Feast for Thieves (19 page)

By now I was a few feet away from the parsonage steps, so I stopped and held her gaze. She was framed in the distance by that field of blue wildflowers, as if caught in one of those new photographs that was bathed in color.

I nodded respectfully to her. And she nodded respectfully to me.

After that she let out the clutch and drove away. She shifted gears quickly as she drove down the road, and I could hear the familiar rumble of the jeep’s engine in my ears for a long time to come, even though it gradually grew quieter the farther away she went.

Well, I cleaned myself up, dressed myself in church duds, and when it was time to preach for evening service I headed back over to the church. My mind wasn’t tied tightly to what I would be preaching on, and no, even as the words were leaving my mouth from behind the pulpit I knew it wasn’t one of my finer sermons. Bobbie wasn’t in service that evening, and I kept glancing at the empty space between her daddy and her sister where she always sat.

When the service was all but over, the sheriff motioned to me like he had something to announce. I called him up and he stood at the pulpit. I thought he’d be wearing a smile at the thought of announcing to the congregation that our building program was
set to begin next week, but he wasn’t smiling. Come to think of it, he’d worn a peculiar frown all the way through service.

“Got some good news and some bad news,” the sheriff began. “It’s one of those occurrences that’s plumb difficult to explain to y’all, but I’ll lay it out there and we can talk more as time progresses.”

I sat on the platform on one of the chairs reserved for staff. From behind him, I could see a red hue creeping up the back of his neck. The sheriff was working on something powerful, perhaps even more powerful than he was letting on. He cleared his throat.

“The good news is that we took in a heap of cash today for our church’s building program. The money was set in an envelope and put in its usual hiding spot for safekeeping before it could be brought to the bank on Monday.” He cleared his throat again. “But the bad news is that when Mert went to count it again, the money wasn’t there.”

A ripple of talk buzzed around the congregation.

“Only six folks know about this hiding spot—the five on the deacon board and our church secretary. All those folks, the ones who are in town anyway, I’ve questioned. And all don’t know where the money is. So … for the time being we’re treating this as a theft.”

Another swell of murmur rose.

The sheriff held up his hand for silence. “I know we’re all disappointed and even angry, but until the money’s located, there ain’t anything more that can be done. If anybody knows anything, come talk to me or Deputy Roy. That’s all for now. Church is dismissed.”

Well, it was a strange evening after that, it rightly was. I shook hands near the door, but there was a strange odor in the room, like the church stunk of death. All Mert could do was look at the floor. Poor, righteous woman. I bet she felt responsible. Wasn’t her fault the money was gone.

Folks stayed longer than usual that evening, talking, arguing, laying down theories as to where the money went, vowing that justice would be levied against the thief. By the time everybody was finished and I swept up and closed the building, the outside night was darker than an inkwell. A cloud had formed in the sky and joined with others. No stars were out, and the moonrise was showing only a tiny sliver far in the eastern sky.

All was dark toward the parsonage. Deadly quiet too. I never left lights on, and the gravel of the church parking lot crunched under my feet as I walked toward my home. My shoes clattered as I walked up the steps and I moved to open the front door. It was already swinging on its hinges. Maybe I left it open. I stopped and stood on the steps, listening close for sounds.

“Anyone there?” I called.

Crickets chirped in the night air. A breeze blew from across the field. The breeze was colder than I expected, and far in the distance a coyote howled.

I reached around the edge of the doorframe, keeping myself as close out of shooting distance as I dared, found the light switch, and turned on the porch light. It provided enough illumination for me to walk forward another two steps, locate the chain dangling from the lightbulb in the middle of the living room ceiling, and give it a quick tug. Streams of white light burst into all corners of the room.

“Watch out. I bite,” said a voice. My pupils dilated in a wink and I looked upon the figure. I didn’t need to. I’d recognize that voice of shadows anywhere. He was leaning back on one of my hard-backed chairs and had his boots on my dining room table. A rifle rested across his lap. I stared at the man hard, swallowed, then found my voice. I could only choke out four words. They were enough to start a conversation, one I knew was a long time coming.

“What do you want?” I said.

There came a pause while the man raised his rifle to eye level and pointed it my direction. He was taking his time, taunting me with the power he held from assuming I was unarmed. He was right. I held no weapon. He laughed and said, “I believe you owe me some money, Rowdy Slater.”

It was Crazy Ake.

  
Part 2
  

SEVENTEEN

W
hen a man levels a rifle at your face, it complicates matters greatly if you’re honor-bound to that man, like I was to Crazy Ake.

See, on my first day of prison, so many months ago now, the fella behind me in the chow line shoved me to one side. Although I had not yet learned all the unspoken codes of prison life, I had the good sense to see I was among roughs—men who valued instinct and aggression—and if I didn’t shove this fella back, then I would be branded a coward. All manner of aggravations would befall me the rest of the time I was locked up, and that would never do.

The fella and I got straight into it, hammer and tongs, but what I didn’t know was that he was only a scout—the soldier walking ahead of the company to test the action and see what’s what. In two hits he was already on the floor, crawling away from me as fast as he could, which is when the rest of the gang took their cue and piled on me. A dozen fellas started beating me, all hard-fisted prison thugs, and I walloped the first five before the rest of the squad pinned me to the floor and their leader pulled a knife.

Their leader was a huge alligator of a man, the one they called Big Red. He was the toughest, most belligerent brute in prison, and he was making a preemptive strike, I learned later. See, when another big-framed fella walks into prison, a man such as myself,
then it’s natural that Big Red would feel threatened. Right away the convict in charge needs to exert his supremacy. If he doesn’t, then he’s equally branded a coward. Plus, he’s forever walking around on pins and needles, waiting for an up-and-comer such as me to make my move and take control.

So there was Big Red with his knife held to my throat below my left earlobe. He was aiming to slice straight across to the right and take my head off. The guards weren’t looking. They didn’t care. And I reckoned I was as good as dead when along came Sergeant Akan Fordmire, a man about twenty-six years old, who broke a chair over the back of Big Red’s skull.

Crazy Ake, for that was the sergeant’s nickname, served as a mortar man during the war. He was a thick-necked Kansas native with bushy sideburns and tattoos on his arms who was sent to prison for stealing supplies from battalion headquarters. Later, when I asked Crazy Ake about why he saved my throat from Big Red’s knife, he put one of his green-painted arms over his face and giggled an eerie laugh. It took nearly a week to pry forth the fuller story.

His saving my life boiled down to cash. Big Red owed Crazy Ake money, or at least that’s the way Crazy Ake saw it. Around prison, if Big Red wanted a new toothbrush, a nail clipper, or a dirty magazine, he wasn’t in the habit of paying straight out for it. He got one of his minions to trade around for him. But the minion flaked and didn’t pay this time, so Crazy Ake was stuck still being owed. When Big Red’s back was turned with the knife at my throat, Crazy Ake spotted a prime opportunity to announce to the whole prison that nobody better not mess with a man’s money, particularly if that man was Crazy Ake.

Big Red was sent to the prison hospital with the back of his head gushing blood and then—fortunate for everyone—was transferred to another lockup out of state. Crazy Ake was slapped with a week in solitary and then, much to my astonishment, he
traded around so he could become my cellmate.

He was starting to collect on the debt I owed him, I gathered soon enough. He was shorter than me and not as muscular, but more wily, I’ll say that much. More shrewd. With Big Red out of the way, Crazy Ake became the new man in charge. As an ex-mortar man he knew how to organize a team, and within a week he had the first tier of brutes under his control. Those brutes controlled the next ranks, and they the next, and all of them put together soon controlled the prison population. Within another two weeks, Crazy Ake bought the guards, at least some of them. And within one short month, a rumor went around that he even bought the warden. There was no way to confirm this. But one afternoon a warm apple pie showed up in our jail cell. No note. No explanation. Just all the sticky goodness Crazy Ake could eat.

Now, in prison a fella’s locked away in his cell for twenty-three hours each day. Sure, you get your meals in the mess hall and you’re allowed to mill about in the yard for an hour, but nothing ever tastes of freedom. There’s always the guard towers to remind you where you are, the razor wire to hold you in, the shouts of profanity that echo off the concrete walls. Surrounding your soul is a depth of deception and trickery you ain’t used to on the outside—it’s always another man doing another man in. The walls talk to you after a while, and simply put: you hate your life.

Well, Crazy Ake told jokes to ease our misery—long, nonsensical stories that sometimes had a point but usually didn’t. He frothed at the mouth and paced wild-eyed in our cell, but he could get a fella to laughing, he could. And he was a charmer in a deceptive sort of way. I confess that with all that time on our hands I was drawn to his high-jinks stories, if only for the entertainment.

I never actually worked for Crazy Ake myself, and I’m not exactly sure why. He never asked me outright for favors and I never offered. In retrospect, I think, he was biding his time until he could collect on the debt I owed him once and for all. My cellmate
had not a bit of a heart for goodness, he was rotten to the core, and over the next months together I watched him operate around prison and saw him stop at nothing to get what he wanted most: a fat fistful of dollars earned the easy way.