Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 02 (27 page)

Ruby Bee shot me a smile that she probably thought was sly (I thought it hinted of dementia). "The last time I looked it was there. Now we'd better get ourselves inside. I already hear the opening hymn."

She and Estelle marched toward the church door. After a dazed moment, David Allen, Bubba, and Sissie followed. Sukie scooped up Baby and tucked him under her arm, then trailed after them, her finger still firmly planted in her mouth.

Hammet tugged on my hand. "Please?" he begged in the time-honored tradition of Oliver Twist.

"Why on earth not? After all, we're all crazy and this is some kind of bizarre dream. Why shouldn't we all go to church together like one big happy family?" I realized I was raving, but I didn't care. "Oh, look, there's Hizzoner and Mizzoner pulling up. This is just dandy. It's better than a surprise birthday party."

Hammet dragged me across the lawn and up the stairs. We went across the porch and into a foyer, entertained all the while by the voices of the congregation doing indictable things to a hymn. A few voices faltered as we continued right down the center aisle to the front pew, but no one tried to stop us. Here comes the bride, I hummed with a manic giggle.

Not that we were welcomed with benevolent smiles, mind you. The organist gave us a withering look as she reared back and took off on another stanza. In the pew behind us, Elsie McMay let out a snort of epic proportion. Kevin Buchanon's mother was sniffling into a tissue, but I didn't take that as a personal affront. Looks were dark and smiles frozen.

On one side of me the Buchanons were arranged in a rigid row, their expressions intent and their hands clutched tightly in their respective laps (except for Baby, who was relishing the last blades of grass and Sukie, who would have been lost without a finger in her mouth). I supposed we were in the front pew so we'd have the best odds when the wages were passed out.

On the other side of me Ruby Bee and Estelle stared at the pulpit. I noticed Ruby Bee had a Bible in her lap. At that moment I wouldn't have worried too much if she'd held a pea-green leprechaun instead. Past Estelle was David Allen, who seemed entranced by the dusty floor.

As the hymn died a merciful death, Brother Verber came out through a door beyond the organ. His steps were bouncy at first, but as he neared the pulpit, he caught a glimpse of his visitors and jerked to a halt. His jaw dropped and his face turned white. His sermon notes fluttered to the floor. His eyelids flapped like laundry in a tornado.

I was fully expecting him to clutch his heart and topple right on over. The congregation whispered and stirred behind us, no doubt expecting the same scenario. Just as I decided to offer him my seat, he shook himself into action and stumbled to the pulpit.

"He's not especially thrilled to see us," I whispered to Ruby Bee. I received an elbow in my ribs and an admonishment to hush up.

"Welcome, welcome, welcome this fine Sunday morning," Verber said, although his voice lacked conviction. "I see we have visitors today, and ain't that fine? It's like God is prodding his black sheep back into our flock so we can share our faith with 'em." His voice gained a measure of steadiness as he continued on in that vein. He then announced various prayer meetings and such, led a hymn, and maintained a tight smile while deacons scurried about to collect our "heartfelt generous offerings." I managed to snag Hammet's wrist before he could help himself to the proffered wages, and engaged in a whispered discussion of the intent of the bowls of money going up and down the aisles.

Then came sermon time. Brother Verber was pinked up by now, and sounding normal as he said, "Today I'm going to tell you a story that is frightful, a story of sin and loose behavior, a story with an ending that'll show you what happens when you stray from the path of righteousness. I am referring to the Second Book of the Kings, right there in Chapter nine. I am referring to Jezebel, who everybody knows was a sleazy, filthy whore, and Jehu, who saw to it that she got what she deserved. Jezebel painted her face and tried to seduce Jehu with her female wiles by making eyes at him from the upstairs window, but he was too smart for her. He just looked up at her and said to the eunuchs conveniently hovering beside her, 'Throw her down!' "

By this time Brother Verber was in fine form. Spittle spewed from his mouth, and his fist hit the podium on every third word. "Well, it was a mighty high window, and when they threw the harlot down to the street, she splattered like a ripe tomato. Then the horses trampled on her and stomped on her until there was blood everyplace. If you'd been there, you'd still be scrubbing your clothes to get out the stains." He switched to a melodramatic whisper. "And do you know what all they did next? Do you know? Why, Jehu and his men went inside just as calm as you please and they had their supper. They had their supper the very same way you have your supper in your own home, just swapping jokes and having a fine time while they ate fried chicken and mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. Did they worry about that dead whore's crumpled body out there in the middle of the street?"

He gave his audience a minute to ponder that one, then slammed his fist down. "No!" he cried, now waving the fist in the air. "They didn't worry one whit -- because she was a whore! Jehu finally got to feeling sorry about the mess outside and told his men to go bury her, but they came back and said they was right sorry but all they could find was her skull, her feet, and the palms of her hands! That was all that was left of the whore!" Verber stopped to mop his forehead. Several members of the congregation muttered amens, but they didn't sound as if they knew exactly why they were doing it.

Hammet rumbled under his breath. Farther down the row Bubba. made the same noise, and Sissie didn't look all that pleased with the sermon thus far. Sukie, on the other hand, looked dumbstruck by the theatrics. Baby was asleep. I crossed my fingers and wished myself to be elsewhere, but it didn't work. It never does.

Verber sucked in a lungful and let it rip. "Now I'm going to tell you what Jehu had to say about that whore, Jezebel. He said that the dogs ate the flesh and that the corpse was dung upon the face of the field. Those were his precise words, because he knew what ought should happen to whores." He sucked in another lungful and gripped the sides of the pulpit as he leaned forward. "And we know it, too. Even in this very day and age, there are whores who are willing to corrupt good Christian soldiers of the Lord. They tempt them something awful. They encourage otherwise moral men to indulge in the sins of the flesh. These whores are about as carnal as you can get! And there is such a whore right here in Maggody. She's smack-dab in the bosom of our little community."

While he stopped once again to mop his forehead, I realized the rumbling along the pew had intensified until I might as well have been sitting beside a hornet's nest. I don't know if Verber heard any of it, but he shot a hooded look at our merry band before continuing. "But why do we allow it? We're charitable Christians, yes. We're kind and forgiving. We're not the kind of folks to stone a sinner -- at least not a penitent sinner who's willing to change her nasty ways. But this whore won't repent! She goes right along tempting men with her big breasts and her curvacious body and her perverted enjoyment of practices way too depraved to describe in the holy house. She encourages those practices -- and takes five dollars for doing them!"

He mopped for a minute while the congregation tried to imagine what practices he was referring to, since they sounded interesting. Once he was tidied up, he sternly studied his flock. "What can we do, you ask me? Well, I'm going to tell you what we can do. We can tell this whore we don't want her in our community any longer. We can tell her that we're God-fearing soldiers of the Lord, and we'll no longer tolerate her depravities. We can tell her we're sick of her, that she is an outcast who'd best go somewhere else to engage in her whorin' and moonshinin' and perversions. We can tell her we don't want her kind because we're moral and pure. We are pillars of the Lord!"

I glanced at Hammet, who glanced at Bubba, who sucked in a breath of his own, stood up, and pointed his finger at the figure behind the pulpit. "Pappy!"

And one beat behind him, Sissle leaped up and aimed an equally accusatory finger at the very same person. "Pappy!"

That rather brought the situation to a halt. The silence was such that you could have heard two electrons collide. Maybe a whole sackful of electrons. The proverbial pin would have sounded like a nuclear explosion. Verber recoiled. His face was so frozen in panic that I decided this time we were going to be treated to the spectacle of a public heart attack. Personally, I was enchanted. It made the last threequarters of an hour worth every tedious second. Ruby Bee and Estelle nodded at each other, leading me to further questions regarding their sanity. David Allen was biting down on his lower lip so hard it was likely to bleed.

Finally there was a noise in the back, followed by footsteps down the aisle. Mrs. Jim Bob stomped right up to Bubba Buchanon and jabbed her finger at him. "You are a filthy little liar! How dare you and this wretched sister of yours make that kind of wild, lying accusation in the house of the Lord? You ought to be whipped until you can't sit down for a solid week. Maybe a year!"

Hammet now poked Sukie, who picked up Baby and turned around to stare at the back of the room. Every head in the congregation turned too. What we saw was Jim Bob Buchanon, Hizzoner the Moron, sneaking toward the exit. What we heard was Sukie loudly lisp, "Pappy!"

"Liar!" Mrs. Jim Bob howled.

"No, she ain't," Ruby Bee said, rising to the occasion. She held up the Bible so everyone could see it. "What I got in my hand is Robin Buchanon's family Bible. She couldn't read or write real well, but she had enough sense to record the names of her children's fathers. It seems like Brother Verber begat a couple, as did our fine, upstanding mayor. This is proof. The begats are written in the Bible."

And right there in the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall, all hell broke loose. It was wonderful. It really was.

14

David Allen, Hammet, and I slipped outside. Even beside the highway we could hear the accusations flying inside the building, with Mrs. Jim Bob the most audible. By a long shot.

"Interesting timing," I said to Hammet.

He gave me a grin of great innocence and shrugged. "We was going to wait until afterward, but he was saying all them low-down things. It jest seemed like the time."

David Allen nodded. "I thought it was well staged, myself. But what about your father, pal? Wasn't he in there cowering behind a pew?"

"No, he used to live over in Emmet, but I think he moved away a few years back. He weren't all that bad. He gived me a dollar once, but of course Her found it and like to slap me silly."

"Do you know his name?" David Allen asked.

"It's in the goddamn Bible." Hammet sighed, then looked up at me with his puppy-dog expression. "Iffen we can't find him, can I live with you? You might get married sometime to a father what wants a sibling for his own little boy -- iffen his little boy gets well."

I bent down and hugged him until he squirmed. "Listen," I said gently, "you know you can't live with me. But we'll find your father and let him know about you. You yourself said he wasn't all that bad. And you can come visit me whenever you want -- if you don't complain about sleeping on the sofa or being left alone all day while I do police work."

Which I needed to do. I was in the middle of asking David Allen if he'd keep Hammet for an hour when a pickup truck drove past us and stopped in front of the Emporium across the road. My whiskery, dope-smoking friend got out of the truck and waved a half-eaten ice-cream cone at me. I told everybody to sit tight and went across the street.

"How are Poppy and the baby?" I asked.

"They're cool. How about you?"

A dark-haired man with the motions of a panther came out of the store, a gasoline can in one hand and a package of light bulbs in the other. Ignoring me, he glowered at Zachery. "I told you to be back an hour ago. What the hell kept you? Are you trying to fuck with me for some reason?"

"Hey, man, don't come down on me. Rainbow told me to wash the truck. It was so dusty she thought it might contaminate the bottled water or something screwy like that." He grinned at me. "Have you met Nate here?"

"You're the one who wasn't around last night to fetch the midwife," I said pleasantly, considering. "You'd gone off in the truck, so I ended up driving all over the county to find her."

"Yeah, tough luck," he muttered.

I looked at the truck, which was blue and battered -- and familiar. "I saw you in the truck last night, by the way. Remember the jeep you almost ran off the road right down there by Estelle's Hair Fantasies?"

"You didn't nosedive into the ditch, lady. You ought to pay more attention when you drive, instead of trying to pin something on me."

"I was talking on the radio, and I might not have been watching too carefully. However, I did have my headlights on. If yours are broken, I doubt those light bulbs will fit. Where were you going? There's nothing down that way until Hasty, which is hardly worth a visit on a bright, clear day. It's unthinkable on a rainy night. It's suicidal on a rainy night without headlights."

"The headlights were on. You've got a loose screw, lady." He put his things under a tarp in the truck bed and started to walk away, but Zachery caught his arm.