My King The President (18 page)

In the time it took me to steadily walk out of St. Michaels back to Ralph’s car, all emotion, humanity, and decency had totally drained from my body and soul. My breathing was normal. My pulse, too. What was left of Jeb Willard was a working mind that was cool and clear as bottled water. The rest of me was beyond feeling anything at all, and I knew that for my survival, let alone getting the answers I needed, this was a good thing.

Priorities. The next thing my brain told my body to do was to somehow remove Liz, Monsignor Ralph, and the residents of the convent from harm’s way. Enough innocent people had died. Too many. Without hurrying, or driving carelessly, I drove back to the Mother House and made straight for Sister Agnes’ austere office. Reading my face, she raised her eyes in question.

My voice was flat. Calm. “Sister Agnes, everyone here is in great danger. We must all leave. Now.”

She leaned back in her chair. “Where is Father Flaherty?”

“He’s dead. Murdered. Some time this morning. Listen to me, please. There isn’t much time. The man who killed Father Tim is responsible for dozens of gruesome murders. Any creature capable of slaughtering a priest in his own church wouldn’t think twice of massacring everyone here just to get at Liz and me. We all have to get away. Right now! What kind of transportation does the convent have?”

Whatever shock the good Mother Superior felt, she didn’t show it. What she did show was uncommon intelligence and the ability to act in emergencies. “We have a small bus, but it’s large enough for all of us. We use it for trips to retreats and other church functions, except none of us can drive it.”

“I’m sorry, Sister Agnes. No time. Call everyone down, tell them all to drop whatever they’re doing and meet me out back. Monsignor Ralph, too. Don’t waste a second.”

She didn’t, and I ran down the corridor and through the rear door of the convent, not even breathing hard. I flung the double doors of the garage open and climbed into the old vehicle which looked like a clone of the white-painted activities bus our high school teams used for out-of-town games, only now the lettering painted on its side read: Our Lady of Perpetual Help, not Tryon’s Cove Cougars.

We desperately need your help now, Precious Lady
.

The keys were already in the ignition, and the old crate started on the first try.
Thank you!
By the time I eased it out of the garage, the first of the fifteen nuns were already lining up, Liz among them. Silently, without panic, they all boarded, Liz giving me a wide-eyed look of questioning fear. “Later,” I said, noticing Ralph emerging from the convent door, looking like my twin. “No time now. Take a seat with the others.”

She brushed past me as Ralph climbed in, Sister Agnes right behind him. “We’re all here, Mister Willard.”

Monsignor Ralph took the front seat to my right. I put the bus in gear and started down the circular driveway, praying that its heater worked. As soon as I reached the main road, looked both ways, and pulled out onto it, he said, “Sister Agnes told me. It’s— It’s
unbelievable
.” In his next breath he wanted to know where we were going.

I downshifted. “You’re going to Dulles. The rest of us are going north. Best you don’t know exactly where. Do you have any money?”

“Money? Um, not much. Maybe seventy, eighty dollars.”

I nodded. Concentrated on my driving, knowing Sister Agnes was quietly passing from seat to seat, explaining the hard facts. Only the droning engine and the tires on the highway made any other audible sounds. A kind of eerie music. Like a perverted, monotonous Gregorian descant. Not much of a Requiem Mass for a Catholic Wom.

It took me two hours to drive to Dulles. I brazenly parked behind a shuttle bus directly in front of the United Terminal, took out Ralph’s wallet, and after removing Barnes’ ID, handed it to him. “Listen closely, and don’t argue. There’s over a thousand dollars of my own money in there. Don’t use your credit cards. Use what cash you need to catch the first plane out of here. Far as possible. Maybe San Francisco. Whatever you do, don’t go to your family, and don’t contact them. When you get situated, maybe at the Y, wait a few days, and then call Ernie Latham at the
Post
. Got that?”

“Ernie Latham at the
Post
. Got it.”

“Right. Don’t mention me, or anything that’s happened here. Just tell him your name and where you are. Tell no one else. Your very life depends on it. Now hurry.” I glanced backwards. Gave him my best smile. “They’ll be all right, I promise.”

He smiled once back at me, then was gone. I hoped he’d be okay. In the left rear view mirror, I noticed a scowling airport cop coming towards the bus, so I wasted no time pulling out, heading for I-95…south.

It was time for me to go home.

All along the Bible Belt from Virginia to Mississippi, every small southern town has one, and Tryon’s Cove is no exception. Yet, ghetto seems too strong a word to describe those areas, which often contain as much as a third of the town’s population: Communities within communities, where generations of black families have clustered since the Civil War; first on an outer boundary, often quite literally “across the tracks” and usually by a wide ditch if not directly on the banks of a flowing stream or river, much like their pre-slavery ancestors had. They lived in shacks, cheap frame houses, and abandoned boxcars that had seen little or no physical improvement since reconstruction. In Tryon’s Cove, the seat of Tuscarora County, that neighborhood was called Oldfield. In almost two hundred years’ time, the rest of Tryon’s Cove had grown around and beyond Oldfield, reluctantly enclosing, incorporating, and then ignoring it as though it was an odorous black lake, to be avoided, if possible, like some rat infested swamp.

During the post-WWII decades, several paved streets, indoor plumbing, electricity, even an occasional telephone, and other modest signs of the twentieth century had gradually seeped, like osmosis, into that isolated neighborhood, although not at the same speed of the birth rate. The only latter day phenomenon to keep pace with the white sections of Tryon’s Cove were proportionate numbers of sprouting television aerials.

And steepled churches.

It was to the oldest of those I was headed. Simon Peter’s church.

Dr. Simon Peter Williams tended his flock at the Mt. Zion Baptist Church with the same kind of organizational leadership, zeal, and style Ghengis Kahn had led his heathen hordes. At six-four, maybe three hundred and twenty or so pounds, and with a voice that could carry over two counties, Reverend Williams’ church never had any internal mutinies and seldom any arguments. When he said something was bad, it was
bad
, brother. Or vice versa. Amen! Every single member knew he had conveniently, perhaps shrewdly, prefixed “Simon” along with an added “r” to his given name, and he was no more a Doctor of Divinity than I was a Catholic priest, but his huge heart was of fourteen carat gold, and he and his wife, Lollie were among Cal’s oldest friends. Mine, too, for that matter. Both had known me since I’d been a baby. Lollie had been our housekeeper after my mother’s death, and in lieu of babysitting, had often taken me along to her church when her private work schedule conflicted with something Simon Peter needed done.

As a kid, and even when I was much older, I was always in awe of the sheer
size
of Mt. Zion’s. Twice as large as any Caucasian church in Tryon’s Cove, it had been rebuilt at least three times over the last hundred years, and now covered most of the entire block of 200 Pine Street. Down in the labyrinth of its enormous basement, the Boy and Girl Scout troop headquarters Mt. Zion’s sponsored, along with the offices of its two Little League baseball teams, had been moved to separate buildings. The vacated space, next to the remodeled, expanded kitchens, was converted into two dozen tiny, furnished apartments for the black unwed mothers of Tuscarora County. Nowadays, they were almost always full. That particular project had been started years ago by Lollie—with Simon Peter’s tacit approval—when two of their own daughters had needed such assistance. Simon Peter and Lollie had never been blessed with a boy child (a vexing cross that Simon bore stoically) and, of their seven girls, two of the first three, Pearl and Opal, had become pregnant before they were out of high school. The oldest, Amethyst, had married a young evangelist, and the youngest, Topaz, was a deputy sheriff who worked at the county jail. The others helped Lollie run the Mt. Zion Haven for Unwed Mothers.

I parked the bus in the church parking lot, turned off the lights and looked at the watch Monsignor Ralph had loaned me. Ten forty-five. I turned to face the women, all who had been truly magnificent on the long bus trip. I had only needed to make two gas-pit stops, and none of the nuns had complained a bit about where those stops had been. I had the sudden thought just at that moment, that Sister Agnes and Dr. Simon Peter Williams had a lot in common besides their faith. “You’ve all been terrific. I need you to be patient just a little while longer. I’m going inside, and it may take a while before I get back. Will you be okay?”

Sister Agnes answered for all of them. “We’ll be fine, young man.”

I left the bus, walked around the corner to the parsonage and knocked, not failing to again notice the hand-painted sign over the sill that said,

THIS DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN.

I hoped it meant what it said.

It was Lollie who came. And it only took her half a second to see through my disguise. Her right hand fluttered to her throat. “Lord God! Jeb?
Jeb
? We thought you were
dead
. Lord God Almighty! What you doin’ in that get-up? Child, I—”

“Please, Lollie, I need to talk to you and the Reverend. It’s mighty important. Can I come in?”

My tearful reunion with those two black saints was something like that of Lazarus, and it took me a good twenty minutes to tell the bizarre story I’d rehearsed on the trip south, most of it absolutely true, because Lollie, if not her husband, would have surely known if I was lying.

Simon Peter Williams never hesitated. “Certainly, certainly. The Lord will provide. We can make room for all of them, and of course your lady-friend can stay with us a while. Long as she needs to.” He turned to his wife. “Lollie, you go on out there with Jeb and take care of those ladies. I’ll go wake Ruby and Sapphire up. They’ll have some food cooked up in half an hour.”

Though polite and dainty, the nuns ate everything put before them, drank two gallons of iced tea, then silently went to their assigned cubicles with grateful, contented smiles on their faces. This in spite of hearing me tell them they’d all have to be ready to travel again by dawn. Liz avoided my eyes, and joined the procession without a word. At the time, I thought nothing of it. She’d been through a lot, and no doubt needed time for her own thoughts.

As for me, I was given a rollaway bed in the hall of the parsonage, along with fresh sheets, two blankets, and an old-fashioned alarm clock. As yet, I still had not had time to look over the pages Jody Erikson had printed out for me, but I was far too tired to, and was asleep the moment my head touched the pillow.

* * *

It wasn’t the clock that awakened me. I must not have been sleeping soundly, and subconsciously felt, sensed, a presence. I opened my eyes slowly, gradually recognizing Liz’s face. Liz’s tear streaked face. She was kneeling beside the cot. I tried to sit up but she pushed me back down. “Jeb, don’t leave me here. Let me go with you and the others wherever it is you’re planning to go. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t ever want to be alone again.”

“It will only be for a little while, Liz. Plus, you’ll be safe here. I’ll come back for you soon. That’s a promise.”

“I’m afraid you won’t come back.”

This time I did sit up. I took her face in both my hands. “Nothing is going to happen to me, honey. Nothing. And my friends here won’t let anything happen to you either. You have to trust me with this. Please.”

The alarm went off. I reached for it and shut it down quickly, then grabbed her face to kiss her, but she turned away so that my lips met only the fabric of the habit over her left ear. “Where are you going?” It was a whisper.

Chapter 17

Sal Cancelossi made me wait until we were well out into the Gulf Stream before starting any conversation—except to snicker at my disguise. “Not the first time a fugitive has hidden behind a priest’s collar,” he’d said, and in the next wheezing breath had agreed that what I had done was the right thing after finding Father Tim’s body. I had located the offices of the Miami Diocese, left the bus, Sister Agnes, and all the nuns in the parking lot. Not particularly anxious to answer a battery of questions by a furious (or sympathetic) Bishop, I had simply walked down Cormiant Street until I could hail a cab. This time around, however, its driver hadn’t given me any condescending hassle.

The guys at the gate hadn’t either; after I identified myself and reminded them that Don Cancelossi was expecting me. One of them, after telephoning confirmation, had taken me straight to the massive front door that was guarded by two more well dressed apes with quick hands and eyes that didn’t blink.