Still Life With Crows (25 page)

“Sitting Bull.” Wren said the words carefully, lovingly, like poetry.

“It will be in your hands by Monday. For conservation only. You may enjoy it for two weeks.”

“And the journal—if indeed it exists—will be in yours.”

“It exists. But let me not disturb your work any further. Good afternoon, Wren. Be careful.”

“Fare thee well.” Replacing the phone in his pocket, Wren returned to his laptop, going over the physical layout of the Selden Collection in his mind, his veined hands almost trembling at the thought of holding, a day or two hence, Sitting Bull’s ledger book.

From the pool of darkness behind the glass-fronted cabinets, a pair of small, serious eyes watched intently as, once again, Wren began to type.

Twenty-Eight

S
mit Ludwig rarely attended church anymore, but he had the gut sense, as he rose that brutally hot Sunday morning, that it might be worth going. He couldn’t say why, exactly, except that tensions had risen to a fever pitch in the town. The killings were all that people could talk about. Neighbors were glancing sidelong at each other. People were scared, uncertain. They were looking for reassurance. His reporter’s nose told him that Calvary Lutheran was where they would seek it.

As he approached the neat brick church with its white spire, he knew he’d been right. The parking lot was overflowing with cars, which also spilled out along both sides of the street. He parked at the far end and had to walk almost a quarter mile. It was hard to believe so many people still lived in Medicine Creek, Kansas.

The doors were open and the greeters pushed the usual program into his hand as he entered. He eased his way through the crowd in the back and moved off to one side, where he had a decent view. This was more than a church service; this was a story. There were people in church who had never been inside the building their entire lives. He patted his pocket and was glad to see he’d brought his notebook and pencil. He removed them and surreptitiously began jotting notes. There were the Bender Langs, Klick and Melton Rasmussen, Art Ridder and his wife, the Cahills, Maisie, and Dale Estrem with his usual buddies from the Farmer’s Co-op. Sheriff Hazen stood to one side, looking grumpy—hadn’t seen
him
in church since his mother died. His son was beside him, an irritable look on his puffy face. And there, off in a shadowy corner, stood the FBI man, Pendergast, and Corrie Swanson, all spiked purple hair and black lipstick and dangly silver things. Now
there
was an odd couple.

A hush fell over the congregation as the Reverend John Wilbur made his fussy way toward the pulpit. The service began, as usual, with the entrance hymn, the prayer of the day. During the readings that followed, the silence was absolute. Ludwig could see that people were waiting for the sermon. He wondered just how Pastor Wilbur would handle it. The man, narrow and pedantic, was not known for his oratory. He larded his sermons with quotations from English literature and poetry in an attempt to show erudition, but the effect only seemed pompous and long-winded. The moment of truth had come for Pastor Wilbur. This was the time of his town’s greatest need.

Would he rise to the occasion?

The reading from the Gospel was complete; the time for the sermon had arrived. The air was electric. This was it: the moment of spiritual reassurance that people had yearned for, had waited for, had come to find.

The minister stepped up to the pulpit, gave two delicate little coughs into his balled hand, pursed his thin lips, and smoothed with a crackle the yellowed papers that lay hidden behind the elaborately carved wood.

“Two quotes come to mind this morning,” Wilbur said, glancing over the congregation. “One, of course, from the Bible. The other, from a famous sermon.”

Hope leapt in Ludwig’s heart. This sounded new. This sounded promising.

“Recall, if you will, God’s promise to Noah in the Book of Genesis:
While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
And in the words of the good Doctor Donne,
God comes to thee, not as in the dawning of the day, not as in the bud of the spring, but as the sheaves in harvest.
” Wilbur paused to survey the packed church from over his reading glasses.

Abruptly, Ludwig’s spirits fell, all the harder for having been falsely raised. He recognized these quotations all too well. Wilbur’s air of practiced improvisation had fooled him.
Oh my God,
he thought,
he’s not going to do the harvest sermon again, is he?

And yet, beyond all understanding, that seemed to be Wilbur’s intent. He spread his arms with magisterial pomp.

“Here we are, once again, the little town of Medicine Creek, surrounded by the bounty of God. Summer. Harvest. All around us are the fruits of God’s green earth, God’s promise to us: the
corn,
the stalks trembling under the weight of the ripe ears beneath the giving summer sun.”

Ludwig looked around with a kind of desperation. It was the same sermon Wilbur always gave at this time of the year, for as long as Ludwig could remember. There was a time, when his wife still lived, that Ludwig found Wilbur’s cycle of sermons—as predictable as the cycle of seasons—comfortable and reassuring. But not now. Especially not now.

“To those who would ask for a sign of God’s bounty, for those who require proof of His goodness, I say to you: go to the door. Go to the door and look out over the great sea of life, the harvest of corn that stands ready to be plucked and eaten, to provide physical nourishment to our bodies and spiritual comfort to our souls . . .”

“To be made into gasohol for our cars, you mean,” Ludwig heard someone nearby mutter.

He waited. Maybe the minister was just warming up and was going to get onto the real topic soon.

“. . . While Thanksgiving is the accepted time to thank God for the bounty of His earth, I like to offer thanks now, just
before
harvest, when the gift of God’s goodness is made incarnate all around us, in the fields of corn that stretch from horizon to horizon. Let us all walk, as the immortal bard John Greenleaf Whittier impels us to, ‘Up from the meadows rich with corn.’ Let us all then pause, and look out over the great Kansas earth covered with the harvest and give thanks.” He paused for effect.

The mood in the room remained one of suspension, of desperate hope that the sermon would take an unexpected turn.

“The other day,” the minister began in a more jocular tone, “I was driving to Deeper with my wife, Lucy, when our car ran out of gas.”

Oh, no. He told this story last year. And the year before.

“There we were, by the side of the road, completely surrounded by corn. Lucy turned to me and asked, ‘Whatever are we going to do, dear?’

“I answered, ‘Trust in God.’ ”

He chuckled, blissfully ignorant of the ugly undercurrent that was now beginning to ripple through the congregation. “Well, she got mad at that. Being the man, you see, I was supposed to have filled up the tank, and so it was my fault that we’d run out. ‘You trust in God,’ she said. ‘I’m going to trust in my two good legs.’ And she started to get out of the car—”

Suddenly a voice rang out: “and got the gas can out of the back and walked to the gas station!”

It was Swede Cahill himself who had completed the reverend’s sentence: Swede Cahill, the nicest man in town. But there he was, on his feet, red-faced.

Pastor Wilbur compressed his lips so hard they almost disappeared. “Mr. Cahill, may I remind you that this is a church, and that I am giving a sermon?”

“I know very well what you’re doing, Reverend.”

“Then I shall continue—”

“No,”
said Cahill, panting heavily. “No, you will not.”

“For heaven’s sake, sit down, Swede,” a voice cried from somewhere.

Cahill turned toward the voice. “There’ve been two horrible murders in this town and all he can do is read some sermon he wrote back in 1973? No, this won’t scour. It won’t scour, I say.”

A woman had arisen: Klick Rasmussen. “Swede, if you have something to say, have the
decency
to wait until—”

“No, he’s right,” interrupted another voice. Ludwig turned. It was a worker from the Gro-Bain plant. “Swede’s right. We didn’t come here to listen to a damn sermon about corn. There’s a killer on the loose and none of us are safe.”

Klick turned her short, furious bulk on him. “Young man, this is a church service, not a town meeting!”

“Didn’t you hear about what that man Gasparilla said on his deathbed?” Swede cried. His face had, if possible, grown even redder. “This is no joke, Klick. This town’s in crisis.”

There was a general murmuring of assent. Smit Ludwig scribbled madly, trying to get down Swede’s words.

“Please,
please!
” Pastor Wilbur was saying, holding up two thin arms. “Not in God’s house!”

But others were on their feet. “Yeah,” said another plant worker. “I heard what Gasparilla said. I sure as hell heard it.”

“I did, too.”

“It can’t be true, can it?”

The murmuring of voices rose dramatically.

“Pastor,” said Swede, “why do you think the church is full? People are here because they’re frightened. This land has seen bad times before, terrible times. But this is different. People are talking about the curse of the Forty-Fives, the massacre, as if the town itself is cursed. As if these murders are some awful judgment upon us. They’re looking to you for reassurance.”

“Mr. Cahill, as the local
tavern-keeper
I hardly think you’re in a position to lecture me on my duties as a pastor,” said Wilbur furiously.

“Look here, Reverend, with all due respect—”

“And what about this freakish corn they want to grow here?” called out a very deep voice. It was Dale Estrem, on his feet, raising a hoe in a knotted fist. “What about that?”

He brought that hoe here as a prop,
thought Ludwig, writing madly.
He came prepared to make a scene.

“It’s going to cross-pollinate and pollute our fields! These scientists want to come here and play God with our food, Reverend! When are you going to talk about
that?
”

Now a far more hysterical voice rang out, trumping all. An old man, skinny as a rail, with a huge bobbing Adam’s apple that made his neck whiskers bristle like quills, had stood up and was shaking his fist furiously at Wilbur. It was old Whit Bowers, the recluse who managed the town dump. “The End Days are come! Can’t you see it, you blind fool!”

Swede turned. “Look, Whit, that wasn’t what I was—”

“You’re all a pack of fools if you don’t see it! The devil is walking among us!”

The man’s voice was shriekingly high, raspy, cutting like a knife through the babel.

“The devil himself
is in this church!
Are you all blind? Can’t you see it? Can’t you
smell
it?”

Pastor Wilbur was holding up his hands and shouting something, but his dry, pedantic voice could not compete with the general hubbub. Now everyone was on their feet. The church was in chaos.

“He’s here!”
Whit shrieked. “Look to your neighbor! Look to your friend! Look to your brother! Is that the devil’s eyes staring back at you? Look well! And take heed! Have you all forgotten the words of Peter?
Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking who he may devour!!
”

Others were shouting to be heard. People were milling in the aisle. There was a cry and someone fell. Ludwig lowered his pad, strained to see. There was Pendergast, still as death in his shadowy corner. There was Corrie beside him, grinning with delight. The sheriff was yelling and gesturing. There was a sudden backward movement of the crowd.

“You son of a bitch!” someone shouted. There was a violent motion, the smack of a landed fist. My God, it was a fight, right here in the church. Ludwig was stunned. He hastily climbed up on the pew to get a better view, notebook in hand. It was Randall Pennoyer, a friend of Stott’s, dusting it up with another plant worker. “Nobody deserved to die like that, parboiled like a hog!”

There was more confused shouting, and several men surged forward to separate the combatants. Ridder himself was now wading in, shouting, trying to reach the fight. Sheriff Hazen, too, was ploughing down the aisle like a bulldog, his head lowered. As Ludwig watched, Hazen fell over Bertha Blodgett and rose again, his face dark with fury. Horrified voices echoed off the vaulted ceiling. The people in the back had pushed open the doors and were exiting in a confused mass.

A pew came crashing down to the frightened screams of a woman.

“
Not in the house of God!”
Wilbur was shouting, his eyes bulging.

Above it all, the apocalyptic voice of Whit continued, piping out a shrill warning:
“Look into their eyes and you will see! Breathe the air and smell the brimstone! He’s a crafty one, but you will find him out! Yes, you will! The killer is here! He’s one of us! The devil has come to Medicine Creek and he’s walking hand in hand with us. You heard it: the devil with the face of a child!”

Twenty-Nine

C
orrie Swanson sat in her car beneath the shade of the trees in the little turnout by the creek, where Pendergast had—in his mysterious fashion—asked her to drive him. It had just passed noon, and the heat was suffocating. Corrie shifted in her seat, feeling the beads of sweat gathering on her forehead, on the back of her neck. Once again, Pendergast was acting strange. He’d simply reclined in his broken seat and closed his eyes. He looked asleep, but of course Corrie knew enough by now to realize he wasn’t sleeping. He was thinking. But about what? And why here? And whatever the hell it was, why had it taken half an hour, and counting?

She shook her head. He was a weird one. Nice weird, but weird all the same.

She picked up the book she was reading,
Beyond the Ice Limit,
found her dog-eared place at the beginning of chapter six, and began to read.