The Bastard Hand (8 page)

“Ain’t that against the law? Why don’t you arrest ’em?”

Oldfield looked apologetic. He said, “Well, it ain’t illegal to make it, Reverend, it’s just illegal to sell it. Those boys make a point of not selling it to anyone in town here. Besides, illegal booze is the county sheriff’s problem, and, according to my sources,” —a bit of pride crept into his voice— “the Aarons give the stuff away to the sheriff’s boys to keep ’em off their backs.”

The Reverend nodded. “Ah, well. Some things you just can’t do nothing about, huh? It’s just a shame that men with such obvious gifts from God would waste it. Maybe I’ll go up to Moker’s Hill and see if I can’t talk to them.”

“I wouldn’t really recommend that, Reverend. The Aarons are always heavily armed. And they don’t care for folks coming out on their property.”

The Reverend said, “The Lord’s will don’t care nothing about guns, Officer.”

“Well . . . if you go up there, at least let me know so that I can go with you.”

With the spiritual matters behind us, the rest of our tour of the church addressed more practical needs. Downstairs, Oldfield showed us the pastor’s office, the bathrooms, the huge kitchen. The main hall was amazingly wide, and Oldfield said, “Most of the church events are held right here in the hall. You’d be amazed how many folks can fit down here.”

Upstairs was a private bathroom with a small shower, and two furnished rooms. Automatically, the Reverend claimed the larger of the two by sitting on the bed and bouncing up and down on it a couple times. His windows looked out over High Park Lane and the park on the other side of it. My room had a view of the dumpster and the parking lot, but I wasn’t complaining. After all, this was the Reverend’s gig. I was just along for the ride.

We went back downstairs and Oldfield showed us the industrial-size coffee maker. He brewed up a pot, and the three of us sat at the tall food prep counter to go through the shooting-the-breeze portion of our tour. Oldfield, who just happened to be a member in good standing of the Baptist Church, covered a few of what he considered the major points of the town. There were a few reserve officers in town, he told us, but mostly the only law around was him and Captain Forrey, whom we’d meet tomorrow. The mayor in Cuba Landing for the last nine years was a man named Bishop Ishy—another personality to meet on the next day’s itinerary. The Reverend perked up a bit only at the prospect of meeting the members of the Ladies Club.

Finally, Oldfield got around to asking the question that had been on his mind. He’d been looking at me speculatively, hem-hawing, wondering how to approach the subject. Sipping his coffee, he went for it. “So, Mr. Wesley . . . if you don’t mind my asking . . . what exactly is your, uh, official capacity?”

The Reverend jumped in before I could answer. “Charlie’s been my personal assistant for going on three years now. Wherever I go, he goes. I just couldn’t get anything done without him, I tell you.”

“Oh,” Oldfield said. “Well, that’s a good thing, I suppose. I imagine church business can get down-right burdensome, can’t it?”

“Amen to that,” the Reverend laughed. “I get so caught up sometimes in God’s work that I tend to forget the everyday stuff that needs to get done. Charlie helps me stay on top of it, don’t ya, Charlie?”

“Well,” Oldfield said. “Good thing we have two rooms up there, eh? Although, I gotta tell you, I’m not sure what the church budget is like. The pastor’s salary is always pretty small anyway, you know, and a second person . . .”

“That ain’t nothing to worry about,” the Reverend said. “I’ve always paid Charlie outta my own pocket, and as long as we got food in our stomachs and a roof over our heads, God will provide. He always has.”

Oldfield nodded wisely. Finishing his coffee, he stood up, said, “I reckon you folks are pretty dogged after your trip, so I’ll be on my way for now. If you need anything, you just call down the police station any old time, I’d be happy to help.”

We stood with him, and the Reverend stuck out his hand. “Kind of ya, Officer Oldfield. Good to meet ya.”

“Likewise,” Oldfield grinned. He shook our hands in turn, and we followed him upstairs to the back door.

Oldfield paused right outside, turned back around as if a thought had just occurred to him. He said, “Oh, yeah, something I forgot to mention that you might want to know, just so you’re ready for it.”

“Do tell,” the Reverend said, smiling.

“Tomorrow night, at this shindig they got planned, you’re probably gonna meet the old pastor’s mama. A lotta folks been giving her a hard time for a lotta years now, saying just all kinds of ugly things about her, but to her credit she’s been good to the church for years now, ever since her boy became the pastor. Heck, even since he took off, she’s been here every Sunday, come hell or high water. I’m sure she’ll want to meet you.”

The Reverend said, “What kind of ugly things do people say about her?”

Oldfield shook his head. “I ain’t one much given to gossip. She’s had it pretty rough, and I’d hate to spread anything around. Some folks think she might have driven the old boy off or something, and ever since then it’s just been one thing after another with her whole dang family. I don’t know. Heck, you know how people like to gossip. In any case, you’re sure to meet her tomorrow evening.”

“What’s her name?” the Reverend said.

“Kimberly Garrity. She’s always been a friend to the church here, so I don’t—”

I cut him off. “What did you say her name was?”

He repeated it for me, and continued what he had been saying to the Reverend. But I didn’t hear the rest.

I’m not sure, but I think I said something about going to the bathroom. I stumbled away from the Reverend and Oldfield, made my way upstairs, careened into my new bedroom. I opened my bag, riffled through my few belongings and pulled out the Bible I’d swiped from the laundromat.

I opened the Bible to the inside front cover, looked at the inscription there, even though I already knew what it said. Garrity. Kimberly Garrity, for God’s sake.

I dropped the Bible back in my bag and went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. Then I stared at myself in the mirror and repeated it over and over. Garrity. Son of a bitch. Garrity.

This was no coincidence, I said to the face in the mirror. Not by a long shot.

After Oldfield left, I took a long shower, then went to my new room and fell into bed. I heard Reverend Childe come up, quietly so as not to disturb me. He spent some time in the bathroom, then retired to his own small room. Still in a state of shock, I spent a long time staring at the ceiling and trying to put it all together in my head.

It was still with me the next day as I walked the streets of Cuba Landing. When I woke, the Reverend had already left on some errand or another, so I took another shower and wandered around the empty church by myself until the echoes started making me nervous. I went out into the warm May morning.

In the park across from the church, a single adult supervised a group of elementary school kids on a picnic. Cars crawled slowly up and down Main. In front of the bookshop, a handsome middle-aged woman was setting up a display of discount books, apparently just opening for the day. The bar was closed, but a teenage boy busily swept the parking lot of broken glass and other debris. Hordes of people gathered inside the bakery, and the smell of fresh bread wafted at me from across the street.

Yesterday, I’d seen a small diner a couple blocks up Main, so I headed in that direction, past clusters of happily strolling couples, sweating joggers, and distracted-looking housewives walking vapid-faced dogs. The night before, Cuba Landing had been an abandoned town, hardly a single person to be seen, and now people moved everywhere, smiling and nodding as I passed, all caught up in this small moment of their lives.

Outside the diner, a young black kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, strummed a beat-up guitar and howled a bluesy rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. He was the first non-white person I’d seen so far. I dropped a dollar into his open guitar case and went inside.

The smell first—biscuits in the oven and sausage sizzling. An old man sat at the counter and a waitress poured coffee into his cup and nodded at me. I nodded back, found the nearest empty booth. It was small, only a row of booths along the window facing Main, and a short bar with six stools. Half-full, but the two waitresses were obviously seasoned and their casually fast pace kept it from seeming hectic. The jukebox was turned off, and the black kid’s song drifted through the glass, underlying the murmur of conversation and laughter. The kid had a damn good voice, and played the guitar pretty well, too.

Before I’d even glanced at the menu, the waitress appeared at my table with coffee. She was pretty in that way that so many of the women I’d seen in the South were, a kind of flippant girl-next-door, with some hard edges. Her nametag read “Hi I’m” and underneath in hurried cursive “Gloria”.

I ordered biscuits and sausage gravy with scrambled eggs. Just saying the words made my stomach grumble. Gloria said, “That’ll be right up, sugar,” and flitted off behind the counter, where the cook cooked and never looked up.

I sipped at my coffee and thought about the last few days. Weird, the way things had happened. Since I’d left the institution in Washington behind, I’d had my share of close calls and run-ins with all sorts of people and things, but nothing really compared to the turmoil that started in Memphis. I’d done more in three days than most reprobates do in a lifetime.

But Garrity was all I could think of. Jathed Garrity. Kimberly Garrity, his mother. I had assumed at first that she was his wife or lover or something, the inscription had seemed so intimate. The words that flowed in a fine womanly script on the inside front cover, interrupted only by the strange hole that pierced the Bible all the way through. . . .

All the way through. Like a bullet hole.

I was so caught up in my thoughts that I didn’t notice the waitress returning until she placed my breakfast in front of me. Refilling my coffee cup, she said, “Enjoy, sugar. Let me know if you need anything else.”

I dug in, trying not to wolf it down too fast. The kid outside started in on his own version of “Whiter Shade of Pale”.

The old man at the bar had been talking and flirting with the other waitress, but suddenly he stopped in mid-sentence and said, “Well, lookee here! Look who’s coming.”

Everyone within hearing distance of the old man, including me, looked out the window. A steel-gray Jaguar X-JS was just pulling up to the curb in front of the diner. The kid playing guitar stopped the tune he was doing and launched immediately into a sweet rendition of The Ink Spots “If I Didn’t Care”.

Someone in the booth next to mine said, “Oh, man. Here we go.”

My waitress, Gloria, said, “Now you boys behave, you hear me?”

The old man said, “How she can show her face . . . ?”

I watched as the Jag’s door opened and a pair of impressive legs slid out. She stepped out of the car and paused there, looking through a pair of dark sunglasses at the faces on the other side of the diner window. Her mouth twisted uncertainly for a moment then hardened into a grimace. She walked toward the newsstand by the diner’s front window, leaving her car door open, nodding to the singing kid.

Blonde hair pulled back from her face, with only a few careful strands gleaming reddish-gold along her neck. The mouth, grim and tight as it was, full and red. She wore a simple flower-print dress, cinched at the waist, and a pair of sensible brown shoes. Bare arms, gleaming gold in the sun like her hair, and the only adornment I spotted was a large silver ring on her left index finger.

The diner had gone silent, watching her as she slipped some coins into the newsstand and took a paper. She let the metal door slam and stood there perusing the front page.

The black kid was the only one who didn’t stare. He played and sang his song, doing it quite beautifully, his eyes on the sidewalk in front of him.

The old man said, “I’d like to go out there and give her a piece of my mind.”

Gloria said, “You mind yourself, Baker. She ain’t hurting nobody. She’s just getting a newspaper.”

“Lookit her. Just standing there, flaunting away.” He shook his head. “No shame, I tell you.”

The other waitress said, “Hush, now. Have some more coffee.”

At last, the woman folded the paper under her arm and walked away. She stopped to drop several bills into the kid’s case, then slid back into her car. Before closing the door behind her, she made a staged gesture of checking her make-up in the rear-view mirror. Then she slammed the door shut and edged away from the curb. She made a sharp U-turn and rode off in the direction she’d come from.

The kid outside stopped singing. He kneeled down next to his case and began counting money.

There was a feeling in the diner, as if a huge breath had been let out. Folks started returning to their meals. The old man turned back around on his stool, shaking his head and sipping coffee.

I sat there, my breakfast growing cold. After a moment, Gloria came back to my table with a coffee refill. Holding out my cup, which was still pretty full, I said, “What was the deal with that woman just now? She sure caused a ruckus.”

Gloria dropped a splash into my cup, said, “You’re Mr. Wesley, ain’t you? Came with the new reverend? Well, you being at the church and all, I reckon you’ll meet her soon enough. That’s Elise Garrity. Her brother used to be the pastor over there, until he just dropped outta sight about a year ago. No one knows what happened to him, but some folks got some strong ideas.” She glanced sharply at the old man, who’d been listening to our conversation.

Standing up, the old man said, “I’d keep away from her if I was you, young man. She’s bad news.”

“Please, Baker. You been going on about her, and there ain’t a thing—”

He cut her off, “Just think about it. A pretty young thing like her? Driving around in her fancy car with her butlers and maids and whatnot. And her preacher brother dropping out of sight? Something about it just ain’t right.”

“Stop it, Baker.”