and no one should need permission. But this is Gracie’s place, and things run differently here. Stone-faced, she scoops one of the nudist’s dollars off the bar, feeds it into the till, and drops four quarters into his outstretched palm. With a grin of gratitude, Cobb hops off his stool and heads out to the small hallway that leads to the payphone, and the restrooms beyond.
No one says anything.
There is silence except for the clink of Cadaver’s pennies.
A few moments later, Cobb starts swearing into the phone.
No one is surprised.
I raise my glass with a muttered: “To Blue Moon,” in honor of the man who can’t be here, and take the first sip of whiskey. It cauterizes my throat. I hiss air through my teeth. Flo goes back to talking to Wintry, leans in a little closer, one leg crossed over the other, one shoe awful close to brushing against the big black man’s ankle, and there’s that envy again. But I remind myself that she’s probably only cozying up to him because he’s mute, and therefore unlikely to ever ask her about her past. For the second time in a handful of minutes, I’m covetous of Wintry’s condition.
Cobb slams down the phone, curses and stalks back to the bar, his flaccid tool whacking against his thigh. I close my eyes, pray my gorge can handle another night of the old man’s exhibitionism and concentrate on refilling my glass.
“She weren’t there,” he mutters before anyone has a chance to ask, and slaps a hand on the counter. “Fill me up, Gracie,” he says. “And make it same as Tom’s. It’ll keep me warm on the walk home.”
I almost expect Cadaver to remind Cobb of his offer, but Cadaver is ill, not dumb. He says nothing, just keeps on counting those pennies.
“You make it sound like you can just walk outta here as you please,” Gracie says scornfully. “You take a blow to the head, or is all the drink just makin’ you dumber?”
“He ain’t the boss of me,” Cobb says, scowling like a sulky teen. There’s no passion in his voice, no truth to his words. Everyone here knows that, just like we know a little brave talk never hurts, as long as you only do it among friends.
“You reckon he’ll show up tonight, Tom?” Flo asks, twirling a lock of her hair around a fingernail the color of blood.
“I reckon so.”
She sighs, and turns her back on me. Flo wants hope, wants me to tell her that maybe tonight will be special, that maybe for the first Saturday night in years, Reverend Hill isn’t going to come strolling in that door at eleven o’ clock, but I can’t. I realized a long time ago that I’m a poor liar, and despite the gold badge on my shirt, no one should look to me for hope, or anything else.
From the corner comes a sound like a dead branch snapping. It’s Cadaver clucking his tongue. Seems a coin slipped off the top of one of his miniature copper towers.
Gracie goes back to pretending she’s cleaning the bar.
Cobb grumbles over his beer.
Occasionally I catch Wintry looking at my reflection in the mirror. What I see in his dark eyes might be concern, even pity, but if I was him, I wouldn’t be bothering with the mirror, or me, not when Flo’s breathing in his ear. Besides, I’m not looking for sympathy, only solutions, and I don’t reckon there’s any to be had here tonight or any other.
The heat from the kid’s glare is reliable as any fire on a winter’s night.
These are my friends.
Chapter Two
The clock draws out the seconds, the slow sweep of the narrow black minute hand unable to clear the face of a decade’s worth of dust. When at last it reaches eleven, with no sign among us patrons that any time has passed at all, there comes the sound of shoes crunching gravel.
Everyone tries real hard not to watch the door, but there’s tension in the air so tight you could hang your washing off it.
Reverend Hill enters, and with him comes the rain, and not the spatters Cadaver announced, but a full-on tacks-poured-on-a-metal-roof downpour. Bastard couldn’t have timed it better, though if it inspires an impromptu sermon from him, he’ll have trouble getting anyone to believe God is responsible, no more than we’d buy that the silvery threads of rain over his shoulder are strings leading to the hand of a divine puppeteer.
For him, the door groans as he shuts out the storm.
He doesn’t pause to regard each of us in turn like any other man would, gauging the company he has to keep, or counting the sinners. Instead, that confident stride carries his lean black-clad self right on up to the bar, where Gracie’s stopped cleaning and watches him much the same way the kid at the next table is watching me. Except, of course, Kyle’s not looking at me right now. All eyes are on the holy man.
The town of Milestone has rotten luck, much like the people who call it home, though to be fair, over time we may have grown too fond of blaming the things we bring upon ourselves on chance, or fate. It’s more likely that bad people, or folks with more to hide than their own towns can tolerate gravitate here, where no one asks questions and they carry their opinion of you in their eyes, never on their tongues.
When Reverend Hill came to town, filling a vacancy that had been there for three years, he brought with him the hope that spiritual guidance might chase away the dark clouds that have hung over the people of Milestone since Reverend Lewis used his belt, a rickety old chair, and a low beam in his bedroom to hasten his rendezvous with his maker.
But in keeping with the town’s history of misfortune—or whatever you want to call it—what Hill brought to Milestone wasn’t hope, but fear.
“Rum, child,” he tells Gracie, and leans against the counter right next to Cobb. He makes no attempt to conceal his disgust for the naked man. Hill has beady eyes, too focused, self-righteous, and intense, to bother with color of any determinate hue. I’m convinced those eyes can see through walls, which may explain why no one in Milestone goes to confession anymore. He has eyebrows a woman would kill for, plucked and arched like chapel naves, a long thin nose that spreads out at the end to allow him the required amount of air with which to fuel his bluster, and a thin pale-lipped mouth that sits like a scar above a pointed chin. At a guess I’d say he’s about sixty, but his age seems to change with his mood. The dim light shuns his greased back hair, which is artificially black. Everything about the guy is artificial, as we discovered not long after he came to town.
Some folks think he’s the devil.
I don’t, but I’m sure they’ve met.
“Evenin’, Reverend,” Cobb says, without looking at the man. Cobb’s afraid of Hill. We all are, but the nudist’s the only one who greets him.
“What do the young children of Milestone think when they see you walking the streets with your tool of sin flapping in front of their faces, Cobb?” the Reverend asks, louder than is necessary. “Immodesty is a flagstone on the path to Hell, or were you operating under the false assumption that nakedness is next to Godliness? Think your “gift” gives you the freedom to disregard common decency?”
Cobb turns pink all over, and doesn’t reply.
The Reverend grins. His large piano key teeth gleam. Gracie sets his drink down in front of him. She doesn’t wait for payment.
I’m alarmed to find myself choked up, gut jiggling, trying to contain a laugh. “Tool of sin” is bad, even for Hill. Sure, he makes my skin crawl every time I see him, but even though I know there’s nothing funny about this situation, nothing funny about what goes down here in Milestone’s only functioning bar at this same time every Saturday night. As it turns out, the humor must already have been on my face, because those coal-dark eyes of his move from Cobb’s pink mass to me, and his grin drops as if someone smacked him across the face.
“Something funny, Tom?”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure?”
