“Yep.”
“Your smile says different.”
“Who can trust a smile these days, Reverend? I sure don’t trust yours.”
That’s enough to give him his grin back. He scoops his rum off the counter and saunters over to my table with all the confidence of a man who enjoys his work, who’s going to enjoy knocking the town sheriff down a few pegs. He drags back the empty chair opposite me, sits, and studies me for a second. I feel like carrion being appraised by a vulture.
His face is only a shade darker than the little rectangle of white at his collar.
“Tell me something, Tom.”
“Shoot.”
At this, Hill looks over his shoulder, to where the kid is still sweating, but I’m willing to bet that sweat’s turned cold now. The Reverend turns back and winks. “Better not say that too loud. Someone might take you up on it.”
“He’s confused,” I tell him, and take a sip of my whiskey. Beer’s a pleasant drink, and requires patience; whiskey’s a straight shot to the brain, and I need that now if I’m going to act tough in front of the only man in Milestone who scares me. “He should be gunning for you.”
Thunder rattles the rafters; the smoked glass flickers with light, illuminating the rain pebbled across its surface.
“Maybe so,” the Reverend says, “But he knows better than to shoot a man of the cloth. He’s a God-fearing soul. He wants vengeance without damnation.”
“Bit late for that isn’t it?”
His lips crease in amusement. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
I decide not to humor him. “Who is it tonight?”
Cadaver has stopped counting his pennies.
“Straight to it, eh? I like that.”
“Cut the bullshit.”
He clucks his tongue. “Profanity. The mark of an ignorant man.”
I wish that were true. I’d love to be ignorant, sitting here with my drink, trading barbs with a priest who may or may not be the devil himself. At least then I wouldn’t see what’s coming.
“So who’s driving?” I ask, and everyone but Wintry turns to look. He’s watching the mirror.
The Reverend reaches into his pocket and tosses a pair of car keys on the table between us. “You are,” he says, and every hard-earned ounce of my defiance is obliterated. He might as well have shoved a grenade down my throat and locked me in iron skin. I release a breath that shudders at the end. No one in the bar sighs their relief but I see shoulders relax, just a little, and hear the clink of Cadaver’s pennies as he goes back to counting.
On the table, there’s a ring of six keys. Three of them are for the prefabricated hut that passes as my office. Two are for the front and back doors of the prefabricated hut that passes as my house. The last one’s for my truck, and the keys have fallen so that one is sticking straight up, toward the Reverend. It’s not a coincidence.
“You know how it goes,” he says, and sits back in his chair. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t be all that surprised. You’ve dodged the bullet for quite a while, haven’t you?”
His face swells with glee. I imagine if I punch him right now, which is exactly what every cell in my body is telling me to do, his head would pop like a balloon. But no matter how satisfying that might be it won’t change the fact that tonight my number’s come up. I get to drive. Hill, son of a bitch that he is, is still only a messenger, a courier boy. Putting a hurting on him wouldn’t make a difference.
Cobb speaks up, “Hell, Tom, I’ll drive for you. It’d keep me out of the rain. Besides, I told ’ol Blue Moon I’d take him up a bottle of somethin’. Kill two birds with one stone, right?” His nervous grin is flashed for everyone’s approval, but he doesn’t get it. No one even looks at him, except me, and though I don’t say it, I’m grateful. I know Cobb walks around in the nip for one reason only—he wants to be noticed, remembered for something other than his gift, or maybe he does it to draw attention away from it. A
“Very noble of you,” Hill says, sounding bored. “But this isn’t a shift at the sawmill. There’s no trading.” He looks Cobb up and down. “But don’t worry. You’ll get your turn. You get that car yet?”
“Wife doesn’t let me drive it. Not here. Not when I’ll be drinkin’.”
“Then either lie or quit drinking. But get it.”
“All right.”
Cobb offers me a sympathetic glance. I wave it away and look hard at the priest. “Who is it?”
From the breast pocket of his jacket, he produces a pack of Sonoma Lights. “Anyone got a light?”
When no one obliges, Gracie tosses him a box of matches, which he grabs from the air without looking—an impressive trick that leaves me wishing like hell he’d fumbled it. He lights his cigarette and squints at me through a plume of blue smoke. “You want the name?”
“No. I’d like to keep what little sleep I get at night. Unless you want to take that too.”
“Oh now, would you listen to this? You make it sound as if you’re the victim!” He barks a laugh and swivels in his chair to face the bar. “Is that what all of you think? That I’m the bad guy, come to destroy your lives?” He turns again, addressing Cadaver and the kid this time. “That you’re all just innocents, forced to do the bidding of some wicked higher power?” He shakes his head in amazement. “Don’t fool yourselves folks. Until I came along you were hanging in Purgatory, waiting for a decision to be made either way. You should be thanking me that you’re not all roasting in the fires of Hell.”
“So that’s not what this is then?”
He leans close, eyes dark, twin threads of blue smoke trailing from his wide nostrils. “Not even close, Deputy Dawg.”
We stare at each other over the table. I try to will the kid to take his shot. I don’t even care who he hits. But the kid isn’t moving, just watching, just like everyone else. The rain keeps raining and the thunder keeps thundering, but inside Eddie’s there isn’t a sound, until I speak.
“This will end, you know.” It’s a threat that has no weight behind it. I want this to be over; I want things to be the way they were before my wife died, before the kid got it into his head that my skull would look better spread across the wall; before we all ended up here as slaves to our sins, but it’s too late. There’s no turning back now. Things have gone too far. Hill knows this, knows surer than shit that all of us are going to be here next Saturday night and the Saturday night after that, and the one after that until we’ve paid off whatever debt it is he’s decided—or more accurately, whoever
But tonight isn’t going to be that night, and as blue light fills the cracks in the rundown bar, I reach across and slide the keys toward me.
“I know it will end,” the Reverend answers, and pauses to take a deep drag on his cigarette. “Tonight it ends for you.”
I close my fist around the keys and let them bite into my palm.
“You get a thief and his girlfriend,” he continues. “The guy shot a pump jockey in the face, killed a woman and injured a little kid. The girlfriend’s an addict and a whore. No one will miss them.”
“Someone will. Someone always does.”
The priest sits back again and smiles. “That’s not for us to worry about.”
“Not for you maybe.”
“These missives from your goody-goody conscience are getting to be a real bore, Tom.”
“This, from a priest.”
His smile fades. “You’d best get moving, Sheriff. Your people need you.”
