arms. Strong as a goddamned blacksmith. Wore the badge of the law. Brooked no nonsense from no man. You'd as soon poke a stick at a bear as you'd rile up Charles Swagger.'
'He must have been a worshipful man.'
'Well sir' said a Turner, 'you could say that. He'd be headed on toward Caddo Gap. He'd be going to worship a cribful. That Baptist prayer retreat camp, that'd be at that Caddo Gap.'
'Yes, that would, and the old man, that's where he'd head, to do his own kind of worshipfulness.'
And they busted out laughing.
The Turners howled into the night! It was like the drunken deities of a fallen Olympus snarfing out a bushel basket of giggles and guffaws at the latest vanity of their pitiful progeny, that tribe of hairy-assed scufflers and hustlers known as mankind.
'Oh, he was a prayerful man,' somebody said.
'He worshipped all right.'
'Pass that jug, Cleveland.'
'She's a coming, Baxter.'
'I still don't?' started Carlo.
Junior Turner delivered the news: 'He did worship. He worshipped at the altar of titty and cooze! He drank the sacred elixir of hooch. He tested God's will and mercy by betting it all on the throw of them little old cubes with the dots! What a great man he was.'
'That old boy, he was a inspiration to us all.'
Carlo was suddenly confused.
'I don't?'
'He didn't go to no prayer meeting at Caddo Gap. No siree, not a goddamn bit of it. He'd come through here and make a big play of how holy he was, and tell ever damn body about the prayer retreat, then he'd roll on out of town, up Route 27 toward Caddo Gap. But goddamn, then he'd cut through the woods on some old logging road and git back on 27 out near to Hurricane Grove and head on his way to where he's really going. Hot Springs, the Devil's Playpen. One day a month, Charles gathered up a hundred or so dollars from the niggers and white trash he'd beat over the head, told his old wife he's going to talk to Jesus, came through here, then cut over to Hot Springs, where he whored and drank and gambled, same as any man. So high and mighty!'
'Jesus,' said Carlo.
'He was a man of sin. Vast sin. He had the clap, he had ten girlfriends in ten different cribs. He never went to the quality places, where he'd might like to chance recognition. Nah, he went to low places, in the Niggertown or up Central beyond the Arlington. He's a reg'lar, all right.'
'How do you know?'
'Ask Baxter. Baxter knows.'
'I ain't a sinner no more,' said Baxter, in the darkness. 'The Lord done showed me a path. But in them earlier years, I done some helling. I knowed him 'cause I pumped gas for him so much as a youngster when he stopped for his Coca-Cola. I seen him onct, twicet and then ever damn place, ever damn time. He didn't have no badge on then. He wore a gal on each arm, and the smile of a happy goddamned man. Sometimes the cards smiled, sometimes they didn't, but he kept coming back. He had the best life, I reckon. He was a God-fearing man of civil authority twenty-nine days a month and on the thirtieth day he's a goddamned hellion who got his old pecker in ever kind of hole there was to be had in Hot Springs. Great man! Great man, my black asshole!'
'This is the truth?'
'This is God's honest truth,' said Junior Turner. 'We all knew it. Not nobody back in his hometown did, but we sure did. So when he got hisself kilt, we figgered it was gambling debts or woman trouble. Whoever done it did a good job of covering it up. But goddamn, he paid the devil his due, that I'll say.'
'You didn't investigate?'
'Well, son, I was in combat engineer school at Fort Belvoir, in Virginia that day. My deputies was in?where was you, L. T.?'
'Getting ready for the Aleutians.'
'Hell, everybody was some damn place or other. Only Jimmy really was here and by God he'd tried like hell to get in, till finally the standards dropped in '43 and they took him. Jimmy didn't see no percentage in turning the light on Charles Swagger's hunger for flesh and gitting himself involved in what goes on in Hot Springs. Hot Springs, that's a evil town. If Charles went to Hot Springs for pleasure, he knew there'd be a price to pay, and by God, he ended up paying it.'
'I see.'
'If you want to know who killed him, I'll tell you how to do it.'
'Okay,' said Carlo.
Junior leaned forward.
'You look for a silver-plated Smith & Wesson.32 bicycle gun. Little thang, 32 rimfire, couldn't weigh more'n ten, twelve ounces. Charles called it his Jesus gun, and he kept it secured up his left sleeve by a sleeve garter. He carried the Colt, a Winchester '95 carbine in.30 government in the car, just like the Texas Rangers love so deeply, but that little gun was his ace in the hole. That was the gun he kilt Travis Warren's little brother Billy with in 19 and 23, during the Blue Eye bank robbery. He shot Travis dead with the Colt, and his cousin Chandler too, but old Billy hit him with a 12-gauge from behind, and knocked him down and bloody with buck. Billy walked up, kicked the Colt across the floor and leaned over to put the shotgun under Charles's chin for a killing shot, and Charles pulled that li'l silver thang and shot that boy slick as a whisde 'tween the eyes. Anyhows, whoever kilt that old man in 1942, he stole that gun. Everyone who knew a thing about Charles knew it was missing. The Colt was there on the ground, you seen it. But the Jesus gun was missing.'
Carlo knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn't help from asking.
'Why do they call it a Jesus gun?'
' 'Cause when he pulls it on you, you are going to meet Jesus. Billy sure did, at the age of only sixteen.'
'Wonder if Billy likes heaven?'
'Bet he do. Plenty of cooze in heaven! All them angel gals in them little gowns. They don't wear no underpants at all.'
'Now don't you go talking that way 'bout heaven,' warned Baxter. 'It could have consequences. There are always consequences. That's the lesson in tonight's sermon.'
Eventually, most of the Turners gave up the ghost and retreated to farmhouses or cabins. It suddenly occurred to Carlo that he had no place to stay, he was too drunk to drive and could see no way clear to a happy solution to his problem. But once again Junior Turner came through, and dragged him upstairs to an unused bedroom, where he was told to get his load off and stay the night, Mama Turner would have grits and bacon and hot black coffee in the kitchen beginning at 6:00 and running through 9:00.
Carlo stripped, blew out the candle, pulled a gigantic comforter over his scrawny bones, and his head hit the pillow. He had a brief fantasy about the farmer's daughters, since there'd been so many pretty Turner girls fluttering this way and that, but no knock came to his door, and as a graduate of a Baptist college he wouldn't have known what to do if one did. And then the room whirled about his head one more dizzying time and he was out.
His dreams tossed in his mind, though. Strange stuff, the product of too much white lightning and too much gravy mingled into a combustible fluid. He could make head or tails of none of it, though it disturbed him plenty and once or twice pulled him from sleep. He'd awaken, wonder where the hell he was, then remember, lie back and sail off again to a turbulent snoozeland.
But the third time he awoke, he knew it was for good. He was sweaty and shaking. Was he sick? Was he going to get the heaves or the runs? But his body was fine; it was his heart that was rocketing along at a hundred miles per hour.
He felt a presence in the room. Not a Turner cousin, comely and sweet, but something far worse: a haunt, a ghost, a horror. He reached out as if to touch something, but his fingers clawed at nothingness. The thing was in his head, whatever it could be. What was it rattling about in his subconscious, trying to find a way to poke a hole into his conscious, trying to get itself felt, noticed, paid attention to? Whatever, it was unsettling. He rose, went to the window, saw the Turner yard, bone-gray in the radiant gibbous moonlight, a swing hanging from a tree, a bench close by, where loving daddies could watch their baby sons play, and guard them and look after them, as his had done for him, as most had done for theirs. It was a scene of such domestic bliss and becalmed gentility it soothed
