The beam of the flash sparkled on the black metal of the open trunk of the car, and he walked calmly toward it, surveying the scene. The car was smashed, the ball joint broken; he could see that from fifteen feet away. Eddie swept his flashlight over everything, seeing the carnage, examining the pitiful leavings of some kind of adventure that had ended recently and badly. He paused briefly to shine the light in the trunk, saw the scattering of blood- soaked bills, the small mounds of white powder. He wrinkled his nose in disgust; if there was one thing Tow-Truck Eddie despised it was pollution of the body. Beer and the like were bad enough, but drugs were downright unholy. He clucked his tongue in disapproval and began scouting the rest of the car. He had approached from the driver’s side of the car, and everything looked deserted. Shining the light in through the open driver’s door revealed nothing but blood. Quite a lot of it, which sent a thrill of excitement coursing through him. The keys were still in the ignition. Tow-Truck Eddie frowned. Straightening from his inspection of the car, he swept his light over the rows of corn, seeing no one. Then he walked carefully around to the other side of the car, and there lay a man sprawled in the bloody mud. If he had shone his light down when he was peering into the trunk he might have seen him, but the man had fallen down by the passenger side of the car and lay entirely in shadow. The harsh white light of his flash made the scene look like a black-and-white photo: black for the man’s suit and tie, white for his face, black for the huge stain of blood that had entirely soaked his shirt.
Eddie had squatted down next to the man and looked him over, from death-pale face to bloodstained shoes. Odd how lifelike the dead can sometimes look, he thought, and then actually gasped as the man moved his mouth in an attempt to speak, though he made no actual sounds.
Tow-Truck Eddie was amazed that the man was still alive. He examined the man in the light, seeing that the dark stain of blood still glistened wetly. There were two ragged holes in the man’s shirt. He’d been gut-shot and was bled as white as the cocaine that had spilled all around him. What a mess, thought Eddie, who couldn’t stand disorder of any kind.
The smell of blood was thick in the air: blood from the man, blood from the birds. The smell was appealing, almost intoxicating, and for a moment Eddie just closed his eyes and let the smell wash over him and through him. He felt a little dizzy from it and had to blink his eyes clear for a few seconds.
He bent closer to peer at the man. Never in his life had he seen a man so close to death. He had seen sick people, sure, even badly wounded ones dragged from wrecks, and he’d seen corpses, but never a man hovering on that delicate point between life and death, his life essence fluttering like a lightning bug trying to work free from a child’s cupped hands. It was incredible to see. Beautiful and delicate and quite moving, and it did something to him. At first he wasn’t aware of it, of what was happening within him, but the realization crept into his consciousness as he watched the man continue his task of dying.
The man looked up at Eddie with pleading in his eyes; eyes that were aswirl with pain and fear, hatred and desperation. Tow-Truck Eddie crouched there, tasting the emotions overflowing from the man’s eyes. The flow of pain was exquisite. He licked his lips and sniffed in the scent of blood through both nostrils.
“You’re hurt,” he said, savoring the intense rush of blood scent and pain, of truly perfect suffering right here in front of him.
“I…I’ve been…shot.”
Tow-Truck Eddie pushed the man over onto his back so he could see the bullet holes more clearly. Fresh blood bubbled weakly from the wounds. He had a sudden and powerful urge to bend forward and drink from the wounds, but he knew that it wasn’t the time for that kind of thing, for that kind of…
He sought the right word.
Sacrament? Was that it? Yes, he thought dreamily. Sacrament. It wasn’t yet time for that kind of sacrament. Not yet. Everything had to be in its time and place, as it said in the Bible. He took the scent again and nearly cried out as the thick coppery smell of fresh blood shot through his nerves like a white-hot current of electricity. His eyes snapped wide and he rocked back on his heels as door after door blew open in his mind. Suddenly he understood! Suddenly — all at once — this all made sense. Everything made sense. Everything that he had thought about and dreamed about for the last few years made absolutely crystal-clear sense. He laughed out loud for the sheer joy of it.
He looked down at the man, staring at him with eyes that were still wide with amazement, seeing the man for who he was…for what he was! He laughed again, and he felt tears gathering in the corners of his eyes. Of course! This was no ordinary accident. How could it be? How could he even have thought that it was? How could anyone be so blind as to think that? It wasn’t even an ordinary crime scene. No, no, this was something far removed from all of that, and Tow-Truck Eddie could suddenly see it. This was something special, something meant only for him, something orchestrated solely for him, and yet something immensely powerful.
He touched the wounds and then looked at the blood on his fingers, glistening black in the light of his flash.
Tow-Truck Eddie’s mind went
He was right. This was not the Sacrement in which the Lord had told him he would one day partake. This was…his
In his mind the voice of God very faintly whispered,
Tears burned in Eddie’s eyes and he bent his head in humble thanks. All at once, here in this lonely place, amid all this carnage, he fully understood what he was and
And did not God direct Jesus to the waters where John was baptizing the penitent? Was that not amid the oppression and violence of Rome’s crushing occupation of Judea? Not exactly the same, surely, but the pattern was there, clear as sunlight to Eddie.
This man…this dying man…the baptizer, and his blood was the purifying waters of salvation. A child could see it.
The man gasped and blood leaked from his mouth, dribbling down his chin. He would be dead soon, but Eddie wasn’t sure exactly what he was supposed to do. Was he supposed to care for this man? Was he supposed to rescue him?
No, that didn’t feel right to him. This man — baptizer or not — had been manifested to him in the form of a criminal, and Eddie could not believe that God would want his Sword to rescue the wicked. The time for that sort of thing had passed.
What then? Was he supposed to watch him die? Was there a message in that?
That felt closer to the mark, but Eddie still didn’t feel right about it. Letting the man’s life just slip away — an event that was imminent — seemed like a waste of some kind of opportunity.
He frowned for a moment, his triumph dimming instantly as doubt chewed at him. What if he interpreted it wrong? What if he misread the holy signs? So much hinged on his reading it right that he felt a wave of sickening uncertainty crash down on him. His smile faded and fell away and he looked from the man to the wreck to the dead birds and back again. What if the act of reading the signs was itself a test? A puzzle or a riddle of some kind? He wasn’t sure what would happen if he failed to solve the riddle. For a full minute he worried over that as the dying man passed in and out of a haze of delirium.
“No,” he said softly to himself, steeling himself. Doubt was a tool of the Beast, not of the Almighty.
In a ragged whisper, the dying man repeated what he had said: “I’ve been shot.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that,” Tow-Truck Eddie said softly, reveling in it. The pain in the man’s eyes was so finely tuned that it flickered like electricity; he could barely look at it without crying out for the sheer joy of it. His mouth was dry and he could feel his palms grow slick with sweat.
“Could you…help me?”
Oh my, how exciting this moment was! The man was actually begging him for help and that fast the answer came to him. It was not rescue, nor the passivity of standing by and doing nothing. This was a direct command from God presented in the form of a test.
“Who am I?” Eddie asked himself with the droning intonation of a litany, and he responded: “I am the Sword of God!”
His purpose was clear to him. A sword was forged for a single purpose, its nature clear to even the meanest intelligence.
