I struck a match and very casually tossed it on to the fliers.
Whoosh! and Whoom! The words you frequently see in comic book panels applied here. The things whooshed and whoomed for several full seconds, like a singer sustaining a high note.
The flames leapt in every direction, burning blue-yellow. They filled the window, too, which faced the trailer. Any eye looking casually from the trailer was bound to see-The flames lent an ugly light to the church, a light that did not soften and flatter but revealed and scorned. All the oil marks on the walls; all the cracks and fungi on the floor; all the cobwebs collected in the high rotting corners.
But the massive painting of the angry Christ was the most startling. He was beyond anger, into hard-core psychosis. He was not my Christ-y could believe in his divinity or not, it didn’t matter -a Christ of sympathy, tolerance, understanding, forgiveness. He was the dark Christ embraced by dictators of all kinds, especially the darkest dictators of all, the ministers and priests who teach their followers to hate anyone different from themselves. Anyone who doesn’t believe, think, dress or behave the way they d. Any mercy or compassion this Christ had ever felt was gone now, gone utterly, as he glared down at me from the wall behind the altar.
The fire burned itself out in just a couple of minutes. Ash was all that was left.
A voice said, “I could kill you right now for trespassing, Mr. McCain.”
I’d been fixated on the painting of Christ and hadn’t heard them come in.
Mother and daughter. The Muldaurs.
Mom, as most Midwestern moms were wont to, carried a sawed-off shotgun.
“That’s our personal property, what you just burned.”
“I’ll be happy to pay you for it. I just don’t want it dirtying up our little town.”
“What you don’t want is for people to know the truth, Mr. McCain. About the Jews and the Catholics. And the niggers.”
Ella just stood there in her worn gingham dress, the blue eyes of that sad pretty face not quite here with us but somewhere else. But she wasn’t the soft-spoken, shy Ella she pretended to be for the people who didn’t know her well. There was a hardness and a harshness in the face now; and a genuine lunacy in the eyes…
She said, “My mom’s right, Mr. McCain. The Jews killed Our Lord and they won’t rest until they take over the world. You probably don’t even realize that several of the popes were Jews.”
And what should have been funny-Jewish popes, Jewish guns in the basements of Catholic churches-wasn’t funny at all. It was sorrowful. Because not long ago she’d been an innocent little girl who should have been given the chance for a full, free life. But Mama and Papa had recruited her as a soldier in their dark army. The Koreans and Chinese had nothing on these folks when it came to brainwashing. The Muldaurs had turned their daughter into a vessel of pure rage and hatred. She was beyond reasoning with. She believed all their conspiracy theories, no matter how ludicrous; and even did their bidding.
“You couldn’t do it yourself, so you had your daughter do it,” I said.
“I wanted to do it, Mr. McCain. It’s the sort of thing God rewards you for.”
“For killing your father?”
“He’d defiled the Lord, Mr. McCain,” she said. “And so did Reverend Courtney. He had defiled the Lord just the way my pa had-with sins of the flesh.”
“How’d you know it was Ella?” her mother said.
She didn’t sound angry or frightened.
More curious than anything.
“They found some kind of ointment all over the neck of the bottle your husband drank from. I didn’t make the connection till tonight-ffElla’s poison ivy salve.”
“You’re a good detective.”
“Look at her, Mrs. Muldaur. Look at her face. She shouldn’t look like that. She should be a nice, ordinary teenage girl.”
“Wearing tight sweaters and going all the way, I suppose, like other girls in this town, Mr.
McCain?”
“That’s a lot better than this, Mrs.
Muldaur. I said to look at her and you didn’t. Because you see it too, don’t you?
She’s insane. That’s why she doesn’t feel any remorse for what she did. She killed devils, not human beings. And you and your husband were the ones who taught her to think like that.”
“You kill him, Mama,” the girl said. “Or I will.”
For the first time, Mrs. Muldaur looked nervous, uncertain. She wasn’t a killer.
Her daughter was.
“We could just let him leave,” Mrs. Muldaur said. “Nobody’d believe what he said.”
“You know better than that, Mama. Now, either you kill him or I will.”
Mrs. Muldaur hesitated. And in that moment, Ella snatched the sawed-off shotgun from her.
“You go wait outside, Mama.”
“I’m not sure we should do this, honey.”
“You heard what I said, Mama. Wait outside.”
Her mother knew there was no sense arguing.
“Honey, I just wish”
“Go wait outside,” Ella said.
Mrs. Muldaur looked down at the pocket of her dress. She slid out what appeared to be an old. 38. Gripped it.
I was sure for a moment she was going to tell Ella to hand back the shotgun. But she didn’t.
She just looked at the handgun, turned, and quietly left the church.
“You need help,” I said. “There’s no point in killing me, too.”
“You sound like some Tv show.”
“You really do need help. And there are people who can help you.”
She smirked. “Jews? Catholics?” She shook her head and raised the weapon. “^th’re your people, not mine.”
I thought of begging but what was the point? I thought of lunging at her but what was the point of that, either?
I’d just be giving her a better shot at me.
“You get up on the altar, McCain.” She sort of waggled the shotgun at me. “We’re going to see how holy you are.”
Snakes. Somehow, it always came back to snakes with these people, that litmus test of spirituality that not even the Aztecs had been nutty enough to use.
“I’m not going to handle any snakes,” I said.
“Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet.
Leastways, you got a chance with the snakes.
Otherwise, I’ll kill you right here.”
She really looked like she knew what she was doing with the gun. She sighted down the barrel and said, “This ain’t nothin’ personal.”
“God,” I said, “I’m glad you said that. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”
“Sarcasm is the Devil’s tongue. Says so right in the Bible.”
“I think there’s something about not killing people in there, too, Ella.”
“Depends on how you read it. Way I read it, God wants us to smite the sinners who won’t see the one true way.”
She was ready. It wasn’t anything she said, anything she did. But some judgment had been reached.
It was right and just and proper to kill me. Any lingering doubts banished.
I was trying to say a prayer for myself but I was too scared to form the words.
Then I said it, the words John Wayne would never say: “I really don’t want to die, Ella. It isn’t your fault you turned out this way. You need to talk to somebody who can help you like I said.” And then: “I’m kinda afraid to die, Ella.” You’ll notice how I sort of slid that “kinda” in there, taking the sting off what a teeth-rattling, knee-collapsing, sphincter-cringing coward I was.
All for naught.
