“He wouldn’t lie,” I said. “He’s ordained. He’d do somethingabout them. Cast them out like Christ did with the demons and the pigs.”
“He’ll tell everyone, that’s what he’ll do. And they’llfinish us.” Martha blew her bangs out of her eyes. “You really are as stupid asyou look, aren’t you? Beneath all that hair, there’s nothing but a few Bibleverses and a casserole recipe.”
There was no use reasoning with Martha when she wasdetermined to be disagreeable. I changed tack entirely. “You haven’t comehunting in three days.”
“And I’m not hunting tonight.”
If that was true, she wouldn’t have climbed down here. “Allright,” I said. “I’ll go alone. Get my guts torn out, and then your daddy canbeat you after my funeral too.”
Whatever Martha thought of me, whatever she said when I wasalive and breathing, I knew she’d still feel awful if something happened to me.We’d seen so much death of late that every corpse in the road or among thetrees felt like a personal failure.
“What do you guess he’d really do?” she said, following meinto the woods.
“I don’t know. More than we can do. They’re not scared ofus. Not even when we shoot them dead. But the purewater man has got someuncanniness.”
“It’s the uncanniness that I don’t trust.”
“You don’t have to trust someone to need them.”
She snickered. “Don’t I know it. Why do you think you’re theone spotting me?”
I let the night air absorb the insult. “No reason not totrust him. My daddy sent for him.”
“And? The world is full of good upstanding preachers gettingthe wool pulled over their eyes by anyone with a scrap of sheepskin to spare.”
“I know for a fact you’ve never been further out of herethan Middleton, so how exactly did you get to know what the world is full of?”I shoved aside a tree branch, blinking so my eyes would adjust faster to thedarkness. The cracks between the branches barely admitted summer sun, let alonemoonlight.
Martha moved as if she was born seeing in the dark. Shedidn’t have a gun, just a bowie knife, but she brandished it so bold that noone besides a demon would have had the guts to lay a hand on her. “Tell methis. If the purewater man is so good and righteous, how come he isn’t talkingto any of us but you and your daddy? Where’d he come from? Why is he here now?”
“There’s always been purewater men,” I said, and that wastrue. The purewater man never came to Pryor before, but before we never hadbones unearthed from fresh graves, never had ten mothers disappear within twomonths, never had demons in the woods. I figured he’d come now because he wasasked to come, because he had to come.
Martha wasn’t convinced, but something moved in the brush atour backs and she forgot that we were in the middle of an argument. The caninesstrung around her neck clinked as she slashed at ferns with her knife, exposinga big-eyed rabbit.
“I know you think I’m wrong in the head,” she said later aswe tromped through the undergrowth. “But I don’t care. What happened to Emmalynwas my fault, really, even if it’s not like my daddy thinks, and the way thingsare going, I don’t have time to trust in men who think a bit of consecratedwater will save us.”
“You don’t trust in that, then what can you trust?”
“I have this,” Martha said, motioning with her blade.
“You’d been doing that for a month already when my motherended up hanging from a tree with a branch around her neck.”
Martha dragged a sigh through her teeth. “Then why do youeven come out here?”
“What else am I going to do? No one came for a long time,” Isaid. “I thought no one would ever come. Now someone’s here, and you won’ttrust him.”
“Look, I don’t care what happens to anyone but me now. Soyou can do what you want. But leave me out of it. I don’t intend upon gettingcrucified for trying to help, which is what’s gonna happen if we tell anyone.”
◊
I didn’t like the purewater man, but I found that I feltobligated to defend him from the scrutiny of Pryor. No outsider was ever safefrom speculation within town limits, even if he was there on God’s business. Especiallyif he was there on God’s business. Everyone was perfectly polite whenever hewas within earshot, but the stories about him grew wilder by the day. Mr. Rayeat the corner store leaned over the counter when I came in for a gallon ofmilk, wanting to know: “does he do anything peculiar when he’s at home with youfolks?” Not an hour earlier, Mrs. Lynch had stopped me in the street anddemanded, “Have you seen his holy water yet? Does he really have it?” “Do youthink he’s close to figuring out who killed that sweet little girl?” “Is heeven looking? You know, I sometimes wonder if he’s even looking.”
I always said that yes, he was looking for Emmalyn’smurderer, even though mostly he just wandered the swamps like he was here onsome sort of sightseeing expedition. No, I said, he didn’t aim to take thechurch from my daddy, even though they stayed up late at night debating everyverse that included the words behemoth or abomination. One thingI could truly say: he drank his morning coffee and shaved his face like anyoneelse. He didn’t seem to have audiences with ghosts and spirits, holy orotherwise. He’s good people, I said, which is the soundest recommendation theycould have asked for.
Martha frowned when she overheard me saying that, said, “Ihope you’re watching him.”
“He’s here to watch us,” I said. We weren’t talking much,then. After that strange sweat-drenched hunt the first night the purewater manarrived, we’d both lost
