He tried to center himself before the tombstone of his mother, drifting for a second while he sought out the dark, quiet place behind his eyes. Your strength had a name that wasn’t your own, and there were times you were going to need it. It would also need you.
With one foot set on his mother’s grave, the other toed into his sister’s, he kept his eyes open waiting for Mags’s hand to flit into his vision once more and give him another sign. He shoveled the blackness aside like dirt covering her. The sound of his own heartbeat faded.
His depths parted. He went further, intent on her whisper. He didn’t know what might happen if he ever hit bottom. It didn’t matter. You went where you were called.
He kneeled, held out a fist to the ground, thinking how killers liked to stick close to their prey, even after it was dead. Would the malevolence in the hills climb down this far?
He aimed himself. The world shifted to red as Shad hooked on to somebody, or perhaps something, moving in and out of view, brooding about him again. He held his hand out farther and slowly wriggled his fingers, the way you do to get fish to rise to the surface. His chest grew warmer. Mags was helping. Maybe Mama too. He started panting, eventually hyperventilating, as the indistinct and somehow
There.
Easy.
He was almost there.
Another moment, Mags. This is for you.
He was almost… yes…
… when he felt a weak influence fuss beside him, like a kid tugging at his elbow. Intruding on his purpose. Tushie Kline used to do it all the time, jabbering on about books, his homeboys, and anything else that flitted into his head. Tush couldn’t turn off his talk.
It was over. Shad’s breathing returned to normal. The irritating force continued to pluck at his concentration until he looked over.
Preacher Dudlow stood beside him, staring down at the ground, with his hands clasped over his mammoth belly, sucking at the edges of his mustache.
Most preachers Shad had run into were still brimstone types, thin as cottonwood and harsh as sun-scorched bone. They visited the hollow in their vans and set up tents out in the fields. They raved and slammed the meaty part of their palms into sinners’ foreheads and commanded them to heal. They took crutches and canes and busted them over their knees. You watched the cripples struggling to stand upright on their diseased, gnarled legs. Folks threw silver. Gospel singers caterwauled like beasts. Deaf men leaned over mumbling, “
But Dudlow had always been a happy, robust man, perfectly round but still sort of muscular, with his face tanned by his outdoor sermons in the pastures and his baptisms at the river.
This afternoon he was bundled tightly in a sheepskin coat and wearing a bright red hunter’s cap with the flaps down over his ears. A mauve knitted scarf had been wrapped twice around his throat and still trailed over both shoulders, down to his ankles. Mrs. Swoozie, Dudlow’s mother, lived next door to him, around the side of the church. The only thing she’d ever found to ease the pain of her arthritis, so she said, was to keep busy crocheting and cooking around the clock.
Shad didn’t know if Dudlow was genuinely unaware of his wife Becka’s lifestyle or not. The preacher might have simply repressed his knowledge beneath the weight of his religious beliefs. It was hard to admit to that kind of failure, especially to yourself. But Becka was usually crocked out on meth and a lot of the buyers came right to her back door. Perhaps Dudlow’s whole act was only a performance and he was actually helping to cook the meth in the church basement.
No matter which was true, you didn’t want the preacher knowing your secrets.
“Comfort and condolences, Shad Jenkins,” Dudlow said.
“Thank you, Reverend.”
“I’ve been meaning to stop by.”
“And now you have.”
He pointed down to the road, where he’d parked his microbus behind the ’Stang. “Yes, I saw your car, thought I’d come up. You look well.”
“So do you.”
Dudlow patted his stomach as if consoling a loved one. “Mama’s got me on a strict diet of legumes. Problem is she bakes so much for the Youth Ministry, the Fellowship Hall, and the Ladies Coalition that she doesn’t miss a few pies. And I can’t help but indulge. I’m weak that way.”
“So am I,” Shad said, letting the lie ease out as if it might bring them closer together.
Dudlow let loose with a moist chortling, and Shad got the feeling that the man was somehow trying to patronize him. He wondered if the preacher showing up the way he did was a coincidence or had a greater design to it.
“Not so anyone would notice, Shad Jenkins. You’re remarkably fit, I can see. More so than when you left us, I’d venture.”
He stood there with an expectant air, as if he might want to get into it, ask some questions, find out if Shad had been anybody’s bitch. Dudlow clapped his gloves together and began to jitter his way toward bad taste subjects, but then finally thought better of it.
“See, it’s her boysenberry that keeps me awake at night.”
“That so?”
“And I can’t just have one piece either, I have to finish the whole thing off or she’d realize I was pilfering. I have to hide the paper plates at the bottom of the trash so she doesn’t learn I’m off her vegetable platters.”
Were they really talking about pies? “Mrs. Swoozie’s baked goods are the best in the county.”
“You’re so right about that! And who can resist? I can’t. If only I had more gumption!” His rotund torso wobbled and shook on those legs as if it might snap loose and roll free.
“We all have our temptations,” Shad said.
“So true. So human of us. It’s a divine test. We’re fated to quarrel with our flaws.”
Would the preacher mention Becka? Was this commentary on sins leading to drugs or Jake Hapgood?
Shad glanced at his feet and saw he was still standing on the graves. Could that be what caused the preacher’s unease? He stepped away and Lament crept up from behind Mama’s headstone, yawned, and sat at Shad’s side.
“A fine looking hound pup!” Dudlow said, smiling so vacantly that Shad could almost see through his head.
“Yes.”
“A terrific dog, that boy there!”
You cut slack where you could, and when you couldn’t give any more you stood and waited. The warden used to play this kind of game, staring at you dead-eyed and talking in circles, imposing himself on the cons until they shrank away. Shad crossed his arms over his chest and kindly regarded Dudlow, unwilling to speak of legumes or cakes or puppies any more.
Dudlow sensed the change and went back to sucking the corners of his mustache for a minute. He toyed with his scarf, and said, “I thought I should visit Megan’s resting place.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“She was such a nice girl with a bright future. Very special. Such a loss.”
“Yes.”
“I spend several mornings a week down at the village cemetery, cleaning up the graves, saying prayers. But I like to make the effort to attend those who aren’t buried on consecrated ground as well.”
So that was it.
The things you could get hung up on.
Dudlow scanned the trees. “Lovely area. I hope your father finds some solace here.”
