The wind was swirling out of the desert, the rain driving hard on the roof, dancing on the handrails of his deck, blowing in the blue-white radiance of the neon cross he had mounted above the entrance to the Cowboy Chapel. Maybe it was time to pile a few belongings into the cab of his truck, drop his letter to the FBI in a mailbox, and disappear inside the vast anonymity of the American West.
He could sell his truck in California and pick fruit in the San Joaquin, harvest beets up in Oregon and Washington, maybe lumberjack in Montana or get on a fishing boat in Alaska. If the law caught up with him, fine. If it didn’t, that would be fine, too. Why not just roll the dice and stay out of the consequences? In the United States a person could get a new identity and start a new life as easily as acquiring a library card. He had to wonder at the irony of it all. In his fantasy, he was joining the ranks of the migrant workers he had railed against.
He went into his bedroom and began stuffing the clothes from his dresser and closet into a duffel bag. That was when he felt the air decompress around him and the cold smell of rain surge through the house, the joists and wood floors creaking as the temperature dropped inside. He turned around and stared into the faces of two men whose hats were wilted on their heads, their brown skin shiny with water, their clothes smelling like horses and wood smoke and sweat that had dried inside flannel.
“Why won’t y’all leave me alone?” Cody said.
“You know,” Krill said.
“I don’t know anything.”
“Yes, you know. Do not pretend you don’t know. Do not make an insignificance of my children.”
“I’m worthless as a minister. I’m no different from you. I he’ped put together a bomb that was used on an abortion clinic. I ruined a woman’s life. I’m not worth shooting.”
Krill was already shaking his head, indicating Cody’s wishes had little to do with what was about to occur. Negrito was smiling broadly. “We told you we’d be back, man. But you don’t listen,” he said. “You got anything to eat? I’m really hungry. What was that about a bombing?”
“You got a hearing defect?” Cody said.
“End this silly talk and come with me,” Krill said.
“Where?”
“Out into the rain, hombre.”
“I’m no count as a pastor, no count as a man. That’s not humility talking, either. It’s the truth.”
“ Venga conmigo. Now. No more talking.”
“You don’t have to point a gun at me. I’m plumb worn out with people pointing guns at me.”
“It’s necessary, hombre. Your ears are wood, your thinking processes like cane syrup. It is clear you’re of low intelligence.”
“You want to hold a gun on me? Here, I’ll he’p you.”
“Let go of my wrist.”
“Put one through my heart. I’m tired of y’all pestering me.”
“Show him,” Negrito said.
“Don’t underestimate me,” Krill said to Cody. “I have taken many lives. I have machine-gunned a priest.”
“Then pull the trigger,” Cody said.
Cody’s hand remained clenched tightly on Krill’s wrist. He could feel Krill’s pulse beating against his palm. Krill’s eyes were inches from his, the onions and wine and fried meat on Krill’s breath as damp as a moist cloth on Cody’s face. “Are you going to help me?” Krill asked.
“Maybe, if you put the gun away,” Cody said.
Krill’s eyes were black and as flat as paint on a piece of cardboard. “It is as you request,” he said, lowering his pistol. A curtain of rain slapped against the window and across the top of the church. “My car is parked behind your church.”
“Let me put on my coat,” Cody said.
“You will not try to deceive us?” Krill said.
“Why should I deceive you?”
“We know of your message to your flock. You have not been our friend. You make them feel comfortable with their hatred of us.”
“I think maybe you aim to kill me when this is over.”
“Would that be a great loss to the world?”
“Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily enjoy it.”
“You are a very funny man,” Krill said.
They went out the door and into the rain and down the stairs to the back of the Cowboy Chapel, where Krill’s gas-guzzler was parked in the lee of the building. Krill opened the trunk and lifted out a large wood box tied with rope. Cody stared at the box and wiped his mouth. “They’re in there?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve always baptized by immersion,” Cody said, the rain beating on his bare head.
“What does ‘immersion’ mean?”
“I take people down by the creek and put them under. If the water is low, I have to dam up the creek. If everything is completely dried out, we go to the river. The creek is probably running pretty good now.”
“No, we aren’t going to a creek.”
“Then come inside,” Cody said.
They walked through the lighted coffee room and into the chapel, both of Krill’s hands cupped under the rope that bound the box, the weight hitting against his knees and sides. Cody removed his coat and wiped his face on his sleeve. He noticed that Negrito never touched the box, even though it was apparent that Krill was struggling with it. Krill set the box down heavily by the altar and untied the rope and let it snake to the floor.
The only light in the room came from a small stage hung with a blue velvet curtain. The interior of the chapel was immaculate, the pews gleaming, the floors polished. For some reason, as though for the first time, Cody realized what good care he had taken of the building. He had just installed new support beams under the peaked roof, heightening the effect of a cathedral ceiling, and had reframed the windows and painted birds and flowers on the panes. He had built a stage out of freshly planed pine in hopes that next year he could put on an Easter pageant and attract more children to his Bible-study classes. The air around the stage was as sweet-smelling as a green woods in spring, not unlike a deferred promise of better things to come.
“You have a very nice church here,” Krill said.
“I’m going to get a pitcher of water out of the coffee room. I’m not gonna call anybody or give y’all any trouble. What I’m doing here might not be right, but I’m gonna do it just the same.”
“What do you mean, ‘not right’?”
“The papists anoint at death. We baptize at birth.”
“These are considerations that are of no importance to me. Go get the water. Do not let me hear you talking on a telephone.”
“Don’t trust him, jefe. He’s a capon, the friend of whoever he needs to please at the moment,” Negrito said.
“No, our friend here has no fear. He has no reason to lie. Look at his eyes. I think he doesn’t want to live. He’s a sadder man than even you, Negrito.”
“Don’t talk of me that way, jefe.”
“Then don’t call others a capon, you who are afraid to touch the box in which my children sleep.”
Cody went into the coffee room and filled a small pitcher with tap water. His head was pounding, his breath short, but he didn’t know why. Was it just fear? Krill may have been a killer, but he was no threat to him. Krill was totally absorbed with the status of his children in the afterlife. What about Negrito? No, Negrito was not a threat, either, not as long as he was under Krill’s control. So what was it that caused Cody’s heart to race and the scalp to shrink on his head?
This was the first time he had ever done anything of a serious nature as a minister. And he was doing it at a time when he was about to flee his church and home and become a fugitive, just like the road kid who had forged checks and ended up on a county prison farm. He walked back into the chapel, knocking against a worktable he had fashioned from two planks and sawhorses, spilling a nail gun and a claw hammer to the floor.
Krill had opened the top of the wood box and was standing expectantly beside it, his gaze fixed on Cody.
