Trouble the Saints

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

  “Do that all you want, baby,” Phyllis says. “Just don’t tell me so.”

  5

  The driveway to the River House is longer than it ought to be. Some Bell ancestor shaped it like a cobblestone question mark, dotted by the tastefully restored colonial mansion. It’s a design for magazine features of iconic upstate country houses. It’s a design to charm visitors and intimidate residents, but now I don’t suppose I qualify as either.

  A maid answers a minute or two after I pull the bell. I note her hair straightened and pressed beneath a red kerchief, her starched apron that would have been cleaner this morning. The round eyes that are sadder, and harder, but the same as her son’s.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “I’m here to see Bobby Junior,” I say.

  She just nods and shows me into the parlor. She doesn’t ask my name. I wonder what Alvin has told her. Or what she’s told him.

  An older man intercepts her in the hallway outside as she’s leaving. I recognize him more from his photos than the handful of times I have seen him in person—he is fatter than I remember. Just as full of that presence that can make an average man seem handsome.

  “Mae,” he says, and then something else, too low for me to hear.

  “To see Junior, sir.” Her eyes are on the carpet. Her back is to a large French vase, set in a niche on the far wall.

  He is much taller. When he moves I can only see the back of his suspenders and shirtsleeves, and the severe sidecut of his thick slate-gray hair.

  “… didn’t I tell him to let the business be?”

  Mae responds quietly. I can’t make out the words, but the practiced, soothing way she says them tells me enough. Mayor Bell’s wife died years ago, but I’m sure Alvin’s mother had learned to use that voice long before then.

  “Well, tell him to get that damned coolie out of my parlor! The Astors are due to arrive in a half hour…”

  More soothing noises. I lean back in my chair—seventeenth-century French, newly upholstered, comfortable as burlap—and pretend I don’t hear a thing. The Astors must be connected to those rumors of a development project on the old Lutheran land. So: money and influence and the imminent possibility of gaining much more. Or the threat of losing it. Alvin’s fears suddenly seem plausible. Mae and Mayor Bell walk away together, still talking. His hand is on the small of her back and she holds herself as tightly as a ballerina.

  Five minutes later, Bobby Bell the Junior stands in the doorway. He’s better dressed than his father and at least fifty percent less imposing. “I heard you’d come back.”

  I shrug. “I’ve always had the house.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. Listen, I hate to be rude, but Dad’s got some poo-bahs coming by in a few minutes and he needs the parlor. Why don’t we take a walk and you can tell me whatever you came for?”

  I follow him through the hallway and into the kitchen. He leads us out by a smaller door that opens onto the gardens and a path to the river. Typical Little Easton, typical Bells. You might get in through the front door, but they remove you from the back.

  “What brings you here, Davey?” he asks as we pick our way down the steep, winding trail. His tone is wary and polite. It’s been the same ever since that incident with his friends by the river. After they dredged for poor Thomas.

  We pause at the river’s edge. “I wanted to ask you about the boy working in Craver’s store. Alvin.”

  “Mae’s little devil? Do you know his own family’s scared of him? If it weren’t for Craver’s damned intervention, the kid wouldn’t dare show his cursed hands on River Road!”

  “What did he do?”

  Bobby shivers and meets my eyes almost accidentally.

  “We never knew he had that … damned voodoo … or whatever you types have.” Bobby snaps his hands in my direction, as though flicking off a spider. “His family kept that secret. Well, can’t say it occurred to us to ask, either. It’s not something civilized people tend to think about. Still, Mae ought to have warned us, after all the Bells have done for her. And good God, even now when I think about that rout of a party…”

  He pulls his pocket square and wipes his forehead. No longer young, the both of us.

  “Party?”

  “The viewing party we have up at the house every May. But Dad had this notion to raise funds for a regional declaration in favor of the war. We’ve got to put some pressure on Washington, after all, or the damn thing’ll be over by the time we get to the front. So we hired the boy for the night to park cars and collect glasses and make himself useful—a favor to his family. The winter ended late this year, all the orchards have been struggling. Which goes to show you charity isn’t always rewarded! The damned weasel revealed his little secret in the middle of the toasts! Touched Charles Yarborough and his wife, of all people, and let’s just say I think Charles’s chances of winning that state senate seat in September are just about shot.”

  “Did you provoke him?”

  “Hot damn, Davey, provoke him? We’ve done everything for that ungrateful bunch of—”

  I flinch, and he stops, which is more than the Junior would have done a decade ago. It has never been good to hear, but after Victor that word is a blow from a loaded gun.

  I release a slow breath. “So your theory is that he risked his family just to, what? See the looks on your faces when he described Charles Yarborough’s love life?”

  Bobby rolls his eyes. “He’s probably some anarchist, intent on destroying white civilization. Point is, what he did is beyond anything decent people can tolerate. Who doesn’t have a few skeletons in their closet?”

  “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”

  “Exactly! So you can see how we can’t tolerate this business with Craver.”

  “Not sure I follow, Bobby.”

  “That man is … what was Phyllis’s charming phrase? Nuttier than a jar of peanut butter. Wacky. All these years obsessed with the dead. He doesn’t like the wheels of progress so he tries to gum the works with his power over the boy? Dad calls it escalation.”

  “Well, I can forgive a man for feeling desperate when his town threatens to dig up his parents’ bones.”

  The Junior waves his left hand, on which his Dartmouth college ring is prominently settled, despite his never having officially graduated. Mayor Bell had connections enough to remove that particular failure from the scholastic record, but not enough to stop the gossip back in town.

  “Craver’s always been like that, as you ought to know. It was strange enough when he took you in—now, don’t take offense, Davey, you’ve turned out fine, but it raised plenty of eyebrows back then. Do you remember how he told the town you had a power straight from that constipated god of his?” He starts to laugh, but then falls silent. I can well imagine what crossed his thoughts, and my hands go clammy with memory. He gives me a brief, funny look, and turns to the river. “More fools we, eh, Davey? More fools we for not listening. But this business with the Spalding boy, it’s a step beyond. It … it’s not right!”

  “And I’m sure remembering those times Alvin’s hands might have brushed yours have nothing to do with it.”

  “Damn it, Davey, who doesn’t have skeletons?”

  “Craver, apparently.”

  “Craver is playing a game. He wants that dead church, no matter that it’s prime real estate that hasn’t been used in decades. This town stands to make millions with the new hotel.”

  “Probably not the Spaldings.”

  “They’re lucky they get to keep their orchard. And if we’re lucky that boy will get drafted on his birthday.”

  I shake my head. “You volunteering, Bobby? Since you and your dad support the war.”

  “Medical exemption from service. Trick knee. Besides, I’m more useful on the home front. And don’t tell me you’ll find yourself over there, what with your New York connections … Speaking of which, I don’t need to tell you it spooked me a bit to see your lady in town. I expect you know s
he and I go back? We passed a few hours at the inn the other day? Of course you do, the way gossip goes around here. I hope you weren’t jealous?”

  He pauses, hopeful. I glance at him and kneel to pick a late dandelion with most of its pollen. I blow the seeds away from his face, but I can’t help the direction of the wind.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing much about you to provoke jealousy.”

  Bobby sneezes. “She doesn’t, I mean, her business here…”

  This fucking country wheat, this absolute twit—was he really asking—

  “Strictly personal, Junior. As I’m sure she told you, we’re both through with the New York racket. Victor’s dead, and we’re here for peace and quiet.”

  His hands tremble in his pockets. He sweats, despite the breeze from the river.

  “Sorry if I offended you, buddy.”

  “We’re not buddies, Junior. Or don’t you remember Thomas?”

  He jerks. But we were both thinking it; I only chose, at last, to name the ghost between us. For many years, watching Thomas die had been the closest I’d come to killing a man. Now, I could almost laugh.

  “I—Davey—I mean, that’s water under the bridge—” He grimaces. Back up the hill, in the River House, a bell starts to ring. “Poor choice of words. Look, I apologize, but I have to go. Dad must want me for something. What I said—don’t take it to heart. I have nothing but respect for you and your lady. All right?”

  To his credit, he holds out his hand. I regard it for a calculated moment and then clasp it with my own. He could be planning to kill Alvin, but he’s sincere about being no threat to me. And yet, there’s something else—I’m trying to trace that ominous whiff of smoke that blows between our connected hands when he pulls away and hurries up the hill. He says something to Mae by the back door, then disappears inside. I turn my back to the house, but only because I know she’s coming.

  She has to make sure she’s alone, first.

  “My boy,” she says, no introductions needed. “He spoke to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say? I love that boy more than my life, but he doesn’t always have the closest relationship with the truth, you understand. He makes up stories, he exaggerates. Sure, we got problems, but I don’t want him going around making it worse ’cause he thinks he got to protect me.”

  She seems out of breath, tired. I think of the mayor’s hand on her back, so sure of its right to be there.

  “He says that the Bells want to kill him.”

  “Now, I’m sure that isn’t true,” she says, but she looks away as she says it. Her nostrils flare, ever so slightly.

  “If you need help, I can try—”

  She holds up her hand, straightens her shoulders. “Now, that’s the one thing I’m damn sure we don’t need. Any more help.”

  We hold each other’s eyes for a moment.

  “Look,” she says, the word soft as a sigh, “I raised that boy right. He’s got a core of iron. He knows why the Lord gave him that burden, he knows it’s his holy duty to use them for good. So don’t go on misunderstanding him. We got plenty of white folks around here for that.”

  I nod, and she seems to take this for agreement. Or maybe she doesn’t have any more time. The bell starts to ring again and she races back up the hill like the kitchen’s on fire.

  And that’s when I place the scent that I had pulled from Junior’s brief handclasp. A threat, yes, but not to me.

  Junior could want to kill Alvin.

  But someone definitely wants to kill Junior.

  * * *

  Craver has flipped the shop sign to CLOSED when I arrive. I rattle the door until Alvin opens it.

  “We’re—oh. What do you want?”

  “I thought I was helping you out,” I say, pushing my way inside. Alvin jumps back before I can get close enough to touch him. I raise my eyebrows. “But it seems you have something to hide.”

  “Did you want to speak with me, Davey?” Craver has removed his dust-stained apron and run a comb through his thin gray hair. The keys in his hand open the churchyard as well as the convenience store.

  “Going to the graveyard?” I used to accompany him to clean the church and the graves. A penance, like everything he did.

  “I doubt I’ll have much more time with them,” he said. “That pair of Herods on the hill are planning sacrilege. The gravest.”

  Alvin snickers. Craver stops him with a look.

  “There’s nothing else you can do to stop them? The town council?”

  “Approved it with one dissenting vote. I’ve appealed to the county, but you know as well as I they’ll make sure to lose the paperwork. One of the Astor sons is a principal investor.”

  That would explain Mayor Bell’s grand visitors.

  Craver turns from me and walks to the window. “They tell me the old church cross will be part of a permanent exhibition of town history they’re putting in the basement of the new resort. I think they meant it as a favor. The cross my ancestors brought from Aachen more than a hundred years ago, squatting next to Edwin Bell’s fishing rod. By God, I’d rather see that place burn than give him the satisfaction. If I were younger, if I were as strong as you, or Alvin here—”

  His back spills rage like a furnace.

  There are people who don’t have killing in them. Put a gun in their hands, they’ll shoot their own foot to get out.

  Tamara’s like that. I used to pretend that I was. But Craver? Alvin? They only need a very good reason.

  “Been thinking about hurting someone, Mr. Craver?”

  “Why? Did you touch something with those hands of yours?” He laughs as if it were a real joke.

  “Hey, Dev,” Alvin says, “he won’t hurt no one. Don’t look at him like that.”

  I wonder, idly, how I looked. Has Pea been rubbing off? “You told me that Junior wants to kill you, Alvin, but now I wonder if it’s not the other way around.”

  “What’s this? Alvin, now I told you—”

  “If Junior don’t have a dozen men wanting to kill him, it ain’t Wednesday. I got my family to protect.”

  He seems genuine, but genuine men lie. I hold up one hand. Make no motion toward him. We could answer the question easy enough, and he knows it. He eyes my open palm, flinches, and shakes his head very slightly.

  “If you find some proof, let me know,” I say. “But until then, I’ve got my own business.” I could try to keep following this trail, but Alvin’s right, men like the Bobbys make plenty of enemies. I need a way out of the draft. Right now Finn and Valentine are looking like a marginally better prospect than exploiting Alvin’s murky relationship with the Bells.

  I let myself out and leave Craver’s pious lecture to mix with the open air. Birdsong. The slush of trees tossing their hair in the wind. Clean air that carries, for a moment, the aroma of bone broth and meat dumplings.

  I loved Tamara for her innocence—a good enough substitute for purity.

  But I would never have killed for her. And Pea, sweet Pea, Phyllis LeBlanc, Phyllis Green, Victor’s angel? For her, my sins are without price.

  6

  Trent Sullivan was a big man, muscular and heavy. He’d been a wrestler in his college days, made a few championships, but he threw out his back in practice and it never quite came back to him. He left school and went to work for his father. Eventually his father retired and he started working directly with Victor.

  He was not the best-connected man in Victor’s little empire, nor the cleverest, nor the one with the least to lose.

  I guess you could say Trent Sullivan had a conscience. Not that I cared at the time. He was just a gangster to me, a stoolie in it for his own reasons. I didn’t have to understand these criminals, I thought, just bring them to justice.

  I was—this is not a defense—very young.

  I’d been looking for him since my meeting with Finn at the diner. I found him a week later. He was nursing a draft beer one Thursday night in a dark corner of the Pelican
. Unremarkable, except for the way his eyes followed Pea. I don’t believe in jealousy, but like the devil, it doesn’t require my approval. She was five feet away from me, laughing and flirting, shining like a sharpened knife. She pretended she didn’t notice me, but at unexpected moments she would turn, her skirt spreading like a fan, and catch my eyes. I know you, they said.

  In the Bible, that meant sex. But in my grandmother’s stories, that meant love.

  And somehow, this big man with a long mustache and tired sheep’s eyes watched her, too, with some knowledge. He gave me a slight nod when I leaned against the wall beside him.

  “You’re the one, then?” he said, softly.

  I twirled my cocktail glass in my left hand. The pieces snapped together, no room for hesitation. Some part of me must have already guessed. “Trent, I take it. What did they tell you about me?”

  “Just that you’re with the angel. And that you’re colored.”

  “Christ,” I said, “what else, my address?”

  Trent laughed softly. “Could use some lessons in subtlety, your folks.”

  “My name’s Dev. I’m supposed to find out what you can give us.”

  He kept his face neutral, but his hand clenched around the mug. “You wacky? See where we are?” His voice was barely a whisper.

  “No one’s paying us any attention,” I said, just as softly, to reassure him. “And we’re safer here than anywhere.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “You know about saint’s hands?”

  Now his sleepy eyes widened and he wheezed a sick laugh. “Like you can’t fucking imagine.”

  “I have them. And they tell me when people are threatening me, or thinking about it. And they aren’t even tingling right now.”

  That wasn’t exactly true. Pea, sitting on the bar, a cocktail in one hand and a man’s tie in the other, looked as though she could hardly remember my name but she hummed warmly against my fingertips. Pea’s thoughts of me weren’t threats, but they were enough of something that my hands could touch them anyhow. I had never felt that with a woman before.