Blue Lonesome

by Bill Pronzini

  Dacy cut the wheel hard to the right to avoid a collision. The Jeep bounced up over a high curb, rattled down with a jolt that nearly caused her to lose control. Something bulked up large in front of them; he yelled a warning, but Dacy was already jamming on the brakes. If he hadn’t had his seat belt fastened and his body braced, he would have gone through the windshield or right up over it when the Jeep shuddered to a dead-engine stop. Closed Chevron station, he realized then. They were on the apron, nose up to one of the pumps on an outer island.

  Hanratty had gone on past but now he was reversing, fast off the highway and in onto the apron at a sliding angle twenty yards away. Dacy was out and running by then. She yanked the Blazer’s door open, caught hold of Hanratty’s shirt, and all but dragged him out.

  “You crazy drunken fool!” she yelled with her face inches from his. “You could’ve killed us!”

  He swatted her hand loose. Then, as Spears came around from the passenger side and Messenger ran up, Hanratty swatted her—a backhanded blow that knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling.

  Messenger hit him in retaliation. Didn’t plan it, didn’t have time to think about it, just swung in sudden fury as soon as he saw Dacy go down. His fist caught Hanratty on the side of the head; pain erupted in his knuckles as the big man stumbled back against the Blazer. But Hanratty wasn’t hurt. He caromed off, bellowing, and bull-charged Messenger, wrapped powerful arms around him.

  Their feet got tangled together and they collapsed in a clawing embrace, Hanratty on top when they landed; his weight and impact with the asphalt drove most of the air from Messenger’s lungs. Gasping, he flailed with arms and legs, managed to free himself and pull away. He got his feet under him and lurched upright.

  A flat banging noise penetrated the blood-pound in his ears.

  Another.

  His vision was clouded; he blinked his eyes clear, looking for Dacy. She was over behind the four-by-four, unhurt and wearing an expression of cold rage, the short-barreled revolver in her hand. Spears stood motionless a few feet from her, staring at the back end of the Blazer. Hanratty had gained his feet, too and was shaking his head in angry disbelief. It seemed to Messenger that enough noise had been made to bring the law and half the town; he was surprised to see that the highway was still empty, the four of them alone in what was left of the desert twilight.

  A loud hissing reached his ears. And he saw then that the four-by-four’s rear end was settling at a backward slant. Dacy had shot out both rear tires.

  “What the hell’d you do that for?” Hanratty said to her. He took a step toward her.

  “Stay put unless you want some of the same. I’m not kidding, Joe.”

  Hanratty stopped, glowering.

  “How about you, Tom?”

  “Not me,” Spears said. “Wasn’t my idea to chase after you.”

  “Goddamn it, Dacy, you’re gonna pay for them tires.”

  “Sure I am. Just like you’ll pay for the damage to my Jeep.”

  Blood dribbled down from a cut on Hanratty’s temple; he swiped at it distractedly, as if it were a bothersome fly. “Second time in two nights you throwed a gun on me,” he said. “I oughta take that one away from you.”

  “Go ahead and try. I’ll send flowers.”

  “Huh?”

  “To your hospital room. Takes a while to get over a gunshot wound, Joe. I hear they’re real painful.”

  “Kind of talk don’t scare me,” Hanratty said, but at some level it must have. Like Billy Draper earlier, he held his ground.

  “Jim,” she said. “You all right?”

  His knuckles throbbed, and his chest ached with the hiss and rattle of his breathing. But he said, “Not hurt.”

  “Go get in the Jeep.”

  He went immediately. Headlights had appeared on the highway: two cars, one passing in each direction at retarded speeds. But their gawking occupants wanted nothing to do with what was happening in the station. Both sets of lights had vanished when Dacy settled in beside him.

  “Damn rednecks!” she said when they were back on the highway. She was still furious. “You sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes. You?”

  “I’ve been hit harder. You handled yourself pretty well back there.”

  “Did I? I haven’t been in a fight since grade school. Tell me something, Dacy. Would you have shot Hanratty if he’d come at you? Or Spears? Or Billy Draper earlier?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think I’d like to know, one way or the other.”

  “My daddy taught me to always finish what I start. That answer your question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bother you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Now suppose you finish what you started to tell me back there at the stoplight.”

  24

  IT WAS FULL dark when they drove up onto the bluff top. This was supposed to be a place of sanctuary, but to Messenger the buildings and the blobs and spatters of light and color had a strangely uninviting aspect. Imagination, perhaps, tainted by the knowledge that had brought them here. Just the same it all seemed remote and empty, secretive, like an island floating in the evening sky above Beulah.

  On the grounds there were amber night lights; in the parsonage, a white globe burned behind an unshaded kitchen window and a pale gold rectangle marked a bedroom or study; in the Church of the Holy Name low-wattage bulbs and possibly candlelight turned the stained-glass windows into religious scenes like those in old illuminated manuscripts. But all of the light was stationary, frozen in the windless, purple dark. Cold light, where it should have been warm: as cold as the metallic silver dusting of stars overhead. The splashes of white radiance from the Jeep’s headlamps was all that moved as they jounced across the parking area; and when Dacy halted near the church entrance, the beams too became solid and cold.

  She switched off lights and engine. Silence folded around them, a thick hush; but almost immediately sounds came out of the shadows that stretched away behind the church. Messenger stiffened with one leg out of the Jeep; Dacy reached over to grip his arm. The sounds continued almost rhythmically: chunking thuds and hollow scrapings. Metal on earth.

  Somebody was digging in the cemetery.

  He finished his exit and stood waiting, rubbing his still-sore knuckles. When Dacy joined him he saw by the starshine that she’d drawn her revolver. He said, “You won’t need that.”

  “Probably not, but I’ll feel better with it handy.”

  “Don’t show it unless you have to. Keep it out of sight.”

  “Okay.” She tucked the weapon back under her shirttails, but she kept her hand on the butt.

  He led the way along the church’s south wall. At the rear, near where the sand-pitted marble angel bulked grotesquely above the Roebuck plot, they paused to probe the shadows. Fifty yards distant, under one of the cottonwoods, a lone figure stood just below ground level, wielding what in drawn-back silhouette he recognized as a pick. Chunking thud as the tool smacked down, hollow scraping as its pronged head dragged through loose earth. Back up again, poised. And back down.

  They approached slowly, not making noise to announce their presence but not being stealthy either. The digging went on unabated. They stopped once more, a few feet away. The hole under the tree was more than a foot deep and roughly rectangular in shape—obviously a grave. No surprise in that, and none in the identity of the person swinging the pick. From the moment he’d heard the digging sounds he’d known who was making them.

  “Maria,” he said.

  No response, then or when he spoke her name a second time. It was as if she were working in a vacuum. Or a trance.

  Dacy touched his arm again. “Let me try.” She went closer, to within two paces of the grave’s edge. Softly she said, “Hello, Maria.”

  The pitch of another woman’s voice penetrated where his hadn’t. It didn’t startle Maria Hoxie or make her react with defensive fright; skittishness was not a part of her tonight.
She merely paused with the pick’s point at shoulder level and peered around, her head cocked to one side like a bird’s.

  “Who’s that?” she said.

  “Dacy Burgess.”

  “Oh.” Then, “Somebody’s with you.”

  “Jim Messenger.”

  His name didn’t seem to bother her, either. She stood silently as he joined Dacy. Tree-shadow mottled her bent body and upturned face, but there was still enough light to show him the sweat-plastered black hair, the widened eyes with a little too much white visible. Working here a long time, he thought, since before nightfall. Calm enough outwardly, but on the inside? How close was she to the edge?

  “I didn’t want you to come,” she said to him. She meant to Beulah in the first place, not here tonight. “I tried to make you go away, even though I knew down deep that I couldn’t. The Lord sent you, didn’t He? You’re the Lord’s Messenger.”

  When he didn’t answer she said, “Yes, He sent you,” and lifted the pick high again, swung it down again.

  Dacy asked, “What’re you digging there?”

  “A grave. What else would I be digging?”

  “For John T.?”

  “No.”

  “For who, then?”

  “For me,” Maria said. “This is my grave.”

  The flesh between Messenger’s shoulder blades bunched and rippled. Dacy edged closer to him; both hands were at her sides now. She said, “You’re not going to die, Maria.”

  “Everyone dies. The Lord wants my soul too—I understand that now. That’s why He sent His Messenger to bring out the truth.”

  “Suicide is a mortal sin. You know that.”

  “I know. Oh yes, I know. But there are worse sins.”

  “The taking of someone else’s life.”

  “Even worse than that.” A shudder passed through her, visible even in the half-light, and made her pause again in her digging. She tipped her head back to peer up at the velvety sky. “It’s dark,” she said, as if she had just realized the fact. “I’d better go get a lantern.”

  “Wait, Maria. Talk to us first.”

  “I am talking to you.”

  “About John T. About what happened last night.”

  Another tremor. She dropped the pick and hugged herself. “I don’t like the dark,” she said. “I have to sleep with a light on, did you know that?”

  He said gently, “What happened with John T., Maria?”

  “Oh, it was his fault. Really. He made me do it.”

  “He made you shoot him?”

  “I thought he wanted to love me, like the other times we met up there. But he never loved me. He only wanted to hurt me.”

  “Hurt you how?”

  “He yelled at me and called me names. Slut, whore—terrible names. Why did I let men like Billy and Pete have my body? Why did I tell them to turn serpents loose on the Messenger? Why couldn’t I let him make the Messenger go away? Why, why, why, over and over. So I told him why. I told him everything.”

  “That you were the one who killed his brother.”

  She didn’t seem to hear him. “He hit me. In the stomach, hard. I’ll kill you for what you did, Maria, he said, and he hit me again. But I knew about the gun, I saw it once when I was looking for tissues. I took it and I … it made a terrible noise inside the car and he …” She hugged herself more tightly. “We punished him,” she said, “God and I.”

  Dacy, in a voice with a rusty edge: “Why did you set fire to the ranch?”

  “God told me to. It was an evil place. Satan made evil things happen there, he made me keep coming back and doing evil things with men like John T. The only way to save my soul was to drive Satan back to the Pit. Fire to fight fire.”

  “Did God tell you to shoot Dave Roebuck, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because he was evil?”

  “Yes. ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’”

  Messenger said, “He hurt his daughter, he made Tess pass through the fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you were a witness.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you go to his ranch that day? To see him?”

  “No. To talk to his wife. To beg her forgiveness for my sin of lying with him. The night before … he was drunk and he laughed at me, he said all he ever cared about was fucking me. There was no love in him either. Only evil.”

  “But Anna wasn’t there.”

  “Just him. And Tess. He was drunk again. Staggering out of the barn, chasing her—that poor little naked child.”

  “Tess had no clothes on?”

  “Naked. Screaming ‘Leave me alone, leave me alone, I’ll tell Mommy what you did!’ She kicked him when he caught her and he yelled and picked up the rock and he … I heard the sound it made, I saw the blood when she fell. From the top of the hill by the gate. But he didn’t see me. He carried her back to the barn and I went down and the shotgun was there on the porch. God put it there for me to see, in plain sight. I took it to the barn and he was bending over the little girl, crying, saying he was sorry, he didn’t mean to hurt her. But he wasn’t sorry. He was drunk and evil and God told me to pull the trigger and I did. He was an abomination unto the Lord.”

  “Then what did you do?”

  “I mustn’t leave her there like that. I mustn’t. I found her clothes and took them into the house and picked out a pretty dress and covered her nakedness.”

  “And after that you picked a sprig of flowers and put it in her hand. From a bush like the one you were planting here on Wednesday, on Tess’s grave.”

  “Verbena. The first one I planted for her died.” Maria sat down on the low mound of dirt, placed her hands together like a supplicant. “Everything dies,” she said. “Sooner or later.”

  “White dress, white verbena. White for purity.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s why you put her body in the well.”

  “Yes. Pure water to cleanse away the evil, to prepare her for her entry into the Kingdom. She suffered, but not for long. Then she was at peace in the arms of the Lord.”

  “But you’re not at peace, Maria.”

  “I will be soon.”

  “You suffered too, didn’t you? The same way Tess did, and for a much longer time. That’s the real reason you’re not at peace.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s why you did what you did at the ranch.” Has to be. It’s the only way it all makes sense. “And why you didn’t tell anyone afterward. You couldn’t talk about such things, not even to save Anna. Your father made you swear never to talk about such things, didn’t he?”

  “People wouldn’t understand, he said. It wasn’t wicked, what we did together, because we loved each other. I love you more than life itself, Maria, you’re the closest to an angel God ever made. I need to show you how much I love you. I can’t stop myself, Lord help me, I can’t. That’s what he said.”

  Dacy made an angry sound in her throat. Messenger said, “It wasn’t love, Maria. You know that now.”

  “Yes. I know that now.”

  Reverend Walter Hoxie. He was responsible for everything that Maria had done, not she. He drove her to look for his kind of love with the Roebucks and Draper and Teal and God knew how many others. He gave her a warped view of religion and sowed the seeds of murder. And at some level she’d known all along what he was and what he’d done to her. It wasn’t Dave Roebuck she’d killed in March, it was her adoptive father. It wasn’t John T. she’d shot last night, it was the man who’d begun molesting her when she was no older than Tess.

  “Where is he?” Messenger said thickly. “Where’s the good reverend Hoxie?”

  “In the church.”

  “Stay here with her,” he said to Dacy. “I’m going to see Hoxie.”

  “Jim, don’t do anything foolish—”

  “I won’t. I just want
to confront him with it.”

  He hurried back around to the front of the church. The hinges squeaked when he pushed open one of the double doors. Electric light was all that burned inside; the votive candles on the altar were unlit. He noticed that first, before anything else registered. Then—

  Light and shadow: one elongated shadow, half bulky and half finger-thin, stretched out over several of the empty pews. The Virgin Mary on one stained glass window, the twelve apostles on another, thorn-crowned Christ on the bronze cross behind the altar … all of them seemed to be staring, as he was staring, at the abomination in their midst.

  Reverend Walter Hoxie hung stiff and straight from a length of rope looped around one of the rafter beams. The crude noose he’d fashioned hadn’t fit tightly enough and his neck hadn’t broken when he stepped off the top of one of the pews. He had died of strangulation: mottled red face, distended tongue a charred-looking black. Like a burnt offering, Messenger thought.

  It was the second dead man he’d seen in less than twenty-four hours, but this time he felt nothing. His footfalls echoed hollowly as he walked closer. There was a piece of paper pinned to the front of Hoxie’s coat; by stretching upward on his toes he could just make out the words printed on it in a shaky hand.

  May God forgive me for what I have done. Just that, nothing else.

  The door hinges squeaked again behind him. He turned to see Maria come inside, then Dacy a few paces behind; heard the audible intake of Dacy’s breath as she saw Hoxie. In the diffused light Maria’s face was clear to him for the first time: without animation or color, eyes flat and empty like the eyes of someone close to death. Like Anna Roebuck’s eyes in San Francisco. Until this moment he’d been certain that no one could possibly be sadder, lonelier than the woman he’d seen that first night in the Harmony Café. But he had been wrong.

  The true essence of blue lonesome was the girl who stood facing him now.

  “I confessed to him this morning,” she said. “Everything, all my sins and all that God told me to do. He cried the way Dave Roebuck cried and told me how sorry he was. Then he came out here. I knew what he was going to do but I didn’t try to stop him. I didn’t want to stop him. I dug his grave first, on the other side of the cemetery from mine.”