The Preacher

by Ted Thackrey, Jr.

  Something was finally happening behind those ice eyes; a tiny hell-flame of fury had been lighted, and I could see the fore finger beginning to whiten on the trigger of the revolver.

  “Your daddy,” I said, “was a—”

  But I never had to finish the sentence.

  The frustrated hopes and unrequited insults of a lifetime were boiling, moving the muscles of Vollie’s hand toward the point of explosion, and his lungs were filling for a shout of rage when he was momentarily derailed, forced off track by a noise from behind him.

  Dana had screamed.

  It was sudden, loud, startling, soul-piercing…and exactly what I needed.

  Vollie’s nerves, stretched to the breaking point with the effort of control and shocked by the unexpected sound, spun him toward her without conscious volition.

  The pistol fired a single shot that went wild, and I swung the shovel at his head, hearing the chirr of air resistance as it responded to every ounce of strength I could bring to bear. There was an instant of wild elation as it connected with a solid metallic clang of bone contact that sent him sprawling—wide open for the killing-stroke that would have to follow.

  It was good.

  Almost good enough.

  But almost doesn’t count in poker or anywhere else.

  I moved toward the fallen man, raising the heavy tool aloft for the second blow…and knew that I was dead. The blade end of the shovel was no longer attached to the shaft. The first blow had broken the handle, and I was left clutching the shattered stump while Vollie Manion, safely out of range, recovered himself and sat up with the pistol still in his hand.

  He leveled it.

  Fired.

  And the world collapsed upon itself like the flame of a quenched candle.

  A BENEDICTION

  (CONTINUED)

  …the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be among you…

  THIRTY-FOUR

  It should have been final, and there was a sense of shock—not entirely unmixed with disappointment—when I felt myself slipping back into the world.

  The alpine meadow was so green…

  And the Enlightened One had been speaking.

  But survival is the chief instinct of all successful species; humankind has always given it top priority. So when I began once more to perceive light and sound—and pain—I was careful to do what both instinct and training had taught me. I lay still.

  Bang, you’re dead…

  If I was swimming back to the surface of conscious life again, I knew it could only mean that Vollie Manion thought I was out of the play. Dead, or so nearly so as to merit no further attention. And the only way I could remain in the world was to keep him thinking that way. I closed my eye and began a cautious damage-control survey.

  Item: My left leg is numb, and I don’t think it’s working.

  Item: My left shoulder hurts. I think it’s broken.

  Item: The right side of my head is on fire.

  I snatched the data from the printer and scurried off to my cave to analyze it.

  My memory of the moments just before the lights went out was surprisingly clear: Vollie had shot me in the head. But he had been firing from an unstable stand, with a handgun, and apparently the bullet hadn’t quite taken me in the ten-ring where he’d been aiming. That, I decided, would account for the raw and burning sensation just above my right ear.

  But if he’d thought enough of the first shot to decide I was dead, what had happened to my left arm and leg? I turned the question around and over and upside down, and finally decided that neither of these conditions came as the result of a bullet wound. Son of a bitch must have spent some time putting the boots to me.

  All right, then.

  Time to risk a peek around the perimeter.

  Opening the eye once more and bringing it to focus, the first thing I saw was Dana, and it took as much control as I had just then to restrain a scream of rage. Kicking me evidently hadn’t satisfied Vollie at all. Dana was still handcuffed to the tree, but she seemed to be unconscious now, and her face had been further damaged. There was a terrifying show of bright blood on her dress and on the bole of the tree beneath her. I forced myself to look away.

  Where was Vollie?

  Scanning, not daring to move my head, I found the rest of the landscape vacant—a small grove of cottonwood trees near a dry streambed, one car parked nearby. Nothing in motion.

  But sight is only one of the senses, and it was my ears that offered the next bit of information. I heard a grunt of effort and the grating of metal against earth and gravel behind me. Evidently I had been away for less time than I had thought; Vollie was still at work on the grave I had begun.

  I set a separate watch to tell me of any change in the deputy’s work pace, and turned my main effort back to personal inventory. Exploring, tentatively at first and later with more assurance, I concluded without actual experiment that I could count on useful response from my right arm and right leg and left hand, with limited cooperation of the left arm. The hand could hold, but the arm would have trouble moving it.

  All right. What else?

  I had fallen facedown, twisted away from the direction of the gunshot, and the broken handle of the shovel was still in my right hand, covered by my torso. The active left hand, attached to the semi-useful arm was under my right cheek…which accounted for the relatively wide arc of vision available to the good eye.

  Something else…

  Something sharp…

  An insignificant pain in the upper part of my right thigh, almost unnoticed among the welter of other sensations, finally gave me the information I needed. The shovel handle had not simply snapped from strain when I hit Vollie. It had fractured along its grain, ripping at the end nearest my hand, but splitting cleanly—and sharply—at the other end of the break.

  The stub in my hand could become a club or a sharpened épée, at my option.

  I had a weapon.

  Almost good enough. But unless I wanted a repeat of the last fiasco, it was going to have to be a lot better than that. I forced my mind through yet another survey of possibilities.

  There would be the element of surprise, surely. The discovery that I was neither dead nor totally incapacitated might work well in my favor. But it was a blunted tool; Vollie would be on his guard. Still not good enough. Something more. Something strong. Something to keep him in one spot for just a moment. Just long enough.

  And then I touched the answer.

  My left hand, pinned beneath my cheek, moved a fraction of an inch as I covertly exercised its muscles for future effort, and the forefinger tapped my eyelid. Sensation and inspiration were almost simultaneous.

  I worked the prosthetic eye out of its socket and grasped it in my palm.

  I relaxed. I waited…

  The body wanted sleep and the soul wanted to go back to the meadow in the Alps, but the essence of self could not allow it.

  Time passed. The winter sun grew warm on my back, and a drone of insect life formed a background for the steady crunch-ugh of Vollie’s labors behind my back. I forced myself to count out the seconds and record the minutes in order to remain at full power for the final effort to come.

  But the work went on for more than an hour.

  He must have wanted a deep grave…

  Then, at last, he was ready. I heard a clang as the pick and the broken-handled shovel landed outside the trench, and the sounds of effort as he climbed out.

  My ki was at full emergency pitch; I evoked saika tanden, the state of nothingness that leaves the self ready for all eventualities, and shinki kiitsu, the unity of soul, mind, and body.

  His hand touched my left shoulder.

  Vollie had intended to roll me over, but full use of the weapon of surprise demanded that nothing go as he had planned. As soon as I was past the point of balance, I brought my good right leg into play and completed the turn in a whirl and, disregarding the sudden protest of pain from my left shoulder, brought that arm straight t
oward his face, opening the hand to let him see the detached eye.

  His reaction was all that could be hoped.

  The sudden shriek of horror that came from his throat was almost feminine, and he stood for an instant paralyzed and helpless before me.

  Almost lazily, I relaxed the left hand to let the eye fall and grasped the part of him that was closest and most secure. My fingers closed around his gun belt, clamping and binding, while my right hand brought the sharp point of the shovel handle upright.

  I could feel him recovering, tensing, ready to break free, and I knew his physical strength would be far too great to resist if he could bring it into play. I needed one more instant of power, and used the full strength of my lungs to provide it.

  My kiai was full-chested.

  And effective. For one final, necessary split second Vollie Manion’s huge bulk and menace stood transfixed, immobilized and defenseless as my left and right hands worked at death.

  The wooden point of the handle flew upward as the entrapping belt drew him down upon it, and I heard myself shouting once again in triumph as it lanced through the center seam of his uniform trousers, penetrating the crotch and ranging unimpeded upward through scrotum, bladder, and bowels.

  Pain broke Vollie’s trance.

  The howl that burst from his throat was accompanied by a great blow that flattened me, breaking my hold on his belt. He staggered backward, gouting blood as the sharpened splinter of wood was drawn free, and shrieked again as he discovered what had been done to him. I braced for a counterstroke, but it did not come.

  The point of the wooden spear had done even more damage than I had hoped or expected. Vollie’s second step was his last; his knees folded under him then, and he collapsed a few feet out of my farthest range, twitching and spasming in an effort to move legs that would no longer obey his command. The wooden blade had either cut or bruised the spinal cord; his lower body was paralyzed.

  The sounds he made told the agony of fear that is always more terrible than any physical suffering. It is the imminence of death, unmodulated by hope. Dante described the sound well; it is the lamentation of the uttermost circle of damnation.

  But finally it ceased.

  And for a while there was silence.

  “Preacher…?”

  The sound of his voice came as a surprise. I had thought he was unconscious. Or already dead.

  “Can you hear me, Preacher?”

  I turned my eye in his direction and got a surprise. I could hear his voice, and I could feel his wa as well. Something had come loose inside him; something more than flesh and bone and nerves. I touched the wa again and felt the heat.

  “Preacher?”

  “That’s what they call me.”

  “Preacher, Father Jake told me about you. He told me he knew you a long time back. In school. In the seminary.”

  “He talks a lot.”

  “No…please!”

  The words and the voice were gentle, but the wa was hot to the touch. Vollie Manion did not mean to die alone.

  “You were a priest. He said so. That was true?”

  I considered lying, but couldn’t see any reason. “Yes. I was.”

  “I was raised Catholic. With Catholics, it’s once a priest always a priest. You can resign, but you’re still a priest and you can still do the things a priest does, only you’re not supposed to without permission. And it’s the same for the Episcopal priests, isn’t it?”

  “Well…”

  “It’s the same.”

  “Yes. I suppose so. But…”

  “Then hear my confession.”

  “No!”

  What in hell was he getting at? I could feel the heat of his wa increasing, feel the weight and determination of his spirit, and it was swollen with the will to do murder.

  “You got to!”

  “I can’t do that, Vollie. You need a license issued by the bishop, and I turned mine in a long time ago.”

  “But this is an emergency. You’re the only one here. No one else is going to come. You got to! Listen: ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned—’”

  “Stop it!”

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…”

  There was no escape, and I knew it. The emergency was real, and—no matter what he might be planning in his heart—I could not refuse to hear the confession of a dying man.

  “The Lord be in your heart,” I said, picking up the ritual, “and upon your lips that you may truly and humbly confess your sins, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.”

  And then I could see it.

  Vollie’s legs weren’t working. He had lost a lot of blood and he was weak, but he had brought a folding knife out from some hiding place and it was in his hand and he was using his elbows to move himself slowly in my direction. The confession was intended to keep me too busy to notice what else was going on until it was too late.

  I took a deep breath, forcing my mind back to the thing we had begun and slowly turning the splintered shovel handle in my hand to make it a club instead of a spear.

  “I confess to Almighty God,” Vollie said, “and to His church, and to you, Father, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word, and deed…”

  His voice droned on and his movement continued, inching closer and closer as he made his way through a litany of sins. Some of the things he confessed were childish; some sounded impossible. And some I could see were both real and disgusting. But none of it was anything I hadn’t heard before, one time or another, and I had plenty of time to make sure of his continued intentions.

  The wa turned fire-hot as he came to the end:

  “For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am truly sorry. I pray God to have mercy on me. I firmly intend am…uh…amendment of life…” The voice stumbled there, and I think there was a bare nanosecond of true repentance before he went on. I hugged the knowledge to myself and hoped it was real.

  “…and ask you for counsel, direction, and absolution.”

  I took a deep breath.

  His wa was hot again and he was far too close.

  “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” I said, “who offered Himself to be sacrificed for us to the Father, and who conferred power on His church to forgive sins…”

  My right hand closed hard around the splintered end of the handle, and I tensed the arm as it lay across my chest. The angle seemed almost right.

  “The Lord has put away all your sins,” I said, taking careful aim.

  “Thanks be to God,” he said, tensing to spring.

  “Go in peace…”

  The time had come, and I brought the clubbed handle down with crushing force on the spot I had selected—the nexus between the brow and the bridge of the nose, turning the energy slightly upward to be sure of sending the end of the bone deep into the brain.

  Vollie’s body arched upward, eyes open, mouth wide for a scream that never came. And then it collapsed.

  The knife fell from his hand.

  The breathing continued spasmodically for another moment or two, and then ceased. The wa winked out.

  “…and pray for me, a sinner.”

  The next few hours were never very clear to me.

  I kept slipping back and forth between the cottonwood grove and other places, all of them equally valid, all of them equally real. Time has a way of moving things around, and one of the things it moves can be you. I think part of it was simply nightmare and may have happened later. But I’ll never be certain, and it probably doesn’t matter anyway.

  It happened where I was sitting.

  That’s all I know. And it is enough.

  As soon as I was sure Vollie wasn’t going to move again, I took the spring-loaded key ring from his belt and crawled over to Dana’s cottonwood tree to unlock her handcuffs.

  But none of the keys seemed to work.

  Patience is not a normal part of my character; I’ve had to learn it in order to play poker, and the game keeps me
in practice—which was just as well when I discovered, belatedly, that I had been trying four keys over and over again for several minutes.

  I struggled to concentrate, and finally located the right one.

  She collapsed against me as soon as her wrists were free, and I could not find her essence, felt no presence of the wa. It frightened me, but there was a kind of cold comfort in the thought that my receiving apparatus might not be in the very best of shape either, and I cradled her head in my arms to try to assess damage.

  The few bruises and cuts I had noted earlier seemed a little more pronounced now, probably because they’d had time to grow and mature. The new injury, the one that had produced all the blood, seemed more important, and I decided it was the reason I could not find her wa now.

  The right side of Dana’s head was distorted and raw, swollen as though from internal pressure. It had stopped bleeding now and didn’t seem to need cleaning. All I could do was hold her and try to keep the sun from her eyes.

  We had to get out of there. She would die if we didn’t.

  My left leg wouldn’t work, and the arm wasn’t much better—something else seemed to have gone wrong during the final engagement with Vollie—but I began dragging us, inch by inch, toward the car.

  Hot sun raised the familiar rain-forest stench, and the whine of insect life filled the audio gaps between incoming mortar rounds.

  I tried to crawl from my hooch to the APC, but it was no-go.

  I couldn’t see far enough.

  Something was covering my eyes.

  I reached up a hand to push it away, and the hand found something wet and sticky where my face should have been and I pressed my mouth against the earth to keep from screaming and finally a little hole opened up on the left side where the color had showed red instead of flat blackness and I could see some kind of overgrown beetle standing still on the ground, looking at me.

  Neither of us moved for a moment.

  But then he leaped away, and I looked around for my armored escape vehicle, but something was wrong with it and it was on its side with smoke coming from its side…