As we walk back to the car, a sinking feeling develops in my guts. It’s not the first time I’ve killed somebody. Won’t be the last, either. But I feel as if what I did was wrong. Not for moral reasons, mind you—but something about it just feels off. Like I’ve left home with the stove on, or without my car keys. There’s something I’m missing.
I open my car door. The bloodied childlike hand is resting on my seat. From here, I can see the thing in its entirety. At the end of it, there’s a hole—like where a plug might fit. I reach for it.
It’s cold. The hand is cold. And plastic.
* * *
3
PREACHER BY J.C. Drake
Leonard Jakes pulled the label off his sweaty bottle of Coors and rolled the sticky piece of paper into a ball, flicking it into the sky. He let out a sigh and fished into his pocket for his crumpled packet of Bugler and Zig-Zags. He rolled a smoke and lit up. The old telephone line spools and folding chairs stuck out beside the parking lot were all that passed for a smoking section at the Breeze Inn. Leonard wanted to drink and smoke, so he sat outside.
The screen door clattered as the girl passed outside, a bag of trash in her hand.
“Hey Jessi,” shouted Leonard, “when you get a chance, one more.”
Jessi tossed the trash and walked over. “That’s four, Leonard. I thought you quit drinking. You ain’t ordered nothing but RC Cola for six months.” “Yeah.” Leonard blew out a long trail of smoke. “Sometimes I quit. Sometimes I start back up again. Today I started.” Leonard swallowed the last of the beer in his bottle. “I gotta go see Preacher.”
Jessi’s smile turned into a grimace. “Damn. I don’t like that man. He comes in here once a week and gets real drunk. Talks to anybody. Crazy shit come outta his mouth. My momma don’t like him none, tells me to stay away from him. I guess he was handsome enough, once, though.”
Leonard shook his empty bottle and smiled. “You know, Sugar, I remember when we couldn’t get Coors in Louisiana. People were crazy for it then because they couldn’t get it. But it ain’t that good. People always want what they can’t – or shouldn’t have. Now I know you young girls don’t always listen to your mommas. But when it comes to Preacher, you better.”
“I’ll get you that last beer, Leonard.” Jessi shook her head to herself. “What you going out there for, anyway?”
“Beaux up at the Piggly Wiggly called. Preacher asked for a grocery delivery. Pay extra, good tip. But none of Beaux’s boys would go up, so he asked me. Got a case of canned shit in the trunk. Headed out cause I need the money.”
“Huh. Well don’t spend it all on beer.” Jessi turned around and strutted back into the Breeze.
“Yeah,” said Leonard, sitting alone.
* * *
The old Crown Vic bounced down the rutted road, dried hard in the summer heat. He had the directions written on a piece of Zig-Zag paper. He’d been out to the old church a couple of times; hard as hell to find. Leonard rotated the piece of paper and tried to read his own handwriting.
Leonard was flustered, a bit too drunk to drive, and distracted. He kept seeing the sight of Jessi’s tight little ass bouncing from one side to the other in her cut-offs as she sauntered back into her momma’s bar. Momma had been a hot piece of ass in her day as well, before too much Jim Beam and tobacco ruined her. Jessi didn’t smoke and seemed to just drink lite beer and Diet Coke. She smelled fresh and sweet – clean. Something you didn’t run across too much in Vermillion Parish. Leonard couldn’t get the memory of her smell out of his nostrils, even bathed in the stink of Bugler. He kept seeing that vision of her walking away from him flash before his eyes.
“Stop thinking with your dick,” he mumbled, pulling his car to the side of the empty road. He polished the sweat off his face with an old bandana. Leonard had to deal with Preacher and he needed to be clear headed. He had once been a man like Preacher – a creature of his appetites. Drink, drugs, women – even when the women didn’t want it. But he’d gotten his life together. He’d found a program and he was straight. Sure, sometimes he’d fall off the wagon and land in a puddle of beer, but he didn’t hurt girls any more. Just beer. Just a few beers. He had self-control.
Leonard pushed himself back into his seat as far as he could go and shoved the bandana down his pants. With his right hand he masturbated, relishing the memory of that clean smell and the sight of that tight, young ass. When he was done he wiped and tossed the bandana into the glove box. Then Leonard got out of the car, walked a few yards into the tall grass of the surrounding fields, and vomited up his gut full of beer. He had self-control. His head was clear. Leonard Jakes got back into his car and found Preacher.
The church stood out in the open. At one time it was probably surrounded by marsh and tall trees, covered in Spanish moss. But all that was gone – drained away for agriculture. Now even the crops had vanished to make room for oil and fracked gas. Mother Nature was creeping back in, but now she had an uglier, harsher face – a face of ruined beauty, torn up by too much hard living.
The ruins of the parsonage were unlivable, but the church itself was still serviceable. It was clear Preacher was living in there. A big black Dodge van with the words JESUS SAVES painted on the side was sitting in front of the building. Leonard pulled his Crown Vic in next to it, parking under the lone tree still left at the place.
He climbed out of his car and went around to the trunk, pulling out the box of groceries. The smell of gas exhaust and the hum of a generator filled the air. A swamp cooler hung roughly out of one of the church’s windows. The swamp cooler’s noise joined that of the generator to create a general cacophony, echoed by the cicadas in that lonely tree.
Leonard walked across the overgrown parking lot. He banged on the church’s double doors - nobody answered. The doors were locked but there was no deadbolt, so by pushing gently Leonard was able to force the doors open and step inside. The smell of body odor and musty swamp cooler air hit Leonard full in the face. It was a wall of stink, layered with cooked food, unwashed dishes, and garbage.
“Guess Preacher’s gone feral,” Leonard mumbled to himself. “PREACHER! HEY PREACHER!”
Leonard walked around the old church pews. He remembered that the place had once been used by a real congregation; a bunch of Pentecostals, whose organ and loud singing could be heard for miles around. Gone, now.
Preacher came to town about three years before, he said from New Orleans, and started holding “services” in the place. He said he had a lease from the family that owned it but nobody believed him. He seemed to be a crank who used a fake minister’s collar to fuck young girls who ought to know better. Probably did drugs and got drunk every night. All the stuff Leonard had resolved to avoid on his program.
Leonard walked around the pulpit. To its right was a closed door with a sign that read “Church Office.” The cross on the wall over the pulpit was gone and somebody had hung a sheet up there on the wall covering something up. Leonard rapped his knuckles on the church office door. There was movement inside.
“Hey Preacher,” Leonard yelled again.
“Leonard Jakes, that you?” An Irish Channel accent barked from the back of the church. Leonard spun around and Preacher was standing in the open double doors.
“Yeah, Preacher, it’s me. Up from Beaux at the Piggly Wiggly. Got your groceries.”
Preacher stepped inside the church and pulled the doors closed behind him. He wore a cheap black three piece suit, dusty and faded, and a black shirt with white clerical collar. On his head was an old black fedora he’d flattened in semblance of a parson’s hat.
“Well come on in, Brother Jakes, and sit a spell.” Preacher indicated a pew towards the middle of the church.
“Where should I put the groceries? You got a kitchen? Or the office?”
“No, no,” said Preacher stepping forward. “Just drop the box on the altar and I’ll take care of that later. What I owe you?”
“Thirty-three fiddy. Plus Beaux said someth
ing about a tip.”
“We’ll make it an even fifty. How about that?”
“Thanks, Preacher. That’s mighty good of you. I think I’ll take that seat.”
Leonard pulled a wooden handled Bowie knife from his pants, tucked away at the small of his back, and gently laid it on the pew next to him. Preacher smiled nervously and sat down on the seat just in front, turning around to face Leonard. He pulled a long metal flask from his coat.
“Drink, Leonard? Smells like you had a few already.”
“Nah, Preacher, I quit that stuff. I got on a program.”
Preacher spun the lid off the flask and took a long pull. The smell of cheap bourbon filled the air. “What kinda program is that Leonard?”
“I met a man. A good man. About a year ago. He was into some Chinese or Japanese bullshit, but he talked a lot of sense about how to channel your mind, focus your thinking. Meditation, they call it. Helps you control your urges. There’s monks over in the mountains in Asia that can go a month without eating, drinking, or pissing, Preacher, they’ve got so much self-control. Makes a man less…thirsty.”
“Oh yeah?” Preacher took another pull. “I’ve heard of that. When I was in college. But I put that stuff behind me and embraced the word of our Lord, Jesus Christ. I’m a saved man. You think much about that stuff Leonard? Your salvation?”
Leonard snorted. “Yeah, I used to think about that stuff. But I figure I’m headed to hell already. Ain’t most of us? So I’m just trying to walk a line while I’m alive on this earth. Jesus might’a saved you Preacher, but not from the bottle.”
Preacher laughed, throwing back his head, revealing a row of white teeth. He was living rough out here, Leonard thought, but he was keeping clean.
“Everything in moderation, Leonard, even moderation.”
Pride. Pride and vanity, Leonard thought. Here was a man with no self-control.
Leonard looked Preacher square in the eye. It made his heart race a little bit to hold such a firm gaze. “Preacher, let me ask you something. What have you got locked up back in that office?”
Preacher’s smile fell and he looked over Leonard’s shoulder toward the closed door. “Leonard, thanks for bringing up those groceries. Here’s a hundred, how about that? Now, I’ve got to get back to cleaning up outside. I’m looking to re-open this place soon!”
“Preacher,” Leonard held that gaze as hard as he could, leftover beer bile rising in his throat, “how ‘bout you tell me what you’ve got locked up in that office?” He laid his hand on his knife.
Preacher stood up and held out his hands, as if he were about to begin a sermon. “Leonard, you know we don’t know each other that well. We’re not friends. I’ve seen you a few times at the Breeze, but now you’re in my home, in my church. Let’s show some manners, cher, eh? Did you know that a long time ago, after I left Tulane, I worked for a carnival? The Rinaldi Brothers Traveling Show! I had one job: to stand in front of whatever attraction I was assigned to that day and talk people into coming in to see the freaks on the inside. It cost a dollar. Cheap. You’d think anybody’d drop a dollar, right? Nope. People had to be talked out of their money, one at a time. A dollar might as well be a hundred dollars or a thousand dollars, Leonard. It’s damn near as easy to get one as the other. I got good at it! Look at this place! It’s not so different, Leonard, except now I’m not showing people freaks, I’m helping them get better – to heal their wounds and save their souls. One at a time. Sometimes that’s easy – sometimes it takes work. And this ministry needs money – it needs those dollars.”
“So what are you saying, Preacher, you’re out here carnival barking for Jesus? It looks like you don’t need money that bad. You just gave me a hundred.”
“I’m saying you and me never had a relationship before but I can see that we should start one. You’re on that program of yours and I’d like to learn more about it. I surely would. But maybe I can help you, too. As I grow this ministry I’m going to need helpers. Maybe you keep on bringing up my groceries, once a week, and I keep paying you like I did today. See, I’ve got an old dog locked up in my office. Sick old thing. Been with me for years and he gets violent around strangers. You just remember that and when you go back to town you tell people that and at this same time every week you can deliver my groceries and get paid.”
Leonard grunted and smiled down into his lap. “You’re interested in my program, huh? That man I met – he’s a bit like you. Educated. He reads a lot, got a lot of books. He spotted me out one night at the Breeze Inn, drunk, trying to grab under some young thing’s skirt, and he asked me to step outside. He knocked me down. Harder than I’ve ever been knocked down before. Then he offered me his hand. He gave me work, odd jobs. An offer just like yours. But he taught me things, too, about how to meditate, how to control my urges. How to be respectable and channel my energy into something useful. Then, about six months ago, he had me at his house and he took me inside and showed me one of those books, Preacher. It was a play, but like nothing I ever read in school. There were words in there I didn’t understand: Cassilda, Camilla, Hyades, Carcosa. It opened my mind, it changed my mind, and all of a sudden I felt different. And when I turned and looked at this man, in my eye, he looked like a King. Maybe you seen this man around, too?”
Preacher flopped back down in his pew. He let out a sigh. “Ok, I was told somebody would be coming today for the merchandise, but I didn’t expect you. I should have known. I thought He might come in person. Do you have the money?”
“I dunno, Preacher, is the merchandise unspoiled? I know about you and them girls, Preacher. I bet when you was on the carny circuit you got more than dollar bills out of some of your customers.”
“I might do it to some, but not this one. I need the money. This one is ‘bespoke’ you might say. This ministry needs money to establish itself. Besides, there’s plenty of cooch down at the Breeze to keep a man satisfied.”
In a flash, Leonard picked up his Bowie knife and ran it across Preacher’s throat. The fake minister’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open as an ugly red gash opened, pouring blood down the front of his clothes. The man gurgled, trying to speak, but only tiny bubbles of blood came out of his mouth.
Leonard stood up and wiped his knife on Preacher’s clothes. “It’s too bad, sir - you were dead when I got here with the groceries. That’s the story the sheriff’s already been told. See, Preacher, we thought you were one of us, but you got no self-control. Eventually you were gonna take the wrong merchandise or talk to the wrong person – and He can’t allow that. We can’t have it. So good night – maybe we can talk again when we both get to where you’re headed.”
Leonard fished around in the dying man’s pockets and pulled out a keyring. He sheathed his knife and strode back to the office. Moving fast he unlocked the door. A young girl was lying on the floor on her side. She couldn’t have been more than 16. Raven black hair, olive skin, but with terrified blue eyes that looked up into Leonard’s face.
“Aw, honey,” said Leonard, “don’t be scared. This’ll be over soon. I’m gonna take you somewhere where you’ll be treated real nice.”
He bent over and picked up the girl and tossed her over his shoulder. She struggled and tried to talk through the rag in her mouth. He headed for the main door of the church, stopping to look down into the dying Preacher’s face. His eyes fluttered, the life draining out of him.
Leonard spoke: “See Preacher, this is my program. When I looked into that book I got clarity, I knew what I needed to do. I help Him get what he needs and I get what I need. Self-control. Freedom from my desires. And safety for me and the ones I care about. See I do this for Him and he leaves the girls down at the Breeze alone; Jessi, her mom, and their friends. They never end up like this, tied up in your goddamned office waiting on a delivery boy to do a pickup. I’m taking care of my own with this, Preacher. But you were never gonna join the program - I could see it in your eyes. You wanted the girl. Jessi. My girl. And someday, if I�
��m good, He’s gonna give her to me. Not you. So you see, it was always gonna be like this between us.”
Leonard Jakes stepped passed the dying man, just as his eyes flickered closed, carrying the struggling girl on his shoulders. He walked down the aisle of the church and into the muggy Louisiana afternoon. The memory of a sweet clean, innocent smell filled his nostrils.
4
THE YELLER KING by David W. Barbee
“Stop telling me to kill people.”
Justin’s dog had been talking to him for years now. It was a shaggy yellow Labrador that his mother had named “Yeller” after the movie. Yeller was still a puppy when he began speaking to Justin, who quickly realized that he was the only one who could hear the baritone words coming out of the dog’s snout. Justin kept it a secret, and like all secrets it became a heavy burden. The dog usually spoke of vengeance and blood and mighty reckonings, a great sea of nothingness floating the world in a leaky rowboat.
Yeller followed him out of the house and up to the street. “You’re going for another walk,” the dog said. “What are you walking away from?”
“It’s just a walk,” Justin said. When the house was out of sight Justin took out his cigarettes and lit one. He was old enough to enjoy smoking but still young enough to want to hide it from his mother.
They came to the end of the street and crossed the intersecting road. On the other side was a thick forest, and Justin walked in with Yeller right behind. They wound their way through the pines, on no discernible path, moving deeper into the shadows of the woods.
Yeller trotted up to Justin’s flank and stood below the hand holding the cigarette. “You hide this from your mother,” he said. “She lives in a fantasy world.”
“Yes,” said Justin. “A fantasy world where the only difference from reality is that I don’t smoke.”
Walk Hand IN Hand Into Extinction : Stories Inspired By True Detective Page 3
