John D MacDonald - One More Sunday

by One More Sunday(Lit)

  him he's wicked and dirty. What I'm doing, I'm setting there g beside his bed at home they got him home after the last o pneumonia and I'm holding his hand and kneeling beside the bed and praying for his immortal soul. And I am telling him there is room in heaven for anybody who goes out of this life sincere, repenting for any mean cruel things they done to anyone."

  "Have you taken a vow of poverty?" John asked politely.

  "It's pretty obvious we never have," Mary Margaret said.

  "Shut up, Mag. I'm asking him."

  "I live as well as I need to live, Johnny. We take up the collections and I take out living expenses, and what is left, half goes to the poor in the parish, the poor and the unemployed and the sick, and the rest goes into the bank waiting on the time we need to fix up the church or build something else. I couldn't have afforded to come here if you hadn't sent the airplane to fetch me. You know something?"

  "Like what?"

  "These days it's all like a big shooting gallery."

  "I don't know what you mean, Tom."

  The Reverend Birdy sat on a hassock with his big fists resting on his knees and looked across the room at them.

  "People are confused. Life has got all mixed up these days. Nuke-ular freezes that won't happen, and jobs scarce as buttons on a goose, Latins flooding in by the hundred thousand, drug busts, and politicians all the time raising their own pay, and them sheiks wanting to cut off the oil again, and Reagan saying one thing and doing something else, and the Supreme Court fogging everything up ever' chance it gets, with one law for the rich man and another for the poor. They got junk and garbage running out of their TVs and their cable onto the rug in the front room. They got a world around them being poisoned by companies so dang big they don't ever have to answer a letter unless it comes from a bunch of lawyers. People want to understand what their life is about and what is the meaning of it, and everything they see in the real world, why, it tells them that their life is no-account and meaningless. So they have this great need to turn to something that will give life meaning.

  That's why it is a big shooting gallery. It is shooting fish in a barrel. It is having so many rabbits in a field you can't walk without kicking them. It makes open season on hopeless folk for every freak religion and medication and diet that comes down the pike promising them everything. Used to be all the medicine men used to peddle their ointment out in California, but it has spread to the whole country. Your daddy worked in times when people were confident of their lives and the future, and it was a lot harder then to bring people to Jesus than it is now. You stand up there and promise them heaven, and they will send you money because they don't dare take the chance they might miss out by not sending it. You lock them into your big group of supporters and tell them they are better than any other group in the whole world. And that, forgive the expression, Sister Mary Margaret, is stable dressing."

  "And what are you doing that's so great? "John Tinker asked.

  "Whatever it is I do, I can't do it in the big store window on Main Street at high noon. I am a private person who belongs to the Lord God. I got my little flock of folks and I make certain they know what the Lord has promised them and what He hasn't. I take care of them, every one, the best way I can, and when I am gone I know where I am going. The only marks I leave behind will be on the souls I touched, the ones left behind when I went. And when all of them are gone from this earth too, there won't be left any sign or mark of me. No big buildings or trust funds or hospitals. I'm an evangelist, Johnny.

  That is my line of work, and I do it alone and do it the best I can. If it weren't for vanity I would never have let those people take that movie of me saving souls. I wanted to say no, but somehow I couldn't he'p myself. I don't have that trouble right now. I appreciate the offer, but I can say no with no trouble at all, and no regrets. If I find my way back to that little airport of yours, will they take me home?"

  They'll take you home," John Tinker said.

  He bowed to Mary Margaret, adjusted the planter hat with care, said, "Thanks for your time," and left.

  "Why were you crying like your heart was broken?" John Tinker asked his sister.

  "Just go away. Okay? Right now. Please."

  "We were wrong," he said.

  "Tom Daniel Birdy is a country clown. We don't need him. We wasted a lot of time on him."

  "Please just- go!". g He shrugged and walked out. She went in and opened the ' closet door that had the full-length mirror on the back. She stood there and looked at herself for a long time. She realized that on all the other times she had looked into it, she had looked at her face and her hem line. Nothing else. The rest of her had been invisible. It had been covered with seaweed.

  Deputy Reeser brought the Lloyd boy in at three Friday afternoon. The boy was sullen and white-faced. He tried a tough swagger as he approached Sheriff Dockerty's desk, but didn't bring it off too well.

  "Just set there on the bench and shut up a minute." j.,j The boy took his elaborate and mannered time in strolling to the bench against the wall opposite the Sheriff's desk and ||| sitting down and crossing his blue-jean legs.

  "You got what I think you got?" Dockerty asked.

  "This here is one of Dud Lloyd's middle boys. This here one is Parker. I waited like you said and he come along and settled down on the ridge there. This here is one of Dud's deer rifles.

  Six-power scope on it. It's empty now. No clip, nothing in the chamber."

  Dockerty picked it off the front edge of his desk and sighted out the small window at the round Gulf sign on the station down the street.

  "Nice big field," he said. He looked over at the boy.

  "Shoot as good as it looks?"

  "Throws just a hair high and... Screw it, I'm not saying nothing."

  "Dud know you got this?"

  "Ask him."

  "Parker. You're the one works over at Burger King. Whyn't you working?"

  "I go back on at..."

  "You might as well talk to us, Parker. You cooperate and I think it might keep Dud from peeling all the skin off your ass, big as you are. What were you fixing to do?"

  "Scare that freak so's he'd leave town."

  "You weren't trying to hit him the first time?"

  "Just scare him."

  Dockerty shook his head.

  "Maybe you can handle a rifle, boy, but you can't handle one that good, so as to hit the handle on the hoe he's carrying, bust it to shit and stick splinters in his leg, not at no seven hundred yards."

  "I guess that one came closer than I wanted."

  "So if we give you the benefit of the doubt, what's it to you if he stays or leaves?"

  "I got sisters and a girlfriend, and a de-gener-ate like him shouldn't be out of jail. He's a danger to every woman in the county."

  "And Parker Lloyd is going to protect every woman in the county by shooting some poor weak-headed fella that never hurt anybody."

  "That isn't what they say."

  "That isn't what who says?"

  "Everybody. They say you had to let him go because the only evidence on him was circum-stan-tial."

  "The evidence we got says he didn't do it, couldn't have done it and wouldn't have done it if he had a chance."

  "You kidding me?"

  Dockerty held up his hand.

  "God's truth, boy. I swear. I haven't lied in years. Out of practice."

  "What... what's going to happen to me?"

  "I don't want you to get off to a bad start, boy. I chink we'll call this malicious mischief. You get yourself to the courthouse on Monday at ten in the morning, and I think Judge Muirhead will probably put you on probation and give you oh, I'd guess a hundred hours of community service."

  "But my old man is going to..."

  "I'll have a talk with Dud. In return for that, Parker, I want you to turn into some kind of motor-mouth between now and when I say stop. I want you telling everybody the old Sheriff has proof Moses didn't do anything illegal except preach in the Mall without
permission. You got that!"

  "Yeah. I guess so."

  ' "Yes, sir" sounds better, boy."

  "Yes, sir!"

  "Take him on home, Harry."

  On Friday evening the early thunderstorm turned into a steady misty rain that lasted well into dark, making halos around the commercial lights of Meadows Center and around the home lights of the Settlements and the corner streetlights. Alberta Macy had broiled a nice piece of fish for them and baked two medium-sized potatoes. He pushed the food around on his plate. He said he couldn't eat. She asked him if he would call the doctor and tell him how he felt. Walter said he wasn't sick. She told him he acted sick. He said he couldn't help how he acted. He was not sick. He asked her to leave him alone.

  After she cleaned up after the meal, she turned on the television set to the educational channel. Walter always liked Washington Week in Review and Wall Street Week. When she looked at him to see if he was enjoying Wall Street Week, he was looking off to the left of the screen, his expression blank, mouth ajar.

  "Would you rather have something else on?" she asked.

  "Would it be possible for you to leave me alone?"

  "Pardon me for living."

  She jumped up and turned the set off and went back to her mending. After about ten minutes he got up and went out into the kitchen. She did not know why he went out there until she heard the door to the carport shut. He raced the engine of the small dark blue Buick which the Church owned and which was permanently assigned to them. When he drove out she resisted the temptation to try to catch him in the driveway and ask him where he was going. She knew it was a very bad day for Walter Macy. He was heartsick. He had at last realized, as she had earlier, that they were bringing in this backwoods preacher, Tom Birdy, to take over a lot of the preaching chores in the Tabernacle, the work that Walter loved best of all. It was a terrible blow to him after all his faithful labor. In fact, a terrible blow to both of them. Probably that hick would be moving into the Manse. As soon as Walter regained some of his spirits, she decided she would ask him to rally the affiliated ministers to his side to reconfirm him as the first assistant to John Tinker.

  She was certain that between the two of them, they could get the affiliates to agree. That hick had no formal training at all as far as anyone could find out. Several times during the day she had tried to get Walter to talk about it, but he had looked at her as though she were some stranger butting into a private conversation he was having inside his head.

  Walter drove the Buick down out of the Settlements in a slow and aimless fashion. He had to get out of the house, had to get away from her and her questions and her worry about him. He parked at the Motor House and went into the coffee shop. His stomach was empty and he felt hungry, but when he tried to eat a doughnut at the counter along with his cup of coffee, it turned into a kind of stale mush as he chewed it and he knew that if he swallowed it, he would be ill. He disposed of it in a couple of paper napkins and left them on his plate beside the rest of the doughnut.

  One of the things that had bothered him most all day had been his inability to muffle the vividness of the memory of Erskine's eyes and his voice'... going to chase your flabby old ass up and down the woods and the fields until you fall on your sorry old knees with the tears running down your face and tell me just how you came onto her like an animal and crushed her throat to stop the screaming."

  It kept coming back into his mind with such a force of prediction that he kept feeling himself being pulled in some strange way toward Erskine, toward confession. But that would be insane. There was no proof. There would never be any proof.

  Two young Angels came in out of the rain, evidently with special permission to be in the commercial area this late. There was a rerun of one of the old De Mille biblical motion pictures at one of the Mall theaters. They had probably been to that.

  They sat at the counter. There were two empty stools between him and the nearest one. They whispered and giggled together.

  The nearest one wore beige shorts and a yellow blouse and carried a furled umbrella. They both ordered chocolate sundaes. They were at his right. The long curve of the top of the girl's thigh was exquisite. He shaded his eyes to conceal the direction and intensity of his inspection of her. She hitched forward on the stool, her knees a foot apart, and he saw where the two lines of her thighs converged softly and gently to stop at a point just far enough apart to provide a sweet space, pouched in beige fabric, for the little curly chestnut thatch, moist pink lips, perky little clitoral button, her magic kingdom awaiting assault. And of course the cheap little teasing slut would know what she was doing flaunting it around, and parading the rubbery cheeks of her taut little ass, and the swollen pink-brown of her nipples. She strutted about, defying God and man in her wickedness, challenging the thunderbolt, practically demanding that somebody take her up on her lascivious flaunting and teach her that the reward for evil was pain and fear and death.

  He shuddered and realized that he must have made some odd sound, because they were all looking at him with a kind of bland and meaningless curiosity.

  "Sorry," he said, 'sorry." He left his coffee and went to the cashier and paid the tab and went out into the misted rain, wondering if he had really had those same thoughts back there during that night in May, or if he now merely imagined that he had thought things like that. Because if he had, then it was probably not an accident. But it had to be.

  He drove west and took the on ramp and headed north on the Interstate. The phased windshield wipers swept and paused, swept and paused. There was little traffic. The tires made a hissing sound on the pavement. He noticed the speedometer and was shocked to see that it read in the low eighties.

  He slowed down at once and turned off at the next exit, forgetting that there was no southbound on ramp at that first exit north of Lakemore. When he realized his mistake, he pulled off the road and got a local road map out of the glove compartment. He saw that he could head east on a county road that would intersect a state road. He could go south on the state road and come out a few miles east of Meadows Center.

  While he was studying the map he thought of the young girl's thighs again, and found that he was swollen large inside his trousers. There seemed to be an unwanted and unfocused sexual excitement in his body that made his face hot and his breath short and rapid. He willed it to go away but it remained.

  And he could not pry his thoughts away from the girl. The country road was narrow, but it had been recently resurfaced.

  He began to drive fast, thinking that if he could make himself nervous about the speed of the car, the erection would subside.

  But the sensation of speed and the vibration of the car, the sway of it as he rounded the gentle curves, seemed to enhance his tumid state.

  He slowed down, and finally took his foot off the gas pedal entirely. The constriction of underwear and trousers was so uncomfortable as to be almost painful. He unzipped himself and prodded himself free. In the faint glow of the dash lights he saw that rigid pallid thing, under the bottom edge of the steering wheel. The car was almost at a stop. An old farm truck rattled by at high speed, startling him with the roar of engine, blare of horn.

  Quite suddenly, and almost with a feeling of relief, he realized that the thing down there, that hard, yearning, grist led object, was the devil. It was Satan which had affixed himself to the body of the servant of the Lord, and thus held that servant in his power. Once long ago he had become drunk for the only time in his life. A fellow ecclesia st had sworn the tall refreshing drinks had little or no potency. And in his drunken state he had felt like this, he recalled. A kind of intense revelation, an awareness of great mysteries around him. A necessity for some kind of act, but he could not guess what it would be.

  He moved the car slowly ahead, looking out through the sweep of the wipers, and he saw a small iron bridge. At first he thought he would pull off the road at the right, but it looked too overgrown to get completely off the pavement. He swung over to the left w
here there was a bare shoulder, pulled on to it, turned off the car lights and the engine. The wipers were stilled. The clear spaces became dotted with fine rain, visible against distant muted starlight.

  The Reverend Doctor F. Walter Macy grasped himself with his right hand and opened the car door with his left. He stepped out into the night, feeling the prickle of mist on his face. He could hear a rushing and whispering of water. He thought he might best step into the thicker brush for what he was about to have to do.

  When he took the second step, his heel slid on wet clay and he fell heavily onto his left shoulder and hip. He was on a forty-five-degree slope. He turned onto his hands and knees and pushed himself erect so he could walk up the slope. A wet branch slashed back across his throat and, in dodging it, he fell backward, realizing as he fell that it would have been preferable to have crawled up the slope on his hands and knees. He fell to the foot of the short slope and struck the back of his head on a shale ledge. It so stunned him that when he lurched to his feet, suddenly and desperately alarmed, he staggered to his right, put one foot deep into the rushing creek water and, with a cry of anger and despair, he fell into the creek, into floodwater boiling with energy and country topsoil. It rolled him over and over and he caught at an edge of the bridge support.