City of Heretics

by Heath Lowrance

  Crowe didn’t say anything.

  “I just poured me a bowl of cereal, too. Now the flakes are gonna get all mushy before I can eat it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ain’t no biggie, though. I got plenty of cereal. Hey, you want some?”

  “Just a room.”

  From the next room, Dr. Phil was telling someone they just needed to get their lives straight and stop being such a burden to their loved ones. Cereal man pushed the ledger over, saying, “Just, you know, the John Hancock there. It’ll be, uh… say, fifty dollars?”

  Crowe signed, handed him a twenty. “Let’s not say fifty,” he said.

  The guy took the twenty, shrugging. “Okay, twenty’s fine, I reckon.” He reached in another drawer and pulled out a key and said, “Room two. You need anything, you lemme know, all right?” And then, “Say, buddy, that’s some scar you got there, you don’t mind me saying.”

  Crowe took the key and went back outside. There were only five rooms along the side of the building. He made his way to the second door—none of them had numbers— and went in.

  The room lived up to the promise offered by the rest of the place. A small, grubby bathroom immediately to the left. Not a window anywhere. The room itself small and boxy, nothing but a bed with ragged sheets and a wooden chair in the far corner. No television or phone. It smelled strangely of rotted fruit, as if someone had stashed a bunch of banana peels under the bed a month ago.

  But it didn’t matter. He didn’t plan on staying long.

  He left the door open to keep from suffocating in the awful stench. Cold air swept through, seeming colder somehow than it had been outside. Crowe sat on the edge of the bed and thought.

  What he knew: the Society of Christ the Fisher had split into two factions. Welling wanted to deal out Vitower and start working with Bad Luck. Another faction, led by who knows who, wanted to maintain the status quo. Welling had the final say, though, and he had Murke sprung to help him.

  And Vitower… well, Vitower had more than one reason to want Murke dead. There was revenge for the murder of his wife, yes, but also… also, he would have to know that Murke could easily be Welling’s tool for killing him.

  Crowe wracked his brain, trying to think of some way he could use this rift in the Society to his advantage. But he couldn’t think of an angle. Strategy was never his strong point.

  He’d just have to bull his way through it. Rack up a body count.

  He back outside, and paused in the gravel parking lot. His was the only car, except for a heavy-duty pick-up in the far back of the lot, loaded with an industrial-size lawn mower. Big letters on the side of the pick-up said Star-One Lawn Mowing, Landscaping and Gen. Maintain. Crowe figured it belonged to the slob who owned this place. There was no way he made any money running the motel.

  It was getting darker, a sort of gray, despondent darkness that smothered out the landscape. Directly across the two-lane road, heavy woods. Even with most of the leaf coverage just coming in, they were still thick with layers of branches and a low, dark gloominess. Crowe figured about a half-mile walk straight through them would take him to the church, angling off just a little to the right.

  Or, straight down the road a considerably shorter distance, the bar.

  He buttoned up his coat, squared his aching shoulders, and started walking.

  The place was a little busier than when he’d driven by earlier. They had the neon going, Bud Lite and Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller’s High Life all competing for attention in glaring red and blue. There were a few more vehicles in the lot, mostly trucks. From the road, he could hear music playing inside. A female vocalist was saying something about her humps, over and over again.

  The music, so alien, combined with the constant flow of pain in his muscles, made him feel the weight of all his years. For a long moment he stood there on the road outside the bar, like some dazed and dumb old man. A dinosaur. A relic.

  He crunched across the gravel parking lot and went in the bar.

  It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom, but when they did he saw it was bigger than it looked from the outside, and with only a modest crowd of good old boy types and sloppy-looking women. Mostly in their twenties, but a few older even than him and some of an indeterminate age. A long bar stretched along the left of the place, and a lone bartender served beers to the men who perched there. To the right, tables and booths, two pool tables, where four or five guys in jeans and work shirts and baseball caps played.

  Cigarette smoke hung thick in the air, mingling with the raw scent of stale beer and unwashed flesh. The music throbbed painfully in his ears and now the singer was saying something about her lovely lady lumps.

  All eyes were on him, and the ebb and flow of various conversations, the rattle of phlegm-y laughter and stupid jokes, stopped cold.

  He was overdressed for this joint.

  He went to the bar, took a stool. The bartender eyed him from the far end for a moment, then drifted over. He looked as if he expected trouble. His eyes were hooded and wary.

  “What’ll it be?”

  Crowe ordered a bottle of Bud. The bartender served it up, said, “That’ll be four bucks, mister.” Crowe dropped a five on the bar, picked up the bottle, and turned away from him.

  A few faces were still set in his direction, but mostly everyone had gone back to whatever they had been doing when he came in. Crowe marked two guys at the pool table; if there was going to be any trouble it would be from them. Open hostility there.

  “Hey!” A slightly slurred female voice, from his left. “It’s the Scar-Man! You said you might stop in but I didn’t think you really would.”

  It was the middle-aged rummy with bad teeth—Willie. She pushed in close to him, grinning, the glass in her hand sloshing rum and coke over her fist. Her friend wasn’t with her.

  Crowe said, “What else am I gonna do in this town?”

  “You got that shit right, babe,” she said, and threw the drink down her throat. She set the glass down on the bar and said, “Buy a girl a drink, why don’t ya?”

  Crowe motioned to the bartender and he brought another one for her. She took the glass, nodded in what he could only assume was supposed to be some sort of toast, and drank.

  “You are a gentleman,” she said. “A true gentleman. Even with that fugly scar, you’re a gentleman. You don’t see a lott’a gentlemen round about these parts. I like it.”

  Crowe nursed his beer. The song about humps and lumps ended, and another came on that sounded like a cross between “Werewolves of London” and “Sweet Home Alabama”. It was awful, but it got a positive reaction—there were several woops and hell yeah’s.

  “You don’t talk much, do you?” Willie said. “I like that, too. These boys here, all they ever do is talk. Talkity talkity talk, drives a girl fuckin’ crazy, all that talkin’.”

  She’d already downed half her drink and now she’d started rubbing up against his arm, so close that when she spoke he could feel her hot boozy breath on his neck. She said, “What say you and me get outta here, huh? You got a room at that fleabag place up the road, don’t ya?”

  “What’s the hurry? I just got here.”

  She frowned, made a peeved sort of huffing noise, shrugged. “Suit yourself. I’m just sayin’, don’t think I’m gonna be available all night.”

  They sat there at the bar for a while and she talked and drank and he bought her another while he nursed his beer. The awful song on the jukebox ended and another one came on, another female vocalist saying that man, she felt like a woman. The singer after that was proud to be an American. Crowe never really had much of an ear for music, but it seemed that while he’d been in prison music had only gotten more inane and vapid.

  The bartender was starting to look annoyed that he was taking up space. Crowe finished the Bud and ordered another and that pacified the bartender for a little while. Willie was getting drunker and making less sense all the time. She was saying, “—and so I tol’ t
he bitch, I tol’ her, you think you’re sumpin’ other than a cheap fuck to him, you stupid bitch? Don’ make me laugh! ‘sides, I seen what he’s packin’ in them jeans and it ain’t nothin’ to get worked up about, believe you me!”

  When she shut up for a minute, Crowe said, “You go to that church?”

  “What?” she said.

  “The church over there, Christ the Fisher. You go to it?”

  She scowled. “What the fuck does that have to do with what I was sayin’?”

  “Nothing. I just want to know.”

  “What are you, some kinda… some kinda church guy or somethin’?”

  “I just want to know.”

  She shook her head. “Fuck no, I don’t go to the church. Jesus fuck, man. What kinda weird question is that? What are you, some kinda… church guy or somethin’?”

  “I was just curious.”

  The bartender had heard part of their conversation. His jaw was set hard, and his flinty eyes shifted from Crowe to the pool players and back to Crowe.

  Willie said, “Just ‘cause half the town goes there, there ain’t no law sayin’ everyone has to. So the Bible-thumpin’ fuckers run the town, so fuckin’ what? I don’t gotta do shit, do I?”

  “No,” Crowe said.

  “You some kinda church guy? Jesus, what a question.”

  In the mirror behind the bar, Crowe saw them approaching. Four guys. One carried his pool cue, all of them carried bottles.

  Before he’d even turned around to face them, Crowe had run through several different scenarios—without a weapon he couldn’t take all four of them, not without breaking a bottle of his own and slashing some faces. He would do that if he had to, but it would probably be better to cut and run: hurt one of them, make an exit.

  But he kept his options open. He’d left the .38 in the Saturn, but the .45 was still in his coat pocket. He hadn’t come here to go on a shooting rampage, though.

  As he turned on the bar stool, one them said, “Hey, old man. What’s with the monkey suit?”

  It was the Buffalo Bill jackass he’d seen on the road earlier. He leered, tongue sticking out and touching his chin. The other three guffawed, sipped their beers, and Buffalo Bill said, “I been watchin’ you since you walked in here, old man. I gotta tell you… there’s just somethin’ about the way you look, makes me wanna fuck you up.”

  Crowe looked at him, waited, bottle in his hand. There was no question, this was going to come down to bottles and faces. Just like a goddamn Western.

  The one with the pool cue said, “What’s the matter, you deaf? My boy’s talkin’ to you. Don’t you hear good? He asked you, what’s with the monkey suit? You a monkey?”

  Another laugh all around. From the corner of his eye Crowe saw Willie edging away, drink still in her hand.

  The boys were laughing and making monkey sounds now, and Crowe thought this is getting idiotic—time to make something happen. He stood up quickly, telegraphed it like crazy, the beer bottle in his right fist and ready to smash against Buffalo Bill’s face—

  --and someone said, “You boys need to step down. What kind of image of Longbaugh are you giving?”

  A man, mid-forties, with a plump friendly face and immaculate reddish-blond hair. He was fit and trim for his age, except for a slight paunch, wearing khakis and a cord-knit sweater. He wore simple frameless glasses. He stood with his hands in his pockets, smiling. He looked like the nicest guy on Earth.

  “Well?” he said. “I’m sure there’s nothing going on here that has to be resolved with violence.”

  The boys had gone all wishy-washy. They stood there looking at him like a bunch of puppies who’d just been scolded for pissing on the carpet. “Mr. Welling,” one of them said. “We, uh… we didn’t know you was in town.”

  Mr. Welling. Fletcher Welling, in the goddamn flesh.

  “Well, I am,” he said, smiling. “I just got in, as a matter of fact. I come in here for a refreshment, something to fortify myself, and what do I find? Members in good standing of the church, acting like a bunch of teenage hooligans. For shame, boys.”

  Crowe couldn’t place Welling’s accent, but it sounded Northern or maybe Midwestern. Buffalo Bill actually blushed. “We didn’t mean nothin’, Mr. Welling. We was just havin’ some fun.”

  Welling pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. “Fun, right. At this poor gentleman’s expense? I think you owe our visitor an apology.”

  They all mumbled shame-faced apologies, and it was all Crowe could do to keep from laughing out loud. But he nodded at each of them sternly and sat back down.

  Welling said, “You boys go on back to your game now, hear?”

  They did.

  Welling turned to Crowe, said, “Mister, if you don’t have too bad a taste in your mouth, will you let me buy you a beer?”

  Crowe shrugged. Welling sat next to him, where Willie had been, and showed two fingers to the bartender, who instantly put a bottle in front of each of them.

  Sipping his beer, Welling said, “My name’s Welling. Fletcher Welling. I’d like to apologize myself for those rowdies, Mr….?”

  Crowe said, “You know who I am, Welling.”

  He frowned. “Sorry?”

  “You know who I am. Let’s not play this game.”

  He mulled it over, and said, “Okay, fair enough, Mr. Crowe. No games. But what I said before, about their not being any need for violence… I meant that.”

  “We might differ on that point,” Crowe said.

  Welling shook his head. On the jukebox, an old Steve Miller Band song came on, the one about liking your peaches, wanting to shake your tree. Crowe didn’t like it any more than he did the others, but at least he knew this one.

  Welling said, “Mr. Crowe. Why have you come to Longbaugh? What, exactly, are you trying to accomplish?”

  “I’m here to find Peter Murke.”

  “And then what?”

  “Kill him.”

  Welling chuckled, sipped his beer. “No, Mr. Crowe, I can’t let you do that. Peter is protected by the Society, you understand? You can’t touch him, not without bringing down the wrath of Christ the Fisher on your head.”

  “I haven’t been particularly impressed with your wrath so far, Welling.”

  “You haven’t seen but a faint glimmering of it yet, Mr. Crowe.”

  They both let that one hang out there for a moment, sipped their beers. Side by side, like they were pals.

  Crowe said, “I’ve seen some dirty fuckers in my time, Welling, but you take the cake. This guy, Murke… he kills your daughter, your own daughter, and you’re rescuing him, protecting him. And for what? Power? In one lousy, stinking city that’s already rocking on its heels and ready to hit the mat. That’s pretty pathetic.”

  If he was mad, Welling didn’t show it. He played with his glasses, said, “I hate to sound as if I’m spouting off clichés, Mr. Crowe, but really… who are you to judge me? Your whole life has been nothing but one long, ugly bout of senseless violence. Do you suppose God approves of what you do? Do you think He’ll forgive you for the people you’ve hurt or killed?”

  “I’m not interested in God’s forgiveness.”

  “I thought as much. The man who doesn’t stop to contemplate God’s wisdom is a man whose life is—“

  “Welling,” Crowe said. “Shut up. If this God of yours actually approves of what you do, or even what I do, then I don’t want anything to do with Him.”

  For the first time, Welling showed some spark of anger. He gritted his teeth, looking at his bottle of beer, and said, “Blasphemy is a sin, Mr. Crowe.”

  “Fuck you, Welling.”

  His eyes snapped around and locked on Crowe’s, and there was rage there, finally. But in a second it was gone again, and he smiled politely. “My father always told me,” he said, “when you’re having a drink, never talk about politics or religion. Good advice, huh?”

  He laughed and drained his beer, ordered another.

  For two or
three minutes they sat there in silence, drinking. When he was halfway through his second beer, Welling said, “I understand where you’re coming from, Mr. Crowe, I really do. Peter killing your girlfriend, Faith, was unfortunate. We didn’t really plan that, I promise you. It’s just that sometimes Peter is a little… hard to handle. You understand?”

  Crowe didn’t answer, and Welling said, “This is a trying time for everyone, you see. Your employer, Vitower, is not… what’s the expression? Not going gently into that good night. He doesn’t understand that he has nothing to offer us anymore, that the real power on the street now belongs to Bad Luck, Inc. The death of his wife, Jezzie, has made him less than useful to us, you know? I’ve been trying for some time now to cut him loose, but… well, I may be the top dog in the church but I’m not a dictator, if you know what I mean. Other members want to keep Vitower. These disagreements have forced me to take drastic measures.”

  He looked at Crowe. “You were sort of… pulled into all this, I’m afraid. None of it has anything to do with you. But I’m afraid that if you keep poking your nose in, it’s going to get cut off. Really, it’ll be out of my control.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Welling frowned, seeming for all the world like the pastor who tries without success to get through to the young heathen. Sad, quiet disappointment in his sensitive eyes.

  “You don’t understand what the Society of Christ the Fisher is all about,” he said. “But I’m not surprised. Most people don’t. You seem to think it’s all about power, about manipulating things behind the scenes, and while that may be a part of it it’s only so that we can accomplish bigger things.”

  “Bigger things,” Crowe said.

  “Yes. You see, when the Society first formed, in the early part of the last century, it had a simple mission: to punish sinners. To eradicate sin, as God would desire. Such a simple, obvious mission, one that couldn’t be clearer in the Good Book. But the world is filled with hypocrites and liars, Mr. Crowe—as I’m sure you know—and the Society’s work was condemned and cursed by man. The Society took on the task God Himself had given, but other religious groups had grown too soft, too corrupted by the world. And so the Society was forced underground.”