Feast for Thieves

by Marcus Brotherton

  On Monday morning I got up, tossed on some clothes, and headed into the pine slash with my axe. Didn’t even get breakfast. I just chopped and chopped, trying to get my head around my predicament. I kept chopping all through lunch and on past dinner until it was dark. About 9 p.m. I headed back to the parsonage, still without a plan.

  A note was tacked to my front door. It had come out of the blue while I was away, and the note flapped in the evening breeze.

  Dear Reverend Slater:

  This past Sunday when we sang the hymn “Shall We Gather at the River,” you failed to omit the third verse. In this church we always omit the third verse of that hymn. That is the way we have always done things around here, and did you know you offended a great number of people by doing things differently? If you truly love God and care for this community, then you will never again change the music at this church. I am highly upset with you, and I am certainly not the only one.

  Prayerfully yours,

  A parishioner

  When it came to leaving a name, the note was unsigned. The coward. It struck me so strange, such a contrast—here I was with my mind so full of life-and-death matters, some spiritual, some physical, and then one of my congregants jabs at me over something as petty as a skipped verse of a hymn.

  I didn’t rightly know how to respond to this criticism. Or even if I should. I felt like shouting at this person to stop being so easily irritated, but a shout didn’t seem reflective of my ministerial office. Without me knowing who signed the note, I couldn’t speak to the note writer in person to address the matter head-on. Maybe when it came to music, I could make a mental note of different folks’ individual preferences within the congregation. Maybe that was the solution. But music being what it is, and folks being folks, there were bound to be plenty of conflicting preferences—so I had no idea what to do. Maybe there was a different solution, one I didn’t savvy yet. I was still getting used to this strange life as a reverend. I hoped I’d have a good number of years left to do so.

  The note, I crumpled, and used it to light a fire in the stove to take the chill out of the air. I hadn’t eaten all day, not since lunchtime the day before, but I wasn’t feeling the pain in my stomach. I was feeling it deep in my bones. I went back outside and did overhand pull-ups on the awning until I thought I’d about pass out. Then I came back inside and paced around the parsonage some more.

  Long after midnight, I fell into a shallow and restless sleep.

  Early Tuesday morning I was startled awake at quarter after five when a horn blasted in rapid bleeping outside my window. I was still dressed in my chopping clothes and flew out the front door to check the commotion.

  Halligan Barker’s patrol car was parked outside the parsonage. Dust still billowed around the tires where he’d slid to a stop. Deputy Roy was in the passenger’s seat leaning over and honking the horn. The sheriff was jogging up my steps, a worried look on his face.

  “Good—you’re already up,” Halligan said. “We got a heap of trouble, Rowdy. Real bad state of affairs. C’mon, get in the car.”

  Roy jumped outside the patrol car and sprinted around to open the rear passenger door for me. He acted like he was doing me a favor, but he looked a mite too gleeful as I hopped in the backseat.

  It didn’t matter. I was still rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, straining to understand the trouble at hand. Halligan threw the car in gear, stomped on the accelerator, and cranked the steering wheel around. We flew down the road back toward Cut Eye. I wondered who knew what.

  “Deputy Roy’s car is over at Gummer’s getting a head gasket fixed,” Halligan explained, the speedometer inching to 100 m.p.h. “He had me pick him up at his place south of town when a call came over the radio. We figured we’d pick you up on the way over.”

  “Where we headed?” I asked.

  “To the café. It’s Cisco Wayman. The man’s mind took a turn for the worse.”

  We rocketed up Highway 2 and on into town. Past the tavern, we pulled to the right near the mercantile, screeched to a stop, and jumped out. Already a crowd was forming in the dawn’s early light.

  Augusta Wayman hurried straight over to us, her face white as salt. “Cisco’s got a gun to his head.” She pointed to the café. “It’s bad, Sheriff, real bad. He keeps calling out for Danny.” Her voice broke, but she found it and added, “The only person he wants to see is Rowdy.”

  The sheriff snapped into action. He ordered Roy to clear the street, shouted at me and Augusta to get behind iron, and buckled on an old military flak jacket—it would stop artillery fragments but not bullets—in preparation to get closer to the café to check things out for himself.

  Augusta and I ducked behind the patrol car while Deputy Roy dispersed the crowd. A jeep pulled up and Bobbie jumped out and ran over to us. She shot me a fearful glance, bent down and gathered Augusta in a ball in her arms, and held the woman in a close crouch.

  From behind the patrol car I watched as the sheriff snuck to the side of the café. He peeked his head around and glanced in the window, then sprinted back to us behind the car.

  “Cisco’s in there with a gun all right,” Halligan said. “Rowdy, can you still handle a rifle? There’s an old Springfield in the front of the car. I want some extra cover. I’m going in. Get set for the worst.”

  “No, wait—” Augusta caught the hem of his pant leg. “Please try talking to him first, Sheriff. He won’t turn his gun on the crowd, I promise. He’s not angry with anyone. He asked to see Rowdy. Please. Let Rowdy go.”

  The sheriff furrowed his brow as if thinking things over, then spoke all business. “The man’s not in his right mind, Augusta. You know I like Cisco same as any neighbor around here, but it isn’t safe. I’m going in.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’ll go.”

  The sheriff glanced my way with a look that said he was still pondering possible plans of action. Deputy Roy was positioned around the corner now, one arm and his rifle in view. His Remington was fixed on the café’s windows. The sheriff began to unbuckle his flak jacket. “Okay, Rowdy,” he said. “The only neck you lose is your own. At least put this on.” He held the jacket out to me.

  I shook my head and said, “It’ll spook him. I’d rather keep things friendly,” then turned to Bobbie and asked, “You got a makeup mirror and a stick of gum in your handbag?”

  She nodded, ran to the jeep without quizzing me on why I needed those things, and ran back with the two items in hand. I grabbed them and headed out from behind the patrol car toward the café.

  The street was deathly quiet as I walked across it. Sun was breaking in the eastern sky, and a chill blew in the autumn air. The door to the café swung on its hinges and I crouched down to one side. I put the gum in my mouth and began to chew, opened the door a crack, then called out, “Cisco—it’s Rowdy. You want to talk with me?”

  All was quiet for ten seconds. Then a voice called back, “Yeah. Come on in.”

  I took off my boot, stuck the makeup mirror to the end of it with the chewing gum, and peered around the doorway by looking into the reflection of the mirror. Sure enough, Cisco sat in the middle of the café, his elbow pointed my direction, a revolver aimed at his ear. His back was toward me, so I brought my boot back, plopped it on my foot, stuck my head around the door frame, and called out, “I’m coming in now, Cisco. We can have a talk, just like you want.”

  It was only fifteen steps distance to where he was, and along the way I eyed out places where I could duck and cover in case he started to fire. I stayed low and kept my eyes on his trigger hand to gauge the slightest flicker of movement.

  “Cisco—” I asked as I was getting nearer. “What’s going on?”

  The big man’s face was blank. Underneath his eyes lay dark circles. His trigger hand trembled.

  “I ain’t slept much lately. That’s all.”

  I paused in my tracks. A silence went around the room. I decided I’d walked close enough. “Well, I can understand that,” I said. “May
be you want to take the gun away from your head and set it on the floor. We’ll talk some more then.”

  “Can’t do that, Rowdy.”

  “Why not, Cisco?”

  “Because there’s no hope in me living anymore. That’s why.”

  I swallowed. “How come you say that?”

  Another long pause pitched around the room. “Because he’s gone, that’s why. And nobody cares that my boy’s dead.”

  “Of course we care. We care a heap. This whole town cares. Everybody loved Danny. He was just doing his duty—that’s all. Plenty of fellas met the same fate. I’ve seen them with my own eyes.”

  “Were you there when Danny died?”

  “No sir. But I was alongside plenty of other fellas just like Danny. I saw it firsthand. They were brave. I know Danny was brave too. Nobody’s ever gonna forget what those fellas did for us over there.”

  Another long pause. I kept my eye on his trigger finger. Finally Cisco asked, “You know why I wanted to talk with you, Reverend Rowdy?”

  I shook my head. “How come?”

  “A spiritual reason. It’s because you’re a reverend, and a reverend speaks for God.”

  A drop of sweat ran down my forehead. I wasn’t sure where he was going with this and said, “I don’t know about that, sir.”

  “Well, that God of yours could have stopped Danny from dying.” Cisco’s hands were trembling something fierce now. “But he didn’t. So you know what that makes God?”

  “No sir, I don’t.”

  “Makes him responsible.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” I said. “Why don’t you put the gun down and kick it over to me. We can get Bobbie in here. She studies lots and knows about these matters far better than I do. We’ll look up some passages. See what the Bible says.”

  “No need to involve her.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Cisco stood to his feet, swung my direction suddenly, and pointed the revolver at me. “Because killing you will even the score.” In a flash, he pulled the trigger.

  Bang!

  His bullet whizzed across the top of my ear. Few men are good shots with a revolver, but I wasn’t waiting around for him to aim straight. I was already running, hightailing it out the door, zigging and zagging in a crisscross pattern back across the street. I dived behind the patrol car. All the while Halligan was shouting at Deputy Roy, “Hold your fire! Don’t shoot! It’s Rowdy! Don’t shoot!”

  I peeked around the car’s fender in time to see Cisco stumble out of the café after me. He held his revolver to his ear again. His trigger hand was shaking something fierce, and if his gun went off again either due to his decision or due to accident then this new bullet would find its mark no problem. He stopped walking and stood still. His eyes bore a crazed look. His finger flickered against the trigger, then paused. He scrunched his eyes tight in preparation for the blast. The man was a split second away from death.

  On reflex, I jumped to the open side door of the patrol car, grabbed the Springfield, wished it was a Garand, and aimed at the man who’d just tried to kill me.

  One shot rang out.

  The Springfield fired true. Cisco’s revolver flew high in the air with a zing.

  “Go!” Halligan yelled. “Go now!”

  I was already running across the street, already tackling Cisco in the gut before he could find his bearings and scramble to pick up his revolver. He went down hard and Halligan piled on right after me.

  “Hold him, Rowdy! Hold him ’til I get cuffs on.” Halligan wrestled the big man’s arms behind his back and snapped the handcuffs around his wrists. Deputy Roy had caught the vision by now and followed up with his cuffs around the man’s ankles.

  Cisco was sobbing. Stunned. Broken. Hurting.

  Halligan held him, cradling the big man as he lay on the ground. “It’s all okay,” the sheriff said with a hush. “You’re gonna be fine, Cisco. Just fine.”

  They took Cisco away, the sheriff and Deputy Roy. Augusta sat in the backseat of the patrol car alongside her husband to give him comfort. His face was blank again and his eyes stared straight ahead like nothing had ever transpired.

  “Where will they take him?” I asked Bobbie.

  “There’s a mental hospital northwest of Rancho Springs. I’ve visited a few patients there before. He’ll get good care until he’s better again.” She looked me over and sniffed. “You okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Welcome to the real work of being a minister,” she said. “Your calling is to mix and mingle with a world of pain. When folks are hurting, they’re prone to take a shot at you—sometimes with a gun, sometimes with just their words—and it’s your job to get up inside people’s hurt, or else you’ll never understand where they’re coming from. They don’t mean to lash out at you, not really, because it’s not you they’re actually angry at.” She shivered, then asked, “You get bloody anywhere? I can take you over to the doc’s if you’d like.”

  “No, I’m fine thanks. I’ve seen worse.” I tried to smile her direction.

  “Where was that exactly—the place you saw worse?”

  The girl’s question was unexpected and serious, like an honest answer was anticipated from me. She was fulfilling her calling as a minister, entering the world of my pain. I could see the sincerity in her eyes, but still I asked, “You truly care to know?”

  Bobbie nodded.

  “I guess a year ago from last December, fighting in Bastogne. You heard about Bastogne?”

  She nodded again. “Read about it in the papers.”

  “One of our replacement officers had seen too much blood too quickly, I reckon, because one morning his mouth froze open and he just stopped talking. Rest of the boys didn’t think much about it at first. When you’re in a foxhole, there ain’t much to say anyway. By mid-afternoon the medic took a look at him, and the officer still wasn’t saying a word. Then, when the medic left to go tend on another man, the officer just walked away, out into the snow. We were stretched real thin on the line, positioned a hundred yards away from each other, and nobody noticed he was gone until they saw his tracks heading across the road.”

  “What’s that mean?” Bobbie asked.

  “Well, it means no one got to him in time.”

  Bobbie shrugged, searching for the rest of the story.

  I sighed deeply. “The Nazis were dug in across the road. A couple shots rang out, and our officer was gone. Just like that. That’s how he chose to end his pain—by walking straight toward the enemy—as if that would do him any good. It took two more days of fighting before we could retrieve the officer’s body. His corpse was frozen solid by then, and they’d dragged it over a foxhole to use as insulation against the cold.”

  A faraway look came to Bobbie’s eyes and she stayed silent a long while. Finally she said, “I’ve got a story for you, okay? You need to hear it.”

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  “I went to school with Danny Wayman,” Bobbie said. “He ran with a different crowd—the boys on the baseball team. I didn’t know him well, but in tenth grade I sat ahead of him in English class. When the teacher wasn’t looking I used to turn around and doodle these funny pictures on his notebook cover. Smiley faces. Flowers that waved hello. Those pictures always made him smile. When Danny went to war I wrote him every week, telling him hello. Saying that we were all thinking of him. I wrote letters to every boy from this county. Each week I read the casualty lists published in the newspaper. Thirty-two of those boys didn’t come home.”

  I was silent for a while myself with that news. Then I said, “I’m sorry I told you the story I did in so much detail. All it did was make us think of difficulties.”

  She wiped away the wetness in her eyes with the back of her sleeve, then said, “No, don’t ever apologize for talking about hurt—particularly when it comes to the war. I asked you because I wanted to know. It’s difficult to hear, but that’s the only way I can get my mind around these recent matters of horror: by listening
to the stories of those who fought for our freedom, and then by telling those stories in their honor to all who’ll listen in return.”

  Bobbie drove me back to the parsonage in her jeep. She didn’t even ask if I wanted a ride. She just climbed behind the wheel, and I climbed in next to her on the passenger’s seat, and we didn’t say another word all the way home.

  A million thoughts coursed through my mind after she dropped me off. Of chief concern, of course, was still my meeting with Crazy Ake come that evening. I still didn’t see a way out of the plan, but one thing I did have to my advantage now was the Springfield. The sheriff and Deputy Roy had been bustling about caring for Cisco, and I’d plumb held on to that old rifle, I had. I kept the weapon in my hands all the time Bobbie and I talked, and the rifle felt unnatural but necessary. When I’d climbed into the jeep, I kept it across one knee and pointed down toward the road. I took it inside the parsonage and hid it underneath my bed.

  I milled about the parsonage by myself for ten minutes or so until it dawned on me that I had another meeting I needed to make this day. It was nearing lunchtime already and I hadn’t eaten yet this morning, but I reckoned I’d better get to this meeting as quick as possible. It was with the one person who wouldn’t be friendly with a missed meeting. I jogged over to the main church building.

  “You’re late!” Mert Cahoon said when I walked into her office. “Mighty late! Don’t you know I needed to run through the entire attendance chart by myself?!”