by Joan Hess
He was sitting on a carton, his face buried in his hands, as I went out the back exit and over to my car. It would take several strategic roadblocks to divert the expected multitude. I was trying to decide which would be the most effective locations as I switched on the radio.
“Don’t do that.”
I looked into the barrel of a gun. I hate it when that happens.
“Where can kevvie be?” asked Dahlia as her father-in-law turned down County 102. She was sitting in the backseat, staring glumly out the window in hopes her husband might be walking alongside the ditch. Why he’d do that she din’t know, but he’d been acting real weird lately. She took a candy bar from her purse and morosely ripped open the wrapper. “I called the supermarket, but they couldn’t say where he is. He was supposed to come home for supper. Where can he be?”
“He’s probably planning to meet you inside the tent,” Eilene said, crossing her fingers. “The two of you can wait until the revival’s over and then insist on having a word in private with Malachi Hope.”
“Where can Kevvie be?”
Earl gritted his teeth and kept driving.
“I’m sure they keep the discarded eyeglasses in a box,” Edwina Spitz said as she turned down County 102. “All you have to do is ask real nicely if you can have yours back for emergencies. Jesus won’t mind a bit.”
Lottie slumped down in the seat and sighed. “Maybe my faith isn’t as steadfast as I thought it was. In any case, I’m blind as a bat without my glasses.”
“And my ankle’s swollen worse than a beach ball,” said Eula, who was in the backseat, where she could elevate her leg. “If Malachi Hope doesn’t heal it again, I may break down and take my pills.”
Their conversation dribbled off as Edwina’s car fell into line.
“This is ridiculous,” I said, as angry with myself as I was at Thomas Fratelleon. Almost as angry, anyway. I was on the floor in the tiny bathroom of the RV, and in a most undignified posture.
He finished wrapping the electrical tape around my ankles, examined his handiwork, then stood up. “It is a bit ridiculous, Miss Hanks, but I don’t know what else to do with you for the moment. I’m sorry that you’ll experience some discomfort during the next three hours. However, I must return to my post in the van so that Malachi can perform his miracles. We don’t want to disappoint all those generous Christians, do we?”
“You’re asking the wrong person, Mr. Fratelleon.”
“I suppose I am.” He stepped over my legs and washed his hands while I glared up at him. If my wrists had not been bound and secured to the pipe beneath the sink, I would have given him something that would have kept him disappointed for a long time.
He dried his hands on a guest towel embroidered with a likeness of his employer. “I should be back as soon as my duties are concluded and Malachi begins his final appeal for donations. In the interim, neither he nor Chastity will have any reason to come in here.”
“The man of God never has to answer the call of nature?”
“Malachi takes a childish pleasure in urinating in the grass behind the tent. As I was saying, while he’s finishing up, I’ll have ample opportunity to escort you to your car. We’ll be on our way well before anyone emerges from the tent.”
“On our way to the logging road?”
“We’ll search for a more secluded one. I had no idea Seraphina would be discovered so quickly. I would have much preferred to have had several weeks to convince Malachi that she had abandoned him in order to resort to a more secular lifestyle.”
“And abandoned her teenaged sister to his unhealthy sexual desires?”
“Seraphina never realized what was going on,” he said as he carefully folded the towel and replaced it on the rack. “But as you said to Malachi—”
“He told you?”
Fratelleon gave me a disappointed look. “He wears a microphone, too. How else could he cue the van when he felt ready to perform another miracle? I was monitoring various conversations earlier. The one you had with him caught my attention.”
“You should have been listening to CNN,” I said.
“You were perceptive when you told Malachi that Seraphina would have figured it out when Joey denied paternity. She was very close to it when I came out of the tent late Sunday night—or early Monday morning, to be accurate—in order to investigate the arrival of a vehicle and the loud voices. Chastity said something at the height of the argument that was incautious. Seraphina’s disillusionment would have resulted in the one thing that could destroy the corporation—unfavorable publicity. If Malachi was charged with a sex offense, even his most zealous followers might suspend their regular contributions.”
“You’re breakin’ my heart.”
“When you’re my age, you’ll appreciate why I long for financial security. I must ensure that Malachi has the resources to build the City of Hope. It will generate millions of dollars, a modest percent of which will end up in my portfolio. If Joey has the sense to remain with us, he’ll be a rich young man.”
“And Malachi will have Chastity all to himself,” I said. “He won’t have to worry about Seraphina finding out that he’s a crackpot, possibly a psychopath. How long do you think it will be before he decides he can walk on water and bring people back from the dead?”
“It’s only a matter of time,” Fratelleon said with a small frown, “but it will not concern me. I’ll see you in approximately three and a half hours.”
I tried to kick his leg as he stepped over me but hit the toilet instead. “It was a real stroke of luck finding the ignition key in Cory Jenks’s truck, wasn’t it?” I said to delay the inevitable as long as possible. I’m not claustrophobic, but I’m not fond of views limited to plumbing. “You knew from Norma Kay’s letters that she’d had an affair with him. All you had to do was borrow the truck long enough to drive to the high school and kill her, then take the whistle off his desk and plant it on Seraphina’s body to further implicate him. Were you afraid Norma Kay might stop sending checks if Chastity and Joey failed to get married?”
“Norma Kay Grapper took it upon herself to become involved in this. When she reminded me on the telephone that she could prevent her husband from selling the acreage to us if she chose, I knew I was going to deal with her sooner or later. As I walked back from the creek, it occurred to me that the key might be in the ignition. I decided to seize the moment. Until later, Miss Hanks.”
Once I heard the front door close, I did some dedicated wiggling and writhing. The tape around my ankles refused to stretch, and the tape binding my wrists to the pipe was too tight to allow me to try to get any friction against the pipe. I kept trying until I was exhausted. As I rested my head on the floor, I heard the crescendo of music and applause that accompanied Malachi’s entrance onstage.
I had less than three hours.
Two hours later my wrists were raw, but the damn electrical tape remained resilient enough to serve as a bungee cord. My buttocks were sore, and my forehead was bruised from being banged against the pipe. (Frustration had affected my depth perception.) The sounds of the revival weren’t improving my mood. Every “Hallelujah” from the tent elicited a distinctly less reverent exclamation from me.
One was forming on my tongue when I heard the front door open. I craned my neck to look at my watch. I had most of two hours left before I could anticipate Thomas Fratelleon’s arrival (and my subsequent departure). I had no idea what Malachi or Chastity would do upon entering the bathroom; anything from being freed to being peed on was a possibility.
I decided to get it over with. “I’m in here!” I shouted. “I need help!”
The door opened a few inches and an unfamiliar face peered through the slit. It had stringy whiskers, yellow-tinged eyes, and a toothless grin. “I shore din’t expect to find a pretty filly on the floor in here.”
“Who are you?” I said, immediately pegging him as a Buchanon but unable to come up with a first name.
“I’m Petrol Buchanon. W
hat about you, honey pie?”
I licked my dry lips until I could stretch them into a painful smile. “My name’s Arly, Mr. Buchanon. It’s kinda hard to explain why I’m hog-tied like this, but I’d be real grateful if you’d be kind enough to find some scissors or a knife and cut off this awful tape. This floor’s harder than bedrock.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Is there anybody else here? I don’t want to get caught. Over in the tent, Miz Twayblade’s slinking up and down the aisles, searching for me, so I came in here to hide. I reckon I could have stayed in the house down the hill, but it was mighty boring.”
“There’s no one else,” I said. “Please help me.”
He returned shortly with a knife. Five minutes later I was massaging my wrists while I waited for LaBelle to connect me with Harve. Petrol was more interested in the contents of the refrigerator than my telephone call; I urged him to take anything that appealed.
I doubt many Buchanons have feasted on caviar sandwiches and champagne.
Snuffling like an asthmatic hound, Bur wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. “The ball was in the air when the buzzer went off. Five thousand fans on their feet, their guts tight and their eyes locked on the ball like it was a ballistic missile. You could have heard a rat fart in the locker room. I’m telling myself we’re gonna beat the bastards in spite of—”
“Whatsat?” Estelle said, pitching forward. She rubbed her eyes, then gave Ruby Bee a confused look as she struggled into consciousness. “I can’t believe we’re still here. My neck’s got an awful crick, and I’m so hungry I could eat a horse. If Bur’s gonna commit suicide, why doesn’t he just do it so we can go home?”
After what she’d gone through, Ruby Bee was well beyond feeling any compassion for Bur. The fat was in the fire, in any case, so she said, “You never did say why you’re planning to kill yourself, Bur. You don’t have to if you don’t want to, but you ought to leave a note. I have a piece of paper and a pencil right here in my purse. You just spit it out and I’ll write it down for you. Then all you have to do is sign it and you’ll be all set to kill yourself. How do you want to start?”
He gazed drunkenly at her. “I ain’t never written one of these before. I don’t know how to start.”
“Of course, you’ve never written one before,” Ruby Bee said with a sniff. “If you had, you’d be dead.”
Estelle leaned forward and patted his knee. “I’ll be right pleased to help you with the wording, Bur, but you have to tell me why you want to kill yourself. Is it because you’re afraid to spend the rest of your life bumbling around an empty house?”
“Maybe grief over losing Norma Kay?” suggested Ruby Bee, her pencil poised above the backside of a grocery list.
“Sort of,” Bur said, plucking at his robe and hiccuping occasionally. “I drove her to do it, what with my orneriness and suspicious nature. I never once found any proof she was sleeping with anybody, but I couldn’t make myself accept it. Sunday afternoon I called her a liar and slapped her so hard she fell against the counter. The next morning I’m told she hanged herself on a basketball goal. What am I supposed to think?”
“Wait a minute!” snapped Ruby Bee. “Are you saying that you think she hanged herself—and that’s why I had to sit here and listen to the details of every last basketball game you coached since the year nineteen hundred and sixty-one? Bur Grapper, you are as stupid as cow spit. Norma Kay was murdered!”
“She didn’t kill herself?” he said weakly. “I guess that’s good to know.”
Ruby Bee stuffed the grocery list and the pencil in her purse, then grabbed Estelle’s arm and hauled her up. “I have never in my life spent such a tedious afternoon. You listen up, Bur—if you ever speak to me again, and I’m not saying you should—you’d better not say one single word that has anything to do with basketball. I don’t know what I’ll do, but you can bet the farm it won’t be pretty. Come on, Estelle, let’s go.”
“Would you happen to know who killed her?” Bur asked meekly, then realized he was talking to thin air. Which-reminded him of that crucial shot back in 1989, when thousands of hysterical fans began to chant, “Airball, airball, airball!”
If they hadn’t, he most likely wouldn’t have socked the referee.
Who had it coming.
Well, hell—maybe he would have anyway.
“I want everybody to shut up!” I yelled from the edge of the stage. “If you’ll do that for me, I’ll explain what just happened. I don’t have any obligation to cooperate, though. You can read about it in the newspaper or catch it on the six o’clock news tomorrow night.”
The overhead lights were on, and the speakers were silent. A thousand, maybe as many as twelve hundred, faces looked back at me, most of them hostile. I made sure there were deputies near the steps that led to the stage and then looked out at what Malachi Hope had seen at every revival: fair game. They wanted something from him, and he gave it to them. He got the job done and sent them away imbued with optimism that Jesus would take a special interest in their problems, that the doctor’s troublesome diagnosis was wrong, that they would become rich and happy forever after. Amen.
If they emptied their wallets, that is.
After I’d explained that Fratelleon had been charged with two counts of murder and Malachi with child endangerment (did you really think I was going to tell the truth?), I announced that there would be no more services and no City of Hope. “Get your religion at your churches and your entertainment at Branson,” I added, “and keep in mind the distinction.”
“What about how Malachi cured folks?” demanded Dahlia, squeezed between her in-laws.
I’d prepared myself for the dubious reward of raining on their parade. “Is there one person in this room who can honestly say he was cured? I don’t mean who thinks he was cured, but who went to a doctor and had it confirmed by a legitimate medical procedure.”
Dahlia wasn’t ready to give up fried chicken. “I saw for myself how a blind man threw away his white cane and walked down the steps on his own.”
“Yeah,” said a man across the room, “but I saw him drive one of those trucks into Maggody last week.”
“I felt a tingle when Malachi squeezed my shoulders,” cried a young woman.
I looked at the metal rectangle on which I was standing. “I’d imagine you did when you received a few volts. Malachi could have knocked the socks off you with this gizmo if that’s what it took.” I wouldn’t have been there if I hadn’t been assured that Joey and Chastity had been taken into custody, too. The former would be questioned, the latter taken to a temporary shelter while her fate was determined. The command post was unoccupied.
“How’s your eyesight?” I called to Lottie Estes. When she shook her head, I looked down at the wheelchair occupants. “Any of you unable to walk into the tent without assistance?”
A woman crippled by rheumatism raised her hand. “This is my own wheelchair, but Malachi didn’t call for Jesus to cure me. My husband brought me all the way from Springfield. This was our third night, and we were hoping …”
And so it went. I finally quieted them down and said, “The only miracle that took place was that Malachi made you believe in him.”
As they filed out of the tent, I went behind the curtain and sat down on the flattened grass. How much crazier could life in Washington, D.C., be? Politicians and evangelists were of the same genus, if not species, and IRS agents probably fit in there somewhere, too. I could drop back into social circles in which the cost of layer grit was never discussed. I most likely couldn’t find a decent chicken fried steak or a cherry limeade, but I’d survived culinary deprivations in a past life.
I stood up, walked up the aisle of the tent, and turned around to take a last look at the stage. The only hope Malachi had brought had been as shortlived as a politician’s promise.
“Poof,” I said, then went out to my car. If I hurried, Ruby Bee’s Bar & Grill would still be open. I may have survived on canapés and cocktails, but at
the moment there was a grilled cheese sandwich in my future. And an icy beer.
“I’ll go to the clinic,” Dahlia muttered as they drove back up County 102. “Malachi still could have cured me, you know. Just because Arly started sprouting off about how he’s a fake doesn’t mean he is one. There was something in his eyes that was real unsettling.”
“How about a gnat?” Earl said, snickering. “Or a mosquito, or—” He broke off as he caught sight of the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall. “Will ya take a look at that?”
All along the road cars and trucks were coming to an abrupt stop as the lights came into view.
“It looks like Noow Yark City,” gasped Estelle.
“Don’t it, though,” Ruby Bee agreed.
“I ain’t never seen anything like it,” said Eula Lemoy, so awed her swollen leg slid off the seat of the car.
Lottie Estes felt as though she was gazing at a magical kingdom all illuminated in a diffused haze. For the moment, she was glad she didn’t have her glasses. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Jim Bob stood by the rectory so she could soak in the mesmerizing splendor of the thousands of lights blanketing the Assembly Hall. A portable sign in front flashed the words: “Bingo! Grand Prizes!” Another sign above the door proclaimed: “Welcome!” Other lights looped among the sycamore trees and twinkled high in the branches. A loudspeaker played “Onward, Christian Soldiers” with so much spirit feet were tapping all the way to the lowwater bridge. Right by the door was a shiny cottoncandy machine.
“Oh, my gawd,” said a woman in a yellow dress.
Mrs. Jim Bob pursed her lips as she tried to think where she’d heard that particular voice. “It should be impressive. It cost over four thousand dollars—and that’s not chicken feed.”
“Four thousand dollars?” the strange woman said, her hand on her bosom. “Who’s paying for it?”
“The mayor of our little town. He sold some property and can well afford it. Can we expect you to attend our Wednesday night bingo game?”
The woman recoiled, almost losing her balance as one of her heels dug into the lawn. “I can’t rightly say. I’m from—from way down past—past Magnolia, and I’m just visiting kin for a few days.”
