Days of Atonement

by Walter Jon Williams

  “Three.” Jerry’s voice was vague. He opened the Fury’s passenger door. “Closer to three, I think.”

  Jerry and Loren got in the Fury. Loren smoothed his hair back with his fingers, blinked grit out of his eyes.

  “I don’t know why Cyrano called you, anyway,” Jerry said.

  “You don’t have a phone.”

  “He could’ve come out.”

  Loren gave him an irritated glance. “Maybe he figured talking to you wouldn’t do him any good.”

  “I woulda done it sooner or later.” Another shrug.

  Loren started the car, stared forward through the windshield. Anger grated in his bones. Trying to talk to Jerry was like trying to reason with a buffalo: you chattered on forever and then the animal did whatever it wanted.

  Try and be a human being! he wanted to shout. Pointless.

  “Hope we don’t get a range fire,” Jerry said. Tumbleweeds had built in large drifts against the junkyard fence, obscuring the Hamm’s beer ad. Loren drove onto the highway, headed back into town.

  “ ‘Better hope no gophers explode.’” Jerry looked at him. “That was your line.”

  “Guess I have something else on my mind.”

  Jerry’s voice rose. “Get off my case, will you, Loren?”

  Loren looked at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “My business with Cyrano is my business with Cyrano. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “It’s your business till Cyrano calls me about it. Now it’s my business.”

  “He shouldn’t have called you. He could have dropped by.”

  “Maybe he did. Maybe you weren’t there.”

  “He only called you because you have this thing about looking after me.”

  Loren looked at him again. “Somebody’s got to.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  “Oh, really.”

  “I can.” Jerry sulked back into his seat. The Earth Church, empty, alone on its windy ridge, sailed past on the left.

  “I saw that friend of Katrina’s the other day,” Jerry said. “Skywalker.”

  Loren glanced over his shoulder at the adobe building. “At the church? I know she belongs.”

  “No. Out in the arroyo behind the yard. She and some older people were in a four-wheel drive.”

  Loren looked at him and wondered if Jerry was implying something illicit. “What were they doing?”

  “Just driving down the arroyo, heading south. Real slow, about three miles an hour. I waved, but I don’t think they saw me.”

  “I think her dad has a jeep.”

  “It was probably him, then.”

  Loren stared at the road and tried to reconstruct Jerry’s line of thinking. What did Skywalker and her jeep expedition have to do with anything?

  Probably nothing. The Skywalker story was probably about as useful as Jerry’s other stories.

  And he had a lot of other things to think about.

  *

  “Lust!” Rickey let the shouted word echo through the church for a moment, then leaned forward to peer at his congregation through glittering spectacles. “Have I got your attention now?” he asked.

  There was nervous laughter from the congregation. Rickey grinned.

  “At divinity school,” he said, “people used to joke that it’s customary to preach on lust right in the middle of the Days of Atonement, in order to maintain a higher rate of attendance.” He blinked at his audience. “Happy Tuesday!”

  More nervous laughter, testifying, perhaps, to the fact that the congregation was larger than usual for midweek. Loren looked up at the pastor and thought of children dying, starving in Africa, burning in Los Angeles. The man he had seen the night before— hollow-eyed, driven, insistent on the hopelessness of worldly life— had transformed himself into a rustic comic.

  Rickey brushed a nervous hand over his thinning hair. He glanced at his notes, and Loren remembered the text of the sermon glowing amber over Rickey’s shoulder.

  “Human beings,” the pastor said, “are moved by appetites. These appetites are appropriate to the preservation of the individual and the species. For instance,” glancing up, “pride. We’ve already spoken of pride as being something that we all desire, in that we all want to be thought well of. But an excess of pride, once it becomes vainglory, is not simply a sin but the greatest of sins.

  “Likewise with the appetites of the body. It is natural for the body to desire food and drink, but when we desire food and drink to excess, we risk gluttony. The body desires rest after labor, but sloth is rest carried to extremes.

  “So it is with sex.” Loren glanced at Debra and saw her own sidelong look at him, the memory of the previous night passing between them. She swiftly looked away, her color rising. Loren suppressed an urge to grin.

  “Sexual intercourse is desirable on two counts,” the pastor said. “It is desirable for the preservation of the species, and it is desirable insofar as it heightens the feeling of love between husband and wife. Love is a special thing— love is a gift of the divine.”

  Loren looked up at Rickey and wondered again about the man. He’d never been married, apparently, and that was very unusual in this religion that stressed family life above all else. Not that this necessarily implied abstinence: as custodian of most of the town’s secrets, Loren had all too clear a notion as to the fallibility of the clergy. There were plenty of woman parishioners, church workers, and secretaries and the like— married, most of them, and hence safer— who were willing to give their all for Jesus or, in his absence, his local representative. There had been rumors, not necessarily true, about the last pastor, Baumgarten, and a couple of the married laywomen. Loren had been inclined, for all sorts of good reasons, to disregard the stories, and in any case there hadn’t been any complaints. Unlike, for example, the case of the Evangelical Baptist minister he’d hauled off to jail for statutory rape. Loren had been careful to use only soft-tissue strikes then, gut and groin and kidneys, driving in with the end of his baton— no chance of broken bones to embarrass the department, and scarcely any bruises. Whether the girls had consented or not— and in this particular case it appeared they had— Loren knew damn well they were still someone’s daughters.

  But concerning Rickey, Loren had heard nothing. Maybe he was too new, maybe the rumors hadn’t had time to start yet. Maybe the town gossipmongers, like Loren himself, hadn’t quite figured out how to take the new pastor, and were waiting to make up their minds before they gave their suspicions any particular spin.

  Maybe the man was a complete ascetic. Unusual in a religion like the Apostles, which preached moderation in material things rather than denial, but not entirely without precedent.

  “Sex,” Rickey said, “is a spiritual good.” He paused a moment, as if anticipating an argument from someone, then looked down at his notes. “ ‘Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins.’”

  “Jeez,” muttered Kelly. Loren felt a quiet shock. He’d never in his life heard anyone quote those verses.

  Rickey looked up. “That’s the Song of Solomon. That is the loving and inspired and godly voice of human sexuality.”

  No shit, Loren thought. He looked uncomfortably around. There were children in here.

  “Where does this divinely ordained love become lust?” Rickey asked. “At what point does it become sin?”

  Rickey paused, straightened, frowned at the congregation. “I have tried, in these sermons, to relate the subject matter to our lives. It’s good ole New Mexican, down-home lust I propose to discuss this morning.” You’re all guilty. That’s what Loren read in his look. I’ve got your number.

  “Sex becomes sin,” Rickey said, “when it becomes an act of commerce. When it is an act of revenge. When it is forced. When it is an act performed in defiance of marriage; when it is performed as an escape from marriage; when it is done lightly, on imp
ulse, without concern for precautions or safety; when it becomes an act of self-punishment; when it becomes a way of punishing someone else. When it becomes a way of raising yourself above someone else, particularly someone helpless, someone who is dependent on you . . .

  Rickey’s voice was cutting. I’ve got your number. Fellow custodian of the town secrets, he wasn’t about to let his parishioners off easy.

  “Let me be more specific,” Rickey said. Cold dread stirred in Loren’s stomach.

  His early adulteries had been impulsive, spur-of-the-moment things, old habits resurfacing. Later, during Debra’s pregnancies, when they’d had to avoid sex if they wanted to keep the child; and after her miscarriages, when she had been too depressed to think about sex at all, his cheating had been deliberate, planned with care by someone who knew exactly how to keep a town from discovering a secret. Running away, as Rickey would have said, from marriage.

  In a cold monotone Rickey anatomized Loren’s sins with careful, ruthless precision. The parson seemed as driven as he had been the previous night. Loren stared at the pulpit, careful not to glance up at Rickey, afraid of meeting his eyes and giving the preacher confirmation of his guilt. His heart throbbed uneasily in his chest. He couldn’t look at his family.

  Rickey had his number, sure enough.

  The service, subdued, staggered to its conclusion. “I didn’t think sex was that complicated,” Kelly said as they walked out. Loren, sweatily following, thanked the Lord for that.

  “Good,” he said at the doorway, shaking the parson’s hand. “Real good.”

  “Thank you.” Rickey’s glance was sharp. Loren compelled himself to smile. The hot Mexican wind blew in his face.

  My family life, he wanted to say, is perfect anymore.

  And it was going to get better.

  The park across from the church was empty: Roberts and his cult had not shown up.

  “Chief.” A well-known voice, a feminine singsong. “Chief, could I talk to you?”

  Heart sinking, Loren turned to face Mrs. Caldwell.

  Antonia Caldwell, the widow of a former councilman, was nothing if not a caricature, a small-town shrew whose energy and high-mindedness were matched only by her viciousness and capacity for turning ordinary gossip into something ugly and wounding. Loren loathed her, hated the soft-voiced singsong in which she delivered her bile; and he hadn’t thought much of her husband, either.

  Loren compelled himself to smile at her. “I’m sort of busy now, ma’am.”

  “It’s official business, Chief.“ Mouth simpering, eyes glittering steel behind blue-tinted spectacles. Her voice was low, and Loren had to bend over her to hear her words over the hissing wind. “Surely you have time for official business.”

  Loren turned to his family. “I’ll be right there.”

  “I think this is an appropriate time,” Mrs. Caldwell sang, “to bring up the matter of Connie Duvauchelle and that horrible house of ill repute.”

  Lord, Loren thought. Not again. “There’s a jurisdictional problem there,” he said. “The ranch is out in the county. You could talk to the sheriff.”

  “I have. He says the ranch is part of the city.” Her mouth twisted into a pursed smile. “I’m sure you can deal with illegality wherever you find it.”

  “There have been no complaints.”

  “But I am complaining now.”

  “But you’ve never been to the Wildfire Ranch, right?”

  Her eyes widened. “I would not soil ...”

  “Then you have no official knowledge of what goes on there, do you?”

  Mrs. Caldwell’s eyes flashed. “Everyone knows what goes on there.”

  “What everyone knows and what you can persuade a judge are different things, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Caldwell had ceased to smile. Her voice had ended its coy singsong. “All of this is just enough to make me wonder,” she said, “if the rumors are true.”

  Loren had just had his sins anatomized by someone who, to his way of thinking, had the moral right to do it. He was not prepared to put up with it from someone who did not.

  “I wouldn’t know what rumors those would be, ma’am,” he said.

  They glared at each other for a few moments. Mrs. Caldwell broke the silence. “How they let that woman in the Rotary, I can’t imagine.”

  Loren could imagine it perfectly well. He suppressed his smile. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” he said, and grinned. “I’ll go out there this morning. In person.”

  Mrs. Caldwell looked at him suspiciously. Loren smiled at her. Got you now, he thought.

  “If I see anything illegal going on, I’ll make arrests,” he said.

  The shrew considered this for a moment, could find nothing to object to. He was doing just what she asked, right?

  “Well,” she said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at his chest. “I see you are still wearing the Star of Babylon,” she said.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “The sight will comfort Satanists, I’m sure.”

  “I haven’t met any. I wouldn’t know.”

  “I know who they are,” she warned darkly.

  I just bet you do, Loren thought. “I’ll be right out to the ranch as soon as I change,” he said, and smiled again. “Good talking to you, ma’am.”

  Just because her husband used to spend time there, he thought. He couldn’t blame Caldwell: he had to get away from his misery somehow.

  Maybe sometimes escape from marriage was justified.

  His family were already in the Fury. Loren hitched his gun around to the front and got in the driver’s seat. He looked at Jerry.

  “Drop you off at the auto parts store?”

  Jerry gave him a sour look. “Guess you might as well.”

  “What did the Horror from the Tomb want?” Katrina asked. Kelly laughed.

  “Wanted to report a lawbreaker,” Loren said. He started the car, pulled out onto Church Street.

  “I remember when she was trying to get Huckleberry Finn and Catcher in the Rye banned from the school library.”

  “Catcher in the what?” asked Kelly.

  “You were in sixth grade.” Katrina pulled off her scarf. “Mrs. Caldwell thinks everybody but her are idiots.”

  “Is idiots,” said Kelly. Her voice was smug. “ ‘Everybody’ is singular.” She giggled. “Idiot.” Katrina jabbed her with an elbow.

  “An interesting sermon,” Debra said. She was sitting behind Loren and her voice, like that of conscience, was unexpected.

  Guilt scalded Loren’s veins. He’d happily forgotten all of that. “Yeah,” he said.

  “I’ve rarely seen Rickey that passionate about anything.”

  The thought surprised Loren. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

  There was something personal going on in that sermon, something driving Rickey. Was it, he wondered, some kind of confession? Had he been so ruthless because he was touched with what he condemned?

  No doubt, Loren thought, he’d someday find out.

  But he knew he didn’t really want to.

  *

  The Wildfire Ranch was out behind Las Animas, right on the city-county border, down half a mile of gravel private road. The place was a dusty clump of mobile homes surrounded by chain link. Old auto tires sat atop the flat roofs of the house trailers to keep the roofs from tearing away in the wind.

  Loren parked his car by the trailer labeled OFFICE. Memories echoed in his head. He hadn’t been here in years.

  He got out of the car and walked to the office door and banged on it. Wind whipped his hair into his face, little needlepricks on his forehead. When Buck, the latest in a long series of young bodybuilders who lived with Connie and acted as bouncer, opened the inner door, the aluminum screen door was almost torn from his hands. Buck fastened his massive grip on the door, looked at Loren, nodded, stepped back. Loren entered, looked at Buck, and wondered where she got them all.

  Connie Duvauchelle stood in the foyer. She was an old woman but her
green eyes were bright and cold and missed nothing. She wore a bright red bouffant wig, crimson lipstick, and a Stewart tartan suit over flat-heeled house slippers. “You’re early,” she said. “Just come from church?”

  “You were expecting me?”

  “Tuesday is Lust Day down at the Apostles, right?” She had an eccentric Southern voice, one that sometimes sounded Arkansas, sometimes almost British. “Sometimes thinking about it all morning gets the congregation all worked up. Hope your damn police car don’t scare away my customers.”

  Loren sighed. “I’m here on a different kind of business, Connie. And I just heard Rickey’s sermon, and I don’t think it’ll do your business any good.”

  “Come into my office.” Loren followed Connie past Buck and into the parlor, where two sullen young women in lingerie were smoking cigarettes and watching a soap opera, a Mexican novela off the satellite, and then past the wet bar and into Connie’s office. It had cheap paneling and was adorned with dozens of old photographs. The badge of the Rotary flaunted over the desk.

  “Shut the door,” Connie said. “You want some Southern Comfort?”

  “No.”

  “Joined the gang of virtue, huh?”

  “It’s just early for me.”

  Connie poured herself a glass from the bottle in the lower right drawer of her desk and reached into a box for a hand-rolled cigarette. She lit it and sat down in a padded chair. The odor of amaretto-flavored tobacco began to invade the room.

  “It’s early for them, too.” Waving the cigarette toward her employees. “They’re not used to early hours.” She sipped her drink. “Stupid junkie bitches. Not like the old days.”

  Loren had heard all this before and had found it only moderately interesting the first time. “It’s some of the old days I want to talk about, Connie,” he said.

  “The twenties and thirties were good times, Loren. During the Depression we gave a home to a lot of good women down on their luck. They gave the place a higher tone. And when the NRA came in, we did our bit for the economy.” She cackled, then hacked a cough. “Raised the price of short-time from two dollars to three. Those were good days here in this town. The pit gave everybody a lot of money, even in the Depression.”