The Countertenor Wore Garlic (The Liturgical Mysteries)

by Mark Schweizer

  "So what else is going on during the All Saints' Sunday service?" asked Joyce.

  "The usual, I suppose," I answered. "We'll have the reading of the roll of the departed during the prayers, the All Saints' collects, and some appropriately saintly music. I'll email all the information to Marilyn for the bulletin. If you're having a Congregational Enlivener, you might want to clue in the vicar."

  "I'll call him," said Bev, then paused in thought. "No, wait. I don't have his phone number."

  "Don't forget," I said. "We have a short All Saints' service scheduled on Wednesday the 1st, before choir practice. I'm guessing Vicar McTavish will be presiding?"

  "We're all guessing," said Bev.

  Marilyn jotted all this down on her pad. "You're still doing movie night on Saturday, right?" she asked. "The 'Big Finish' to the Halloween carnival? I saw the flyer at the bookstore."

  "Yep," I said. "Nosferatu. Five o'clock sharp. I borrowed a big screen and a projector from New Fellowship Baptist. The kids are selling popcorn and we've arranged for the Altar Guild to help clean up and get everything ready for Sunday morning."

  "I'm bringing the grandkids," said Marilyn. "I'm also preparing some program notes."

  "That's great! Thanks!"

  "Who's going to help the vicar serve communion this Sunday?" asked Meg. "Any of the Eucharistic Ministers involved?"

  "Nope," said Bev. "No one. He's doing it himself."

  ***

  Choir practice went about as usual. Dr. Ian Burch, PhD, joined us again in the alto section and we were starting to sound pretty good. He came in early, managed to take Martha Hatteberg's chair before she got there, and relegated her to the front row. Being a charter member of the BRAs, she glared at him, but since he was still a guest, bit her lip and didn't say anything. Tiff was back from her trip and so was Sheila. They flanked Ian and both tried to be friendly, but he seemed to be only interested in speaking to one of them.

  Chapter 6

  The carnival was slated to begin at eleven with the costume contest, but when Meg and I arrived at ten, the kids were already pestering the folks who were running the booths to hurry up and get things rolling. Meg had business downtown, a meeting with one of her Lowcountry clients who was coming up for the weekend. I parked in my designated spot on the square—the one right in front of the police station carefully marked "Reserved for Chief Konig"—gave Meg a kiss, then got out of the old truck and surveyed the downtown activity. The door to the station opened a second later and Nancy joined me on the sidewalk.

  "I heard you driving up," she said. "You might want to get that truck tuned up before winter."

  "Maybe," I said, "but I think you were hearing the Sacrificial Dance from The Rite of Spring. I had the stereo on pretty loudly."

  "I don't know why Meg puts up with it," Nancy said.

  "Me, neither," I said. "Do we have donuts inside?"

  "Is a five-pound robin fat?" answered Nancy. "Dave brought some in about a half-hour ago. We're out of coffee, though. We might have to walk over and get some."

  "Come on," I said with a nod toward the Slab. "We can get a couple of to-go cups."

  We walked into the café a couple of minutes later. This being Saturday, and a busy Saturday at that, there were no tables available and, judging from the line, there wouldn't be any tables available until a week from Tuesday. Someone had even taken Nancy's RESERVED sign and put it into the refrigerated pie case behind the Boston Creams. Nancy growled, but didn't say anything. Pete was nowhere to be seen, probably having his hands full in the kitchen. Cynthia, Noylene, and Pauli Girl McCollough were handling the rush with aplomb. All three were balancing coffee pots, cups, full plates, empty plates, and whatever else might be required, all the while maneuvering expertly between tables and customers in a dance that's been going on since Nooka, the first waitress, plunked a big piece of mammoth meat on the table at the Tusk and Tarpit and demanded a seashell for her trouble.

  "'Morning, Hayden!" called Mattie Lou Entriken from a table against the far wall. She waved me over in her direction. "C'mere a minute, will you?"

  Mattie Lou was having breakfast with Wynette Winslow and Wendy Bolling. Mattie Lou and Wynette, now both in their seventies, had grown up in St. Germaine and been best friends since they were girls in pigtails. Wendy was a newcomer, only having lived here for the last fifty years. All three had outlived their husbands and all three were matriarchs of St. Barnabas. They'd been on, and in charge of, every church committee you could think to name and if I had a question about St. Barnabas, I usually went to one of them first. Mattie Lou and Wynette could be found in the church kitchen every Wednesday morning making sandwiches for the Salvation Army in Boone. Wendy occasionally joined them, but she was now on the Altar Guild, and so looked ever-so-slightly down her nose at the two other ladies. They pretended not to notice. Mattie Lou was also the church historian and was a pack-rat when it came to St. Barnabian minutia.

  Nancy went to get our coffee while I squeezed past some occupied chairs and over to the ladies' table.

  "What are the 'Zombies of Easter?'" asked Mattie Lou.

  "Pardon me?" I said, not at all sure I had heard correctly.

  "New Fellowship Baptist has their sign out in front advertising 'The Zombies of Easter,'" said Wynette. "They have a new minister you know. He's been there about a month."

  "His name's Brother Tommy or Johnny or something like that," added Mattie Lou.

  "It's Donny, dear," corrected Wendy. "Brother Donny. That's what Walleena told us. Brother Donny something-or-other."

  "That's right," agreed Wynette. "Brother Donny. Anyway, they're having a 'Zombies of Easter Walk' for the Halloween trick-or-treating. My grandson, Brandon, says the youth group is dressing like zombies and walking through town during the carnival handing out biblical salvation tracts. He says it's right out of the New Testament."

  "So what we want to know is..." said Mattie Lou.

  "What the heck are the 'Zombies of Easter?'" finished Wendy.

  "Zombies, eh?" I said, mentally running through all the zombie stories I knew of in the New Testament. Not Lazarus probably. Not Corinthians. Ah!

  "I suspect," I said, "that Brother Donny is referring to a specific scripture passage found in Matthew 27."

  "You mean there really are zombies in the Bible?"

  "Well, they weren't exactly zombies, per se," I said. "But after Jesus' resurrection, the bodies of many holy people who had died came out of their tombs and walked around Jerusalem."

  "What?" said Mattie Lou. "Dead people walkin' around? I never heard of such a thing. They never showed us that story on Sunday School flannel-boards!" She pondered the prospect for a moment. "What would they be wearing? The dead people, I mean?" She didn't wait for an answer, but instead reached into her purse and pulled out a small New Testament.

  "I guess they would have been in their linen grave wrappings," I said. "Unless they stopped by a shop somewhere and got some clothes."

  "Grave wrappings?" said an incredulous Wendy. "Like mummies?"

  Wynette shook her head. "That's not in my Bible."

  "I'm afraid it is," I said.

  "He's right," said Mattie Lou, having flipped through the thin pages to the correct passage. "Right here in Matthew. Chapter 27, verses 51 to 53. 'And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many.'"

  Nancy walked up and handed me a lidded paper cup of coffee. "What are you guys talking about?" she asked.

  "Zombies," said Wynette. "Zombies in the Bible. I never would have believed it."

  "Oh, I believe it," said Nancy. "There's a talking donkey, too. Like that one in Shrek."

  "No such thing," exclaimed Mattie Lou, snapping her New Testament shut. "Talking donkey, indeed!"

  *** />
  The celebration of Halloween, in our part of the country, was always getting mixed reviews. We are in the Bible Belt, of course, and therefore subject to many different perspectives. There were those very conservative denominations that held that celebrating a holiday by dressing up as demons, devils, witches, goblins, and other such creatures of the night was just plain heresy and wouldn't be tolerated in any shape or form. There were those semi-conservative denominations that offered the kids an alternative to trick-or-treating by having "Fall" carnivals at their church on Halloween, inviting the children to come dressed as their favorite biblical character. Of course, when the Witch of Endor and Lucifer showed up, they were both invited home to change into something more appropriate.

  Most people didn't mind Halloween. It is a fact that all kids, as well as some adults, like to dress up, and Halloween is the one day of the year that you can watch Old Man Krinklemeyer walk through the park in his red long-johns and think that maybe he decided to wear a costume this year, even though you know that he probably just forgot his overalls again.

  Halloween—All Hallows' Eve—the night before the Feast of All Saints'. (This year, celebrated on the Saturday night prior due to school.) It was a holiday for kids and when we were kids we reveled in it. We carved pumpkins in the image of scary faces and lit them with a candle, not so much to frighten off the evil spirits as was the original intent, but because it was fun. We planned out costumes for weeks in advance, hung paper skeletons from the trees; then, when the sun set, ran through the neighborhoods knocking on doors and calling "trick-or treat," all the while hoping to fill our sacks with enough candy to last us until Thanksgiving at least.

  Things change.

  Now parents buy the costumes at Walmart and schlep the kids around to wealthy-looking neighborhoods in their mini-vans, all the while keeping in touch by cell phone.

  In St. Germaine there was still that old-fashioned feeling about the whole thing: kids running up and down Maple and Oak Streets banging on doors and shrieking with delight as some adult dressed as Barney the Dinosaur or Frankenstein or the Wicked Witch of the West answered the door with a plate full of goodies.

  Moosey McCollough was a kid who loved Halloween. The other kids loved it, too, but not with the same fervor as Moosey. He was rabid.

  Moosey was the youngest of the McCollough clan, a ten-year-old for whom the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder might have been invented. All three of the children had been raised by their mother, Ardine, in a little, single-wide mobile home up in Coondog Holler. Ardine scratched a living making and selling quilts and working at the local Christmas tree farm. I helped the McColloughs out when Ardine let me, but she was a proud woman, lean and hard, and wouldn't take much charity. Hence, I had a closet-full of quilts, all beautifully handmade, and I suspected worth quite a bit more than what I'd given Ardine for them.

  PeeDee McCollough, the children's father, was no longer around. In fact, he hadn't been around for a good long time. When he'd been around, he was an abusive husband. Once he became an abusive father as well, he disappeared. Sometimes, especially in these hills, things happened, and no one looked very hard or very long for PeeDee McCollough.

  PeeDee named each of his three children after his favorite thing in the world next to himself, his truck, and his hunting dog: beer. The eldest boy, Bud, was now in his junior year at Davidson College. He was majoring in business and, after flying through his wine courses last summer, was now proud to be one of the seventy-five Master Sommeliers in the United States. His nose for wine was like nothing any of us had ever run into and, along with his expertise, he had a penchant for the lingo. It was not uncommon to hear Bud recommending some wine or another down at the Ginger Cat: "A tender Cabernet as plumose as a suckling calf; like the baby Jesus in velvet pants going down your gullet." And he was right. I was partners with Bud in a wine venture and when he turned twenty-one, we had plans to open a shop in St. Germaine. Bud had a girlfriend here in town, a tapeworm of a girl named Elphina. Just one name, like Madonna or Fabio. She was a self-styled Goth vampiress, embracing the coterie of teen-aged angst to its fullest, complete with the look: black spiked hair, black dresses, black boots, and a black-velvet choker on which dangled some sort of blood-vial jewelry. She wasn't the only girl in town that dressed like this, of course, but she was the most conspicuous. Well, unless she turned sideways. Her fashion choices had yet to rub off on Bud, but then, Bud was always an independent sort.

  Pauli Girl McCollough, Bud's eighteen-year-old sister, was the most beautiful girl in town. She was still a senior in high school, due to a bad case of pneumonia she'd contracted in the spring that kept her out of school for more than two months. She'd managed to keep up with most of her school work, but she had a few credits to complete, and would graduate at the end of the semester. Pauli Girl walked down the street like Daisy Mae, the barefoot Dogpatch damsel, her comic book boyfriends trailing in her wake like the lovesick McGoons they were. She wouldn't have a thing to do with any of them, and vowed to shake the dust of our small town off her shoes as soon as she graduated. To that end, she'd been waitressing in St. Germaine since she was fourteen and still had the very first penny she earned.

  Moosey—Moose-head Rheingold McCollough—had enough of a handicap to overcome just by virtue of the moniker given him by his drunken father after he'd slapped Ardine (after nine hours of labor) for suggesting the name "Paul," filled out the birth certificate himself, and handed it to the midwife waiting outside by her car. The name didn't bother Moosey, or anyone else in town. Nor did any of the kids make undue fun of him. In a town where there were more Tammys, Billy-Waynes, and Normettas than Mallorys, Olivias, and Heathers, a name like Moose-head Rheingold McCollough didn't raise many eyebrows. Besides, Moosey was a kid that everyone liked. His wire-rimmed glasses, seemingly always askew, framed a pair of dancing blue eyes, and although he was still missing a top cuspid, his once gap-toothed smile was almost complete and definitely contagious, even to the most fervent of curmudgeons. His head was topped with a mop of straw that hadn't yet seen a comb that could tame it. Well-worn blue jeans and coat were lovingly patched at the elbows and knees. His high-topped red Keds were his calling card.

  Moosey's Halloween posse was composed of most of the elementary Sunday School class at St. Barnabas. Moosey's best friend was Bernadette. Ashley and Christopher had been in Sunday School with both of them since kindergarten. Dewey had joined them last year. Samantha, Stuart, Addie, and Lily were all a year younger, and happy to be included. Garth and Garrett Douglas, age eight, were twins and the bane of educators everywhere. All the kids were dressed in their costumes and all were gathered in front of Brother Hog's tent.

  Brother Hog had erected his small tent in the southwest corner of Sterling Park across the street from Eden Books. He had a large tent as well—his revival tent—but that would have covered a good bit of the south end of the park, and the Kiwanis Club nixed that immediately. Still, Hog's "small tent" could easily hold twenty or thirty people. The front and side flaps of the white canvas pavilion had been lowered and there was no seeing inside. The banner outside of Hog's tent proclaimed "The Plague Faire," and the kids, some of whom had obviously done some advance reconnaissance, were waiting impatiently outside. When Hog finally pulled open the tent at eleven o'clock on the dot, Moosey and the gang dashed inside.

  The other booths opened at eleven as well and there was no shortage of Halloween revelers in Sterling Park, mostly young, but with a good dose of parents and grandparents to fill out the mix. There was plenty for everyone to do—bobbing for apples, games, races, donkey cart rides, pumpkin carving, and candy galore. In fact, the Piggly Wiggly had run out of candy earlier in the week and people around town had to go into Boone to stock up for what was looking to be a banner trick-or-treating year.

  ***

  It was raining like an orphaned rat's tears when we pulled up to Buxtehooters, a pipe-organ bar with all the class that the piano bars in the city forgot. The
dirndl-clad beer-fräuleins were the best looking dishes this side of Blue Danube, New Jersey, and they served up the suds with gusto and sing-alongs. We could hear the patrons inside whooping it up to a bawdy three-part canon having something to do with a broom and an unfortunate couple named John and Mary who were trying to assemble it.

  Pedro LaFleur was working the velvet rope when we walked up and pushed our way to the front of the line.

  "C'mon in," said Pedro, unhooking the rope for us and holding back a couple of black-clad Goth waifs with one meaty paw. "Always room for the beautiful people. You guys look like you could use a Stinksteifel. We've got it on tap."

  "I'll give it a try," I said. "Can you bust loose of the fashion parade? I might have a job for us."

  Pedro was my right hand man, mean as a snapping turtle with a face to match. He eyed Tessie with a look that said, "Listen, toots, you may be stacked like a fat man's plate in a one-time through smorgasbord, but I like my women stringy and tough, like hard working bird-dogs, trained to the gun and loving it."

  "Does it pay anything?" he snided with a sneer.

  "The usual," I said.

  "Yeah, I figured," he grumbled. "Great, just great." Pedro was a countertenor with a gig at the Presbyterian cathedral on the corner, but since the recession hit he'd been relegated to the eight o'clock Victorian service singing the alto line in Dudley Buck anthems, that and bouncing undesirables at Buxtehooters. It made him mean, but then, Dudley Buck would make anyone mean.

  "We could shoot the works," I said. "I hear vampires have some loot."

  "Vampires, eh?" He grubbed a mitt across his grizzled gills and grinned grimly. "I could afford to cash out."

  "Yeah?"

  "My countertenor days are numbered," he said, waving us in. "I'm losing my high Ds. Let me see what I can do. I might know a guy."