“Clem was a good boy,” Mae said softly. “Was some said he was touched, but I knew the truth of it. That dad. That damned Sam Tanner was the one was touched. Touched by too many bottles.” Mae’s gaze swung down to the jug at her side. She frowned, and then lifted it to her lips, drinking deeply, and stepping forward to offer it to Brandt.
At first he couldn’t move to accept it. He could only stand, and watch, wondering what was the right thing to do and knowing that no matter how right a thing might be it couldn’t change a second of what he’d just seen . . . what had been released. Hand trembling, hooking the jug quickly, he brought it up and tipped it, drinking deep. He coughed, nearly choking, then gulped again before lowering the stoneware vessel, eyes closing for a second, and feeling Syn prying the jug from his hand.
“Touched by the bottle,” Mae went on, “and so many devils you couldn’t have beaten them out of him with a hammer. Just mean. You ever know a boy,” she turned to Dexter, common ground easing the pain of the moment, “who’d hurt a dog? Who’d laugh and stone it and whip it with sticks and lure it back with a bit of meat, just to beat it again?”
Dexter blinked. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Or hang a litter of puppies in a gunny sack, shoot the bag with buckshot, and keep the one that lived, because it was a ‘fighter?’ Yes.”
Mae nodded. “Like that. Mean. Started a long time before he was old enough to be fathering children he had no business within miles of, but here, out here in South Haven, well, things get overlooked. You live far enough from the spit-hole they call town square, you live in your own world. Stay clear of the freeways and don’t shoot nobody, you got yourself a safe home. God save America.
“Sam was a survivor. Emma, the girl he stole away from her ma over by the tracks, she wasn’t a survivor, but she was lucky, in some ways. Sam, he would beat a dog for walkin’ on the same side of the street he did, but he wouldn’t tolerate anything wrong for Emma. She was his one treasure. Not bright, mind you, but what use did that man have of a bright woman? She could stew meat and brew coffee, and knew enough to keep her mouth shut when he was drinkin’, which was most of the time.
“Then there came Clem and Eave, and everything went to hell in a hand basket. That Sam, he never counted on kids. He had him a dog, old bitch coonhound, that he loved. I saw that animal heavy with pups so many times I can’t count. Never saw a pup. Sam had a limit, one per species, and all his. When Doc Nutman told him it was to be twins, there was a storm brewing in the depths of those cold eyes before the words was dead in the air.
“Only thing Sam never counted on was that girl Emma. ‘Tweren’t for her, I suspect we’d have never seen those twins. I don’t believe they’d have ever breathed or walked an hour in their lives, but she saved them. Don’t know how. She kept them alive, and she kept them at her side, day and night. In church, they were front pew. The moment services ended, they was gone, but they was there every week like a Swiss clock.
“Clem and Eave was ten when Emma died. No one knows what happened, really. Sam came walkin’ into town one day, Emma in his arms, already passed, his eyes as dead as two lumps of coal. He didn’t say a word. He brought her to the church, laid her on the steps out front, so gentle you’d have thought he was a child playing with a kitten, and then he turned on his heel and marched off, pretty as you please. No one said a word.
“Local sheriff wanted no part of that man. No one did.
“That left the children. Clem and Eave still came in every Sunday for services. Don’t know how they got Sam to allow that. They came, and they sat, quiet as you please, right where they’d sat every week of their lives when their mother was with them. Their eyes would be on the floor, as if there was something to be ashamed of, but they listened, and when the hymn-time came you could hear them singing together softly.”
“Why did you bring them to your home?” Dexter asked, breaking into the moment. “Why?”
“They was hungry,” Mae answered. For just that moment, her animated voice dulled. “I wanted to feed them, one solid meal. They were so . . . naive, and pretty. So needy. I remember asking them, you know?” Mae’s head lifted and her eyes flashed. “You know what that girl child said to me?”
I don’t think we should, Mae ma’am. My daddy, he needs me. I’m the mommy now, and dinner will be late.
“All the while that girl is speakin’, her brother Clem is nodding. Nodding like a plum empty-headed fool. You can see in his eyes these are words he’s heard, again and again. You can see in his eyes that he’s hungry, and believes she should be cookin’. You can see in her eyes that when she says, ‘I’m the mommy,’ she doesn’t just mean she cooks.
“It’s then I see her for the first time as a young woman, a young woman so like her mama you couldn’t tell the image of the one gone from the one before you, quiet and mouse-like and eyes turned to the floor. The same glow when you mentioned that Sam’s name and all the while, Clem noddin’ like a village idiot.
“You know I took those babies home. I took them home and Donald was standin’ there at the door as we came, his eyes wide as saucers and his head shaking before he said a word.”
Mae, you’re askin’ for trouble. You’re beggin’ for it. Sam ain’t goin’ to take to this no way.
“And I didn’t listen. I brought them in. I set that Eave to dicing the potatoes and I snapped the pole beans. We had chicken a’plenty and fixin’s to make it go a long ways. Plenty of food. I just wanted to see them eat.
“What I should have done was to call the sheriff. If he’d hightailed it, he might have gotten there in time. If I’d failed to mention who I was calling about, he might have done it, too. Never did.
“And those two children—those babies, all burned and ruined on the table, Eave crying for her ‘daddy,’ and Clem moaning. I fell in the corner, just fell, flat on my ass and hands to my eyes. I couldn’t look at what was left of Sam on the floor, couldn’t bear to see any of it, so I cried. I was like that when I heard the screams, ripping through the air and slicing at my ears and heart. I knew the voice, you see. I knew it from whispered soft words in my ear at night and the first things spoken over coffee in the morning. I knew it from forever-vows and long-whispered ‘I love you, Mae’s’ on the porch swing.
“Donald was screaming, louder than I would have believed possible, and there was another sound, higher pitched still, a keening, wailing voice that rose and fell like a siren. I was up quick, on my feet and shaking my head to clear the cobwebs, but it was too late. Donald was falling toward me. His eyes were wide. So wide. He reached for me, and there was no accusation in that gaze, nothing but love—regret. He reached for me and I stood there like a bump on a dead log as he fell, face first. He’d hit the floor before I saw the blood, streaming and pumping from his back.
“And there behind him stood Clem. He was nodding, still nodding, as if Eave were telling him it was time for her to cook dinner for Daddy because she was the mommy now. The blood was splattered over every inch of him, coating his arm and drenching the white shirt he wore each Sunday. That boy was weaving back and forth and back and forth like a snake, his lips moving without a sound to be heard.
“I screamed then. I screamed, my hands slipping up to grip my hair and my eyes locked to him like I was hypnotized. The world was crashing down around me, tumbling and falling to pieces, and he didn’t see it at all. He didn’t see Donald, bleeding to death on the floor, or his father, smashed beyond recognition. His sister.
“I looked to the girl then, desperate, and I saw where all that blood had come from. Not from Donald. Not from my Donald at all. Eave was torn open. Not a slice. Not a clean wound, but torn, throat to belly, one long ragged rip and another, and another; each time momentum stopped he must have dragged that blade free and dug it in again. The table ran red. Clem rocked. The world rocked, and I fell. My head caught the kitchen counter hard, and I don’t really know what happened much after that.
“I know when I woke, he was still rocking. I know when I c
alled the doctor, for what reason I’m still not certain, and when I called the Sheriff, he never moved except slowly up and back. I went to him and I took that knife.”
Mae stopped for the first time since she’d started, glaring at them all in defiance.
“I took that knife, and I washed it, and I dried it. I stepped around Donald and I gritted my teeth, blinked through the tears, and found a way to slide it into Sam’s hand before they arrived. I took a kitchen towel, and I soaked it in Eave’s blood, twisting it and wringing it over Sam until he was a spattered wreck of gore.
“Then I washed up, just a little, and I took that boy and sat him in the corner. He was still hungry. I don’t think he saw a bit of it. I don’t think he knew what he’d done.”
“They believed Sam did it?” Brandt asked softly, breaking in finally, and drawing Synthia closer.
Mae nodded, lowering her old eyes toward the gravel. “They’d have believed anything in the world that took someone like Sam away forever. I kept Clem with me. For years.”
“What happened?” Liz asked very suddenly. “Why is Clem . . . here tonight?”
“He walked out the door one night,” Mae said slowly, “like he did every night of his life. He walked down there to that freeway, and he took a stroll into the front end of a big rig. Not even a warning, or a horn. One moment in the shadows, and the next . . .”
“An angel,” Synthia finished, her voice broken and small. “An angel,” she repeated.
Mae dropped her eyes again, without comment. The sounds of the countryside intruded gently. The crickets echoed, magnified by the void Mae’s voice had left. Brandt turned to Synthia, hugging her, and the motion broke the last of the spell.
“You kids better get some sleep,” Mae said, hardly more than a broken whisper.
Dexter rose from his seat, moving to Brandt and Synthia and retrieving the jug. He took a long swig, and then walked to Shaver. Shaver looked up, and as Dexter started to hand him the jug, the drummer stopped, caught by something in those eyes. Dexter glanced down to where Shaver clutched his hands to his belly.
“Again?” he asked.
Shaver shook his head. “Not like that. Too much, too soon, but I’ll be okay.”
Dexter nodded, then tipped the jug to Shaver’s lips and held it as his friend swallowed. Liz shook her head, eyes red, as Dexter offered it to her next. She helped Shaver to his feet, being very careful of his hands.
Dexter turned to Mae. He walked to the old woman slowly, the jug swinging easily in his hand. As he reached her, he swung it up and took another long belt before handing it back. Mae took it, immediately turning away, but he stopped her with a hand placed gently on her shoulder.
“It isn’t a bad thing, Mae,” Dexter said. “There are those who deserve our love and consideration, and there are those who deserve nothing. There are those who would have cheerfully killed Clem for what happened. You chose to care for him. He has waited a long time for tonight. You owe him this. You know what he is waiting for.”
Mae stopped cold. She turned to Dexter, her face slack and pale, and her eyes wide. “I can’t.”
Dexter slid an arm around her back, turning her away from the building and back toward the parking lot. “You can, and you will. We can’t be stopping by here every time you think you might be ready, you know. Got a lot of pressing engagements.”
Mae listened, and yet she didn’t. As she turned, the humming of the overhead light grew impossibly loud. They all turned, watching as she watched. The parking lot was gone again. The desert stretched, endless and desolate, and they littered that plain. Row upon row, silent and staring, waiting. Watching.
Brandt closed his eyes. The pain had subsided, and yet, the scene shifted. The dull ache was nothing more than that. He didn’t need to play. There was no more to be released. Not here, not now. Synthia moved closer in his arms, and he held her, his eyes opening once more to watch as Dexter and Mae stepped toward that silent crowd.
As the two stepped forward, a single slender figure melted from the gathered angels. His eyes were turned to the ground. His features were obscured, but they all knew him. They all knew him now and could not have forgotten with all the tequila and Jack Daniels in the world.
Mae stopped. Dexter stood beside her, his arm still firmly around her shoulder, and at last she lifted her gaze.
“It wasn’t your fault, Clem. None of it. Wasn’t your fault you was born with the damned Devil as your daddy, and not your fault I brought you home that day. That I had to be the one to help you. Not your fault I took the blame and let you walk in front of a truck. Not sure there’s a bit of fault in any of it, but I’m sorry. So sorry.”
Mae moved forward then, breaking free of Dexter’s arm and reaching out, wrapping herself around the wraith-Clem in what would have been a tight, tight hug. Would have been, if that moment, that very second she moved, it hadn’t faded to nothing. All of it. They stood, watching Mae hug the air in the center of an empty, poorly lit parking lot, and they cried. Every one of them, tears streaming and breath gasping. Mae hugged herself, and Dexter moved in closer, wrapping his own slender arms around the woman’s shoulders.
The others moved forward as if on cue, joining the hug. One, then another of them wrapping around the others and laying their heads on the shoulder of the person before them. It was a long time before they broke and slipped into their separate rooms, different hugs blending to embraces and heat and in other rooms to deep sleep.
In a distant place, the candles burned up and down the road and a table waited, squat and low, long and endless, bordering the woods where one walked—hungry and alone.
Sixteen
Madeline carefully aligned the candles along her walk, watching the road, and the woods, and the mountain in quick succession. The sidewalk shimmered with the flickering light of dozens of white candles. She moved to the sides, carefully placing each votive in alignment with the last, forming the cross with symmetrical precision.
Eight to one side, three up, and eight back, moving slowly. One thing Brian had taught her was precision. Each thing in its place.
With a soft shiver, Madeline moved to stand at the center of the crucifix. She didn’t know what had moved her, but somehow it seemed the right way to face what was to come. The candles reminded her of days when the church had been her life. They reminded her of Brian, and of Elizabeth, and of Reverend Forbes and his deep, resonant voice.
The brush rustled at the edge of the trees. Madeline shivered and snuffed the long fireplace match she’d been holding, letting it drop to the ground. She had a leather-bound edition of the Bible in the pocket of her blouse, and she pulled that free, clutching it to her breast tightly.
No candles lined the road from the church this night, but she knew he was coming. She’d known since that day he slid past the front of her house, not stopping, really, but watching her, that something was wrong. Now, with all the attention from the congregation, and the town fathers, and with the reformation of the old covenants, Madeline was doubly wary.
And she was worried. Worried for Brian. Worried if Brian would even respond, or if he were watching. She could feel him, sense him, but that meant nothing in the face of what was to come. None had acknowledged his sacrifice for so long—would he? Did he hunger for his sacrifice, or did he merely hunger for retribution?
Madeline turned to the bent and twisted bit of wood dangling from the cross in the center of her yard. Brian had left it. She hadn’t seen him. He had left no note, nor a sign, and yet one day, it had been there, leaning gently against that cross, looking like nothing so much as a visitation from the heavens—a reminder of mortality.
Madeline had left it as it was for days, watching it, thinking about it. Wondering what to do. In the end, there had been but one thing she could do. She’d found Brian’s old hammer, a pile of half-rusted nails, and she’d raised the twisted wood to the center of the cross, propped on a base of old bricks and stones, to be hammered into its rightful place.
>
Madeline remembered that day as if it had happened within hours, and not a decade in the past. She remembered how the tears had streamed as she’d placed the first nail, irrational tears that hadn’t ended until hours after the final stroke had implanted that “idol” on her cross. She remembered kneeling for hours, the hammer long forgotten and her brow pressed to the knot at the center of the log.
There had been a strange comfort in that. No one had seen. No one ever came to visit her, and there was nothing further along the road up the mountain than her home. Madeline had had the log, and her yard, and her mind to herself that day. She felt in her heart that Brian had been watching, that it had all happened according to a plan he’d set in motion, but there was no way to be certain. Brian had been gone so long that if she hadn’t had the pictures, Madeline might not have even remembered what he looked like.
There was a rustling at the tree line, and she shifted her attention, slipping a bit closer to the center of the candlelit cross. At first there was nothing. She stood, and she watched, heart hammering, as the shadows continued to be shadows, and the night grew progressively chillier, despite the season. Madeline strained her vision, forcing the darkness to part, searching each nook and cranny of darkness, but she might as well have stood in the desert in the middle of the night and screamed.
No one was there. Nothing moved, not really, only shadows that danced in and out of the periphery of her vision, speeding her heart and slipping back to darkness.
“Who’s there?” she called out, her voice more shrill than she’d intended, and without the force. “Who’s there, I say? Come out and face me in the light.”
At first, nothing. She coughed, wavering on shaky legs, and nearly turned back to the house, feeling foolish for standing there alone.
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