Murders Among Dead Trees

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “Shoulda married that other guy.” Ministers, no matter which variety, are on call all the time and summoned to the ER to bless every broken toe. Birget knew the demands of his calling. On those nasty mornings, she was looking for a fight. None of that nonsense today. While she made her coffee, he dawdled over his cereal in silence. When she came to the table, he got up and headed for the door without looking at her.

  “What’s the rush?”

  He paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked up at the hallway light for a moment. It did not flash. “See you in church.”

  “It’s only just nine and I’m not dressed yet — ”

  Ted was already out the door. He walked across the yard from the rectory to the side door of the church and unlocked it. John Castillo, the organist, was warming up in the sanctuary. The front door would be unlocked and the choir would arrive soon. John seemed to be alternating between scales, Rock of Ages and the tune played at baseball and hockey games that ended with the crowd yelling “Charge!”

  Ted squirrelled into his tiny basement office. His predecessor, Rev. Ditko, who retired eight years previously, had left a bright yellow “Do Not Disturb” sign on the inside doorknob of the office door. “At some point you’re going to start using this,” the old man had said, “and then you’ll wonder why you didn’t always use it.”

  For the first time in his career, Ted stuck the sign on the outside doorknob and slammed the door shut. He spun the old skeleton key, locking it. It was the first time he had done that, too. Ted headed straight for the cabinet that contained communion wine like a looter in a riot. The bottle was dusty, a gift from a young Catholic priest he’d met years ago at a non-denominational conference. He should have known better than to give wine to his brand of Baptist. Ted had never been drunk, even in college. It seemed imperative now.

  He fell into an empty stupor, seeing only the globe light’s flash between each swallow of acidic wine. The bells in the steeple rang so Margaret Cillian, the choir’s ancient soprano was undoubtedly in the sanctuary. One Sunday last summer, a young alto had dared to push the button to ring the steeple bell recording in her stead and the old woman had chewed him out for trying to steal her honor. A headache began to form deep in the center of Ted’s skull as the fake bell rang out to call the faithful, as if all city dwellers needed was a reminder. As if they were village peasants who would pull themselves from their straw beds at the insistent pealing.

  The clock crawled closer to eleven. The congregation trickled and then clambered in. Ted drank faster, wincing at the taste of the horrid stuff. The old wooden floorboards creaked and thumped above him with every footstep. His dread grew. He took longer drags of wine. Something built inside him along with the growing headache. Whatever was going to come out, he couldn’t keep it in its cage.

  The choir started up above him, their singing barely muffled. Ted shuddered. Someone knocked on his office door, at first hesitant and then with growing conviction. Two female voices parried with each other. One of the women ran off while the other continued knocking on the heavy old door.

  “Ted? Are you in there? Are you alright?” Birget, of course.

  Ted let her pound on the door and made sure the wine bottle was empty before he pulled himself up and turned the lock. He yanked the door open to find Marcus, the kid they paid to be the church handyman. He held a large screwdriver, apparently about to exercise his mechanical options in popping the door. Birget, looking pale, stood at his shoulder.

  “Ted! Are you okay? We called and called. What have you been doing in there?”

  He grabbed his robe hanging on the back of the door and breezed past them.

  “Ted? Ted! I asked you a question. What have you been doing in there?”

  “Jerking off,” he said. “I just found out that’s all I ever do.” He didn’t look back and steamed up the stairs to the dais.

  The choir climbed lazily through an old gospel, perhaps stalling for his benefit. When Ted burst through the door, John mangled a few notes at the organ. Usually he sat off to the side while the choir stood and sang but now he stalked in front of them and grabbed the sides of the altar. Ted’s knuckles grew white as the choir pressed forward through another chorus.

  His headache burst then into a pressure he had never before felt. He waved the choir off. Most sat immediately, though the choir director, Brad Cherney, kept waving his arms, oblivious to Ted’s warning. Only Margaret Cillian, that old crone, kept singing, apparently seizing on this moment of confusion to take a rare solo.

  “Siddown!” Ted cried and John stopped playing in the middle of a discordant note.

  A murmur went through the congregation. People leaned toward each other, whispering all at once. Ted spotted Birget at the back of the church. The combination of her complexion and her white dress made her look like a terrified ghost. Marcus stood behind her, the screwdriver still in his hand. The boy had an amused smile on his face and that gave Ted the courage to smile, too.

  “Aren’t you just sick of these old songs?” he said too loudly into the microphone. “I mean, really. These songs really suck. We should celebrate more. You want a church meeting that rocks? We should play some old Springsteen for you and get your blood going again.”

  He looked over the crowd as the shockwave hit. All the regulars were there, each family in their accustomed pew. The church board members sat in the front row. Six old men looked up at him with red eyes and their blue veins throbbed through their paper skin, lips tight and jaws clenching. They were businessmen who were getting ready to die so church was very serious business. In private, and only to Birget, he called the church elders The Blue Hair Crew. In meetings, they called him Pastor and he called each of them “sir.” They didn’t appear sensitive to sarcasm.

  Ted felt his skull pound further and wondered if its beat would ever crescendo. Ted’s own physician, Chad Bradshaw, sat just a few rows back with his pretty wife, Alicia. The doctor sat with his arms crossed and watched him intently, his forehead wrinkled. Ted thought briefly of going straight to Dr. Bradshaw. He felt like he was on the first long uphill climb on a roller coaster. Then he remembered the message he received from the light and gripped the altar even harder. As his headache banged on, Ted closed his eyes and listened to the mass of voices babbling at each other. It sounded like a gaggle of geese on fire. “Sh!”

  No response.

  “Shut up, you robots!” Ted yelled and the congregation fell into silence.

  “You know what I see here? I see a bunch of people who smile on Sunday and shoot you on Monday! I see a bunch of people who haven’t received the message of the light!”

  More murmurs and nervous rustling.

  “I have a message for you from the light!” Ted paused and had no idea what he was going to say next but was pleased to find that the headache receded as he spoke. “I got a pressure in my head and preaching you the good news is apparently the valve that’s going to release that pressure.”

  Birget walked briskly up the middle aisle. “The Reverend is not feeling well today. This is…most unusual.”

  “You siddown, too, you old cow!”

  “Ted!”

  “I’ve got something to say and you’re going to hear it before this headache starts up again.” Dr. Bradshaw stood, apparently ready to jump forward if needed in his professional capacity, but his eyes were full of doubt as to what he should do next.

  “Don’t you folks worry about me,” Ted said. “Something came to me last night in a flash and…wow, I realized a few things. I’ve been down in my office for the last couple hours knocking back a little wine and thinking about it. It couldn’t be more clear.”

  “Oh, my God!” Birget said, and turned to walk out the door.

  Ted smiled and looked behind him to see the choir looking at him with hard eyes. He looked to the back and Marcus, standing there in his cheap sports jacket and blue jeans.

  “There it is. I’ve been married to that woman for years but I dare to ste
p out of the mold just once and she’s looking for the door!”

  A group of parents with children stood up as if some silent parental alarm known only to them had gone off. They moved as one toward the exit following Birget.

  “You folks with young children should stay because, today, I’m going to stop the lies and we’ll save those little tykes a lot of time and guilt. We’re going to save those kids all the time I’ve wasted! They’re young so they might get it!” Ted gestured to the line of hard-faced men directly in front of him with their blue-haired wives. “The Blue Hair Crew are too scared and too close to the grave to take the truth up the ass now but for you it’s not too late!”

  He heard a thud behind him. Margaret Cillian had fainted. Ted glanced back and smiled. “I never like that old bitch. And from now on, anybody who wants to push the button to ring the steeple bells can do so any time they want, day or night! We’ve got to tell people the truth revealed to me in the light!”

  Dr. Bradshaw moved forward then. “Ted, I think you better come with me. You’re either just drunk or something is terribly wrong with you. Major changes in personality are a symptom.”

  “Screw off.”

  Another wave of murmurs went through the crowd. Ted’s headache started galloping again to match his heart’s pace. More people got up to leave while others appeared to settle in, fascinated and titillated with the changes to his usual, staid Sunday service.

  One voice pierced the din. Marcus yelled from the rear, “Give us the good news, Rev! What’s up?”

  Ted could have kissed him. “The good news? The good news is you sorry bastards can stop grovelling! I’ll tell you why, too! You ever read any old stories? Look at any Greek tragedy or Homer, say. The Odyssey and all that. In all those old stories, a hawk or two would fly off to the right and it would mean one thing. If they flew to the left, it would mean another thing. Prophets would tell kings some shit they saw in a dream and it would all mean something. It’s modern times now. Now we know those prophets were schizophrenics! The voices were just in their heads! If there’s drought, it’s because the earth’s weather is messed up. It doesn’t mean anything beyond the fact that you drove Hummers too long and the pollution screwed something up in ways we don’t quite understand.

  “While we’re at it, a groundhog who sees his shadow in the spring? It’s just a big rodent. Spring comes at the same time every year no matter what. A rodent is not a meteorologist! Why do you pay attention to that? And…and I’m just a rodent. I have not seen my shadow. I have seen the light! I can’t get you into heaven! I can’t even get you a bargain on winter radials!”

  Murmurs flitted amid the crowd — it was no longer a congregations per se. Many were listening to his slurred rant instead of going straight to their default: taking offense at the unexpected. He let out an appreciative, growling laugh.

  “Last night, a light in my house flashed and for a brief moment I thought it might mean something. Then the light said, ‘Bullshit, it’s an electrical anomaly!’ It said, ‘It’s a short that will cost you a bundle of money for an electrician to fix. My flash of light doesn’t actually mean anything. It’s a wiring issue, a faulty connection. Wires heat up, make a tentative connection and the connection breaks as the wires cool. That’s all. And you know what came to me? We’re all bullshit, electrical anomalies!”

  “Tell it, man! Teach it, brother!” Marcus yelled.

  Dr. Bradshaw made a motion for Ted to calm himself, which the pastor ignored.

  “This is good news!” Ted continued. “It means an evil god didn’t give us September 11th because of our wicked ways! It means homosexuals don’t get AIDS because God hates them. If you based who He hates on who gets AIDS then God must love lesbians…though Jesus knows we all love lesbians, don’t we? Lesbians so hot.” His eyes fell on Cybill Shipman in her best denim overalls two rows back. Ted blurted, “Well, you know. The lipstick lesbians, I mean.”

  More gasps of horror. Marcus doubled over and let out a shout of a laugh.

  “Holy shit!” Burt Messier, the Blue Hair car dealer, blurted out from the front row. His wife and two daughters sat beside him. He tried to cover the ears of the nearest girl. She leaned away from Burt, desperate to hear Ted’s message.

  “Exactly, Burt. This is all holy shit. Let me tell you something — ”

  “Somebody call the police!” someone in the congregation called out.

  “Call an ambulance!” Dr. Bradshaw yelled back

  “Burt, let me tell you something before the cops show up,” Ted continued on smoothly. “You’re here because you’re trying to bargain your way into heaven. Your best years are over. You’re stuck with that toothless bag of bones beside you and you want another shot. Someday soon you’re going to wake up with some incurable disease and you want to hope that your life means something. Or after you die you want another life that means something since you pretty much screwed up this one. Am I right?”

  “You son of a bitch!” Burt said, growing purple with rage.

  “You’re a good Christian, Burt, so I know you’ll forgive me.”

  “Bastard!”

  “Careful, Burt. You’re still in church. If you’re right about your view of the universe, you’re really fucking yourself over…now, where was I? Oh, yeah, I was talking about the horrible incurable disease Burt is scheduled to get any day now.”

  Burt looked like he was about to get up but then sat down, stricken.

  “Tell us the good news, Rev!” Marcus said again. “Don’t stop!”

  “The good news is that if you hear my message today, the bargaining is over. It’s going to be such a comfort to face your final days knowing that no evil god did this to you. You’re just a fluke, an electrical anomaly. You don’t have to try to pray so hard you thwart the determination of an all powerful god to kill you off. There’s no negotiation to be done. You can finally, for the first time in your entire meaningless existence, be free of fear. You’re coming from nothing and headed to nothing! You! You can be godless and free like me!”

  Dr. Bradshaw tackled him and brought him down. “Et tu, Brute?” Ted said. “And you, a man of science! I’m so disappointed. You, of all people, should get it. You’re a high priest of society, too!”

  “Shut up, Ted —”

  “The good doctor explained.”

  “Shut up!”

  The headache was gone and Ted couldn’t remember ever feeling so well.

  The doctor was right about one thing and he had proof. The shadow in the CAT scan, he told Ted a few weeks later, indicated that something was very much wrong with him. “It’s a brain tumor, I’m afraid, Reverend. Inoperable.”

  “Just call me Ted and don’t be afraid.”

  “It’s a brain tumor, Ted.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “This isn’t a normal reaction. That tumor must be pressing on something. This is not appropriate. Do you feel euphoric, Ted?”

  “Nah, don’t worry about me. I’m not wailing and crying and throwing myself around because…well, this is just the Circle of Death, Simba — no guilt or doubt required.”

  “Um…”

  “You’ll come around once you think about it for awhile. You’re a smart guy.”

  Dr. Bradshaw looked at him for a few beats, his face solemn. “I’m smart enough to know that I’d rather be happy than right.”

  “That’s a choice. This is all about choices. I suddenly find I’ve got a lot of choices. Birget’s moved in with her mother so I can watch sports on TV. I don’t have to fake being patient when Birget says I should watch something more worthy of my time. And I always know where the TV remote is now.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll do the logical thing. Publicly recant, claim disability, blame the tumor for going off the rails, squat in the rectory until my new friend in my skull kills me off. Or maybe one of these days I’ll wander down the highway and throw my carcass in front of
a semi. Given the choices modern medicine offers, that would be the logical thing to do.”

  “Have you thought about moving somewhere? I can’t do much for you, but you may have some time to see something of the world before you go.”

  “Nah. One part of the world is pretty much like any other and I don’t want to be far from the light bulb in my upstairs hallway. It might have something else to say before I’m done.”

  “Ted, if you need anything — ”

  Ted shook his head as he got up. “Having a god to answer to is such a demanding thing. The standards are superhuman, but we aren’t that super. It’s unfair, like asking a dog to type. People are easier to deal with now. They don’t expect perfection anymore. I’m relieved.”

  He paused to throw his troubled doctor a smile before he strolled out the door, out of the waiting room and into bright sunlight. He could do whatever he wanted. But what? What mattered now?

  I'LL TELL YOU WHAT THEY WON'T

  You’ll notice a crossroad here with Asia Unbound, so it’s nice to see the story from another perspective. Isn’t it strange that people get so offended where sex is involved, but violence is fine by them? Baffling. I was surprised to find that one of my most trusted readers, oldest friend and consiglieri, Peter, declared this story the saddest he’d ever read. “Pete,” I said, “I’m writing fiction, not an instruction manual.” He warned me not to publish it so, naturally, here it is. I don’t judge my characters. That’s up to the reader and your visceral reactions. Bad guys are fascinating in one particular feat: They don’t think they are bad guys. ~ Chazz

  Plan A complete. There’s just enough light leaking under the door to pick out the outlines of shapes on the floor. I can’t really tell which is which, but the trail is predictable. It always ends in a pile of shorts and panties at the edge of the bed. Take the socks and shoes off first or you look stupid, that’s my advice.

  I wish someone had told me the way things really are, so I’m thinking this through, sorting out what you need to know. Somebody’s got to tell you the truth and it’s down to me. I take this responsibility very seriously. I’m going to get this all straight in my head and later I’ll write it all down for you. Feel free to pass on joy. It’s the only way to stop the conspiracy.