Chapel of Ease (25 page)

As I sang, I watched them, wondering anew about their wings. They weren't just folded up under their clothes: Thorn's sundress was far too light to disguise that. So was it some kind of physical transformation, like a werewolf? No, that wasn't right, either, because they didn't look any different in their fairy forms.

And yet they
did.
Naked, their wings flexing in the moonlight, they'd both looked
perfect.
As she sat before me now, Thorn was thin and rather wiry; last night she'd been curved in just the right exquisite places. C.C., as good-looking as he was normally, had been a god. Whatever they did, however they changed, it was almost as if the skin they wore now was the disguise, a way for such perfect beings to move among normal people and not cause riots.

And then I remembered the word: “glamour.” It was how the fairies disguised themselves in stories, and made people see what they wanted to see. But had I seen their glamour last night … or was I seeing it now?

When I finished the last chorus, Ladonna wiped away tears and said, “That's some beautiful music, Matt. Wasn't it, Gerald?”

“It purely was,” he said. He wasn't crying, but the sadness in his voice made up for it. “He must've worked awful hard to get that good.”

“He was always revising and tweaking,” I said, trying not to cry myself. “That line about, ‘the things we most want to stay sharp / turn dull before the others,' he put that in just a couple of days before…” A tear escaped and ran down the side of my nose. I wiped it away.

“Thank you, Matt,” Thorn said. She hadn't cried, but I could tell she was moved.

“So I reckon when you see the show,” Gerald said, “you find out what's buried in the chapel.”

“Uh … no, actually,” I said. “You never do.”

“Huh.” He turned to Ladonna. “You ever hear of anything being buried in that old chapel?”

“Not a peep,” Ladonna said. “Seems like it'd make a lot of people want their money back.”

“It kind of works in context,” I said.

The screen door opened and C.C. entered. I almost gasped out loud as he filled the room with his presence. I wanted to rush to him, but of course, I couldn't do that in front of all these others.

He saw everyone's expression and said, “Wow, what's the bad news?”

“Matt was singing for us,” Ladonna said.

“The way y'all look, he must've been awful.”

“No, he sang all the songs Rayford wrote for his play,” Thorn said. “They're sad.”

I looked at the two of them, remembering what we'd all three done the night before and wondering if it was suddenly as vivid to them as it was to me. But neither betrayed anything out of the ordinary.

“I'm sorry I missed it,” C.C. said. “If it's all right, I'm going to take Matt out for lunch down to the Pair-A-Dice.”

“You gonna go back and fix that tractor?” Gerald asked C.C.

“Why? You ain't going to be plowing nothing,” Ladonna answered. “You're going to sit right there on that couch and surf all them channels you pay for every month and never watch.”

“I'll do it this afternoon,” C.C. promised. “And I'll even wipe off the blood for you at no extra charge.” He turned to Thorn. “You want to come?”

She smiled wistfully. “No, I think you two have more to talk about than I do.”

“See you later, then.”

I followed C.C. out to his truck, and it wasn't until we were down the road and out of sight of the house that I asked, “Did last night really happen?”

“You think you dreamed it?”

“I dreamed talking to Ray. Did
that
really happen, too?”

“Around here, it might. If he came back as a haint, you might see him almost like he was still alive.”

“‘Around here' seems to be a weird place.”

He laughed. “That's true enough.”

We didn't hold hands this time, but there was a comfortable air between us, the kind that develops when two people realize they're compatible in ways other than sex. It struck me that I'd known C.C. for only two days, and might know him for only one more; I was scheduled to fly back tomorrow. But being with him felt old and comfortable. It would never be that way with Joaquim, although I wondered if it was with whomever he was seeing behind my back. Hell, for me it had never been that way with
anyone.

“So where are we going?” I asked.

“The Pair-A-Dice. It's a local roadhouse, but they serve terrific burgers and fries. It's the one spot in the county that anyone, from either side, can come and not run into any trouble.”

If I'd thought about it, I would've realized what he meant by that, but I was still fuzzy from the previous night and the emotional impromptu concert. I watched the pattern as sunlight flickered through the trees, idly wondered if Bigfoot lived in these woods, and almost fell back asleep before C.C. said, “Well, here it is.”

It was a long concrete building with two big wooden cutouts of dice perched at the roof's peak. They'd been recently repainted, but the wood itself was warped, cracked, and needed to be replaced. A row of small birds sat along the top edge, and took off as we got out. A half dozen other vehicles parked around the building, all old and worn.

When we went inside, I was a little taken aback. Much like the barn where they'd held the wake, the Pair-A-Dice's inner proportions didn't seem to quite match its outer ones. It wasn't outlandish, like
Doctor Who
's TARDIS, but it did seem odd. I resolved to pay more attention when I left to see if I was imagining things.

There were mismatched tables at one end of the room, and a small stage at the other. A battered piano rested beneath an enormous old heater that hung from the ceiling. A bar ran along part of one wall, and behind it was a window into the kitchen. A broad-shouldered girl seemed to be the only server working.

We took seats at an empty table, and C.C. motioned for the girl. As she dropped off water and silverware, she said, “Hey, there, C.C. Who's your new friend?”

“This is Matt, from New York. He was a friend of Rayford Parrish's.”

“Oh,” she said sympathetically, “I'm so sorry for your loss, then. I didn't know Rayford that well, but he always seemed nice. And he sure could sing.”

“He was,” I said. “And he could. Thank you.”

C.C. ordered burgers and beer for us both, and when the server left, he said, “I hope that wasn't too presumptuous. It's just that they're famous for their burgers. And the fries ain't bad either.”

Impulsively, I said, “I don't think anything's too presumptuous after last night.”

His cheeks actually turned pink, and he looked away. But he smiled.

I indicated the stage. “So, do they have a lot of music here?”

“They do. Like I said, both sides can come here and not fight. So this is where they jam instead. You be surprised how well people who hate each other's guts can get along when they're playing. If we could just take it outside this building—”

Without warning, a man sat in one of the other chairs at our table, directly across from me. He leaned his elbows on the table and asked, “So what are you two queers talking about? Who's gonna suck whose dick?” He smiled, revealing a mouthful of perfect white teeth.

I didn't move. This guy radiated the hateful, entitled air of a full-time bully, and even though he looked to be about thirty years old, he had the swagger of a teenager. He also had a family resemblance to Winslow and Mustache Durant. I looked over at C.C. for confirmation.

“Nobody's talking to you, Billy,” C.C. said. “Why don't you just run off and fuck some more pigs?”

“Woo-hoo, must be that time of the month for you, huh?” Then he looked at me. “And this must be the New York faggot who knows fung ku.” He mockingly exaggerated the last two words.

“This is Billy Durant,” C.C. said. “You met two of his brothers.”

“Winslow still ain't walking quite right.” Billy's grin widened. “But I reckon you
would
know how to handle a dick.”

“What do you want, Billy?” C.C. demanded.

He pointed at me. “This fella's done started a feud. Trespassing, assaulting my brothers … probably cocksucking while he was there, too. What're you gonna do about it?”

“He's not going to do anything about it,” I said. This Billy was exactly the kind of person my dad made me sign up for martial arts to face, and just as before, I wasn't about to back down. “
I
might, though, if you don't go the fuck away.”

Billy snapped his fingers, and three more men, obviously Durants, stood up and surrounded our table. They stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking us from the view of the room, and their musty, animal smell made me want to gag.

“You threatenin' me, you Yankee faggot?” Billy said, still grinning.

“No,” I said seriously. The mental image of him spitting out those perfect teeth was growing sharper and more vivid. “I'm not threatening you at all. I'm asking you to go away and leave us alone. We know you shot Gerald Parrish yesterday.”

“Me? I wasn't nowhere near the Parrishes. I got witnesses, right?”

He looked at his brothers, and they all nodded.

I glanced at C.C. Although he tried to act tough for my benefit, I could see the fear in his eyes. He was strong and physically intimidating, but he wasn't a fighter and had no idea how to handle this type of conflict. A rush of protectiveness for him came over me.

“Isn't that convenient,” I said to Billy. “You may have had nothing to do with that, but anything that happens next … well, that's on you.”

I should've been nervous, but the emotions of the last twenty-four hours had left me worn out and single-minded. And that smug grin was the final straw.

Billy put a big pocketknife in my face, the tip of the blade right at the end of my nose. “How about I shove this beautiful Case knife right up your ass, you Yankee faggot?”

I met his smile with one of my own. “Dude, I hate to tell you, but if you're into shoving things up other guy's asses, that makes
you
the faggot.”

That did what I wanted, which was to break his control. He drew back his arm, a stupid move since he was in the perfect position to slash my face with very little effort, but now he was angry and wanted the satisfaction of a stab.

I used my right hand to turn his arm aside as the knife came at me, and drove the blade into the padded back of the empty chair. Then I stood a little and used that momentum to add to the power of driving my left elbow into the side of his head with all the considerable force I could put behind it. The impact stunned him, and he slid from his chair to the concrete floor. His nearest brother, instead of catching him, stepped aside to let him fall. His head made a loud
bonk.

I jumped up into a defensive stance. The other Durants were momentarily too startled to make a move. I readied myself to take them on; if I kept them off balance, I might be able to put them out of commission before one of them shanked me. But before I could, a female voice said loudly, “Billy Durant!”

We all turned. The woman I was sure had visited Ray in New York, Bronwyn Chess, stood in the doorway. She had no baby with her now. About half the people in the place scurried past her to get out of the building.

“You know this ain't the place for that kind of nonsense, Billy Durant. What do you think you're doing?”

Billy climbed back to his feet, using the chair and his nearest brother for support. “This faggot sum'bitch just broke my skull!” Billy said woozily.

“Yeah, well,
this
bitch is going to break your neck if I don't see you moving.” She made one of those hand gestures, and the sound of chairs scraping on concrete was loud in the silence as the remaining bystanders moved away from us.

Billy Durant shoved one of his other brothers aside and looked hatefully at me. “This ain't over. You think going back to New York'll make you safe, but we can find you anywhere.”

“You've already found me twice,” I said. “Hasn't worked out too well for you either time.”

His face turned red, but his brothers pushed him toward the door. They all had their heads down in either shame or fear, but Billy managed to get in one last glare as the door closed.

Bronwyn sighed and shook her head. She picked up Billy's dropped knife and sat down at our table. Around us, conversation resumed, but a lot more quietly than before. I could guess what they were all talking about.

“You boys seem to cause a ruckus wherever you go,” Bronwyn said, and flicked her finger at the cut Billy's knife had made in the chair back.

“They caused the ruckus,” I said, and sat down as well. I was secretly tickled that I used that word, which I'd learned from the play, in actual conversation. “We're just the ruck-ees.”

“Did you hurt him bad?”

“I rang his bell, that's all.”

“Might've been better in the long run if you'd cleaned out his belfry. How long are you in town for?”

“I leave tomorrow.”

“Good. Not that I have anything against you, but the world just spins better if the Durants stay up on their mountain.”

Emboldened by my victory, I said, “You know, you can deny it all you want, but I know that it
was
you in New York visiting Ray.”

Before she could respond, C.C., who'd been absolutely still and silent through the whole altercation, said quietly, “He knows about the Tufa.”

Bronwyn looked from him to me. “What does he know?”

“What Thorn and I showed him last night. How to ride the night wind.”

She thought it over, then said, “Come with me, then.” She stood and waited for me to do the same.

I looked at C.C. He said, “Go on. You don't have to worry about Bronwyn. You can trust her.”