The Blackstone Commentaries (27 page)

The rain, the heaviest it had been for all the revival, roared, and the wind blew. Lightning broke through the shroud. Listening to the thunder rumble away through that vast blackness, Dugan thought it might clear out by morning.

“He's evil,” the preacher said. “I can see the evil in him. Stay close tonight, and tomorrow we'll head west up that broad highway through Little
Zion on into Tennessee. I know you've been troubled, Brother Dugan, and I've never asked you how or why—that's between Jesus and you, if that's the way you want it. But I can see you're a good man, a righteous man, and this other man, this surgeon, you call him, smells like temptation, like the devil himself. You're in the wilderness here in this Damascus, and beware the dark angels at the gate. There is too much money and sin here. Pride. We get up in Tennessee with humble people, I'll bring you right up by my side. You and me together can gather a lot of people to Christ—I can feel it. We will do the Lord's work. I think God meant that man to come into our tent last night. Only now, He means him to go. ‘And I that am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles.' ”

But though the preacher smiled paternally, his gaze with its habitual tinge of severity never left Dugan.
He's trying to read me
, Dugan thought,
trying to smell out my intentions, and what happened tonight. Just like that doctor
. Again he found himself wondering in a way he'd never wondered before how this old man could do it, could preach people back into their little, shitty, humble holes and help them make a virtue of it, as though the laws of mortals—ambition, hope, dreams—shouldn't propel them, much less govern them.
Keep your eyes on heaven: nothing else matters
. Was what the man preached what Jesus Christ Himself wanted? Why did they crucify Him, then? Why bother? He would have been an asset to them.

Whose law was the preacher really trying to enforce?

He just couldn't get away from that question. It had already driven him out of Alabama, though by this time when it came at him, from any direction and at any time, it wasn't nearly as long-lived as it had once been, not so unruly. He was no longer in those endless days of darkness, swamped by doubt and shame, trapped inside his skin while his mind whirled out of control. Yet there remained something daunting in that question, something that might still come at him that he couldn't see coming, some ultimate night. While thinking this, he became aware of a dry smell emanating from the preacher, faint like old burned-house smoke. It was in the preacher's breath and skin, in his impatience, like a piece of charred parchment about to float away.
He knows I'm staying
.

“I appreciate your asking me to join you, Reverend Paul, I truly do,” his words spoken in that soft manner that always surprised people, given his size, especially if they happened to look at his eyes and see the resolve.
“I'm not sure the ministry of Jesus is my calling,” he said, trying to be gentle in the face of the man's kindness and lack of simple self-interest, giving him all the benefit of the doubt.
He gave me refuge, and I gave him my best in kind. But I know damn well it's not my calling
.

“I have read, Brother Dugan, that ‘apart from nomads and the lawless, only the mad inhabit the wilderness.' What has this man promised you? What do you believe you might accomplish here?”

“I was once in law enforcement.” It felt like a confession. “I may go back to it.”

The old man seemed to stare through him. “If you want to be of the law, stick with Jesus. Everything else is corruption. Vileness and corruption exist in most places, and if they don't for a moment, they will again. But they're especially bad right here in Blackstone County, in Damascus. The law is for the rich and mighty. You have to push ordinary, hardworking people down for that to be.”

“Surely now, you know I understand that, reverend.” Dugan realized then he'd just said more and expressed much more feeling than he'd intended. Still, he felt he owed the old man something, and anyhow, they, neither one, could hide their roots from each other. “But if I heard right,” he whispered, “maybe things could change.” Dugan was unable to hide the passion that jumped into his voice when he spoke those last words, particularly after a couple of hours thinking over his conversation with Pemberton. Maybe he could have a future here. Yet he felt compelled to whisper to the preacher, as though he were afraid he might be overheard, as though someone somewhere might actually pay attention to the dream he hadn't even fully realized was his until that moment, then care enough about what he just said to crush him for it.

“There's no earthly justice for the poor except Jesus, Brother Dugan. You can't change what is! You can work for our everlasting salvation when we'll all be as one with the Lamb, but the rest is vanity. And vanity, like a cancer, eats you up.”

“You believe that, don't you, sir?” he'd said, again whispering, momentarily overwhelmed by the man's absolute conviction, and once again touched by something like fear. Could this man really divine something? What was he, Charlie Dugan, afraid of? Being wrong? Madness? Oh, that he might actually believe in something, even something as cockamamie as
everlasting salvation, with such fervor and dedication! But he'd decided right then that what he was hearing from that preacher, and through him from all the Bible thumpers and teachers life had thrown at him since well before his uncle died, was an excuse for failure.
How easy to excuse ourselves so we don't have to deal with what is
.

“This is the place for faith,” Dugan heard himself proclaim aloud into the car's darkness. He was startled by the words hurled back across all those years, back over the soft hum of the engine of the big silver Dodge and the gentle splashing of radial tires. It had showered lightly just before dawn; he could tell by the light color of the pavement under the trees. He lowered the window, and the air rushing in smelled rich and sweet with wet grass. Heading home, he tried to forget about Eddie, about the raid. About failure. Eddie was right—people depended on him, and he needed to take that into consideration when he made up his mind about anything. So had he been wrong to take up the Carvers' case? Was that it? What choice did he ever really have?

That last night they were together, the preacher, watching him as though his face were a television screen, had said, “ ‘And the devil saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' ” He'd spoken slowly, enunciating his words, his hard eyes boring into Dugan and roaming his soul. The smell of the preacher, that dryness of old fires and death, had overwhelmed him.

“
Whose
laws are they, reverend?” he'd demanded, suddenly angry, once again showing more heat than he intended, sweat popping from his forehead. “What is wrong with a simple belief in justice, or if not justice, fairness? This is a democracy. Men are supposed to be equal under the law. So why don't laws work like they're supposed to? More important, if they don't, why can't they be made to?”

“Listen to yourself, Brother Dugan! The only law is the law of God and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Only His world can be perfect, when He comes again. You have to be saved to Jesus. Any other law is flawed and will fail. Earthly failure springs from the very souls we seek to save. I know, I've been down that road. We have to trust in Jesus for our salvation.”

Rasping, feeling parched, Dugan demanded, “What about Caesar? Who put him there? Who made him rich? Not God, surely. But His Son, now, He must have at least acknowledged what was already there, what
was, and you and I both know they wouldn't have crucified Him just for that. So what was He really up to? Why did they have to get rid of Him?”

Suddenly, and only for an instant, the preacher drew close, his eyes alight the way they'd been the night before, when amid the desultory singing and his wife's panic—because she'd never trusted Dugan, or anything out of the ordinary, for that matter—he'd watched Dugan challenge the intruder Pemberton and be rewarded with a hundred-dollar bill. Dugan saw hope in those eyes, an ember from a long-ago fire.

But the eyes again went dead. Exhaling his dried, burnt breath, the preacher drew back. Grabbing his throat as though choking, he stared sidelong at Dugan. “I've lived too long for this,” he gasped. “It's heresy!”

“
Whose
laws do we serve, reverend?” he'd insisted. “
Who
do those laws serve?” For a moment, all the violence and shame he'd buried so long had boiled up, pouring into those sibilated utterances, possessing him so thoroughly that even if to himself he still seemed rational and in control, he wasn't. But the only proof to the contrary had been an old, burned-out, jake-leg preacher backing away under a rotting, wind-puffed tent.

Until tonight
, he thought.

Until Eddie. Eddie was no preacher. Eddie was no underling either. Eddie was Eddie, a friend who had backed him faithfully, loyally and, more importantly, honestly. Yet even with this recognition, Dugan still felt nothing in the midst of his abjuration of all feeling—just echoing, empty words.

He left the car parked in front of the barn next to his pickup truck and, leaning on the fence, watched his Angus cattle emerge from the gloom. He rubbed one steer on its soft, wet nose before it jerked away to consider him sidelong with a monstrous, gentle eye. He looked across the drive then and saw Dru waiting for him in the deep shadows at the top of the porch steps. As he began to walk toward her, he recalled their first night together, the silk of her body, the gift of it again and again that same night—all that hunger. But the recollection was clinical nonbelief.

As she watched him approach, she held her hands clasped in front of her, a gesture of vulnerability almost, he thought, tenderness maybe, or concern—was that it? But her stance and even the look on her face were inscrutable; he couldn't read her. She still had that catlike beauty, though
she was heavier now, fuller, if that was possible without being fat. She was staring right at him.

Did she want to ask him something? Of course she did.

He remembered the first time he'd seen her up in New Apex standing in the snow, getting gas at the store. He hadn't known she was born there, just that she'd been avoiding him. But it seemed in that moment, when she turned and, tossing her hair back, stared at him with a ferocity he'd never encountered in any woman before, that she'd never avoid him again. Fevered, he'd felt powerless, as though she'd seen him, and through him, as no other person had ever done or would ever do again—so he sincerely hoped. He hadn't been able to stop her. Mentally stripped, defenseless, he'd just stood and stared back while the snow bit his ears and the cruiser radio squawked impatiently behind him, reminding him of who he'd been once upon a time, a few moments earlier. He would always feel that way around her, as though her mere apparition were more than he could believe.

Then he'd watched her face clear with comprehension, and all that hardness melt in the snow. “Is it
that
awful?” she'd suddenly laughed. Way back then, so many years ago.

“Was it that bad?” she asked now, but gently, like it was her right or due. She wasn't laughing or even smiling.

Wordlessly he shoved by her and on across the porch. With a trembling hand, he seized the handle of the screen door, thinking,
One more damned word out of her …

XXVII

Elmore

Elmore sat alone in the vast field behind the now-empty house in Rance's Bottom, his head pressed between his hands. His shoulders and back throbbed. His face was numb and swollen. A nervous tongue sidled out of his broken lips and worried the blood drying there. If he moved at all, his body screamed. The night, formless and cold, reeked of untilled earth, tannin and sour weeds, of long neglect. He fell back as black pain rode out of his head. The damp cold crept up from the ground.
I will get sick and die
, he thought, and waited for death.

Water began to seep from the darkness overhead. With a sigh, the earth opened and received the rain, its musk enshrouding the rank sourness of his fear, outrage and shame. He lay still, cradling the pain. The shower stole away.

“Shut the
hell
up, Mother!” he bellowed into the darkness, then groaned in torment.
Clarissa Reston Willis, my mother's married name. Reston was my mother's father's name. I'm Elmore Reston Willis
. He moved his head, and pain shot across the tops of his eyes. Tears rolled down his
cheeks.
She hated my father, she hated the Second World War that changed my father, she hated the South, she hated everything she couldn't control. And she hated herself for even trying. But she really hated me for coming back here
.

He recalled a passenger train gliding lightly down a grade into the South, into 1948. Maroon, gold and black, smoke rolling down its flanks—wild and free, it passed into oblivion. Like all things. Like my father. He was stiff-necked, Claire, like you always said, but here he was a saint. People hate me because I'm not a saint.

Dugan two hours ago … three? “Don't sit there and goddamn smile at me, you stupid, drunken shit! God, how your father would have been ashamed!”

“What the
fuck
do you know?” The words were scarcely out of Elmore's mouth before he was yanked up out of the chair into the maw of Dugan's fury, the sweet stink of his aftershave and masticated supper.

“Your father was a good man. Don't you ever forget it! He cared about people who couldn't help themselves. People in need! What do you care about except yourself?”

Not even the pain of a fist slamming the side of his face equaled Elmore's shock at Dugan's contempt.
What did I ever do, Claire, to make him that angry?
He'd shaken his head wildly, trying to dispel his alcoholic stupor. Tears of frustration and rage at his self-imposed vulnerability boiled out. A second fist connected.