Chapter Fourteen
“Many are called,” the Reverend Majestic Earl Bill Clay howled from the top of his pulpit, which was an upended wooden crate with Sears, Roebuck stamped on the side in black letters. “But few are chosen. And why are the many not chosen?”
Hiram and Michael had parked down by the Colorado River, about five miles up the canyon from the Preece cabin. Cars were everywhere, some parked dangerously close in the weeds next to the green waters.
Hiram and his son had then marched up a short trail into Frenchie’s Canyon.
There, the Reverend stood in front of a wall built up of slabs and chunks of red rock, filling in the underbelly of an overhang on the top of a long sandbank. Water might flow down this canyon, which was narrow enough to become really dangerous in a flood, but there was no water in sight now.
The canyon was mostly in summer afternoon shadow, but the spot where the Reverend stood was bathed in pink and orange light. This made the Reverend himself—a bear of a man, unshaven, with bright red hair and beard, who was dressed in mismatched parts of several tuxedos of differing sizes and who hopped up and down from the crate to emphasize key points, always jumping with both feet at the same time and landing on both feet—look like a purple bear.
Dotted along the sandbank, the Reverend’s parishioners were seated on the front rows on chunks of red stone, with the back rows standing. Hiram immediately recognized the Udalls: same calico shirts, same overalls, same boots. They looked more like brother and sister than man and wife. Well, the Bible did say that Moab had other issues besides just human sacrifice.
To one side, despite his assurances to the contrary, sat Rex Whittle. Not far from him, Hiram recognized Don Pout, the man with the tiny nose and long eyelashes who had been at the dowsing. He saw one of the migrant workers, too, the short man who smelled of tobacco. Hiram and Michael stood in the back, near the top of a stone-choked path that led up this narrow canyon from the river below.
“Why are the many not chosen?” the Reverend Majestic hollered again.
“Why?” Rex Whittle called out.
“Tell us!” bellowed an old woman Hiram didn’t recognize.
“Because of the dragon!” The Reverend leaped up into the air, pulling his knees up into his chest and then coming down on both feet simultaneously. Gravel in the sand crunched. Plumes of dust rose to cover the Reverend’s legs.
Hiram winced, thinking how much such a jump would hurt him. He had to admit, though, that it made the sermon lively.
“So, Pap,” Michael whispered. “Is that the guy who attacked you?”
“In the darkness, I didn’t see much,” Hiram murmured. “And once that fellow hit me, my vision became entirely unreliable. Funny as this sounds, I’d like to get closer and try to smell him.”
“That doesn’t sound funny at all,” Michael said. “That sounds disgusting.”
The Reverend paced back and forth. For all his energy in leaping, he walked with a severe limp. Something was wrong with his right foot; he stepped on it as if only the heel had feeling, or as if his toes were broken and he was afraid to flex them. His mismatched tuxedo imitation was equaled by his wearing two mismatched boots—the right boot looked as if it might have been Army-issue in the war, and the left was an oversize cowboy boot that swiveled around his calf like a rolling bucket at every step.
“The dragon has us all in its grip, and do you know how you can recognize it?”
“How?” This from Don Pout, whose voice trembled at the weight of his own question.
“Telegraph!” the Reverend bellowed. “Telegraph! Telegraph! Telegraph! Not to mention the gold standard, and the Works Progress Administration, and the Panama Canal—Satanic all!” He leaped up again and this time landed on top of the crate, arms windmilling briefly to catch him from falling.
“See, Pap?” Michael said. “That’s religion for you. Maybe you Mormons can add a little of his circus to your act, fill those pews.”
“Where is the room for the little man in all this, eh, Mr. Roosevelt?” The Reverend stabbed an accusing finger at the sky. “You speak with a honeyed tongue, but I see the Rolls Royce you drive! I know the wolves you send out among the human flock, to eat our flesh and to make you and your kind fat!”
“Earl Bill Clay!” a voice bellowed to Hiram’s left.
Hiram turned to see Sheriff Jack Del Rose and a couple of deputies in khaki pants and dark olive jackets. The deputies held nightsticks.
“Everybody except Preacher Bill needs to clear out,” Del Rose bellowed.
A few of the parishioners at the fringes of the crowd crept out past the law enforcement men.
“Now!” the sheriff roared.
The crowd ran. They streamed past Hiram to rush down to where their cars and even in some cases their mules waited; in a minute of busy motion, the desert amphitheater emptied out.
Hiram and Michael stood still.
The Reverend Majestic leaped into the air one more time, now landing in front of the only opening in the rough stone wall, an irregular door beneath an irregular sandstone lintel. He wheeled to face the lawmen, nearly falling over as he pivoted awkwardly on his bad right foot. When he finished his pivot, though, he held a silver knife in his hand.
“Can you smell that, Pap?”
“That’s Preece’s knife!” One of the deputies started forward, brandishing his nightstick. “I’m going to kill you, you vermin!”
Hiram sucker-punched the deputy, landing a solid right fist on the man’s temple. The deputy tumbled to the sand and lay still—should Hiram grab the nightstick? But he wanted to defuse tension, not raise it.
He stepped into the path of the lawmen, deliberately dropping his hands to his sides, his fingers not curled up into fists.
“Pap,” Michael said. “The guy with the knife is behind you.”
“Tell me if he makes a move.” Hiram nodded, feeling sweat slicken his back and palms. “Sheriff, you can’t kill this man.”
“Don’t get all excited, Hiram,” the sheriff drawled. “Russ Pickens didn’t really mean he was going to kill anyone. He just meant that suspects sometimes come out of the arrest process a little bit worse for wear.”
“You don’t know that this man killed Preece,” Hiram said. Even as he said that, he smelled the Reverend Majestic, and the combined reek of alcohol, stale sweat, and corruption was unmistakable—this was definitely the man who had knocked Hiram down, charging out of Preece’s cabin. “He might have a perfectly reasonable explanation as to why he has Preece’s knife.”
“Yes, I do!” Clay howled. “The knife is Satanic!”
“You heard him.” Jack Del Rose chuckled. “That sound reasonable to you?”
“It’s not the craziest thing I’ve heard.” Hiram’s mouth was dry. He swallowed, and that didn’t help.
“And then I thought maybe I could sell it for money!” Preacher Bill yelled.
“That sounds downright sane,” Michael quipped.
“Once I exorcised all the evil spirits of the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Administration out of it!”
“This is nuts.” Sheriff Del Rose sighed. “You came by my office this morning to make your statement, and that was helpful, Woolley, but now I’ve got my man and you’re getting in my way. And you’re doing it on purpose. Stand aside, or I’ll arrest you for obstruction of justice. And I will remind you that arrested suspects sometimes come out slightly worse for wear—which is none of your business.”
“He might be guilty,” Hiram admitted. In fact, Hiram thought he most likely was guilty, and he envisioned himself testifying at Clay’s trial about the night of the murder, and his blind fistfight with the hobo preacher. “But he gets arrested like any other suspect, and no one roughs him up, and then he gets a trial.”
“Guilty of what?” Clay asked.
“Why do you care, Woolley? Why do you care if Pickens saves the taxpayer some money by doling out the punishment this guy is going to get, anyway?”
“Look at him,” Hiram said. “He’s a madman. Jesus had mercy on madmen. If I want Jesus to have mercy on me—”
“Spare me the Jesus talk!” Del Rose barked. “I had enough of that to last me a lifetime before I was ten years old.”
“Guilty of what?” Clay screamed. “Guilty of the taint of the dragon? Guilty of being a man-eating wolf, like all the other man-eating wolves in this valley? Guilty of the Fall of Adam?”
The downed deputy, Pickens, was stirring, and the other deputy started to help him to his feet.
“Earl Clay,” the sheriff called. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Lloyd Preece!”
“Lloyd Preece? Lloyd Preece?” All the menace and imbalanced madness fell instantly out of Clay’s voice. “Why would I murder Lloyd? He fed me. He gave me money.”
The bloodstone in Hiram’s pocket lay inert. Did that mean that Clay was telling the truth? Or was it one more instance of Hiram’s craft failing him, because of his erotic obsession with the widow Artemis?
But in any case, he believed Clay. There was madness in the man, but innocence as well.
Hiram backed toward Clay, raising his hands slightly from his side, but still not balling them into fists. “Why do you have Preece’s knife, Reverend? You took it from his house, didn’t you?”
“He was already dead when I got there! I took it from his body!” the Reverend howled. “I told you the knife was Satanic! The knife killed my friend, the dragon killed him, the world killed him! And I took the knife to destroy it, because maybe if I destroyed the knife, he would come back!”
“Yeah,” the sheriff said slowly. “Or maybe you could sell the knife for money like you just confessed. That would be after Lloyd Preece refused to give you a dime and you killed him.”
“Maybe,” Clay said.
“I’d keep quiet,” Michael muttered. “You’re not helping your case.”
“Just promise you won’t beat him up,” Hiram said to the sheriff.
“I’m not promising shit,” the sheriff said. “Get out of the way now or you get to see the inside of my jail. Hell, I’ll throw you and your new best pal in together.”
Hiram heard the thud of running feet.
“Pap!” Michael yelled.
Hiram dropped forward, curling himself into a ball to avoid a knife-blow from behind that he felt certain was imminent—
and threw himself under the sheriff’s legs.
The two men collapsed to the ground in a tangle. Past the sheriff’s khaki-colored knees and olive-green midriff, Hiram saw Earl Bill Clay duck into his stone dugout. “You can’t see me!” he yelled. “I can hide in here!”
The two deputies were having none of it. They charged the door, nightsticks up—
and the first one went reeling away as a red rock the size of a man’s head struck him in the face. Blood spattered on the sand, and Hiram saw a flash of silver.
“That’s it!” yelled the standing deputy, Pickens, as he pulled his gun. “Come out, you!”
No answer.
“Now, or I shoot!” Pickens yelled.
“No!” Hiram called.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The deputy fired into the dugout as he ran into it. Sheriff Del Rose stood and dragged Hiram to his feet, glaring through his one half-open eye. “To hell with arresting you. I should just shoot you, and say it was an unfortunate mistake after you wouldn’t get out of our way. Might have to shoot your boy, too, and that would break my heart, but I tell you what…I know how to get over hurt feelings.”
The sheriff smelled of sweat and too much coffee. Over the sheriff’s shoulder, Hiram saw Michael stoop and pick up something from the red sand near the dugout doorway, pocketing it quietly.
“I only wanted to prevent violence,” Hiram said softly.
“Lying bastard,” Pickens said, emerging from the dugout. “You punched me right in the noggin and I wasn’t even looking at you.”
Hiram shrugged, but kept an even gaze on the deputy.
The sheriff shoved Hiram aside. He managed to keep his feet.
“Pickens, what the hell?” the sheriff growled. “You kill the guy?”
Pickens shook his head.
Michael stepped quietly away from the lawmen.
“Then what? You go in there, made friends, and you decided to leave him alone, after all?” Del Rose’s brow furrowed, perplexed. “Maybe you wanted to leave him for me, like a present?”
Pickens looked embarrassed. “He disappeared.”
The sheriff drew his gun and a flashlight and stationed himself beside the doorway.
“It’s broad daylight,” Michael said. “Why the flashlight?”
“Shut up, kid,” Del Rose spat.
“Better than ‘Injun,’” Michael murmured. Then, “Oh, it’s going to be dark in that cave. Right.”
The sheriff screamed, “I’m coming in, and I’m more than ready to shoot you.”
Then he slipped into the dugout.
Hiram followed.
The space inside was small and dark. Hiram tried to follow the beam of the sheriff’s flashlight with his eyes, and he saw a wedge-shaped corner that angled down and back, until the sand underfoot finally met the overhanging rock wall. On two sides, the sandstone rocks had been stacked into such a tight wall that almost no light shone through the chinks between them.
“I’ll be damned,” Del Rose said. He turned slowly, staring at the walls and shining his light up at the rock face, as if he might find a hidden staircase.
Hiram’s own flashlight was in the Double-A. “Sheriff, would you mind shining your light over here? In the corner.”
“Go home, Woolley.”
“Don’t you want to find your suspect?”
“You mean the one that you let go?”
“Just…humor me, would you?”
Del Rose shone his light into the corner Hiram indicated. “What do you think you’re seeing?”
“Do those furrows look like a body might have crawled into that corner?” Hiram asked. “And look at the sand at the base of that rock in the corner. It’s heaped up, like someone pushed the rock into place from the other side.”
“You’re thinking that was an exit, and after the crazy guy crawled out, he pushed in a rock behind himself.”
“I think he had enough time,” Hiram said.
“Fine.” The sheriff pointed his gun at Hiram. “You go take a look. I’ll cover you.”
That had not quite been Hiram’s plan. He reached to touch his chi-rho medallion and was reminded that he had given it to Diana Artemis.
“Okay,” he said. Then he lowered himself to his hands and knees, crawling back into the corner. “Reverend Clay, I’m coming your direction,” he called out. “I’m not going to hurt you. I believe you were Lloyd Preece’s friend.”
The sheriff snorted.
Hiram lowered himself onto his belly. “The way I see it, you went to ask him for money. Preece was a generous man, he gave to people all the time. He’d given to you before. But you found him dead, and that made you upset. Maybe you were distracted or maybe you thought you could really help him, but you grabbed the knife, and that’s when you heard me knocking on the door.”
“What are you doing, helping plan his defense?” the sheriff asked.
Hiram had reached the rock in the back corner. He pushed at it experimentally, and it moved—no weight rested on it, and a breeze blew through the cracks around it. “Maybe you were afraid that I was the killer, come back to kill you too, or to take the knife. So you turned down the light, and when I knocked again, you attacked me.”
“Jesus, Woolley.” The sheriff sounded disgusted.
Hiram pushed the rock all the way through. The space beyond was not totally dark—so, not a cave? “There’s definitely an opening here.”
“So the preacher had an escape route planned, did he?” Del Rose chortled. “That strike you as innocent?”
“It strikes me as paranoid,” Hiram said. “Or maybe just well prepared.” He dragged himself through the opening, and found himself in a vertical shaft, which appeared to have been formed as a wrinkle of open space where two masses of sandstone met. The floor of the shaft was sand, and pale light shone from above. Hiram looked up and saw, for just a moment, a pair of dangling legs silhouetted against the last light of the evening sky.
“Woolley?” the sheriff called.
“Preacher Bill!” Hiram yelled. “Reverend Clay!”
The legs pulled themselves up over the lip of the sandstone and disappeared.
Sheriff Del Rose crawled into the shaft. He stood, and the two men nearly filled the space. The sheriff looked up. “He climbed out the shaft.”
Hiram nodded. “Surprisingly agile for a man with a limp.”
“I should arrest you. I really should.”
Hiram sighed. “You’d have a case.”
“Yeah.” Del Rose squinted at him. “Get out of my sight, farmer.”
“You’re not going to climb up the chimney?”
“So that maniac can drop rocks on my head? No, thank you. My men and I will have to figure out how to get up onto the top of the cliff and keep searching. Maybe get some dogs or something.”
“I think he’s innocent.”
“Shut up.”
Hiram dropped to all fours and crawled out of the chimney, and then stood to exit the dugout. He walked into the barrel of Pickens’s revolver, and the deputy’s sour stare. Michael stood off to the side, sweat on his face.
“I should shoot you,” the deputy said.
Hiram nodded, tired. “The sheriff said a similar thing. He decided against it and let me go.”
Pickens seemed to consider the possibilities.
“Come on, Pap,” Michael said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Pickens settled for snarling, and Hiram and Michael walked down the canyon toward their truck.
“Doggone, Pap,” Michael said, “you really think the crazy guy is innocent.”
Hiram didn’t have the heart to talk about the bloodstone and his doubts. Instead, he just said, “I think he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
They climbed down the boulder-strewn slope. They reached the Double-A, parked in a clump of junipers. All the other vehicles were gone.
They got into the truck.
Michael didn’t start it. “Pap, I have a question about obstructing justice.”
“I wasn’t obstructing justice,” Hiram said. “I was trying to…prevent another murder.”
“Right. The crossword deputy wasn’t about to stop at a beating.” Michael was quiet for a moment. “So you’re saying, you wouldn’t want to actually obstruct justice. For instance, by holding on to evidence.”
Hiram was still full of adrenaline and couldn’t think straight. “Probably not a great idea, no. You can go to jail for it, even if Sheriff Del Rose’s deputies didn’t beat you to death.”
“That’s what I thought,” Michael said. “So, I make it about 5:15. It’s about forty-five minutes into town. That gives us an hour to kill.”
Hiram opened the door, closed it, and leaned in the window. “I need a walk and time so I can think and pray. I would suggest you do the same.”