Gone South (7 page)

The question was: what could be done about it?

He heard an engine gunning behind him.

He looked in the rearview mirror.

And there was a state trooper’s car right on his tail, its blue bubble lights spinning.

Dan had known true terror before, in the jungles of Vietnam and when he’d seen Blanchard’s gun leveling to take aim. This instant, though, froze his blood and stiffened him up like a dime-store dummy.

The siren yowled.

He was caught.

He jerked the wheel to the right, panic sputtering through his nerves.

The trooper whipped past him and was gone around the next curve in a matter of seconds.

Before he could think to stop and turn around, Dan was into the curve and saw the trooper pulling off onto the road’s shoulder. A cherry-red pickup truck was down in a ditch, and one of the teenage boys was standing on the black scrawl the tires had left when he’d lost control of the wheel. The other boy was sitting in the weeds, his head lowered and his left arm clasped against his chest. As Dan glided past the accident scene, he saw the trooper get out of the car and shake his head as if he knew the boys were lucky they weren’t scattered like bloody rags amid the pines.

When the trooper’s car was well behind, Dan picked up his speed again. Dark motes were still drifting in and out of his vision, the sun’s glare still fierce even as the afternoon shadows lengthened. He’d had not a bite of food since breakfast, and he’d lost the meager contents of his stomach. He considered stopping at a gas station to buy a candy bar and a soft drink, but the thought of pulling off while a state trooper was so close behind him put an end to that idea. He kept going, following the sun-baked road as it twisted like the serpent on his forearm.

Mile after mile passed. The traffic was sparse, both in front and behind, but the strain of watching in either direction began to take its toll. The shooting replayed itself over and over in his mind. He thought of Blanchard’s wife — widow, that is — and the two children, and what they must be going through right now. He began to fear what might be lying in wait for him around the curves. His headache returned with a vengeance, as did his tremors. The heat was sapping his last reserves of strength, and soon it became clear to him that he had to stop somewhere to rest. Another few miles passed, the highway leading between pine forest broken by an occasional dusty field, and then Dan saw a gravel road on his right. As he slowed down, prepared to turn into the woods and sleep in his truck, he saw that the road widened into a parking lot. There was a small whitewashed church standing beneath a pair of huge weeping willow trees. A little wooden sign in need of repainting said:
VICTORY IN THE BLOOD BAPTIST.

It was as good a place as any. Dan pulled into the gravel lot, which was deserted, and he drove the truck around to the back of the church. When he was hidden from the road, he cut the engine and slid the key out. He pulled his wet shirt away from the backrest and lay down on the seat. He closed his eyes, but Blanchard’s death leapt at him to keep him from finding sleep.

He’d been lying down for only a few minutes when someone rapped twice against the side of his truck. Dan bolted upright, blinking dazedly. Standing there beside his open window was a slim black man with a long-jawed face and a tight cap of white hair. Over the man’s deep-set ebony eyes, the thick white brows had merged together. “You okay, mister?” he asked.

“Yeah.” Dan nodded, still a little disoriented. “Just needed to rest.”

“Heard you pull up. Looked out the winda and there you were.”

“I didn’t know anybody was around.”

“Well,” the man said, and when he smiled he showed alabaster teeth that looked as long as piano keys, “just me and God sittin’ inside talkin’.”

Dan started to slide the key back into the ignition. “I’d better head on.”

“Now, hold on a minute, I ain’t runnin’ you off. You don’t mind me sayin’, you don’t appear to be up to snuff. You travelin’ far?”

“Yes.”

“Seems to me that if a fella wants to rest, he oughta rest. If you’d like to come in, you’re welcome.”

“I’m … not a religious man,” Dan said.

“Well, I didn’t say I was gonna
preach
to you. ’Course, some would say listenin’ to my sermons is a surefire way to catch up on your sleep. Name’s Nathan Gwinn.” He thrust a hand toward Dan, who took it.

“Dan …” His mind skipped tracks for a few seconds. A name came to him. “Farrow,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you. Come on in, there’s room to stretch out on a pew if you’d like.”

Dan looked at the church. It had been years since he’d set foot in one. Some of the things he’d seen, both in Vietnam and afterward, had convinced him that if any supernatural force was the master of this world, it smelled of brimstone and devoured innocent flesh as its sacrament.

“Cooler inside,” Gwinn told him. “The fans are workin’ this week.”

After a moment of deliberation, Dan opened the door and got out. “I’m obliged,” he said, and he followed Gwinn — who wore black trousers and a plain light blue short-sleeve shirt — through the church’s back door. The interior of the church was Spartan, with an unvarnished wooden floor that had felt the Sunday shoes of several generations. “I was writin’ my sermon when I heard you,” Gwinn said, and he motioned into a cubicle of an office whose open window overlooked the rear lot. Two chairs, a desk and lamp, a file cabinet, and a couple of peach crates full of religious books had been squeezed into the little room. On the desk was a pad of paper and a cup containing a number of ballpoint pens. “Not havin’ much luck, I’m a’feared,” he confided. “Sometimes you dig deep and just wind up scrapin’ the bottom. But I ain’t worried, somethin’ll come to me. Always does. You want some water, there’s a fountain this way.”

Gwinn led him through a corridor lined with other small rooms, the floor creaking underfoot. A ceiling fan stirred the heat. There was a water fountain, and Dan went to work satisfying his thirst. “You a regular camel, ain’t you?” Gwinn asked. “Come on in here, you can stretch yourself out.” Dan followed him through another doorway, into the chapel. A dozen pews faced the preacher’s podium, and the sunlight that entered was cut to an underwater haze by the pale green glass of the stained windows. Overhead, two fans muttered like elderly ladies as they turned, fighting a lost cause. Dan sat down on a pew toward the middle of the church, and he pressed his palms against his eyes to ease the pain throbbing in his skull.

“Nice tattoo,” Gwinn said. “You get that around here?”

“No. Someplace else.”

“Mind if I ask where you’re headin’ from and where you’re goin’?”

“From Shreveport,” Dan said. “I’m goin’ to —” He paused. “I’m just goin’.”

“Your home in Shreveport, is it?”

“Used to be.” Dan took his hands away from his eyes. “I’m not real sure where I belong right now.” A thought struck him. “I didn’t see your car outside.”

“Oh, I walked from my house. I just live ’bout a half-mile up the road. You hungry, Mr. Farrow?”

“I could do with somethin’, yeah.” Hearing that name was strange, after all this time. He didn’t know why he’d chosen it; probably it was from seeing the young man who was begging work at Death Valley.

“You like crullers? I got some in my office; my wife baked ’em just this mornin’.”

Dan told him that sounded fine, and Gwinn went to his office and returned with three sugar-frosted crullers in a brown paper bag. It took about four seconds for Dan to consume one of them. “Have another,” Gwinn offered as he sat on the pew in front of Dan. “I believe you ain’t et in a while.”

A second pastry went down the hatch. Gwinn scratched his long jaw and said, “Take the other one, too. My wife sure would be tickled to see a fella enjoyin’ her bakin’ so much.” When the third one was history, Dan licked the sugar from his fingers. Gwinn laughed, the sound like the rasp of a rusty saw blade. “Part camel, part goat,” he said. “Don’t you go chewin’ on that bag, now.”

“You can tell your wife she makes good crullers.”

Gwinn reached into a trouser pocket, pulled out a silver watch, and checked the time. “ ’Bout quarter to five. You can tell Lavinia yourself if you want to.”

“Pardon?”

“Supper’s at six. You want to eat with Lavinia and me, you’re welcome.” He returned the watch to his pocket. “Won’t be no fancy feast, but it’ll warm your belly up. I can go call her, tell her to put another plate on the table.”

“Thanks, but I’ve gotta get back on the road after I rest some.”

“Oh.” Gwinn lifted his shaggy white brows. “Decide where you’re goin’, have you?”

Dan was silent, his hands clasped together.

“The road’ll still be there, Mr. Farrow,” Gwinn said quietly. “Don’t you think?”

Dan looked into the preacher’s eyes. “You don’t know me. I could be … somebody you wouldn’t want in your house.”

“True enough. But my Lord Jesus Christ says we should feed the wayfarin’ stranger.” Gwinn’s voice had taken on some of the singsong inflections of his calling. “ ’Pears to me that’s what you are. So if you want a taste of fried chicken that’ll make you hear the heavenly choir, you just say the word and you got it.”

Dan didn’t have to think very long to make a decision. “All right. I’d be grateful.”

“Just be hungry! Lavinia always makes a whoppin’ supper on Thursday nights anyhow.” Gwinn stood up. “Lemme go on back and call her. Why don’t you rest some and I’ll fetch you when I’m ready to go.”

“Thank you,” Dan said. “I really do appreciate this.” He lay down on the pew as Gwinn walked back to his office. The pew was no mattress, but just being able to relax for a little while was glorious. He closed his eyes, the sweat cooling on his body, and he searched for a few minutes of sleep that might shield him from the image of Emory Blanchard bleeding to death.

In his office, Reverend Gwinn was on the telephone to his wife. She stoically took the news that a white stranger named Dan Farrow was joining them for supper, even though Thursday was always the night their son and daughter-in-law came to visit from Mansfield. But everything would work out fine, Lavinia told her husband, because Terrence had called a few minutes before to let her know he and Amelia wouldn’t be there until after seven. There’d been a raid on a house where drugs were being sold, she told Nathan, and Terrence had some paperwork to do at the jail.

“That’s our boy,” Gwinn said. “Gonna get elected sheriff yet.”

When he hung up, the reverend turned his attention again to the unwritten sermon. A light came on in his brain. Kindness for the wayfarin’ stranger. Yessir, that would do quite nicely!

They always amazed him, the mysterious workings of God did. You never knew when an answer to a problem would come right out of the blue; or, in this case, out of a gray Chevy pickup truck.

He picked up a pen, opened a Bible for reference, and began to write an outline of his message for Sunday morning.

“T
WO CARDS.”

“I’ll take three.”

“Two for me.”

“One card.”

“Oh, oh! I don’t like the sound of that, gents. Well, dealer’s gonna take three and see what we got.”

The poker game in the back room of Leopold’s Pool Hall, on the rough west end of Caddo Street in Shreveport, had started around two o’clock. It was now five forty-nine, according to the Regulator clock hanging on the cracked sea-green wall. Beneath a gray haze of cigarette and stogie smoke, a quintet of men regarded their cards in silence around the felt-topped table. Out where the pool tables were, balls struck together like a pistol shot, and from the aged Wurlitzer jukebox Cleveland Crochet hollered about Sugar Bee to the wail of a Cajun accordion.

The room was a hotbox. Three of the men were in shirtsleeves, the fourth in a damp T-shirt. The fifth man, however, had never removed the rather bulky jacket of his iridescent, violet-blue sharkskin suit. In respect of the heat, though, he’d loosened the knot of his necktie and unbuttoned the starched collar of his white shirt. A glass of melting ice and pale, cloudy liquid was placed near his right hand. Also within reach was a stack of chips worth three hundred and nineteen dollars. His fortunes had risen and fallen and risen again during the progress of the game, and right now he was on a definite winning jag. He was the man who’d requested one card, so sure was he that he owned a hand no one else could touch.

The dealer, a bald-headed black man named Ambrose, finally cleared his throat. “It’s up to you, Royce.”

“I’m in for five.” Royce, a big-bellied man with a flame-colored beard and a voice like a rodent’s squeak, tossed a red chip on top of the ante.

“I fold.” The next man, whose name was Vincent, laid his cards facedown with an emphatic
thump
of disgust.

There was a pause. “Come on, Junior,” Ambrose prodded.

“I’m thinkin’.” At age twenty-eight, Junior was the youngest of the players. He had a sallow, heavy-jawed face and unruly reddish-brown hair, sweat gleaming on his cheeks and blotching his T-shirt. He stared’ at his cards, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. His lightless eyes ticked to the player next to him. “I believe I got you this time, Mr. Lucky.”

The man in the sharkskin suit was engrossed in his own cards. His eyes were pallid blue, his face so pale the purple-tinged veins were visible at his temples. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, his body as lean as a drawn blade. His black hair was perfectly combed, the part straight to the point of obsessiveness. At the center of his hairline a streak of white showed like a touch of lightning.

“Put up or fold ’em,” Ambrose said.

“See the five and raise you ten.” The chips clattered down.

“Fifteen dollars,” the man in the sharkskin suit said, his voice so soft it neared a whisper, “and fifteen more.” He tossed the chips in with a flick of his right wrist.

“Oh, lawwwwdy!” Ambrose studied his cards with heightened interest. “Talk to me, chillen, talk to me!” He picked up his cigar stub from an ashtray and puffed on it as if trying to divine the future in smoke signals.

Nick, the pool hall’s bartender, came in while Ambrose was deliberating and asked if anybody needed their drinks freshened. Junior said he wanted another Budweiser, and Vincent said he’d have a refill of iced tea. The man in the sharkskin suit downed his cloudy drink in two long swallows and said, “I’ll have another of the same.”