The Bastard Hand Read online

  The dome light was on in the car, and Reverend Childe leaned over to look at me. He said, “Everything all right, Charlie?”

  I nodded, and, amazingly, my uneasiness wavered. Maybe I was being paranoid. I tended to do that sometimes.

  I got in the car, closed the door, and Childe grinned at me and pulled out of the church parking lot. I looked at his honest workingman face, and decided I was definitely being paranoid.

  But, for a second there, I knew in my heart that the Reverend was bad news.

  Reverend Childe didn’t know where he was going. He didn’t say anything to suggest it, and he didn’t even look particularly confused, but I knew. We’d been driving for almost an hour around the scummiest parts of the city, and I recognized a few buildings and signs that we passed at least twice. I thought about saying something, but the Reverend didn’t seem concerned at all and I realized that there was no reason why I should be concerned either.

  He talked almost non-stop the whole time. “I was digging around early this afternoon, looking for a good place to hole up, when someone gave me the word about this little joint where a man could kick back and relax for a spell. A big ol’ bed to sleep in, good quality whiskey to drink, billiard tables, everything. And all it costs is three hundred bucks a night. Bargain at twice the price.”

  I interrupted him there, said, “Uh, Rev . . . I don’t have three hundred bucks to spend on a place to stay the night.”

  He laughed, glanced over at me. “Well, hell Charlie, I know that! Just look at you! You’re a real nice fella, but it don’t take a brain surgeon to see you ain’t exactly loaded down with cash. I wouldn’t have invited you along if I didn’t intend to take care of ya. S’on me tonight.”

  “No way. I can’t let you—”

  “Would you stop arguing with me? I got more cash than I know what to do with, ol’ son. You just relax.”

  So I relaxed.

  Despite his odd behavior, and the strange feeling I had outside the Haley Baptist Church, I felt comfortable with him. He was a lot like Kyle—Kyle then, not now. Sort of freewheeling, jolly, irreverent. These days, Kyle was just a pain in the ass.

  Thinking of him started my mind off on a bunch of other things I didn’t want to think about, so I pushed them aside and gazed out the window.

  The city was a schizophrenic mess. No rhyme or reason. Auto body shops with battered signs from as long ago as the ’30’s squatted morbidly next to kwik-stop convenience stores obviously slapped together in more recent years. Even the newer buildings looked shabby, as if the malady of ungraceful age was contagious and spreading. We drove through the heart of a tenement project under the shadow of a freeway, and black children played in the dark glass-and-garbage-strewn front lots. Teenagers in gang colors leaned against parked cars, rap music pounding, and gazed at us dispassionately as we drove by.

  Close to ten o’clock, the Reverend finally pulled the Malibu in front of a large old house on a dark side street. He shut off the engine. “Well, Charlie, I knew I’d get us here one way or another.”

  I looked at the house dubiously. “This doesn’t look much like a motel.”

  “Motel? Who said anything about a motel?”

  He got out of the car and from up the block came the sound of someone yelling in a drunken stupor. A woman screamed angrily in response. I climbed out of the passenger seat. The Reverend was already halfway up the walk and I had to trot to catch up with him.

  He was whistling something that sounded like the hymn we’d sung that evening. I said, “Reverend. This is a whorehouse, isn’t it?”

  Looking at me sideways, he grinned and shook his head. “No offense, Charlie, but you ain’t the brightest of your litter, are you?”

  “Damn,” I said.

  He stopped and looked at me. The couple down the street still argued, but it sounded fainter, like they were moving away. From inside the house, soul music throbbed steadily under deep silky vocals. The Reverend just stared at me.

  I said, “What?”

  He cocked his head, went all serious. “Charlie . . . you ain’t a faggot or something, are you?”

  “No. Why the hell do you ask me that?”

  “I wouldn’t hold it against you or nothing. I just wanna know.”

  “Well, I’m not, okay? Why would you ask me something like that?”

  He stuck his hands in his pockets. “I ask because you seem downright put-out at the thought of partaking in some feminine wiles.”

  “It’s not that, Rev. It’s just . . .” My words petered out. There were a million reasons why I was annoyed, but damned if I could communicate any of them. The only thing I could come up with was an old macho stand-by. “It’s just that I don’t need to pay for sex. I’ve never done that, and I don’t intend to start. Besides, what about diseases and stuff? I mean—”

  He cut me off. “Charlie, don’t get your britches in a bunch. If you’re worried about catching something nasty, I got a pocketful of funny hats for your rocket, and you know how to put those on, doncha?”

  It took me a second to understand what the hell he meant, but by the time I figured it out he’d moved on. “And there ain’t nothing shameful or unmanly in a lonely fella passing through to shell out some bucks for female companionship. Why, it’s a hell of a lot better than picking up some unsuspecting woman in a bar, fucking her, then leaving her high and dry the next morning, ain’t it? Now that would be shameful. And anyway, no one’s holding a gun to your head saying you got to get your oil changed. If you want, you can just get drunk and play with yourself all night. Now, are you coming in or not?”

  I grimaced, shrugged. He laughed. “Well, all right. Come on in, before someone shoots us for standing around looking pretty.”

  “You’re a strange one, son,” a voice said out of the hazy light. “I’ll be damned if I ever seen a stranger one.”

  A chuckle, then outside movement jarred me and I squinted up into the bright yellowness. A car door ka-chunked closed, jostling me against the rear seat, and a huge head blocked out some of the light.

  From the front seat, the Reverend grinned down at me, said, “A whole house full of willing women, a nice soft bed waiting, and what do you do? Run out to the car and sleep on the damn floorboard. I swear, Charlie, you sure do beat all.”

  I mumbled, “Issit morning?” and moved my arm to pull myself up. At least I tried to move my arm. My brain sent the message, but something along the way was intercepting it, and the arm just lay there like a dead thing.

  Groaning, I tried to shift my weight to pull the arm out from under my torso. Pain wracked my entire body. I flopped my other arm up to the headrest, tried to hoist myself up. No good. My legs were bent at an unnatural angle. The Reverend just grinned down at me. “Havin’ some trouble, Charlie?”

  “Give me a hand.”

  He laughed, grabbed my hand, pulled me up with surprising strength. My back screamed at me. Grunting, I slid up onto the back seat and experimented with stretching. I felt miserable.

  I couldn’t remember how I’d wound up in the car. Strange hazy images burned in the back of my brain, but I couldn’t separate them from the bad dreams. Playing pool. Playing pool with a girl named April, and she had taken off her blouse. We were laughing about something. And then . . . what? She was moving in close to me. I remembered my hands hurting, and the awful golden glow radiating from my fingertips. I was afraid of something, but I couldn’t recall what. I just knew I had to hide. I remembered sirens in the distance, the sounds of the city breathing, something about floods and angels, and sex under golden lights. Something about trying hard . . . trying hard to listen for God’s voice.

  It kind of made me nervous that I couldn’t put it all together in my head.

  But I had the physical pain to distract me from that.

  “Serves you right for sleeping in the damn car,” the Reverend said. “Ain’t you old enough to know better than that?”

  Rubbing my neck, I managed a weak smile. “I though
t so. One thing’s for sure: I’m old enough to regret it already. I’m gonna be feeling this all day.”

  “I bet you will.” He looked invigorated. He was wearing a fresh set of clothes, his preacher collar open, his face clean-shaven. Not a single indication he’d been drinking and screwing all night. He said, “How ’bout a cup of coffee?”

  I revolved my head on my neck, making audible popping sounds in my spine, and said, “A cup of coffee is exactly what I need.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he grinned. I expected him to turn around, start up the engine, and head for the nearest diner, but instead he produced a thermos from the front seat and poured some coffee from it into a little plastic cup. He handed it to me. “Asked ol’ JoJo to fill it up for me before I left. Got a long trip ahead of me, y’know. Relatively speaking, anyway.”

  I sipped gratefully at the coffee, getting my morning bearings, and looked out the window. We were still in front of the brothel, and in the daylight I noticed the carefully tended flowerbeds that lined the front of the house. It really did look like any other house on the block, a little run-down, but livable.

  The Reverend stared at me with his big teeth so white they hurt my eyes. He said, “Had a bit much to drink, did ya?”

  “Yeah.”

  He guffawed. “Me too, brother, me too! But them girls sure were fun, I tell you that. Maxine and Tawnee. I think I’m gonna have those names tattooed on my willy. It took me hours to get them tuckered out.”

  I said, “What time is it, anyway?”

  “It’s seven-fifteen in the morning. Time to face the day.”

  “Seven-fifteen. Jesus Christ. You mean there’s such a thing as seven-fifteen in the morning?”

  Without losing his grin or sounding at all threatening, the Reverend said, “Don’t blaspheme, Charlie, it’s wrong. And hell yes, there’s a seven-fifteen in the morning! The sunlight’s a precious thing, brother, and it ain’t right to waste it. So drink that coffee up and let’s get rolling.”

  After the second or third sip, the coffee began agitating my broken tooth. I could taste the copper tang of blood again. The Reverend watched me while I drank and noticed my wince. “What’s the matter there, Charlie? Too strong?”

  “No, it’s perfect. It’s just my tooth. I sort of got into a scrap the night before we met and my tooth got busted.”

  “A scrap? What kind of scrap?”

  “It was just a little fight. Guy jumped me in an alley, busted my tooth. It hurts like a sonofabitch.”

  He frowned. “You oughta get yourself to a dentist or something.”

  I rubbed my thumb against my fingers, the universal sign that means cash flow problems. He nodded, said, “You ain’t got the money, huh? Well, that does present a problem.”

  Grimacing, I tried one more sip of coffee, but it was too painful, getting worse. I handed the cup back to him, said, “I appreciate your hospitality, Reverend. You’ve been good to me, and I’ve had a lot of fun, but I guess it’s time I got going. Don’t want to hold you up on your way to Cuba Landing.”

  I reached down for my bag, and he said, “Well, damn, Charlie. What are you gonna do about that tooth of yours?”

  “I guess I’ll find some work around here for a few days, get some money, then have the tooth pulled or something. Then I can get going again. In any case, it’s been fun. Maybe we’ll run into each other again sometime.”

  I stuck out my hand. He took it, shook warmly, but didn’t let go. Instead, he looked at me, as if measuring my worth. Then he said, “You know, Charlie, when I get down to Cuba Landing, I’ll be in a position to find a good job for you. I mean, a reference from a man of God sure does carry some weight, you know. Why don’t you come on with me?”

  I shook my head, smiling. “That’s real nice of you, Reverend, but it’s not necessary. I can look after myself.”

  “I know you can. That’s not what I’m saying. All I mean is, well . . . it surely couldn’t hurt, could it? North Mississippi ain’t exactly out of your way, and why find a job here in Memphis where you don’t know nobody when you could get a job down in Cuba Landing where you’d have a friend?”

  “Well—”

  “And on top of that, if you come down to Cuba Landing with me, why, I can lend you some money to get your tooth tended to, and you could pay me back when you get some cash.”

  “I couldn’t borrow money from you.”

  “Why the hell not? Don’t you think it would be better to get that tooth taken care of as soon as possible? I mean, if you wait a few days who knows what’ll happen? The damn thing could decay right there in your mouth, give you some nasty gum disease and then what? You’d lose every tooth in your head.”

  That one shook me up a bit. And what he said made sense. Why go around begging for some pissant work when I could get something easily down in Cuba Landing with his reference? And why be stuck here in Memphis when I could be just that much closer to Florida?

  I argued the point a little more, just for decency’s sake, but my mind was already made up. The Reverend kept insisting, and after a few minutes I laughed and said, “Okay. Why the hell not?”

  He laughed with me, pumping my hand like a well handle. “Well, all right! Why the hell not, indeed!”

  He turned around and started up the engine.

  Like it our not, our futures from that point on were bound together. Amen.

  • • •

  The dentist’s office was farther up Madison, in a midtown neighborhood that balanced itself uneasily between poor and lower middle-class. Homeless people wandered the street and bleary-eyed rednecks drove by in rusty cars, but the area didn’t really give the impression of being bad—just sort of down-and-out.

  The Reverend left me in the parking lot of the Piggly-Wiggly grocery store across the street, said he was going to find a Baptist church to join in the morning services. “I’ll meet ya in front of the Pig here at noon-time. Sound good?”

  I nodded, my pocket bulging with his money, and watched him drive off. When I couldn’t see his car anymore, it dawned on me that my bag was still in his back seat.

  By ten, I was out of the dentist’s office. The dentist had explained to me that it would cost a lot because I was uninsured and because he didn’t normally work on Sunday morning—I just happened to catch him in his office. He hummed show tunes the entire time he worked on me.

  On the other side of Madison was a dingy little strip plaza with a donut shop at its corner. Donuts were out of the question right then, but I was hungry as hell. I decided to go over and see if they served soup or some other toothless fare.

  I’d made it halfway across the street, jaywalking against the traffic, when screeching tires from the Piggly-Wiggly parking lot made me look back. A car full of teenagers showed off for a lone girl who happened to be cutting across the lot. She stopped long enough to show them her middle finger, then walked on.

  I stood in the middle of Madison, stunned.

  It was her. Short black hair, pale skin, almond-shaped eyes. The bitch that mugged me, right there in broad daylight, walking across the parking lot of the Piggly-Wiggly.

  I stood there, planted in the middle of the street, not believing my eyes.

  A car horn honked irritably and a rusted coupe swerved past me. A face loomed from behind the wheel, yelling, “Goddamn idiot! Get out of the road!”

  That caught the girl’s attention. She looked up, and our eyes locked. She froze. I was familiar to her, only familiar, for a moment. Then recognition widened her eyes and her mouth shaped a single word: Shit.

  She bolted.

  Without even thinking about it, I was after her.

  In a heartbeat she was across the parking lot and started sprinting up a side street. By the time I reached the spot she’d been standing in, I was wheezing for breath and my side ached. But I kept running, willing to collapse from exhaustion before giving up. I made it across the parking lot just in time to see her dodge behind a parked delivery truck, emerge
on the other side, and cut across the side street. About a fourth of a block ahead of me.

  Doubling my effort, I was just able to keep up with her.

  With a quick backward glance to see if I was still following, the girl veered off to the left, down a street so small I didn’t even notice it at first. Twenty paces later, I made the street myself, only to glimpse her veering right again down a connecting lane. She’d led me into a run-down suburb that she probably knew like the back of her hand.

  “Damn!” I took a deep ragged breath, my pace slowing now, and glanced at the street sign. The words Court St. were barely visible under a layer of grime.

  I made it to the corner and saw her halfway up the block. Without losing any momentum, she swung off to the left, up someone’s driveway, and dashed between two houses.

  I stopped running, leaned over, resting my hands on my knees, and sucked air. My face wasn’t numb anymore; in fact, every breath whistled through my mouth like scalding steam. The spot where my broken tooth used to be was alive with pain.

  Instead of following her, I continued up the street I was on. A car was parked against the curb. I crouched down behind it, peeking over the trunk at the next street up, and waited.

  She didn’t let me down. After a moment she appeared at the mouth of the next street, walking. At the corner she paused, looked both ways. I ducked down quickly, peered at her through the rear window of the car.

  Satisfied that I was heading in the other direction, she stuck her hands in her pockets and strolled, smiling, down Court and away from me.

  I gave her a good lead, then crossed to the other side of the street and followed. Her head swiveled occasionally, glancing around for me, but fortunately Court was lined with heavy shrubs and trees and parked cars, and I was almost always obscured.

  Her walk grew more confident as she went on. After five minutes or so it was as if she’d never encountered me. I followed, not daring to take my eyes off her.