James Burke - Feast Day of Fools

“Then pull the trigger,” Cody said.

Cody’s hand remained clenched tightly on Krill’s wrist. He could feel Krill’s pulse beating against his palm. Krill’s eyes were inches from his, the onions and wine and fried meat on Krill’s breath as damp as a moist cloth on Cody’s face. “Are you going to help me?” Krill asked.

“Maybe, if you put the gun away,” Cody said.

Krill’s eyes were black and as flat as paint on a piece of cardboard. “It is as you request,” he said, lowering his pistol. A curtain of rain slapped against the window and across the top of the church. “My car is parked behind your church.”

“Let me put on my coat,” Cody said.

“You will not try to deceive us?” Krill said.

“Why should I deceive you?”

“We know of your message to your flock. You have not been our friend. You make them feel comfortable with their hatred of us.”

“I think maybe you aim to kill me when this is over.”

“Would that be a great loss to the world?”

“Maybe not. But that doesn’t mean I’d necessarily enjoy it.”

“You are a very funny man,” Krill said.

They went out the door and into the rain and down the stairs to the back of the Cowboy Chapel, where Krill’s gas-guzzler was parked in the lee of the building. Krill opened the trunk and lifted out a large wood box tied with rope. Cody stared at the box and wiped his mouth. “They’re in there?”

“Of course.”

“I’ve always baptized by immersion,” Cody said, the rain beating on his bare head.

“What does ‘immersion’ mean?”

“I take people down by the creek and put them under. If the water is low, I have to dam up the creek. If everything is completely dried out, we go to the river. The creek is probably running pretty good now.”

“No, we aren’t going to a creek.”

“Then come inside,” Cody said.

They walked through the lighted coffee room and into the chapel, both of Krill’s hands cupped under the rope that bound the box, the weight hitting against his knees and sides. Cody removed his coat and wiped his face on his sleeve. He noticed that Negrito never touched the box, even though it was apparent that Krill was struggling with it. Krill set the box down heavily by the altar and untied the rope and let it snake to the floor.

The only light in the room came from a small stage hung with a blue velvet curtain. The interior of the chapel was immaculate, the pews gleaming, the floors polished. For some reason, as though for the first time, Cody realized what good care he had taken of the building. He had just installed new support beams under the peaked roof, heightening the effect of a cathedral ceiling, and had reframed the windows and painted birds and flowers on the panes. He had built a stage out of freshly planed pine in hopes that next year he could put on an Easter pageant and attract more children to his Bible-study classes. The air around the stage was as sweet-smelling as a green woods in spring, not unlike a deferred promise of better things to come.

“You have a very nice church here,” Krill said.

“I’m going to get a pitcher of water out of the coffee room. I’m not gonna call anybody or give y’all any trouble. What I’m doing here might not be right, but I’m gonna do it just the same.”

“What do you mean, ‘not right’?”

“The papists anoint at death. We baptize at birth.”

“These are considerations that are of no importance to me. Go get the water. Do not let me hear you talking on a telephone.”

“Don’t trust him, jefe. He’s a capon, the friend of whoever he needs to please at the moment,” Negrito said.

“No, our friend here has no fear. He has no reason to lie. Look at his eyes. I think he doesn’t want to live. He’s a sadder man than even you, Negrito.”

“Don’t talk of me that way, jefe.”

“Then don’t call others a capon, you who are afraid to touch the box in which my children sleep.”

Cody went into the coffee room and filled a small pitcher with tap water. His head was pounding, his breath short, but he didn’t know why. Was it just fear? Krill may have been a killer, but he was no threat to him. Krill was totally absorbed with the status of his children in the afterlife. What about Negrito? No, Negrito was not a threat, either, not as long as he was under Krill’s control. So what was it that caused Cody’s heart to race and the scalp to shrink on his head?

This was the first time he had ever done anything of a serious nature as a minister. And he was doing it at a time when he was about to flee his church and home and become a fugitive, just like the road kid who had forged checks and ended up on a county prison farm. He walked back into the chapel, knocking against a worktable he had fashioned from two planks and sawhorses, spilling a nail gun and a claw hammer to the floor.

Krill had opened the top of the wood box and was standing expectantly beside it, his gaze fixed on Cody. “How do you want to do it?” he asked.

Cody hadn’t thought about it. The images that went through his mind were too bizarre to keep straight in his head. He looked into the box and swallowed. “Put them on the edge of the stage,” he said.

“They’re watching,” Krill said.

“They’re watching?”

“From limbo. They want to be turned loose. That’s what you’re going to do.”

“Listen, I don’t know about those kinds of things,” Cody said. “Don’t make me out something I’m not.”

“You have cojones, hombre. I misjudged you.” Krill placed his children, one after another, on the apron of the stage. The oldest child could not have been over four when he died. The younger ones might have been three or two. All three were wrapped tightly in cloth and duct tape. Only their faces were exposed. Their eyes were little more than slits, their skin gray, their tiny cheekbones as pronounced as wire. There was no odor of decomposition. Instead, they smelled like freshly turned dirt in a garden, or like damp shade in woods carpeted with mushrooms.

“What are you waiting for?” Krill said.

“I feel like I’m doing something that’s dishonest,” Cody said.

“Your words make no sense. They are the words of a man with thorns in his head instead of thoughts.”

“Your children are innocent. They never hurt anybody.”

“Do not make me lose my patience, hombre. Do what you need to do.”

Cody poured water from the pitcher on the thumb and the tips of his fingers and made the sign of the cross on each child’s forehead. “I baptize these children in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”

“That’s good. I’m proud of you, man,” Krill said.

“But it’s me and these two men who need absolution, Lord. These children didn’t commit any sin,” Cody said. “I left a woman blinded and maimed for the rest of her life, and the two men standing beside me are covered with blood splatter. We’re not worthy to touch the hem of Your garment. We’re not worthy to baptize these children, either, particularly the likes of me. But You’re probably used to hypocrites offering up their prayers, so I doubt if two or three more liars in Your midst is gonna make a lot of difference in the outcome of things.”

“You better shut your mouth, gringo,” Negrito said.

“I’m done. I’m sorry for what happened to your children, Krill. If y’all are fixing to kill me, I reckon now is the time.”

He walked into the coffee room, his back twitching. Out the window, he could see the deck of his house glimmer in a bolt of lightning, like the bow of an ark sliding out of a black wave. He sat down in a folding chair, his back to the doorway that gave onto the chapel. A phone was on the counter by the sink, and for a moment he thought about picking it up and dialing 911. But what for? If Krill planned to kill him, he would do it before a sheriff’s cruiser could arrive. Also, Cody would eventually have to tell the sheriff or one of his deputies about the clinic bombing, and Cody had no intention of going back to jail, or at least no intention to actively aid and abet his own imprisonment.