Julia Spencer-Fleming - I Shall Not Want

Elizabeth de Groot fluttered up to her after everyone else had left. "Clare," she said, in her cultivated voice, "I know this is a disappointment to you, but I'm sure that in time you'll see-"

"Elizabeth," Clare said, "don't you have something to do?"

The deacon looked at her hesitantly. "Uh, yes. Hospital visits."

"Then I suggest you go forth, spreading the good news of Jesus Christ." And leave me the hell alone .

Clare was sitting on the priceless antique table, wrapped in a blue devil, when Lois stuck her head in the door. "Want me to put away the leftovers?" she asked, waving toward the remaining sandwiches and chips.

"Thanks, Lois. Go ahead and take your lunch break. I'll carry this downstairs and put it in the fridge. I can deliver the sandwiches to the shelter later."

She found a plastic grocery bag in her office and tossed the chips in. Hanging it over her arm, she collected the sandwich platter and tottered downstairs to the church kitchen. The lights in the hall were already on. Good Lord, had she forgotten to turn them off after she and Lyle MacAuley went through the place Sunday night?

Wonderful. Another collection plate for the National Grid Power Company .

Then she heard a step behind her.

She whirled, saw the shape of a man emerge from the sexton's closet, and screamed. She was raising the tray in self-defense, hitting herself in the chest with the bag of chips, when the man said, "Father? It's just me."

She lowered the food. The sandwiches slid toward her, mashing into her stomach, mayonnaise and tuna smearing over the black cotton. "Mr. Hadley," she said. She cleared her throat to steady her voice. "You startled a year's growth out of me."

"Grampa? What was that?" At the other end of the hall, Hadley Knox's little girl popped out of the nursery. "Are you okay?"

Her big brother stepped into the hallway beside her. "Should I call Mom?"

"No! G'back inside, you two. I just startled the Father some." He ran one hand over his bald scalp. "Din't mean to scare you. We got here when you was meeting with the vestry. Din't want to interrupt."

"No, no." She looked down at the mess on her clerical blouse. "I was going to put this in the fridge." She looked at the sexton. He was in his usual work clothes: baggy, stained twill pants and a plaid shirt. He had a backpack in one hand, and even from several feet away she could smell cigarette smoke. "What are you doing here?"

"Honey told me 'bout the Mexican boy disappearing. I figgured it was time for me to get back on the job."

"With the kids in tow?" Another thought occurred to her. "Has your doctor-" the bag of chips was beginning to cut into her wrist. "Let me get rid of this, hmm?" He followed her down the hall into the semisubterranean kitchen. She laid the sandwich platter and the chips on the wide center island. "There are some sodas left in the meeting room. Would the kids like lunch?"

"Don't want to be no bother." He waved his hand in the vague direction of her upper body. "Better take care of that stuff on your shirt, there. 'Fore it stains."

She grabbed a dishcloth and turned on the cold water. "Has your doctor given you the okay to go back to work?"

He grunted. "Somebody's got to. This place ain't gonna clean itself, y'know."

She looked up from scrubbing the mayo off her blouse. "Does your granddaughter know you're here?"

Mr. Hadley shifted from foot to foot. "Long as I'm watching the kids and they ain't parked in front of the TV like she axed, I don't see as it makes no never mind where we are."

"Mr. Hadley-"

He lifted the backpack and placed it next to the sink. "I found this in my closet. Figgured it belonged to the Mexican."

She recognized it now. Amado had been carrying that bag when she had come to pick him up at the McGeochs' farm. Before the choir concert. Before the Christies invaded her church. Before Russ-

She dropped the dishcloth in the sink. The mayo was gone, but now she had an enormous oily wet spot on her midsection. "I suppose the police will want to see it."

"I s'pose they will." Mr. Hadley unzipped the bag and held it toward her, opened wide.

"Holy-" She inhaled. Inside, a monstrous.357 nestled between wrapped stacks of currency.

"Oh, dear lord." She thought of the young Latino's nervous eyes. The way he'd scrub at his half-grown mustache when she spoke to him. "What did you get yourself into?"

He wished he had kept the gun. It would have felt good, riding heavy against the waistband of his jeans, raising a bruise as he toiled up and down the forested hills, making his way to the Christie farm. It was a form of communication those hijos de putas could understand.

Amado paused and wiped the sweat out of his eyes. The air was sticky with the scent of pine. Only an hour past dawn and already hot beneath the forest cover. Raul thought he was a liar, with his stories of cool mountain mornings and evenings where you needed to wear a jacket. Those were past years. This year was different.

He wished he had never come back to this place.

He wasn't sure how he was going to get them to admit what they had done with Octavio. He wasn't even sure they were there. The policewoman who had come last night, asking questions while her partner searched the bunkhouse and the barn and the outbuildings, had said other police were talking with the Christies at the same time. She had said they should call if Amado showed up. Everyone looked straight ahead and pretended they didn't know the real Amado had swapped names and papers with his brother. She had said they should watch out for anyone suspicious and should stick together in pairs. She didn't know much about dairy work.

He had two utility knives in his pockets. A farmer's tool. Sharp enough to slash through tangled leather straps, sturdy enough to pry a stone out of a hoof. He was a farmer, not a fighter, but he knew he could hurt the Christies badly enough to make them talk. If they didn't kill him first.

He hiked up the last rise-the same stretch of woods he had stumbled through a month ago, fleeing with gun and money and Isobel's kiss and the sounds of her beating in his ears. He wondered, for the hundredth time, if he should have stopped her brother and taken her away. To save her. To save Octavio from this stupid mix-up he had created. One lie, to keep Octavio from deportation. And now it might be the boy's death warrant.

Did they come after him because they thought he was the brown-skinned man kissing their sister? Or had Isobel crumbled and told them a man named Amado had the gun and the money, sending them after Octavio in a stupid, deadly mistake? Either way, he was to blame. For losing his mind and pretending he could be with an Anglo woman. For agreeing to keep her secrets, even when he wasn't sure what they were. For handing a bag full of death over to Octavio. He had counted the money. It was more than enough for someone to kill for. And he had given it to the boy with no more warning than to keep it private. What could be safer than a church?

What had he been thinking?

He heard something ahead of him. He froze. A ting-ting sound, like sweet small bells. The skritch-skritch of squirrels running up a tree. Bleating. He relaxed until he remembered Isobel's family raised sheep. If they were grazing in the old wood-ringed pasture, would one of the brothers be there? He reached inside his pocket and gripped the handle of the utility knife. One man, he could take on and hope to succeed. Unless there was a dog, too.

He slunk to the edge of the pasture like a wolf. There were perhaps fifteen or twenty sheep mowing the grass, their coats half-grown from a spring shearing, belled to make them easier to track. No shepherd. No dog that he could see, although that didn't mean there wasn't one napping in the shade of the pole barn.