Эд Горман - Blood Moon

He wanted me to disagree but I wasn’t about to. I still doubted that Jesus, back on earth today, would tool around in a new Lincoln.

“I hope your wife gets better.”

He looked at me hazily, as if he were coming out of a trance, as perhaps he was. Bible-thumpers often worked themselves into real frenzies.

“I thank you for your charitable thoughts, sir.”

“You’ll get a hold of me tonight?”

“I most certainly will. I most certainly will.”

I nodded and walked out of the church, watching the play of shadow and light on the oak walls, and hearing him mutter prayers to himself up near the altar. This had to be for my benefit. Isn’t there a psalm about the most sincere prayers being those whispered in the heart?

Outside, I saw a young blonde woman in white shorts and a blue halter hosing down one of the Lincolns. She had the somewhat overweight and overripe sexuality of a fifties femme fatale . She wore too much makeup and too much hair spray and too much theatrical sexuality, but her particular persona worked anyway. She was appealing in a slightly tawdry, vaguely comic way.

I was five feet away from her when she turned and saw me and then very slowly leaned over to take a sponge from the sudsy red plastic bucket by her bare feet. In bending over, she gave me a nice lingering look at her considerable cleavage.

“Hi,” I said. “You’ve got a nice day for it.”

A knowing but tentative smile. She still hadn’t figured out if I’d be worth any serious flirting.

“I could stand it ten degrees warmer,” she said. “I’m from Houston, and I just can’t get used to what you all call a ‘heat wave.’ ” She gave me the benefit of enormous eyes made violet by contact lenses. “Actually, I could stand it a whole lot hotter.”

Being a gentleman, and being somebody who hates corny lines, I decided to take what she said without any implication whatsoever.

“I was just in seeing the reverend. He seems like a nice guy.”

She eyed me skeptically. “Somehow you don’t seem the type.”

“The type?”

“You know. The churchgoing type. There’s just something about you. I don’t mean any insult, either.”

I told her who I was. “You’re the second good guesser I’ve seen in fifteen minutes.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Kenny Deihl guessed that I was a journalist. And I am.”

She had a good nasty grin. “That isn’t all that Kenny is good at guessing, either.”

And with that, and before I could ask her what her obscure remark had meant, she turned back to the car and sprayed water all over the roof and driver’s door.

She shouted above the din of water on metal. “He lets me drive this if I keep it clean. Part of my pay, I guess.”

“Are you Mindy?”

“Right.” She grinned her nasty grin again. “I’m the girl singer for the reverend.”

“He said he found Kenny in a Holiday Inn. Where did he find you?”

“A Motel 6.”

“In the bar?”

“Motel 6s don’t have bars, if you get my drift.”

I went right on past that one. “You three travel a lot?”

“Me and the rev and Kenny?”

“Uh-huh.”

“ ’bout four months of the year, all told.”

“The reverend do much traveling on his own?”

“That’s kind of a strange question, seeing’s how your article’s supposed to be about a bedroom community and all.”

“Not really. I’m just curious about how he holds his flock together.”

She laughed. “So that’s what you call them. A flock. I’ve been wondering what name to use for them.”

She picked up the sudsy sponge and stood on tiptoes to wash the roof. She had a great bawdy body and knew it. Another five years, it would mudslide into fat if she wasn’t very careful, but right now it was bedazzling.

She had given the roof a few swipes when I heard a beeping sound and saw for the first time the beeper clipped to the waist of her shorts.

“Oh, shit,” she said. “Pardon my French.”

She stopped work, shaking her head miserably. “That bitch.”

“Who’s a bitch?”

“Betty Roberts.”

“The reverend’s wife?”

She heard the discomfort in my voice. “He sold you on it, too, huh?”

“Sold me on what?”

“Her cancer.”

“She doesn’t have it?”

“Hell, no, she doesn’t have it. He just says that so the ‘flock,’ as you call them, will feel sorry for him and give more money.”

“You sure you should be telling me all this?”

She plopped sponge into suds, wiped her hands on her hips and said, “I’m splitting in a week. Don’t matter to me anymore who knows what.”

The beeper erupted again.

“She’s up there at her bedroom window watching us with binoculars. That’s all she does all day. The colored woman who works for her, it’s her day off, so Reverend Bob makes me be her gofer.”

“This is quite a setup here.”

“Yes,” she said, grinning her nasty grin. “Isn’t it, though?”

What most people don’t know about prison is that it’s a bureaucracy and that you have to treat it that way.

Early one spring, he decides he wants to start writing — just give him something to do other than listen to all the jailhouse lawyers talking about how they’re going to get themselves out early, or listening to some con whining about how unlucky he’s been all his life, or watching this one guard just drool at the prospect of cracking a skull or two. But the assistant warden won’t let him have a typewriter.

Why not? he asks.

I wasn’t aware I had to give you any reasons for my decisions, the assistant warden says.

According to Anderson you do.

Ah, yes, Anderson. God, I get sick of jailhouse lawyers.

I could file a form, you know.

The assistant warden doesn’t say anything for a time. Just stares out the window. Then says, A BP-9.

What?

A BP-9. That’s the form you need to file. Its official title is an administrative remedy appeal. File the form, maybe the warden’ll give you that typewriter you want. Of course Anderson, being a good jailhouse lawyer, he can tell you about the BP-9 or the BP-10 or the BP-11.

Then the assistant warden pauses a long time and says, You killed that dog didn’t you? The one with its legs cut off.

Don’t know what you’re talking about.

You think I don’t know about you? You think I buy all this altar-boy stuff you spread around? You’re the most dangerous man in this entire prison system.

He says nothing. Just watches.

Did it get you hot, when you cut up that dog that way? Did it make you feel good about yourself?

The assistant warden shakes his head wearily.

I can handle the thieves and the con artists and even some of the killers — but it’s the monsters I can’t deal with any more. The people like you.

Sounds like you need a vacation.

I want you to know something.

Yeah? What?

If I can ever figure out any way to do it, I’m going to kill you. Cut your throat the first chance I get. That’s a promise.

Is there a complaint form for that?

For what?

For when somebody threatens to cut my throat?

You think this is funny?

I was just asking a question.

I couldn’t sleep for a month, thinking about what you did to that little dog.

You think you can prove it?

I don’t need to prove it. Not to my satisfaction, anyway, because I already know you’re guilty.