Tom Piccirilli - Emerald Hell

Jester turned and his eyes pulsed with energy. Duffy tugged at his brother's arm and drew him back through the palm leaves. "Let's just let the preacher go on about his own business. We'll go sit down the creek this'a way."

"Well then, I'm in agreement," Deeter said, "let's get on. But I'm a'gonna get some hog cracklins Tore this night is through."

As they moved off, the ghost of Jester's murdered wife- the wife he had murdered -appeared beside him and said, "You claim you've done this for family, but you destroyed the one you had. Iffun you cared so much about kith and kin, you'd not have been so anxious with the blade."

The voice again, and always, so much more than her own, filled with the kind of peace he craved and could not contain.

"It's no empty claim,"Jester said."I've a right to my own fulfillment and serenity."

She stroked the bone-white curls at his neck, the way she would during summer picnics at the river, after the baptisms. "By warming your hands in the blood of children?"

"I've never hurt a child yet."

"Oh," she said, as if stricken. "You forget."

And it was true, he suddenly realized, he had forgotten. The child rushing him, the hatchet, the struggle. Here he was following the trail of his true enemy, and he had ignored how close they'd once been, even at his bleakest hour.

Brother Jester said, "My mistakes were made for love. Anything done for love is beyond the righteous and the wrathful."

"That's an excuse meant to soothe your scratched heart."

"God's will is greater than man's."

"You speak with such conviction on judgments left best to the Lord," his dead wife said.

"I speak with the tongue He gave me. It's what I've always done. Back when I had a honeyed voice and now that I don't. I've always spoken the words He presents me."

Her ghost, despite knowing the harmony of the afterworld, looked almost aggrieved for a moment.

"You'll not see me at your side again," she said. "Does that worry you?"

"Yes."

"Take my hand and let your pain end."

"There was a reason I murdered you," he said. "And I have not forgotten or forgiven it."

"'If only you'd ever loved as well as you learned to hate, these last twenty years wouldn't have been so empty."

"Better than being dead."

"You are dead," she reminded him.

"I'll miss you,"Jester said, his ruined voice thick with emotion, and in turning he knew he would no longer find her there.

And then seeing he was alone he understood he truly had nothing now, and the child seemed that much more important.

He remembered the all-night sings during the tent gatherings and revivals, when he'd stand in a pulpit surrounded by the lame and the blind and the abandoned and the damned and the doomed, and side by side with a golden-voiced boy he'd feel the will of God flowing through his hands and he would heal them all.

They would praise the name of Jesus and kiss Jesters palms and hug the boy, and the evils of the world would perish for a moment, an hour, a night. He'd end his summers staring up at the stars and listening to the evening gales rolling in, and the sweetness of life would fill him until he wept. While at home in his bed his wife had taken up with Bliss Nail, and the arrival of his own oblivion fell upon him.

Now he was back, and the shielding music played, and the golden-voiced boy was now a man who awaited him. Another circle was about to close. Jester stood and moved toward the creek. He was ready.

Despite the storm clouds, the stars began to shine down. Jester smiled, crossed his arms, and hugged himself as he walked, and the sweetness of life filled him once more so full of love that he wept black flame for what would soon be his.

Duffy' and Deeter danced with two women older than their ma-older than their ma would've been if they hadn't ushered her off with the ax handle-while the jug and washboard band continued to play up on a porch and the drizzle came down.

The sun had set but the swamp folk had party lights strung up along a couple of porches and down the main street. Duffy had found himself a bottle half full of corn liquor and Deeter had hog cracklins falling from his mouth while they swung arm in arm with the ladies.

The women, though a little older than the Ferris boys generally liked, were still firm and fleshy and had most of their teeth, so the brothers didn't mind much. The fact that one of the ladies seemed to have an extra eye staring out from beneath the ringlets of her hair, and the other was such a fine dancer because she had three legs to leap around upon, initially gave the Ferris boys some pause.

But they figured what the hell and hopped to it anyway, since they were hungry for food and company, and they figured to have some regular good old fun before they got to the killing.

The women had already gone soft on Deeter and Duffy, the way most ladies did. Duffy tried not to let the third eye throw off his two-step, even though it sort of kept peering at him in a somewhat suspicious manner. Deeter was having fun trying to keep up with the three-legged gal who was more or less running circles around him.

"You boys sure do know how to kick up a good time," the three-legged gal said.

"Nowhere near as good as you, honey!" Deeter squawked out, laughing. He threw his arms around her and hugged her to him, thinking this would be a good bundle of woman to go to bed with each night and wake up beside every morning. He was in a marrying mood.

The Ferris boys hadn't been to a good old-fashioned hootenanny since at least last summer, or maybe even the summer before, although with all the moonshine often being poured among their friends and neighbors along the way, it was hard to recall the specifics. A good jug and washboard band was a rarity in Enigma. A fine banjo-player even more so. Working the mash vats didn't leave a man with much wind left and hardly no skin on his fingertips.

"Darlin'," Duffy said to the three-eyed woman, "what do you see with that extra one right there?"

"I sometimes glimpse the future," she said, staring directly at him. And when this gal stared directly at you, she well and truly stared .

"That right? Well, then you tell me this. Are you gazin' on anything of great or minor import at this here very moment?"

"I am."

"And what is it?" Duffy asked, eyeballing the eyeball that eye-balled him. The girl's wet hair closed over it and he reached up and parted her ringlets. "You got me curious."

"I see you being chased by gators."

The eye blinked at him, and shifted in her head to look him up and down.

"I don't get 'chased, darlin', I do the chasin'. I killed me more than twenty bulls in the last month."

"You're a poacher then." She smiled and her two normal eyes seemed almost adoring, and the third one looked like it was sneering at him.

"We're just businessmen, me and my brother," Duffy said, wondering if he punched the extra eye would the girl take offense. Maybe she'd tell him, Hit it again, I never did like that little glaring bastard.

"You're screaming," she said. "You're croaking."

"I'm what?"

"Croaking like they do. Making those awful noises."

He tried to continue grinning but this gal was wearing on his good mood. He checked Deeter and was surprised at how much fun his brother was having, just swinging and swaying about, eating his hog cracklins and tapping at some moon. "So you're sayin' they catch me, these gators?"

"Looked mighty close," the three-eyed woman said. "I just flashed on it for a moment."

For some reason that got him laughing, and even though the eyeball was definitely glowering now, wishing him hurt, the music swelled around Duffy and some of the brutal thoughts that had started to go through his head, like how he might want to jam Mrs. Hoopkins's cutting knife right into this gal's third peeper, began to fade. He hugged her again and she tittered in his ear, and that was just fine.