Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

“Hell, this is all right,” Jud said. “I need you on as a cook.”

“Not likely. How do people make a living around here?”

“Lumber. Cut it and mule it out. That’s a thing about East Texas, plenty of lumber.”

“Some day there will be a lot less, that is my reasoning.”

“It all grows back.”

“People grow back faster, and we could do with a lot less of them.”

“On that matter, Reverend, I agree with you.”

When the Reverend went outside with Jud to let Norville loose, the kids were still throwing rocks. The Reverend picked up a rock and winged it through the air and caught one of the kids on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.

“Damn,” Jud said. “That there was a kid.”

“Now he’s a kid with a knot on his head.”

“You’re a different kind of Reverend.”

The kid got up and ran, holding his hand to his head squealing.

“Keep going you horrible little bastard,” Reverend Mercer said. When the kid was gone, the Reverend said, “Actually, I was aiming to hit him in the back, but that worked out quite well.”

They walked over to the cage. There was a metal lock and a big padlock on the thick wooden bars. Reverend Mercer had wondered why the man didn’t just kick them out, but then he saw the reason. He was chained to the floor of the wagon. The chain fit into a big metal loop there, and then went to his ankle where a bracelet of iron held him fast. Norville had a lot of lumps on his head and his bottom lip was swollen up and he was bleeding all over.

“This is no way to treat a man,” Reverend Mercer said.

“He could have been a few rocks shy of a dozen knots, you hadn’t stopped to cook and eat a steak.”

“True enough,” the Reverend said.

The sheriff unlocked the cage and went inside and unlocked the clamp around Norville’s ankle. Norville, barefoot, came out of the cage and walked around and looked at the sky, stretching his back as he did. Jud sauntered over to the long porch and reached under it and pulled out some old boots. He gave them to Norville. Norville pulled them on, then came around the side of the cage and studied the Reverend.

“Thank you for lettin’ me out,” Norville said. “I ain’t crazy, you know. I seen what I seen and they don’t want to hear it none.”

“Cause you’re crazy,” Jud said.

“What did you see?” the Reverend asked.

“He starts talkin’ that business again, I’ll throw him back in the box,” Jud said. “Our deal was he goes with you, and I figure you’ve worn out your welcome.”

“What I’ve worn out is my stomach,” Reverend Mercer said. “That meat is backing up on me.”

“Take care of your stomach problems somewhere else, and take that crazy sonofabitch with you.”

“Does he have a horse?”

“The back of yours,” Jud said. “Best get him on it, and you two get out.”

“Norville,” the Reverend said, “come with me.”

“I don’t mind comin’,” Norville said, walking briskly after the Reverend.

Reverend Mercer unhitched his horse and climbed into the saddle. He extended a hand for Norville, helped him slip up on the rear of the horse. Norville put his arms around Reverend Mercer’s waist. The Reverend said, “Keep the hands high or they’ll find you face down outside of town in the pine straw.”

“You stay gone, you hear?” Jud said, walking up on the porch.

“This place does not hold much charm for me, Sheriff Jud,” Reverend Mercer said. “But, just in case you should over value your position, you do not concern me in the least. It is this town that concerns me. It stinks and it is worthless and should be burned to the ground.”

“You go on now,” Jud said.

“That I will, but at my own speed.”

The Reverend rode off then, glancing back, least Jud decide to back shoot. But it was a needless concern. He saw Jud go inside the shack, perhaps to fry up some more rancid horse meat.

They rode about three miles out of town, and Reverend Mercer stopped by a stream. They got down off the horse and let it drink. While the horse quenched its thirst, the Reverend removed the animal’s saddle, then he pulled the horse away from the water lest it bloat. He took some grooming items out of a saddlebag and went to work, giving the horse a good brushing and rub down.

Norville plucked a blade of grass and put it in his mouth and worked it around, found a tree to sit under, said, “I ain’t no bowl of nuts. I seen what I seen. Why did you help me anyway? For all you know I am a nut.”

“I am on a mission from God. I do not like it, but it is my mission. I’m a hunter of the dark and a giver of the light. I’m the hammer and the anvil. The bone and the sinew. The sword and the gun. God’s man who sets things right. Or at least right as God sees them. Me and him, we do not always agree. And let me tell you, he is not the God of Jesus, he is the God of David, and the angry city killers and man killers and animal killers of the Old Testament. He is constantly jealous and angry and if there is any plan to all this, I have yet to see it.”

“Actually, I was just wantin’ to know if you thought I was nuts.”

“It is my lot in life to destroy evil. There is more evil than there is me, I might add.”

“So. You think I’m a nut, or what?”

“Tell me your story.”

“If you think I’m a nut are you just gonna leave me?”

“No. I will shoot you first and leave your body. Just joking. I do not joke much, so I’m poor at it.”

The Reverend tied up the horse and they went over and sat together under the tree and drank water from the Reverend’s canteen. Norville told his story.

“My daddy, after killin’ my mother over turnip soup, back in the Carolinas, hitched up the wagon and put me in my sister in it and come to Texas.”

“He killed your mother over soup?”

“Deader than a rock. Hit her upside the head with a snatch of turnips.”

“A snatch of turnips? What in the world is a snatch of turnips?”

“Bunch of them. They was on the table where she’d cut up some for soup, still had the greens one ’em. He grabbed the greens, and swung them turnips. Must have been seven or eight big ole knotty ones. Hit her upside the head and knocked her brain loose I reckon. She died that night, right there on the floor. Wouldn’t let us help her any. He said God didn’t want her to die from getting’ hit with turnips, he’d spare her.”

“Frankly, God is not all that merciful. You seen this? Your father hitting your mother with the turnips?”

“Yep. I was six or so. My sister four. Daddy didn’t like turnips in any kind of way, let alone a soup. So he took us to Texas after he burned down the cabin with mama in it, and I been in Texas ever since, but mostly over toward the middle of the state. About a year ago he died and my sister got a bad cough and couldn’t get over it. Coughed herself to death. So I lit out on my own.”

“I would think that is appropriate at your age, being on your own. How old are you. Thirty?”

“Twenty-six. I’m just tired. So I was riding through the country here, living off the land, squirrels and such, and I come to this shack in the woods and there weren’t no one livin’ there. I mean I found it by accident, cause it wasn’t on a real trail. It was just down in the woods and it had a good roof on it, and there was a well. I yelled to see anyone was home, and they wasn’t, and the door pushed open. I could see hadn’t nobody been there in a long time. They had just gone off and left it. It was a nice house, and had real glass in the windows, and whoever had made it had done good on it, cause it was put together good and sound. They had trimmed away trees and had a yard of sorts.