Robert Parker - Brimstone

“She said he was poking Laurel,” Virgil said.

“Everett says she was drunk.”

“Seemed so,” Virgil said.

“She’s drunk all the time,” Allie said.

“Don’t mean she’s lying,” Virgil said.

“Not on purpose,” Allie said. “I know that she had a bad time when the Indian took her. Laurel, too. And it made her crazy, and when she’s drunk she’s crazier. I been trying to help her, and help Laurel, and so has Brother Percival.”

“Girl talking yet?” Virgil said.

“No,” Allie said. “And Mary Beth’s crawled into her bottle and given up being a mother.”

“So who looks out for the daughter?” Virgil said.

“I do. I’ve become the closest thing she has to a mother.”

“And she ain’t, ah, indicated nothing to you about Brother Percival’s intentions.”

“No, of course not. You think I would stand by and let that happen? She’s like a daughter to me.”

Virgil nodded. I poured myself a cup of coffee.

“Well,” Virgil said. “Me and Everett are deputy sheriffs here. I guess we got to go talk with Brother Percy.”

“He doesn’t like to be called Percy,” Allie said.

Virgil nodded.

“I’ll keep it in mind,” he said. “You mind sticking here and looking after her if she wakes up?”

“I’ve done it before,” Allie said.

“Good,” Virgil said. “ ’Preciate it.”

“And you’re really going to talk with Brother Percival?” Allie said.

“Just doing my duty,” Virgil said.

“She’ll say anything,” Allie said.

“I know,” Virgil said.

“You can’t believe anything she says.”

“I know.”

“She didn’t tell you anything about me?” Allie said.

“Anything to tell?” Virgil said.

“Virgil, you shouldn’t ask me a thing like that,” Allie said. “Of course there isn’t anything. What do you think I am?”

“Just asking,” Virgil said.

“You know how drunks are,” Allie said. “They don’t remember things that happened. They remember things that didn’t happen. They make up stories. They’ll say anything.”

“Keep that in mind, too,” Virgil said.

He stood. I put down my coffee cup, and we went out into the street.

“Mary Beth tell you anything you haven’t mentioned?” I said to Virgil as we walked toward the church.

Virgil didn’t answer. When Virgil doesn’t answer, it isn’t because he didn’t hear the question.

I didn’t press it.

WE TALKED TO BROTHER PERCIVAL in the front room of his house in the compound in back of the church.

“Where’s my organist?” Brother Percival said, and smiled.

He was in his official church clothes: white robe, sandals, long hair.

“Allie’s looking out for a drunk down at the jail,” Virgil said. “Woman named Mary Beth Ostermueller.”

“Poor Mary Beth,” Percival said. “We’re all trying to help her, but…”

“She says you’re fucking her daughter,” Virgil said.

Percival looked like he might burst into prayer.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he said.

“Said you was fucking her, and now you’re fucking Laurel.”

“Must you speak so coarsely, Deputy?” Percival said.

“Just quoting Mary Beth, Reverend,” Virgil said.

“She was drunk.”

“She was.”

“The charge is, as you must know, entirely untrue,” Brother Percival said.

The front room of Brother Percival’s house wasn’t much: a table and chair, an uncomfortable-looking round-backed blue couch, a large Bible on a stand near the door. A big photograph of Brother Percival hung in an oval frame on the wall. In the picture he was wearing a dark suit with a vest and a white shirt with a dark tie. In the picture, his hair was short.

“I’m sure it is, Reverend,” Virgil said. “But me ’n Everett, here, bein’ law officers, we have to ask.”

“Of course you do,” Percival said. “I understand perfectly.”

“Got any idea why she might be thinking these things about you?” Virgil said.

“Aside from drunkenness?” Percival said.

“ ’Side from that,” Virgil said.

“Perhaps my attempts to share my religion with them, to help them, somehow became distorted in her degenerated mind. What happened to her and all. The poor woman clearly isn’t right.”

“Something’s wrong,” Virgil said. “Tell me a little ’bout your religion.”

“My religion is the presence of God in me.”

“How’s God feel about sex?” Virgil said.

“Do not blaspheme,” Percival said.

“Sorry,” Virgil said. “Tell me a little ’bout how you been trying to help these two ladies we brought you.”

“I counsel them every day,” Percival said.

“Meanin’ you take them someplace and talk to them,” Virgil said.

“Yes,” Percival said. “I talk with them here. Though it is, of course, a bit more than that.”

“Girl talk any?”

“Not yet,” Percival said. “Poor child.”

“Well, she probably don’t argue much,” Virgil said.

“No, she surely doesn’t,” Percival said. “I’m not sure she understands what I’m saying. I’m not sure she is at all in her right mind.”

“What are you saying?” I said.

“I explain to them that His eye is on the fall of a sparrow,” Percival said. “That He never sends you a burden too great for you to bear.”

“Ain’t found that to be the case myself, Reverend,” Virgil said. “But you probably know more than I do ’bout all that.”

“I know that the Lord resides in me,” Percival said. “I know what the Lord shares with me.”

“Lord always been there?” Virgil said.

“He is always there in all of us,” Percival said. “But many of us deny him.”

He looked sort of pointedly, I thought, at me and Virgil.

“Didn’t realize he was there,” I said.

“I denied him, at first,” Percival said. “There was a time when I denied God, when I lived a life of the physical self, when I drank, when I committed fornication, when I relied on violence. But God would not be denied. He battered my defenses. He forced himself upon me until we have become one.”

“You and God?” I said.

“Yes.”

“One thing?” I said.

“Yes.”

“You and God being one thing,” I said. “Must be pretty hard to think anything you do is wrong.”

“The Lord governs me in all things,” Percival said.

“He tell you to keep Choctaw Brown on the payroll?” Virgil said.

“As you must know, there is no payroll,” Percival said. “Choctaw came to me, as I had been. He came from a life of dissipation and cruelty. He said he wanted to be saved. We welcomed him to the brotherhood.”

“He saved?” I said.

“He is.”

“Still wearing a Colt,” Virgil said.

“I told you we are militant Christians,” Percival said. “We will not allow those who have not been saved to do us harm.”

“I guess probably I ain’t been saved yet,” Virgil said. “But I don’t want you touching that girl.”

“To accuse me is to accuse the Lord, who abides in me.”

“Seems to be the case,” Virgil said.

Percival seemed to get taller as he stood in front of us. He folded his big arms across his wide chest.

“You can’t accuse me,” Percival said.

His voice was firm but not very loud.

“Because of the Lord?” I said.

“We are one,” Percival said. “You cannot accuse us.”

Virgil looked at Percival for a while, the way you’d look at an odd insect you’d found. Percival stood with his arms still folded like he was going to give the Sermon on the Mount. Then he turned and stalked out of the room.

As we walked back to the sheriff’s office, Virgil said, “You believe any of that?”