Robert Butler - Perfume River

Then he wakes, and nearby a voice says, “Brother Bob.”

Bob begins to turn his head in that direction and the pain rushes like a breaker of blood into his right eye, crashing and foaming there.

A hand is upon his head.

This will be it. Finally. The big squeeze.

But the hand simply rests on him, and Bob focuses his eyes to see Pastor Dwayne, who is in the midst of a prayer, the details of which elude Bob. But presumably they are to fix all this.

“In the name of Jesus,” Pastor Dwayne concludes, and he draws his hand away. He smiles.

Bob’s head still hurts.

Pastor Dwayne says, “How are you doing, Brother Bob?”

“Brother Bob’s head hurts like a sonofabitch,” Bob says.

Pastor Dwayne maintains his smile. Even warms it a little. “The Lord spared you from serious harm.”

Bob says, “Have you found out who it was the Lord spared me from?”

“I’m afraid there’s no way to determine that. The man was long gone when we found you. As you well know, we freely offer that space to anyone in need.”

Bob’s body wants him to sit up in umbrage, but the pain in his head checks that impulse instantly.

“Be still now,” the pastor says. “I’m here to help you. The hospital will keep you for only twenty-three hours. That time is almost up. But I’ve spoken with the social worker. They’d normally find you a halfway house for a few days. I’ve asked if I might take you in at the church, and they’ve agreed, if that’s all right with you.”

Bob pops a little breath in halfhearted assent. You always take the handout in front of you.

“After your head feels better, perhaps we can find you some work,” Pastor Dwayne says. “Our Heavenly Father brought you to us for a purpose.”

Bob would dispute this now if another sea wave of pain weren’t rolling through his head. Heavenly or not, a father just wants to fuck with you. Bob knows the pain has helped him out. Don’t push back at the old man if there’s anything more to be had from him.

And so by mid-morning Bob has an inflatable futon and a reading lamp and a New International Holy Bible in a conference room off the church office, converted to a temporary living accommodation so readily that he knows other Hardluckers have preceded him in this place. Bob is wearing flannel and denim, new to him, with the smell of cheap dry cleaning layered over intractable Goodwill funk. He has showered. He used the talcum powder set out for him. He has new underwear. He knows he better not stay.

Pastor Dwayne has blessed him and encouraged him to rest and to read today and to take his pain medicine, and he has promised a nice chat later this afternoon, when he has finished his day’s errands. In the meantime, Sister Loretta, the church secretary in the next room, will help him in any way he needs.

Sister Loretta, buxom and no doubt well talcumed, was standing in the conference room doorway beaming and nodding at him in assent through all of this encouragement, though now that Pastor Dwayne has gone on his way, she has returned to her desk and is presently on the phone talking to a friend. Her voice pitches suddenly lower, though Bob, bending near to the frosted glass panels edging the door, can still hear her speaking kindly of the poor unfortunate in the conference room who the pastor feels responsible for, but it’s okay, the friend should come pick Loretta up at noon, as the poor man is fast asleep. She can take an hour away. Pastor Dwayne won’t mind.

Shortly after noon Loretta is gone and Bob steps from the conference room. A distant corridor rings with hammering. A man in coveralls carrying a ladder passes by on the gravel beyond the office windows and Bob steps back to put the conference door between him and any possible glance.

The footsteps on gravel recede and all is quiet. Even the hammering stops for a few moments, and Bob stays where he is till it resumes.

He crosses the room, passes Loretta’s desk, and he opens the door into the pastor’s office.

Bob is not a thief.

He has not been a thief for decades, and even then it was for only a few years in his late teens. He never used a gun. Never a gun. He was quiet. He was an amateur. He stopped after a couple of whiffs of jail but before he had a permanent record.

He does not enter Pastor Dwayne’s office with the intent to steal anything. He does not have even a flicker of a thought to do so.

Now that he’s standing in the room, the door closed behind him, the bright chill silence of the January morning pressing against the windows, Pastor Dwayne’s massive mahogany desk crouching before him, Bob could not say why he’s come in here. Better simply to put on the sweater and overcoat and watch cap and gloves they’d gathered for him from some donation bin and to walk away right now, while no one is looking.

But this man Dwayne has found an empty La-Z-Boy in Bob’s head and has taken a seat and put his feet up. Though he’s playing it smarmy for the moment. When he stood before the fresh-scrubbed and newly clothed Bob, he explained about his errands and what he expected of Bob for the day’s activities, and then he stopped talking and he took a moment to look at Bob, up and down, and he said, “I see something in you.”

Maybe that’s why Bob is standing in the man’s office now. Do you know me? Who the hell are you that you know me? Bob will turn the tables on him. Figure him out. I bet I know you.

The wall beyond the desk, between two windows looking into a tree line, holds a bronze cross up near the ceiling, and beneath are frames and frames.

Bob circles the desk and approaches.

A cluster of color photos. Dwayne and wife. Bob does not look at her face. Dwayne and his sons: young Dwayne and child boys; older Dwayne and teenagers; old Dwayne now and men. Arms around one another’s shoulders.

Bob moves his eyes sharply away from the family photos, all featuring that Jesus-aping loving father, Pastor Dwayne Kilmer. Bob’s gaze lands on another arrangement.

A diploma for a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Bob Jones University.

A photo of Pastor Dwayne shaking hands with the governor of Florida, the two men grasping hands but looking at the camera, the governor a bald man with a lunging, sappy smile like the smiles of the Hardluckers you need to watch out for in the shelters at night.

A typed letter, framed in gold plate. At the top is an eagle sitting on crossed rifles, the NRA logo. Dear Pastor Kilmer. I am grateful to you for your support in our efforts to protect our Second Amendment rights. What our opponents do not understand is that we have a First Amendment only because we have a Second. Men of God such as yourself …

Bob skips to the signature. He cannot read it. The first name appears to begin with a great, curvy P and the rest is a tight march of undifferentiated letters that could be all u ’s or m ’s or n ’s or l ’s. Then Bob’s eyes slide to the right, to what he realizes is a companion frame, and he thinks he recognizes the square-jawed man speaking behind a lectern. Back to the letter. The logo. And yes. The man’s name is printed in small type beneath it. Not a P , in the signature. A fancy C . Charlton Heston. Bob’s old man loved this guy. Moses the gunslinger.

Bob looks abruptly away from this wall, turns around.

He starts, as if someone has snuck in behind him.

But it’s the high back of Dwayne’s desk chair.

Bob circles it.

Sits in it.

He puts his arms along the arms of the chair.

He settles himself. As best he can, for his head is quick-thumping in pain.

There’s nothing to do for that. Just push through it.

He begins to open drawers.