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By Root 1148 0

of the crosses stood as well, streaked a dull red with rust from the nails. The other four lay on the ground, orange-flowered trumpet vines curled around them. His heart caught just for a second when he saw some of the remains of the dog still hanging from the first cross his father had ever raised. He leaned against a tree, thought about the days leading up to his mother’s death, how Willard wanted so much for her to live. He would have done anything for her; fuck the blood and the stink and the insects and the heat. Anything, Arvin said to himself. And suddenly he realized, as he stood once again in his father’s church, that Willard had needed to go wherever Charlotte went, so that he could keep on looking after her. All these years, Arvin had despised him for what he’d done, as if he didn’t give a damn what happened to his boy after she died. Then he thought about the ride back from the cemetery, and Willard’s talk about visiting Emma in Coal Creek. It had never occurred to him before, but that was as close as his father could get to telling him that he was leaving, too, and that he was sorry. “Maybe stay for a while,” Willard had said that day. “You’ll like it there.”

He wiped some tears from his eyes and set his gym bag down on top of the log, then walked around and knelt at the dog’s cross. He moved away some dead leaves. The skull was half buried in loam, the small hole from the .22 rifle still visible between the empty eye sockets. He found the moldy collar, a small clump of hair still stuck to the leather around the rusty metal buckle. “You were a good dog, Jack,” he said. He gathered up all the remains he could find on the ground—the thin ribs, the hipbones, a single paw—and pulled off the brittle pieces still attached to the cross. He laid them gently in a small pile. With the sharp end of a tree branch and his hands, he dug a hole in the moist, black dirt at the foot of the cross. He went down a foot or so, arranged everything carefully in the bottom of the grave. Then he went over to his bag and got the painting of the crucifixion that he’d taken from the motel and hung it on one of the nails in the cross.

Going back to the other side of the log, he knelt down in the place where he had once prayed next to his father. He pulled the Luger out of his jeans and set it on top of the log. The air was thick and dead with the heat and humidity. He looked at Jesus hanging from the cross and closed his eyes. He tried his best to picture God, but his thoughts kept wandering. He finally gave up, found it easier to imagine his parents looking down on him instead. It seemed as if his entire life, everything he’d ever seen or said or done, had led up to this moment: alone at last with the ghosts of his childhood. He began to pray, the first time since his mother had died. “Tell me what to do,” he whispered several times. After a couple of minutes, a sudden gust of wind came down off the hill behind him, and some of the bones still hanging in the trees began to knock together like wind chimes.

54

BODECKER TURNED ONTO THE DIRT LANE that led back to the house where the Russells used to live, his cruiser rocking gently in the ruts. He cocked his revolver and laid it on the seat. He eased slowly over flimsy saplings and tall clumps of horseweeds, coming to a stop about fifty yards from where the house had once stood. He could just make out the top of the rock foundation above the Johnson grass. The little that remained of the barn was another forty yards to the left. Maybe he would buy the property once this fucking mess was over with, he thought. He could build another house, plant an orchard. Let Matthews have the damn job of sheriff. Florence would like that. She was a worrier, that woman. He reached under the seat and got the pint, took a drink. He would have to do something about Tater, but that wouldn’t be too difficult.

Then again, the Russell boy might be just the thing he needed to win another election. Someone who would kill a preacher for getting some young pussy had to have a screw loose, no matter what