Riders In The Sky Part 34

"Oh, sure," he muttered. As if, after traveling all this way, for all this time, they were just going to tuck him in, kiss him goodnight, and leave. Just like that.

As he dressed, he made sure he made a lot of noise. Stomping around the bedroom. Grunting loudly. Glancing at the door now and then to see if anyone was there. When he was finished, and still alone, he walked heavy-heeled down the hall to the stairs and paused, listening.

They were there.

He couldn't hear them, but he knew they were there.

He backed away from the stairs and looked into the guest room. Nodded. Someone had slept in the bed.

In the storeroom the closet door was closed.

Back at the stairs he hesitated. There were going to be a lot of questions, most of which he knew he wouldn't be able to answer to their satisfaction. He could always tell them to leave, though, that he hadn't asked any of them to do this, that they had been fools all this time, chasing after something that no longer existed.

But that wasn't going to happen.

He remembered the looks on their faces when they first saw him that night; he wouldn't be able to stand the looks they'd give him if he threw them out.

So what would he do? What was the best way to handle this mess? The solution didn't take long. He would be friendly, but distant. Interested in their stories, but cool. The most important thing to remember, above all else, was that nothing was going to change.

He took the first step down, and felt the first twinge of panic. The second step added a little sweat to his palms. He nearly missed the third and had to grab the bannister for support. When he was halfway down, Cora stepped out of the living room, a tentative smile, an expectant look.

"Reverend Chisholm," she said, "someone was here to see you before. Some lady."

He stared at her for a long time before he said, "Cora, I am very glad to see you, but don't ever call me that again."

2.

Lyman Baylor's office was at the side of the house, with an entrance of its own so he could see parishioners without them having to tramp through the house-Kitra's idea, to preserve at least a little of their privacy. It was a small room made smaller by the bookshelves and texts, the desk and chair, the two armchairs and standing lamp, and a large globe on a carved spiral walnut stand.

In shirtsleeves and stocking feet he sat at the desk and flipped through the Bible his mother had given him. He wanted something new this Christmas, aside from the usual telling of the Story. He wanted something relevant. The problem was the congregation, which, on Christmas morning, didn't want relevance; it wanted joy and remembrance and a promise that the following week wasn't going to bring the end of the world.

It should have been simple, forming a compromise that wouldn't alienate that which he'd worked so hard for so long to create.

He should have been able to do this in his sleep.

But as the news worsened and the local situation became more puzzling, and dangerous to those who bucked the mayor's as yet unknown plans for the island's north end, he couldn't find anything to say but the same old cliches.

Not a bad thing.

Not what he wanted.

So he was pleased when he saw his wife hurrying up the sidewalk. Not only was the impending interruption a blessing of sorts, but it gave him a chance to watch her, to appreciate her beauty, to thank G.o.d she had chosen him and not the dozens of other suitors who had pursued her throughout her life.

He grinned shamelessly, then, when she came in without knocking.

"Lyman," she said. "Lyman, my G.o.d, you're not going to believe it."

It wasn't difficult to pick up on her distress, and he was immediately on his feet. "What? What happened?"

"Nothing. It's Mr. Chisholm."

His stomach lurched, his temper sparked. "They got him again? Did they-"

"He's a priest, Lyman! That man is a priest!"

3.

As soon as Casey saw them waiting in the living room, he knew he couldn't do this in here. There wasn't enough room; he would feel constricted, confined; he needed s.p.a.ce. Much more s.p.a.ce.

"Get your coats, we're going for a walk."

It was the tone, not the words, that made them move; it was the look on his face that trapped their questions inside.

He waited for them on the porch. Making no plans, no rehearsals, he nodded them out the screen door and down the walk to the street, herded them left and used a wide sweeping gesture when he said, simply, "This is my home."

Bannock and Lisse walked on his right, Cora and Reed on his left.

He flipped up his windbreaker collar, put his hands in the pockets, and with the sun at their backs, he followed the long road around the wide bend.

Maple Landing, he began, and sensed Cora and Reed tensing, from the corner of his eye saw them move closer together and clasp hands.

You weren't there, John. You don't know what all happened, unless the kids told you something. But the short of it is, Death rode into my village-actually, it was smaller than that-but Death rode in and tore it apart anyway. She brought others with her-they'd been riding and killing across the country for weeks-and almost everyone I knew, every member of my parish, died in a single night.

I'm told that I fought her, but I don't really remember.

I woke up in the hospital, broken bones everywhere, more aches than a cranky old man on a rainy November night. They said I fell from the belfry, was lucky I landed in some pretty thick bushes. I'm here to tell you, I definitely didn't feel lucky about then, all trussed and casted up like that, tubes running every which way out of my body, doped to the gills and still hurting like h.e.l.l. Funny thing was, after all that had happened to me, they were too scared to let me know the least of it-that my hair had turned white. Every strand of it.

Stupid thing is, that bothered me more than anything else. Pride, I suppose. No; vanity. Looking way too old before my time.

What you see here comes from a lot of practice, straight out of a bottle.

Pride, now, that took a hit somewhere else.

There was a woman. Her name was Helen. I kind of think we were something like lovers, or at least falling in love. She stayed with me as long as she could, and then, one day, she left. It was too much, and she didn't understand what had really happened. I don't blame her. She had a life to lead, and I sure wasn't it Took a while to get better, though faster than they suspected, and I was on my feet again. So I went back to the Landing and saw what had been done.

The only thing left standing in one piece was my church. I had thought, lying there in the hospital, that I'd won. That I'd beaten her. But when I saw what was left-the blackened timbers, the craters, the abandoned houses only barely singed-I knew I had lost.

I lost, John.

Everything I worked for, I lost in one night.

Everything I was, was buried in the ashes of the school and the video store and the luncheonette and the bar; it was as dead as the rotting dock down where this great old man used to rent canoes to the tourists, and Reed here, when he wasn't being too lazy, was one of the guides; dead as the school blown apart by a little kid.

There wasn't a single soul left in Maple Landing. All the survivors had moved away, no forwarding address.

I think it was sometime during those two days I spent wandering those streets that I called you, when I told you you were marked. I don't know how I knew that, I just did. I knew you would end up same as me, somehow. I know I sounded crazy, but I know I was right.

He looked over, and John nodded, pushing the hair from his eyes, shoulders slumping.

"My son," he said quietly. "Casey, it was my son."

Casey said nothing.

There was nothing to say.

I had a suitcase, Casey continued, and I threw stuff in it until there was no more room. Then I left, and I haven't been back.

I was foolish enough to think that I could change things. I thought I could make it up to those who had died because I hadn't won. The place to do that, I figured, was back home, in Tennessee. I had a little money, so I took a bus down, and the first thing I did was visit my mother's grave. I buried her, you know. One of the first things I did after my ordination was bury my mother.

I can remember the day clear as any morning you've ever seen in your life. That day, though, the day I went back, it was drizzly and damp and I had to pull vines from her marker and chase leaves off the grave. I told her what had happened, promised I'd try to keep preaching. But it was hard. Awful hard. *Cause as it turned out I was doing it for all the wrong reasons.

Like the song, you know? Don't take your guns to town, boy, leave your guns at home? Something like that?

I was mad. h.e.l.l, I was so full of rage I was d.a.m.n near blind and twice as pigheaded. I was determined to let people know what was going on, what was happening right under their noses in their very own towns, even if I had to stomp it into them, but they were so took up with themselves that they used every explanation they could think of for the famines, the sickness, the violence; all but the right one.

And that made me even angrier.

I visited small churches and small tents and living rooms and day rooms and even a bowling alley once. One week, in Knoxville, I took to standing on street corners. But none of it worked. I couldn't do it. I couldn't say the words as if I meant them, because ... because the anger had long since gone away, and I was just plain tired.

Worse, though. Far worse, was that I couldn't bring myself to believe a blessed word I said.

Can't go after the bad guys if you don't have bullets for your guns.

You have no idea how frightened that made me.

So I figured I had one last chance-I tried to find the priest who had taken me from my cell, promising the moon and G.o.d knows what else so I wouldn't have to do my full time. He and his wife took me into his home. Showed me what I was good for. Put me on the road, John, and d.a.m.n if I didn't end up in Maple Landing.

I should have known he wouldn't be alive after all this time, but when I saw his grave there in North Carolina, it ended.

It all ended.

I took off the collar and I haven't worn it since.

4.

"He's what?"

Whittaker Hull kicked away from his desk, his chair rolling halfway across the small office, the portable telephone so tight to the side of his head that his ear began to ache.

"A priest," Lyman repeated. "He's a priest."

"I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned. Can't be. Impossible. Him? You sure?"

"I checked. Kitra's a magician with a computer, so she did some searching, and there was a priest-an Episcopalian priest, Whittaker-named Casey Chisholm, disappeared about three years ago after a horrible incident at the place he was ministering to, up in New Jersey. Lots of people dead, the town practically burned to the ground."

"New Jersey? You've got to be kidding me, Ly. Oh my Lord, you don't suppose-"

"Oh, no, no, Whittaker, he had nothing to do with it, let me a.s.sure you. Somehow he ended up in the hospital, but once he was discharged-actually, if I read it right, he walked out-he vanished."

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h."

"Whittaker, please."

"But d.a.m.nit, Ly, this isn't good, you do realize that, don't you? This isn't any good."

"What do you mean?"

"I thought maybe we'd finally have some muscle on our side. Kind of even up the odds with Cutler and the Teagues. Keep them off our backs, or at least make them think twice before they tried something else. But he's a priest, for crying out loud, Ly, and he's hiding. What the h.e.l.l kind of ally is that?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way."

"Well, think on it a little, son. Think on it. Senior Raybourn's got the only property left up there that doesn't belong to some blind corporation we both know is owned by Cutler and that weasel Cribbs. Who the h.e.l.l's gonna protect him? You? Me? Rick? Oh Jesus Christ, Ly, sweet Jesus Christ."

"Whittaker."

"Go away, Lyman. I've got a Christmas editorial to write."