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  “We heard a shot . . .” Bayard began.

  “So dramatic you two are. You heard the neighbor’s auto backfiring.” She waved her hand as if to dismiss his worry. “One of those odd little foreign jobs. That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.”

  “We’re looking for a friend,” Frank said, but she responded only by raising her eyebrows. “The guy who brought in those.” He pointed at the groceries strewn across the floor.

  “Oh,” she said, her perfect lips curving into a smile. “The delivery fellow. I’ve never known a delivery man to travel with an entourage before.” She batted her eyelashes at Frank. “I’m afraid he took a spill coming in, twisted his ankle or something.” She crossed the room to the door that led from the kitchen deeper into the house. She placed her hand against it, then looked back over her shoulder at them. “Come through, come through,” she said, smiling widely. “Your friend is inside getting patched up.” When neither of the men moved, she held the door for them, her smile growing wider. “Come.”

  Frank took a few furtive steps toward her, then recovered his normal self-assuredness. A new and exciting fantasy began to stir within his imagination. He returned her smile and glanced back at Bayard. “You heard the lady,” he said, following her as he spoke. Soon the sound of Bayard’s heavy footfalls echoed behind them.

  Frank found himself walking a tad closer to her than perhaps he should. Her perfume, a spicy, almost too-sweet scent, made him lean in even closer, drawing his breaths slowly, as if to breathe her in. Myrna noticed, but she didn’t seem to mind. She kept glancing over her shoulder at him. “You smell real good,” Frank said, feeling foolish as soon as the words escaped him. “Your perfume,” he backpedaled.

  She paused. “Are you a religious man?” Her eyes seemed to mock him, but he didn’t care. “Catholic perhaps?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “I only ask as I’ve been told the scent is reminiscent of the incense of which they are so fond. Myrrh, to be precise. The papists evidently burn it by the pound.” She paused as if in thought. “Of course, the resin was used long before the church was born. The ancient Egyptians associated its scent with immortality. But then again, what did the ancient Egyptians know? Sure, they built the pyramids, but they also married their own sisters.” She smiled again, her eyes narrowing seductively. “Would it surprise you if I told you I don’t wear perfume?” She turned and continued down the marble-floored hallway that seemed even longer than the great hall of the cathedral-like station where they’d arrived. He felt like they’d been walking for several minutes, even though he knew it couldn’t be true. The walls were lined on both sides with mirrors in golden frames. Frank was sure it was just his imagination, but it seemed his hostess’s reflection blurred in each of them, almost like she was vibrating as she passed. He cast a glance back at Bayard, lumpy and sweating through his suit, but in fine focus. The reflection of Bayard’s eyes, skittish and uncertain, met his own. The way the mirrors were situated across from each other reflected the three of them into what seemed an eternity.

  Just when Frank was about to ask how much farther the hall could possibly reach, she stopped before a door and placed her hand on its oversized knob. “If you two will just wait in here, I’ll go see what’s become of your friend.”

  She pushed open the door, motioning with her free hand that they should enter. Frank stepped over the threshold into the room, which was presided over by a long, curving sofa, covered in white fabric. He turned back to see their hostess carrying on down the hall in the opposite direction from which they’d just come.

  His focus returned to the room. Before the sofa sat a low round table that echoed the shape of one of the couch’s inward bends. A chandelier—not a dangly one like the one he’d noticed in the train station, but rounded like a puffed-out dandelion—hung in the center of the room. There were three large windows, but each had been covered in curtains of heavy gold fabric. This place sure as hell beat the two-room apartment he kept in Conroy, and it didn’t stink of pulpwood either. It smelled like her. The whole place carried her scent, a scent, Frank realized, he could grow to like very much. Bayard entered the room, and the door closed with a loud clack behind him, as if it had been slammed shut by an unseen hand.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” his partner asked, the reek of his musky sweat breaking through Frank’s intoxication. “I’m going to take a look around, see if I can find Ruby and get us out of this place.”

  Frank nodded slowly, and licked his dry lips. He no longer felt so sure he wanted to leave.

  TWENTY-NINE

  War had accustomed Corinne to the colors of injury, disease, and death, but there was something about the sight of Judge Lowell’s pallor and his rasping breath that caused the skin of her arms to prickle. She hesitated before taking his wrist, the way she might before touching a slug. Silently cursing her own cowardice, she forced herself to place her fingers against the man’s wrist, then focused her eyes on her trusty wristwatch—the one gift she’d bought for herself upon completing her nurse’s training—and counted. “His pulse is still thready, Doctor.” Hypovolemia—the term crossed her mind, a lack of blood. But it was a condition, not a diagnosis.

  The Judge needed to be treated in the hospital; any fool could see he wouldn’t survive for long without a transfusion, but Dr. McAvoy was adamantly opposed to moving him.

  The doctor struggled to pull an armchair closer to the bed, then sat in it and looked up at Corinne. “I know you are worried that I am just a country sawbones, filled with all kinds of antiquated ideas.” The doctor’s large blue eyes watered behind the thick lenses of his glasses. “Don’t worry, though, I’m not just some bumpkin.” He took a deep breath and removed those glasses, pretending to use his handkerchief to clean the lenses, but quickly dabbing his eyes in the process. “Come daylight, I’ll drive over to the hospital in Tupelo. They got one of them blood centers there. I’ll take a sample of Ovid’s blood to get it typed, and bring back what we need to replenish the blood he’s lost. I’ll see to it that he gets the good, proper, modern care he needs, but we will have to provide that care for him here, in his home.”

  Rather than taking Muhammad to the mountain, McAvoy seemed intent on bringing the mountain to Muhammad. “But wouldn’t it be better to take him there now? I know how to drive if you are worried about seeing . . .”

  “You don’t understand, Miss Ford,” he interrupted her. He didn’t sound angry, just weary. “We can’t let people know how poorly Ovid is doing. He’s an important man around these parts,” he said, speaking slowly, as if he were responding to an inquisitive child who couldn’t comprehend an adult matter. “A lot of people . . . depend on him. We need to patch him up, get him back on his feet first, and then we’ll worry about what comes next.”

  Corinne nodded a silent assent, as if she agreed with his plan of care, even though in truth it made no sense to her. Dr. McAvoy sat still for several minutes, watching over the Judge like a concerned father until his own eyes fell closed, and he, too, began soughing. An hour passed, then two. Corinne had learned to take catnaps standing up and during heavy shelling, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so now. Something in all of this struck her as unwholesome, unnatural, so in spite of her weariness, she remained on high alert. But it was more than the situation with the Judge or the old doctor’s odd behavior that bothered her.

  Had she done the wrong thing in coming here? In spite of her earlier conversation with Elijah, the trip across the river to this house had been done in a nearly complete silence. What resolve Elijah had within him seemed to wilt beneath his parents’ scornful gaze. Elijah felt like a stranger to her or, worse, an imposter of the man who’d charmed her all those many thousands of miles away.

  Corinne went to the window, scanning the sky for familiar constellations. Somehow knowing where she stood in relation to the sky had always helped her center herself. If it were a winter sky, she could have easily spotted Orion by his belt, but sh
e had to settle for the sight of Vega before picking out the five brightest stars of Cygnus that also made up the Northern Cross. She felt foolish. She hadn’t even given Conroy a full twenty-four hours, but a very large part of her wanted to leave on the first morning train out. She couldn’t do that to Elijah, though. He’d just lost two dear friends, maybe four. Her thoughts slowed as the instincts she was trying to suppress began hitting back.

  Did she love Elijah? It struck her as an odd question to be contemplating, even in this strange place, on this far from typical night. The human race didn’t used to think along those terms. Until a couple of hundred years ago or so, marriage was a practical proposition, having little or nothing to do with romance or other emotional entanglements. Now most people seemed to think it was the only aspect that mattered. Corinne had never known this intoxicating variety of love. Fondness, yes. Passion, no. She searched her heart again, hoping to find some kind of spark or fire there for her intended.

  She cared for Elijah; she knew that. Or at least she cared for the man she’d met beneath the mess hall’s canvas flaps. She’d believed that would be enough, but now she suspected that Elijah had known that fiery variety of love before meeting her. It was the kind of love he would never forget, and that they could never re-create together. These feelings couldn’t be cultured. They sprang fully formed, or they never rose at all.

  Was it crueler to leave or crueler to stay and marry him, knowing she’d be depriving him of the chance to find again what he’d lost? Or was this type of love a once-in-a-lifetime thing? She even began to wonder if she should envy Elijah. Was this romantic fervor an experience she should risk all to seek out for herself? Movies and music portrayed romantic passion, losing one’s self in the beloved, as the ultimate pleasure, the very pinnacle of human existence. But the thought of surrendering herself, her will, completely, even for pleasure, terrified her. Did it make her less of a woman that she’d never gotten caught up and lost in her emotions? She’d met plenty of men over the years, good, solid, decent men, and a few absolute scoundrels. Was there something wrong with her that none had ever stirred those desperate, romantic feelings within her? She leaned against the window frame and asked the stars for answers.

  At around 3:00 a.m., the Judge startled, his eyes flying wide open. His jaw worked silently at first, then sounds resembling the yelps of a frightened dog rang piteously through the room. He struggled to free himself from the bedclothes, finally managing to fling the blankets to the floor. Corinne moved quickly to comfort him, to try and return him to a supine position, but he lunged forward, grasping her forearms so tightly that she couldn’t help but squeal. His grip was much stronger than any sick, middle-aged man with soft pale hands should be able to muster. McAvoy, who was startled out of sleep by the commotion, rushed to their side and administered the Judge a barbiturate. Judge Lowell went limp, collapsing back on the bed, but not before he spoke a single word: “Ruby.”

  THIRTY

  Merle presented himself naked before his mother, averting his eyes when she failed to avert her own, and focused instead on the cigarette that dangled between her lips. As she inhaled, its tip flared bright in the darkness, shining like a red star in the nearly moonless night. She grasped the cigarette in her right hand; a stream of smoke, more sensed than seen, issued from her mouth. She coughed and spat on the ground.

  “It’s time,” she said, in those last few minutes before the dawn, motioning toward the fence with the cord of rough hemp clothesline she held in her left hand.

  He nodded and walked before her, holding his hands behind himself to cover his buttocks, toward the wood rail fence that marked the property line. He felt every inch of his nakedness, other than maybe the soles of his feet, hardened as they were this time of year by going barefoot whenever he wasn’t working, to save wear on his shoes. It had been hot and dry for days. Too hot for dew, even at this time of day, or maybe night. The grass crunched beneath the soles, but he barely felt the way it scratched as it bent underfoot.

  “The angel”—that’s how his mama insisted on referring to Ruby—“it’s good she commanded this of you. You’re like your daddy was, too weak to resist the lusts of the flesh.” He ignored her. He’d heard her say this about his father so many times, the words had lost any meaning. He kept walking. “‘For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die:’” She raised her voice, nearly singing the words of the apostle—“‘but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.’ Romans, chapter eight, verse thirteen.”

  His mama liked to think of Ruby as her own, but he had spotted Ruby first, on a hot full-moon night, back toward the end of July. He’d been sitting, dangling his legs out of the window of his second-floor bedroom, smoking and trying to catch any kind of breeze. He saw her, cutting across the field that separated his mama’s land from the old Cooper house. She wore white, but even from a distance he could see the entire front of her gown had been stained dark.

  “Wait,” he’d called out to her, and she’d stopped and turned. He clambered down the stairs, waking his mama—she’d always been a light sleeper—as he did so. He rushed out the door to meet Ruby. At first his mama chased after him, tried to catch hold of him, and keep him from going out to Ruby. But then she stopped and looked out across the way to where Ruby stood.

  “Yes, come in,” his mama said as if she were replying to an unspoken request.

  As Ruby drew near, he could see that the stain on her dress was blood. But it didn’t matter. He was only sorry that it hadn’t been his own blood coating her breast.

  They’d been serving Ruby since that night. Helping her prepare for her great work of punishing the guilty and rewarding the faithful. Merle, she counted him among the faithful. Most folk in Conroy treated him like a punk. He’d taken so many beatings, he decided to leave school early, just to put an end to them. Ruby, she didn’t care he was a pimply dropout, or that he spent his days washing dishes at the diner. He was important to her. He was a big part of her plan. She encouraged him to dream of ways to make the kids who’d tormented him pay, promising to give him all the power he’d need to turn those dreams into reality.

  Ruby had never tasted his mama. Merle couldn’t blame her. The thought of putting his lips against the old woman’s sour skin nauseated him.

  His mama loved quoting scripture, sure and certain of the righteousness of her every deed, and quick to damn all of Conroy for even the smallest of sins. When Ruby came, his mama believed she had to be an angel, and the visitation was proof positive of her own purity.

  But no matter what his mama believed, none of it had anything to do with her. Ruby was no angel, no messenger for a God Merle wasn’t even sure existed. No. Ruby was here. Right where you could see her. Touch her. There’d be no need for him to hope for a better world in the next life. She was going to set things right around here, starting now, and she’d chosen Merle to help her.

  She’d tasted him, more than once, but it wasn’t till tonight that she had shared herself with him.

  Drawing near the rough rails of the fence, he hesitated. He’d grown up knowing that it wasn’t his parents, but the man who owned the adjoining parcel who’d built this barrier. It had never been intended to protect him and his family; its purpose had been to keep them out. He placed one hand on the splintery top rail and stared out across the field that, this year, their neighbor had chosen to leave fallow. An unmated mockingbird began a new chorus of the song it had been singing on and off all night long. He could smell the stink from the pulp mill creeping downriver, though the fog the mill produced hardly ever carried this far down out of town.

  “East is behind you,” his mother’s raspy voice rode over the birdsong. “Angel wants you facing east,” she said, and when he didn’t budge, she flicked the butt of her cigarette down by his feet. “You got to turn around.” She grasped his forearm. He yanked it away. His eyes met hers. He didn’t want her to touch him with her mottled and leathery hands, her nicotine-yellow fingers
. Forgetting his nakedness, he fixed her with angry eyes. She looked back with a blank and bovine gaze that sharpened, her lids lowering, her brows pressing in on each other and deepening the ugly crease that split her forehead.

  He hated the deep lines on her face—wrinkles that made her look more like his granny than the woman who’d birthed him. The kids at school, back before he quit going, used to taunt him about that. He hated her straggly unwashed gray hair and her yellowed snaggletooth smile. He comforted himself knowing his mama hadn’t been chosen. Ruby would not share herself with his mama. Someday, soon, she’d be dead, and he would have forever to dance on the dust of her grave.

  Merle’s skin crawled in anticipation of his mother’s touch, but to submit to Ruby’s will meant, for now, doing as his mama said. He turned his back to a post, reaching behind himself and draping his arms over the upper rail. His mama began unwinding the coil of clothesline and stepped to his side. She reached behind him, and began weaving the cord around his wrists and the railing, binding him tight, more tightly than she needed to, to the fence.