Emerald Hell

Chapter 20

Deeter checked the load in Plume Wallace's shotgun and said, "I hear music. Goddamn, that boy sure can play a jug. You listenin' to that?"

"I am," Duffy said, dragging the skiff up onto the creek bank. "It's some fine banjo-playin' and squeezeboxin' too."

"As good as Pa used to play."

"Better'n him, I reckon. Better'n him before his third or fourth tap of moon anyways. Pa always improved as the night went on."

Brother Jester, pressing through the palmettos, allowed the magics of the music to rake against him like barbed wire. He grunted, enjoying the raw ache, and said, "It's a powerful charm, a circle of peace and protection. Harmonies of the heavens, it lures even the angels astray."

The Ferris boys stared at one another, then down into the mud and around at the wet brush, looking for circles and seeing none. Deeter placed a hand on the sheathed Bowie knife at his belt, and handed the shotgun to his brother. Protection to them meant bear traps or a twelve-gauge, and they didn't see those either.

"What is, Preacher?" Deeter asked.

"The songs. Woven into the notes are charms and spells of celestial love. A granny witch has composed this, and they play it well under her direction."

"Sure is a catchy tune, right 'nuff."

Duffy still had Mrs. Hoopkins's cutting knife in his belt and he slid the handle aside for an easy draw. He said, "Some nice ladies' voices carryin' it just fine too, reelin' right along with the washboard. About time we stopped off for some companionship with the feminine persuadin'. I'm'a feelin' a might lonely after all this travellin'."

"And I smell hog cracklins!"

"They got themselves a right proper hootenanny goin' on. I say we get out of this rain and have us a terrible ruckus of fun."

The archangels pressed their hands to Jester's face. Like over-eager children they flew and returned with more and more images and knowledge that he couldn't fully understand. He dropped his chin to his chest as the shadows roamed about him, within and without, fluttering their great wings and confiding their tender testimonies, urging him onward. His life and death had been a trial before the eyes of man and God, and it still wasn't over. Would never be over. He needed the daughter that should have been his. He needed the grandchild that would share his burden. He deserved the family that had been denied him before.

He said, "It grows dark. Wait until the moon rises and then we'll visit ourselves upon our swamp neighbors. Until then, leave me."

"Leave you?" Deeter asked. "Just where in the hell we gonna go, preacher?"

Jester turned and his eyes pulsed with energy. Duffy tugged at his brother's arm and drew him back through the palm leaves. "Let's just let the preacher go on about his own business. We'll go sit down the creek this'a way."

"Well then, I'm in agreement," Deeter said, "let's get on. But I'm a'gonna get some hog cracklins Tore this night is through."

As they moved off, the ghost of Jester's murdered wife-the wife he had murdered-appeared beside him and said, "You claim you've done this for family, but you destroyed the one you had. Iffun you cared so much about kith and kin, you'd not have been so anxious with the blade."

The voice again, and always, so much more than her own, filled with the kind of peace he craved and could not contain.

"It's no empty claim,"Jester said."I've a right to my own fulfillment and serenity."

She stroked the bone-white curls at his neck, the way she would during summer picnics at the river, after the baptisms. "By warming your hands in the blood of children?"

"I've never hurt a child yet."

"Oh," she said, as if stricken. "You forget."

And it was true, he suddenly realized, he had forgotten. The child rushing him, the hatchet, the struggle. Here he was following the trail of his true enemy, and he had ignored how close they'd once been, even at his bleakest hour.

Brother Jester said, "My mistakes were made for love. Anything done for love is beyond the righteous and the wrathful."

"That's an excuse meant to soothe your scratched heart."

"God's will is greater than man's."

"You speak with such conviction on judgments left best to the Lord," his dead wife said.

"I speak with the tongue He gave me. It's what I've always done. Back when I had a honeyed voice and now that I don't. I've always spoken the words He presents me."

Her ghost, despite knowing the harmony of the afterworld, looked almost aggrieved for a moment.

"You'll not see me at your side again," she said. "Does that worry you?"

"Yes."

"Take my hand and let your pain end."

"There was a reason I murdered you," he said. "And I have not forgotten or forgiven it."

"'If only you'd ever loved as well as you learned to hate, these last twenty years wouldn't have been so empty."

"Better than being dead."

"You are dead," she reminded him.

"I'll miss you,"Jester said, his ruined voice thick with emotion, and in turning he knew he would no longer find her there.

And then seeing he was alone he understood he truly had nothing now, and the child seemed that much more important.

He remembered the all-night sings during the tent gatherings and revivals, when he'd stand in a pulpit surrounded by the lame and the blind and the abandoned and the damned and the doomed, and side by side with a golden-voiced boy he'd feel the will of God flowing through his hands and he would heal them all.

They would praise the name of Jesus and kiss Jesters palms and hug the boy, and the evils of the world would perish for a moment, an hour, a night. He'd end his summers staring up at the stars and listening to the evening gales rolling in, and the sweetness of life would fill him until he wept. While at home in his bed his wife had taken up with Bliss Nail, and the arrival of his own oblivion fell upon him.

Now he was back, and the shielding music played, and the golden-voiced boy was now a man who awaited him. Another circle was about to close. Jester stood and moved toward the creek. He was ready.

Despite the storm clouds, the stars began to shine down. Jester smiled, crossed his arms, and hugged himself as he walked, and the sweetness of life filled him once more so full of love that he wept black flame for what would soon be his.