Emerald Hell

Chapter 2

Brother Jester, slave to God's pettiest whims, returned to the town of Enigma, that place of his former life, his eventual undoing, and his own death.

The hunger visited again. He found a crushed possum in the road and began to remove what few guts remained in it. He only ate what the Lord provided and only what he found offered to him in the road. It was both a measure of penance and an act of defiance. Daring Heaven to whittle him down farther, if that was his fate. When there was no food, he ate his rage.

While Brother Jester could starve, he couldn't die.

The moon shone down in a burnished silver rippling. He had no shadow when he walked, but he had many in his mind. As he'd preached his way back and forth across thousands of miles of the American South, occasionally retracing his steps from church to church, through a ghost town or swamp village, he'd send the shadows out among the crowds and they'd return with hidden truths. It was the way of the Lord.

Sometimes he spoke these secrets aloud in his devastated voice, letting a cuckold know which men his wife had slept with. Periodically he held back words that might ease decades of bad blood among families or carry an afflicted soul up from the void. He could only do so much, and took pleasure in doing no more for others than was ever done for him. We all have our blood to let.

He worked his will among the people as God did, treating them no better or worse than Heaven ever had. Some died at ease, others did not. He reveled in their faithlessness as much as he did in their courage. On their deathbeds, he murmured their corruptions and trickery to them and watched the turmoil and terror bloom in their eyes just as the light of life faded from them.

It was, in its own way, quite glorious.

As Jester continued walking, taking his first bite of raw possum, he heard the woman whimpering out in the morass.

He moved off the road and pressed through the palm fronds and scrub oak. He eased into darkness and his shadows awakened. The ground grew muddier and the glowing cypress grew thicker, the hanging moss stretched out above. He heard laughter and hunkered down behind a stand of sprouting sassafras.

Two handsome, golden-haired men stood at the shore of a hillock of slough watching a middle-aged woman slowly sink into the mire. Her arms flailed once and she let out a sob, but could do no more than that. All the fight had already gone out of her, blood in her eyes as she cried out a name that sounded like "Henry."

Two scut-backed bull gators swam through the slime toward her, their powerful tails slashing deep black wakes behind them.

The men crouched and pawed through clothes and the contents of the woman's luggage and purse, letting out whoops of joy when they found fifty dollars in cash.

"I gonna get me a new shirt and go out dancin' Friday night," one said.

"You can't dance worth a lick, but you can use you some new clothes, 'specially some undergarments, whether you two-step in 'em or not."

Brother Jester sent his own darkness among the two killers and the dying woman, watching the shadows flap free as their feathery touch brushed the raised, knotted flesh of his scarred throat. They returned momentarily with knowledge of love and crimes that had been, and would be, completely buried in these swamps. It added to his anguished heart.

The woman's name was Marcie Andrews, a saleswoman on her way down to Jacksonville for a Mary Kay Cosmetics convention. She was a top earner in Raleigh and wanted to win a pink Cadillac for selling more product than anyone else in the region. She had stopped several times during her trip to hold impromptu sales pitches with various waitresses at truck stop diners and five-and-dime cashiers.

Sixteen cases of lipstick, eye shadow, rouge, pancake powder, and other necessities for a woman's morning ritual of beautifying were packed in the back of her Ford. Her husband Henry had told her not to push the Ford past sixty for fear of throwing a rod, but the more she stopped the further behind in her schedule she got, and the faster she drove to make up for lost time.

Already she'd sold another $227.48 worth of cosmetics, which she just knew was going to earn her that Caddy. Then Henry would surely be happy and might even take her on a second honeymoon like he'd been promising for the last twenty-eight years of marriage. The first honeymoon had been three days at the Whispering Pines Motel outside of Rosestock, South Carolina where he'd mostly gone fishing with the motel manager and another newly wedded husband, and Marcie and the other newly wedded wife mostly browsed at the little souvenir shop and read recipe magazines together.

She threw a rod two miles outside Enigma and sat behind the wheel flustered and cussing, wondering where in the hell she was going to find someone to help her in this swamp burg. Her tears cut quarter-inch-deep twin channels down her heavily made-up face and, gesticulating helplessly to the sky, she began to walk the road.

In their Dodge Charger, the Ferris boys found her that way, alone and about a half mile from her truck. They offered to haul the Ford to the nearest repair station, and Marcie, so taken with their chiseled, winsome features, didn't start to get worried until they were already deep in the river bottoms and bog land.

The boys didn't have to do anything more than toss her out the door into the morass. Marcie's penchant for fried foods and bonbons hadn't done her figure much good, and after five minutes of trying to dog paddle out in the muck, she was breathless and ready to go under. If she was lucky, she might drown before the gators dragged her off to gator ground and rolled her down in the mud, letting her ripen wedged and broken between logs. It might take days to die that way.

Brother Jester parted the high-standing sassafras and stepped into view. Showing mercy, as the Lord sometimes did, he was filled with prophecy and said to the woman in his ruined voice, "Henry will soon be with you before the eternal divine presence, Marcie. When he hears of your death he'll shoot himself in the head with his father's Army.45. You'll be together come Judgment Day in the light of Christ's peace and beauty."

Marcie tipped to one side, dying but still worried that her hair was getting dirty and the nice French curls that had cost her eighteen dollars down at Iris Connifer's House of Beauteous Bouffants were getting bugs in them.

But before the dark waters filled her mouth she whimpered, "Help me… oh no Henry… no… don't…"

The bull gator took her by the legs and yanked her under right then. Jester saw it would be hours before she would pass, as the gators jammed her beneath a hill of brambles to rot and tenderize. She wouldn't be eaten until Tuesday.

Jester bowed his head and said a prayer.

The Ferris boys stared at him and saw what the rest of the world saw. A seasoned, weathered, gaunt man with parchment-white skin, wearing a dusty frock coat, string-tie, and flat black hat of the old-time traveling ministers.

"Son, you done messed with us now," Deeter Ferris said. "Better to fling yourself in the mud your own self than cross paths with us."

His brother Duffy pointed to the water. "Go on and get in there. Don't you make me dirty my snakeskin boots none."

"That wouldn't be right at'all."

"Not'all."

"I know who you are," Brother Jester said. "Duffy and Deeter Ferris, who killed your own parents when you were but ten-year- and eleven-year-old bucks. And you haven't stopped your backwoods murdering since. You've masked your evil with your charm and comeliness, so no one dares accuse you."

The Ferris boys didn't act surprised to hear their ugliest and most intimate truth spoken aloud. Enigma was a town of many open secrets.

Deeter stroked the golden stubble on his chin and said, "This preacher sound like he been garglin' hot asphalt."

"Good that he ain't bein' loud, my ears is still ringin' from that woman's yodelin'. Why you sound like that, preacher?"

"I was hanged,"Jester said.

The Ferris brothers burst out laughing. Duffy asked, "Well, son, who done hanged you?"

"I don't remember."

"Reckon you might recollect a thing like that."

Deeter moved forward. "Reverend, you made the worst mistake in your whole dang life, not haulin' ass while you had the chance." He drew a Bowie knife that glinted with shreds of moonlight. "Lord almighty, now ain't you one sad sight, boy. Been a while since you had yourself some biscuits and gravy, ain't it. You won't hardly make a decent dessert for them bulls."

A six-inch skinning blade appeared in Duffy's hand. "You is surely one ugly sumbitch, Reverend. We doin' you a favor sendin' you off to Heaven 'fore you ain't nothin' but a walkin' skin-bag'a corruption and bones."

How true, Jester thought. Such luminous gospel cannot be hidden even from ignorant degenerates as this.

They approached easily with their weapons drawn, the violence and butchery in them large and majestic, which Brother Jester found refreshing.

He held up a hand and a faint crackle of black energy played between his fingers, dancing across his debased flesh, before he stretched out his palm and the power moved from him toward the killers.

Here was the capricious will of God. As often distant and oblivious as it was pure and obliging. Here was the strength of ten thousand prayers spoken in hope and belief, and ten thousand more from, the heart of his loss and hatred.

"Hellfire, son," Duffy called. "What you got there?"

Jester afforded himself a grin. "Heaven-fire."

He clenched his hand and the cords of mystic power tightened around their bodies while they screamed. It was an ugly passionate sound, perhaps loud enough for Marcie Andrews to hear down where she moaned trapped and broken in the catclaw briars and tussocks of weeds. The black energy wove about the Ferris boys and stung at them like wasps. It tore and delved and slithered through their ears to heat their brains. It dug at their tongues and knew all their words. It skittered against their knives and the blades turned red-hot in the emerald darkness. Both cried out,"God-"

We all call for God before our deaths, Jester thought, all except himself, of course. Which is perhaps why he was so blessed and so damned.

His shadows found all their secrets and weaknesses and raked their excruciating places. The brothers, like all righteous penitents, went to their knees, bleeding and sobbing and begging.

"I may have use for you two," Jester said.

Once he had been a man like other men, but perhaps with a greater will to serve Heaven than most. He preached the holy word and sought to save lives that had gone to shambles. The road whispered for him to follow and he traveled the land giving witness and testament: He had a lush, compelling voice and would sing at tent revivals. His words, a gift from on high, brought peace and joy, and then, by turns, prophecy and tongues.

Eventually, through another boon, he began to heal the sick. The crippled, diseased, and maimed came to him in long processions, winding through the marshes and villages and towns, hobbling in along the dirt tracks, the blind following his voice.

He had the love of a good woman at home and he always returned to her, in time. When he returned they would picnic down by the bottoms and make love in the juniper. When the Lord called for him to move on again, she understood.

His last few years as a mortal man had been busy ones. He was away from home more than ever. Building churches, improving schools, inviting doctors to create clinics. Mending those he could and consoling those he could not. The flocks gathered to him. No matter how often they saw the miracle of each new day, and were blessed with life and family, they needed to be reminded of the Word.

There were more ill children to attend and souls to save. So many that when he spotted the orphan boy in the swamp revival during an all-night sing, and heard the child sing and preach with a golden voice even more commanding than his own, he knew he would mentor and cultivate the boy's skills.

After those long months traveling the hills and the swamps, growing to love the boy as a son, he returned to Enigma strong and tan and full of conviction to find his wife holding a newborn baby girl.

He remembered that moment as one of overwhelming elation, so much so that he rushed to her and threw his arms around her. It wasn't until he noticed his wife's terrified expression that he realized he couldn't be the father. He'd been away for more than a year.

Brother Jester could no longer recall his wife's name, or his own at that time, because for so long it made him suffer and groan to even think of them. But he spoke her name then, whatever it had been, and, with the pieces of his heart twisting inside him, he looked at the baby and wanted to kill it.

His wife spoke his name, whatever it was, and said, "You love God more than you do me."

It wasn't a question. It needed no answer. But he felt compelled to say, "Yes." As if there could be any other response from him. As if there should be.

"He's a selfish god, is what He is," she continued, "and I'm a selfish woman. I need a man wants me more than anything else. Who comes home to be a husband."

Jester began crying, smiling sickly, unable to stop. "But we were bound before-"

"You haven't spent more than a week at home in the five years we've been married. How bound does that make you to me?"

He didn't know what to say or what to do. The full sweeping call of his rage had not struck yet. His tears fell and he staggered about the room, occasionally lurching toward the baby as if to take her, and then moving off again. He stumbled into furniture. He hugged the boy and then shoved him aside. There were pictures of Jesus on the wall staring.

Brother Jester asked who the father was.

His wife wouldn't answer.

But even then, as his path to destruction widened before him, with no possibility of avoidance, his power was rising. He went to his knees before his wife, chewing his lips, blood filling his mouth.

Shadows drifted. Angels moved through the air and knew him-Azrael, Adonai, Ariel, Anafiel-their wings unfurling and the light brush of black feathers touching his cheek, their shadows crossing his racked body like scourges.

The knowledge became his because it was nothing but a greater torture. And from such pain came purification. His mind filled with white light and the answers to his questions.

Bliss Nail, the rotten rich man who already had six daughters. They were always laughing and gabbing about town, driven about in a huge town car, with a chauffeur who tipped his cap to everyone he passed.

The baby girl merely stared at Jester, smiling toothlessly, and then reached for him and grabbed hold of his finger.

Jester scowled at his wife's child, wanting it dead.

The boy, standing behind him and holding a handful of roses to present to the woman, said with true understanding, "The Lord's work sometimes ain't easy on His servants. We do our best but it ain't always good enough."

In his heartbreak, and in the awakening of his true nature,Jester had almost forgotten about the boy. His protege, his almost-son.

Brother Jester said, "Quiet, boy, you don't know anything about what this means."

"I reckon I do, and it's you who's done lost your way. I see it in your eyes. They're brimmin' with hate. It's not too late. Ask forgiveness."

"Like hell!"

And then, like the striking of a hammer, Jester's skull nearly burst with his black grief and righteous wrath, his need to die and his need to kill. He screamed and the baby began to cry, and the wife backed out of the room, and the boy dropped the roses.

Jester remembered running for the shed and finding the hatchet there. The shadows of lost archangels lashing him along like a whipped animal.

The boy had tried to stop him. The child's faith was fearsome and forceful, even the angels drew back from the boy, confused and uncertain. But the boy was only eight years old and Jester struck out with the hatchet and left the child crumpled in the dust, his forehead cracked and bleeding.

Returning to his wife, who was on the phone pleading for her lover to aid her, Jester casually twirled the hatchet, the blade dark with a splash of the boy's blood. Bliss Nail's voice came through the line loudly, and in the background there was the sound of girls squabbling and yakking. He grabbed up the phone and said, "Bliss Nail, you'll have a silent home now."

Then he proceeded to murder his wife.

She didn't struggle, her hands raised as if to scratch at his eyes. But she never did claw at him, as if too disgusted to touch him now, even if it might save her life. He left the infant in its cradle, willing it to die but unable to reach out and break its neck or use the hatchet. And how he had tried. He'd stared at his hands for minutes, until they turned black and began to spark. But for some reason, despite his rage, he couldn't place his fists in the cradle and do the deed.

After that, his memory became a haze. He remembered awakening once at the end of a noose, his body swaying, laughing to himself because he wasn't dead. Then he felt small hands on him. His next recollection was three days later. He was bent in the road chewing on the headless body of an egret. There were feathers in his mouth, and a group of children stood across from him, whimpering, too frightened to even run.

His once-strong voice, which had brought peace and joy to others, was now filled with ash. It had turned into an awful croak.

For almost twenty years now he'd walked the hollows and ridges and marsh prairies, speaking at church tent revivals, spreading truths, no matter how ugly, as he saw fit. Saving some, damning others, and forcing a great many to their most destructive sin and vice. He felt no remorse because he was only a vessel for God and God's madness.

And now the angels told him to come home again, because his daughter-his very own daughter, for he was the father who had set her course, because he could not kill her in the cradle-was about to give birth. Hallelujah.

These were to be his acolytes and aides: two moonshine-running, gator-skinning, local backwood murderers, as beautiful as Lucifer and just as evil.

They had been pawns of their father, Farrell Ferris, who thirty years ago would beat Jester in the schoolyard every afternoon because Jester would eat lunch alone while reading the Bible. Farrell Ferris, his tormentor, had grown worse with age and moonshine.

The blood on his hands became thicker and redder until he was stained to the elbows. These boys had been fed that malevolence and had flourished on it.

He drew back the rage into himself and released the Ferris boys, who rolled in the mud and wept across the ripped clothes and makeup cases of Marcie Andrews. When they could move again, wincing in pain, they both stood and trembled in the heat, without any idea of what to do next.

"I knew your father," Jester said. "When I was a boy."

"He was the meanest critter this swamp hollow ever done seen," Duffy said.

"'Sides us, a'course," Deeter added.

"You made it last. The killing of him."

Duffy nodded, his mane of golden curls sprawling to his shoulders. "Took a while 'fore him and Mama finally done give up their ghosts. We wasn't very strong then, but we could still wield ax handles. Wouldn't have been much fun watchin' him die quick, now would it?"

"Hell no, where's the joy in that?" Deeter turned to Jester and said,"Last time he made to strike us we got out his own shotgun and blew off the big toe on his foot, then broke his arms some with the ax handles and chased him through the briar till he was so torn up that he looked like… like…" Deeter's hands moved in useless gestures. Try as he might, he could think of nothing that looked as raw as that.

"Like us after one'a his early-morning-to-mid-after no on whippings."

"That's right, like us. And he was hung up in the brambles, caught on a thousand thistles, and we sat down before him with a jug of moon and watched him struggle and bleed to death from the scratches. Was a mighty jubilant sight, it was."

"It was," Duffy said, "a rapturous sight. Yes, it was."

Breathing in their hate and enjoying the heady scent of it, Brother Jester said, "After twenty years of preaching in the mountains and the valleys, I've come home again for a reason. God has set me on this path and finally allowed me to return to its beginning. I have need of you two. God is the master, I am merely the servant. And you are now servants to the servant."

Duffy and Deeter exchanged a panicky glance and nodded, biding their time.

"I lost my skinnin' knife," Duffy' said. "Somewhere in the mud. I feel nekkid without it."

"You want, Reverend, we'll get you full up on some grits and gator meat."

"I don't share food with anyone."

"That much is plenty evident, Preacher!"

Jester smiled in the night,his teeth burning."! eat only what is provided for me dead in the road. And I'm not a preacher anymore. Call me Brother Jester."

"What you come back here to Enigma for? What you gonna do? Why you among us again?"

"I've come for my daughter," Brother Jester said. "Sarah."