The twister spent itself in an outward rush and dissipated, slung clouds and rain across the horizon, leaving only wet dusk behind.
All around, nothing still stood except the things he’d allowed to survive. The rest was laid waste, sure as Gideon left Jezreel. Like Chorazin and Bethsaida, whose smoke goes up forever.
Which made him . . . one of them.
Exodus, 22:18. Fit only to be weeded out, burned and buried, their graves sown with salt. Just like that poor boy with the one goat’s eye, trembling in fear with his sidelong pupil opening squarish, as he stared headfirst down into the flames.
Back in Missouri, in Rook’s first parish, “good” people had tied a sick child to a ladder and cooked him over a flaming stack of hay, for the grand crime of being born a witch’s get — while Rook had done nothing but watch and pray, because they were his, and he theirs. Which was why he’d left under cover of night soon after, fled as far as the stage-ticket bought with his flock’s money would take him, then got roaring drunk enough to join up. Fleeing from what he’d seen, and done, by not arguing other parts of the Good Book, for fear of suffering similar excision and execution. Matthew, 7:3 to 7:5, for example. 1 Corinthians 13.
Born different, that boy — and through nobody’s fault, not even his own. Same as Chess, always flaunting his slick little occasion-for-sin self around, with what he refused to pretend not to be writ large on every inch of him. Or Rook, too, with his doubts and deficiencies, the Bible leaping in his breast-pocket every time he heard something he felt he couldn’t speak out against for himself, without using Jesus’, Moses’ or Ezekiel’s words as back-up. Rook, washed white as snow with God’s word, then damned black as night with the discovery of his own power.
“Whah . . . happen . . . ?” Rook rasped at last, shaking his head to flick wet hair from his eyes, down on his hands and knees in the wet black muck. Then looked up to meet Hosteen’s horrified eyes — for between them lay Chess, his crumpled face pallid, wounded arm crooked behind him in a very unnatural fashion.
You could save him, that voice in Rook’s head suggested.
At almost the same time, like he’d somehow heard her, Hosteen grabbed Chess up and dropped him almost in Rook’s lap, intent plain, if impossible: Here, you fix this! Rook looked down, one palm cupping each side of Chess’s slack skull — and God damn, but his hands were either far bigger than he’d ever thought, or Chess’s face was far smaller. Or maybe it was just that he’d so rarely seen Chess Pargeter this still or silent, before.
I don’t know what comes next, he thought — and knew he must be lying, because . . . well, shit, take a look around.
Rook shut his own eyes, squinched them hard and cleared his mind, swiping an elbow ’cross a spectral blackboard. Then leaned down, kissed Chess for the first time, on his own hook — deep and probing and tender — and whispered a Bible verse into his mouth, as he did it: “Psalms, 51-7 to 51-10. Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness. Let the bones you have crushed rejoice . . . .”
The rain fell, a booming drum. Rook sat surrounded by his own words, glittering letters turning in the air, a slow cascade of evil stars.
While the colour came seeping back into Chess’s face by degrees, Rook moved his broken shoulder back into place, as gently as he could, and felt the bone pop together once more, whole as though never split. Felt the sinews blossom beneath his fingers.
Eventually, Chess opened his eyes anew, pupils tiny, as though contracted against a bright, wild light. He grinned back up at Rook, happily, teeth sharp as some snapping dog’s in the storm’s half-darkness.
“It was you,” he said. “I knew it. Oh, I knew it. Goddamn! You killed them all, them sons of bitches, didn’t you? But good.”
A sliver of ice pierced Rook’s chest, then, encircling his heart so quick he wondered whether it would ever melt away again. Or whether he ever wanted it to.
“Yes,” he agreed, unable to deny it. “Yes. I did.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Nine months before the twister. That was when Rook had first heard the Lieutenant say —
“And this’d be Private Pargeter.”
A grey day, that first camp even greyer, all their uniforms dirt-stiffened and indistinguishable. But Chess still stood out, hair and beard bright as a brand. He’d been butchering livestock yanked as tribute from a local farm, and his hands were bloody to the wrists.
Looked up mildly from cleaning his knife, to answer — “Lieutenant. Reverend.”
“Pargeter’s our very best man for close work, ’specially during nighttime incursions,” the Lieutenant told Rook, an odd note in his voice blurring what seemed like praise with something else. “He rode after us when we passed through California, rarin’ to volunteer. Fair scout, excellent killer.”
Eyes like sweet poison, too, Rook thought, and blushed.
Chess caught him at it, and grinned. “You’re thinkin’ how I’m small-made, to merit that kind of reputation,” he said.
“Oh, no, I . . . hadn’t thought about it, really,” Rook replied, reddening further. “I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Accuracy hardly counts as insult,” the Lieut said.
Chess nodded. “Oh, I ain’t insulted. But then again, that’s the glory of the army, ain’t it? For folks like me.”
“Me
aning?”