“That’s right,” Love told Rook, drawing himself to full height, while the tunnel around them shook and spat. “Now you see the true power of God Almighty at work, at long last.”
Was that more sympathy he heard, just a touch of it, in Love’s clarion voice? Rook almost hoped so. He lay caught between two equal-matched forces, prey to Hell’s undertow.
“Goddamnit, Ash, you Bible-drunk king prick — we’re under fire, soldier! Get your big ass up and do your damn duty!”
The central mistake — the hubris, for which Rook was now paying — had been trying to take hold of Love’s soul in the first place, seeing how that obviously belonged to one far more equipped to fight for it. Christ knew,
if Rook’d just picked up a damn mountain and dropped it on him, faith alone could never’ve kept the son of a bitch uncrushed.
“That’s right, Serpent,” Love said, sadly. “On thy belly shalt thou go. Of the dust shalt thou eat — ”
Not just another opportunist — the Lieut wouldn’t’ve been fit to shine this one’s shoes. He loves this shit-flat place, these stupid, quarrelling people. Wants to do right by them, no matter the cost. Sophy over there’s his wife, or will be — and little Gabe’s fruit of their sin, ’til they get that reward money, and raise the church he’ll marry her in. Sinners or no, though, they’re firm in their commitment, their hope in redemption not so much a lie as telling the truth in advance.
He knows it’ll happen. God told him so.
Mesach Love’s done bad things in his time, like all men, but he’s certain in ways you never were, about anything. Except . . . Chess.
Chess, even now grabbing fast hold of Rook’s hand and pulling at him like he was a skinful of water on the Devil’s griddle, without knowing he was doing it at all. Sucking power from him in waves, his face re-ordering itself, nose straightening with a visible ripple, eyes re-emerging from their bruisy nests, as mean and bright as ever. Bound and determined to pound Sheriff Love into the dry ground, on both of their behalves.
And Love don’t stand a tinker’s dam of a chance against him, poor bastard — God or no.
Rook’s head swam as he tried to form the words, but his dazed mouth wouldn’t obey. Thinking, instead — Oh, let me go, sweetheart, let me go. This fight’s one I don’t deserve to win.
To which he somehow “heard” Chess reply, over their mutual nerve-strung telegraph-wire: Yeah? Well, too bad, Rev. Fuck that bullshit, right in the Goddamn ass.
Chess drew careful aim on Love, right between the eyes. “Eat this,” he said.
While, at the same time, Rook reached desperately up — stop Chess shit stop —
His hand spanning Chess’s, fingers and thumb overlapping, so Chess wore them like a huge flesh glove — Chess’s index tightening sure and vicious on the trigger, Rook’s slippy-sliding in cold sweat. About as restraining as a wedding ring.
It was like the doubled force of both of them came rocketing right out through the barrel, along with the bullet. Hitting Love not quite square-on, but with enough force to spin him ’round, one spurt of blood arching up to break apart on the sandstorm’s churning maelstrom.
Only winged him, thank God . . . guess he’ll thank Him himself, after.
Chess, rightly amazed by his point-blank miss, swore ably.
“You shut your mouth,” Love ordered. To Rook: “And as for you, you hypocrite antidinomian . . .” Here he stopped short, however.
Because something was already licking out from the wound in his shoulder, all white and icy-sparkling: salt, blanching him the way flame blackens paper. His long body froze, all bones and glass, eyes wild in a calcinate mask. Rook saw Love’s flesh bloom pinkly through here and there, a breathed-on coal, before stiffening forever into an almost-featureless pillar. His saint’s gaze forever lidded over, in a single terrible blink.
So fast, Jesus! Like judgement.
At the same time, the sand-wall blew away, allowing young Missus Love-to-be to catch sight of her man’s fate. She screamed, while others fought to pull her to safety — the baby already having begun to wail too, mimicking his Mama’s grief, if all unknowing of its cause.
Chess laughed out loud, to hear it. “Yeah,” he snarled. “Go on ahead and cry, little boy — your Daddy ain’t comin’ home anytime soon, not now, not ever — ”
Rook retched a sour lick of spit, genuinely sickened by Chess’s cruelty, the anger that had spawned it, his own complicity in both. Then cringed back a half-stride when he saw bits of verse glinting in the spew-up, silver-black and stomach-mucky — verse he didn’t even recall thinking up. Genesis again, Lot in Sodom. Abraham the Patriarch, begging: Give me but one honest man, my Lord, and stay Your hand against the city —
And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD:
And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace . . .
The words came torn straight from Rook’s head, unbidden. And in that same puking breath, he felt the tide turn — swigged deep, sucking all the power Chess’d taken from him back again, and more. The sheer jolt of it lit him up, then backwashed, and sent the same salt that had snared Love quick-dripping down the Sheriff’s legs, curdling the earth beneath into a floodplain mire. Each of his congregationalists sunk to the ankle, the knee, the waist, salinified from their extremities up, so they crumbled and broke apart even as they struggled to flee.
“Don’t look!” Rook could hear Hosteen screaming from somewhere behind, to the rest of the gang. “Cover your face! For Christ’s sake, shut your God damn eyes!”
The salt skirted both him and Chess, though, avoiding them like they were the plague at hand. Like he’d suspected it might, so long as they only kept fast hold of each other.