Abandon

“I’ll mix you a cobbler.” She smiled. “Ladies seem to like it.”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Well, I’m gonna get a little more fine.”

Joss filled her glass. The preacher pulled two bits from his leather pouch, set it on the bar, but he made no move to leave.

“There somethin else I can help you with?” she asked.

Stephen pushed his hair behind his ears.

“Actually, I did have ulterior motives for coming here tonight.”

“And what might those—no, wait. Please, please, tell me you ain’t here to make some half-assed attempt to—”

“Save you? No. God saves. I am a very small part of that equation. Besides, it would be an insult to your intelligence for me to think I can convince you of your need for God. You’re a smart woman. You’ve lived many a year in this world and have certainly heard the Gospel at some point. You’ve chosen not to accept Him. It saddens me, certainly saddens God, but you have free will. I respect that.”

“Well, that’s a relief to hear. I didn’t relish the idea a throwin a Gospel sharp out on his ass, but I was prepared to.”

Stephen smiled. “I understand you’re to be sent back to Arizona in the spring to . . .”

“To be hanged. You ain’t gonna hurt my feelings sayin it.”

“Miss Maddox. Joss. I was walking home tonight from the Christmas Eve dinner, and I saw the lamps glowin in your saloon, and God put it on my heart to come in here.”

“He did.”

“I would like to pray for you, Joss. Right now. It’s Christmas Eve. You’re chained up behind a bar. I can’t imagine the fear you face at having to go back to Arizona next year. I thought I might say a prayer with you. If it could bring you any comfort at all, I would be most—”

Joss leaned toward Stephen. “You think I rejected God?”

“I just—”

“You said I had chosen not to come to God.”

“I just assumed—”

“You wanna hear a story about rejection? The cunt bitch who birthed me abandoned me in a alley in the California goldfields when I was a day old. Man who found and raised me put me up for three dollars to any son of a bitch who had a taste for ten-year-old pu**y. Ever husband I ever had beat me. Now the way I figure it, God either approved or couldn’t be bothered to give a shit, so don’t come in here talkin to me about my rejection a God. I’d say He’s had His back to me ever since I took my first breath.” A vein had risen on Joss’s forehead and her big black eyes shone.

“You think God hates you?” Stephen asked.

“I stopped caring what He thinks or don’t think a me years ago.”

“Well, I can assure you that He loves—”

“Look, you don’t gotta come down here, hat in hand, makin amends for God. He knows where I live. He can come Hisself or not at all. Thanks for the gesture, Preach, but you’re barkin at a knot, and prayin with you ain’t exactly on my wish list this year. Now, I gotta close up.” She looked at the deputy. “Al! Get your ass up!”

The deputy startled into consciousness, instinctively touched the revolver at his side, his words slurring. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

“We’re done for tonight,” Joss said. “Take me back to jail.”

“But it ain’t but—”

“Al, goddamn it, contradict me one more f**kin—”

“All right, Joss, you ain’t gotta yell.”

Stephen took a step back and regarded Joss with his sad, sweet eyes.

“Merry Christmas to you,” he said, and started for the door.

Stephen Cole stood under a streetlamp, watching the wind build snowdrifts against the storefront of a vacated barbershop. Across the street, on the second floor of the hotel, Molly Madsen sat in the bay window, looking down at him, her face weakly illuminated by the candle in her hands. He waved, whispered a prayer for her.

He followed the plank sidewalk for several blocks, then turned up the side street that led to his cabin.

His mind brimmed with thoughts of his home in Charleston, South Carolina—the palm trees and live oaks and saltwater marshes, the ocean at sunrise, the faces of his father and mother.

He had come west three years ago because he believed it to be the will of God, had felt compelled to minister to those who lived in these harsh environs.

What he had found were a thousand little towns high in the Rockies, built upon debauchery and greed.

I’ve accomplished nothing, he thought. God, show me one life in these mountains that has benefited from my presence.

Overcome, he knelt in the empty street and prayed until his face had gone numb and his body shook with cold.

Stephen rose to his feet and wiped the snow from his hair.

He’d taken two steps toward home when he heard it.

He froze. Forgot that he was cold. Forgot his loneliness.

He just stood there in the darkness and falling snow, a strange warmth spreading through him. Having now heard it, he knew with certainty that all the other times, kneeling at the foot of his bed, sometimes hours in the silence, had been imagination and hoping.

It was simply his own name that he’d heard, but it filled him with such blinding peace that he didn’t question for a moment the source.

When God speaks to you, His voice is unmistakable.

2009

TWELVE

Six tubes of light swung through the fog that had settled in the canyon—a colony of headlamps moving toward the ruins of Abandon. The air carried the steel smell of snow, though none was yet falling. Night had arrived moonless and overcast, with a darkness Abigail had never imagined possible out-of-doors, like they’d all been locked into an im mense, freezing closet. She walked between Emmett and June, with Lawrence a few yards ahead, the two guides relegated to the back, with orders to stay close but quiet. Abigail had brought along her tape recorder and was collecting background information from the Tozers when Lawrence said, “Hold up!” They stopped. Lawrence shone his flashlight into the darkness ahead, the beam passing over a grove of spruce. “Can’t believe I found it in this fog. Here’s what’s left of the cabin of Ezekiel and Gloria Curtice.”

Abigail followed June into the grove. The small woman, swallowed in a red ski jacket, aimed her light at the rubble. Abigail saw a cookstove, cans, rusted bedsprings amid the detritus. Emmett slipped off his camera’s lens cap and began to circle the homestead.

Abigail said, “June, while Emmett’s taking photos, could you tell me how you two got involved with paranormal photography?”