Daniel lunged for Milo and started tickling the crap out of him. Squirming in his grip, the boy shrieked with laughter. “Let goooooooo.” But the torture continued until one of Milo’s involuntary leg spasms caught Daniel in the balls, and both boys rolled to separate corners, moaning and gasping for different reasons.
“Okay,” Daniel said when he’d caught his breath. “You win.”
“I can stay?”
“No… but how about we get you some new comics on the way?”
Milo’s eyes widened. “You gonna steal them?” The drugstore, after all, was still closed for repairs.
“Borrow,” Daniel said firmly. “I work there. I can do that.”
Milo looked dubious, but stuck out his hand for a shake. “Deal.”
“Deal.”
They set off for the road, pausing only when they realized Jule wasn’t with them. “Well, you coming?” Milo called back, as if it were a foregone conclusion.
“I guess.” Jule started after them, keeping her head down and wishing her hair were long enough to cover her face. She wasn’t about to let either boy see that, for whatever stupid reason, she was trying very hard not to cry.
Daniel had the feeling that if she caught him looking at her legs, she’d beat him up. But then, he reasoned, sneaking another glance, why would you wear fishnets if you didn’t want people looking at your legs? They weren’t even particularly special, as far as legs went – neither long nor slender – but somehow the inky web that carved her legs into diamonds of smooth skin cued his brain to mark them as tantalizing and slightly forbidden. Though not so forbidden he wasn’t justified in taking a peek.
“What?” Jule said, almost catching him at it.
“Nothing.” If he’d been a religious person, he might have taken it as a sign that, at that moment, they reached the church.
The lobby was ordinarily papered with flyers about tutoring and yard sales and various substance-abusers Anonymous meetings. But the detritus of ordinary life had been replaced by a wall of government notices, support-group ads, requests for short-term labor and short-term employment, volunteering opportunities, and, in red, a row of handmade wanted posters featuring Cassandra Porter’s junior prom photo. She’d been spotted in the storm, impossibly free and headed for Oleander.
Daniel couldn’t suppress the wave of sympathy that washed over him at any mention of Cass Porter, as he couldn’t help appreciating the curl of her lips and the bounce of her hair in the grainy picture. And, as always, the wave was quickly followed by a tsunami of guilt. All the hours and years he’d spent drooling over her every move… surely there’d been some kind of sign, a dog whistle of a signal that he’d subconsciously ignored, and what kind of a person falls for a future murderer?
Probably the same kind of person who feels sorry for her after the deed is done.
With its roof stripped off and its nave exposed to the elements, the church was starting to show some wear. Birds nested behind pillars and flitted beneath tables scavenging for crumbs. Scritch-scratches in the shadows suggested that the rodents of Oleander had also found themselves a hospitable home. The pews were still slick with morning dew, and it seemed only a matter of time before a layer of moss would creep over the hardwood that stretched to the altar. Daniel had heard that the day before, a sparrow had objected to a particularly boring stretch of sermon by crapping on the deacon’s head. The thought of it happening again was the only thing that could tempt Daniel to a service.
Pink day-care signs directed them to the basement, but to get there, they had to muscle through the crowded nave. Oleander’s only remaining church had quickly become a default meeting place and distribution center for food, clothes, or any kind of assistance, spiritual or otherwise. There were cots for those with nowhere else to sleep, and a rotating staff of volunteers handed out blankets and soup at all hours of the day. Here, as everywhere, people had cell phones attached to their hands, redialing every few seconds in a useless attempt to get a signal. Here, as everywhere, stories flew about desperate attempts to make it across the border, and the uniformed men with guns who lurked in the prairie grass, determined to turn them back. It was the same all over town, but on the streets, you could feel a rising desperation, the claustrophobic’s wild-eyed need to get the hell out. In here, there was only quiet acceptance, and despair. It was a mishmash of people – young mothers, elderly women leaning on canes and rolling in chairs, a handful of kids Daniel recognized from school, a man in his Sunday-best suit who reeked of whiskey, a couple of red-eyed tweakers – all of them wearing the same expression, a mixture of loss and hope; all of them tracking Deacon Barnes as he glad-handed his way across the room. He kept one arm at all times tightly around the shoulders of a willowy blonde a third his age.
“Crap,” Jule said suddenly. “I gotta go.”
“Because of her?” Daniel asked just as the blond girl spotted them. Her face lit up at the sight. “Is that Ellie King?”
“It’s Saint Ellie now. Or haven’t you heard?”
He’d heard the rumors: that she emitted, under the right light, a saintly glow; that she knew things about you she should never have known; that beneath her fingers pain dissipated and twisted muscles regained their use. These stories were mostly on the order of something a friend of a friend who heard from a neighbor said. It was impossible to pin down anyone who’d seen the miracle worker in action. In fact, as far as Daniel could tell, what Ellie King mostly seemed to do was stand by the deacon’s side looking beatific and nodding sympathetically at the shattered masses.
Now she was heading toward them and waving frantically, the deacon on her heels. People kept reaching out to touch her as she passed.
“I have to get out of here,” Jule said, but she made no motion to leave.
“God saved her,” Milo said, in a low voice that sounded eerily like their father’s. “He called her to the church, and he saved them both.”
Daniel wanted to shake him. “Who told you that?”
Milo gave him the you’re-a-moron look that only an eight-year-old can truly pull off. “Everyone knows that.”
“He’s right,” Jule said. “Everyone’s saying it. Guess that makes it true.”
“Jule!” Ellie King threw her arms around Jule, who stiffly endured. “I knew you’d be safe. He’s not done with you yet.”
Jule shoved her away. “Apparently, neither are you.”
Daniel didn’t know what was going on between the two girls, nor did he want to. Not as much as he wanted to get Milo away.
The deacon nodded politely to the new arrivals, then whispered something in Ellie’s ear. She shook her head. “He can wait.”
“This is important, Ellie.”
“This is important,” she said softly. “Five minutes.”
He obviously wasn’t happy about it, but he left her to it. “Five minutes.”
Once they were alone, Ellie took Jule’s hand. “I know what you’ve said before —”
“Which?” Jule asked. “Leave me alone, or leave me the hell alone, or leave me the —”
“Do you know my dad?” Milo said suddenly.
Ellie started, like she hadn’t realized he was there. “Who’s your father?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter.” Daniel tugged at his brother. But Milo was an immovable object when he wanted to be, and the last thing they needed was a kicking and screaming fit in the middle of a crowded church.
“The Preacher,” Milo said. “That’s what people call him. He talks to God, just like you.”
Jule snorted.
From Ellie’s expression, it was clear she knew exactly who the Preacher was and didn’t much appreciate the comparison. At least, not as much as Jule did.
“I’m not sure it’s exactly the same,” Ellie said.
“No, it is,” Milo told her. “And God talks back to him, too. Like he talks to you. Doesn’t he?”
“He does…”
“See? Same thing. So, can you ask him somethin
g for me when you talk to him?”
“Your father?”
“No, God. Can you ask him where my dad is? And give him a message for me?”
Daniel swallowed. It had been four days, and the Preacher still wasn’t back.
It had been four days, and it was time to accept that the Preacher probably wasn’t coming back. But no one had explained that to Milo yet.
“I will do that, Milo,” Ellie said, with an unruffled assurance that suggested it was as simple as picking up the phone. “And remember, the Lord has a reason for all He does. I’m sure your father’s safe, whether on earth or in the bosom of —”
“Milo!” Daniel barked. “Go wait for me by the stairs.”
“But I haven’t given her the message.”
“Milo. Go.”
Milo went. Daniel stepped closer to Ellie, close enough that her wispy bangs nearly brushed his forehead. “I don’t care what you tell the rest of the idiots in this town. But you don’t tell my brother God has his reasons, and you don’t tell him God has the inside line on his dead father. In fact…” He didn’t want to leave Milo here. He wanted to take his brother home, back to his real home, dingy as it was, and watch him every second of every day until he could be trusted to protect himself. But storm damage meant repairs, and repairs meant money – there were weeks’ worth of odd jobs awaiting him all over town, enough hammering, towing, cleaning, and plumbing to be worth a year of shifts at the J&C. He could make enough to get them both out of town… if he could get Milo squared away. And if he could stay awake.
He wasn’t sleeping. The dreams were back, ever since the storm. And they were worse than before. The screams were no louder, the moans no more gut-wrenching, the current of blood no stronger. But in this version of the dream, Gathers died first, gut-shot on the wrong side of the register, a stack of comic books in his gnarled hand. In this dream, Daniel was the one holding the gun.
He wondered what Ellie’s chatty God would make of that.
“Just don’t tell my brother anything,” he said finally. “Period. Stay away from him.”
She was silent, and he wondered if she had even heard him, or if Bible quotes ran through her head on a permanent loop, crowding out everything else.
“Do you understand me?” he said.
She nodded, letting her hair fall forward across her face. “I’m sorry about your father. And I’ll… I’ll stay away.”
“From me, too,” Jule put in.
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said again, and then she was gone.
Daniel felt like he’d stepped on a kitten.
“Impressive,” Jule said. “I haven’t managed to get rid of her all year, and you get it done in five seconds?”
His righteous disdain had drained away. “I guess she wasn’t hurting anything…”
“You guess wrong.”
They herded Milo downstairs. The volunteers tending to the children were mostly church ladies he didn’t know but who, he could tell from their freshly pressed blouses and starched hair, were from the “right” part of town. Definitely the type to snitch on him to Milo’s mother. This wasn’t because they took her as an equal – perish the thought – but because any adult was to be trusted over a teenager from the west side, especially one descended from the town drunk. None of them was a likely candidate to watch out for his brother.
Then he spotted the one person who might be right for the job.
“Grace!” he called. She handed off the infant she was holding to an older woman and carefully threaded her way through the children. “You volunteering here?” he asked, surprised, and not just because with her twin braids and delicate features she didn’t look much older than her charges.
She offered him a sour smile. “Suffer the little children, right?”
“They certainly seem to suffer you,” Jule said as a toddler wandered up to Grace’s leg and gifted her knee with a kiss. It almost seemed like Grace was tempted to kick the child away, but instead she patted him on the head and gently disentangled herself.
“I see you found your brother,” she said.
“I know you,” Milo said.
“And I know you. Your brother went to a lot of trouble to find you – and now he’s dumping you here?”
Milo grinned. “That’s what I said!”
Daniel shook his head. “You’re perfect for each other. Enjoy.”
“I got some new comics,” Milo told her. “We stole them.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Borrowed them.”
“Whatever. Wanna see?”
“Desperately,” Grace said in a flat voice. “Make my day.”
Daniel dared another glance at Jule, though this time at her face. She looked like she wanted to adopt Grace for her own.
“Your parents make it back?” Daniel asked the girl. “You’re not still alone in the house, are you?”
“Now, why would I give out that kind of sensitive information to a stranger?”
“If you’re staying there by yourself —”
“It’s taken care of,” she said.
Daniel shrugged, reminding himself it was her business, not his. You developed a knack for that, living in a town this size. “Just don’t let him out of here until I get back, okay?”
Grace took hold of Milo’s shoulder. “Nothing happens to this kid on my watch.”
She was smiling when she said it, in a tone that suggested a lighthearted joke, or tried to, but there was nothing light about the girl, and nothing warm about the smile. Whether in spite or because of it, Daniel decided to believe her.
Ellie hovered in the doorway of the deacon’s office, cursing herself for thinking that she knew better than he did. It was Jule Prevette. Something about the girl made her lose perspective. It had been a year, and Ellie was no closer to convincing her to come to the Lord than she’d been that first day at the trailer park. But she couldn’t let go. Even now, when she had so many more important things to do.
“We can’t hesitate,” the deacon was saying, hands waving expansively as they did when he had particularly warmed to his topic. “Don’t tell me there aren’t changes you’ve been wanting to make around here, Mouse.”
“I told you not to call me that.” The mayor rose to his feet.
“The Lord knows you by all your names, Mouse. You can’t hide from Him, and you can’t hide from this moment.” The deacon stood, too, slapping his hands flat on his broad desk, and as he did, he caught sight of Ellie in the doorway. He beckoned her inside. “Here she is, sir, the main attraction.”
Ellie allowed herself to be introduced to the mayor and inspected like a show pony, smiling and shaking hands as she tried not to consider the phrase main attraction. It all too easily called to mind the circus that passed through town every other summer with its carnival freaks in tow, the bearded lady and the strong man and the mermaid. Fakes, all of them, but content enough to sit on their stools and bear Oleander’s curious gaze. That was how the town looked at her now. Even her mother stared when she thought Ellie wasn’t paying attention.
No one was more surprised by Ellie’s newfound divinity than the woman who had borne her.
All children were filthy little beasts. That’s what Charlotte King believed, and that’s what she taught her girls, from the moment they were old enough to speak (and to smear pudding on the walls and spaghetti on the floor and snot on their mother’s face, among other unforgivable transgressions). Be clean, stay clean, never associate with anyone who shows signs of not being clean – that was the prime directive. Homeschooled and raised on a steady diet of chores, Sunday services, and Christian pop, the King girls were allowed three hours of supervised television a week. Their mother selected the shows. They could read any book they chose, as long as it came from their mother’s library. They dressed first in clothes their mother picked out for them, and later in clothes she carefully vetted, occasionally bringing out the measuring tape when a hemline crept close to a knee. At age fourteen, each daughter slipped on a
purity ring, to signify her promise to God that she would keep her body and soul clean. Henry King, who’d wanted sons and didn’t understand daughters, suffered this with the same mixture of bemusement and impatience with which he endured all of his wife’s decisions. But he occasionally took his youngest on illicit movie dates and, when his wife was out, let her poke around online, “our little secret.” He couldn’t disguise his pride when she developed a rebellious streak of her own.
Ellie could still remember how she’d felt, fourteen and lawless, capable of anything but getting caught, so proud of her shoplifted mascara and the PG-13 DVDs tucked beneath her mattress. She’d felt invincible, and if her mother hadn’t opened her eyes to her sin, she didn’t know where she’d be now.