12

“Cadaver?”

He’s still facing the fire, but his head is bowed, all his attention on his upturned palm. I give the kid one brief, regretful look, then head back to the old man. Back there in the shadows, Brody’s still cursing.

As I draw abreast of the old man, I see there’s only two pennies in his palm. I guess the fire took a little something extra from him. But when at last he raises his head, not only does he seem calm, he’s almost smiling. A thin thread of blue-gray smoke drifts from the small hole in the box in his throat. Opaque eyes settle on mine, and they look ancient.

The smile.

The pennies.

It dawns on me then, the not-so-quick-witted Sheriff of a town on life support, that there was something to Reverend Hill’s threat after all. It was there right from the beginning. We were waiting for a great black winged demon to come bursting up from below, or the devil himself to come strolling in the door with a brimstone smile and eyes like glowing embers, all those peachy images the Good Book tells us we should be watching for, when we should have been looking at that ever-present patch of darkness in the corner. To the man counting his change.

Fear overwhelms me, and my legs, which have done a respectable job of holding me up through the madness, finally give out. I stumble. Cadaver’s hand lashes out and clamps on my arm, somehow keeping me upright.

“You all right, Sheriff?” he whispers, head cocked slightly in an admirable impression of genuine concern.

From the fire comes a great hiss. It might be a serpent; it might just be the rain meeting flame. I’m not so certain of anything anymore. Only that Cadaver’s the reason the air smells like burning flesh.

“‘Just counting what’s left’,” I say, recalling his words to me before we left the bar. “You were talking about us.”

He nods, glances back at Kyle, then steps closer. There should not be enough strength in his old bones to keep me from falling, but there is. His hand on my elbow might as well be a metal brace.

“There’s no accountin’ for human emotion,” he says, his whisper tinged with sadness, aided by the expression of regret on his worn face. “Especially the love of a frustrated old woman for her shameless husband. Because of Eleanor Cobb, everythin’ went sideways on us. You were right. This shouldn’t've happened.”

“But it did.”

“Yes it did, and that’s a shame.” He closes his fist around the pennies. “If it means anythin’–and I don’t expect it will, at least not for a while–this isn’t what I wanted. They were my friends too.”

I’m bitter, and scared, and more than ready for him to reach inside my tired body and wrench out my soul, whatever’s left of it. “Am I supposed to believe that? Or is it just customary where you come from to burn your friends alive if things don’t go according to plan?”

He purses his lips, then squints at me like a short-sighted man trying to read the fine print on a legal document. “The Reverend got what was comin’ to him. They all did, unfortunate as it is. Wintry…” He shook his head, a wry smile on his wrinkled lips. “He can talk you know. He just chose not to after– ”

“I don’t want a litany of their sins,” I interrupt. “It hardly makes a damn bit of difference now. All I want to know from you is what happens to Kyle.”

He nods his understanding. Anyone looking might think we were discussing the latest decisions of the coaches of our favorite football teams. “Repentance is the name of this game, Tom. Don’t matter whether I influence it or not, or whether you both live to be a hundred and ten or die tomorrow, the debt’s got to be settled. It’s the price you have to pay for makin’ the wrong choice when both were available to you.”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

He sighs. “I’m a reasonable man, Tom.”

I can’t help myself. I laugh long and loud at that little nugget of absurdity. The contradiction to Cadaver’s claim is burning high and bright before us. Sure, he didn’t strike the match, but if not for his influence, none of us would have been there to begin with.

He releases his grip on me. I don’t fall, but there’s not a whole lot of strength left in me. I stay standing only so I can look him in the eye when he tells me what’s going to become of my son. And maybe when he does I’ll have just the right amount of energy left to punch his fucking face in.

But he doesn’t answer right away. Instead he grabs my left hand, forces it out of the fist that I’ve made to follow up on my unvoiced threat, and drops his two pennies into my palm.

I look up at him.

His eyes probe mine, and my guts squirm as if a surgeon has put his cold fingers in there. I’m afraid I’m going to be sick. “Consider it a loan,” he says, and closes my fingers around the coins.

“Why?” I ask, as he starts to walk toward the burning building, the smoke whipping itself into specters that chase each other around the flames. Sparks dance like giddy stars.

At the threshold to the inferno that used to be Eddie’s Bar, he stops, seemingly unaffected by anything but the light from the blaze. He squints back over his shoulder at me, and though his voice is still a whisper, I hear it as surely as if he’s said it right into my ear.

“It’s all I have.”

***

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