Redemption Road(131)

“Necessary things, Gideon. We’ve had the discussion many times. All I ask now is that you trust in my purpose, even if you can’t understand it.” He watched the boy blink and swallow, a windup toy waiting for the spring to tighten. “Do you understand?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you try?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come with me, then.” He led Gideon to the front door and opened it with care. Nothing moved on the street. An old lady stood in the yard three houses down, shading her eyes in a housecoat and no shoes. “Open the car, Gideon. The back door. The hatch.”

“Reverend…”

“Don’t argue, son. The hatch.” Gideon opened the hatch and stood immobile as the reverend put Elizabeth in, still loose. The girl followed, but was struggling in the tarp. Up the street, the old woman was watching, but he wasn’t worried. Things were moving too fast. “Get in the car, Gideon.”

The boy got in, and the preacher did, too. He would go to the church because his daughter had been baptized there and loved her father there. The good years between them were as baked into that church as the mortar itself, and that made the decision simple. Daughter or not, failure or success, it would end as it began, the father and the child and only honesty between them.

*

Gideon was smart enough to know that everything happening now was wrong. Liz shouldn’t be hurt like that, and not the girl, either. They shouldn’t be in a car that smelled like pee, and the reverend shouldn’t be so scary. He had never been before. He’d been firm and, at times, judgmental. But those were the little things, and Gideon never worried much about the little things. The bigger things mattered more, such as how the reverend was calm and quiet and seemed to know so much, the way he spoke of life and how it should be lived, and how he made every day seem solemn and purposeful. Gideon had always wanted a life that felt as if the minutes and hours had weight of their own. A life like that wouldn’t dry up and blow away. A life like that mattered.

The reverend whistled as he drove. The flat, shapeless tune raised the hair on Gideon’s arms. It felt as wrong as fingernails on a blackboard. But that could be the car, the blood, the way he looked at Gideon when the road got straight. “Do you know what a sand tiger shark is?”

His voice was quiet, but Gideon twitched because they were the first words the reverend had said in ten long minutes. They were beyond the edge of town. The girl had stopped struggling. “No, sir. Not unless you mean regular tiger sharks.”

“Sand tiger sharks have embryos that fight and die in the mother’s womb. Once they’re large enough, they go at each other right there in the tightness and the black. They tear each other apart until only one is left alive; and that’s the one that’s eventually born. Everyone else is eaten or left to rot. Brothers. Sisters. Even the eggs, if any are left.” He drove for another mile. “Does that sound like God to you? That savagery?”

“No, sir.”

“Does it sound like me?”

Gideon didn’t answer because it was clear he was not supposed to. The reverend was driving with his eyes down to slits, and muscles rolling in his jaw. Gideon risked a look behind him and saw the girl watching. She was sucking hard through her nose. Trying to breathe. She shook her head, and Gideon felt the same fear.

Crazy.

Full-on, batshit crazy.

Two minutes later he saw the church. The reverend drove past it twice, studying it, craning his neck. He stopped at the drive, watching the road through the glass, the rearview mirror. “Do you see anything?”

“Like what?”

“Police. Other people.”

“No, sir.”

“You sure?”

Gideon kept quiet, and after a moment’s silence the preacher pulled up the twisting drive and parked.

“Stay in the car.”

He opened his door, and wind carried the smell of every summer Gideon had ever known. For a moment, he thought of better times; then the hatch opened, and Liz started fighting, the thrashing so violent and loud and hard to watch that Gideon was screaming by the time she flopped onto the dirt, and the same horrible, crackling sound made her go as limp as if dead. He wanted to help her. But, the reverend nailed him with those dull eyes and crushed whatever part of him thought there would be an explanation. He’d imagined it mere seconds ago. The car would stop. The preacher would wink and laugh, and suddenly everyone else would be laughing, too. Joke’s on me, he’d realize.

But, it was no joke.

The preacher had his daughter on a shoulder. He was tearing down tape, leaning into a wooden door that opened with a lurch and swallowed them up. Suddenly, Gideon was alone with the girl. “Please, don’t cry. He’s just sick, I think. Or confused.”

But the girl fought when the preacher reappeared. She screamed behind the tape and fought as Liz had fought, so red-faced and desperate that Gideon got out of the car and pulled at the preacher’s arm as he dragged the girl out.

“Reverend, please! She’s just a girl. She’s scared.”

“What did I say about the car?”

“Let’s just go back to town, okay? This doesn’t have to be real. None of it has to be real.”

It was like a nightmare, and he was begging to wake up. But the sun was too hot for it to be a dream, the church too solid and tall. He tried again to stop what was happening, but the preacher shoved him away, hard enough to make something tear deep in Gideon’s chest. He fell hard on the ground and felt heat on his skin as the bandages soaked through. The preacher had the girl under an arm. Gideon caught his belt; tried to pull himself up.