CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Donna stirred to the screeches of Theo howling as though he’d just lost a limb. She rolled her head to the right and located the infant, who was cradled in Kathy Beard’s lap. Kathy herself sat crisscrossed on the floor less than a foot away. She attempted to soothe Theo by cooing at him and making funny faces, but to no avail. The infant’s face was a crimson mask of upset. His tiny balled-up fists trembled over his belly.

“That’s his hungry cry,” Donna managed groggily when Theo paused for breath. Her voice was weak, low, and raspy. Her tongue was thick in her mouth, making it difficult to form words.

Kathy examined her with relief in her eyes. “Well, look who’s up!” she said in the same baby voice she’d been using to entertain Theo. “It’s your momma! Yessiree, your momma’s awake!” Then, in her normal voice, “How are you feeling, Donna? Do you think you can sit up?”

Donna pulled her legs into arches at the knees and propped herself on her elbows. A wave of dizziness turned the wall of Beard’s General into a Vaseline smear for a second, but it dissipated quickly. She sat up and propped her forehead on the fingertips of her left hand. Her bandaged right one rested in her lap.

“I think I’ll be okay,” she replied. It was a struggle to talk over Theo’s police siren-like wails. “I don’t know what happened. The last thing I remember was Peter and Mark—”

She glanced around the room. Peter Mayberry and the stranger they all thought of as Marilyn stood together beside a mop bucket. Jerry and Eli leaned against the wall of shelves opposite them, staring. Just staring at Marilyn, mouths hanging stupidly half-open. “Wait, where’s Mark?”

Kathy smiled at her piteously. “There’s no Mark here,” she said. “You went down hard. It’s got you confused. You’re in my store. It’s been raining for hours, and the bridge is washed out. We’re kind of sitting ducks until the weather passes and the water recedes. Or until some kind soul brings a boat for us. We need to get this baby fed.” She passed Theo to Donna and then waited expectantly. After an awkward few seconds of silence, “Do you need me to get you something to cover up with? A blanket?”

“I don’t, uh, breastfeed,” Donna answered, tucking her chin.

“Oh. Right.”

“There’s another bottle of formula in my bag,” she added quickly. “It’s the last one. It should hold him for a while if you could get that for me. I need you to help me mix up some fresh for him later. I can pay for it. It’s just about 15 ounces of water, boiled, mixed with a tablespoon of Karo, and about 9 ounces of unsweetened evaporated milk. Oh, and we’ll need to pour that off into bottles to cool it.”

Kathy nodded and stood up. “I remember. I’ll see what I can do. Meantime, let’s get you back over to that table so you can feed this boy.”

She stretched out her arms and retrieved Theo from Donna so she could stand. Donna planted her bandaged right hand palm-down on the floor for leverage. It landed in something wet. Surprised, fearing she had reopened the cut, she jerked her left hand away from Kathy and raised her right palm to her face. It wasn’t blood, whatever it was. The liquid she’d slapped on the floor was translucent, if a tad ruddy after soaking her bandage. It wasn’t viscous like blood or mucus. It was just plain brown creek water.

“Oh!” Kathy exclaimed. “I forgot about your hand. Did you hurt it?”

“No, not at all,” Donna replied, still mesmerized by her palm. She looked at the floor where she’d braced herself. A small puddle of dirty brown liquid oozed through the crack in the floorboard near where she sat. Some of it overflowed the bevel and stained the gray planks on each side of it a darker color. “Oh. Oh, God.”

“What is it?”

Donna helped herself to her feet and took Theo. The boy had stopped fussing about his hunger pangs and drifted into an unsatisfied slumber again.

“Uh, does this place have a second floor? Or an attic?”

“No,” Kathy replied, glancing up at her store’s ceiling as if she’d never seen it before. “Nothing but ceiling and rafters up there. Why?”

With the baby in her left arm, Donna dabbed her right palm on her dress. She hoped the water hadn’t soaked through her bandage enough to expose her wound to infection.

“Because the creek's decided to come inside.”

She pointed to where she’d been sitting. Kathy followed her finger. She gasped as together the women watched a fast-running trickle of rain-swollen creek water roll out of the space between two floorboards nearer to the door. Suddenly the stuff was everywhere. Donna could hear the floorboards groaning, see them bulging against the pressure of the flood’s assault.

“Well, shit,” Kathy said matter-of-factly. “Jerry! Get the push brooms!”

Behind them, Jerry grabbed Eli by the overalls strap and dragged him into the employees-only room behind the cash register. Seconds later, the boys emerged from the depths of that space, each with a sizeable wood-handled push-broom in hand.

“What do we do with them?” Jerry called.

“Sweep the water out the door!” Kathy snapped back. “What do you think?” She looked at Donna and rolled her eyes. Kids, that look said. They’re a handful.

Kathy put a hand on Donna’s shoulder, urging her farther into the store. A few paces backward, and the women were standing on the linoleum that covered the aisles of stock. The floorboards only accounted for a fifth or less of the room’s square footage by Donna’s estimate. They spanned the width of the building from the cashier’s stand to the far wall, laid parallel to the door and window in the front.

“That area used to be part of the front stoop,” Kathy explained as if reading her mind. “We closed it in because we didn’t need that much porch. We didn’t want to take up potential aisle space when we added the cashier’s stand.”

“What’s under us?”

“A crawl space walled in with cinder blocks, I think,” Kathy answered. She looked at the floor, shaking her head. “In all my years, I’ve never seen that creek come out of its banks like this. I mean, how high can it go? It’s got to be over five feet from the bottom of the bed.”

“It covered the world after God commanded Noah to build the ark,” a male voice from behind them said.

Donna pivoted to discover Peter strolling up to them. She had half expected Mark MacDonald, the Nazarene preacher, for reasons she couldn’t quite pinpoint. The Marilyn woman stayed several paces behind, seemingly transfixed by the intruding water. She looked confused, even fearful.

Jerry and Eli continued striving in vain to direct the liquid toward the door. The speed of their broom pushing was no match for the expediency of the flood. Their brooms made swish sounds with each forward stroke. After each swish, the gaps in the floor cleared but immediately filled and overflowed again.

Jerry was better at the job than Eli, who kept forgetting to lift the bristles off the surface before he pulled the broom back to himself for another push. He was making ripples and waves more than guiding the flow of water.

Kathy was on Peter before Donna could fully process what he’d been saying.

“You,” she strained, “go back over there with your friend. I still haven’t figured out what happened to Mark MacDonald, but it’s not happening to anyone else here if I have anything to say about it. And soon as I can, I’m getting the law out here on both of you.”

A lump rose in Donna’s throat. “Kathy? Where is Mark?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but Peter interrupted her.

“The false prophet is gone,” he croaked. “He doubted. He denied. He shall be cast into the lake of fire along with all of those who deny her.”

“Peter!” Kathy growled. “Shut the hell up and go stand over there.” Then, to Donna, “Mark might be dead. I’m not sure. He attacked that woman over there, and she did...something...to him. I don’t think I can describe it.” She craned her neck toward Peter and Marilyn. “She’s not God! She’s a goddamn witch!

“Come on, Donna. Let’s get your baby fed.”

Kathy snatched Donna’s bag from the floor beside the chair in which she’d spent much of that late afternoon. She bade Donna sit while she rooted for the bottle of formula. She found it quickly and handed it to Donna, who capped it with its nipple. Donna cradled Theo in a gentle slope conducive to feeding and teased the baby’s lips with the formula. He took the bottle without question, sucking it down greedily. He chugged a third of the milky stuff in what seemed like seconds.

Donna beamed at her infant son while he supped. Such peace! He did not worry about where his food came from. He was not concerned about when or where his next meal would be provided. He knew only that he had been hungry, and he was being fed.

Donna closed her eyes and listened to the sounds of Theo gulping, sucking, gulping some more. He paused for a breath now and then, but mostly he fed. For a few minutes, everything seemed normal. The downpours and thunder and lightning outside faded into the background. The sickly bright lights inside Beard’s General dimmed into the warmth of flame. The swish, swish, swish of the push brooms all but disappeared. But most of all, she and Theo were safe and warm, away from bad weather as well as bad husbands and fathers.

Kathy’s voice in her left ear startled her out of her reverie.

“He gave me back the money he took,” she said softly. “Mark. He gave it back. Even though I didn’t say as much, I’d already forgiven him for taking it. But that doesn’t explain how Peter knew, how she knew he’d taken it.”

“He told me he did it,” Donna replied. She’d located the memory of it, although it was distant in her mind, like something that had happened decades ago. “He did feel guilty about it, I think. But he told me something else, too. Something...crazy.”

Kathy met her eyes. “Yes?”

Donna swallowed and followed that with a long sigh. “Well, you heard him call her an apostate from Hell. What he told me is that she’d been feeding on him all night long, ever since Jerry and Peter dragged her in here. It was some kind of mental connection, I guess. He said she was eating his guilt, like a...well, something he called a sin-eater.”

Kathy nodded. “Go on.”

“Here’s another crazy thing. The whole time he was telling me about it all, I had the weirdest sensation of déjà vu. It seemed like he and I had had that exact conversation before. But we hadn’t. Well, there wouldn’t have been any reason for us to have, would there?”

“No,” Kathy said. “Did you kill Ted?”

The abrupt change of subject startled Donna so severely that she gasped aloud. It dawned on her then that the entire store had heard everything Marilyn had said to her: about her mother, about her china dolls, about Ted and, most significantly, about her having sliced him up with a shard of broken glass that had subsequently dug itself into her palm.

She considered lying to Kathy, but an entire day and evening of unreality had cured her of any notion that she wouldn’t be caught. Someone would eventually find his body, no matter what happened tonight. No matter how far she and Theo had run by that time. A woman and an infant on their own amid the economic boom of the past few years would not precisely be inconspicuous.

Instead of manufacturing a cover story, Donna nodded, adding a meek “Yes” just in case Kathy hadn’t seen the gesture. A beat of silence passed between them. Donna squirmed in her seat. Theo’s feeding position in a short wooden chair intended for use at a kitchen dinette was putting a strain on her back. She opened her mouth to add to her affirmation when Kathy finally spoke up.

“You’re about to say he was hitting you and that you were afraid for the baby.”

Those were the precise words Donna had been about to utter. She gaped at the woman. “Is it that obvious?”

“I’ve been getting that same feeling of déjà vu all afternoon, too,” Kathy continued. “I can’t say for sure that’s how I knew what you were going to tell me. I mean, everyone in town knew Teddy had a temper. With that bandage on your hand and those bruises on your face—the makeup doesn’t cover the swelling that well—it’s an easy guess. You said yourself that any conniving old fortune-teller could hit this stuff on the nose.”

“Yeah,” she said. “Wait. I said that out loud? I don’t remember that.”

Kathy smiled. “Well, maybe I just saw it in your face. But I can’t shake this feeling, either. I have memories of the boys trying to sweep the water out, even though water has never come into the store before, as far as I know.”

Together they eyed the work still going on at the front of the store. Eli had slowed, obviously tired. Jerry swept furiously still, although there didn’t seem to be much water to push around anymore. The torrent that had pounded the roof overhead had slackened, and they could no longer hear it over their voices. Donna allowed herself to feel a twinge of hope. This could be the end of it. That was fine with her. Whatever came next, at least she wouldn’t be stuck in a general store with a zealot and his weirdly sexy God anymore.

Kathy piped up again. “Have you looked at Peter lately?”

“He looks older somehow.”

“Like, older just since he walked in the store today?”

“Yeah,” Donna said.

“Yeah.”