Nineteen

Stoney and Marian shot down the Savannah highway toward the swamps. Crouched over the Rover’s steering wheel, Stoney was already tired from walking the swamps most of the last forty-eight hours, and now and then he stared into the windshield and thought he saw drops of blood splattered on the glass. He shook his head and focused on the road.

“I called Ed Hammond,” he said to Marian after a while. “He came home with me and I dropped him off at his house. I told him—on the phone—what you said about the Sheldon Church. He’s going back out to meet Jim and he’ll tell the rest of them. I imagine they’ll all head down there. Hell, we’ve looked everywhere else.”

Marian didn’t answer. She was thinking about the last look Maum Chrish had given her that afternoon. There had been something unspoken in her eyes as Marian was leaving and Marian had struggled all afternoon to understand what it might mean, what it might have to do with locating Leonard. But she couldn’t figure it out. She had tried to project into Maum Chrish but she just couldn’t get in. She stared up at the moon. As darkness fell, the light of the Dark Satellite patterned the road with patches and dribbles, which they resolutely followed south.

The deeper they penetrated the woods, the larger and thicker the trees seemed until it was hard to tell where the road ended and the swamps began. They crossed low concrete bridges like fugitives, unseen by anyone. Only two cars, going in the opposite direction, passed them, and the sudden headlights invaded the Rover like split-second passing images on a television. Then the light was gone again and the darkness resumed. The trees were older the farther south they drove, as though all life had begun at the sea. These trees leaned like shrunken old people and many were dead. The swamps were thicker too, the smell deeper and loamier and darker. Old cemeteries lay so close to the low-lying road here that sometimes floods unearthed a casket and left it floating in a small inlet for days—like a Norse death-ship launched into the ocean to journey to heaven. Gnats and mosquitoes papered the windshield and at one point Stoney had to turn on the wipers to get rid of them. For a moment he imagined it was raining, but only insects slicked the glass between him and the darkness. Abruptly he remembered going to Harriet’s in the middle of the night months earlier, finding footprints under her sleeping porch. He had told her everything would be all right. Now he saw her face again as it had looked that night. The boldest of the bold alone and afraid.

Stoney glanced at Marian. She was staring out the windshield too, immobile, as though she were somewhere far away. He wanted to ask her why, mother or no, she had ever come back to this godforsaken place, to this town with its secrets and swamps, but it felt like prying and so he didn’t ask. He wondered if she felt what he felt. That cool breeze. It was so humid sweat trickled down his leg into his socks but from somewhere he also felt an uncannily cold air pocket. It circled around the back of his neck and whirled down his arms to blow across his hands on the steering wheel. No matter how he turned, he felt that cold breeze encircle him and it filled him with dread. Above them the trees crowded in closer and Stoney wondered if the cooler wind came from them, if some odd juxtaposition of hot and cold currents was causing the prickly sensation on the back of his neck. The tree branches reached down to the car like the hands of the starving—begging for food, aggressive in their need, ripping at the Rover in desperation. Cold hands scratching and clawing, breathing out a cold wordlessness.

He had to talk. “You sure this is the way?”

Marian nodded. “Before long we’ll be out of the trees.”

And she was right. She, too, was glad when the sky opened up; now the trees were fewer, which meant they were nearing the end of the Coosawhatchie Swamp. Marian saw some cattails along the side of the road and she almost laughed aloud. The swamps were giving way to partial marshes, they had made it through. She could see over the trees now. The moon could get in again and at least there was light. And beside them stretched a small inlet, flat and slick with green slime.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Stoney said. “The marshes are so visible. He can be seen so easily here.”

“But only if someone’s looking for him.”

They passed more low savannas with reeds sprouting out of them and herons swooping low for nocturnal feeds. Although many people came to the marshes to fish, almost no one lived along this particular section; this land was even more untenable than the swamps. The ground was always giving way, returning to the ocean.

Abruptly Stoney braked at a stop sign. The highway ended here and they had two choices—go right or go left. He turned to Marian. “Which way is it?”

“The crossroads,” she whispered.

“But which way?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been here, I’ve just heard about it.”

“For God’s sake, Marian. You should have told me that.” Stoney reached for the glove box and rummaged through it, looking for a South Carolina map. “I know I used to have a map in here, it probably has the Sheldon Church on it.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought—I thought I’d just know where it was.”

“Well, I hope to hell Jim and Bill and the rest have a map.”

“Jim must know where it is. Boys used to hunt near it when we were growing up.”

Stoney slammed the glove box shut. “Well, we’re going to have to use the trial-and-error method.”

They got out of the Rover and walked beyond the stop sign into the intersection and stared in both directions. Nothing but darkness. Here the marshes receded again and all the land fronting the intersection was thickly forested. There were no lights on the crossing two-lane road and no cars, no signs, nothing.

“Suppose we split up and you go one way and I’ll try the other?” Marian suggested. “I’ll walk down this way,” she pointed to the right, “and you ride down the other way and if you find anything you circle back and pick me up.”

“No way. I’m not about to leave you out here alone.”

“Stoney, we can’t waste time. If we don’t cover both directions, he may get away.” A pause. “Besides, I know this area much better than you do.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

They went back to the Rover. Inside, Marian snapped open her purse and took out the loaded derringer. “I’ll be okay by myself. I’ve got this. And extra bullets.”

Stoney stared at the gun and thought for a few moments. Then he looked down the dark road. Finally he said, “Okay, just for a little while. But you take the Rover. And stay in it. I mean that, Marian. Don’t get out. You find the church, you come back and get me.”

Stoney climbed out of the vehicle, a flashlight and Jim Leland’s rifle in his hands. Marian slid into the driver’s seat and Stoney waited until she started the engine. Then he slammed the driver’s door shut. “You be damn careful. He’s not afraid of anything.”

Marian slipped the Rover into first gear. “I’ll be okay. You’re the one I’m worried about. You’re on foot.” Marian hesitated, then added, “Stoney, if you have to, shoot first.”

“I just don’t buy it,” Jim Leland said to Bill Jenkins and Heyward Rutherford. “Makes no sense at all for Leonard to go down to the Sheldon Church.”

Bill swatted at the gnats flying around his face. He felt like he’d sweated off ten pounds and the frigging bugs must have eaten away at least another five. “I’m just telling you what Ed said. Marian believes he’s there.”

Jim wondered if he’d done the right thing. Putting so much stock, despite his misgivings, in Marian’s opinion. Telling everyone to follow the river as they had earlier, but to advance southward now as rapidly as possible. When the river ended, at the marshes, they would be almost exactly at the Sheldon Church. So that part did make sense. If Leonard followed the river, then he would also end up there. And would need a new place to hide—someplace out of the way, with lots of cover. Of course, Buck Henry had looked down his nose at the whole thing. They were to follow the advice of a schoolteacher who’d obtained her information from a half-looney voodoo queen? Was this the kind of police work that went on in Essex all the time?

Jim shivered when he heard the drumbeats again. Lordy, he wished they’d quit that, whoever was doing it. Over and over again just this one drum beating. Just when he thought it had stopped, it started up again. It sounded like a death knell, the way the bell in the tower of the Lutheran church had once been rung for dead people. People over sixty never stopped talking about the way it had rung over and over again for Elizabeth Setzler in the twenties. Jim listened again. Thummm—thummm—thummm. Did that sound give Buck Henry the willies too? The Ashton sheriff had finally agreed to send his men toward the church, so they would all end up there eventually. Probably at about the same time, give or take. Coming through the swamps, they might even beat Stoney and Marian. If Leonard was there, it would be good to have everyone together. On the other hand, Jim knew that if he got to the church first and found Leonard, then this would be his arrest. Leonard Hansen, who had tricked him, who had even offered to help him, would be arrested and behind bars. Leonard would kill no more. Not in the town where he was police chief.

Abruptly Jim froze. What was that?

Bill and Heyward, ahead of him, stopped too.

“What is that?” Bill’s voice was almost inaudible.

“I don’t know,” Heyward cried. “Sounded like something moving.”

“Quiet!” Jim bent low and held his rifle up to his chest and carefully unhooked the safety, signaling with his eyes for the other men to do the same.

Then they heard it again. The sound of hard and heavy footsteps. Tree limbs snapping back. Something running.

Jim listened. Whoever it was, he was close. Buck Henry had those damn dogs way upstream and they had Leonard right here! Jim stared at Heyward and Bill, wondered if they were the back-up men he’d have chosen.

The moon suddenly shot out from behind a cloud and illuminated the three men. Bill Jenkins jerked back from the light. “Which way?”

“I can’t tell.” Jim’s head pounded, and he bit his lip so hard it bled. He pointed. “He could be over there. Or on the other side of the river.” The police chief straightened his shoulders abruptly. “You two cross the river and check there. I’ll go this way.”

Bill Jenkins looked doubtful, thinking about Jim alone. He also thought about confronting Leonard himself with only Heyward to help. Then he saw the story it would make if he were personally involved in Leonard’s capture and he forgot Jim and turned to scramble across the river, dragging Heyward with him. Jim watched them go, then turned in the other direction and started running.

Leonard Hansen knelt down beside the rusted water pump, which sat on a raised brick platform, and worked the iron handle up and down for several seconds. Water coughed in the lines and finally shot out of the spout. Leonard cupped his hands and drank deeply, still kneeling, his rifle butt resting against his thigh, the barrel cradled in the crook of his right arm. He pumped the handle again and leaned his head under the spout, allowing the water to run down his cheeks and across the back of his neck. Slowly he wiped his face on his shirt sleeve and sat back on his haunches, his right hand nervously gripping his weapon.

He never heard the approach, just the voice. “Don’t move, Leonard. Not an inch.”

Leonard froze, his hand tightening on his rifle. The voice was behind him. Leonard turned his head slightly; in his peripheral vision he saw a figure in the shadows. A gun, perhaps a rifle, was pointed at his back.

“I said, don’t move!”

Leonard sat perfectly still but eased his hand toward the safety on his rifle.

“Pick up your rifle and toss it to your right.”

Leonard waited but didn’t move.

“Throw your rifle to the side. Now.”

Leonard stood, his back still turned. “I’m lifting it up,” he said, holding the gun out from his body. “I’m going to toss it over toward that tombstone.” Slowly he angled in the direction of a nearby grave. “Here goes.” He flung his right arm wide but didn’t let go of his weapon; instead, he slowly pivoted to face the gun still aimed at his chest.

“Throw it down, Leonard. Or I’ll fire. I swear I will.”

Leonard stared but didn’t raise his rifle. “No you won’t.” He smiled but the hand holding his downturned firearm trembled slightly. “If you had the guts, you’d ’a already done it.”

They stood for a moment in complete silence. Then, “You bastard. You killed all of them, Sarah and Brockhurst and Harriet. They knew what kind of man you really are—and it cost them their lives.”

“Got it all figured out, have you?”

“Not just me, everybody knows. About the money your father wouldn’t leave his own son, how Sarah told him about the rape years ago. Everybody’ll be here in a minute. They’re going to lock you up for the rest of your life.”

Leonard glanced toward the ruins of the Sheldon Church. Behind the building was another way out of the grounds. He stared at his accuser. “I shoulda took care of you a long time ago,” he growled.

“Drop your rifle, Leonard. I mean it.”

Leonard smiled. “No you don’t. You don’t have it in you. Takes guts you ain’t got.”

“But you do, of course. You’re brave enough to rape teenage girls and kill frail old ladies.”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Drop your rifle.”

Leonard stepped forward and breathed, “Except for the damn noise, I’d shoot you through the head right now.” He brushed past and started walking up the path toward the church.

“Stop right there!”

Leonard kept walking. He heard footsteps behind him but he didn’t stop. When he got to the church, he paused for a second and turned around. “I will take care of you now if I have to. Beats the shit outta crawling around old houses that stink of catpiss, or carving up goats for stupid fools who’ll believe any—”

The sharp sound lasted only a second, then he felt it.

All the searchers were now near the church. They all heard it clearly. The shot so loud it was handed off by the trees one by one until everyone covered their ears. Not one shot, not two, but three. Then a silence as thick as dirt.

Buck Henry careened out of the swamps with his two deputies and grabbed the map sticking out of his back pocket. The three men ran east through the woods and then found a paved road. They followed the road for half a mile; then the sheriff noticed a six-foot-high rusted wire fence on their right. “That’s it.”

The men sprinted alongside the fence until they reached the open gate and the stone steps leading into the enclosure. Abruptly they all halted. In the distance moonlight outlined the ruins of an old brick church, a ghoulish shell minus its roof and windows, crumbling red brick walls missing a corner here and there, twenty-foot arched holes missing their stained glass, and four mammoth columns out front that were now detached from the rest of the structure. The building was surrounded by live oaks, and a thick mist that was indistinguishable from the ghostlike strands of Spanish moss lay upon the churchyard like a mantle.

They started toward the church. On their left was an old-fashioned water pump, its greenish-iron handle still up, water dripping from the spout. Someone had recently taken a drink. Buck Henry stared at the pump; then he saw a single tombstone, leaning and illegible, to one side of it. Then he saw another. The church had no formal graveyard; its grounds were so expansive that the dead had been buried randomly, in isolated pockets of the yard that suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

“Buck, somebody’s down there. At the church.”

The sheriff stared down the worn dirt path. The mist was so clouded it was hard to see the structure, just those decapitated columns sticking out of the treetops. But then he saw the people too. He relaxed, slowed down. Many of the men were already here. They were all very still, so Leonard Hansen either wasn’t here or had got away. But the shots. Who fired them? And why was everyone just standing around?

As Buck Henry and the two deputies walked forward, the mist rose from the ground, the cold nightbreeze meeting the hot earth, and it curled around the live oaks that lined the pathway to the church, wove in and out among the long tendrils of gray moss, some of which hung almost to the ground. The inside of the church was a grassy mall with one cement catafalque grave commemorating the founder of the church. Beyond the building, to its right, three other rectangular tombs stood in a circle like friends meeting on a streetcorner. One of the catafalques was damaged; several pieces of the top slab had fallen inside, leaving a gaping hole the size of a shoebox in the top of the tomb.

It was around this tomb that everyone had gathered. Buck Henry saw the Essex police chief and the town council president and that fellow who ran the newspaper. He saw Ricky Gibson, who had once worked on his car, and he saw the doctor and Stoney McFarland and that schoolteacher (a woman had no business out here at night). He saw some of his own men but the guys with the dogs hadn’t arrived yet; he saw one or two farmers whose names he could never place. All of these men were standing very still and they were all staring at the broken catafalque.

Then Buck Henry saw why.

Everyone looked up when they heard the sheriff approach. Now they stared at him. Quickly Buck Henry dropped to his knees beside the catafalque. And leaned over a body.

The sheriff stared at Leonard Hansen. The man’s eyes were open and there were two bullet holes in the right side of his skull. There was no need to put a finger to the pulse in his neck. Buck Henry stood up heavily. Then he squatted back down again and picked up the assault rifle that lay beside the dead man. It was cold.

The sheriff motioned to Jim Leland. The police chief stepped forward and the sheriff asked, “Who shot him?”

Jim Leland stared down at Leonard. “I’m not sure.”

“Well, the man’s rifle hasn’t been fired. We have to know what happened.”

Jim stared down at Leonard’s body again. Something glinted up at him in the moonlight. “What’s that?” He reached down and held up Leonard’s limp left hand. On it was a small diamond ring which was obviously too small; it was stuck on the knuckle of Leonard’s left pinky finger. Jim leaned back up; he had never seen Leonard wear a ring before. He walked over to Marian and said something and the two of them approached Leonard’s body again.

Marian stared down at the dead man. Jim held up Leonard’s hand and she stared at it. Then she gasped, her hands covering her mouth. “Harriet’s ring.” She dropped down beside Leonard’s body and hit the dead man’s chest over and over again. “Why did you have to kill her? Goddamn you, why?”

Jim dragged Marian away and walked her back over to where Stoney was standing. He and Stoney stared at each other for a moment. “I guess you were right all along.”

Stoney didn’t say a word, he just stared at Leonard’s body.

Jim crossed back to Buck Henry. The sheriff said, “We have to find out who shot him so we can file a report. Likely as not, it was a case of self-defense. But we have to answer for his death.”

Jim nodded but he didn’t say anything.

Buck Henry turned and faced everyone. “I have to know who shot Hansen.”

No one said a word.

“You know we can’t just leave it this way. His gun wasn’t fired so we have to explain what happened. I want whoever shot this man to raise his hand now.”

No one did.

“I know you probably didn’t mean to kill him—just to stop him. There’s nothing to worry about. But you’ve got to speak up.”

Almost imperceptibly men moved away from each other, just inches, fractions of inches, just enough space to cast sidelong looks at each other without anyone noticing, and they wondered what would happen to them if no one owned up to the shooting.

The khaki-clad sheriff sighed and shook his head. He walked back and forth in front of Leonard’s body, stopped once in a while to say something to one of his deputies. Then he addressed the other men again. “You know there are ways of finding out, ways of identifying that bullet. Ways of finding out who was carrying the rifle with the right bore. But it seems a damn shame to waste all that effort—look what this man has already cost us—when it could all be cleared up right now if one of you would just speak up and tell me what happened.”

Silence. More imperceptible movement. Now the distance between those who stood in the churchyard was large enough that shadows could get inside it. The people stood scattered like the tombstones, isolated from each other. And they did not answer.

Buck Henry finally sent one of his men back to radio for the coroner. The deputy moved past the others and was soon swallowed by the mist. Then the Ashton sheriff spoke directly to Jim, “You got any ideas?”

Jim shook his head.

The bigger man gazed down at Leonard Hansen’s body, then finally looked up at the assemblage. “I’m going to ask y’all one more time. Who shot this man?”

Silence.

“Goddamnit. Now who did this?”

After waiting for a response and getting none, Buck Henry turned around again and sighed. When he angled back toward the group, he said, more quietly, “It’s not that I blame you. You saw his gun and panicked, maybe that’s how it happened. It was self-defense, you were apprehending a known and armed killer. It’s simple,” he finished, almost pleading now. “Please. Just tell me that.”

“It’s never simple,” someone said.

“Who said that?”

The sheriff searched each face and saw that he was not going to get an answer.

Before dawn broke, Buck Henry personally felt each firearm to see if any were warm, but it was too late to tell which had been fired now. Leonard Hansen’s body was removed, the group still standing around watching. Then, finally, everyone left. But they did not go out of the church as they’d come inside its gates, nor as they’d first entered the swamps two days before. They walked singly now, not in groups, not slapping each other, not even talking. Even those who would ride back to Essex together walked alone now. They would get in the same car and ride back through the murky morning but they would not ride together. They would look at each other furtively and they would wonder. But only one of them would know. And so they would ride side by side but singly. And they would speak again but they would not talk.

Stoney dropped Marian off at her house and then drove on to Bill’s to pick up Anna. Diane Jenkins had already taken Anna home, she said, staring at Stoney at her front door. “Stoney, what happened out there?”

“Bill didn’t tell you?”

“He said somebody shot Leonard dead. That’s not what I mean. Bill is—I don’t know, distant, different. He’s asleep now.”

Stoney gave Diane Jenkins no answer. He just drove on home in the early morning light. He was so tired he left the Rover in front of the house and climbed the steep stone steps to the front porch. Then he saw it. At his own front door. Her. He was beside her bed, he was looking down … oh God there was so much blood, Jesus blood everywhere, on the headboard, on the sheets, on the cotton blanket, on her neck, her face, the floor, drops of red trailing across the rug like footprints, it was all over the room, and she was bleeding, cuts on her face, her neck, her eyes were open but Christ she didn’t see and there were torn seams in the skin along her neck and God in heaven she was dead and cut and there was this smell this smell and she was so full of blood and there was this—

Stoney grabbed his front storm door and shook it violently, holding on, trying to make the image go away. He closed his eyes. They flew back open. That was all he could see, whether his eyes were open or closed. The room. Sarah’s face. The woman of blood. God oh God he even stabbed her in the eye! I will not look at this, I won’t. He closed his eyes tight but there it was, Sarah’s face. He opened his eyes again and saw Sarah’s face on the surface of the front door. He snapped his eyes shut. Then he saw Monkey. He saw Harriet—and he beat on the door harder, almost tore it down.

When Anna found him, he looked at her in terror. Then he saw she had no blood on her. He allowed her to lead him inside, where she made him lie down on the sofa. She held his hand. He tried to talk but found he had no words, and so he just held on to her hand as she stroked the contours of his cheekbones until he fell asleep.

“Maybe we can’t trust the world anymore, Stoney,” she whispered to him once. “But I do trust you.”

He slept all day. When he woke up, he was uncertain what day it was, uncertain whether the darkness meant it really was night or not. Day and night didn’t seem to mean much anymore. He rose and went to take a shower and toweled his hair dry and shaved and then looked at himself in the mirror for a long time.

Anna was standing in the doorway when he walked back in the bedroom. He was naked except for the white towel tied around his waist and it reminded her, suddenly, of Maum Chrish’s white scarves. It made her want to cry, that white cloth. As did the strong stomach muscles running up the sides of his chest like ladders. Her eyes mirrored the ache he had seen in his own in the bathroom and for a few minutes they just gazed at each other, taking their time, knowing exactly what that ache meant.

Slowly she unbuttoned her blouse, but they didn’t speak. He watched as she peeled her clothes away and stood in front of him. He reached over and took her hand and kissed it and they talked with the pressure of their fingertips. Their touch was sometimes sad but never tentative. Then they were together almost at once, without speaking. Their passion was hot, desperate, and demanding. Over and over again they brought each other up and they could hear the cicadas outside and smell the moist earth through the window. He felt immersed in an incredibly warm sea, a tide that caught and held him, lapped at the edges of his consciousness until he began falling rapidly, spiraling into a deep tunnel where there was no sense of danger, no explanations or circumlocutions, no blood, no fear of landing against a hard and implacable surface. As he plummeted, she soared. She ascended higher and higher into spacelessness, weightlessness, where there is no consciousness, only the sure and steady hand of sensation. That sensation was given air and light, allowed to breathe, and so it divided into a thousand different levels, a hundred dimensions. She could feel the difference between them even as she winged beyond and began to splinter into space, reveling in the loss of herself. As they moved in opposite directions, they drew together even as they drew apart.

And they had waited so long. She cried out over and over again, until sudden and intense tears erupted, so thankful was she for the simple complexity of pleasure. But the next tremor came and soon she was laughing and crying at the same time and he shouted then and took so long, went so deep, even he was laughing before it was over. The floorboards beneath the bed creaked and moaned, in the kitchen Silas howled, and Stoney and Anna laughed together until they cried again.