CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jack Everett
Rusty brushed the funk from his tongue, smiling the whole time. He thought only of Robyn, of her smile and the way she smelled. Her scent was all over him and it made the rest of the world fuzzy and insignificant. She had gotten up at 8:00 am to run some errands before work and left him less than twenty minutes prior. Before she left, she climbed in bed, freshly showered and nude and pressed her warm body against his. She kissed him deeply, groped his crotch which was already at attention and ready to either fuck or drain eight hours worth of used beer, and told him simply, “Thanks. Let’s do that again soon.”
“Sure,” he had said. He had a goofy look on his face. Part of that look was a grin and part was the idiot face a kid makes in class when the teacher puts them on the spot and they weren’t paying attention to the question. Idiot face or not, he didn’t want her to leave.
He showered and dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, then he sat outside on the hood of The Bat and smoked a cigarette. Rusty was, in a word, satisfied. He had nothing on his mind, nothing that is, but finding a cup of strong coffee and maybe a doughnut. It was cooler out than it had been, still summer, but upper 70’s instead of upper 80’s.
“I’m going for a walk,” he told the world. The world responded with a nice breeze. A breeze that stunk of evil and seawater, but Rusty didn’t notice the evil. He had grown used to the smell. The underlying thing that had bothered him for a couple days had been assimilated into life, into routine. It had become okay.
He slid from the hood of his car and walked across Bay to Howe seeking the little pastry shop he’d passed when Travis dropped him off in the tow truck.
The pastry shop was called Rosalie’s and it smelled heavenly. Once he was inside, the scent was even better. Coffee and doughnuts and fruit toppings and cinnamon. The woman behind the counter was portly and might have been from New Jersey or New York. Bronx, maybe.
“Mornin’ toots,” she said, followed by, “Cannigetcha?”
He smiled and looked at the display case of calorie-infused goodness. All good things to dunk in rich, black coffee. Dunking in anything else would’ve been a crime.
“What do you suggest?” he said.
“Look at me, do I look like I ever passed up a doughnut?”
Rusty laughed and the woman grinned with lipstick-stained teeth. It should’ve been creepy, but it only made him giggle more. While he was still looking, she leaned up on the counter as another customer came in. She was an older lady with a new perm in her gray hair. She smiled warmly and stepped up to the counter, ready to order.
“The bear claws just came out of the oven. They’re still warm. That’s where my money would go,” she said.
“Done,” Rusty said. “And a large coffee, your dark roast. Black.”
“Perfect. Just a sec. Be with you in a minute, toots,” she said to the older woman who nodded with the same warm smile.
Two minutes later, he was outside walking and trying to sip the piping hot coffee. Four minutes later, the bear claw was gone. Seven minutes later, he had turned down Nash Street and as the coffee finally got to a temperature where he could stand to drink it without burning his mouth, he saw the Methodist church. It was a white church, small with a plank wood exterior. Quaint—the type of church you saw in paintings or on five hundred piece puzzles—exactly the type of church you pictured in that little kid finger game. Here’s the church and here’s the steeple. Open the door and there are the people! Then, if you were a toddler, you would laugh.
Rusty didn’t much go to church as a youth unless his parents made him. Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings, funerals and the oh, so rare Sunday morning. He remembered the inside was lined with plank boards all the way up to the ceiling. The stain was dark, the finish old, the work of a craftsman. It was beautiful work, really. The pulpit was lined with red carpeting and the rail in front of the choir stand always had flowers on it. He wondered if it was the same and knew inside it was.
A man was outside tending to a small garden in between the community center and the church itself. The two buildings were attached with a breezeway just behind the garden area. Jack Everett was a thin man with his blondish hair slicked to one side like a letterman from the 1950’s. He was clean shaven with a long pointed nose and sunken, Bassett hound eyes. He smiled and waved as Rusty approached, and at once the two men recognized each other.
You killed my sister, you bastard.
Rusty wrestled with the thought for a moment. It was unfair. It was an accident, not even Jack’s fault. No one’s fault really. The tire had blown out on the road and sent the car into a tree. Hell, you couldn’t spit and miss a pine tree in Smithville. Tires blew out all the time, especially on the old beat up cars teenagers drove. He hadn’t meant to hurt Laura. He couldn’t have.
“Good morning,” Jack said. A kind voice, soft spoken and practiced. The kind of voice which gave people comfort.
“Jack?” Rusty said. “I mean, may I call you Jack? What is your title? I’m not much of a churchgoer.”
“Jack is fine. Pastor or reverend if you prefer, but Jack is fine. I suppose with what we share, we’ll always be on a first name basis.”
Laura. He’s talking about Laura.
Rusty reached a hand out for Jack to shake and the minister obliged. He looked at the flowers, roses mainly, and then back at Jack. The man appeared much older than Rusty felt. There couldn’t have been more than a few years between them, but time hadn’t been a friend to Jack Everett.
“Yeah, I guess. I’m not sure what brought me down this way today. Coffee and a walk,” Rusty said. “My mother used to love coffee and a walk in the mornings.”
His mother had loved many things. She’d loved Laura and she’d loved Rusty, even after Laura was killed. There was never a moment when Rusty felt like his mother didn’t care for him on the deepest level where only mothers dwelled, or that she ever resented him for Laura’s death. There was no reason for her to do so, but often with the loss of one child, there is some suffering reserved the remaining children. His mother loved him, loved coffee and taking mind clearing walks. In fact she was on one of those walks when she died of a heart attack at fifty-one years of age. Rusty had been twenty-six years old and it had crushed him.
His father was not like his mother. He was a hard man with high expectations. Rusty knew his mother’s soft and loving ways were a perfect counterpoint to his father. He knew their relationship would be strained after her death and it was. His father had died six years later, a combination of lung cancer and stubbornness. When he passed, Rusty felt as if his ribcage had grown two sizes and suddenly he could breathe.
“I remember your mother. A wonderful lady,” Jack said.
“She was. So good to see you, Jack.”
“You as well.”
The two men stood in awkward silence for a moment. Rusty broke it.
“I’m just going to say this. I harbored a lot of bad feelings for you after Laura’s death…I want you to know I was a dumb kid back then. I said some things…”
“No apology necessary, Rusty. I hated myself at the time.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course. I was responsible for another person’s death. That’s a lot to deal with when you’re only seventeen. It required years of counseling and the good Lord to see me through it. I confess, I still pray for forgiveness to this day.”
“You don’t think you’re forgiven?”
“I do now. It’s still a terrible thing what happened, but I’ve come to accept it, though I will never get over it. I loved Laura. For as much as one teenager can love another, I loved her.”
“Wow. I never thought of it that way. I guess her death was your loss as much as it was mine or anyone else’s.”
Jack didn’t speak to that point, but he nodded.
“Is that how you came to be a minister?” Rusty said.
“Partially. After I started speaking with God on a regular basis, I found I rather en
joyed it. And I enjoyed the fellowship and other good things that came along with the church.”
The cool breeze moved from the ground up into the treetops and let the June humidity take hold. It made Rusty uncomfortable in an instant.
“Not much of a churchgoer myself,” Rusty said.
“As you’ve said. It’s your decision, Rusty. I’m not one to force my beliefs on others. Just know you’ll always be welcome here if you should need guidance or anything else my church has to offer.”
“Thank you, Jack. That’s kind.”
Jack fidgeted and the smile on his face faded.
“I shouldn’t keep you,” Rusty said. “Like I said, I’m not sure what brought me down this way. Maybe I just needed to see you.”
Jack made a grunting sound, an affirmative sound, but one with a sarcastic quality. Rusty finished the last sip of his coffee and crossed his arms. The air had grown humid again and the temperature had risen ten degrees. Cicadas screamed all around them.
The men were quiet for a minute as a hot breeze passed through. Rusty’s discomfort grew a little hairier. A powerful urge to run and never look back passed over him. He locked eyes with the minister and saw those sunken eyes had drawn back even further into their caverns. Jack’s face was gray like the crazy old man at NAPA—like his vision of Thomas Bledsoe—and sweat was dripping from his temples.
“You want the details, do you?” Jack said. His stare had taken on a manic quality.
“I’m sorry?” Rusty said.
“I understand. After all this time, you want to know what really happened there on the road when my tire blew out and your sister went on to be with God.”
There it is. The meanness. Everyone in Smithville is bi-polar or schizophrenic or something.
Jack’s voice had gone cold and instead of the calming tone a minister uses to reassure his flock, it was accusatory and yet vacant. He was a man telling a story of pain and of obstacles overcome to someone who he felt wasn’t worthy of hearing it. It was a heed my tale story without any good intentions. Jack cocked his head and stared at Rusty the way a cop eyeballs a lying criminal. He grinned and Rusty saw how chapped his lips were, cracked and bloody in places. His teeth were longer than the average person’s. Like an old time smoker where the gums had receded and yellowed at their roots. It was a skeletal, hateful face.
“I don’t want to hear any such…” Rusty started, but Jack had already begun.
“We’d just had sex. Crazy, circus sex, little brother. I was taking her home from school and detoured down the ferry road so I could fuck her. She liked that. Your sister was quite nasty in bed or anywhere else we could get away with it. She liked it to hurt, man. As hard and often as I could and she always wanted more. Sometimes I was sore for days afterward. I know she was sore. She always wanted it bareback, too. It’s a fucking miracle she wasn’t pregnant when she died. I was in her mouth or in her ass at least once a day back then. More on the weekends.” Then Jack winked.
Rusty swallowed a lump of dry nothing. His eyes were wide and so full of anger, but he couldn’t move and he couldn’t speak. He was fished in, mesmerized by the worm of Jack’s tongue, wiggling the bait so expertly in front of him. Jack dragged his tongue across his chapped bottom lip, then continued.
“Yeah, so she’d begged me for it that day and we were on the side of the road going at it when a cop pulled up and knocked on the roof of the car with the butt of his flashlight, or maybe it was a baton. I remember the windows were steamed up. So hot, she was so hot for me. I rolled mine down and do you know the cop told us to get on home? He told Laura she should have more respect for herself, but he took himself a big ol’ eyeful of her titties while she was scrambling to get her clothes back on. Once we were back in the front seat and driving away, she started giggling and couldn’t stop. She had her seatbelt off. By the time we turned off of the ferry road and headed back toward your house, she had my pants unzipped and was doing her best to finish me off. Laura was a filthy little whore. You know, come to think of it, I’m glad she’s dead.”
Rusty punched him then, a good hard right hook to the chin. It knocked the preacher backward and the man stumbled but straightened right back up, never slowing his story. His face didn’t register pain or even surprise. It just kept that same hollow look as he spoke on, blood trickling from his now busted, chapped lip.
“You’re the devil,” Rusty said. His words came out in a whisper and spittle flew from his teeth.
“Oh, that’s rich. I’m the devil, I’m thee devil. You think there’s just one, little bro?”
“Stop calling me that.”
Laura called me that. That and twerp. You have no right.
“There are so many devils, Rusty. So many I can’t count them all, but soon you will be able to count them. She is coming. They are all coming.”
Rusty stepped away from the preacher. Jack let bloody drool run from his lower lip.
“She had her mouth on my cock as we came around that curve. I was right on the edge of ecstasy when the tire blew. That’s funny, Rusty. First she blew. Then it blew. Get it?”
Rusty choked back tears that were equal parts sadness and fury. He turned and ran back down the street toward Rosalie’s and as he ran, he heard Jack Everett calling after him, “Get it?”
He sprinted down Howe to the corner, stumbling across Bay to the motel and didn’t stop until he had run into the door of his room. In his mind, he saw Laura’s smiling face, the only image he remembered about her. It was her sophomore class picture and it was the picture of an innocent kid. Not anything like he’d just heard described.
Laura wasn’t like that. Not at all like that.
Behind the image was the grey face of Jack Everett with his sunken eyes and chapped lips and long teeth. “Get it?” he said. Over and over. “Get it?”
Rusty burst through the door and closed it behind him. He locked it with the slide latch and ran to the sink to wash his face. The water felt cool and washed some of the horror away, but not all of it.
Things are just meaner.
Things were definitely not right. Chicago seemed like a great place to be all of a sudden. Anyplace else would be better, less crazy, and Robyn didn’t even cross his mind for more than an hour.