Apocalypse Burning (5 page)

“He was murdered,” Delroy said, and was surprised at how hollow his voice sounded in his ears.

Walter nodded. “They never caught the man who did it, did they?”

“No.”

“But they figured they knew who it was.”

Delroy remained quiet and still. His chest suddenly felt so tight he couldn’t breathe.

“Man named Clarence Floyd was the man Sheriff Dobbs thought killed your daddy,” Walter said.

“Where are you going with this, Deputy?”

“Walter. Call me Walter. I told you that.”

Delroy waited.

Walter sighed and shifted his equipment belt. “Ain’t no way but the hard way with you is there? Shoulda known that from all them knots on your face.”

“Now who’s being unbecoming?”

Frowning, Walter said, “I blame you. Yes, sir, I do. It’s like you bring out the worst in me.”

Delroy let the accusation hang between them. Anger stirred restlessly within him. He forced himself to breathe out.
Give me patience, Lord. This here’s a good man, and I’ve got no cause to make his life any more complicated than it already is.
Slowly, the anger fizzled out. He broke the eye contact with the deputy and reached for his fork.

“I’m sorry,” Walter said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“It’s all right. I’m pretty sure I had it coming.” Delroy broke open a biscuit, added butter and grape jelly, and ate.

“Biscuits still as good as you remember?” Walter asked.

“Melt in your mouth,” Delroy answered. For a time, they ate in silence.

Delroy watched the news and saw fitful bursts of information regarding the military effort in Sanliurfa. More interviews with Nicolae Carpathia, the Romanian president scheduled to speak at the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York City, spun across both televisions.

“Reason I asked you about Clarence Floyd,” Walter said.

Delroy looked at him.

“Three years ago,” Walter said, eyes level and steady, “Floyd moved back to Marbury. He lives here now.”

The news slammed into Delroy.

“You didn’t know that, did you?” Walter asked.

Delroy didn’t try to lie. He knew his angry disbelief had been too strong. “No.”

“I didn’t think you did. But if you’re gonna stay here a couple days, chances are you’d probably find out once folks in town figure out who you are.”

Delroy sat quiet and still. His father’s murder had happened over thirty years ago, but the grief and anger over the act had never truly dimmed. If he hadn’t been so worn out emotionally from last night, he didn’t know what he might have done.

“Why did he come back?” Delroy asked when he could talk again.

Walter studied him, then scooped up more jelly and scrambled eggs to spread on a biscuit. “He just come home. Like you, I suppose. Wasn’t nowhere else to go, maybe. His life, it ain’t been like yours. He doesn’t have no navy career, no calling to keep him busy. He’s just a mean seventy-three-year-old man who’s afraid of dying.”

“You’ve seen him?”

“Not today,” Walter said. “But I have. I take a look through Sheriff Dobbs’ cold-case files from time to time. When Floyd moved back into his folks’ home, I looked him up.” He ate the biscuit. “Wasn’t nothing ever brought up against him regarding your daddy’s murder.”

“His father paid off the judge.”

Walter shrugged. “That wasn’t ever proved either.”

“That’s what happened.”

“That may be. I can’t say. But one thing I gotta tell you, Chaplain Harte. As long as you’re around here, I don’t want you seeing Clarence Floyd. Now normally, the city, why that’s the police chief’s concern. But what with everything going on that’s been going on, the sheriff’s department and the police department are working on a share-and-share-alike basis. We help each other out because we know most of the same folks around here. I brought you into town, and I decided to release you on your own recognizance. That makes me somewhat responsible for you.”

Delroy sat back for a moment. “This breakfast isn’t turning out the way I thought it was going to.”

“No, sir.” Walter nodded. “I expect not. Usually these eggs settle on my stomach better’n they are right now. From what I see of you, you’re a good man. Just a little lost right now. In my experience, that’s when men make bad decisions that can haunt them the rest of their lives. I ain’t here to save Floyd’s neck so much as I am to save yours.”

Delroy didn’t speak, didn’t really know what he would have said if he had been so inclined.

“You can believe that or not,” Walter said. “But something you can take to the bank is this: If you go out of your way to cause problems for Floyd, I’ll lock you up so fast it will make your head spin.”

“All right,” Delroy said.

“Another thing,” Walter went on. “I made some phone calls while I was out and about waiting to get the doc’s report on you. As it turns out, your wife Glenda is still in town.”

Surprise pushed Delroy’s outrage and pain aside. “Glenda is here? She didn’t … leave with the others?”

“No, sir. She didn’t leave. She’s here.”

The world grew silent and still and as cold as a January morning. Delroy couldn’t breathe for a moment. Then he heard the blood roar in his ears as his heart chugged through another beat.

“Does she …” Delroy’s voice failed him.

“Know that you’re here?” Walter shook his head. “Not that I know of. I ain’t one to go around jacking my jaws about everything. The doctors and nurses at the hospital ain’t connected you with Glenda. As a matter of fact, I doubt they even know her.”

“You said the floor nurse knew my name.”

“Yes, sir. She did. But she don’t know Glenda. She knew stories about your daddy. I also asked her to keep things quiet. She will.”

“Thank you for that. I don’t know how Glenda would react to knowing I was in town.”

“You wasn’t planning on stopping in and seeing her?”

“No,” Delroy admitted, and he felt guilty at once. “All my plans ended at the graveyard.”

“You thinking about stopping in and seeing her now?”

“No.” Delroy’s answer was immediate.

“You two divorced? ‘Cause that’s not the way I heard it was.”

“Not divorced. At least, not that I know of.”

“She’s still carrying your name.”

Delroy knew that was how Glenda was. She’d married him all those years ago, and she’d told him she’d wear his name for the rest of her life.

“You mind me asking what it is that’s come between you two?” Walter asked.

“I do mind.”

“Too bad. I’m asking anyway. Things I’ve heard about Glenda Harte are all good. I wouldn’t stand for hearing that any harm’s come to that woman because I made a mistake about somebody else.”

Delroy thought about getting up and walking out of the café. His eyes darted to the door.

“Leaving wouldn’t do you any good,” Walter continued in a level voice. “I brought you to breakfast because I thought we might talk things out like men.”

“What’s gone on or is going on between my … wife and me is none of your business.”

Walter sighed and rubbed his face. “Chaplain Harte, you’re carrying around more grief and anger and confusion than any man I’ve ever met in my life. Or at the very least, any man I’ve met in a good many years. And in my line of business I’ve met no few men like that. So I consider myself a pretty good judge of another man’s disposition. Maybe that’s conceit on my part, but I’ve paid my dues for that one. Now, we’re gonna get straight with each other this morning, or I’m gonna bust you and take you in to get some psychiatric help. I ain’t gonna have no loose cannon roaming around this county I swore to protect and defend.”

“I’m not here to hurt anyone.”

Walter held up a hand. “Ain’t nothing wrong with my hearing. I look like a man gone hard of hearing?”

Delroy said, “No.”

“My wife’s the only one accuses me of that, and that’s ‘cause I don’t jump up ever’ time she wants me to do something on her honey-do list. But I’m good at law enforcement. I get so I ain’t, I’ll lay it down immediately.” Walter blew on his coffee and sipped it. “Now if I lock you up, it ain’t but one short phone call to the navy. Bet if I told whoever was at the other end of that line that one of their officers was down here acting squirrelly, you’d be back wherever it is you belong in a New York minute.” He brushed biscuit crumbs and gravy from his mustache with his napkin. “Are you reading me now, Chaplain?”

“Aye,” Delroy responded. “Loud and clear.”

“Good. That’s real good. ‘Cause that’s the last thing I want to do. I don’t think that’s what will get things done for you here.” Walter leaned back a little.

“My son’s death separated my wife and me,” Delroy said.

“I heard your son passed during military action.”

Delroy nodded, having to force himself to move.

“Your wife couldn’t get over it?” Walter asked. “I’ve seen people like that. People that couldn’t make peace with a loss. Took me a long time to meet eye to eye with God over the loss of my own boy. I still don’t think it was right, and maybe I stepped away from Him some. I faulted Him a lot for a long time. Maybe that’s part of why I’m still here.”

Shame burned Delroy’s features. It was hard to admit everything, but at least he felt that he and Deputy Walter Purcell shared something in common.

“It wasn’t my wife that couldn’t get past it,” Delroy said in a low, soft voice. He thought of Terrence lying in that muddy grave, the ground above him all torn up where Delroy had tried to dig down to him. “It was me. I couldn’t get past the death of my son.”

Walter stared at Delroy for a long time. Then the big man leaned forward and put a hand on Delroy’s shoulder. “It’s a powerful hard thing to get past. And it’s mighty confusing because you just don’t feel right about moving on through it.”

“I know. I’ve given a lot of people that speech over the years.” Delroy felt cold and empty inside. “Glenda faltered. I saw her. And I tried to comfort her. That gave me something to do, gave me the chance to turn away from my own pain and anger.” He stopped, lost in the memory and unable to go on.

“Then she started to come around,” Walter said quietly. “She started healing.”

“Aye.”

“And you resented her for it.”

Delroy tried to speak but couldn’t.

“It’s an easy thing to do, Chaplain,” Walter said.

“Not for me,” Delroy said fiercely. “Never once did I ever think I would resent Glenda for anything. I took a vow before God to cherish her always. I didn’t.” His voice broke, betraying the strong emotion that vibrated inside him. “I was supposed to be stronger than that. My father raised me up to be stronger than that.”

“Your daddy,” Walter stated gently, “wasn’t there. And it wasn’t him asked to give up a son, Delroy. It was you. You were entitled to your grief. Still are. I ain’t finding no fault with that.”

Delroy brushed tears from his eyes before they could fall; then he willed them to stop. “Not five years of grief.” He kept his voice flat and neutral. “I’m being selfish. I just—I just don’t know how to stop. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

“You’re human. Ain’t nothing wrong with being human. Just hard wearin’ from time to time.” Walter shifted. “I seen men what didn’t care about nothin’. Seen ‘em on battlefields and I seen ‘em in law enforcement. Some of them men even wore badges now and again, and that was real hard to witness and not do nothing.”

“I’m a navy chaplain,” Delroy said. “A preacher’s son. My father taught me my faith.”

Walter was quiet for a time. “One thing I learned through losing my own son: God’s grace is never known to you till after the fact. Sometimes, I suppose, it ain’t gonna be known till you’re in the hereafter. I still struggle with my own belief, but I believe God is there. Just haven’t figured out my own relationship with Him. I guess that’s why I’m still here. I look around this town, Reverend, and I see a lot of good folks stuck in much the same boat.”

“Pretty good Christians.” Captain Mark Falkirk’s final words aboard
Wasp’
s flight deck echoed in Delroy’s mind:
“The most dangerous man on this planet is the person who believes he is a pretty good Christian.”

“That’s as good a term for it as any other,” Walter said. “Good people that, for whatever reason, just didn’t make the final cut. Now, I believe the world was raptured. I’m sure you do too. So that means we got a limited time to make a difference. Not just in our lives, but in the lives of others. Me, I’m a man what’s always stood on the right of things. Straight and narrow. That’s how I’ve lived ‘er. When I could. And I could most of the time.”

Delroy met the other man’s gaze with difficulty.

“Now, I usually ain’t one to go around taking chances,” Walter continued. “Before all this happened, before I started opening up my Bible and reading Revelation, why if I’d come across you in that graveyard, found out the man who murdered your daddy and your ex-wife was living in this town, I’d have had you locked up for observation in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Just to keep the peace.”

“I would never hurt Glenda,” Delroy said. “I give you my word on that.”