Between the Bridge and the River (19 page)

Joshua was horrified. He took his sword from its scabbard as Hughes turned to look at him. Far from being afraid, Hughes thought his captain had come to join the fun. He offered the boy to Joshua. Disgusted and repelled beyond reason, Joshua severed Hughes’s head from his body in a single forceful sweep of his weapon.

He had buried the Arab boy and left Hughes’s body for the vultures.

He thought of Hughes again.

The one who had killed the young girl would have to be one of the thankfully rare creatures like Hughes.

As the sun rose over the small town, news reached the jailhouse that another murder, exactly like the one before, had occurred. Joshua, although saddened by the murder, was relieved for Bonita. Surely now the authorities would set the old woman free.

But he was wrong.

The mob formed again outside the jail, demanding the burning of Bonita, claiming she must have taken the form of some kind of animal, a
familiar,
and crept out of her cell during the night to commit the crime.

The priest arrived and quieted the mob by promising them a burning but saying that she had to be tortured first, lest they leave any of her accomplices undiscovered. With this he gave a pointed look to Joshua, who was relieved to have sat the entire night through in full view of the prison guards.

Joshua was immediately arrested and brought before the priest in his private chambers. The priest had the guards wait outside. As soon as they were alone Joshua protested.

“You cannot believe that Bonita is the killer here, not after last night. I was here all night. Nothing came or went from her cell.”

The priest nodded. “God is perfect, but sometimes his sheep are too enthusiastic in his service,” he said, gesturing to the mob outside the window. “I believe you are a good man and a God-fearing one, also I respect your position as a Crusader. Therefore I will be candid with you. If you continue to protest the innocence of the witch, the towns-people will see you as her accomplice and demand your hide too. I suggest you leave forthwith.”

Joshua stood his ground. “She is no witch, she is a harmless and kind old woman.”

“I do not think Bonita is the killer, but unless we have someone in her place that the mob believes is guilty, then I am afraid the church must do what any tired mother does to quiet her unruly children.”

“What’s that?” asked Joshua.

The priest sighed. “Give them what they want.”

Joshua was about to protest again but the priest silenced him by raising his finger. “I will give you one day. Find the monster, or I will burn the old mother.”

The priest was a clergyman but he was not an idiot. He knew that the devil was not abroad at night in the form of a cat or a wolf or any other animal. He lives eternally in the hearts of men.

So Joshua left the priest, and with not a thought to his personal safety, stayed in the small town and set out to find the killer although he did not know where to begin.

How do you catch such an animal?

He went to the sites of the murders. They had both been committed within a stone’s throw from the town cess pit, a place that was understandably avoided by most of the populace. The girls had been killed by being sliced cleanly across the throat; their bodies had been cut in half at the waist.

Joshua thought of Hughes. How would he have tried to hide himself in civilian life, how could he?

He was a butcher.

A butcher?

The town butcher, as Joshua found out, was in his seventies and had six daughters of his own. He seemed an unlikely candidate. Joshua sat outside the butcher shop and looked around the street in the hope of an idea.

A butcher shop, a barbershop, two taverns, an apothecary, and a church. Not much of a town. You could get a drink and a haircut and some lotion for your boils before going to pray that you wouldn’t get too drunk.

Actually it was better than it used to be. The barbershop was new, the barber arriving from the south only a few months earlier and setting up shop.

A barbershop?

In the Middle Ages barbers performed surgery and dentistry in their establishments.

They were knivesmen. Anything with a blade.

Joshua solved the crime. He exposed the local barber as the ruthless sex killer by luring him into a trap, watched by the priest and some townsfolk. Joshua paid a young homeless girl to enter the store and flirt with the barber, arranging to meet him later for a sexual encounter.

She was bait.

The barber, like most serial killers, was a moron and didn’t realize he was being set up. He was caught en flagrante just as he was about to slaughter the girl.

Joshua watched the mob fall on the barber, watched them pull him apart with their bare hands. Even after his experiences in battle, after all that he had seen, he never ceased to be repulsed by how savage people could be.

He gently guided the killer’s intended victim away, sparing her even the sight of vengeance. He would never allow any young girl to be harmed again if he could help it.

The grateful town allowed Bonita to leave jail and she returned to the forest with Joshua. The townsfolk were glad to not have to look at her too often. After all, she might not be a killer but there was no denying she was hideous. They had no idea how Joshua could stand to be in her company, how he could look at her day after day.

What they didn’t know was that Joshua had seen real ugliness and that Bonita was no match for that.

What they also didn’t know was that every night, after the excellent meal she cooked for him, she took the form of a sultry raven-haired young girl and made enthusiastic and perfect love to him, then held him tenderly until he fell asleep, exhausted and blissful.

Then she took the form of a cat and slept by the fire.

“I DON’T GET IT,”
said Fraser. “If she was a witch, why didn’t she just escape from the prison or even just escape when they came looking for her?”

“She wanted to see what Joshua would do for her.”

“Bloody women,” said Fraser. “They’ve always got an agenda.”

“You liked it? The story?” asked V.

“Yeah, it was okay,” said Fraser, not wanting to sound too enthusiastic, but the truth is he had been riveted, and had even cried a little at the end although he thought he’d managed to hide that from the poet. He hadn’t.

“Is it a true story?” he asked.

“Partly.”

“Which parts?”

“The true parts.” V smiled.

“Oh, I’m tired of this rubbish!” snapped Fraser, but the truth was he had been so engrossed in the story that he hadn’t noticed the landscape had changed a little as he had walked. Grass, it seemed, now grew here and there underfoot, some life appearing, and it seemed to Fraser that in the distance, a small hill rose up to obscure the horizon. He turned to mention this to V and noticed that the poet himself had changed. He looked to have gotten taller and thinner and younger.

“What?” asked Virgil when he noticed Fraser was staring at him. His voice was now deeper and more impressive.

“Things are changing,” said Fraser. “You look different, the lay of the land looks different. What’s going on?”

“Ah.” Virgil smiled. “You just heard a story, you are being affected by it. Nothing has changed. I am the same, the lay of the land is the same.”

“But it all looks different,” protested Fraser.

“That’s because the story, like all stories, has altered you slightly. Everything will look a little different.”

And it did.

Fraser’s perspective was indeed changing.

They walked on, the sinner and the poet, to the crest of the small hill. They reached the top and looked over.

It seemed they had been on a plateau, for down below, laid out like a painting, was the most beautiful valley Fraser had ever seen. A large clear blue lake sat on the valley floor, and on the shore, a tower.

From this distance Fraser couldn’t be sure but it looked a little like a place he had seen in photographs. In a biography he had read. It looked like Bollingen.

Carl Jung’s home.

PALM SPRINGS IS A VULGAR LITTLE BURG
, as a town that exists solely for its climate must be. There is some local tourist propaganda that claims there are restorative warm mineral springs in the area but none of the residents pay any attention to that rubbish. Anyway, very few rich seniors want to sit in smelly boiling water, they just like this town because it’s hot.

It’s hot, very hot, and it keeps the thin blood of the diseased and the elderly at a bearable temperature as they drive little electric buggies around manufactured lawns created by stolen lakes in search of little white golf balls and wait to die. Many think that the icy stillness of death cannot reach them in the desert, so they retire there to escape. But there is no escape, just as there is no party in Clouston Street.

Death will find them, it just takes a little longer, so they get to spend more time with their precious white balls.

Because the town attracts the weak and infirm, it also attracts the evil and avaricious—after all, if you have a fair-sized hamlet of elderly sheep, you can bet that word will get around the vulture community. So jailbirds perch outside the town in a dusty fence-post dump called Desert Hot Springs (where, strangely, there actually are
restorative mineral springs although most are surrounded by trashy motels) and wait for opportunity.

However, the frail and weak are not stupid and poor, like those who would prey on them, so they hire security, and lots of it. Armed security, thugs who sweat uncomfortably in cheap nylon uniforms, give the stink-eye to anyone under seventy who is not another security guard or a cop.

And the old folks arm themselves too, with giant shiny revolvers, which look big and clean and young in their reptilian, liver-spotted hands.

And everybody waits for trouble. Waiting for death and robbery and crime and terror—
I like to be in America, La La La La America
. The atmosphere of the place is stifling, and the heat is the least of it.

A few psychics who have been there have guessed the awful truth of the place. It was never designed or meant to have humans live there, it is not an oasis or a strategic position. The land resents the presence of people.

It is not the worst case of this, of course. That distinction belongs to the town of Las Vegas, which is truly the capital city of the corrupted soul. In Las Vegas the land actually has a plan: It is waiting until the town reaches its maximum size, then the desert will swallow it and all the dirty, greedy cash-eating robots who live there and shit them into hell, where they belong.

Or perhaps that is Los Angeles.

Saul and Leon visited all three cities before they became holy and the first was Palm Springs.

They arrived in town in the cabin of the soft-furnishings truck that they had rode in from Florida. Leon loved the back of the truck, it reminded him of the old days back home with Mom. She had also wrapped the furniture in thick plastic to keep it from getting dirty. Saul hated it for the same reason but it did give him a chance to reflect on their recent adventures.

Saul knew that what he had seen in religion was going to be very important in his life. He had seen that some people were so desperate to believe in anything that the slightest piece of sorcery and/or show
business would have them thrusting any cash they had on you, and they would be full of gratitude and love for you being gracious enough to accept it.

Once he knew this it was only a matter of time before he got into religion, especially armed with the singular talents of his brother.

And lo it was the Holy United Church of America was conceived in the back of a big rig on a freeway heading toward the Pacific.

Leon’s thoughts were less profound. He was embarrassed about getting caught having sex with the minister’s wife, but Saul, a born talent agent, put him at his ease.

“It’s who you are, buddy. Women find you irresistible, it’s not your fault. It’s just something we’re going to have to look out for in the future.”

“I’m so sorry, bro,” said Leon.

“C’mon, Leon. That gal was desperate for you from day one. I watched her the first time we were in church. If her husband hadn’t a been actually preaching that day, her snatch would have leapt out of her panties and gobbled up your sausage like a hungry cougar, right there in front of the congregation.”

Leon laughed, then so did Saul.

Always laugh second.

They had built a little den for themselves out of sofas and easy chairs, and snuck out to get snacks when the driver took his breaks. It was too uncomfortable to wait for the driver to stop when they needed to pee—he seemed to have a bladder the size of an oil tanker—so Saul took a couple of quart-sized empty oil containers from the Dumpster at a truck stop and the boys used them to piss in; they were perfect because the oil covered the smell of wee and the containers had airtight sealing caps. Taking a dump was a rare luxury, never in the back of the truck, they had to wait until they had stopped somewhere and then they had to make sure the driver was sitting down eating.

Saul nearly got left behind. He was in the bathroom when the driver unexpectedly got up and left a diner just outside of Houston. Leon had been watching the driver from the parking lot but he hadn’t seen him pay the bill. As the driver headed to the truck, Leon stopped him.

He couldn’t think of anything to say, so in desperation he asked, “Excuse me, sir, do you believe in Jesus?”

The driver, a short blond middle-aged man with pale skin and alarmingly large dark brown freckles that made him look a little like a ghostly leopard, eyed Leon with the wary look of a seasoned traveler.

“Yeah,” said the driver.

“That’s great,” said Leon, floundering, “’cause . . . er . . . he believes in you.”

“What do you want, kid?” asked the driver in an accent Leon could not recognize.

Over the driver’s shoulder, Leon saw Saul emerge from the bathroom. Saul saw Leon talking with the driver and he knew they were in trouble. He immediately ran to his brother’s side.