Salvage (33 page)

"I'm good, thanks." She smacked him on the butt as he moved down the hall ahead of her. "Don't flash the neighbors!"

"Aw. Party pooper."

He padded down the small, carpeted stairs and into the kitchen of the backsplit house. Jo and her family hadn't used their share of the money to haul their house up the hill. He'd noticed on their way in that the house was as old as the foundation, mid-'60s, most likely.

At the sink, he peered out the window at the sad lawn and the trees, making sure there were no neighbors to flash. Then he turned on the cold water, let it run for a moment, and dipped the glass Jo had drank from under the tap.

The faucet rumbled, loose parts in the plumbing. He turned off the water, and brought the glass to his lips.

"
OWEN!
"

A loud crash startled him. Cursing under his breath, he ran barefoot to the hall.

"
Help! Owen!
"

Owen's blood raced as he bounded up the steps, still carrying his water glass, and what he saw through the open bathroom door nearly made him stumble back down the steps. The far wall and bathroom window were warped and rippled as if he were looking through old glass. Just as it had done at the dam, the water had risen up, this time from the tub, this time holding Jo several feet above the floor in colossal, translucent fingers. A second shape like a human head formed a grin as it studied Jo's bloodless face, her eyes widened in terror, her mouth an agonized rictus. The hand made of water closed around her, crushing her alive. The face,
Crouch's
face, watched as she died.

"…
help
…"

Owen threw the glass. It splashed through Crouch at the throat, shattering against the far wall. Crouch whipped his massive, rippling head round to observe the interloper, and as his giant's face formed a scowl, a second hand emerged from the tub, as big as the first, which was still tightening its hold on Jo's midsection, cracking her ribs with a wet crunch. Jo's eyes met Owen's for the last time, and a look of peace washed over her. In the next moment, Crouch's other hand swatted angrily at the door.

The door struck him on the forehead, knocking him backward, and still it slammed shut. Fireworks exploded across his vision as he stumbled back toward the stairs. He grabbed the stair rail, stopping short of tumbling down backwards. Blood from the gash in his forehead fell on the carpet in a rapid stream of fat, heavy drips while he steadied himself. Dizzy, he staggered back to the bathroom door, shouting Jo's name. He jerked the handle, pounded his fists—thundering my fists upon the soil—against it, all to no avail. "Jo! Oh, please, don't let him kill her, please!" He threw himself against the door, once, twice, so hard his teeth rattled. He tasted blood from his tongue. Blood dripped down into his eyes. His vision went momentarily pink, and he blinked it away. On the third strike, the door cracked open, and he stumbled forward, slipping on the wet tiles.

Jo lay sprawled over the toilet. Blood streamed from her nose, her ears, her mouth. The bones in her chest and arms were so badly broken she had the look of a marionette with its strings cut.

Owen slipped again and staggered to her, a gurgle in the drain capturing his attention just long enough to see the water that had been a monstrous version of his father disappearing down the drain. The Reverend Everett Crouch had killed Jo Dunsmuir, the same girl he'd bounced on his knee when she'd been a child, and now that his work was done, he returned home, back to the lake.

Owen hurled curses at him, kicked at the tub, and fell down on his knees beside Jo. He saw right away she wasn't breathing, or if she was, it was so shallow her chest didn't move at all.

"Please don't be dead, Jo,
please
."

He pressed his fingers against her throat, felt no blood move beneath her wet skin. He took her wrist and felt the same. He brought her to the floor and breathed into her mouth, as she'd done for him only recently, breathing him back to life. He pounded on her chest, and breathed again. He hadn't trained for this, was only following what they did on TV. On television, just when it seemed like she'd never wake up, Jo would turn her head and vomit up water. She'd gasp for air and look into his eyes, disoriented and relieved, and smile her dimpled smile.

He breathed and pumped.
Breathed
.
Pumped
.

"Please, Jo, please,
please
…" Weeping. Shuddering.

The tub made one last gurgle—a long, groaning death rattle—then fell silent.

Jo made no sound at all.

He drew her into his lap and held her. She felt brittle and jagged in his arms, not at all like she'd felt that night in the lake. He wept, loud and messily. He thundered his fist against the tub and kicked the wall until it cracked, and hurled accusations at the giant angry man in the sky. After a long while, the small room began to darken, seemingly in tandem with the light draining out of his life. He stood and hoisted Jo into his arms.

Owen brought her to the biggest bedroom—which had once been her parents, but which she must have taken for herself, since the covers were ruffled and the room looked lived in. He placed her on the bed, drew her arms across her chest, then changed his mind, not liking the gruesome image it made, and laid them at her sides. He brushed damp hair back from her face and kissed her forehead.

"It's over, now, Jo," he whispered in her ear. "Wherever you are, I hope there's no more pain."

Downstairs in the living room, he found a box of cassette tapes with hand-printed labels, the spirituals she'd mentioned before. He found one labeled
The Dunsmuirs HOUSE OF MY DREAMS: DEMO
and liked the sound of it, and he thought Jo might have liked it, too. The master bedroom had a stereo on the vanity. Owen inserted the tape, already wound to the beginning. He pushed play, and sat on the edge of the bed in his damp clothes, looking down at what remained of Crazy Jo Dunsmuir, his first and only real love.

A tune strummed on an acoustic guitar, both heartbreakingly sweet and hauntingly sad. Edam Dunsmuir's gravelly vibrato joined it, belting out the lyrics with a slight country twang. During the chorus, Jo's mother sang along in a pleasing falsetto.

If you stay with me tonight,

I'll swear we'll build a Heaven on Earth

How we'll live there,

I don't know

Take me down to the water

Where the green grass grow

Take me down to the house

Of my dreams

He let the tape play out, then wound it back and played it again. At first, the lyrics seemed a fitting tribute to the Dunsmuir family, though the second time through he decided Jo might not have felt the same, considering how her parents had died, he
she'd
died, and shut it off. He came back to her side, leaned down, and kissed her cold, blue lips. He brushed her hair away from her ear, as blonde and fine as it had been when she was a girl.

"You remember what Mr. Wickman said? Death isn't the end, Jo. Death isn't the end," he said again, sitting down beside her, trying his damnedest to make himself believe it.

1

OWEN MADE HIS WAY
down to the living room, where he'd left his cell phone. He sat on the sofa in his wet clothes, dialing the long-distance number. After four rings, his mother picked up from two-hundred kilometers away.

"Saddler residence," she said.

For a long moment Owen said nothing, didn't know how to begin. It had all come apart: all the progress he'd made, shattered in an instant of carelessness and stupidity.

"Mom," he said finally, "it's me."

"Owen." She sounded neither thrilled nor disappointed to hear his voice. "Where are you calling from? You sound odd."

"Mom, Jo is dead."

"Jo. Am I supposed to know this person?"

"Joelle Dunsmuir," Owen said, annoyed by her brusqueness.

"Joelle—" She clued in. "
Little Jo
? Where on earth did you…?"

Silence, filled by the hiss of dead air. "Mom."

"You're
there
now, aren't you? You went up to that awful place—"

"Mom, I have a right to know—"

"You have
no idea
what I went through to get you away from that damned place, and you had the nerve to go
back
? Just when were you planning to tell me, hmm? After what happened to—" She made herself finish it, "to your sister. How
could
you, Owen?
How could you?
"

He held the phone away, her scream ringing in his ear. It was the most emotion he'd gotten out of his mother in years, since the days he used to argue and fight with everyone; he hadn't sought out anger, but it was better than the flat tone she'd taken before. Now that Jo had died he'd been stumbling around on autopilot, like a man in a dream. Night had slipped its cold hands over the world without him noticing, the windows now entirely black. Anyone could be out there in the dark, with the cicadas and the frogs chirping out spirituals of their own. Their somber music helped him focus his thoughts.

"Lori came up here for me, Mom. Because of my depression."

"Pish posh."

"She was looking for my father," he said, becoming angry. "For Crouch."

A long pause, the hiss of distance between them: metaphorical and physical. "And I suppose she found him," his mother said after a time.

"In a way. He's dead. He's been dead for years, Mom. Since the day we left."

"What do you mean? Your father's not dead."

"Mom, I was down there in that church—"

"
You went down there?
"

"Twice. The people we left behind drowned down there. They meant to kill themselves, but I think they changed their mind at the last moment. Somebody murdered them."

Margaret Saddler clucked her tongue.

"
Mom
."

"You can't possibly know all that. How could you know all that?" she said, as if asking herself.

"What do you think I've been doing up here, taking a vacation? I've been researching. I've been diving. I found a journal Lori wrote to me, Mom, and I met Jo Dunsmuir and we…" He swallowed his sadness. "…and now she's, she's
dead
, Mom. Because of Crouch. Because of the lies you told me."

The distant hiss. "You
blame
me. Well, I'm sorry, Owen. I'm sorry that had to happen to your little friend. She was a fine girl. Your father—" She seemed to choke on her own words, sorrow cracking the veneer. "Your father loved her very much. He loved both of you. But he was sick. He'd been sick for quite a while. I saw the signs—I should have, I transcribed all his sermons—but I chose to ignore them."

She cupped the receiver to politely blow her nose. "You don't remember how he was," she said when she came back. "His
fury
. He never struck either of us, not with his fists. He wielded God's Word like a weapon, bullying us into submission with Eternal Damnation and Hellfire, abusing and demoralizing us with scripture. Not just the two of us, Owen, but the whole church. The whole
town
. He was sick, your father. Sick."

"He should've been on medication."

"I suggested it, when the worst of it began. He spat at my feet. On the
kitchen floor
he did this, Owen. 'Many are the afflictions of the righteous,' he said, 'but the Lord delivers him from them all!' And I told him, 'Shepherd the flock that is among you, not domineering over those in your charge, but being an example to the flock.' We went on and on like that. Everett would say 'Those who are well do not need a physician. Do you not know the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?' I reminded him God's ways are not our ways, and if we were expected to follow everything the Old Testament told us to the letter, we'd all be out toiling in the fields and stoning hippies to death for smelling like patchouli."

Odd as it was to hear his mother quote scripture, even odder was the tone in which she spoke about her relationship with his father. She was angry, impassioned—but affection trickled through the bitterness. It hadn't all been bad times in the Crouch house, after all. They'd been a family. There'd been
love
.

"He used to like that we could debate religion," she said. "But that night I think I must have pushed him over the edge. It was Woodrow's influence, I don't fully blame Everett."

"Brother Woodrow?"

"That's what Everett called him," she said. "We'd been arguing for hours before you wandered into the kitchen in your pajamas. It was the first time I saw venom in your father's eyes, every bit of it aimed at you. Three years old at the time, you were. It was the first time he truly frightened me. He'd always been a passionate man, I'd known that from the moment I met him. It's what fueled his sermons. It put butts in the seats. But
rage
? Toward his own
flesh and blood
?"

"So it's true," Owen said. "He really was going to murder me."

"Oh, no. No, no, I don't think he'd ever have gone that far. When you were very little, Everett baptised you," she explained. "You nearly died. We would only ever do full-body immersions. When Philip baptized the Ethiopian, he took him down
into
the water. He didn't just sprinkle water from the font on the man's forehead. So that's what we did in the Blessed Trinity. It was the same ceremony for adults as it was for the children.

"By the time we started this, you were barely a year old. You didn't like the water, not one bit. Not the bath, and especially not the river. And you struggled. You screamed bloody murder. Everett used… a little more force than he'd meant to, I think—I
hope
that's what it was, because the alternative scares the life out of me."

Owen pictured Crouch pushing him under the water, the great holy glory in his eyes. The scene came back to him in a flash, Crouch pushing him down, smiling darkly, the pocket watch hung from a chain in his pocket, the men and women whose faces he recognized: Dink Deakins, and Edam and Joan Dunsmuir, who'd rejoined their brethren and sistren in death, and the little blonde girl who was Jo, he knew that now, the same child Woodrow had been baptizing in the lake, held in her parents' loving arms. She'd been with them all along, had spent her entire life living under the shadow of that terrible church, living just like the dead, and now she was back in the tender bosom of her loving family.