Chapter Fourteen

Tommy loved the open road, with the Harley roaring beneath him and infinite blue space before him. Oklahoma was very flat, which made for dull scenery, but it really let you open up the throttle.

Using the fear inside him, he’d mugged somebody in Evans, just outside of Augusta—a man in a suit who was able to withdraw six hundred dollars at the ATM. He’d bought a black motorcycle helmet to avoid getting pulled over. Considering he was an escaped prisoner riding a semi-stolen bike, it would be stupid to get busted on a minor helmet law. He could usually deal with a lone police officer just fine, but it was always risky, and he didn’t want the hassle.

He was in a hurry. Daylight was starting to break in the east. He’d been driving for eighteen hours, with only a brief stop for a nap in the Ozark National Forest.

The sores on his hands, arms and face were healing, but slowly. He didn’t know what that bitch had done to him, but he couldn’t focus on her until the immediate business was handled.

He sped through the dreary countryside, past collapsing farmhouses and rusty barbed wire, towards the miniscule town of Sulphur. There was a bright grin on his face. He was going to sort some things out today, and sort them good.

In his childhood memories, the Tanner house and the outbuildings made up a massive compound, almost like a town. When he pulled up the dusty gravel driveway, he almost thought he had the wrong place. The main house looked tiny and gray, many of its exterior boards crumbling to dust. The outbuildings seemed much smaller than he remembered, too.

Tommy parked in front of the house, next to a big rusty pick-up truck, and he looked up to the tiny window on the second floor. Then he knew he had the right place. That window had been his eye on the world for nearly three years.

The lights in the house were already on. Mr. Tanner liked everyone to be up by sunrise, to get started on chores around the farm.

Tommy stepped off his bike, hung his helmet on it, and walked past the chickens scraping and pecking in the yard. The front door opened as he approached it—someone must have heard his engine.

Mrs. Tanner stood behind the screen door, a few years fatter and grayer. A boy of about ten stood beside her, his eyes bulging with fear.

“Howdy,” Tommy said with a wide smile. He wondered how he looked to them, with the oozing infections leaking down his face.

“Who are you?” Mrs. Tanner asked. “What do you mean making all this noise so early in the morning?”

“Don’t you remember me?” Tommy took off his sunglasses and stared at her with his gray eyes.

“Thomas?” she whispered.

“Fuck yeah.” Tommy pulled open the screen door and stepped inside, forcing Mrs. Tanner to take a step back. The little boy stared up at him. “What’s your name?” Tommy asked.

“Paul,” the boy whispered.

“Did Mr. Tanner baptize you when you got here, Paul?” Tommy asked.

“Yes,” Paul whispered. “He baptizes me all the time.”

Tommy scowled and looked past the boy and Mrs. Tanner. Two more kids ate breakfast at the kitchen table, staring at Tommy over spoonfuls of shredded wheat (not the frosted kind, as the Tanners believed that would spoil children). The boy looked about fourteen or fifteen, while the girl looked twelve or thirteen.

“Oh, look.” Tommy nodded at the girl. “It’s the future Mrs. Tanner.”

“That is disgusting!” Mrs. Tanner snarled.

“You’re getting a little ripe, aren’t you?” Tommy poked Mrs. Tanner’s doughy arm. His touch made her gasp and back away. “A little old for Mr. Tanner.”

“He was right,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “You do have the devil in you.”

“True.” Tommy picked up a bowl of unsweetened shredded wheat from the table and ate a spoonful. “This stuff is nasty. You kids like this?”

The two kids at the table shook their heads.

“What in the Lord’s name is happening down here?” Mr. Tanner tromped down the staircase, dressed in overalls and boots. He glared at Tommy. “Who are you?”

“You forgot me already, Mr. Tanner?” Tommy asked.

“This is Thomas,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “He ran away. Remember?”

“I don’t care who he is,” Mr. Tanner said. He jabbed a finger into Tommy’s chest. “You gonna get out this house right now, less you want me to grab my shotgun and plow a trench through your skull.”

Tommy seized Mr. Tanner’s hand.

“Get the shotgun if you want, old man,” Tommy said. “It’ll end with your brains splattered on the ceiling. I promise.”

He squeezed tight, giving Mr. Tanner a good dose of fear, then released the man’s hand. Mr. Tanner just gaped at him.

“Mrs. Tanner,” Tommy said. She jumped at her name, but he had her attention. “When the old man died, you brought a couple of witches here to talk to his corpse. To find some missing money.”

“You did what?” Mr. Tanner stalked toward his wife. “Witches? I’m gonna whup you so bad. Get upstairs and take them britches off.”

Tommy grabbed Mr. Tanner’s throat and slammed him back against the kitchen wall. Pots and pans hung overhead crashed to the scuffed linoleum floor. The little girl at the table started crying.

“You stay put there,” Tommy hissed to Mr. Tanner. “Or I’ll kill you like I killed your daddy.”

Mr. Tanner’s face looked fishlike, big cold eyes and lips gulping at the air, reminding Tommy of Pap-pap on his way into death. Tommy could feel the darkness flowing out in a river now, washing away any doubts Mr. Tanner might have had about Tommy’s devilish nature.

Tommy turned back to Mrs. Tanner.

“I’m looking for them witches,” Tommy said. As always, his deep-country accent grew thicker when he was angry, or scared, or just excited. He was a little of each right now. “You tell me how to find ‘em.”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “It’s been years—”

“Tell me!” Tommy snapped, and she cringed.

“I have the phone number upstairs,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “I’ll go get it.”

“Don’t try to pull any tricks on me,” Tommy said. He was still pinning Mr. Tanner against the wall. “I can kill him. All I got to do is think about it.”

“Do what he says,” Mr. Tanner whispered. “Do anything he says.”

Mrs. Tanner whimpered and scurried from the room.

The ten-year-old, Paul, was crying louder than the girl now. He knelt on the kitchen floor, weeping.

Tommy pulled Mr. Tanner off the wall and turned him so his back faced the doorway where Mrs. Tanner had gone. If Mrs. Tanner tried to pull anything—if she came back with that shotgun, for instance—she would have to go through her husband first.

Fortunately, Mrs. Tanner was timid. How could she be otherwise, Tommy thought, after a lifetime with Mr. Tanner? When she returned to the kitchen, she was holding nothing but a scrap of yellowed paper in her shaking hand.

“What’s that?” Tommy asked.

“Her phone number,” Mrs. Tanner whispered. “It’s all I have. I’m sorry.”

“Bring it.” Tommy tightened his grasp on Mr. Tanner’s throat. He reached out his other hand to Mrs. Tanner.

She approached Tommy with small, trembling footsteps. When she was close enough, Tommy snatched the paper from her hand, and she gasped and darted away.

The scrap of paper was a grocery store receipt.

“On back,” Mrs. Tanner whispered.

Tommy turned it over. GUADALUPE RIOS was hand-written on the back, along with a phone number.

“What area code is this?” Tommy asked.

“Texas,” Mrs. Tanner said. Her voice was almost too quiet to hear. “Fort Worth.”

“Okay. Perfect.” Tommy folded the paper and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.

“It won’t do you any good,” Mrs. Tanner added. “They’re scam artists. They never did come up with any money.”

Tommy smiled. He looked at Mr. Tanner, who was downright terrified from being in Tommy’s grasp so long. He could let the man go now. Then Tommy looked at the three frightened children. He remembered his own childhood, how often Mr. Tanner’s twisted, insane ideas about religion seemed to involve stripping and beating the children.

“You were right,” Tommy said to Mr. Tanner. “I do have the Devil in me. And today, the Devil wants you.”

Tommy let the black lightning rip out of him, filling Mr. Tanner. Mr. Tanner’s shuddered hard in Tommy’s hand, and a trickle of blood leaked from Mr. Tanner’s nose. Then the man slouched, and Tommy let him fall to the floor.

Tommy kicked him, but Mr. Tanner didn’t respond. His eyes stared into empty space. Heart attack, stroke or seizure—one way or another, Mr. Tanner had died of fright.

Mrs. Tanner screamed and dropped to the floor to embrace her husband’s corpse. “Oh, Jesus!” she cried. “Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus…”

Tommy ignored her. He grabbed a box of long kitchen matches and walked outside.

In the biggest barn, where the horse trailer and the ancient canvas-sheathed Buick were parked, there were also large plastic jugs of gasoline for the tractor. Tommy picked up two of them.

The three children trickled out of the farmhouse to look at him. They trailed him, at a great distance, as he walked to the old barn Mr. Tanner had converted into a church for his weird little personal cult.

Tommy pulled open the barn door. He splashed gasoline on the handmade pews, the wooden dais, the willow cross. He splattered more along each of the four walls.

The children stood outside, several feet from the open door, and watched him with open mouths.

When he’d emptied both containers, he walked to the door, and the children ran back ten or twenty feet. Then they turned to watch him again.

Tommy gave them a grin as he struck a kitchen match. Then he flicked it into the barn. The burning matchstick tumbled end over end, until it landed in a gasoline puddle in the middle of the dirt floor. For a moment, he thought the match had simply gone out.

Then a gout of fire belched up, and rivulets of flame rushed out to the four walls of the barn. The cross and the whole altar area went up in a bright red whoosh.

Tommy walked along the dirt-rut road. The children cleared off of it and ran up the slope to the stable, to watch him from a safe distance as he passed.

“Do yourselves a favor,” Tommy said to the three of them. “Run off. There’s nothing good here. You got to sort out your own life for yourself, sooner or later.”

Tommy walked past the gaping children, and on past the farmhouse, where he could hear Mrs. Tanner wailing over her dead husband.

Then he got on his bike and headed for Texas.