RATTLEMAN: Praise for 18 Seconds 'Excellent! Stephen King Read online

  “It’s a witness,” Lazarus growled.

  “Could be reliable?”

  “Impeccable.”

  “Can you say who they are?”

  “We are,” Lazarus said.

  Chapter 18

  Quills Landing, West Virginia

  The evening service at the Pentecostal Church was underway as Rolfe climbed the hill out of Quills Landing. An ambulance wailed off the interstate, heading toward an alley near River Road.

  The gravel lot was jammed with old American cars, chrome bumpers glistening under bare light bulbs, the voice of Reverend Holland crackling from homemade speakers nailed to the trees.

  Rolfe had attended three of Holland’s services over the years, standing in the back and leaving before they ended. It was like the cabin and the cemetery and all the memories of his childhood. Sad and somehow painful, and yet he couldn’t leave them alone.

  The congregation was seated when Rolfe entered the church.

  “Lord deliver us from evil,” Reverend Holland said, his fingers pointing at the floor.

  “Amen!” someone said.

  “For Thine is the Kingdom.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “And the Power.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “And the Glory forever and ever.”

  “Amen!” they said in unison.

  The preacher shifted weight from foot to foot, bowed his head and raised his arms into the air. “Lord, we have walked in your narrow path of righteousness. We have spoken with pure and modest tongues. We have remembered your goodliness and salvation and all the blessings you have bestowed upon us.”

  “Amen,” they said, louder.

  “Now we come to you in humble worship, to praise you and to witness your extraordinary powers.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Do you want a sign, brothers and sisters?”

  “Yes,” they yelled. “Give us a sign.”

  Holland picked up his Bible and raised it over his head.

  “Lord, grant your flock their one earthly desire, their one pursuit of the flesh. Grant them a sign as you did in the land of Egypt and in Bethsaida and at the pool of Siloam.”

  Someone stood. “Amen!”

  Holland strutted back and forth in front of the congregation.

  “The Godless seek to tempt each other, as they too have been tempted by the one in hell!”

  “They,” he pointed at the window, “fear death, because life is their only heaven. They,” he said more softly, “fear the serpent and the poison, and for good reason, my brothers and sisters.”

  He walked slowly to the center of the room, crossed behind the beams that supported the ceiling and undid his tie behind a music-stand pulpit, his voice plummeting to a level just above a whisper.

  “They lack faith,” he whispered.

  The room went silent.

  “And faith,” he said, “is the most precious element in the universe.”

  “Amen,” someone said softly.

  “Even the disciples lacked faith. Jesus showed Mary his wounds after the resurrection but the disciples refused to believe.” He pulled the tie from his neck and draped it over the music stand. “So he gave them another chance and then a third.” He shook his head as he rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. “Finally he told Thomas to put his finger in the very wounds.”

  Holland looked around the congregation, eyes meeting eyes, stopping on Rolfe’s for a second, then folding his hands in front of him. “When they finally realized it was him he said to them, ‘Go into the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons. They will speak in new tongues. They will pick up snakes with their hands, and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all. They will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.’ And, brother’s and sisters, HE,” Holland said, his voice rising dramatically, pacing the floor from one end to the other, “WAS TALKING ABOUT,” his voice was thunderous now, “YOU!”

  The crowd cried hallelujah and clasped each other’s arms, hugging and swaying, going forth to receive the snakes.

  The door at the rear of the church opened and Rolfe stepped out into the night. Some, who saw him leave, thought he was frightened by the spectacle. Holland, who saw him too, had no such illusion.

  Chapter 19

  Marion, West Virginia

  Marty put the truck windows down, the air warm and sweet smelling as they approached the top of Emmett’s Fork. A blue sign read: Elevation 4320 ft.

  On the crest of the summit was an old log tavern with a pink neon sign on the roof that read: MOST HEAVEN.

  Marty turned into the parking lot and rolled to a stop between two trucks.

  “Most heaven?” Judy looked up at the sign.

  “Almost Heaven,” he said. “They lost some letters during a microburst last April. Food’s a little greasy but the beer is always cold.”

  He pushed the screen door open and ushered Judy in. A dozen heads turned at the bar and Marty lifted a hand, “John,” he said, then “Pappy.” He waved and nodded at some others, led her around the bar to a pine wood dining room, redolent of fried onions. The walls were covered with antlered deer and a bear’s head. There were fish and turkeys and a raccoon baring its teeth.

  “Just like home,” she said blandly, all eyes watching them as they walked to a corner table.

  The kitchen door opened and someone yelled, “Hey, Marty!”

  Marty waved and the door swung closed.

  She smiled. “Popular.”

  “Born here,” he said.

  A waitress with an abundance of cleavage stopped at the edge of their table and put a hand on his shoulder.

  “What’ll it be, handsome?”

  Marty looked at Judy. “You drink beer?”

  She nodded.

  “Pitcher and two mugs,” he said. “And two pepperoni pizzas, okay?’ He looked at Judy and she nodded again.

  She studied a menu while they were waiting for the beer. When it came it was with a red plastic basket full of popcorn. A jukebox in the corner played a familiar sounding song. Ceiling fans raised fur on the stuffed bear’s ears.

  “Pathetic-looking bear.” Judy pointed with her mug.

  “He’s been hanging there since I was in a highchair,” Marty said. “And probably a whole lot longer. He and I never made it very far from home.”

  “There’s something to be said for that.” She looked up at the bear. “There isn’t anything in my life that reminds me of my childhood. I mean all the places and all the people are gone. It’s like it never happened.”

  Marty nodded thoughtfully. “You mentioned Deep Creek. Your summers at the lake.”

  “My cousins.” She nodded reflectively. “They moved to the west coast when I was in sixth grade. Deep Creek was a lot like here.”

  “Mountainous and backward,” Marty said.

  “No,” she said, slapping the back of his hand. “Wild, beautiful, silent.”

  “Silent?”

  “No clutter,” she said. “No sirens or thumping car speakers. No car alarms and garbage trucks backing up. Like I said, reminds me of Deep Creek.”

  Marty laughed. “I guess I never appreciated silence. So then Marion is everything you expected it to be?”

  She smiled. “I didn’t expect to be here a second night.”

  “And what would you be doing if you were home?”

  “Sitting on my sofa.” She shrugged. “Staring at my laptop and trying to figure out how to write about that missing cocaine.”

  “But the silence got to you, so you stayed another day.”

  She laughed. “Really, I’m not kidding. The only thing I can say for sure is that the plane didn’t blow up in the sky.”

  Someone put money in the jukebox.

  She looked at her hands and turned them over, looked some m
ore and placed them on the table.

  “I just have to say this one more time: I was too quick to judge you yesterday and it wasn’t really about you. It was me. It was about my own stuff. Okay?”

  “Okay,” he said, “but one more time, it wasn’t a big deal.” He raised his beer.

  They were silent for another moment, Judy studying the walls.

  The waitress stopped to check on them, left to refill the pitcher. Again Judy saw the way she brushed her arm against Marty’s shoulder.

  “Don’t tell me you don’t get hit on,” she said.

  Marty smiled. “She just fools around like that.”

  “U’huh,” Judy said. “You must be the town catch.”

  He laughed.

  “So why no wife or girlfriend?”

  “Just haven’t met the right one, I guess.”

  “Never?”

  “Once,” he admitted. “But never married.”

  She nodded.

  “And you. You said you were divorced? No kids?”

  Judy lifted her mug and put it to her lips, waiting a moment or two before taking a drink. She put it down and crossed her ankles, seeming uncomfortable about what to do with her hands. At last she laid them flat on the table and cleared her throat.

  “I had a daughter,” she said, eyes beginning to glisten. “Sorry.” She dabbed at them and looked at the ceiling. “I always seem to be crying in front of you.” She waved her hand. “I had a daughter named Lynn. She was six months old when she died of SIDS.”

  Judy looked back down and reached for her beer, this time draining it as loud laughter erupted around the bar.

  Marty’s mouth began to form words, but then closed.

  And then something came over Judy, like a feeling that she had cleared a large hurdle. She had spoken Lynn’s name and it was behind her, like the bittersweet memories of her childhood, her parents and her marriage to Tom, and all those cousins who had once upon a time gathered on the lake at Deep Creek.

  Suddenly time seemed different in Marion where it was okay to talk about the past and okay to be okay.

  A siren wailed outside and flashing blue lights passed the windows.

  The waitress approached the table. “Another pitcher for you two?”

  Marty shook his head. “Just the pizza and a check.”

  When she was gone again, Judy shook her head. “She wants you, you know.”

  “She plays with everyone like that. Doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “Better think again, Mister,” Judy said.

  “Then she’s not my type.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s good,” she said, “because I have no intention of being dumped in a bar with dead animals.”

  “Oh, I’d never dump you.” Marty shook his head.

  Judy looked at him with mock skepticism. “Yeah, well haven’t we all heard that one before?”

  Chapter 20

  Quills Landing, West Virginia

  Myron Jenkins, voluntary caretaker and gravedigger for the Pentecostal Church, brought a lantern and a pint of Wild Turkey – courtesy of Reverend Holland – and climbed the field above the church toward Cemetery Hill. He had a shovel in his hand and a heavy tarp across his shoulder. He had already dug the Miller boy’s grave, but Monday was the funeral and tomorrow they were calling for rain. He could sharpen up the corners tonight and spread a tarp over it until Monday’s funeral. There was nothing worse than bailing mud from a grave while the congregation waited in the rain.

  Suddenly the wind changed and he got a whiff of rotting meat. Something was dead and experience told him it was big. A coon or a fox; maybe even a deer. Probably it was coming from the tree line, but as he approached the open grave the smell only grew stronger. For a moment he felt a surge of anger, recalling a Friday night homecoming game when some teenagers stole a roasted half pig from a post-game party and brought it to Cemetery Hill. Two days later a funeral procession conveying a casket had found it rotting in the open grave under a mountain of empty beer cans.

  But it wasn’t any garbage that was in his grave tonight. It was a woman. And she had been disemboweled.

  Chapter 21

  Emmet’s Fork, West Virginia

  They drove a quarter mile past the tavern and turned onto a narrow road, following the ridge past a dozen identical A-Frame cottages. He finally turned into a driveway by a double wide trailer. There was an old white pickup in front of it, American flag decal on the bumper and a bow and quiver suspended from a rifle rack. Toby’s idea of a joke, he told her.

  The old man answered the door dressed in checkered flannel pajamas and terrycloth slippers.

  “Marty,” he said in mock surprise, “you should have told me you had a girlfriend.” He winked and ushered them both in.

  Toby, shorter than Judy, was in his late seventies, with dark mischievous eyes and a nose hooked like a beak. His skin was dark and wrinkled like cracked clay, and he wore his snow-white hair in a crew cut. “I could have put feathers on and practiced on my Cherokee.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Marty said blandly, leading Judy into a neatly kept living room.

  “Is she someone else’s?” Toby asked.

  Judy shrugged. “No husband, no boyfriend.”

  “Pity.” The old man shook his head. “He’s really not that bad. I can vouch for him. I’ve known him for a long time.”

  She smiled. “Oh, I don’t mind him at all.”

  “She’s a federal agent,” Marty said. “And we have something we want you to look at.” He laid the pizza box on the table. He reached in a pocket and handed Toby the leather pouch. “We found this yesterday morning up at the plane crash site.”

  Toby looked at it for a moment, loosened the top and poured the contents out over the tablecloth. After a moment he looked up at Marty.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Whoever dropped it there took drugs out of the plane. Twenty pounds of cocaine.”

  Toby turned the pouch over in his hands, studying the crosses etched into the leather.

  “Strap was cut?” He held up one end.

  Marty nodded.

  Toby picked up an item on the table. “Dock root.” He shrugged. “And this here is Yellow Root, both used for medicines. Then he picked up a tiny flat stone and pinched it between his fingers. “This pebble is called a madstone. Haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid. You find them in the belly of a deer every once in a while, like a gallstone. People keep them to cure rabies.”

  “Rabies?” Judy repeated.

  He nodded. “You dip the stone in milk and stick it to the bite. When it falls off, the poison’s been drawn into the stone.”

  She raised her eyebrows.

  Toby brushed aside the Buckeye and picked up one of the dark berries and held it close to one eye.

  “What about those,” Marty asked.

  “Devil’s berries.” Toby continued to study it. “From the Belladonna plant and very poisonous.” He dropped it on the table and picked up a stem with a dried purple flower. “This here is Wolf’s Bane. If you eat it, it can paralyze the lungs and you die of suffocation.”

  “What’s all this mean to you?”

  Toby looked at Marty. “It’s a medicine bag.”

  “You’re speaking Indian medicine bag?” Marty said, surprised. “Does this make him some kind of a shaman? A medicine man?”

  Toby shook his head. “No. Not necessarily. The origin of the medicine bag is certainly native, but white men have shared the mountains for centuries and many still cling to the old ways.”

  He picked up the empty bag. “A shaman wouldn’t have sewn the bag together. The shaman believed that his magic could leak from the stitching. He would have made it from a single piece of hide.”

  “So not necessarily an Indian, but he lives off the earth. He treats his own afflictions?”

  Toby nodded. “I would agree.”

  “Why would anyone put poisons in a Medicine Bag?”

  Toby paused fo
r a moment. “What we know about nature we have learned from someone’s experience – the result of some ancestor’s fortuitous discovery, or misfortune. Many must have journeyed to the brink of death in search of answers, some to cross over, some to return and tell the tale. Folk remedies were often complex and mysterious. You ask about poisons, Marty, so consider the Rattlesnake. We now know to treat the bite with the venom. The poison is the cure. And so it is with many things in life.”

  Marty considered this for a few moments. “So he’s backwoods if nothing else. Likely uneducated.”

  “Which doesn’t make him simple,” Toby said quickly. “Do not confuse education and understanding. He may be quite skilled in his element. May have a purpose for what he carries.”

  “A purpose,” Judy said slowly, a faraway look in her eyes.

  Toby handed the bag back to Marty and opened the pizza box, taking a piece and offering it to Judy.

  “Oh, no thanks. We have our own in the Jeep.”

  Marty started collecting the items on the table and putting them back in the bag. “I thought I’d take Judy up and show her the house before she goes.”

  “Goes where?” Toby asked.

  “Back to DC,” Judy said. “Tomorrow morning.”

  “I like the Old Ebbitt Grill.” Toby nodded, grinning. “Two dozen oysters and half a dozen beers.” He laid the pizza back in the box, held up an index finger and hurried down the hall. A moment later he returned carrying a string of white shells.

  “Indian love necklace,” he said, handing it to Judy. “They’re from the New River basin and prehistoric, I’m told. I was going to give it to the next squaw I came across.” He snickered into a cupped hand. “But now I’m too old. You come back again.” He took her hand. “I like you better than the last one.”

  “Toby,” Marty said sternly.

  “And you,” he pointed at Marty, “best watch out. These things work quickly.”

  Judy slipped the necklace over her head and Marty reached for the doorknob, shaking his head.