Part 14 (1/2)

”Tell me about your brother,” she said. ”Vernon.”

Considering how interested everyone else had been in Creed, this simple question was gift enough. ”There's not much to tell,” she said.

”Oh, there's always something.”

”He was a simple man.”

”There you go.” The preacher smiled. ”That's something.”

”To tell you the truth, he grew up in a simpler time.”

”We all did.”

”Only he never left it.”

The preacher adjusted her hand on a small and battered black volume in her lap, which Donna had taken for a notebook. She saw now that the edges of the pages were gilded. A New Testament with the Psalms. Just the essentials. The preacher caught Donna's eyes on it and neither concealed it nor disclosed it further. ”He was a good bit older than you.” It was not a question.

”Eleven years. Vernon was the oldest, and I was the youngest. Am Am. I am the youngest.”

Light dawned. ”Your parents kept trying until they got a daughter.”

Donna c.o.c.ked her head. ”I'd never thought of it that way.”

”I'll bet they did.” The preacher gave a broad smile. ”Why else would they keep going through three boys in a row?”

”Boys are useful around a farm.”

”I'll bet your parents kept them busy.”

”They sure did.”

”And then when your time came, they let you go your own way.” The preacher let her gaze wander around the sun porch, the more or less manicured yard, the late-model Toyota in the driveway.

”I guess they did. Pretty much.”

”That's what happens when you wait for a child. My husband and I did the reverse. We had our two girls first and then our boy. Of course they're all grown up now.”

”Mine too. My one.”

”They go their own ways.”

”They do.”

”Time goes by.”

”It does.”

The preacher's fingers rubbed at the gilt edges of the book in her lap. Donna got the impression that she might be about to turn the conversation toward other ends, so she half-rose from the creaking chair and made an offer of some nice cold iced tea and the preacher said yes that would be a pleasure and a relief on this hot afternoon. She said she'd help Donna get it and Donna didn't say no, so they went together into the cool kitchen.

Del.

PEOPLE TALK. Things get out. In a perfect world it wouldn't happen, but this isn't a perfect world and it does. Then again, in a perfect world people wouldn't die under mysterious circ.u.mstances.

It could be that's just it. If the world were perfect, Vernon Proctor would pa.s.s on in his sleep exactly the way he did and n.o.body would give it a second thought. But we know things. We suspect things. Our brains start working on them and we can't help it. We want it all to be perfect and it's not perfect, it isn't going to be, but we keep trying to make some sense of it.

A hundred years back, I don't know. Things were different. Fifty years, even. You go to the doctor and he asks what did your grandparents die from and you realize you can't say. People died, that's all. When there was any record they had different words for things or they used the same words we use now but they meant something else. The words meant something that people might have been sort of unsure about, but it didn't make any difference. It didn't change things.

I guess we've come a long way. We're all experts in everything now. We might just be the poorer for it.

Anyhow people say things who shouldn't say things. An old fellow like Vernon dies and it wouldn't make a ripple under normal circ.u.mstances. It's nothing out of the ordinary. My men went out there because Creed Proctor called us. The emergency technicians went out there because of the same call. No big deal. Simple as that. An unattended death, we'd have had to look into it anyhow. We went out the next day because the medical examiner found some things and we had to see about them. A reporter can look at that from any angle he wants-it's all there on the public record, or he could come straight to me for a statement-but until somebody in the district attorney's office begins shooting his mouth off there's no reason to start talking about murder. And there's definitely no reason for everybody and his mother to know about how that poor old man signed a confession.

But you have to think it through all the same. So when I first heard about it I wondered if maybe the story had come from the night clerk at the Mobil station. The one who witnessed. The one who sold us that pizza for Audie. I thought maybe he'd gotten an idea about talking to the newspaper, but if he had they wouldn't have said what they did about an unnamed source in the district attorney's office. That would have been a lie. An unnecessary lie. And as little as I trust the Courier Courier, I think I was starting to trust Ben Wilson's office a little less.

1989.

DeAlton.

HOW YOU DIDN'T KNOW this road was back here I'll never know. this road was back here I'll never know.

You bet I'd call it a road. You can drive on it, it's a road.

If I'm putting up money then you're going to have to take the bad with the good. Get used to it. We've got plans to retire on that money, your mother and me, not just this little bit but the rest of it I'm going to have to pump into this operation, and we're going to want it back with interest. That's why they call it interest. I'm here looking out for my interest.

That's right.

I say we're we're going to want it back, but I mean going to want it back, but I mean me me. If she knew about this she'd kill the both of us.

Ow. Watch your head. This'll get better in the summertime once the mud dries up.

I'm all right. You all right? This d.a.m.ned VW's got no padding anywhere. It's like riding around in a d.a.m.ned freezer chest.

So. How many ways you got to get up here?

Just the one? Just the one straight up through the pasture?

Unbelievable. How in h.e.l.l have you stayed out of the penitentiary all this time?

Well now you got two ways up. We'll find a couple more, quick as we can. Maybe park down by Marshall's Pond and come up cross-lots. Blaze a trail. We'll get around to it. The main thing right now is to get this s.h.i.+t moved up and finish digging out the trenches and run the drip lines without that busybody next door deciding he ought to start taking pictures for his sc.r.a.pbook.