After that I played on the floor with some model race cars Pastor Mike had brought me that he'd glued together himself. Pastor Mike was always bringing me little presents, and I wondered if he'd keep it up once they got married. I wasn't sure how he could afford it though on a preacher's salary, which Mom said wasn't much more than what she was making as a nurse. But she said that once they put the two paychecks together, we wouldn't be nearly as poor and might even be able to afford a computer, which I figured was about time.
Then Mom, who could be such a downer, asked Pastor Mike if he'd seen Runyon around town lately. She said she hadn't heard a peep out of him ever since she'd gotten the court order.
“I doubt if he'll be bothering you and Nate anymore.”
I asked Pastor Mike how he could be so sure, and he said he just had a feeling that Runyon was long gone. That was when I finally pieced it all together. Runyon was delivering the stuff he stole to Dad, who was selling it to the general public and then splitting the money with him. With Dad in jail, Runyon either had to find a new fence or go to some other part of the country to do his stealing. The only thing that didn't make sense was how Pastor Mike could have known about it all, since he seemed pretty positive that Runyon had left town for good. After a while I got sleepy from thinking so hard about it and started yawning, and Mom sent me upstairs to get ready for bed. The walls in our house were as thin as tissue, and I could hear most of what they were saying. But it was generally just grownup talk and didn't amount to much. Mom went on a little about what a skunk Dad was, but I'd heard her tell that whole sad story to her nurse friends plenty of times and didn't pay much attention.
After they'd stopped chattering for a while, I crawled down the steps a little to see if they might be hugging and kissing. But Mom was just resting her head on his shoulder with her eyes closed and smiling sort of calm and sweet. Pastor Mike was smiling a little too, although his eyes were still open and he was looking down at her. I didn't hear him leave, but when Mom woke me up next morning for church he was gone.
My new Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Shipley, had been divorced three times now according to Mom, and she'd just spun off her last husband about a year ago. She was always wearing real tight dresses, especially up top, and high black heels that made the muscles in her legs stand out kind of plump and meaty. She liked having plenty of sparkly jewelry clanking around her wrists and around her neck, and she smelled like flowers most of the time. Some people at church thought she shouldn't be teaching Sunday school, I guess because of her being married so much. But according to Mom, Pastor Mike had put the brakes to that idea. I guess Pastor Mike had a soft spot for women like Mom whose husbands hadn't measured up.
That morning Mrs. Shipley read us a story from this new Bible she brought along that was written special just for kids and had lots of pictures in it. The story was about a guy who got swallowed up by a whale and then after stewing about it awhile got spit back out onto dry land. It wasn't long and hard to follow either, like those stupid old myths Mr. Grimes kept pushing on us before he got himself tossed into jail. After she was through reading, Mrs. Shipley closed up the Bible and smiled at us and said that the story showed that we were all special and that God loved each and every one of us no matter what. It sounded to me like God let us get away with an awful lot. When I asked her about it, Mrs. Shipley said that it was probably true.
“Just don't push your luck, Nathan. You have a tendency to do that sometimes.”
Mrs. Shipley being so nice and all, I let it slide without putting up a fight like I usually did when someone took a shot at me. When Sunday school was over, Mrs. Shipley gave me a big long hug that almost squeezed all the air out of me. She looked even happier than usual, and I asked what had gotten into her. She was so excited that her voice shot up real high and squeaky, and I almost had to shut my ears.
“Oh, your mother probably hasn't told you yet. It's just like her to be so secretive. I'm sure she'll get around to it shortly.”
I asked her what Mom hadn't told me yet, but Mrs. Shipley said she wasn't allowed to give it away. She said it wouldn't have been fair to Mom, but according to her it was good news and that I shouldn't fret about it. Even though I liked Mrs. Shipley a lot, I wasn't sure if she could tell the difference between good news and bad news. But when I asked her again, she still wouldn't budge.
After I moped downstairs for church, I saw Pastor Mike in the lobby all dressed up in a suit and tie. Like I told you, our preachers never got dressed up fancy like that except for Christmas Eve and Easter. And according to Mom the only reason they did it then was because they were trying to show off for all the people who only came to church once or twice a year. I thought about asking Pastor Mike what was going on, but there were too many people crowding around him for me to break through.
Mom had her own special Sunday school class for old ladies like her. Whenever I'd gone into their room by mistake they were always clacking away so loud that it nearly gave me a headache. It didn't sound like they were talking about God much either. Instead they'd be going on about somebody's gall bladder operation, or saying what a shame it was that some guy's nephew got caught red-handed with drugs on him and was shipped off to some prison on the other side of the state. When I asked her about it one time, Mom told me it was none of my business what they talked about. She said that you couldn't talk about just the Bible all the time anyway without going a little crazy.
After her Sunday school class finally let out and they were all gabbing out in the lobby waiting for the service to start, I walked up to Mom to ask her if I was old enough yet to sit by myself in church. Right after they passed around the collection bags, the ushers made you say hello to the people sitting near you and shake their hands, even if they were complete strangers. I hated doing that, “the greeting,” they called it, and I hoped if I were sitting way in the back I could hide out under my seat where nobody would bother me.
I kept tapping Mom on the shoulder to get her attention, when all of a sudden she whirled around and said I could sit by myself if I promised to hook up with her right after the service. She said that she had some wonderful news to tell me, something that she had learned just last night. I knew it couldn't be about Dad getting tossed into jail, since that was no big secret. I asked her why she just couldn't spill it to me now and get it over with. She said she wanted somebody else to be right there with her. I asked her who, but by then she was already back to gossiping with her friends.
I sat way in the very back row for church, and I even got in a little snooze before the band started playing real loud. When the time came and the band was putting away their guitars and fiddles and drumsticks and stuff, Pastor Mike skipped up onto the stage in his suit. I was surprised how skinny he looked up there under all the lights. A lot of the time when he was preaching, he wore these big bulky sweaters and looked kind of dumpy.
Pastor Mike was so excited that he didn't even say a little opening prayer like usual. Instead, he announced in a loud voice that some donor, he wouldn't say who, had given enough money to pay for the whole new addition to the church. Then he made us all say a prayer thanking the Lord for being so kind to us. After that he started his sermon, but it was kind of boring and I didn't pay much attention.
After church let out I was hanging around in the lobby waiting for Mom, when I heard some old guy with a black patch over his left eye and a big scar on his chin saying that Pastor Mike had just given one of the best sermons he'd ever heard. He said that he'd grown up Catholic and then left the church for about forty years. Not too long ago he claimed he'd had a heart attack and started coming to The Lamb of the Redeemer Holy Ghost Worship and Revival Center to get back on good terms with the Lord before he hit the exit ramp for good. He said that if the priests had just preached “strong and true” like that while he was growing up, he might have turned out more religious.
I told him I was good friends with Pastor Mike, and he said I was a lucky boy. Then he rushed out the door to beat the traffic, because he said churchgoers were the worst drivers in the world, at least when it came to getting in and out of parking lots.
A few seconds later I saw Mom standing right next to Pastor Mike in the middle of all these old women who were talking up a storm. There were some guys too hovering along the edges. They kept trying to push through all the women so they could shake Pastor Mike's hand. But they were having a hard time of it.
I decided to slip outside with Chewy to go searching for snakes. Whoever it was must have given a pile of money, because they already had a big hole dug and these hefty steel girders set up nearly four stories high. Me and Chewy wandered around checking out all the heavy equipment, especially the backhoes, which to me anyway looked like iron monsters taking a nap. But pretty soon Chewy got bored sniffing hard metal and wanted to go out into the woods with the other living creatures.
I tagged along, and in no time I spotted a nice pretty black snake with little orange stripes and grabbed it by the tail. But when it tried to bite me, I clamped my fingers down on its head and reached into my pocket for some string, which I always kept handy for emergencies. I tied one end of the string to the stem of a big sturdy weed and the other end to the snake's tail. The snake didn't really like being tied up much, but I figured it would get the hang of it soon enough. I knew Mom wouldn't let me take a snake home with us in the car, so I planned to come back later on my own and get it. I could always keep it in a little cage I'd stashed away in the garage back behind Dad's old work bench where Mom never went.
It was harder than I expected getting the knot to hold, the snake being so slippery and slimy, but I finally got it fastened on good and tight. Then after telling the snake to settle down, I started poking around a little deeper into the woods.
Chewy was scampering around all excited now, scaring off the other snakes, because Chewy liked throwing her weight around out in the woods. I'd gone another fifty feet or so when all of a sudden I got a whiff of this really putrid smell, like a skunk or a deer had died close by. I started searching around for the body, but the smell was so bad that even when I pinched my nose tight between my fingers, I still felt like puking. Chewy must have been on the scent too, because she was headed toward a thick patch of evergreen trees with her snout nearly touching the ground and her tail wagging high and loose.
The stink was so awful that I was about to go back to the church when I saw it sticking up out of the weeds right in the middle of the evergreens. At first I thought it was just a big gray bag of garbage that somebody had dumped there. Then as I got closer and saw that it was a dead person, I started shivering so bad that I forgot all about how rank he smelled. His arms were poking up real rigid and hard and his legs were twisted around a little underneath him. There was a big dent in his skull too, and worms were crawling in and out of his eyeballs.
I ran back to the church yelling out his name and that he'd been murdered on account of the dent in his head, which I didn't think he'd done to himself. But then I remembered the little snake and stopped by to see how it was doing. The string was still tied to the weed, but the other end was loose and the snake was gone. It seemed like either some animal like a raccoon or a groundhog had come along and eaten it, or else the little snake had wriggled free and escaped. I decided that she must have slipped out on her own, because there wasn't even a drop of blood or guts on the ground. I didn't feel too bad about losing her either. With a dead body out in the woods the cops would soon be tramping around all over the place. And I didn't want the poor snake to get squished, since it wasn't her fault that the guy had gotten himself killed.
When I ran back inside the church and started telling everybody about the dead body lying right outside, you should have heard all the shrieking and gasping and wailing. It was like being down at the shrine when all the country folks rolled in speaking in tongues. Mom didn't seem too thrilled about me being the one to find the body either, but there wasn't much she could do about it now. She sat me down right beside her, while Pastor Mike and some of the others went outside to check out my story.
After a few minutes they came back and said that I wasn't making it up after all. So just like when news first got out about Mary's face appearing on the concrete, I got to be the center of attention for a while, especially a few minutes later when the cops showed up.
I recognized two of them right away, the round one and the skinny guy shaped like a crescent moon, the same ones who'd asked me all those dumb questions about Mary. I'd seen them hanging around the shrine a lot lately too. The skinny guy was always leaning up against the outside of Mary's house chattering into his cell phone. He must have been talking to his girlfriend because he kept using words like “honey” and “dear” and “don't get mad.” And whenever people came up to ask him where the restrooms were or something like that, he'd just turn his back on them and keep right on talking into his phone. The round cop liked strutting along Main Street twirling his billy club and throwing his weight at anybody who came too close, so that most of the pilgrims were scared even to go near him.
The round cop seemed to be the boss, and he told the skinny guy and two cops I'd never seen before to go outside and rope off the body, so people wouldn't go stomping on the evidence. Then he came over and asked me a bunch of questions about how I'd found the stiff, and whether I'd seen anybody sneaking around out there in the woods, and other simple-minded stuff like that. I answered every one of his dumb questions, but he didn't seem too happy about my answers because he kept asking me the same question two or three times. After he was finally through with me, he started lecturing anyone who'd listen how motive was the most important thing in any murder investigation.
“Once we find the person or persons with the proper motive, we'll solve this case in no time.”
When the round cop left to go check out the stiff firsthand, I asked Pastor Mike, who was sitting right next to Mom now with his arm around her shoulders, what motive meant. He said it was a reason, a good reason, he said, for killing somebody. I asked him if it was possible to have a good reason for killing somebody. He smiled and said that I'd scored a point on him there. Then I asked Mom what the big news was all about, and she said she was too upset now and that she'd tell me later. I asked her what she was so upset about, since it didn't seem to me like such a horrible thing that the guy was dead. But she shook her head kind of slow and weary and said that it was time for us to go home.