He passed an old gas station he never remembered seeing before. Something about it, the suddenness of it, made him fumble for the brakes, the way it gleamed skull-white in the moonlight, its windows nothing but blank holes and the cinder block walls weeping rust and cracks. He lost control and skidded off the road, smacked a tree and bumped his head. It was a miracle he wasn’t killed outright.
He got out of the truck and that’s when he first saw the old man sitting in shadows.
That was the night his life changed.
Tonight, as he pulled beside the gas pump that was so old it had a hand-operated suction pump, the same figure sat in its usual place in a warped rocking chair. Roby had the feeling that, if he dropped by during the daytime, unexpectedly, the side of the road would be barren, or he’d find only a stand of stunted jack pines. He had an equal belief that the garage could be found in other places, on other dark stretches of roads that led to nowhere. The same garage, the same old man.
"Been expecting you," Johnny Divine said. His eyes shone, the only features visible amid the dark face.
"I got what you wanted," Roby said. He pulled the suitcase off the passenger seat, slid out of the truck, and walked across the crumbling old concrete tarmac.
"It’s not what I want, Mr. Snow," the old man said. "It’s what you need."
"I don’t need this. I never asked for this."
Johnny Divine’s laughter crept from the shadows, around the chipped corners of the low structure, down from the moon and up from the cold ground. "You most certainly did, sir. The first night we met. Said you’d do anything."
"I didn’t mean it like that."
The scratchy voice was almost sad. "They never do. I guess they never really do, when you get right down to it."
Roby held out the suitcase. "Here."
Johnny Divine didn’t take it. After a moment, Roby set the suitcase down near Johnny’s moccasined feet and moved a couple of steps backward. He heard a tapping sound, then saw the head of Johnny’s cane poking at the suitcase.
"Are you sure that’s the right one?" Johnny asked.
"Barnaby sent it special," Roby said. "Fresh."
"Unh-huh." Johnny leaned forward and Roby got a brief glimpse of his face, the blank eyes, the dark caverns of cheeks and eye sockets. A face that looked to have drawn its substance from the surrounding blackness, cobbled and knitted itself from the dirt, shaped itself in the cold forge of the night.
Johnny pulled the suitcase into the shadows and flipped the brass latches. Roby didn’t want to see what was inside.
On that first night, Johnny had sent him to Clawson’s Funeral Home with the empty suitcase. Barnaby hadn’t said a word, just looked him over as if they shared an unspoken secret, then took the suitcase. Roby had waited while Barnaby attended to some work in the back room. Barnaby then gave the suitcase back to Roby, several pounds heavier. And Roby had driven back out to Mule Camp and made the delivery to Johnny Divine.
Then Johnny had instructed Roby to go to the home of the deceased’s family and help ease the grief.
Roby hadn’t understood then, but now he knew plenty enough.
Enough to hold out his hand when Johnny Divine passed him the wrinkled sheet of paper.
"Would you please, sir?" Johnny Divine said. "My eyes aren’t so good anymore."
Roby read the name that ran across the top of the document. Glenn Claude Isenhour.
Roby didn’t know Isenhour, but he had a feeling he would soon be his second cousin. A member of the grieving family.
"You wouldn’t mind reading it aloud, would you?" Johnny said.
Roby cleared his throat and held the paper higher so that it caught more of the moonlight. He tried for a mixture of solemnity and energy with his voice, as if he were a news anchor.
"Glenn Claude Isenhour, age 72 of
1235 Pleasant Valley Road, Barkersville, died Thursday morning, September 18, at PickettCountyHospital following a long illness.
"Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour was born on December 27, 1930, to the late Otis Cornell Isenhour and the late Beulah Florence Cook Isenhour. Mister Isenhour was a veteran of the Korean War.
"Mister Isenhour was preceded in death by his wife, Sally Ruth Ridgehorn Isenhour. He is survived by a daughter, Mary Ruth Eggers, and a son, Glenn Claude Isenhour, Jr.; two grandchildren, Glenn Claude "Trey" Isenhour, III, and Emily Faye Isenhour; and a number of nieces and nephews.
"Funeral services for Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour will be conducted Saturday afternoon at 2 o’clock at the Clawson’s Funeral Home Chapel, officiated by the Reverend Barnaby Clawson. Burial to follow in the ShadyValleyBaptistChurch cemetery."
Roby paused, aware of his voice being the world’s only sound, as if the walls of the old garage, the surrounding forest, and the soft dark hills were all listening.
"Go on," Johnny Divine said. "You’re getting to the good part."
"The family will receive friends at the viewing Friday night before the service from 7 until 8 p.m. At other times, the family will be sitting at the home of Mary Ruth Eggers,
4752 Old Cove Road. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to V.F.W. Post 1393, Barkersville. Clawson’s Funeral Home is in charge of the arrangements."
Johnny sat back in his rocker as if he had just finished a heavy meal. "Mister Glenn Claude Isenhour."
"Do you know him?" Roby asked.
"I’ve made his acquaintance recently."
Roby looked longingly back at his truck.
"Don’t be in such a hurry," Johnny said.
How did he know? He couldn’t see.
But there were other kinds of sight. Some that saw through to the bone even in pitch-blackness. Some that looked right into your heart.
"I have a problem," Roby said.
"So I heard. Jacob told me all about it."
"What should I do?"
"Well, you wouldn’t want Jacob to show up for Judgment with only four-fifths of his soul. So you’d best find a way for that last family member to get a piece of the pie."
"What if I can’t?"
The cane tapped at the ground, steadily, four beats, five beats, then stopped. "You’ll find a way. Or you might just end up on the wrong side of this suitcase yourself."
"I’ve got the Ridgehorn viewing, then I’ll have to run over to the Isenhour sitting. I reckon the pie will be ready by tomorrow."
"Oh, sure. Beverly Parsons knows better than to let us down. Her daughter’s leukemia didn’t go into remission of its own accord. Unless you happen to believe in miracles."
Roby was sick of miracles. He’d seen too many, the bad kind, nothing holy or inspiring about them. He looked around at the trees, at the kudzu that draped them and smothered them. He wondered if anything could be worse than this endless cycle of sittings, his constant posing as a relative of the deceased, his strange and endless mission. He’d been privy to too many family secrets for families that weren’t his.
Roby peered into Johnny Divine’s pale, sightless eyes. "How many more, Johnny? How many times before I’ve paid what I owe?"
"I didn’t set up this game of living and dying. I got caught in the middle myself. You think I like sitting out here by this spooky damned garage in the dead of night, miles from nowhere?"
Roby had never considered the strange man’s motives. Barnaby Clawson made an earthly profit, Roby and Beverly Parsons benefited in their own selfish ways. The dead counted on these strange transactions to aid their journey to a mysterious Judgment in a plane beyond this one. But Johnny Divine seemed tied to both worlds, the one of battered suitcases and broken-down garages as well as the one of shadows and spirits.
Though Roby had been raised a Baptist, he’d learned new rules of the road since meeting Johnny Divine. God and the devil had no place here. Unless Johnny Divine was one or the other. Or both.