She knew that he was talking just to soothe her. He had noticed how distraught she was. He wanted to settle her down so they could discuss it in a calm, reasonable manner. She didn't mind. She needed to be soothed.
Having cracked all four eggs, he turned the sausages with a fork, then opened a drawer and took out a spatula, which he placed on the counter near the egg pan. As he got plates, knives, and forks for the table, he said, "You look more than a little scared, Chrissie, like you'd just seen a ghost. You can calm down now. After so many years of schooling and training, if a young priest can be afraid of making a mistake at Mass, then anyone can be afraid of anything. Most fears are things we create in our own minds, and we can banish them as easily as we called them forth."
"Maybe not this one," she said.
"We'll see."
He transferred eggs and sausages from frying pans to plates.
For the first time in twenty-four hours, the world seemed right. As Father Castelli put the food on the table and encouraged her to dig in, Chrissie sighed with relief and hunger.
8
Shaddack usually went to bed after dawn, so by seven o'clock Thursday morning he was yawning and rubbing at his eyes as he cruised through Moonlight Cove, looking for a place to hide the van and sleep for a few hours safely beyond Loman Watkins's reach. The day was overcast, gray and dim, yet the sunlight seared his eyes.
He remembered Paula Parkins, who'd been torn apart by regressives back in September. Her 1.5-acre property was secluded, at the most rural end of town. Though the dead woman's family — in Colorado — had put it up for sale through a local real-estate agent, it had not sold. He drove out there, parked in the empty garage, cut the engine, and pulled the big door down behind him.
He ate a ham sandwich and drank a Coke. Brushing crumbs from his fingers, he curled up on the blankets in the back of the van and drifted toward sleep.
He never suffered insomnia, perhaps because he was so sure of his role in life, his destiny, and he had no concern about tomorrow. He was absolutely convinced he would bend the future to his agenda.
All of his life Shaddack had seen signs of his uniqueness, omens that foretold his ultimate triumph in any pursuit he undertook.
Initially he had noticed those signs only because Don Runningdeer had pointed them out to him. Runningdeer had been an Indian — of what tribe, Shaddack had never been able to learn — who had worked for the judge, Shaddack's father, back in Phoenix, as a full-time gardener and all-around handyman. Runningdeer was lean and quick, with a weathered face, ropy muscles, and calloused hands; his eyes were bright and as black as oil, singularly powerful eyes from which you sometimes had to look away … and from which you sometimes could not look away, no matter how much you might want to. The Indian took an interest in young Tommy Shaddack, occasionally letting him help with some yard chores and household repairs, when neither the judge nor Tommy's mother was around to disapprove of their boy doing common labor or associating with "social inferiors." Which meant he hung out with Runningdeer almost constantly between the ages of five and twelve, the period during which the Indian had worked for the judge, because his parents were hardly ever there to see and object.
One of the earliest detailed memories he had was of Runningdeer and the sign of the self-devouring snake….
He had been five years old, sprawled on the rear patio of the big house in Phoenix, among a collection of Tonka Toys, but he'd been more interested in Runningdeer than in the miniature trucks and cars. The Indian was wearing jeans and boots, shirtless in the bright desert sun, trimming shrubs with a large pair of wood-handled shears. The muscles in Runningdeer's back, shoulders, and arms worked fluidly, stretching and flexing, and Tommy was fascinated by the man's physical power. The judge, Tommy's father, was thin, bony, and pale. Tommy himself, at five, was already visibly his father's son, fair and tall for his age and painfully thin. By the day he showed Tommy the selfdevouring snake, Runningdeer had been working for the Shaddacks two weeks, and Tommy had been increasingly drawn to him without fully understanding why. Runningdeer often had a smile for him and told funny stories about talking coyotes and rattlesnakes and other desert animals. Sometimes he called Tommy "Little Chief," which was the first nickname anyone had given him. His mother always called him Tommy or Tom; the judge called him Thomas. So he sprawled among his Tonka Toys, playing with them less and less, until at last he stopped playing altogether and simply watched Runningdeer, as if mesmerized.
He was not sure how long he lay entranced in the patio shade, in the hot dry air of the desert day, but after a while he was surprised to hear Runningdeer call to him.
"Little Chief, come look at this."
He was in such a daze that at first he could not respond. His arms and legs would not work. He seemed to have been turned to stone.
"Come on, come on, Little Chief. You've got to see this."
At last Tommy sprang up and ran out onto the lawn, to the hedges surrounding the swimming pool, where Runningdeer had been trimming.
"This is a rare thing," Runningdeer said in a somber voice, and he pointed to a green snake that lay at his feet on the sun-warmed decking around the pool.
Tommy began to pull back in fear.
But the Indian seized him by the arm, held him close, and said, "Don't be afraid. It's only a harmless garden snake. It's not going to hurt you. In fact it's been sent here as a sign to you."
Tommy stared wide-eyed at the eighteen-inch reptile, which was curled to form an 0, its own tail in its mouth, as if eating itself. The serpent was motionless, glassy eyes unblinking. Tommy thought it was dead, but the Indian assured him that it was alive.
"This is a great and powerful sign that all Indians know," said Runningdeer. He squatted in front of the snake and pulled the boy down beside him.
"It is a sign," he whispered, "a SUPERNATURAL sign, sent from the great spirits, and it's always meant for a young boy, so it must have been meant for you. A very powerful sign."
Staring wonderingly at the snake, Tommy said, "Sign? What do you mean? It's not a sign. It's a snake."
"An omen. A presentiment. A sacred sign," Runningdeer said.
As they hunkered before the snake, he explained such things to Tommy in an intense, whispery voice, all the while holding him by one arm. Sun glare bounced off the concrete decking. Shimmering waves of heat rose from it too. The snake lay so motionless that it might have been an incredibly detailed jeweled choker rather than a real snake — each scale a chip of emerald, twin rubies for the eyes. After a while Tommy drifted back into the queer trance that he'd been in while lying on the patio, and Runningdeer's voice slithered serpentlike into his head, deep inside his skull, curling and sliding through his brain.
Stranger still, it began to seem that the voice was not really Runningdeer's at all, but the snake's. He stared unwaveringly at the viper and almost forgot that Runningdeer was there, for what the snake said to him was so compelling and exciting that it filled Tommy's senses, demanded his entire attention, even though he did not fully understand what he was hearing. This is a sign of destiny, the snake said, a sign of power and destiny, and you will be a man of great power, far greater than your father, a man to whom others will bow down, a man who will be obeyed, a man who will never fear the future because he will make the future, and you will have anything you want, anything in the world. But for now, said the snake, this is to be our secret. No one must know that I've brought this message to you, that the sign has been delivered, for if they know that you are destined to hold power over them, they will surely kill you, slit your throat in the night, tear out your heart, and bury you in a deep grave. They must not know that you are the king-to-be, a god-on-earth, or they will smash you before your strength has fully flowered. Secret. This is our secret. I am the self-devouring snake, and I will eat myself and vanish now that I've delivered this message, and no one will know I've been here. Trust the Indian but no one else.