“Unclasp your belt,” said Louis.
The knife man paused for a moment, then did as he was told.
“Now pull it out.”
He grasped it and pulled. The belt caught once or twice before it freed the scabbard and the knife fell to the floor.
“That’s good enough.”
“I still got a problem.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Louis replied. “You Willard Hoag?”
The sunken eyes betrayed nothing. They remained fixed on the interloper’s face, unblinking.
“I know you?”
“No, you don’t know me.”
Something danced in Willard’s eyes. “You niggers all look the same to me anyways.”
“Guessed you’d take that point of view, Willard. Man behind you is Clyde Benson. And you-” The SIG lifted slightly in front of the bartender. “You Little Tom Rudge.”
The redness in Little Tom’s face was due only partly to the heat of the burning liquor. There was fury building in him. It was there in the trembling of his lips, in the way his fingers were clasping and unclasping. The action made the tattoo on his arm move, as if the angels were slowly waving the banner with the name “Kathleen.”
And all of that anger was directed at the black man now threatening him in his own bar.
“You want to tell me what’s happening here?” asked Little Tom.
Louis smiled.
“Atonement, that’s what’s happening here.”
It is ten after ten when the woman stands. They call her Grandma Lucy, although she is not yet fifty and still a beautiful woman with youth in her eyes and few lines on her dark skin. At her feet sits a boy, seven or eight years old, but already tall for his age. A radio plays Bessie Smith’s “Weeping Willow Blues.”
The woman called Grandma Lucy wears only a nightdress and shawl, and her feet are bare, yet she rises and walks through the doorway, descending the steps into the yard with careful, measured strides. Behind her walks the little boy, her grandson. He calls to her-“Grandma Lucy, what’s the matter?”-but she does not reply. Later she will tell him about the worlds within worlds, about the places where the membrane separating the living from the dead is so thin that they can see one another, touch one another. She will tell him of the difference between day-walkers and nightwalkers, of the claims that the dead make upon those left behind.
And she will talk of the road that we all walk, and that we all share, the living and the dead alike.
But for now she just gathers her shawl closer to her and continues toward the edge of the forest, where she stops and waits in the moonless night. There is a light among the trees, as if a meteor has descended from the heavens and is now traveling close to the ground, flaming and yet not flaming, burning and yet not burning. There is no heat, but something is ablaze at the heart of that light.
And when the boy looks into her eyes, he sees the burning man.
“You recall Errol Rich?” said Louis.
Nobody responded, but a muscle spasmed in Clyde Benson’s face.
“I said, do you recall Errol Rich?”
“We don’t know what you’re talking about, boy,” said Hoag. “You got the wrong men.”
The gun swiveled, then bucked in Louis’s hand. Willard Hoag’s chest spat blood through the hole in his left breast. He stumbled backward, taking a stool with him, then landed heavily on his back. His left hand scrambled at something unseen on the floor, and then he was still.
Clyde Benson started to cry, and then it all went down.
Little Tom dived to floor of the bar, his hands seeking the shotgun beneath the sink. Clyde Benson kicked a stool at Angel, then ran for the door. He got as far as the men’s room before his shirt puffed twice at the shoulder. He stumbled through the back door and disappeared, bleeding, into the darkness. Angel, who had fired the shots, went after him.
The crickets had grown suddenly quiet and the silence in the night had a strange anticipatory quality, as though the natural world awaited the inevitable outcome of the events in the bar. Benson, unarmed and bleeding, had almost made it to the edge of the parking lot when the gunman caught up with him. His feet were swept from under him and he landed painfully in the dirt, blood flecking the ground before him. He began to crawl toward the long grass, as if by reaching its cover he might somehow be safe. A boot caught him under the chest, skewering him with white hot pain as he was forced onto his back, his eyes squeezing shut involuntarily. When they opened again, the man in the loud shirt was standing over him and his gun was pointed at Clyde Benson’s head.
“Don’t do this,” said Benson. “Please.”
The younger man’s face was impassive.
“Please,” said Benson. He was sobbing. “I repented of my sins. I found Jesus.”
The finger tightened on the trigger, and the man named Angel said:
“Then you got nothing to worry about.”
In the darkness of her pupils the burning man stands, the flames shooting from his head and arms, his eyes and mouth. There is no skin, no hair, no clothing. There is only fire shaped like man, and pain shaped like fire.
“You poor boy,” whispers the woman. “You poor, poor boy.”
The tears begin to well up in her eyes and fall softly onto her cheeks. The flames start to flicker and waver. The burning man’s mouth opens and the lipless gap forms words that only the woman can hear. The fire dies, fading from white to yellow until at last there is only the silhouette of him, black on black, and then there is nothing but the trees and the tears and the feel of the woman’s hand upon the boy’s own-“Come, Louis.”-as she guides him back to the house.
The burning man is at peace.
Little Tom rose up with the shotgun to find the room empty and a dead man on the floor. He swallowed once, then moved to his left, making for the end of the counter. He got three steps when the wood splintered at the level of his thigh and the bullets ripped through him, shattering his left femur and his right shin. He collapsed and screamed as his wounded legs impacted on the floor, but still managed to empty both barrels through the cheap wood of the bar. It exploded in a shower of shot and splinters and shattering glass. He could smell blood and powder and spilled whiskey. His ears rang as the noise faded, leaving only the sound of dripping liquid and falling timber.
And footsteps.
He looked to his left to see Louis standing above him. The barrel of the SIG was pointing at Little Tom’s chest. He found some spittle in his mouth and swallowed. Blood was fountaining from the ruptured artery in his thigh. He tried to stop it with his hand but it sprayed through his fingers.
“Who are you?” asked Little Tom. From outside came the sound of two shots as Clyde Benson died in the dirt.
“Last time: you recall a man named Errol Rich?”
Little Tom shook his head. “Shit, I don’t know…”
“You burned him. You ought to know.”
Louis aimed the SIG at the bridge of the bartender’s nose. Little Tom raised his right arm and covered his face.
“I remember! I remember! Jesus. Yes, I was there. I saw what they did.”
“What you did.”
Little Tom shook his head furiously.
“No, you’re wrong. I was there, but I didn’t hurt him.”
“You’re lying. Don’t lie to me, just tell me the truth. They say confession is good for the soul.”
Louis lowered the gun and fired. The top of Little Tom’s right foot disappeared in a blur of leather and blood. He shrieked then as the gun moved toward his left foot, the words erupting from his gut like old bile.
“Stop, please. Jesus, it hurts. You’re right, we did it. I’m sorry for what we did to him. We were younger then, we didn’t know no better. It was a terrible thing we did, I know it was.” His eyes pleaded with Louis. His whole face was bathed in sweat, like that of a man melting. “You think a day don’t go by when I don’t think about him, about what we did to him? You think I don’t live with that guilt every day?”