Midnight Crossroad

21

The next night, at the diner, the Rev preached after his dinner. He finished his food, patted his lips with his paper napkin, and stood up, turning to face the round table.

In a surprisingly deep, sonorous voice, he began to give them the Word as he interpreted it. Bobo put down his fork and folded his arms across his chest, prepared to listen. Olivia looked down at her plate regretfully and followed suit. On her left, Manfred was just beginning to cut his meat, but Olivia laid a hand on his arm. “Nope,” she whispered, not turning her gaze away from the Rev. “Respect.”

Another mysterious Midnight rule. Manfred resigned himself to waiting until the Rev was through, but he was peeved. He’d come in late, and he’d just gotten served—sadly, not by Creek, but by Madonna. His food was hot and smelled delicious, but here he sat, still and hungry.

As he listened, Manfred became interested despite himself. This was not the fire-and-brimstone message he’d been expecting, but an elaborate explanation that began with the Garden of Eden, detailing how God had created creatures that combined the features of animals and man, the were-creatures so feared today. The Rev believed that key verses had been deleted from the Bible so that bad men could repress the were-creatures, so that they would be humbled away from their pride in their superiority. The Rev believed that men only had power over the two-natured because of their vast numbers and their willingness to kill what they didn’t understand.

It was confusing but fascinating, even though Manfred’s mouth was still watering over the baked chicken and green beans with new potatoes that were cooling on his plate. The Rev certainly knew his Bible, and he knew a lot of extra scripture besides, verses that had been “left out.” Manfred now heard a few of those verses. “I’m amazed at how convincing that sounds,” he whispered to Joe on his left. To Manfred’s embarrassment and surprise, Joe seemed offended at his skepticism. Again, Manfred was at a loss.

For five more minutes the Rev rambled, and even Madonna stood behind the counter at attention during the impromptu sermon. Abruptly, the small man came to the end of what he had to say, and he concluded with “Amen!” His congregation echoed the word with varying degrees of enthusiasm. The Rev gave a decided nod, as if he were satisfied with the response. Then he stalked from the diner, his hat firmly planted on his head, his back straight as a ramrod.

“How often does he do that?” Manfred asked, hoping it was okay to inquire.

“Not often. Usually means he’s worried about something,” Joe said. “I didn’t mean to go all righteous on you, but the Rev believes what he says, and we go along with him. You don’t want to upset him.”

Manfred said, “Of course I don’t want to be rude to him . . . but you sound almost scared.”

“You would be, too, if you ever saw him angry,” Joe said, and then firmly turned the conversation in another direction. “Bobo, I saw the sheriff’s car at your place yesterday. Everything okay?”

“The sheriff said they’re satisfied with my alibi. Apparently, I’m in the clear.” Bobo didn’t look particularly happy, though. “And here’s another thing,” he said. “The gun, the one they found? It was from the shop, which I knew when they held it up. That day we found her.”

Everyone around the table froze for a moment. But Manfred got the distinct impression this was not news to several of the people at the table.

“But Smith said she wasn’t shot,” Bobo added.

Manfred said, “Great, man. Congratulations.” Then he realized that this was not the happiest wording, and he ate another bite of chicken. This is one of those nights I wish I’d stayed at home and opened a can of soup, he thought.

“What happened to her?” Joe asked Bobo. “Did the sheriff say?”

Manfred glanced up in time to see Bobo shake his head.

“So, you’re in the clear. Why are you so grim?” Olivia asked bluntly.

“Her family doesn’t want me at the funeral.” Bobo looked down at his plate. He mauled a potato with his fork.

Olivia went steely. “They can’t stop you if you want to go,” she said. “We’ll all go.”

Joe leaned forward, looked at each person at the table in turn. His eyes were very serious. “Do we want to make a terrible day worse for them? If Chuy were here, that’s what he’d be saying.”

There was an awkward silence. “No, we don’t want to do that,” Olivia said. “But if Bobo’s been cleared . . .”

“Smith told me he had let them know I didn’t kill her, but that they were still bitter,” Bobo said.

No one had a response to that. Manfred was able to finish his meal in peace.

Lemuel had not come in to sit with them that night. Fiji had taken home enough leftovers from her barbecue meal the night before that she was having her dinner at home. Chuy was visiting his brother in Fort Worth, so Joe had brought Rasta with him to the diner. The dog sat quietly in a compact circle by Joe’s chair. Joe was rigid about no one feeding him from the table.

Shawn Lovell had come in to get three to-go meals, and he’d given everyone a casual wave before carrying the bag of take-out containers back to the service station. Only Manfred, Bobo, Olivia, and Joe were left after the preacher exited.

As he finished his meal, Manfred wondered how Madonna managed to keep the diner doors open. But he was sure glad she did.

“I’m going to Fiji’s class on Thursday night,” he said. “I couldn’t say no. Anyone else want to try it out?”

“Sorry, I’m just not in the mood for strangers,” Bobo said, and Manfred felt a stab of envy that he had a good excuse.

“I have to pack,” Olivia said. “I have an early flight Friday.”

“Chuy is coming back on Thursday,” Joe said. “Sorry, buddy, seems like you’re flying solo.”

“Great,” Manfred said. He had already been kicking himself for agreeing to go to Fiji’s class, which would undoubtedly be all mystical kumbaya and talk of every woman’s inner goddess.

On Thursday evening, Manfred was kicking himself even harder. The women gathered in Fiji’s store ranged in age from twenty-one to sixty. A couple of the younger women had made an effort to look “witchy” in black dresses or leggings, heavy black eyeliner, and dyed black hair—Goth with pentagrams, he told himself. The older women tended to the scarves-and-skirts style of witchiness, though one lady in her early forties was cinched into a black leather bustier and a black lace skirt, with huge silver earrings swaying from her multiply pierced ears. Manfred felt like he’d come to a bad costume party, especially when the women stood to form a circle and held hands to begin their meditation. “The full moon will make tonight an especially favorable one for self-enlightenment,” Fiji told the group before she began the invocation.

Manfred had never linked his psychic ability to witchcraft, and he had no particular religious beliefs. Fiji’s directions to implore Hecate to help those present develop their powers left him just a bit bored and faintly contemptuous. He had no idea who Hecate was. Only his certainty that Fiji herself possessed real power kept him in the store and holding the right hand of the forty-something would-be hottie and the left hand of a white-haired grandmother in a sweeping skirt.

While Fiji implored and invoked, Manfred did the mental math about what he’d clear that month, and then abruptly his brain took a left turn down a dead-end road. He found himself catching a glimpse of the awful corpse of Aubrey Hamilton. As Fiji’s singsong voice went on and on, Aubrey’s skull, with its hanks of ragged hair, rotated toward him. The darkened teeth moved under their remnants of flesh and muscle. Horribly dead Aubrey said, “I truly loved him. Tell him.”

Manfred’s eyes flew open and he looked up to meet Fiji’s. She was looking at him steadily, as if she knew he’d had a true and direct communication. She smiled. And then her eyes shut and her head dropped again, and Manfred was left to compose a grocery list for his next trip to Davy to stave off any other unwanted revelations. As long as he told himself over and over again that he needed orange juice, bread, and peanut butter, plus lightbulbs, he could keep the dreadful vision at bay.

After those few seconds of freezing fear, he was bored silly. Two of the gray-haired women employed the Ouija board, which told them they were never too old for love. After that, there was a round of dream interpretation, though Manfred figured cynically that most of the dreams had been constructed well after the sleep session. If there was anyone approaching Fiji’s talent there that night, Manfred could not detect it. Since he always watched the money flow, he’d noticed right away that Fiji kept a pretty blue bowl on the counter, and he also noticed all the women dropped twenty dollars in it discreetly before they paraded out the door, chattering excitedly about astral projections and ley lines.

Fiji stood on her porch smiling after them, pleased with the evening and with herself, as far as Manfred could tell.

“Was that a typical class?” Manfred asked, making sure his tone was polite and respectful.

Possibly he hadn’t succeeded, because Fiji looked a bit taken aback.

“I would say so,” she said. “You got a true reading, didn’t you?”

“I had a vision,” he said, reluctantly. “At least, I guess it was a vision.”

“Tell me about it, if it wasn’t too personal.”

“It wasn’t personal at all. It was a message for someone else.” He described the brief scene. When Fiji heard about Aubrey’s corpse talking, she shuddered.

“Do you think I should tell him?” Manfred asked.

“Of course,” Fiji said immediately. But she looked anything but happy. “If you have a true vision, you should tell the person involved. He’ll be glad to hear that . . . if he believes you.”

“People mostly believe what they want to,” Manfred observed. “My whole business is based on that principle. How do you square this class with that piece of truth?”

Fiji’s round face was sad, and Manfred felt at once as though he’d kicked a puppy. After a moment, she returned to the easy chair she’d occupied during the “class.” She crossed her legs, and her boot-clad foot swung back and forth. “It’s like teaching ballet,” she said. “Or piano.” She looked very serious.

Manfred laughed. “You mean, ninety-nine percent of the students have no aptitude at all, but you keep doing it for the one student who has talent?”

“Exactly,” she said. She thought that over and nodded some more. “Plus, it gives them something to do, something to think about besides the here and now. That’s not a bad thing, either.”

“You sound like they were all fuzzy kittens,” Manfred said. “Don’t you ever worry about them doing harm with what you’re teaching them?”

“Meditation? Planchette work? Dream interpretation?”

“Witchcraft? Spells? Blood magic?”

“I don’t teach them that,” Fiji said indignantly.

“But it’s the next step. They’ll look at your books, ask you questions about your own spells, your own beliefs, and next thing you know . . .”

He could tell from the way she hunched her shoulders that this had already happened. “The next thing I know, what?” she snapped.

“You’ll have a dead husband or an enslaved boyfriend,” Manfred said, speaking what he knew to be the unpleasant truth. From the corner of his eye, he saw the marmalade cat with the stupid name leap up from its cushion to stare at him. “I like you, Fiji, and I hope we’re getting to be friends . . . but if you don’t think about the next step, you’re being irresponsible.” He shrugged and opened the front door. “Thanks for inviting me. See you later.” He couldn’t think of anything else to say, and Fiji didn’t open her mouth. After a moment of standing there feeling like a fool, and a jerk, Manfred left.

As he crossed the road, which was shockingly visible under the full moon, he chewed over his last pronouncement to Fiji. Though he was sorry they were at cross purposes, he still believed he’d spoken the truth. He gave a mental shrug, shoving the problem to the back burner. He noticed that Olivia’s car was gone from the rear of the pawnshop, and he was surprised she wasn’t home packing for her trip. Then he noticed that the pawnshop was closed. Lemuel ought to be in there. Well, that was strange but none of his business. As he was unlocking his front door, he glanced back to see Mr. Snuggly sitting at the edge of the yard, watching him.