All the Sinners Bleed

by S.A. Cosby

“Flannery O’Connor said the South is Christ-haunted. It’s haunted, all right. By the hypocrisy of Christianity. All these churches, all these Bibles, but it’s places just like Charon where the poor are ostracized. Where girls are called whores if they report a rape. Where I can’t go to the Watering Hole without wondering if the bartender done spit in my drink. People say this kind of thing doesn’t happen in a place like Charon. Darlene, this kind of thing is what makes places like Charon run. It’s the rock upon which this temple is built,” Titus said. He tossed back the rest of his drink and stomped into the kitchen.

“Season of pain,” Titus said in a low voice.

“Titus, that’s not true. God walks with us in every moment of our lives. Even the darkest ones,” Albert said.

That everyone was making it up as they went along and religion was just another crutch, like liquor or weed.

Time had dulled that injury, but there was still a thirteen-year-old inside of him that hated his father just a little bit for that.

Ninety percent of his job was enforcing the law, but ten percent, the percentage most folks saw, was creating an image.

He knew he had to use that fear, break it and bend it to his will. There was a chasm everyone had to traverse at one time or another called failure. Fear was the bridge that carried you over that crevasse.

Small towns are like the people who populate them. They are both full of secrets. Secrets of the flesh, secrets of blood. Hidden oaths and whispered promises that turn to lies just as quick as milk spoils under a hot summer sun.

But its soul is a truth that can be scried from the sweat of illicit lovers, the blood that drops from the lips of the PTA president after her husband has had one too many, too many times. It can be augured from the serial numbers on the tens and twenties passed from the hands of Charon’s favorite sons and daughters to the men and women who sell them a taste of the quiet that sends them to dreamland drooling.

It’s there dancing among the fumes of a kerosene heater in a freezing trailer that snatches the breath from a mother, a father, a baby boy. It persists when all the niceties of civility fall away under the weight of their own impermanence. It can be divined in the eyes of the Wolf who buried seven young men and women under Tank Billups’s weeping willow tree. The Wolf who dreams of angels with their wings unfurled, their four faces rippling with a madness that comes from being too near the throne of God. The Wolf who revels in its secret. Who delights in hiding its true face. Yes, small towns are like the people who populate them. Eventually they will give up their secrets, but the price for those revelations is always paid in blood.

That was often how crimes were solved. Animus was a great motivator for vigilance.

“Must have been in ’88 or ’89. Otis was still alive. His parents had a little bungalow just down the road a piece. Every Sunday they would try and get us to go to church with them, and finally Otis convinced me to give in. That was a mistake. You ever been to one of those hooting-and-hollering services over there, Sheriff? It’s like watching End Times, the Musical. Then they bring out them damn snakes. I told Otis that was my first and last time attending a service at Holy fucking Rock. That Sunday just happened to be the same day Elias and Mare-Beth tried to pass off that boy as their own,” Griselda said.

Especially a mixed-race child that was being homeschooled by the goddamn Heaven’s Gate.”

“He talks an awful lot about God and the Bible, but my mama always said the devil can quote the Good Book as well as any angel. And Elias is as close to the devil as I wanna get.” She took a long drag off her cigarette.

“Henry Hillington was as mean and nasty as one of those snakes they dance with on Sunday mornings. A man like that hates himself and don’t know why, so he blames everybody else for the way he feels. He treated that boy worse than Elias did. He smacked him around, called him names, made fun of the way that boy walked and talked so much I hollered at him more than once to just leave him the fuck alone,” Griselda said. She stubbed out her cigarette and lit another one.

crab pots alone.

“If I’m being honest, Henry was the kind of man that was going to find someone to kill him sooner or later. And the way he treated that child, I ain’t waste no tears on him. But that poor boy. The kind of pain they put him through, the hatred they poured into him all in the name of what they called church, well, I don’t think one killing would be enough for him, do you? That kind of hurt stays hungry.” Griselda stubbed out her second cigarette. She said softly, “That kind of hurt has to eat.”

That’s a distinction without a difference.

“Revelation twenty-one: four,” the voice said.

“‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, there will be no more death, no more pain, for the old order of things has passed

away.’ Is this some biblical trivia game? Is that what you want to tell me? Because we don’t have time to tie this line up with foolishness,” Titus said in his best cop voice.

“Tell me, Sheriff, why do you think Jesus didn’t extend his hand from the heavens and wipe away the tears of those boys and girls as I carved the words of the Good Book in their skin?”

This was the Last Wolf speaking.

“Genesis nine: twenty through twenty-seven,” the voice said. “The Curse of Ham? Is that your justification for what you and Spearman and Latrell did? Is that why you targeted boys and girls?” Titus said gently.

“John ten through twelve.”

“Oh, Sheriff, did I finally get you? Let me give you a hint. Will you flee when you see me coming? Will you flee when the wolf comes to devour your flock?” the voice said.

“Yeah. Tell him I need to put a trace on my non-emergency number. The killer just called up here,” Titus said.

“You know this thing here, it’s more than a badge. It’s a promise. You put this on and you’re supposed to be giving your word that you will protect and serve, but more than that, you’re promising to do your very best to keep the people you serve safe. Keep their children safe. Their sons, their daughters. Their brothers and their sisters. That’s what it’s supposed to mean, anyway. That’s the dream, ain’t it? But when you break that promise, this star becomes a cheap piece of tin and you become a liar,” Titus said.

Doubt was gangrenous. Cutting it out was nearly impossible once it started.

“Because I know you’re lying. Here’s what else I know. Cole called up here to tell us about someone he thought might be dangerous. A person he’d done work for with his side job. He told us he partied with this person. That they used to hang out with some girls in a place that had angel art on the walls. I think you’re one of the girls. You and Cole and some other folks that we don’t know about used to get down at this place. Yeah, you got together at the service road, but that was just for quickies. This place is owned by someone you and Cole trusted. Except after my press conference Cole started thinking about this person. He started thinking about the place with the angel pictures. He called up here but lost his nerve. I think he confronted that person. Then that person asked you for a favor. Get Cole out the house. And you did it and now Cole’s dead. Just like those kids under the weeping willow tree. Because the person who killed Cole was the one who killed them too,” Titus said.

“If I was you, I’d worry about catching whoever killed them kids, whoever killed Cole. I’d worry about protecting my own flock.”

“When you talk to him, tell him I’m coming. Tell him I’m going to make him pay for what he did to those kids. And when he slits you open from neck to navel, remember we tried to help you.”

“We got a call yesterday from someone who knew details of the case no one besides us and the killer would know. He referenced a flock and how he was the wolf that was going to devour it. Then she says something to me about a flock.”

“Yes, I do. And I think he’s the Last Wolf,” Titus said.

Murder had stilled the beating heart of Charon’s economy.

“People keep their secrets, that’s for sure,” Titus said. Red DeCrain would have agreed with him if he wasn’t already dead.

Howls of anguish that should have made God reach down and touch Gene with the breath of life just to stop their torment.

But he had never seen that miracle, or any miracles, for that matter. And he still carried his own torment deep within the coldest chambers of his heart. In a place where his mother’s slack, dead face stared up at him out of the depths like a siren from the void.

Perhaps that was the miracle that confirmed the true believers’ faith.

Or maybe Reverend Jackson took advantage of a congregation bound so tight to the old church at the fork in the road by tradition and tribulations that they closed their eyes and turned their heads from the red in the church ledger. Perhaps they thought the red would change to black like the water turned to wine. Meanwhile, Reverend Jackson lived in one of the biggest houses in the county. Hallelujah, Titus thought.

Preach, because not all good prophets are great prophets thee coul be in disguise!

“Like get you a new car?” Titus asked. Reverend Jackson and Albert both stared at him.

I wish Jesus was real so he could chase you down the aisle with a goddamn whip,” Titus said.

and i oop :0

“This isn’t your church. You just stand in the pulpit,” Titus said.

“That building over there ain’t the Church. All that is sticks and stones and vinyl siding. The Church is what you and Gene was doing. I might not believe in it, but I can recognize it. Don’t you ever let that con man convince you otherwise, Pop.” Titus put his arm around his father.

“Psalm thirty-seven, verse twenty-five,” Albert said quietly. “‘For I have been young and now am old but I have never seen the righteous forsaken nor his seed begging for bread.’ You’re the righteous, Pop. Because of you, a lot of people have never had to beg for bread,” Titus said.

They stood there together side by side for a long time. Any tears they shed were hidden by the rain.

This poor creature had lost its life, but, much like sacrifices in the years of antiquity, a blessing might soon manifest from its spilled blood.

Children and animals were easy targets. Neither had learned to be wary of good intentions and sweet words.

THERE IS NO ESCAPE FROM THIS SAVAGE PLACE.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,’” Davy said. “‘He maketh me lay down in green pastures,’” Pip said. “‘He leadeth me beside the still waters,’” Steve said. Soon all three of them were chanting the rest of the Twenty-third Psalm in unison.