The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,47
about three o’clock. I’m going to have something for you.’
‘Something from the Preacher?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
Ruby chose her words with care. ‘There’s something else I need you to get from him,’ she said. ‘If he’s still got it. Can you do that for me?’
Carson Tatum just smiled.
The carnival was small, worn out. It smelled of axle grease and spun sugar and despair. Whatever it had once been, it was no longer. In fact, it was not much of a midway at all. There was a small Ferris wheel, a carousel with painted horses, a track with only four little cars, along with the usual games of chance. There were a half-dozen food stands offering elephant ears, funnel cakes, caramel apples. Fireworks were promised.
Ruby had been here before. She knew this the moment she stepped onto the field, and the knowledge electrified her senses.
She had been here in her dreams.
Ruby took the boy by the hand, gave the man at the front booth their tickets. She looked to the edge of the field and, as expected, saw the black dogs. She had long ago stopped trying to tell which dogs were which. Ruby figured they were probably on their fourth or fifth litter. But there were always two. And they were always near.
At three o’clock she saw Carson standing by the carousel. Ruby and the boy walked over. Carson took them behind one of the stands.
‘Big news. He’s about to pack it in,’ Carson said of the Preacher. ‘I just heard that he is going to go to –’
Philadelphia, Ruby thought.
‘– Philadelphia,’ Carson said. ‘He lived there at one time, you know.’
Ruby knew. She had read the Preacher’s book. When the Preacher’s mama left Jubal Hannah, and moved to North Philadelphia, the Preacher was only four.
Ruby knew the past, just as she could see the future in her dreams. She saw her son grown tall and strong and wise. She saw him silhouetted against the waters of the Delaware River, at long last free from the devil within him.
‘Preacher said he’s gonna start a mission up to Philadelphia,’ Carson continued. ‘A storefront church of sorts. Maybe a second-hand store.’
This was in her dreams, too.
‘Did you get what I asked?’ Ruby asked.
‘Yes, missy. I sure did.’
Carson looked around, reached into his coat, took out a thick paper bag. He handed it to Ruby.
‘Let him think it was me,’ Carson said.
Ruby hefted the sack. It was much heavier than she thought it was going to be. ‘What else is in here?’
When Ruby peeked inside she almost fainted. In addition to what she asked Carson to get for her there was a fat wad of money.
‘There should be forty thousand there,’ Carson said. ‘You take it and go make a life.’
Ruby forced down her sense of shock, hugged Carson long and hard and tearfully, watched him walk away. He had developed a limp on the right side. An affliction, she imagined, from all the heavy lifting he had done for the Preacher.
When Ruby paid her two spool tickets for the carousel, and she and the boy stepped on the platform, she saw Abigail and Peter for the first time in years. How big they had grown. Her heart ached with their nearness. She wanted to throw her arms around them like she had when they were small. She couldn’t.
A few minutes later she saw the Preacher. Despite his troubles and the intervening years he still looked beautiful. Ruby reckoned she would have seen him this way no matter what he did to her.
He did not see her.
The Preacher put Abigail and Peter on horses. It all seemed to happen in slow motion, as Ruby imagined it had for St John.
The Preacher chose a white horse for Peter, a red one for Abigail. The two children were fraternal twins, but now they looked a great deal alike, as if they were identical.
Ruby then saw the Preacher put a small boy on a black horse. Ruby did not have to wonder whose child this was. The boy looked just like the teenaged girl standing by the cotton candy stand, the thin, nerve-jangled girl named Bethany, the girl who had come after Ruby. Ruby wondered how many girls there had been since.
Ruby helped her boy onto the horse directly across from where the Preacher stood. This horse was old, unpainted. Its eyes were a faded gray, but most surely had one time been a coal black, as black as the dogs that were always near.