Westside Saints, page 20
“I did. A long time ago. I was in the basement when that fire started. I smelled the smoke, choked on it. I was about to give up when my father stormed down those stairs and got us out. He saved my life, and he would have saved Barney’s, too.”
Judy leaned on the window, which swayed under her weight. She stared out at the snow-covered branches that twisted out into the dark. She said, to no one in particular: “He didn’t kill himself. He wasn’t called up to heaven.”
“He ran as far as he could go,” said Mary.
“He ran here.”
Helen jerked Mary out of her chair and pulled her close. She wasn’t threatening her, not quite, but they were awfully close to the drop.
“What does that do for my daughter?” said Helen. “What does it do for Ruth?”
“Nothing,” said Mary, like she wished she knew how to say sorry. I approached Helen, slowly, lest I startle her, and inched Mary away from the ledge.
“What happened to Ruth wasn’t Mary’s fault,” I said. “It was Bully’s . . . and it was mine.”
Helen pulled, harder than I thought possible, wrenching Mary away from me. Mary stumbled, tripping on a bit of frayed carpet, but Helen did not let Mary fall. Stretching her arm out straight, Helen held Mary right against the edge of that impossible room.
“Prove it,” Helen said. “Prove it beyond doubt, or this one dies.”
“She can’t prove it,” said Enoch, smashing something porcelain against the floor, “because it isn’t true.”
“Miss Carr,” said Mary, “perhaps the time for rhetoric has passed.”
I walked up to Helen, and she squeezed Mary tighter. I walked right past them, right to the door to Bully’s room. It was locked. I kicked it open. It was empty.
“Here’s your proof,” I said. “Bully is gone.”
Helen hurled Mary into one of the armchairs and pushed past me to confirm what she’d already known was true. She looked around the room.
“And the silver, too,” she said.
“Where the hell did he go?” said Judy.
“Nowhere,” said Enoch. He rushed into the empty room to search every barren corner. “He can’t have left again.”
I felt sorry for Enoch, who wanted his daddy as much as he wanted the miracle. But the latter didn’t exist, and on the Westside, the former was just as hard to hang on to.
There was another scream from upstairs. It didn’t seem to touch them. Helen circled the empty bedroom, flipping stray bits of furniture over the edge into the dark. Judy entered the bedroom and inspected the harnesses and winch she’d used to spirit Mary into the sky. One harness was missing. She wrapped the other around her waist and called her mother back.
“Lower me, Mam, and don’t be shy about it,” she said. “That bastard. The minute he staggered into the church, I knew, I knew, I knew.”
Enoch sobbed softly. Another howl from upstairs. Helen nodded to Judy, who stepped backward into space. The winch spun and caught, and Helen slowly lowered her down. A third scream from upstairs, rough and bloody.
“I can’t take that,” said Mary.
“Me either,” I said, but there were things I had to know before Ruth died. On leaden feet, we mounted the stairs. They seemed to float between the trees. At the top, nestled against a smooth white pine, a doorway opened onto what might have been called a bedroom, but which was really just a platform, where a cast-iron bed sat by a burning lantern, raked by ceaseless wind. It looked a lonely place to die.
I sat in a hard chair at the head of the bed, pulling it as far as possible from the edge. It was quiet enough that I could hear my heart pounding and feel the cold sweat on my palms. I wasn’t sure if it was vertigo or fear of the woman buried under the heap of wool blankets.
Her right hand was exposed, and her face, too. They’d cleaned most of the blood and found a way to slow the bleeding, but her neck and dress were streaked with dried gore. Her face was loosely bandaged in a torn muslin gown that was soaked through with crimson and needed changing soon. It showed part of her mangled jaw, where her ragged, burnt lips framed what remained of her mouth.
Her eyes were open, and she must have recognized me, because she peered over the bandages with as much hate as I had ever seen.
“Ruth,” I said. I meant to apologize, somehow, to say that even though I thought her crooked I’d never meant for her to come to this kind of harm, but before I could say anything, she groaned, as deep and rough as an iron door sliding over stone. No apology could touch that pain. There were heavy steps on the stairs. I looked down and saw Enoch bounding up from the room below. Mary locked the door and pressed herself against it.
“Did you bring your father back?” I said. She shook her head, barely, side to side. “Who did?” She shook her head again.
“Hurry up,” said Mary.
“That’s my sister in there!” shouted Enoch. “You can’t keep us out.”
He banged hard enough to shake the trees. Blood pooled on Ruth’s neck. She squirmed under the quilts.
“Hot,” she said. “Hot.”
The talking shook her bandages loose and started the bleeding anew. I peeled off quilt after quilt until she was exposed to the air, her bloodied dress clinging to her clammy skin, her sweat starting to freeze. She breathed a little easier as the cold embraced her, and she croaked something that might have been thanks.
I touched her forehead, expecting it to scorch my hand, but her skin was cold and getting colder. Her fingers dug into the sheets; her mouth twisted, and the last of the bandages fell away. She groaned again, as fiercely as the women laboring in Mrs. Greene’s birthing center, but without the hope.
“Goddamn it, Gilda,” shouted Enoch. The door started to splinter. “Mam!”
Ruth gurgled, then spit out the blood streaming into her mouth and grunted some kind of sound. She said it again.
It sounded like, “Róisín.”
“Did you take the finger?” I said. She swayed her head. “Who did?”
The door burst open, knocking Mary to the ground. Enoch came halfway through and stopped, frozen and pale. Helen was a few steps behind him, hurtling up the stairs. They hung there, fixed in space like the steps that dangled from the trees, and paused for a long moment before Ruth finished her final sermon.
“Him,” she said.
Helen slammed me out of the way. I hit the floor hard but did not feel it. She dragged the blankets back onto her daughter. She knelt at her side and tried to kiss the life back into her face, but Ruth was gone.
I thought Helen was going to explode. She did not. She straightened the blankets, tucking them down tight on the side of the bed, then dabbed some of the blood away from Ruth’s mouth. She took her place in the chair and held her daughter’s hand.
“Mrs. Byrd,” said Mary, but there were no words after that. I took Mary’s hand and led her back to the stairs.
“Not now,” I said. “Not ever.”
We found Enoch in the downstairs bedroom, fumbling with the winch, trying to get one of the harnesses back up so that he could escape us, too. We dragged him back into the parlor. I slammed him into the hardest chair.
“Where’s the finger?” I said.
“I don’t know,” he said. “That’s why we hired you.”
From the coffee table, Mary picked up a handsomely printed Enoch Byrd Bible. I didn’t think much of it. I was focused on Enoch—sweet, honest Enoch—wondering how someone so gentle could lie.
I took the NYPD report off the table.
“You were how old when this happened?” I said.
“Ten.”
“When your father disappeared, where did you think he went?”
“Mam said he’d been called back to heaven. I wasn’t stupid. I’d seen his eyes when he realized he couldn’t go back for Barney, and I wasn’t surprised when he chose to die.”
“Only now you know that he didn’t die. He came here.”
“That’s not possible.”
“And resurrection is?”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” he said, almost shouting. He pushed his hand through his hair, trying to smooth back some of the strands that his passion had sprung free. “We’ve built airships to cross oceans, machines to talk to people on the other side of the globe, telescopes to stare into the deepest reaches of space. Why can’t we conquer death?”
“You sound like you’ve been asking yourself that for a long time.”
From the pocket of his jacket he pulled a yellow notebook whose front cover was peeling apart. He tossed it onto the table.
“My inheritance,” he said. “Every sermon my pap ever wrote. Not a word in there that isn’t a lie—until you get to the last page.”
The book’s spine was cracked such that it opened right to Bully’s final testimony—a few lines of pure gibberish, followed by a recipe for blue fire.
“Why do you say this is true?” I said.
“Because it’s Latin. It’s real. Bully preached in English—the common tongue. If he needed some Latin, he made it up.”
“So that means it can raise the dead?”
Enoch shrugged.
“Did you ever try it?” I said.
“Hundreds of times. I mixed the blue powder. I burned it over a cedar fire. I said the words, every way I could think.”
“And it doesn’t work.”
“I couldn’t get it there. I was too weak.”
The Bible cracked shut, loud as a bull whip, and Mary dropped it on the table. “Second Kings, chapter thirteen, verse twenty-one!” she shouted. “He’s lying, Gilda. He took the finger. The Bible says so.”
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“I knew it. Sure as I know that this bob makes me look stupendous, I knew I’d heard this story before.”
“Don’t you dare use that book against me,” said Enoch. “I printed it myself.”
“And a very fine job you did, too, but that doesn’t change Second Kings: ‘And it came to pass, as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha: and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet.’”
“The bones of Elisha,” I said.
“Or failing him, a saint. Just the thing to put a little kick in Enoch Byrd’s patented resurrection powder.”
“You stole it. You ground it into dust. Am I wrong?”
“No,” he whispered. From his pocket he took a little snuffbox monogrammed E. B. He opened it, and I saw blue powder flecked with gray.
“You went to the old church,” I said. “You performed the ceremony. No one in your family knew what you were doing.”
“I didn’t think it was going to work. It never had before. I felt so guilty, I didn’t even put any feeling into the words, but as soon as that powder hit the cedar—”
“A turquoise gate opened in the threshold,” said Mary.
“How did you know?”
“I’m a woman. I know all sorts of things. Bully came through the gate, followed hot on his heels by the most handsome, doomed man the fire department ever spit out. What happened next?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did Bully kill Tom?”
“I swear to you—”
“Did you kill him?”
“No!”
“Then what happened?”
She held the arms of his chair in her hands, looking ready to fling him into the night. I steadied her. She shook me off.
“I never saw anybody come out of that gate,” he said. He guided my hand to the back of his skull, where I found a lump like a chunk of coal. “Whoever killed your friend knocked me out first. I woke an hour later. It took three days for the headache to subside. I didn’t see him till everyone else did, when he showed up at the church.”
“So you thought you’d brought him back from death?” I said.
“And for a day or two, I felt the relief that comes from feeling like your life hasn’t been a waste, after all.”
He lifted his head and stared up with wet, red eyes. If he wanted sympathy, I was past giving it.
“What was the plan for the resurrection ceremony?” I said.
“Get the silver, perform the rite, and get the hell out of there before the crowd saw that it wasn’t going to work.”
“It was Bully’s plan?”
“And Ruth’s. They built a trapdoor in the stage. I didn’t like it—”
“But you went along with it.”
“He was my father. What else was I supposed to do?”
“Did Bully disappoint you?”
“In what way?”
“The greed. The lying. The truth. Did it break your heart? Or were you just happy to have him home?”
“Yes. Both of those things, all at once.”
There was no point telling him, but I understood.
A boot crunched on a branch overhead, sending a little flurry down onto the carpet. A Gladstone bag dropped from the tree, thudding onto the floor, and was followed by Bully Byrd, his hair wild, his hat missing, his collar no longer spotlessly white. He landed easily, strode across the floor, and placed his hand on Enoch’s shoulder.
“That was a lovely story,” he said, “and before you girls waste any more time arguing, I’ll confirm it’s true.”
“Then you killed Tom,” said Mary.
“I didn’t, but I know you don’t believe me and I don’t particularly care. I’ve never been much for murder.”
“Just arson,” I said. “Let the fire do your killing for you.” His smile dulled.
“That was an accident.”
“Tell that to Barney. Or Ruth, for that matter. You are really hell on this family, you know that?”
“I love my children, and that’s the most any man can do.”
“Quit your lies,” said Enoch, not looking his young father in the eye. Bully knelt before him and took his hands.
“Please, son,” said Bully. “You think I don’t love you? I remember the minute you were born. I can still feel the weight of you on my chest, the touch of those little fists, the look of those midnight blue eyes. I feel like it happened this morning. How could I ever stop loving that sweet little boy?”
Bully hugged Enoch, and for just a moment, Enoch’s face relaxed. Then Bully jerked away, the snuffbox in his hand. I reached to snatch it, but he was quicker than me. He pulled back, and I lost my balance, falling over the table just in time to see him grab the yellow notebook, throw his Gladstone over his shoulder, and start for the winch. Helen was waiting for him, though, her face like a corpse frozen in ash.
“Stop,” she said. “You’ve hurt us enough.”
Bully didn’t answer, and he didn’t break stride. He threw the Gladstone bag right at her chest. The weight of that silver knocked her backward, just half a step.
And then she was in midair.
And then she was gone.
Fifteen
Bully leapt for the line that led to Judy’s harness. He slid down in an instant. The moon was gone and the night was dark, and I did not see where Bully had gone. I was steeling myself for the jump when Enoch grabbed my shoulder and said, “We’re taking the stairs.”
They led down to a broad branch that stretched across the void into a half-ruined building. After just a moment’s deference to my terror, I raced across it, trusting the luck of idiots to carry me over the span.
When my feet hit hard, sensible tile, I allowed myself a breath for the first time in an hour or more. Mary and Enoch touched down beside me. Mary clapped a hand on my shoulder hard enough to make me flinch.
“I had no idea you could move so fast,” she said, panting.
“Where did he go?” said Enoch.
“The church,” I said. “It could only be the church.”
“Follow me,” he said. “I can find the way.”
He ran to the far side of the empty building. The floors were inconsistent—in some places solid tile, in others wood, in others open entirely to show the branches below. A match revealed flickering, dancing shapes that on closer inspection turned out to be dressmaker’s models, padded flesh rotted away to expose their bent steel bones. Ever a gentleman, Enoch held open the fire door and we passed into the stairwell, which wound around a pair of skinny pines.
After a long walk down, we found ourselves on solid ground. I could have kissed the snow. The shadowy landscape of trees and brick was alien to Mary and me, but Enoch hadn’t lied—he knew the path. He led us down one twisting street overrun with spindly little pines and up an alleyway formed in the gaps between two fallen buildings. We ran hard enough to drive the breath from our lungs. At the end of the path was a clearing, and through the clearing burned a fire.
Bully stood before the stone arch of his ruined church, his shadow fifty feet tall on the trees across the street, holding the notebook and screaming in Latin. His other hand held a fistful of blue powder, flecked with the dust of the saint’s bones, ready to hurl it into the flames.
He was too enchanted by the sound of his own voice to hear us approach. Just as his speech climaxed, I tried to grab the notebook out of his hand. He spun away with a jackal’s grin and hurled the powder into the flames.
I felt the explosion before I heard it. The force knocked me onto my back, crushing the wind from my chest and leaving me blinded.
Blue flames snaked along the frozen ground, split, and raced up the archway. The fire burned up, sideways, and down, filling the doorway with an irresistible turquoise glow. When the flames were at their highest, Bully leapt through headfirst. Enoch went after him. They did not emerge from the other side.
I prepared to jump, but Mary hung back. I looked at her. She shook her head.
I crossed the ground between us in one long stride. I took her by the hand.
“I can’t go back,” she said. “I’ll die there.”
“I know,” I said, and pulled us in.
The light was brighter than any I’d ever known. Even when I shut my eyes, it burned through the lids. For a long time, I felt nothing, heard nothing, but then my legs collapsed, and I knew I was falling to the earth. I opened my eyes and still could not see—there was only the afterimage of that awful turquoise—but I heard someone moving in the grass.
