He pulled over to get a bottled water at a convenience store. As he headed back to the car, chugging down the water, he caught a chorus of singing voices on the breeze.
Only when he turned and saw the open front door of the Baptist church across the parking lot did he realize that it was an actual choir. Drawn by the music, he walked over, climbed the stone steps, and entered. The pews sat empty, but the singers were in place in the choir stand, decked out in royal-blue gospel gowns. They were working on an a cappella hymn, practicing beneath a stark wooden cross flooded with light from behind. The choir conductor, an older man, directed from a podium. The voices rose pure and true.
Evan’s form in the doorway cut the light, and the director half turned, his hands still keeping time for the singers. He gave a welcoming nod in the direction of the pews.
Evan felt the habitual pull to withdraw, but there was a power in the joined voices that hit him in the spine, made it thrum like a guitar string. He took a seat in the last row and let the hymn wash over him.
With the harmony came memories. Waking up in the dormer bedroom in Jack’s farmhouse that first sun-drenched morning. Walking behind Jack in the forest, filling those boot prints with his own small shoes. The cadence of Jack’s voice, how it never rose above a measured pitch during their nightly study sessions. Jack had taught him everything from Alexander the Great’s battle tactics to basic phrases in the Indo-Iranian languages to toasting etiquette for Scandinavian countries—nothing was too trivial. The smallest detail could save Evan’s life in the field.
Or kill him.
He thought about an Arab financier peering through raccoon eyes, wearing a half-moon laceration from Evan’s garrote like a necklace. A fat man, bald as a baby and clad only in a towel, staring back at him lifelessly through the steam of a bathhouse, blood drooling from a bullet hole over his left eye. A man slumped over a table in a drab Eastern European kitchen, his face in his soup, the back of his head missing.
He thought about what he was going to do to Van Sciver and every one of his men he came across along the way.
The choir finished. Before they could disperse, the director cleared his throat to good dramatic effect and said, “Now, when you get back out there with your car pools and your grocery shopping and your punching the clock, you take a little time to think about the works you do and the life you lead. When you’re back in this here church one day boxed up in a coffin, that’s gonna be all that’s left to speak for you.” With a crinkled hand, he waved them away. “Go on, now.”
The singers filed out, joking and gossiping. A few glanced Evan’s way, and he nodded pleasantly. People forget anything that’s not a threat, and Evan had no intention of being remembered.
He lifted his eyes to the glow behind the altar and wondered at the beliefs men held and what those beliefs drove them to do. In his brief time on the planet, he’d seen so many dead stares, so many visages touched with the gray pallor of death. But he’d never blinded himself to the humanity shining through the cracks of those broken guises. Jack had made sure of that. He’d lodged that paradox in Evan’s mind and in his heart. It had saved him, in a manner of speaking. But it came with a price.
Evan started to rise when the director turned and caught his eye. The old man limped up the aisle toward him. “Our altos are flat and our tenors are sharp. You’d think it’d even us out some.”
“It sounded perfect to me,” Evan said. “But I’ve got an untrained ear.”
“You must.” The man sat heavily in the pew next to him, let out a sigh like air groaning through a bellows.
“I’ll let you get on with your day, sir,” Evan said.
“Minister.”
“Minister. Thank you for letting me listen.”
“A man doesn’t stumble into a church for no reason.”
Out of deference Evan didn’t take issue with him.
The minister sat back, crossed his arms, and gazed at the vaulted ceiling. Evan felt a familiar tug to leave but realized that for the moment he had nowhere to be. The minister scratched at his elbow, clearly in no rush.
Evan considered the man’s words again. Decided to rise to the challenge.
“Which matters more?” he asked.
“Which what matters more?”
“At the end. Which matters more? The works we’ve done or the life we lead?”
“Say ‘I,’ son. First person. You’d be surprised at how powerful the change is.”
Evan took a pause. “Which matters more? The works I’ve done or the life I lead?”
The minister was right. The words felt different in Evan’s body and behind his face.
“You assume they’re different,” the minister said. “One’s works and one’s life.”
“In some cases.”
“Like yours?”
“That remains to be seen.”
The minister gave a frown and nodded profoundly. It took a good measure of dignity to manage a profound nod, but he managed it just fine. “Do you follow the Commandments, son?”
Evan nearly smiled. “Yes, Minister. Every last one.”
“Then there’s your start.”
Evan held a beat before switching tracks. “I’d imagine that few people are woven into this community as well as you are.”
“I’d say you imagine right.”
“Has there been any word about government folks coming through town, a helicopter, a fire?”
The minister arched an eyebrow. “There has not.”
“Suspicious flurry of activity down by the”—he hesitated slightly before naming his nemesis—“Peachoid?”
“No.”
“How about alien spaceships cutting crop circles?” Evan countenanced the man’s watery glare. “Kidding.”
“What’s all this hokum about?”
“I was supposed to meet a friend at the peach water tower.”
“Why don’t you call him?”
“Long-lost friend. We’d arranged a meet online.”
“Hmm.” The minister mused a moment. “You sure you got the right one?”
A jolt of anticipation straightened Evan up slightly in the pew. “The right friend?”
“The right Peachoid. Same folks built a smaller one down in Clanton, Alabama.”
Evan had not in fact been following all the Commandments. He’d overlooked the first one: Assume nothing.
He rose. “Thank you, Minister. I can’t tell you how useful your guidance has been.”
“I serve with gladness.”
Evan shook the proffered sandpaper hand. “As do I.”
9
From Beyond the Grave
Five hours and thirty-eight minutes later, Evan was standing on the side of I-65 between Birmingham and Wetumpka, gazing up at a five-hundred-gallon version of the same eyesore.
Twenty-seven minutes after that, his headlights picked up Jack’s truck parked at the edge of a fire road running between two swaths of cotton that stretched into the darkness, maybe forever.
He climbed out of the Impala, unholstered his slender ARES pistol for the first time, and approached the truck tentatively. It was cold enough out to be uncomfortable, but he didn’t have any interest in being uncomfortable. He shone a key-chain Maglite through the windows and took in the damage. Slashed seat cushions, scattered papers from the glove box, holes punched through the headliner. They’d searched as well as he’d expected they would. They’d have been looking for anything that might point them to Evan.
His breath fogging the pane, Evan stared at the defaced interior and considered how many years Jack had polished this dashboard, vacuumed the seams, touched up the paint. Anger and sorrow threatened to escape the locked-down corner of his heart, and he took a moment to tamp it back into place.
He walked around the truck, searched for booby traps. None were visible.
The truck was unlocked. It was two decades old, but the hinges didn’t so much as creak when the door swung open. Jack’s hinges wouldn’t dare.
Evan sat where Jack used to sit.
Do you regret it? What I did to you?
He put his hands on the steering wheel. The pebbled vinyl was worn smooth at the ten and two. The spots where Jack’s hands used to rest.
I wanted to hear your voice.
Out of the corner of his eye, Evan caught a gleam from the molded map pocket on the lower half of the door. He reached down and lifted Jack’s keys into the ambient light.