In the previous installment, Abishai’s unease about Jackson Hollow began to grow, as he parried questions from the local lawman and fought off an attacker in the dark.
It was full morning by the time Abishai rose the next day; he had slept longer than he had intended. He dressed and noticed that a note had been slid under the door. His sleep must have been quite deep, he decided, if he had not heard a person climb the creaky, old staircase.
The note, unsurprisingly, was from Pastor Tayloe. It said that Abishai was welcome to join him at the church that morning where there was a Bible study gathering and brunch would be served. The low rumbling in his stomach was all the incentive Abishai needed to accept the offer.
The Jackson Hollow Community Church met in a building that was like something out of a history book. A picturesque steeple rose high above the street, a brilliant white against the pale blue morning sky. The front doors, Abishai found, were closed. As he rounded the corner in search of the Bible study he noticed the building’s cornerstone; it read: “Jackson Hollow Independent Baptist Church, 1896.” The building’s age was a silent testament to how differently the decades of turmoil had affected towns like this one compared to the cities.
Before he could linger on that solemn thought, Abishai’s nose alerted him to the nearby presence of eggs and bacon. Following the aroma led him to a side door, beyond which he could hear conversations. He opened the door tentatively and stepped inside.
It seemed that he had missed the Bible study portion of the gathering. A few small groups in hushed conversations hovered over mugs of steaming coffee; a stack of used plates and silverware was waiting in the corner for the dishwasher.
“Mr. Godfrey,” came the voice of the pastor. “I’m glad you could come. Sit here with me and Emmy will get you a plate from the kitchen.”
Abishai thanked his host as they sat down at a table by themselves. Emmy was a homely girl in her twenties and, judging by the shape of her face and the dark shade of her hair, must have been the pastor’s daughter. She returned a few moments later with a plate of scrambled eggs and a biscuit in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.
The pastor sat silently for a minute or two, allowing his guest to finish more than half his food. Then Abishai said, “I noticed that the church was originally a Baptist church. When did it change?”
“Oh, that was long before I got here. I don’t remember the year, exactly. Someone probably wrote it down in the church record book, I suppose.”
“And how long have you been here?” Abishai asked, probing for no reason other than idle curiosity.
Tayloe gave him a quizzical look, but replaced it quickly with a grin. “Quite a while now. It’ll be getting close to fifteen years come this spring. It’s hard to put an exact date on it. It was after The Uprising and after all the ripples had died down in these parts. The church was without a pastor and I just showed up at the right time. ‘God works in mysterious ways,’ as they say.”
Abishai gave a noncommittal grunt and downed the last of his coffee.
“How was the Bible study?”
“Good. We’ve actually been going through this every other weekend.”
The pastor slid a book across the table. Abishai picked up the slim, paperback volume and examined the cover; intricate drawings of various flowers and herbs created a circle around the title, The Appalachian Way: A Practical Guide to Traditional Folk Healing and the So-Called Granny Magic.
It was Abishai’s turn to let a look of confusion pass over his face. He handed the book back to Tayloe.
“This is what you’ve been discussing for your Bible study?”
“Oh, well, we’ve just kept calling it ‘Bible study’ since that’s what people are used to. We try to broaden our horizons too.”
“Uhh,” Abishai sighed. “I’m not quite sure what to say to that.”
“Well, walk with me for a minute and I’ll show you what I mean. It’s probably a lot better thing than you’re thinking. Lots of folks here didn’t quite get it at first either.”
Tayloe snaked his way through a seeming labyrinth of hallways. Abishai found himself uncharacteristically unable to marvel at the impractical but unique way in which buildings of generations past were often constructed. His attention was focused on his guide and what might be awaiting him at the end of their trek.
They emerged into a large room that congregants in years past surely would have called “the sanctuary.” It was, however, unlike any such room Abishai had ever been in. Instead of pews, there were chairs; that by itself was not terribly unusual. Rather it was the arrangement of chairs that was strange. Instead of all facing in the same direction, toward a pulpit or lectern, they were scattered around the room in circles and squares and half-circles of various sizes. Within some of those groups were tables or credenzas, but without getting closer Abishai could not make out what they contained.
“You see,” Tayloe began, “we’ve taken to heart the truth that every child of God is a priest. I’m blessed to be a leader here, but who am I to deny the gifts of others?”
They walked toward the front of the stage. A long table was there with some seasonal decorations and a large Bible opened to the Psalms.
“We love the Bible, as you can see,” Tayloe said, gesturing toward the book. “But all truth is God’s truth. Our church is just more open to finding truth wherever we can than we used to be.”
From there they moved to the first semicircle of chairs just to the left of the stage. Tayloe stopped and gestured toward the table that stood there. Prominent on the display was a picture of a man standing in front of a truck, the back of which was filled with some kind of boxes. The picture was held in a garish frame, in front of which sat several candles.
“For instance,” Tayloe resumed, “this is where Sister Judith teaches. The picture is—”
“It looks like—” Abishai interjected, but cut himself off. “Who’s the man?”
Tayloe chuckled slightly. “That’s one of our dear, departed saints, Armand Rivers. He did so much for this community and this church that Sister Judith thought—”
“You mean the mayor?” Abishai interrupted again.
“Yes, of course,” Tayloe replied. “Surely, you don’t object to a woman teaching in church, do you, friend?”
Abishai ignored the question as he moved to the next group of chairs. If his suspicion was correct, then a woman teacher was the least worrisome thing.
The table in the next group was draped with a cloth. On the portion that hung down almost to the floor was a symbol. Abishai recognized it instantly as the same symbol tattooed on his attacker, Jed, from the night before.
“What’s that mean?”
Tayloe feigned surprise, as if he’d never thought about explaining the symbol to anyone. “Oh that? Well, you see lots of the folks around here trace their roots way back to England. I ‘spose they’d be called ‘Scots-Irish’ or something like that in the history books. So naturally there’s a connection here to the ancient Celtic practices …”
Tayloe’s voice trailed off. He bit his lip and looked Abishai up and down before continuing.
“Mr. Godfrey, I might be no more than a simple, country preacher, but I can tell when a man disapproves of me. Do you want to say what’s on your mind or just keep fuming?”
Abishai glanced around the room. All manner of Christian symbols seemed to be mixed with the full panoply of pagan paraphernalia, from things he took to be Druidic and Wiccan to those that were unmistakably of Native American origin. There was one in an alcove in the back, concealed by shadows, that he shuddered to even think about.
“Mr. Tayloe, I’m your guest here—though not for much longer if I can clear things up for the Constable—and I thank you for the hospitality.”
“But?”
Abishai took a deep breath. As heavily as the conviction that he must speak plainly fell on him, there seemed to be no corresponding lightening of the load of consequences that he was sure would follow.
“But,” Abishai began, “You have no right to call this a church, no right to claim to love the Bible, and no right to call yourself a minister of the Gospel. I don’t know where you went wrong or when or why, but this much I do know: unless you repent of this wickedness and turn to Jesus Christ and Him alone, you and all those whom you are leading astray will suffer God’s righteous wrath for eternity.”
“Heh. Mr. Godfrey,” Tayloe said as the grin returned to his face, “you sound like one of them screamin’ fundamentalist preachers I heard so much about as a kid. Seeing as you’ll be leaving town soon, I don’t see the sense in trying to argue with you.”
“I may be leaving soon and you may not see the sense in arguing, but I can’t see any virtue in pretending I haven’t seen what you’ve shown me here.”
“Mr. Godfrey!” Tayloe very nearly shouted. “Perhaps I failed to make myself understood.” He lowered his voice, but Abishai could see that his fists were clenched. “My dear wife ofttimes used to tell me that I was too soft-spoken for my own good.”
Two men appeared in the doorway through which Abishai and the preacher had come a few minutes before. Tayloe looked over his shoulder at them, but held up a hand.
“What I mean, Mr. Godfrey, is that our Bible study is over for today. It’s time for you to go. Let me just go unlock the front doors there and you can be on your way.”
The pair of them walked to the back of the room as the other pair watched intently from the hall. Abishai stepped through the door and into the bright rays of the late morning sun. He’d been through more than a few small towns in recent days and visited almost as many small-town churches, but he’d never seen anything quite like what he had just witnessed. The walk back to his lodgings to collect his things gave him time to ponder, but he failed to make sense of it.
A couple streets up from the church building was the town hardware store. He peered in the front window, and concluded that it must have been abandoned some time ago. Leaning around the corner of the building and peering into the small alley—to see whether anything useful had been left lying around—he found that it was overgrown with weeds of all kinds. Some rusted, old lawnmowers were strewn about, perhaps waiting for repairs that would never be made. Wooden pallets not even fit for kindling were stacked six feet high and several rows deep, but there seemed to be nothing else of interest.
Abishai was about to leave when he noticed a pair of bare feet poking out from behind one of the piles of pallets. One of the feet had what appeared to be a fairly deep gash in it that was still bleeding. He poked his head around and found a ghastly scene, one with which he was sadly too familiar. There, slumped against the brick side of the hardware store and a stack of pallets, was an unconscious man; the ground near him was littered with the unmistakable fragments of his drug kit. The man’s left arm, pocked from wrist to elbow, lay at his side in the tell-tale position.
Abishai leaned down to check the man’s pulse and breathing; both were weak and shallow, but he remained among the living. A few minutes later, Abishai had located Constable Carter who had been meeting with the Mayor.
“Hate to see him like this,” Carter said. In a town the size of Jackson Hollow it was no great surprise that the Constable and the Mayor both knew the man. Steven Medlock was known to the town, however inexplicably, as “Happy.”
Constable Carter sighed and scratched under the bill of his faded Massey Ferguson ballcap. “There anything you can do, Judith?”
“Let me go get my bag,” the Mayor said.
Abishai was somewhat taken aback. “Constable, this man needs a hard detox. I’m headed up toward Antioch Crossroads where there’s supposed to be a hospital. Let me borrow some transportation and I’ll get him there.”
Carter stood still and silent for a long moment. “Can’t do that, Mr. Godfrey.”
Before Abishai had a chance to ask why, the Mayor returned. Trailing close behind her was a man who could almost have been Happy’s twin, save for the plumper face and mane of silver hair that fell to his shoulders.
“What did you do to my brother!” the man bellowed before charging headlong at Abishai.
An instant before the two of them would have collided, Abishai stepped to one side and stuck out his foot. The man, caught by surprise, tripped and crashed into a rusty, riding lawnmower with three flat tires. Abishai rushed over, wrenched the man’s arm behind him in a hammerlock, and took him the rest of the way to the ground, pinning him there with a knee in the small of his back.
“Benny, what the world are you doin’?” Mayor Judith said to the man as he gradually gave up on trying to get himself free. “This man found Happy; probably saved his life too—if you’ll knock it off and let me get to work.”
Carter bent down, showing Benny an old pair of handcuffs. “Now you’re not gonna make me use these, are ya?”
Benny shook his head and relaxed.
“You can let him up, Mr. Godfrey. He’s real sorry about that.”
Abishai cautiously released his grip. The man rolled over and scooted himself up against the side of the lawnmower. He scowled, but stayed in place.
In the meantime, Mayor Judith had crouched next to Happy. Some reddish-brown substance was smeared on his forehead in the shape of a cross. Next to her, on the ground, were a mortar and pestle; she pulled something leafy from her bag and ground it up with whatever ingredients were already there.
Rather than mix the herbs with liquid and administer it to her patient, Abishai was astonished to see the Mayor ignite the contents of her mortar with a match. She held the little clay bowl up near Happy’s nose and began mumbling some words. They sounded to Abishai’s ear like they might have been Latin or some stray lines from Beowulf he vaguely remembered from years ago. After a few moments, Happy’s eyes began to twitch; his breathing grew stronger and steadier. Mayor Judith set the mortar down, took Happy’s hands in her own, and continued her mumbling as she bowed her head and closed her eyes
The mumbling became clearer as Happy slowly opened his eyes and started to become aware of his surroundings. “Thy kingdom come, they will be done,” the Mayor said.
“Stop!” Abishai blurted out. Happy seemed to jolt fully awake at that and the Mayor whipped her head around, glaring at Abishai. “This is blasphemy!”
Benny scrambled over next to his brother as Mayor Judith gently placed Happy’s hands in his lap. She snapped her bag shut and stepped over to where Abishai was standing.
“Mr. Godfrey, I don’t know just who you think you are that you would dare interrupt me like that.”
“Mayor Judith,” he replied, “I don’t know who you think you are that you would dare—”
“Don’t bother,” she said, cutting him off. “I know the Bible better than anyone in this town and probably better than you. But I know more than the Bible too. How do you suppose I got to be Mayor? Why do you think Pastor Tayloe answers to me? You think the church got that way because of him?”
There was something hard in her voice, something foreign to her aged and matronly appearance. It was only when Abishai looked into her eyes that he could see it. He’d sensed from the beginning that things were not right in Jackson Hollow, but at that moment he knew why.
“Constable, you were done with your investigation, weren’t you?” Judith said without breaking eye contact with Abishai.
“Umm, yeah. Yeah, I was, Mayor,” Carter said with a slight tremor in his voice.
“Well, I’d say that’s just plain fortunate for you, isn’t it Mr. Godfrey? You can be on your way then to … well, to wherever it is you were going.”
Constable Carter rose from where he’d been kneeling next to Happy and Benny. “I’ll make sure you get all your stuff from Pastor Tayloe’s house before you head out,” he said.
“I think I can handle it,” Abishai said.
“Oh, but we insist, Mr. Godfrey,” Judith said. “After you’ve been such a good Samaritan to our town.”
The change in tone was jarring and revolting, but Abishai did his best to ignore it. Half an hour later he had his pack and—somewhat remarkably and to no small relief—his rifle, and was headed out of town on the side of the main road.
Read the conclusion of “Beneath the Hill” here.