Brimstone

42

WE TALKED TO BROTHER PERCIVAL in the front room of his house in the compound in back of the church.

“Where’s my organist?” Brother Percival said, and smiled.

He was in his official church clothes: white robe, sandals, long hair.

“Allie’s looking out for a drunk down at the jail,” Virgil said. “Woman named Mary Beth Ostermueller.”

“Poor Mary Beth,” Percival said. “We’re all trying to help her, but…”

“She says you’re fucking her daughter,” Virgil said.

Percival looked like he might burst into prayer.

“Oh, dear Lord,” he said.

“Said you was fucking her, and now you’re fucking Laurel.”

“Must you speak so coarsely, Deputy?” Percival said.

“Just quoting Mary Beth, Reverend,” Virgil said.

“She was drunk.”

“She was.”

“The charge is, as you must know, entirely untrue,” Brother Percival said.

The front room of Brother Percival’s house wasn’t much: a table and chair, an uncomfortable-looking round-backed blue couch, a large Bible on a stand near the door. A big photograph of Brother Percival hung in an oval frame on the wall. In the picture he was wearing a dark suit with a vest and a white shirt with a dark tie. In the picture, his hair was short.

“I’m sure it is, Reverend,” Virgil said. “But me ’n Everett, here, bein’ law officers, we have to ask.”

“Of course you do,” Percival said. “I understand perfectly.”

“Got any idea why she might be thinking these things about you?” Virgil said.

“Aside from drunkenness?” Percival said.

“ ’Side from that,” Virgil said.

“Perhaps my attempts to share my religion with them, to help them, somehow became distorted in her degenerated mind. What happened to her and all. The poor woman clearly isn’t right.”

“Something’s wrong,” Virgil said. “Tell me a little ’bout your religion.”

“My religion is the presence of God in me.”

“How’s God feel about sex?” Virgil said.

“Do not blaspheme,” Percival said.

“Sorry,” Virgil said. “Tell me a little ’bout how you been trying to help these two ladies we brought you.”

“I counsel them every day,” Percival said.

“Meanin’ you take them someplace and talk to them,” Virgil said.

“Yes,” Percival said. “I talk with them here. Though it is, of course, a bit more than that.”

“Girl talk any?”

“Not yet,” Percival said. “Poor child.”

“Well, she probably don’t argue much,” Virgil said.

“No, she surely doesn’t,” Percival said. “I’m not sure she understands what I’m saying. I’m not sure she is at all in her right mind.”

“What are you saying?” I said.

“I explain to them that His eye is on the fall of a sparrow,” Percival said. “That He never sends you a burden too great for you to bear.”

“Ain’t found that to be the case myself, Reverend,” Virgil said. “But you probably know more than I do ’bout all that.”

“I know that the Lord resides in me,” Percival said. “I know what the Lord shares with me.”

“Lord always been there?” Virgil said.

“He is always there in all of us,” Percival said. “But many of us deny him.”

He looked sort of pointedly, I thought, at me and Virgil.

“Didn’t realize he was there,” I said.

“I denied him, at first,” Percival said. “There was a time when I denied God, when I lived a life of the physical self, when I drank, when I committed fornication, when I relied on violence. But God would not be denied. He battered my defenses. He forced himself upon me until we have become one.”

“You and God?” I said.

“Yes.”

“One thing?” I said.

“Yes.”

“You and God being one thing,” I said. “Must be pretty hard to think anything you do is wrong.”

“The Lord governs me in all things,” Percival said.

“He tell you to keep Choctaw Brown on the payroll?” Virgil said.

“As you must know, there is no payroll,” Percival said. “Choctaw came to me, as I had been. He came from a life of dissipation and cruelty. He said he wanted to be saved. We welcomed him to the brotherhood.”

“He saved?” I said.

“He is.”

“Still wearing a Colt,” Virgil said.

“I told you we are militant Christians,” Percival said. “We will not allow those who have not been saved to do us harm.”

“I guess probably I ain’t been saved yet,” Virgil said. “But I don’t want you touching that girl.”

“To accuse me is to accuse the Lord, who abides in me.”

“Seems to be the case,” Virgil said.

Percival seemed to get taller as he stood in front of us. He folded his big arms across his wide chest.

“You can’t accuse me,” Percival said.

His voice was firm but not very loud.

“Because of the Lord?” I said.

“We are one,” Percival said. “You cannot accuse us.”

Virgil looked at Percival for a while, the way you’d look at an odd insect you’d found. Percival stood with his arms still folded like he was going to give the Sermon on the Mount. Then he turned and stalked out of the room.

As we walked back to the sheriff’s office, Virgil said, “You believe any of that?”

“Sure,” I said. “Like I believe the world’s flat.”

“Looks flat,” Virgil said.

“But it ain’t.”

“Can’t prove it ain’t,” Virgil said.

“You believe what Percival’s saying?”

Virgil shook his head.

“I think he’d fuck a snake if you held it for him,” Virgil said.

“You think he believes what he’s saying?” I said.

“He might,” Virgil said.

“Think he’s been bothering the women?” I said.

“Something you mentioned,” Virgil said. “You mentioned that if he thought God was in him and he was, you know, part of God, and God was part of him, then he’d feel pretty good about doing anything he wanted.”

“Anything God does is the right thing to do,” I said.

“You think he thinks he’s God?”

“Might,” I said.

“That’s disappointing,” Virgil said.

“ ’Cause you thought you were?”

“Still do,” Virgil said. “Just don’t like it that Percival thinks different.”

“So we know it,” I said.

“Can’t prove it,” Virgil said.

“Mary Beth saying so ain’t enough?”

“Nope,” Virgil said. “Too drunk.”

“We could shoot him anyway, just to be safe,” I said.

“Can’t do that,” Virgil said. “Got to know.”

“How you gonna know?” I said.

“Gotta ask the girl,” he said.