Carved in Bone

CHAPTER 28

O’Conner poured waylon another shot of whiskey — his third, by my count, and I was counting pretty closely, as I was depending on Waylon for a ride back to my truck. “I know you want to,” O’Conner said for the hundredth time, “but killing him won’t help. It’ll ruin your life, and Vern’s too.” Waylon just snuffled and shook his bearlike head.

“What turns a man into something like that,” I asked O’Conner, “all mean and hateful inside?”

O’Conner shrugged, as if he had no clue, but I was reasonably sure he possessed some insight, so I waited him out. Finally he spoke. “Well, Cooke County alone — the hardscrabble life that requires a man to break the law or break his back just to get by — is enough to harden anybody,” he said. “Anybody predisposed to it, at least.”

“But this goes way beyond hardened,” I said.

“Well, then there’s the Kitchings family itself — sort of the Cooke County of families.”

“How so?”

“Well, you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting the matriarch and patriarch yet,” he said, “but they’re about as warm and nurturing as those copperheads on the trail to Vern’s. A copperhead mostly wants to be left alone — he won’t generally come after you — but provoke him, and you’ll get a nasty dose of poison.”

“But the father’s a minister, isn’t he?”

“He is, but you’ve got remember what kind of church he’s in. Primitive Baptists—‘Hardshell Baptists,’ they’re also called — are about as flinty as Christians get, in my experience. Their faith is the washed-in-the-blood, fire-and-brimstone variety. Not as keen on the touchy-feely, love-thy-neighbor part of the gospel. Most of the time, they’re pulled in pretty tight — don’t tolerate drinking, dancing, or card-playing; take a pretty dim view of movies and television; don’t much trust a woman who cuts her hair or wears pants or makeup. Funny thing is, though, on Sunday, this tamped-down, thou-shalt-not crowd completely cuts loose, working themselves up into a frenzy of righteous enthusiasm.”

I nodded. Cultural anthropology was full of studies of religious ecstasy; that variety of spiritual experience cuts across virtually all nations and cultures, including highly conservative groups. Even Pentacostal churches that practice snake-handling and speaking in unknown tongues — practices at the far end of the Christian spectrum — were based on ecstatic, trancelike states.

“I heard Reverend Kitchings preach a few times in my youth,” O’Conner went on, “back when I was courting Leena, trying to make a good impression on the family. Sitting in that cold stone building, I would just marvel at the transformation this tight-lipped, tightassed puritan would undergo once he got fired up. He’d get into this preaching rhythm that was almost hypnotic, more incantation than sermon. He’d punctuate every sentence with a ‘Praise God!’ or a ‘Hallelujah!’ instead of a period. Go hell-for-leather till he’d run out of breath, then give this final, quacklike gasp, then draw in another huge breath and let fly again. I reckon he’s still at it these days. You should go hear him; I bet you’d find it fascinating.”

“I probably would,” I agreed. “How about the mother? How would you describe the family dynamics?”

“Well, I’d say the reverend is a big fan of St. Paul—‘Wives, submit to your husbands’; that sort of thing. I don’t think she’s had an easy or pleasant life with that man. Pretty hard for the sons, too.”

“In what way?”

“Well, let’s just say that if it took a liberal application of the razor strop to keep his boys on the straight and narrow path to salvation, the reverend was just doing his Christian duty.” He said this with a grim look that told me he had probably witnessed a Kitchings flogging or two firsthand.

“But why did Tom and Orbin turn out so different,” I asked, “if they both came from that same harsh environment? Not to let Tom off the hook — after all, I’m pretty sure he’s derailing this murder investigation — but he doesn’t seem to be a bad guy at heart. Unlike Orbin, who seems truly bad to the bone.”

“Damn right,” growled Waylon. “Meanest sumbitch on the face of the earth.”

O’Conner smiled slightly. “I’d say you’re a pretty shrewd judge of manflesh, Doc. He is bad to the bone. Not sure why. I mean, why do some abused children grow up to be serial killers, while others grow up to be compassionate doctors and teachers and social workers?”

Ah: the Problem of Evil. I’d spent a lot of fruitless hours pondering that conundrum. “I guess it would’ve been hard to be Tom’s little brother,” I ventured.

“Real hard,” O’Conner said. “Still is. The halo’s slipped some by now, but Tom Kitchings was Cooke County’s golden boy. Didn’t get a huge amount of nurture and affirmation at home, but to the rest of the county, Tom was practically a god. Led the high school football team to two state championships, then led UT to a couple, too. Good-looking, pretty smart, and really personable. Orbin, less so.” Judging by my two brief encounters, O’Conner was giving Orbin a huge benefit of the doubt there. “Be easy to turn hateful if you found yourself being measured and found wanting your whole life. Hell, even now, Orbin’s still playing second fiddle to Tom. Sort of the age-old story of Cain and Abel, isn’t it? Orbin can either bash his brother’s brains out, like Cain did, or he can use weaker folks like Vern as his whipping boys. Been doing it just about all his life.”

O’Conner’s armchair analysis made a lot of sense. “So would you guess Orbin’s flying solo when he puts the squeeze on pot farmers and cockfighters, or is it possible Tom’s in cahoots with him?”

He frowned. “Don’t know. When he was younger, Tom would never have stooped to that. But when he was younger, he had a lot more choices. He’s had some big disappointments to reckon with, and you never can tell whether somebody’s going to walk out of the valley of the shadow as a bigger person or a smaller one.”

As he said it, I found myself wondering whether I was seeing a bigger or a smaller Jim O’Conner than the one who’d courted Leena Bonds. Then I found myself wondering whether he was seeing a bigger or a smaller Bill Brockton than the one who’d lost Kathleen. I remembered my last phone call with Jeff, and I knew the answer. I vowed to call him and apologize.

“Hell, that’s enough of my cracker-barrel psychology for one day,” said O’Conner, draining the last of his whiskey. “Let me get Waylon to take you back to your truck.”

“You sure Waylon ought to be driving?”

“Hell, Doc, I could drive that stretch of road with my eyes closed,” said Waylon.

“He’s not kidding — I’ve seen him do it,” O’Conner laughed. “It’d take another three drinks before Waylon started to feel that whiskey, and even then, he’d be a better driver than you or I stone-cold sober.”

With some misgivings, I climbed into the truck with Waylon. I rolled down the window and called to O’Conner, “Will you please make him promise not to drag me into any more adventures along the way?”

He laughed. “You hear that, Waylon? Straight to the Pilot station; no stops. All right?”

Waylon nodded. “No stops,” he said.

It never occurred to me to extract a promise to drive with the headlights on. Halfway along the river road, Waylon flicked off his lights, leaving us careening along in utter blackness.

“Waylon, stop!” I yelped.

“Cain’t,” he said. “I promised — no stops.”

“Then turn your lights back on!”

“You b’lieve now?”

“Believe what?” Had something in our discussion of religion struck a nerve in Waylon?

“B’lieve I can drive this with my eyes closed.”

“Yes, for God’s sake. Now turn on your headlights.”

He did. As the beams shot through the blackness, I saw that the big truck was tracking dead-center in the right-hand lane, halfway through an “S” curve, as if it were on rails.

“Waylon, you’re going to turn me into either a believer or a dead man.”

He laughed. “Well, either way, you won’t feel scared no more.”