Save The Last Dance For Me

Twenty

On the way out there, we stopped at the Nite Owl grocery store and bought a can of lighter fluid. Then we were back on the road and I was explaining everything to her.

Fifteen minutes later I pulled off the gravel road.

“This is the part you won’t like.”

“What part is that, McCain?”

“I’m going in there alone.”

“That isn’t fair.”

“I’m acting as the investigator for Judge Whitney. You’re a reporter. If Cliffie wanted to make a stink about me taking you along, he could.”

“So I wait till you wave a white flag?”

“Something like that.”

She leaned over and kissed me.

“I guess that makes sense.”

Which made me suspicious. She took her reporter’s job very seriously.

I got out of the ragtop. The moon was riding high. The prairie gleamed with moonlight. A John Deere tractor with lights in a distant field looked like a giant alien insect, like the mutated kind you always see on drive-in movie screens.

The garage resembled a jungle ruin in the shadowy light. A lost race of auto mechanics had once thrived here, sacrificing virgin Fords to the motor gods until the very degeneracy of their actions caused them to vanish utterly from the earth. There was a good chance they’d gone to Atlantis.

There was light and mountain music coming from the nearby trailer.

First, to do my good deed for the day. The Boy Scout ethic was not lost on me, even though I’d been tossed out for smoking a cigar in the back of a troop meeting. Somebody had dared me to do it and in those days a good dare was a bracing and irresistible spur.

The snakes were inside the church now. I could hear them hissing from the makeshift altar. And, as my eyes became accustomed to the gloom, see the outline of their cage.

But the snakes didn’t interest me-or even especially frighten me-now.

What I wanted was the corner where all those flyers were stacked. You know, John Kennedy, Secret Rabbi.

The stack sat right next to a window. I was hoping the folks in the trailer would see the fire and come running. And there I’d be with my. 45 and my accusations.

I took my can of Ronson lighter fluid and went to work. I did those babies up proud. By the time I was done, the entire four-foot stack of flyers glistened. And I was out of the giant-size can of fluid.

I struck a match and very casually tossed it on to the fliers.

Whoosh! and Whoom! The words you frequently see in comic book panels applied here. The things whooshed and whoomed for several full seconds, like a singer sustaining a high note.

The flames leapt in every direction, burning blue-yellow. They filled the window, too, which faced the trailer. Any eye looking casually from the trailer was bound to see-The flames lent an ugly light to the church, a light that did not soften and flatter but revealed and scorned. All the oil marks on the walls; all the cracks and fungi on the floor; all the cobwebs collected in the high rotting corners.

But the massive painting of the angry Christ was the most startling. He was beyond anger, into hard-core psychosis. He was not my Christ-y could believe in his divinity or not, it didn’t matter -a Christ of sympathy, tolerance, understanding, forgiveness. He was the dark Christ embraced by dictators of all kinds, especially the darkest dictators of all, the ministers and priests who teach their followers to hate anyone different from themselves. Anyone who doesn’t believe, think, dress or behave the way they d. Any mercy or compassion this Christ had ever felt was gone now, gone utterly, as he glared down at me from the wall behind the altar.

The fire burned itself out in just a couple of minutes. Ash was all that was left.

A voice said, “I could kill you right now for trespassing, Mr. McCain.”

I’d been fixated on the painting of Christ and hadn’t heard them come in.

Mother and daughter. The Muldaurs.

Mom, as most Midwestern moms were wont to, carried a sawed-off shotgun.

“That’s our personal property, what you just burned.”

“I’ll be happy to pay you for it. I just don’t want it dirtying up our little town.”

“What you don’t want is for people to know the truth, Mr. McCain. About the Jews and the Catholics. And the niggers.”

Ella just stood there in her worn gingham dress, the blue eyes of that sad pretty face not quite here with us but somewhere else. But she wasn’t the soft-spoken, shy Ella she pretended to be for the people who didn’t know her well. There was a hardness and a harshness in the face now; and a genuine lunacy in the eyes…

She said, “My mom’s right, Mr. McCain. The Jews killed Our Lord and they won’t rest until they take over the world. You probably don’t even realize that several of the popes were Jews.”

And what should have been funny-Jewish popes, Jewish guns in the basements of Catholic churches-wasn’t funny at all. It was sorrowful. Because not long ago she’d been an innocent little girl who should have been given the chance for a full, free life. But Mama and Papa had recruited her as a soldier in their dark army. The Koreans and Chinese had nothing on these folks when it came to brainwashing. The Muldaurs had turned their daughter into a vessel of pure rage and hatred. She was beyond reasoning with. She believed all their conspiracy theories, no matter how ludicrous; and even did their bidding.

“You couldn’t do it yourself, so you had your daughter do it,” I said.

“I wanted to do it, Mr. McCain. It’s the sort of thing God rewards you for.”

“For killing your father?”

“He’d defiled the Lord, Mr. McCain,” she said. “And so did Reverend Courtney. He had defiled the Lord just the way my pa had-with sins of the flesh.”

“How’d you know it was Ella?” her mother said.

She didn’t sound angry or frightened.

More curious than anything.

“They found some kind of ointment all over the neck of the bottle your husband drank from. I didn’t make the connection till tonight-ffElla’s poison ivy salve.”

“You’re a good detective.”

“Look at her, Mrs. Muldaur. Look at her face. She shouldn’t look like that. She should be a nice, ordinary teenage girl.”

“Wearing tight sweaters and going all the way, I suppose, like other girls in this town, Mr.

McCain?”

“That’s a lot better than this, Mrs.

Muldaur. I said to look at her and you didn’t. Because you see it too, don’t you?

She’s insane. That’s why she doesn’t feel any remorse for what she did. She killed devils, not human beings. And you and your husband were the ones who taught her to think like that.”

“You kill him, Mama,” the girl said. “Or I will.”

For the first time, Mrs. Muldaur looked nervous, uncertain. She wasn’t a killer.

Her daughter was.

“We could just let him leave,” Mrs. Muldaur said. “Nobody’d believe what he said.”

“You know better than that, Mama. Now, either you kill him or I will.”

Mrs. Muldaur hesitated. And in that moment, Ella snatched the sawed-off shotgun from her.

“You go wait outside, Mama.”

“I’m not sure we should do this, honey.”

“You heard what I said, Mama. Wait outside.”

Her mother knew there was no sense arguing.

“Honey, I just wish”

“Go wait outside,” Ella said.

Mrs. Muldaur looked down at the pocket of her dress. She slid out what appeared to be an old. 38. Gripped it.

I was sure for a moment she was going to tell Ella to hand back the shotgun. But she didn’t.

She just looked at the handgun, turned, and quietly left the church.

“You need help,” I said. “There’s no point in killing me, too.”

“You sound like some Tv show.”

“You really do need help. And there are people who can help you.”

She smirked. “Jews? Catholics?” She shook her head and raised the weapon. “^th’re your people, not mine.”

I thought of begging but what was the point? I thought of lunging at her but what was the point of that, either?

I’d just be giving her a better shot at me.

“You get up on the altar, McCain.” She sort of waggled the shotgun at me. “We’re going to see how holy you are.”

Snakes. Somehow, it always came back to snakes with these people, that litmus test of spirituality that not even the Aztecs had been nutty enough to use.

“I’m not going to handle any snakes,” I said.

“Sure you are. You just don’t know it yet.

Leastways, you got a chance with the snakes.

Otherwise, I’ll kill you right here.”

She really looked like she knew what she was doing with the gun. She sighted down the barrel and said, “This ain’t nothin’ personal.”

“God,” I said, “I’m glad you said that. That makes me feel a whole lot better.”

“Sarcasm is the Devil’s tongue. Says so right in the Bible.”

“I think there’s something about not killing people in there, too, Ella.”

“Depends on how you read it. Way I read it, God wants us to smite the sinners who won’t see the one true way.”

She was ready. It wasn’t anything she said, anything she did. But some judgment had been reached.

It was right and just and proper to kill me. Any lingering doubts banished.

I was trying to say a prayer for myself but I was too scared to form the words.

Then I said it, the words John Wayne would never say: “I really don’t want to die, Ella. It isn’t your fault you turned out this way. You need to talk to somebody who can help you like I said.” And then: “I’m kinda afraid to die, Ella.” You’ll notice how I sort of slid that “kinda” in there, taking the sting off what a teeth-rattling, knee-collapsing, sphincter-cringing coward I was.

All for naught.

“You get up on that altar or I’ll kill you right here and right now.”

And I knew she would.

She hitched the gun up, sighted even tighter down the barrel. Her elbow kicked slightly as she got ready to fire-And I turned and walked up to the altar.

“Sit in the chair.”

I sat in the chair.

“Mama! Mama! I need you in here!”

About now, I was wondering where Kylie was.

Had Mama found her? Roughed her up?

Mama came through the door. She still had the handgun clutched tight in her fingers.

“You get up here, Mama. I need you to tie him up.”

They’d reversed personalities. Daughter was now mom, and definitely in charge. And mom, a big woman rendered mousy all of a sudden, was daughter.

Mama came up to the floor in front of the altar. Ella stood next to the snake cage.

“I need you to tie him up, Mama.”

“I sure wish you wouldn’t do this, honey.

We’re in trouble enough.”

Ella’s voice crackled. “Not with the Lord, we’re not in no trouble, Mama. Where’s your faith?”

Mama muttered to herself then began walking up on to the platform. I glanced over my shoulder.

A coil of rough rope lay on the rear corner of the platform. Mama, all sweat now, all great sigh, all great dead eyes, dead as the eyes of the rattlers, brought the rope over.

“Tie him up,” Ella said. “Good and tight.”

“You’ve done a great job with her, Mrs.

Muldaur,” I said.

Mama spat in my face. Hot, dirty spittle on my cheek.

She did me good and tight. The circulation left my upper arms and my lower legs. The only thing that could cut me loose would be a scimitar and you just couldn’t hardly find any of those in a small Iowa town like this.

“There you go, hon,” Mama said. No more doubts. No more regrets. She wanted to see me killed. I’d insulted her one time too many.

“Now, you go stand in the back, Mama. I know how you don’t like these snakes.”

“I wish I had better faith, hon,”

Mama said, sounding genuinely ashamed of herself.

“I can’t help it them things scare me.”

She turned-all too gladly, it seemed-and walked back to the door in the rear of the place.

Ella set her shotgun down on the floor with great care. No need to worry about me now. I was all tied up.

The snakes had gotten the message. They were having a snake revival meeting inside the cage. While they weren’t ordinarily much interested in human beings-they only struck out at us because they were as afraid of us as we were of them-they were getting ready to take all their caged frustrations out on me.

Ella went over to the cage, leaned down and did a little work on the latch holding the lid in place. She couldn’t seem to get it open.

Could I be that lucky? Of course not. A couple of seconds later she flipped the latch and then opened the lid a few inches.

You could feel the energy of the rattlers. The thrust and thrum and mean intent of them. Back when our species had been only twenty inches high, we’d learned to dread and fear these creatures. And that dread stayed with us. It was with me right now.

And then she did it. The unthinkable. Just plunged her hand down inside the cage-pretty casually, really-and up came a timber rattler.

I almost felt sorry for it. The thing was in pure frenzy. Ella had obviously mastered the trick of holding it in such a way that it couldn’t angle its head around to strike at her.

“Are you pure of soul, Mr. McCain?” she said. “Somehow, I doubt that you are.”

She carried the snake over to me. Wriggling, wrenching, wrestling its body around in mid-air-and furious-she slapped the lower third of the rattler against my face. I made some kind of undignified sound of terror. I jerked up in my seat, bringing the chair with me.

“You’re sure a ‘fraidy cat, Mr.

McCain.” She said this clinically, as if surprised that anybody my age could possibly fear rattlesnakes this much.

Then she got serious.

Gripping the snake tighter than ever, she brought it even closer, touching the lower part of it to my neck.

“I never was able to get one of these things around anybody’s neck,” she said, again with great cold loony dispassion. “Maybe I’ll have better luck with you.”

This time I didn’t try to come up out of my chair. I knew better. I had to be as still as I could be.

The rattle. The insane hissing.

Ella taking the snake and starting to wind it around my neck.

And then her mama fell face forward.

I’d been concentrating on Ella’s large body but she moved out of the way-trying to get the snake to coil better around my neck-and it was just then that Mama hit the floor. Heart attack?

I couldn’t think of anything that could fell a person so swiftly. I’d have said gunshot but there’d been no sound. Mama was just laid out on the floor.

The snake began to grip onto my neck.

Ella’s science project was going to be a success after all.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to rip through my bonds. I wanted to beg.

But I was too frightened to do any of those things.

And that was when the United States Cavalry, in the fetching form of Kylie, came through the rear door.

Moving fast. Picking up the gun Mama had dropped.

Breaking into a run down the aisle right up to the altar and saying, “Put the snake back in the cage, Ella.”

My heroine.

That same drugged dead response from Ella: “Be fun to try one of the serpents on a Jew.”

Kylie pushed the gun in Ella’s face.

“Put the snake away, Ella, and then stand over there with your hands in the air.”

“You can’t order me around. Only God can.”

The snake was still against my neck. I wasn’t moving.

“Do it, Ella.”

“You won’t shoot me.”

“You might be surprised.”

“You probably never shot a gun in your life.”

“You don’t want to take that chance, Ella.

Believe me.”

And then she did it.

Wasn’t it enough for my heroine to knock out Mama, grab the gun, and then rush the altar to confront the snake girl?

Not enough for Kylie.

She doubled-gripped the gun and fired it just to the side of Ella’s head, the violent noise forcing Ella to jerk away, taking the snake she held with her.

Ella sort of windmilled backward for several feet and then fell off the side of the platform. The snake went flying off into the darkness.

Kylie came over and started untying me.

“How’d you knock out Mama?” I said.

“Rock. A big one.”

“You saved my life.”

She gave me a kiss, as she continued to untie my ropes.

“Yeah,” she said, “and don’t you forget it.”