Sometimes he spoke these secrets aloud in his devastated voice, letting a cuckold know which men his wife had slept with. Periodically he held back words that might ease decades of bad blood among families or carry an afflicted soul up from the void. He could only do so much, and took pleasure in doing no more for others than was ever done for him. We all have our blood to let.
He worked his will among the people as God did, treating them no better or worse than Heaven ever had. Some died at ease, others did not. He reveled in their faithlessness as much as he did in their courage. On their deathbeds, he murmured their corruptions and trickery to them and watched the turmoil and terror bloom in their eyes just as the light of life faded from them.
It was, in its own way, quite glorious.
As Jester continued walking, taking his first bite of raw possum, he heard the woman whimpering out in the morass.
He moved off the road and pressed through the palm fronds and scrub oak. He eased into darkness and his shadows awakened. The ground grew muddier and the glowing cypress grew thicker, the hanging moss stretched out above. He heard laughter and hunkered down behind a stand of sprouting sassafras.
Two handsome, golden-haired men stood at the shore of a hillock of slough watching a middle-aged woman slowly sink into the mire. Her arms flailed once and she let out a sob, but could do no more than that. All the fight had already gone out of her, blood in her eyes as she cried out a name that sounded like "Henry."
Two scut-backed bull gators swam through the slime toward her, their powerful tails slashing deep black wakes behind them.
The men crouched and pawed through clothes and the contents of the woman's luggage and purse, letting out whoops of joy when they found fifty dollars in cash.
"I gonna get me a new shirt and go out dancin' Friday night," one said.
"You can't dance worth a lick, but you can use you some new clothes, 'specially some undergarments, whether you two-step in 'em or not."
Brother Jester sent his own darkness among the two killers and the dying woman, watching the shadows flap free as their feathery touch brushed the raised, knotted flesh of his scarred throat. They returned momentarily with knowledge of love and crimes that had been, and would be, completely buried in these swamps. It added to his anguished heart.
The woman's name was Marcie Andrews, a saleswoman on her way down to Jacksonville for a Mary Kay Cosmetics convention. She was a top earner in Raleigh and wanted to win a pink Cadillac for selling more product than anyone else in the region. She had stopped several times during her trip to hold impromptu sales pitches with various waitresses at truck stop diners and five-and-dime cashiers.
Sixteen cases of lipstick, eye shadow, rouge, pancake powder, and other necessities for a woman's morning ritual of beautifying were packed in the back of her Ford. Her husband Henry had told her not to push the Ford past sixty for fear of throwing a rod, but the more she stopped the further behind in her schedule she got, and the faster she drove to make up for lost time.
Already she'd sold another $227.48 worth of cosmetics, which she just knew was going to earn her that Caddy. Then Henry would surely be happy and might even take her on a second honeymoon like he'd been promising for the last twenty-eight years of marriage. The first honeymoon had been three days at the Whispering Pines Motel outside of Rosestock, South Carolina where he'd mostly gone fishing with the motel manager and another newly wedded husband, and Marcie and the other newly wedded wife mostly browsed at the little souvenir shop and read recipe magazines together.
She threw a rod two miles outside Enigma and sat behind the wheel flustered and cussing, wondering where in the hell she was going to find someone to help her in this swamp burg. Her tears cut quarter-inch-deep twin channels down her heavily made-up face and, gesticulating helplessly to the sky, she began to walk the road.
In their Dodge Charger, the Ferris boys found her that way, alone and about a half mile from her truck. They offered to haul the Ford to the nearest repair station, and Marcie, so taken with their chiseled, winsome features, didn't start to get worried until they were already deep in the river bottoms and bog land.
The boys didn't have to do anything more than toss her out the door into the morass. Marcie's penchant for fried foods and bonbons hadn't done her figure much good, and after five minutes of trying to dog paddle out in the muck, she was breathless and ready to go under. If she was lucky, she might drown before the gators dragged her off to gator ground and rolled her down in the mud, letting her ripen wedged and broken between logs. It might take days to die that way.
Brother Jester parted the high-standing sassafras and stepped into view. Showing mercy, as the Lord sometimes did, he was filled with prophecy and said to the woman in his ruined voice, "Henry will soon be with you before the eternal divine presence, Marcie. When he hears of your death he'll shoot himself in the head with his father's Army.45. You'll be together come Judgment Day in the light of Christ's peace and beauty."
Marcie tipped to one side, dying but still worried that her hair was getting dirty and the nice French curls that had cost her eighteen dollars down at Iris Connifer's House of Beauteous Bouffants were getting bugs in them.
But before the dark waters filled her mouth she whimpered, "Help me… oh no Henry… no… don't…"
The bull gator took her by the legs and yanked her under right then. Jester saw it would be hours before she would pass, as the gators jammed her beneath a hill of brambles to rot and tenderize. She wouldn't be eaten until Tuesday.
Jester bowed his head and said a prayer.
The Ferris boys stared at him and saw what the rest of the world saw. A seasoned, weathered, gaunt man with parchment-white skin, wearing a dusty frock coat, string-tie, and flat black hat of the old-time traveling ministers.
"Son, you done messed with us now," Deeter Ferris said. "Better to fling yourself in the mud your own self than cross paths with us."
His brother Duffy pointed to the water. "Go on and get in there. Don't you make me dirty my snakeskin boots none."
"That wouldn't be right at'all."
"Not'all."
"I know who you are," Brother Jester said. "Duffy and Deeter Ferris, who killed your own parents when you were but ten-year- and eleven-year-old bucks. And you haven't stopped your backwoods murdering since. You've masked your evil with your charm and comeliness, so no one dares accuse you."
The Ferris boys didn't act surprised to hear their ugliest and most intimate truth spoken aloud. Enigma was a town of many open secrets.
Deeter stroked the golden stubble on his chin and said, "This preacher sound like he been garglin' hot asphalt."
"Good that he ain't bein' loud, my ears is still ringin' from that woman's yodelin'. Why you sound like that, preacher?"
"I was hanged,"Jester said.
The Ferris brothers burst out laughing. Duffy asked, "Well, son, who done hanged you?"
"I don't remember."
"Reckon you might recollect a thing like that."
Deeter moved forward. "Reverend, you made the worst mistake in your whole dang life, not haulin' ass while you had the chance." He drew a Bowie knife that glinted with shreds of moonlight. "Lord almighty, now ain't you one sad sight, boy. Been a while since you had yourself some biscuits and gravy, ain't it. You won't hardly make a decent dessert for them bulls."
A six-inch skinning blade appeared in Duffy's hand. "You is surely one ugly sumbitch, Reverend. We doin' you a favor sendin' you off to Heaven 'fore you ain't nothin' but a walkin' skin-bag'a corruption and bones."
How true, Jester thought. Such luminous gospel cannot be hidden even from ignorant degenerates as this.
They approached easily with their weapons drawn, the violence and butchery in them large and majestic, which Brother Jester found refreshing.