Fry counted five hooded shapes twirling and dipping around a crudely dug fire pit. They wore white robes and weren’t actually crying; it was a strident, wailing chant, with no discernible melody. A tall wooden cross had been planted on a dune overlooking the campsite.
“It’s the Klan!” Fry whispered.
“They’re a long way from home,” said Skinner.
Fry saw him reach beneath his sweatshirt and adjust a gun-shaped bulge in his waistband. It was possible he clicked off the safety.
“What’re you gonna do, Dad?”
“Be my usual charming self.”
Nervously Fry followed him out of the pines. Skinner walked with casual purpose as he approached the moaners, who one by one stopped dancing and fell silent.
“Howdy,” Skinner said.
“Who are you, brother?” It was the tallest one; a man’s voice.
“State wildlife commission. I’m lookin’ for a man named Louis Piejack-he’s wanted for poachin’ shellfish.”
“Don’t know the sinner,” said the tallest moaner. The others closed ranks behind him.
“How ’bout losin’ those hoods?” Skinner asked genially.
The hoods turned out to be part of their white robes, each of which bore a breast emblem that read FOUR SEASONS-MAUI.
Definitely not the KKK, thought Fry with relief.
“We’ve nothing to hide,” the tallest moaner declared. He and the others obligingly revealed their faces. There were two men and three women, all shiny-cheeked and well fed. Neither Fry nor his father recognized them from Everglades City.
“I’m Brother Manuel,” the tall one volunteered, “of the First Resurrectionist Maritime Assembly for God. We believe that Jesus our Savior has returned and is sailing the seven seas”-he paused to acknowledge the lapping surf-“preparing to come ashore in all His glory and inspire the worldly to repent. We will welcome Him with prayer and rejoicing.”
Skinner nodded impatiently. “Where you from, Manny?”
“Zolfo Springs, sir, and we’re up to no mischief. We’re here upon this blessed shore to baptize our newest sister, Miss Shirelle.”
She identified herself with a perky wave.
“You folks been drinkin’?” Skinner inquired.
Brother Manuel bridled. “Wine only, sir. I can show you the passage in the Scriptures.”
“I’m certain you can. See anything strange out here tonight? We believe Mr. Louis Piejack is in the vicinity.”
One of the female moaners asked, “How might we know this man?”
“One of his hands is taped,” Skinner said, “like a mummy’s.”
“Ah!”
“Plus he stinks like dead mudfish,” Fry added, quoting his mother.
One of the male celebrants revealed that they’d heard gunshots earlier in the evening. “From over there,” he said, pointing across the waves.
“How many shots?” Skinner asked. He avoided eye contact with Fry, whom he knew would be alarmed. He purposely had not told his son about the shotgun that he’d seen in Piejack’s johnboat on the river.
“Two rounds,” the man said.
“Sure it was gunfire? Sometimes campers bring fireworks.”
“Brother Darius is a deer hunter,” Brother Manuel explained. “God’s bounty, you understand.”
Sister Shirelle, the stoutest of the moaners, asked, “May we invite you to stay for the baptism? Join us in the divine waters where our Savior sails.”
“Some other time,” Skinner said tightly.
Another woman called out, “Sir, may I inquire about the boy?”
“That’s my son.”
“I couldn’t help but take note of the headpiece. Is he afflicted in some way?”
“Yeah, he’s afflicted with one motherfucker of a migraine. He crashed his skateboard into a truck.”
Brother Manuel clasped his hands. “Then let us pray for the youngster’s healing. Come, brothers and sisters!”
The moaners re-hooded and commenced a new chant, as dissonant as the others. Sister Shirelle, dauntingly braless, led the group in improvisational writhing.
Fry jerked his father’s sleeve and whispered, “You think they really heard a gun?”
“Vamos ahora,” Skinner said.
They’d gone about fifty yards down the beach when Brother Manuel broke from the dance ring and barreled after them, yelling, “Friends, wait! Whoa there!”
Away from the firelight, Fry could no longer see his father’s expression. Not that he needed to.
“A-hole,” he heard him mutter.
“Should we run?” the boy asked hopefully. He was aware of Skinner’s low opinion of preachers and zealots. One time his dad had turned a fire hose on a roving quartet of Jehovah’s Witnesses who’d accosted him at the crab docks.
“See, this is the problem with religion, son. They can’t keep it among themselves, they gotta cram it down everyone else’s throat.” He’d hurried his pace, but the long-legged moaner was gaining on them. “It’s been a long time since I looked at the Bible, but I don’t recall Jesus makin’ a damn nuisance of Himself.”
“He’s almost here, Dad.”
“Yeah, I know.” Perry Skinner stopped and whirled around.
Huffing and sweaty, the tall moaner advanced with the grinning, witless confidence of the self-righteous. From his purloined hotel robe he produced a folded pamphlet, which he held out to Skinner as if it were a deed to a gold mine.
“No offense, sir, but by your coarse language I could tell it’s been awhile since you brought your soul to church. Here, please take the Word.”
Fry held his breath. Slowly his father drew the.45 and placed the barrel upon the florid tip of Brother Manuel’s nose.
“Manny,” Skinner said, “I got my own word: Semiautomatic.”
The leaflet fluttered from the moaner’s fingers. “Easy, dog,” he said.
“This is my church,” Skinner went on, “this island out here and all the others-so many islands that nobody’s counted ’em all. And the sky and the Gulf and the rivers that roll out of the ’glades, all of it’s my church. And you know what? God Almighty or whatever His name might be, I believe He’d approve.”
Fry said, “Come on. Let’s go find Mom.”
The boy was more worried than before. Learning of the gunshots plainly had set his father on edge, too.
“Manny, I’m gonna ask you a personal question and I expect an honest, upright Christian answer,” Skinner said. “You’re fornicatin’ with Sister Shirelle, aren’t you? You already baptized that young lady in your own special way, am I right? Told her to close her eyes and get down on her knees and wait for sweet salvation.”
Half-lit by the moon, Brother Manuel blinked once in slow motion, like an anemic tortoise.
“Thought so,” Skinner said. “Look-me and my son are gonna leave now, and you’re gonna go back to your people and boogie for Christ and forget you ever laid your sorry heathen eyes on me. Got it?” Skinner lowered the.45.
“Amen,” said the moaner and ran away, his white robe flapping like a shredded sail.
Eighteen
Boyd Shreave dreamed he was working at Relentless, phoning suckers at dinnertime. He was trying to sell residential lots on a sodded landfill in a future housing development called Lesion Hills. To the east was a pig farm and to the west was a dioxin factory; upwind, a crematorium. All unsavory details were perversely included in the telephone script, and elucidated with appalling candor to prospective customers.
It was a nightmare. Everyone whom Shreave called would insult him savagely then hang up. When he turned to commiserate with Eugenie Fonda, he was aghast to find her cubicle occupied by his wife, who menaced him crudely with a Taser. And the dream got worse: Shreave neglected to observe that the last number on his call sheet belonged to one D. Landry, a disaster compounded by his failure to recognize his own mother’s voice until he was midway through the sales pitch, when he heard a string of witheringly familiar debasements that culminated with the phrase “worthless pile of muskrat shit.”