“You met with the vestry…?” Velma prompted.
Clare wrenched her head away from the narrowing bloodred place it was sliding toward. “Yes. Um. They had a very ambitious meet-and-greet planned for me, but I told them I just wanted to get back to work.” She hadn’t told them the idea of being hailed as the returning hero turned her stomach. “Instead, we agreed I’d drop in on as many of our groups and outreach programs as possible. Kind of like wading into the pool from the shallow end.” She needed to start at the shallow end. Her body’s clock was still set seven time zones away, and it was only thanks to the go and no-go pills she had brought back from Iraq that she opened her eyes in the morning and shut them at night. Plus, she had been having nightmares-
“Are you going to be at church on Sunday?”
Velma’s question brought her back to the moment. “I’ll be celebrating, yeah, but Father Lawrence will be preaching. Writing sermons is the only thing I didn’t miss while I was gone.”
They laughed again, and the rest of her dangerous thoughts retreated into the dark, turned away by her parishioners’ good humor. She went to work in the dining room, taking the chairs off the tables, carting plastic glasses and coffee cups to the drink station; laying out cheap, disposable salt and pepper shakers at every table. She pushed open narrow casement windows and switched on every standing fan to move the sticky, overheated air around.
At noon the doors, beneath their inscription I WAS HUNGRY, AND YOU GAVE ME FOOD, opened. One by two by four, the diners came in, some silent, some chatting with friends, some talking to companions only they could see and hear.
It had surprised her, when she’d first arrived in Millers Kill, that there could be any street people in such a small town, but Russ had shown her the derelict waterfront buildings where they sheltered. The untreated mentally ill, the hard-core alcoholic addicts, the people who would not or could not be reached.
Then there were the teens and early twenties, often passing through; sometimes a couple of Appalachian Trail hikers looking to save a buck, other times twitchy, defensive kids who looked as if they could never remember being cuddled on someone’s lap.
The St. Alban’s volunteers served lunch to men in mechanic’s overalls and feed store caps, and to women headed to Fort Henry for the afternoon shift behind a cash register at the Kmart or the Stewart’s. They served the slow-moving, dignified elderly, and occasionally the young, darting around their mothers or fathers.
Clare tried to speak with as many people as she could, even if it was as brief as a greeting and a “Lord, it sure is hot today, isn’t it?” Pouring drinks, swiping spills off the tables, bringing diners seconds, she could feel her vocation reassembling around her, feel herself changing from a single recipient of God’s grace into a conduit, from someone clutching with tight fingers to someone giving away with both hands. She had long thought that if Jesus were around today, he’d be feeding people at a soup kitchen instead of washing their feet.
There was a cry of distress and a flurry of motion at one of the tables farthest from the door. An older woman had knocked over her iced tea, and the two others sitting near her were trying to sop up the rapidly spreading puddle with their inadequate paper napkins. Clare strode through the dining hall, waving her large stained cloth like a martyr’s relic. “Let me. I can get the whole thing with this monster.”
One woman in polyester uniform pants and a tired expression suggesting she was between two shifts plunked back down into her seat as Clare attacked the spill. The younger woman stayed by the old lady’s side, her hand on her shoulder. “Let me get you another drink,” she said.
“Oh, thank you, Tally.” Her dining companion’s voice shook. “That would be nice.”
Clare lifted her head. Tally? Tally McNabb had vanished last week from the Dew Drop Inn and hadn’t been seen since. Russ had waited twenty-four hours, then released her husband and Warrant Officer Nichols. Nichols had left town, and when Tally failed to turn up, Russ had speculated she had gone with him. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she had been living on the streets or bunking with friends until her husband cooled off.
How many Tallys could there be in Millers Kill?
Clare rolled the wet cloth and ice cubes into a ball and went after her. The young woman was reaching for a pebbled plastic glass. “Tally?” Clare said. “Specialist Tally McNabb?”
She spun around, staring, and Clare had an impression of brown eyes and fear and a tattoo on one arm, and then Tally hurled the iced tea straight at Clare and bolted for the door.
The plastic glass bounced off Clare’s forehead.
“Ow!” Ice cubes flew into the air and chunked down onto her head and shoulders. Sweet tea drenched her shirt and runneled down her hair. She dashed liquid out of her eyes. “What the hell?” She took off after the fleeing woman, shouts of “She attacked Reverend Clare!” and “Call nine-one-one!” rising from the kitchen behind her.
Clare dodged tables, chairs, people leaping and lurching to get out of Tally’s way. A grizzled man in an overcoat opened the door and staggered back as Tally rammed into him, caromed off his chest, and sprinted down the sidewalk.
Clare skidded to a stop, grabbing the man’s shoulders to steady him. “You okay?” Alcohol fumes rose off him like heat shimmers off the street.
He nodded and smiled, cheerily and toothlessly. “Enjoy your lunch,” Clare said and pounded after the younger woman, who now had almost a block’s lead on her. Clare concentrated on closing it, lengthening her stride, shortening her arm swing, matching her breathing to the thwap-thwap-thwap of her sneakers hitting the pavement. She’d been running six, eight, ten miles a day these past months, endless, punishing loops around the base perimeter, kicking it up, kicking it and kicking it until she outran her mind and was nothing but a body, all sensation, no thought.
She drew closer and closer to Tally, her breath sawing in her ears, her feet thudding along with her heart. She was getting into that zone where all the noise in her head went away and she just felt: anger and excitement and the heat on her skin and the stretch and flex of her muscles. When Tally pivoted into an alley between the Goodwill and a dilapidated hobby shop, Clare didn’t hesitate. She followed-right into the garbage can the girl had toppled in her path.
Clare hit the can, flipping over it, smashing shoulder-first onto the gritty asphalt. Her lungs emptied. Her eyes filled. She heard the pounding of footsteps behind her, then the thud and swish of someone leaping over her, then the footsteps receding as Tally ran back onto Mill Street.
Clare swore. Pushed herself off the pavement, her shoulder burning and cramping. Wiped her forearm across her eyes to clear her tear-and-dust-clouded vision. Took a step and collapsed at the stab of pain in her right ankle. She swore again. Limped out of the alley as fast as one and a half legs could take her. Spotted Tally one block up, bent over, hands braced on her knees, her body bowed before the limits of her heart and lungs. When she saw Clare, she started upright and staggered toward the Riverside Park.
“Wait, goddammit!”
Tally ignored her. Clare cursed again then clamped her mouth shut as she realized she had brought more than a running habit back from Iraq. Limping up the sidewalk, she tried again. “I just want to talk with you!”
Even Tally’s lurching half-jog was going to outstrip Clare’s speed with a twisted ankle. “It’s about Quentan Nichols!”
Tally paused, still not turning.
C’mon, Clare thought. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.
A cruiser flew from the end of Burgoyne Street, crossed Mill, and kept right on going, over the curb, onto the sidewalk, and the door swung open and Eric McCrea was there, gun out, pointing it at Tally, bellowing, “Police! Get down on the ground!”