Then I heard the singing. Sweet and high and mountain-stream pure, no affectation, no straining for effect, a simple, sincere young girl’s voice singing one of those old hillbilly hymns you could catch on “Grand Ole Opry” or “Country Jubilee” every once in a while.
My assumption at first was that it was a record or a radio. But as I turned I realized that it was coming from the church. I let it pull me, eager to hear it more clearly, and moments later I stood in the cooling shadows of the old service garage, listening to Ella Muldaur sing.
Ella stood in the center of the platform, a radiant hill child in a tattered blouse and faded jeans. Viola sat in the chair next to her, dressed in a pair of overalls and a blouse.
“Oh, I have talked to Jesus,
And He said He will show me peace.
Oh, I have talked to Jesus,
And He promised me no more grief.”
Her voice was skilled and knowing enough to convey both the promised peace and the grief of the present time.
No wonder Viola was crying, as she had been that first night I’d seen them here on the altar.
She held Ella’s right hand as the girl sang and swayed in joy and sorrow to the melody. And for that moment I was able to put aside all the hip, modern ways I’d been taught to feel about our quest for purpose and meaning and to simply share in our need to understand our place in the cosmos.
Cave paintings dating back thousand of years illustrated the desperate need mankind had always felt in seeking such an explanation. It almost didn’t matter if you believed in a god-force or not. The need to bring some meaning to the spectacle of human history was primal.
And so gentle and soothing when put into song by this girl.
They were so caught up in Ella’s singing they didn’t even seem aware of me at first.
And then she was done. And I felt banished from celestial comfort. I was no longer elevated by my humanity but doomed to it. It was not in heaven I stood but in an old garage that smelled of car oil and filth.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Viola said.
“I’m here to see Ella.”
“Ella? What for?”
I was only halfway up the aisle. I stood in place.
“The other day she said she had something to tell me. I’m curious what that was going to be.”
“I shouldn’t’ve said that, mister,” Ella said.
“That’s the most beautiful singing I’ve ever heard.”
“You should not praise the Lord’s music,”
Viola snapped. “Only the Devil wants worldly praise. Ella sings beautiful because her soul is beautiful. Ella is the purest of us all. She is God’s favored child.”
“Ella’s old enough to speak for herself,” I said.
“Please, mister, you’re gonna get me in an awful lot of trouble. And besides, all I was gonna say was that my daddy, he got sick even before he came to the altar that night.”
“You hush, girl!” Viola said. “We don’t talk to this man.”
“Yes, Mama!”
“Now, you leave, McCain. Or I’ll have Bill Oates spend some more time with you.” She grinned. “He told me how he done you pretty mean the other night.”
“You don’t seem very interested in finding the man who killed your husband, Mrs. Muldaur.”
“All I’m interested in is you gettin’ out of my sight.”
Not much I could say to that.
Fifteen
Bill Oates lived on an acreage on the north side of the town. A hundred yards or so from his dirt driveway was the “City Limits” sign. He’d planted half an acre of corn and some soybeans and there were a few head of cattle on a wide patch of grazing land. People who couldn’t make a living farming anymore often lived on places like this. They worked in town but kept a hand in the farm life they’d grown up with.
The outbuildings-gd-size barn and a large wooden shed, maybe for chickens-were in decent shape and the John Deere tractor parked near the back of the house looked to be in fine repair, too.
The inevitable farm collie rushed at me in the inevitable way and made all the inevitable noises and threats until a tired-looking woman even more faded than her housedress shushed him and shooed him and then came out, screen door snapping shut behind her, to meet me. She’d apparently been baking. Her hands were white with flour.
“Help you?”
“My name’s McCain.”
“I know who you are.” Not at all friendly.
Wide face, smart but angry blue eyes, reddish hair just starting to go gray. And a very nice body if you liked them voluptuous, body that performed all the functions of eating, sleeping, working but that she probably never gave much thought to otherwise. Mid-thirties, most likely.
“The mister ain’t home.”
“Then I’d like to talk to you.”
She held up her hands for inspection. “I’m baking pies.”
I knew I had only a few seconds left before she ordered me back to my car. “I was out at Muldaur’s church the night he died.”
“Yeah, I seen you. So did everybody else.”
“Muldaur asked me to be there.”
“Muldaur’s dead, like you say.”
“Your husband slapped you that night.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“I saw it.”
“Oh.”
“I’d like you to tell me why he slapped you.”
“That wouldn’t be any of your business, mister.
And anyways, I thought Sykes was the law in these parts.”
I grinned. “More or less.”
“You ain’t even half as cute as you think you are.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” I didn’t have anything to lose so I said, “Were you friendly with Muldaur?”
She spat into the dust. “You got a lot of nerve askin’ a Christian woman a question like that.”
“Two men have been murdered. I need to know why.”
“Somebody tell you something about me?” More suspicious now than angry.
“No. But I’m learning things about Reverend Muldaur. And I just thought it was strange that your husband would hit you like that.”
“He hits me all the time like that. I need to be hit all the time like that.”
I thought of what Parnell had told me about how a good church should make you feel bad. My God is a wrathful God.
“Any particular reason?”
“There was a time in my life when I wandered.”
“Wandered?”
She looked over at the collie. The dog had a long, sweet face. She looked as if she sympathized with the woman’s wandering.
“I used to wander off with other men.”
“I see.”
“I had the Devil in me.”
“That’s why he slapped you?”
“Used to be why he slapped me. Then we moved up here from Georgia and the wandering stopped.”
“But he kept hitting you?”
She stared at me. “I’m a sinner, mister.
I done a lot of other terrible things. I mean, it wasn’t just the wanderin’. I don’t always keep the house clean the way God wants me to, I don’t always fix Bill the meals he wants the way God wants me to, I don’t always do the things in our marriage bed God said I should do even though it hurts me when I do them. I’m a coward about pain. I even hated my own children when they was bein’ born because I was in so much pain.
I’m not a good woman, mister. So Bill’s got every right in the world to hit me.”
“He found out about you and Muldaur?”
She spat in the dust. “Git. And git now.”
“I’ll find out eventually, Mrs. Oates.
If not from you, somebody you know. Things like this get around.”
Hard-eyed, hard-voiced, she said, “You must think you’re pretty big stuff. Goin’ around and judgin’ people like this.”
“I’m not judging you, Mrs. Oates. I’m a sinner just like you. No better, no worse.”
That seemed to affect her. She touched a flour-white hand to her hair, as if for the first time she was concerned about her appearance. As if for the first time, she saw me as human and thus somebody to look presentable for.
She shrugged. “He found out a week before John died. He had his suspicions and he just kept workin’ on me.”