And so these two remained in their separate rooms, apart but somehow together, barely thinking about the men who had died at their hands that night. Instead, one reached out to the other and wished him peace, and that peace was granted, temporarily, by sleep.
But true peace would require a sacrifice.
Already, Louis had some idea of how that sacrifice might be achieved.
Far to the north, Cyrus Nairn was enjoying his first night of freedom.
He had been released from Thomaston that morning, his possessions contained in a black plastic garbage bag. His clothes still fitted him no better or no worse than they ever had, for incarceration had made little impact on Cyrus’s crooked body. He stood outside the walls and looked back at the prison. The voices were silent so he knew that Leonard was there with him, and he felt no fear at the sight of the things that crowded along the walls, their huge wings drawn back against their bodies, their dark eyes watchful. Instead, he reached behind his back and imagined that he felt, at either side of his curved spine, the first swellings of those great wings upon his own body.
Cyrus made his way to Thomaston’s main street and ordered a Coke and a doughnut in the diner, pointing silently at the items that he wanted. A couple at a nearby table stared at him, then looked away when he caught their eye, his demeanor giving him away as much as the black bag at his feet. He ate and drank quickly, for even a simple Coke tasted better outside those walls, then gestured for a refill and waited for the diner to empty. Presently, he found himself alone, with only the women behind the counter to cast the odd anxious glance in his direction.
Shortly after midday, a man entered and took the table next to Cyrus. He ordered a coffee, read his newspaper, then departed, leaving the newspaper behind. Cyrus reached out for it and pretended to read the front page, then dropped it back on his own table. The envelope concealed within the newspaper’s folds slid into his hand with only the gentlest of jingles, and from there, into the pocket of his jacket. Cyrus left four dollars for his food on the table, then walked quickly from the diner.
The car was an anonymous, two-year-old Nissan. Inside the glove compartment was a map, a piece of paper with two addresses and a telephone number written upon it, and a second envelope, containing one thousand dollars in used bills and a set of keys for a trailer located in a park near Westbrook. Cyrus memorized the addresses and the number, then disposed of the paper by masticating it into a wet ball and dropping it down a drain, as he had been instructed to do.
Finally, he leaned down and felt beneath the passenger seat with his hand. He ignored the gun taped into place and instead allowed his fingers to brush the blade once, twice, before he raised them to his nostrils and sniffed.
Clean, he thought. Nice and clean.
Then he turned the car and headed south, just as the voice came to him.
Happy, Cyrus?
Happy, Leonard.
Very happy.
14
I LOOKED AT myself in the mirror.
My eyes were bloodshot and there was a red rash across my neck. I felt like I’d been drinking the night before: my movements were out of sync and I kept bumping into the furniture in the room. My temperature was still above normal and my skin was clammy to the touch. I wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers up over my head, but I didn’t have that luxury. Instead, I made coffee in my room and watched the news. When the Caina story came on, I put my head in my hands and let my coffee go cold. A long time went by before I felt certain enough of myself to start working the phone.
According to a man named Randy Burris at the South Carolina Department of Corrections, the Richland County Detention Center was one of a number of institutions participating in a scheme involving former prisoners who preached the gospel to those still incarcerated. The program, called FAR (Forgiveness And Renewal) and run out of Charleston, was an outreach ministry similar to the THUG (True Healing Under God) program that was trying to help inmates in the north of the state by using ex-offenders to convince others not to reoffend. In South Carolina, about 30 percent of the ten thousand inmates released each year ended up back behind bars within three years, so it was in the interest of the state to support the ministry in whatever way it could. The man named Tereus-his only given name-was a recent recruit to FAR, and according to one of the administrators, a woman named Irene Jakaitis, the only one of its members to opt for a ministry as far north as Richland. The warden at Richland told me that Tereus had spent most of his time at the prison counseling Atys Jones. Tereus now had an address in a rooming house off King Street close by the Wha Cha Like gospel store. Prior to that, he had lived in one of the city’s charity hostels while he searched for a job. The rooming house was about a five-minute ride from my hotel.
The tourist buses were making their way along King as I drove and the spiel of the guides carried above the noise of passing cars. King has always been Charleston ’s center of commerce, and down by Charleston Place there are some pretty nice stores aimed mostly at the out-of-towners. But as you head north, the stores become more practical, the restaurants a little more homely. There are more black faces, and more weeds on the sidewalks. I passed Wha Cha Like and Honest John’s TV Repair and Record Store. Three young white men in gray dress uniforms, cadets from the Citadel, marched silently along the sidewalk, their very existence a reminder of the city’s past, for the Citadel owed its beginnings to the failed slave revolt of Denmark Vesey and the city’s belief that a well-fortified arsenal was necessary to guard against future uprisings. I stopped to let them cross then turned left onto Morris Street and parked across from the Morris Street Baptist Church. An old black man watched me from where he sat on the steps leading up to the side porch of Tereus’s home, eating what looked like peanuts from a brown paper bag. He offered the bag to me as I approached the steps.
“Goober?”
“No thanks.” Goobers were peanuts boiled in their shells. You sucked them for a time, then cracked them open to eat the nuts inside, made soft and hot by their time spent in the water.
“You allergic?”
“No.”
“You watching your weight?”
“No.”
“Then take a damn goober.”
I did as I was told, even though I didn’t care much for peanuts. The nut was so hot I had to pucker and suck in air in order to cool my mouth down.
“Hot,” I said.
“What you expect? I done tole you it was a goober.”
He peered at me like I was kind of slow. He might have been right.
“I’m looking for a man called Tereus.”
“He ain’t home.”
“You know where I might find him?”
“Why you lookin’ for him?”
I showed him my id.
“You a long ways from home,” he said. “Long ways.” He still hadn’t told me where I might find Tereus.
“I don’t mean him any harm, and I don’t want to cause him trouble. He helped a young man, a client of mine. Anything Tereus can tell me might make the difference between living and dying for this kid.”
The old man eyed me up for a time. He had no teeth, and his lips made a wet sucking sound as he worked on the nut in his mouth.
“Well, living and dying, that’s pretty serious,” he said, with just a hint of mockery. He was probably right to yank my chain a little. I sounded like a character from an afternoon soap.
“I sound overdramatic?”
“Some,” he nodded. “Some.”
“Well, it’s still pretty bad. It’s important that I talk to Tereus.”
With that, the shell softened enough for him to bite through to the nuts inside. He spit the remnants carefully into his hand.