“Why Minnesota?” asked Vivian.
Ruth placed a hand on her friend Vivian’s shoulder. “Sit down, sweetheart. Lyle, go shut that door. Vivian, we’re going to tell you what’s really going on.”
Vivian eased warily into the nearest chair. “It’s about those awful college boys, isn’t it? And the two sad ones who died.”
“Three are dead now,” put in Maggie.
Vivian choked.
Jane looked over at her brother. Her eyes solicited corroboration for the incomplete truth she was about to dispose: “The young man was murdered. And the police think it was my brother who did it. We have to get him out of Zenith as soon as possible.”
“You have to get him out? And Maggie and Molly as well?”
“There are other parts to it,” said Jane. “I’m sure that Ruth will explain it all to you in time. All we can do right now is apologize to you and Sister Lydia for leaving like this, and hope you won’t hold this decision against us. Oh, and one other thing. We have a small side favor to ask of you.”
“Yes?”
“That we be allowed to spend the night here.”
“Right here? In Sister Lydia’s tabernacle?”
Jane and Ruth nodded. Ruth picked things up from here: “This is a church. And a church should be a place of sanctuary. We need that refuge tonight. All six of us. I know there are resting cots in the storeroom downstairs — the ones you’ll be using for healing services. We can sleep on them—down in the storeroom. No one needs to make any fuss over us.”
Vivian thought about this. “It’s very irregular. But then again, what is regular in a world that seems these days to be spinning right off its axis? And I fear, my dear girls, that we are a long way from having peace and sanity restored.”
Vivian got up from her chair and walked over to where Lyle was leaning against a walclass="underline" silent, pondering.
“I have to know,” she said. “Did you kill the boy? Did you do it?”
Lyle traded a look with Jane. Jane nodded that he should answer, and he should answer truthfully.
He tipped his head.
“Why?”
Jane sat down. Her eyes began to well up. Molly went to her and wrapped her arms around her neck in a gesture that was both loving and protecting.
“I think I know,” said Vivian Colthurst, looking painfully at Jane. “And I also know that the church has offered sanctuary to the accused for centuries — both the falsely accused and the rightfully accused who seek divine forgiveness. And why should Sister Lydia’s Tabernacle of the Sanctified Spirit be any different?”
Vivian spent most of the next two hours working with her five favorite choir members to teach them the songs that in their several-day absence the other members had already learned. In the meantime Lyle was down in the storeroom making ready the room he and We Five would share that night. It was decided that rather than have Lyle wait until the end of the morning service to leave — and thereby run the risk of being spotted by the police — he’d depart alone just before daybreak. He would drive his 1919 model Oldsmobile “Economy” delivery truck up to St. Agatha. He’d wait there at the depot for the arrival of the Middle West Limited from Zenith. Then he and Maggie and Molly and his sister Jane would continue their journey to Maggie’s uncle’s cabin by back roads.
Vivian had pointed out to Lyle that if he wished, he need only come close to the heating vent in the basement storeroom to hear his sister and the other choir members singing during the full rehearsal in the auditorium upstairs. “Sister Lydia is quite the showwoman, so you’ll miss all the eye-pomp that generally characterizes her theatrical services, but at least you’ll be able to hear things, if you’re so inclined: her sermon — riveting as always—and the music. Such divinely gorgeous music.”
At five minutes to six, a robed Molly and Maggie and Jane and Ruth climbed the stairs to the north anteroom off the auditorium. Carrie did not. Carrie took a detour; she went to the storeroom to see Lyle. For a moment Carrie and Lyle looked at one another without speaking. Then Lyle said, “Maybe I’ll tell you goodbye now, because you’ll probably be sleeping when I leave in the morning.”
Carrie nodded. She took Lyle’s hand and held it up to her cheek. “You’ve been very nice to me. Jane said you never used to be nice to anyone, so I consider this as a big improvement in your character.”
“I’m still not a very good person, Carrie. I killed a man.”
“According to Jane you’ve killed several men. During the war. In the Battle of the Argonne Forest. She showed me your Distinguished Service Cross.”
“How could she? I threw it out.”
“Well, it didn’t stay thrown out. She said she found it in the trash and kept it. Why did you throw it out, Lyle?”
Lyle took a moment to answer. He did so without looking at Carrie. “I stopped believing what they told me about the war. And then I stopped believing I could ever have been a hero. You can’t be a true hero in a war that should never have been fought. And when I stopped believing that, why, I stopped believing in anything.”
Lyle took Carrie by the shoulders and turned her so they’d have to look at one another now. He kept his hands on those shoulders as he spoke. “Listen to me, Carrie. I know what I did was wrong — killing Catts was wrong in ten different ways. I wanted to hurt him for what he did to Jane. No, I didn’t just want to hurt him. I wanted to kill him. You’re right. I’ve killed men before. The army taught us how to do this — how to flip the switch, and then suddenly it’s okay to kill, because you’re in a war and it comes down to either you or the Boche. And even though the war’s been over for five years, it doesn’t look like I’ve lost the knack for flipping that switch when I can find a reason to justify it. That makes me the opposite of a nice person, Carrie, a good person. That makes me a dangerous person. You’re looking at me and seeing somebody who isn’t there. I don’t think he’s ever going to be there.”
“You don’t know that, Lyle.”
“If I ever find the Cross, I’m going to toss it out again. Jane was wrong to hold on to it. Look, it would have been something else if I’d walked in on the two of them — if I’d caught him in the act of hurting her and I struck out at him. But I didn’t. I went looking for him. The same way I hunted down German stragglers in the Argonne and picked them off like field rabbits.”
Through the heating vent came the sound of the tabernacle organ (compromised somewhat by its five missing pipes) playing the anthem “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” The anthem would serve as prelude to the procession of Sister Lydia and her large company of choir members, musicians, and various spiritual adjutants into the auditorium.
“You should go,” said Lyle, taking his hands from Carrie’s shoulders.
“What about us, Lyle?”
“I don’t know about us. I only know that I can’t keep running forever. At least if they decide not to hang me, you can always come visit me in prison.”
Carrie glanced at the open door, but she didn’t make a move for it.
Lyle nudged her gently. “Hurry up. They’re waiting for you.”