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“We’re out here on personal business,” said Tom mildly. “Family business. We don’t discuss that business with strangers.”
“Is that what we are, Brother Tom?” asked Preacher Jack with a hint of reproach in his voice. “Are we strangers?”
Tom said, “If we’d met in town or at Wawona, or in the sanctuary of one of the way stations, then I suppose I’d feel comfortable enough to swap stories. That’s not the case. I find a man tortured and fed to the dead. That’s suspicious. Then you step out of nowhere.”
“I—”
Tom stopped him with a raised hand. “Let me finish. I offer no hostility and mean no disrespect, but I am not in a position to trust a stranger.” He nodded toward Benny and the others. “Manners are going to have to take a backseat to common sense and safety.”
“So I see.”
“I’m going to ask one more time … do you know anything about who this man is, why he was killed, or why he didn’t reanimate?”
Preacher Jack hooked his thumbs into his belt, and Benny noted that this put the heel of his right hand on the pommel of his knife. Having seen how fast the man could draw that knife, Benny had no illusions that the gesture was accidental. He carefully tightened his grip on the bokken.
“I don’t believe that I have any of the answers you seek,” murmured the man in the dusty coat.
“Then I think we’re done here.”
“Done with me or done with this poor sinner?”
“With both.” Tom took a small step back.
Preacher Jack nodded. “Perhaps we’ll meet again under more pleasant circumstances, Brother Tom.”
“That would be nice, sir, but unlikely. You see, we’re heading east.”
For the first time Preacher Jack’s smile flickered. “What? You’re leaving these mountains? When will you be coming back?”
“I don’t expect that we will.”
That wiped the smile completely from the preacher’s face. He looked disappointed and even a little bit angry at this news, and Benny watched Tom as his brother watched the change in Preacher Jack’s expression.
“Something wrong?” asked Tom, his own face and voice neutral.
The smile returned, te
ntatively at first and then with all its twitchy vibrancy. “Wrong? Why, no, except that it would surely have been a blessing to sit down, break bread, and try this whole meeting again in a more civilized way. I fear we got ourselves off on the wrong foot here. Knives and hard words and all.”
Now Tom smiled, and it looked genuine, at least to Benny.
“Yeah.” Tom laughed. “I guess this wasn’t the most genial encounter.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, it could have been worse.”
“Yes,” said Preacher Jack with a glitter in his eyes, “it surely could have.”
They stood there, eight feet apart with a dead man lying on the ground between them, and Benny had the impression that there were all sorts of conversations going on at the same time. Words that were not being spoken but that were mutually understood. Except to Benny and, from the look on her face, Nix as well.
Preacher Jack bowed to Nix and Lilah. “If by word or deed I have done anything to offend you fine ladies,” he said, removing his hat and bowing low once more, “then I am truly sorry and most humbly beg forgiveness. The Ruin is not a charm school, and in hard times we often forget who we are and where we came from.”
Lilah said nothing, but her honey-colored eyes lost some of their intensity. Nix gave a single curt bob of her head.
Preacher Jack turned to Benny. “Peace to you, little brother.”
“Um … yeah, sure. Back atcha.”
Preacher Jack ignored Chong altogether, but he fixed Tom with a knowing smile. “I won’t offer my hand again, Brother Tom, for fear that it will once more be left hanging in the wind. So I’ll tip my hat and bid you all a farewell. May the Good Lord keep you from snakes and snares and the evil that men do.”
With that the preacher replaced his hat, tugged his lapels to adjust the hang of his jacket, and walked back into the woods, where he vanished so quickly into the shadows that the whole encounter might have been a dream. Tom and the others stood where they were for a full five minutes, listening first for Preacher Jack’s soft footfalls and then to the forest as the ordinary sounds one by one returned.
