AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I nodded.
“It was not a natural death?”
I shook my head.
“Clarence!”
It was such a shout as would shake the field beasts and the shepherds asleep. It was the start of a sermon on darkness.
J. C. leaped up, head back. Tears spilled from his eyes.
“. . . Clarence …”
And he began to walk, eyes shut, down the Mount, away from the lost sermons, toward the other hill, Calvary, where his cross waited. I pursued.
Striding, J. C. asked:
“I don’t suppose you got anything on you? Liquor, booze. Hell! It was going to be such a sweet day! Clarence, you idiot!”
We reached the cross and J. C. searched in back and snorted a bitter laugh of relief, pulling out a sack that made liquid sounds.
“Christ’s blood in a brown bag in an unmarked bottle. What has the ceremony come to?” He drank, and drank again. “What do I do now? Climb up, nail myself, and wait for them?”
“Them?!”
“God, boy, it’s a matter of time! Then I’m spiked through the wrists, hung by my ballistics! Clarence is dead! How?”
“Smothered under his photographs.”
J. C. stiffened. “Who says?”
“I saw, J. C., but told no one. He knew something and was killed. What do you know!?”
“Nothing!” J. C. shook his head terribly. “No!”
“Clarence, outside the Brown Derby two nights ago, recognized a man. The man raised his fists! Clarence ran! Why?”
“Don’t try to find out!” said J. C. “Lay off. I don’t want you dragged down with me. There’s nothing I can do now but wait—” J. C.’s voice broke. “With Clarence killed, it won’t be long before they think I put him up to going to the Brown Derby—”
“Did you!?”
And me? I thought. Did you write to ask me to be there, too!?
“Who was it, J. C. They, who is they?! People are dying all over the place. My friend Roy, too, maybe!”
“Roy?” J. C. paused, furtively. “Dead? He’s lucky. Hiding? No use! They’ll get him. Like me. I knew too much for years.”
“How far back?”
“Why?”
“I might be dead, too. I’ve stumbled on something but I’m damned if I know what. Roy stumbled on something and he’s dead or on the run. My God, someone has killed Clarence because he stumbled on something. It’s a matter of time before they figure, What the hell, maybe I know Clarence too well, and kill me, to be sure. Damn it, J. C., Manny’s shutting the studio for two days. To clean up, repaint. God, no. It’s for Roy! Think! Tens of thousands of dollars out the window to find one crazy goof whose only crime was living ten million years back, who ran amok with one clay beast and has a price on his head. Why is Roy so important? Why, like Clarence, does he have to die? You. The other night. You said you were high up on Calvary. You saw the wall, the ladder, the body on the ladder. Could you see the face of that body?”
“It was too far away.” J. C.’s voice shook.
“Did you see the face of the man who put the body on the ladder?”
“It was dark—”
