Chapter 36
l raised my foot, had a split second to admire my
navy blue loafer (Misty Moccasin, Beverly Feldman, $265, because
sandals didn’t seem a sensible choice for hell) before my leg
pistoned out and the church doors flew open, slamming back against
the walls with a satisfying double crash.
“Don’t even,” I said
as Laura cowered behind me, groaned, and covered her eyes. “This is
me being subtle, so don’t even say it. Hey! Asshats!” I stomped
down the aisle, ready to kick some uptight bigoted Pilgrim ass.
“You guys. All you old white guys. And also your uptight wives. And
why are there kids in here? You want
your children to watch you lie and get hysterical and trump up
charges and scare and hang innocent people? Let me guess: there’s
gonna be a potluck supper afterward.”
The woman on trial—it
had to be her, she was standing in front—looked at me with eyes
gone huge. And the first thing I noticed was how gorgeous she
was.
Don’t get me wrong,
it’s not like I surround myself with the deformed. If anything, I
usually found myself hanging out with men and women who were
obscenely good-looking (I had yet to meet the fugly vampire). Hell,
Tina alone could have won Miss America blindfolded with two black
eyes and a runny nose. And pimples! Okay, maybe not with
pimples.
The would-be witch
was quite small—the top of her head was way, way below my chin. But
then, I was tall for an undead heathen.
Her hair, a gorgeous
rippling brownish red, was piled on top of her teeny head. She had
so much of it, it seemed as though the weight of all those tresses
would yank her head back if she let them down.
Her skin was pale,
except for two hectic flares of color on her cheeks—not blush. (I was pretty sure Revlon hadn’t been
incorporated yet.) It was the hectic color of anger or fright or
excitement ... or all three. And her eyes seemed almost to take up
half of her face, enormous and so deep a brown they were nearly
black, with dark slashing eyebrows and long lashes.
Her outfit was right
out of a museum exhibit: a big fat dress—fat because of the
hoopskirt thing. Big-time modest, too; she wasn’t exposing so much
as an elbow dimple. The gown, too, seemed to emphasize her tiny
frame and delicate features; she looked like a kid playing
dress-up.
Her dress was pale
blue; her neckerchief thing was transparent white lace. Long
sleeves, long skirt—I could barely make out the toes of her shoes
when I glanced down.
She smelled terrific,
like clean cotton and sunshine. If I could have bottled that scent
and brought it back to the twenty-first century, Sinclair
and Jessica could have thrown their
zillions away.
She had only one
piece of jewelry I could see: there was a black ribbon tied around
her wrist, and from it hung a little painting of an older woman. It
was so small I could only make out the woman’s graying brown hair
and teeny-weeny face.
Taking in the
would-be witch’s museum-exhibit clothing had only cost me a couple
of seconds, which was good because it meant people were still
astonished, and no one was sneaking up behind me to brain me with a
hymnal.
I pointed to the
gorgeously wronged Massachusetts resident who stared at the tip of
my finger and backed up a step. “You think this is a witch? This is
not a witch, jerk-offs.”
“Be gone from here,
wretch, and cover yourself!”
“Okay, um,
no. And is that any way to introduce
yourself?”
“To be fair,” Laura
called from the back of the church, “by their standards you’re
wearing the Puritan equivalent of a garter belt and peekaboo
bra.”
“Oh yeah?” I looked
at the other person standing, the guy, I figured, who was after the
lady’s farm. He, too, looked like he’d stepped right out of a
colonial America clothing exhibit (“Gift shop on your left, and
yes, we validate parking”), with a white linen shirt, black
culottes (or whatever men’s suit pants that only came to the knee
were called), and a matching black coat with dazzling gold
buttons.
He was clutching a
cane so hard his knuckles were white. So was his face, but from
fear or rage I hadn’t yet figured. I was smelling lots of fear,
sure, but it was coming from the pretty brunette, not to mention
the thirty people sitting in pews behind us.
“Tell me, do my
awesome leggings and Eddie Bauer shirt make you bitches nervous?
Hmmm?” I wriggled my shoulders back and forth, shaking my tits at
the head asshat, whose face went redder. Cool. If I flashed him, I
could probably give him a stroke. Ah, good times. “Or is it just
female sexuality in general that freaks you out?”
The congregation was
too startled to so much as murmur, and they were shaking their
wriggling fingers at me. At first I thought I was observing the
invention of American Sign Language. Then I realized they were all
forking the sign of the evil eye at me. Ha! If that didn’t work for
my old babysitter, it sure wasn’t going to help them.
“This is what you do?
Because TV and the Internet haven’t been invented? You make up lies
and then hang your neighbors? Or rack them? Or crush them to death
under big rocks? Pathetic, with a capital P.”
Dead silence. Nobody
was even shifting their weight.
“Wow, really? Nothing
to say? Because I heard plenty from outside. Cat got your tongue?
Or maybe the devil?
“You want a witch?
You think torturing people will save your moldy black souls? Do you
really think when you show up at the
Pearly Gates, God’s not gonna have serious questions for you? And especially you,
fuck-nuts.”
The man in the black
suit was, I just now noticed, clutching a Bible, which made me
laugh.
“You think lugging
that around means God’s not gonna want to give you the old one-two
punch and send your ass to hell? How will you ever justify telling
him that you lied and sentenced an innocent to death ... so you.
Could get. A farm. A farm! When there are, like, a hundred people
in the whole country right now and zillions of acres up for grabs!
When you’re living in a time when there is more than enough land
and resources for every single person on the planet, you
piece of shit!
I was seriously
considering placing a private bet on when he’d pass out. He stood
straighter and straighter, and got whiter and whiter. “You will not
speak so, witch!”
“Oooh, that hurt my
feelings.” I yawned.
He brandished the
Bible. In fact, he’d been clutching it so tightly, his fingers had
left marks in the leather. I was willing to bet Mr. Big Shot hadn’t
been talked to like this by anyone, never mind a saucy wench
dressed in what he assumed was her whorish underwear.
(I had whorish
underwear, of course. But he was never
going to see it. That was strictly Sinclair’s domain. Mmm. Better
not think about him, or I’d start worrying about that weird stupid
fight.)
“—to the bowels of
hell!”
“What? Sorry, I zoned
out for a few seconds. I assume you predicted I’d go to hell? You
think that scares me, the day I’ve had?”
I turned to the
woman. “And you. Are you okay? They didn’t start with the torture
before I got here, right?”
“That—that is
correct, ma’am.”
“Actually, you can
call me B—” Laura made frantic hand slashing motions ... hmm, good
point. “Beverly,” I finished. “Beverly Feldman, yeah, that’s me.”
If only.
I turned back to the
congregation, who were frozen in shock or fear or anger or maybe
all three. “That wasn’t rhetorical, by the way,” I said, addressing
them as well as the head jerk-off. “I really do want to know how
you can reconcile deep, honest religious faith with this.” I pointed at the tiny brunette. “What’s she
supposed to have done, anyway? Do you even know?”
Nobody said a word,
and then I got another surprise. She
spoke up. “They claim I ...” Her voice shook, and she made a
visible effort to steady it. I could see her throat working as she
swallowed and tried again. “They say I witched their cheese and
their milk.”
“Witched
it?”
“It spoiled. It went
bad. They—they say I did it a’purpose.”
I gaped, then
whirled. “You decided she’s a witch because no one’s invented
refrigeration? Dairy products go bad
because you’re storing them in warm cupboards but that’s
witchcraft?”
“It seems flimsy to
me,” Laura called from the back.
I was so furious I
was actually dizzy with it. There were so many bitchy, sarcastic
observations to make, I was having a sarcasm stroke. “My God! You
people! You’re—you’re so stupid you’re making my eyeballs throb.
They’re throbbing, dammit!”
Their duly elected
witch started to laugh, which she then choked off by clapping both
hands over her mouth.
“No, no,” I said.
“Don’t be nervous. Laughing? Just now? Is totally the correct
response. If you can’t get to a gun, I mean. What
else?”
“I would not
marry.”
“Uh-huh. Let me
guess. Jackass McGee here, right?” I jerked a thumb toward Black
Suit.
“He is called
Will—”
“Silence yourself,
witch!” he roared, and finally his face was getting some
color.
“William. Putnam,”
she said, and her voice wasn’t shaking at all now, nope. From the
look she leveled at him, I half expected Putnam to burst into
flames. That would have been a cool way to end our trip. “He funded
the building of this church. He thinks it is his church and his
town and that we are all his, and he does not like that I am
not.”
“Mmm, wow, there’s
nothing more attractive than a sore loser who’s also a bully. The
ladies must love you, Putnam.”
“It’s true,” Laura
called. “That’s just terrible, Mr. Putnam. Little kids know
better.”
“Yeah, well, maybe
not in this time and place. That explains why you’re up here,
cutie.”
I was walking back
and forth, almost pacing, while I voiced my thoughts. “But how
about the other ones? The ones you guys killed? The ones you
arrested and will kill? You got them
stashed somewhere? Jail, I’m guessing? And for what? So you can get
your name in the paper as the big bad witch hunters? Well,
why?”
I took another look
at Black Suit. Yes, he looked quite tidy and prosperous. In fact,
he was the nicest dressed guy in the room. Built the church. Liked
getting his way. “Let me guess. Political
aspirations?”
The congregation
seemed to sigh all at once.
“Aw. That’s just
charming.” I glanced at Laura, who was making time-to-go motions.
And she was right, we’d certainly pushed our luck more than long
enough. But I wasn’t satisfied. I didn’t want to leave just now.
This will sound weird, but I was hoping the jerk-off would try
something really stupid so I could—
He took three quick
steps (more like stomps, actually) forward and brandished his cane.
“Witch! Filth! Devil’s whore!”
“Well, which one is
it?” I asked.
“Be gone from this
place! Cover your nakedness, cover your lewd flesh, lest you tempt
honest men from God’s path!”
“Oh, thank you,” I
cried, jerking back so he couldn’t brain me—the brass tip of his
stick was easily two inches across, and he swung it like it had
some heft. I heard the soft whshhh as
it passed about three centimeters from my nose. “You’ve made me so
happy.”