“There is much I could say about this Casey today. When he was a boy of twelve I baptized him in the tank out behind the church. I watched him play at the edge of the fields and I watched that play turn gradually into the work of a man. He used to have a little one-shot rifle that he carried with him into the woods and he was a mighty hunter with it. I could tell you stories all day long, as many of you could tell stories to me.” He turned slightly so that he was half facing the young man sitting in the other cypresswood chair. “But I want to let this young gentleman up here beside me get up now and talk to you. He is the uncle of this boy, arrived last night from Nashville. Reverend Arthur Wayne is his name. He is a preacher himself and has asked to speak to you this afternoon.”
He turned fully, offering his hand to the slender man, who rose and took it. The minister pulled him fluidly and gently to him. Grasping the man’s elbow with one hand, his other behind the man’s back, he guided him to the pulpit and shuffled backwards to his seat. Delvin at first thought the man was blind. The way he sniffed the air and raised his eyes to the place where the wall joined the ceiling. But then he looked straight out into the congregation, and Delvin could tell he saw just fine. He had a large, hawkish face. He stared into the crowd, letting his eyes rest on this one or that. A silence grew heavier as it lasted and filled the sanctuary. People began to grow restless, and Delvin could sense the nervousness rising.
Reverend Arthur Wayne smacked his lips once, loudly. He threw back his head and laughed. The laugh made a high keening sound, the laugh of a madman. Many found the laugh painful to hear, many were disturbed by a mad-sounding laugh coming from a preacher and told themselves what they heard wasn’t so. Some experienced a stab of anger. Others were openly frightened. The man smacked his lips and laughed again, Rev Wayne. He swayed in the pulpit, rocking from one arm to the other and back. The older minister — his name was Oriel Munch — made a half move toward him but thought better and sank back into his chair. The young man caught the sides of the heavy rostrum. His dark-complected face shone with sweat. Some of the women wanted to go to him. He stared again into the depths of the congregation, and now many shrank from his eyes. They were afraid he would pick them out. Rev Wayne opened his mouth, showing a fine row of upper teeth missing the dog tooth on the right side.
He bowed his head, perhaps in brief silent prayer, raised his face, and in a gentle, even voice said, “Devilment.” He smiled again, this time without opening his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, “devilment. That’s what brought you here.”
Beyond the open window, beyond the graveyard, a breeze tugged at the tops of the cotton. Delvin felt a prickliness, as if the breeze carried with it a tiny sting like nettles or a sticker bush. Something out there seemed to touch something inside him. A precision, unlifelike and false, that carried harm. A glint of sunlight on metal. He stepped carefully back — into safety, into the other world beside what was in fields and roads and common rivers.
“Devilment,” the preacher was saying. His voice was soothing and even this word, a shocker, soothed. “We can’t help but stare at it,” he said. “We are drawn to it. I want each of you to make sure you take a good look at the devilment lying here before you today. Not the devilment in this boy. There was never any devilment in
He shook his head. His long stiff dry crozzled hair swayed slightly. He raised his left hand and with drawn-together fingers wiped his face. The back of his hand was lacerated with white scars. Someone gasped. A moan went through the congregation. He again looked out. He looked straight out. “Are we children of God?” he asked.
Somebody answered yes, an old man with close-cropped gray hair, Hardy Purcell.
