Epilogue #2
Delphine had seen him from the door. She said he was sitting forward with his forearms on the pew in front, watching the front of the church like the service was still going, and he did not look up when she came in.
And he was wearing a cut.
"Iron Hex?" I said.
"Iron Hex."
"Whose."
"Jonah." She had her arms wrapped around herself. "It was the old rocker. The single-piece one."
"That hasn't been issued since—"
"Since 1986," she said. "I know. I've seen exactly one in my life and it's in a frame in the clubhouse."
By the time we got there the pew was empty.
Bear was on the front steps and had seen nobody. Roach was on the side door and had seen nobody. Duckie was in the lot the entire time with a plate and swears on his mother he'd have noticed a man, and I believe him, because Duckie notices everything except when he's needed.
Preacher came in behind us and stood in the aisle and looked at that last pew for a long time without saying anything.
"He was watching the front," Delphine said.
"Watching the ceremony?"
"No." She swallowed. "Jonah, that's the thing. He wasn't looking at the altar. I've been going over it since. He was tracking left."
"Meaning what."
"Meaning he was watching where the bride was standing," she said. "Not you. Her."
And on the pew, laid neatly in the exact center of the seat, was a hunting knife.
Not thrown. Not dropped. Placed, square to the edges, the way a man sets down something he intends to be found.
Old. Bone handle, worn to the shape of a hand. The blade was clean and the edge was fresh and the whole thing had been oiled recently by somebody who cared about it.
It was pointing at the door.
Nobody touched it. Preacher crouched and looked at it for a full minute with his hands on his knees, and then he stood up and I watched sixty-two years go across that man's face.
"Preacher."
"Mm."
"You know that knife."
"No," he said.
"You're lying."
"Yes," he said.
Odalys came in with a jar and a pair of tongs, because she is the only person in this parish who owns the correct equipment for anything.
She got the knife into the jar without touching it and held it up to the candle.
"Well," she said.
"Well what."
"It's clean."
"You said that like it was bad."
"Jonah, that blade's been in something," she said.
"You can see the wear. It's been used and used and used, and somebody's honed it down a quarter of an inch over its life, and there is not one particle of anything on it.
Not oil residue, not rust, not a fingerprint, not a hair.
" She turned the jar. "I've handled cursed objects that were filthy.
Filth is normal. This has been cleaned by somebody who knows exactly what people like me look for. "
Teodora, in the doorway with her coat on: "So he's been looked for before."
"He's been looked for by professionals," Odalys said, "and he's still walking around."
Delphine said, "There's one more thing and I've been sitting on it for ten minutes."
"Say it."
"The cut he was wearing." She hugged herself. "It was clean too. No wear on the shoulders. No sun-fade. Jonah, it was new."
Preacher didn't turn around.
"A single-piece rocker that hasn't been issued since 1986," he said, "brand new."
"Yes."
"Somebody's making them."
He put his hand on my shoulder on the way past.
"Go dance with your wife, Jonah. It's four months of good news, and this parish don't hand those out often, and this'll keep till Monday."
"Will it?"
He stopped in the doorway with the light from the reception coming across the lot behind him and three hundred people laughing in it.
"Something cut the first seal in 1931," he said, "wearing a cut that didn't exist yet. And now it's come to a wedding to be seen. That means it's starting something."
"And you know what."
"I know one thing." He looked back at the pew. "A man leaves a knife pointed at a door when he wants you to know which way he went."
Roach caught me at the door of the church.
"Preacher says Monday."
"Preacher says Monday."
"You want my read?"
"Always."
"He knew that knife," Roach said, "and he lied about it in front of four people, and Preacher has not lied in front of four people since the day he married Odalys, on account of a ring that used to burn him for it."
"He's not wearing that ring anymore."
"No," said Roach. "He isn't. And I've been thinking about that all night and I'd like to stop."
I went back and danced with my wife.
Salt on the hem of a dress that has now been to two weddings and one war. Her hand split open in the old places, healing again, the way they do.
"What was that about?" she said.
"Monday."
"That bad?"
"It'll keep."
"Jonah."
"It'll keep till Monday," I said, "and I've got you for the whole weekend, and I've waited seven years, and I am not spending one hour of it on a man in a pew."
She put her left hand flat on my chest first, the way she does, the way she's always done and doesn't know.
Then she came the rest of the way in.
"Jonah."
"Mm."
"Look at Miss Ida."
Miss Ida was dancing with Bear. Eighty-three and five foot nothing, and Bear had her hands up like he was afraid of breaking something, and he had an expression on his face I have not seen on that man in nineteen years.
"He's going to cry."
"He's already crying."
"That's four times today."
"He's a different man," Wrenlee said. "Church did it."
"Church did it."
"You know that's going to be his whole personality now."
"It already is. He's got a pew, Wrenlee. He's got a seat and he's territorial about it."
She laughed into my shoulder, and outside the light went the rest of the way down, and three hundred people who had walked eleven miles at dawn stayed until midnight.
Out past the east boundary, eleven miles of salt lay closed in the dark, and held.
For now.