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Chapter 13

129 Chapter 13 By Monday evening most everyone in the town had heard the warning about George Fowler, and they talked about him at their supper tables. “I knew him because my brother-in-law worked with him,” one person said. “He used to come into the hardware store,” another one commented . “I knew something wasn’t right. I could look at him and see that.” It was seven-thirty that night when the minister walked into his office after the meeting at the larger church to plan a group memorial service. At the meeting, he had been asked to deliver the sermon . He knew everyone who had died. Carlton Greenly had invited the minister and his family over for barbecue each summer. Stella McNeese and her family were longtime church members. While the others didn’t attend his church, he knew who they were. It was hard to believe they were suddenly gone. After the meeting, the minister got a sandwich with John Scott, and when John dropped him off in the church parking lot, he went to get his things and call Nancy to say he was on his way home. The parking lot was empty, save for his car, and out front the street was 130 quiet. Earlier he’d spoken to the police chief and been told they’d determined George Fowler must have driven from the town early Sunday morning before the roadblocks were set up. Now, with the warning having been broadcasted, it was unlikely he would come back. “You can tell your congregation what happened next Sunday if you like,” the chief had told the minister. And Reverend Edwards had been contemplating this. Throughout the day, the minister’s anxiety had settled on the responsibility of delivering the sermon on Saturday at the town’s memorial service and his nervousness over revealing George’s visit to his congregation. As he walked into his building, he focused on these concerns, but when he opened his officer door, all he saw was a cloud of smoke. “Get in quick and shut the door.” Like an apparition, George sat on the couch, hunched over with a cigarette. The minister hesitated, one hand still on the doorknob, the other in his pocket grasping his car keys. “Hurry up. Get the door shut and lock it.” He lifted a pistol, using it to gesture. The minister reached behind him uncertainly and pulled the door shut, turning the small lock. “Good,” George said. “Now quick, go over to the windows and close the curtains.” The minister walked to the windows. At the meeting, Reverend Dodd, the other minister, had said, “George Fowler attended your church, didn’t he?” “Yes, a couple of years ago,” Reverend Edwards had answered. Afterward, no one had commented on it, and there had been a stillness in the room. Looking out the window before pulling the curtain shut, the min- 131 ister saw the empty parking lot. The sun had dropped below a line of clouds at the horizon, and a deep purple color, similar to the cloth he sometimes laid on the altar, pooled beneath it. Everything felt clear, whatever he should have done and whatever he needed to do. In his head, he heard the words from the parable of the prodigal son—“And he would gladly have fed on the pods that the swine ate, and no one gave him anything.” Then George spoke and everything felt confused again. “What are you standing there for? Hurry up,” George said in a harsh whisper, and the minister closed the curtains and turned back to the room. The office had darkened, and the red glow of George’s cigarette floated above the couch. “All right, now sit down in the chair,” George told him, gesturing at the small armchair where George himself had sat two nights ago. As the minister walked toward it, he bumped against the edge of a table, his eyes not adjusted to the change in the light. He knew where everything was in this room, but now the room felt foreign. Then he reached the chair, and as he slid down onto the upholstery, there was an odd comfort to its familiarity. “I got in through the basement window at the back,” George said. He put the cigarette to his mouth and sucked on it. “I could have waited and come to your house, but I came...