Free The Bastard Hand by Heath Lowrance Page B

rough, and I’d hate to spread anything around. Some folks think she might have driven the old boy off or something, and ever since then it’s just been one thing after another with her whole dang family. I don’t know. Heck, you know how people like to gossip. In any case, you’re sure to meet her tomorrow evening.”
    “What’s her name?” the Reverend said.
    “Kimberly Garrity. She’s always been a friend to the church here, so I don’t—”
    I cut him off. “What did you say her name was?”
    He repeated it for me, and continued what he had been saying to the Reverend. But I didn’t hear the rest.
    I’m not sure, but I think I said something about going to the bathroom. I stumbled away from the Reverend and Oldfield, made my way upstairs, careened into my new bedroom. I opened my bag, riffled through my few belongings and pulled out the Bible I’d swiped from the laundromat.
    I opened the Bible to the inside front cover, looked at the inscription there, even though I already knew what it said. Garrity. Kimberly Garrity, for God’s sake.
    I dropped the Bible back in my bag and went into the bathroom and splashed water on my face. Then I stared at myself in the mirror and repeated it over and over. Garrity. Son of a bitch. Garrity.
    This was no coincidence, I said to the face in the mirror. Not by a long shot.
    After Oldfield left, I took a long shower, then went to my new room and fell into bed. I heard Reverend Childe come up, quietly so as not to disturb me. He spent some time in the bathroom, then retired to his own small room. Still in a state of shock, I spent a long time staring at the ceiling and trying to put it all together in my head.
    It was still with me the next day as I walked the streets of Cuba Landing. When I woke, the Reverend had already left on some errand or another, so I took another shower and wandered around the empty church by myself until the echoes started making me nervous. I went out into the warm May morning.
    In the park across from the church, a single adult supervised a group of elementary school kids on a picnic. Cars crawled slowly up and down Main. In front of the bookshop, a handsome middle-aged woman was setting up a display of discount books, apparently just opening for the day. The bar was closed, but a teenage boy busily swept the parking lot of broken glass and other debris. Hordes of people gathered inside the bakery, and the smell of fresh bread wafted at me from across the street.
    Yesterday, I’d seen a small diner a couple blocks up Main, so I headed in that direction, past clusters of happily strolling couples, sweating joggers, and distracted-looking housewives walking vapid-faced dogs. The night before, Cuba Landing had been an abandoned town, hardly a single person to be seen, and now people moved everywhere, smiling and nodding as I passed, all caught up in this small moment of their lives.
    Outside the diner, a young black kid, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old, strummed a beat-up guitar and howled a bluesy rendition of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”. He was the first non-white person I’d seen so far. I dropped a dollar into his open guitar case and went inside.
    The smell first—biscuits in the oven and sausage sizzling. An old man sat at the counter and a waitress poured coffee into his cup and nodded at me. I nodded back, found the nearest empty booth. It was small, only a row of booths along the window facing Main, and a short bar with six stools. Half-full, but the two waitresses were obviously seasoned and their casually fast pace kept it from seeming hectic. The jukebox was turned off, and the black kid’s song drifted through the glass, underlying the murmur of conversation and laughter. The kid had a damn good voice, and played the guitar pretty well, too.
    Before I’d even glanced at the menu, the waitress appeared at my table with coffee. She was pretty in that way that so many of the women I’d seen in the South were, a