Читать книгу The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart - Glenn Taylor - Страница 14

The words split the preacher’s lips asthmatic. He was small, but he preached big and airy and hoarse, like a coughing fit had ahold of him. ‘The sorrows of death compassed me,’ he shouted. ‘And the pains of hell gateheld upon me. I found trouble and sorrow.’ Frank Dallara’s body went into the ground inside a rough-cut box, wet from rain. ‘Then called I upon the name of the Lord,’ the preacher went on. ‘Oh Lord, I beseech thee deliver my soul.’

Trenchmouth stood and listened. For a time, he’d felt more anger than anguish. Folks had been talking about Anse Pilcher, the burned hotel’s owner. Anse had a condition. His bones were soft. Like cartilage. His bones could be pierced just like his flesh, and because of this, most wouldn’t speak poorly of ‘the cripple,’ as they called him. But he had enemies and Frank Dallara had been one of them. Those talking said Anse had told Frank a little girl was inside all that fiery construct, that he lied to see the man set ablaze. Trenchmouth thought on this at the funeral. His shoulders, broadening now, nearly split the shirt seams the Widow had sewn a night prior. When Frank Dallara’s coffin hit bottom and the rough men lowering it pulled back their ropes, the boy nearly lost what little composure he had left. In a week’s time, he’d lost the man closest to being a father to him and learned the vile fate of his real daddy. He’d watched his birth mother spew shit and venomous words in his direction. And he’d kissed his own sister on the mouth. It was a good deal to take in at nine years old.

The preacher preached onward. ‘I said in my haste, all men are liars.’

That’s when the boy knew that God was for the featherheaded, that religion was a salesman’s game. God’s man himself had said it: ‘liars.’ Trenchmouth turned then and walked away from all of them. Black-clad and bad-postured, they half-listened to the words, ‘deliver my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.’ But Trenchmouth drowned it out. He whistled while he walked away. This struck a particular funeral-goer, Frank Dallara’s ugly brother-in-law Hob Tibbs, as disrespectful beyond the pale.

He followed the boy away from the mourner’s circle. He pulled him by the arm behind a substantial tree, and he smacked him. ‘Don’t you disrespect the dead,’ he said. He smacked again. ‘Don’t you dare disrespect the Lord out here, you hear me?’

Folks handle anguish in a variety of ways. Somehow the nine year old knew this to be true, and it stopped him from striking the ugly man back. But Hob Tibbs had made a new enemy, had added to his list of many, and something in his face burned into Trenchmouth’s brain unforgettable. Tibbs said, ‘You’re going to be in church every Sunday, hear? I’m puttin you to work for God. You’ll spit shine a cross if I tell you. Polish up stained glass for walking away from a man’s burial.’

Trenchmouth said what he’d said all his life. ‘Yessir.’