Bad Blood

kept the worst of you away from her.”
    Virgil: “What happened to Kelly Baker?”
    Alma said, “She was like Kathleen Spooner—I got sidetracked there. Kathleen liked being serviced. So did Kelly. And she liked other things: we heard that she had whip marks on her legs. Father might know more details, but as I understand it, my dead brother, Junior, my husband, Jacob, Jim Crocker, and John Baker took her out to the Baker barn and had their own little pool. She choked on Jacob’s thing and they couldn’t get her to breathe again. They knew what would happen with the World of Law, so they took her car to town, and put her in the cemetery.”
    “They washed her body before they did that,” Virgil said. “Was that some kind of religious death thing?”
    Alma said, “They were talking about this DNA thing. They say they live outside the World of Law, but they know all about it. You think we got one hundred years of this thing, if Father is right, without keeping an eye on the World of Law?”
    “Was Jim Crocker in on that? Keeping an eye on the law.”
    “Of course he was,” Alma said. “He wasn’t any regular church member—you wouldn’t see him praying—but he was sure there when it came time to service the girls.”
    “Your dead brother, Junior. Is he the one who was laid out in your father’s house?”
    “He was. He was shot,” Alma said. “Everybody who was shot and killed was laid out, and the houses burned, because somebody said that the fires would get so hot that nobody could prove they was shot, and so the World of Law couldn’t take the farms away. The houses weren’t worth so much; it’s the land that’s worth a lot.”
    Helen said, “I’m glad Junior’s dead.”
    Edna: “So am I. I’d service him, but he was just mean. Mean, and he never washed.”
    Virgil asked the girls: “How many men were you involved with . . . over the years?”
    The younger one said, “I was only with family, because I wasn’t in the pool yet.”
    The older one said, “I don’t know. Most of the men who were still in our part of the church. How many is that?”
    Alma said, “Many.”
     
     
    ALMA SAID, “We’re getting close to a verdict, seems to me. Mr. Flowers, you’ve been asking questions, but you haven’t been putting up a defense.” She said it as “dee-fence.”
    Virgil said, “Miz Flood, I’ll tell you the honest-to-God truth, and that’s that I don’t care much about what happens to your father. I came out here to arrest him, and put him in jail for the rest of his natural life. And while I don’t believe in hell, I understand that you folks do, and I suspect that if there is, he’s going to be burning there forever after. So, from my point of view, your father’s taken care of. He might as well be dead.
    “But if you kill him, you’re going to have to pay. If you—”
    “I already killed Wally; I’m going to have to pay for that, anyway,” she said. “What are they going to do, make me pay twice?”
    “It goes beyond that,” Virgil said. “You’re not only threatening to kill him, you’re dragging your daughters into it, by making them vote. And you think it’s not going to hurt them, growing up without parents, after everything that they’ve been through? Killing Wally, you’re going to have to pay for—but given what was going on, I’ve got to believe that a judge will let you out pretty quick. Plead temporary insanity—”
    “It’s not temporary,” she said.
    “Plead insanity. I think you’d get off, and given some time, you’d get out to see your children. Maybe even some grandchildren, someday. Edna and Helen will be taken care of by the state, and given treatment, and maybe, there’s a possibility that everything will work out for them. So the thing we’ve got to think about here, is not your father, but what happens to you and the girls.”
    “I don’t care much what happens to me,” Edna said. “The World of Spirit is coming to an end, and I don’t know if I can live in the World of Law.”
    “You’ll fit right in,” Virgil lied. “You’ll be amazed. You’re young enough that in a few years, with treatment, this life will be like a bad dream.”
    Alma said, “Pretty smart. Taking that path, I mean. Saying it’s not about Father, it’s about us. You’re a smart fella, Mr. Flowers.”
    “I got more, if you want it,” Virgil said. “You’ve been reading the Bible, I know, the New Testament and the Old Testament, and they