Rescue

got to have faith in the Lord Jesus our Savior, faith that you’re gonna get through this night. That’s what I have to do every night. Got to have enough faith to get through it without taking a drink. I don’t, my life ain’t nothing, account of the demon rum’ll kill me. Life without the booze is hard, life with it’s just plain impossible.“
    “Severn, you didn’t go to all this trouble just to turn me loose at the end of it.“
    “Well, I guess you’re right there.“ A pause. “Won’t be no body, either. This camp’s got a dry well about fifty feet in back. Fool who owned her originally dug himself a well seventy feet deep, when the water table drops to a hundred by the time the hunting season rolls around. Now, I ask you, what sense does that make? So it’ll be some time before anybody notices you. Years maybe, if you’re lucky. So to speak.“
    I tried to keep my voice even. “What do you want?“
    “That’s better. Cooperation’ll make everything just that much easier. I see from your ID and wallet stuff in the truck that you’re a private detective from Boston. Now, what were you doing at my trailer?“
    “Looking to see what might have happened to Eddie Haldon.“
    Another pause. Then, “Why?“
    “When I stopped to help change their tire, just before I saw you, I promised Eddie I’d look for him if he got in trouble.“
    A third pause, then a laugh, mean and long, not like the good-Christian, recovering-alcoholic, but one from the earlier time, a barroom “Let’s have some fun with this feller“ sound. Finishing, he said, “Why do you care where that boy’s at?“
    Even trapped in the chair, I felt a little hope. Severn’s question implied that Eddie was still alive. “I told you. I promised him.“
    Severn didn’t say anything, just moved away from me, a scuffing sound, as though he were on his knees. I heard him pick something up and scuff back. Then all the fires of hell melted through the back of my right hand, and I screamed from it, rocking in the armchair, nearly carrying it over backward. A smell floated up, one I’d known in Vietnam often enough and once recently in Boston, the smell of burning flesh.
    Severn’s voice floated up to me, too. He must have been kneeling in front of me, like a subject supplicating before the king on his throne. “That was just a taste, boy. Just a taste of the blade from the fire. Our Lord God has said that fire cleanses, fire purifies, fire makes our tongues want to praise the Glory of His name. In your case, it’s gonna make you want to tell me the truth, and we’re gonna toast you a little at a time till you do. Now, nobody works for no snot-nosed kid, so who hired you, and why’d you take those Church papers from my trailer?“
    I tried to keep the fear and pain out of my voice, and thought I was about half successful. “I told you the truth. I made Eddie a promise. I’m not working for anyone on this.“
    I felt I was talking too much, and I forced myself to stop.
    Severn scuffed away from me. I tried to flex my right hand, didn’t like what I felt there.
    The scuffing back. Other hand this time. I nearly levitated, the second application seeming worse than the first, including the smell.
    Severn said, “I don’t know why, but things seem to work faster if I plow new ground each time. At least till I run out of it. That one, it was only about half an inch into your flesh, but I thought I felt a little bone at the tippy-tip. Hard to tell, with you jumping like that. Beauty of the fire part, it don’t just hurt going in, it closes the wound coming out. ‘Cauterizes’ it, I believe is the doctor word. Now, what sinner of Satan you working for, boy?“
    I thought about bad times I’d had in the service and since, and even some of the good ones with Beth and Nancy, but I couldn’t see anything to do about this one. Then I felt Severn’s hands close on my wrists, the knife lying long axis to my left forearm in his right hand. He pulled himself up to a standing position, leaning in close to my face. His breath was horrible, even filtered through the burlap. His voice rumbled, glowing with pleasure.
    “Boy, we can do this for a very long time, because the Lord Our God has taught me patience... “
    I remembered something.
    “Patience that is eternal in His Name... “
    I tensed for it.
    “Patience that is—“
    As hard as I could, I whiplashed my head forward at his, the Coco-butt that Justo Vega and I had practiced