Sins of the Fathers Page 22
AT ONE-THIRTY in the morning, two days after he walked off the red spine of a buried god, Father John Calvin pulled the SUV into the parking lot of a motor lodge off Colorado State Road 160. He keyed off the ignition and sat in the dark a minute, listening to the tick of the cooling engine block. Calvin rubbed his face and sighed. He looked up through the windshield at the single light burning in the office. The motel was a five room strip of concrete block and peeling paint. There was an electric sign proclaiming the name of the place, but it appeared to be burned out. Either that or someone just hadn’t bothered to turn it on. He already knew what the beds would smell like.
Behind the motel loomed the profile of a five mile long corpse lying on its back: Ute Mountain. There was supposed to be a story about some chief or warrior turning to stone or some such mumbo jumbo. A shiver ran across his shoulders as got out the SUV and walked to the office.
Calvin pulled open a screeching screen door and found a pink room with blue zigzag detailing along the walls. A lonely slot machine, long dead, stood in one corner next to a table strewn with dusty brochures and what appeared to be a glass coffin.
The six foot glass box was capped with a heavy piece of mesh held down with a brick. Calvin leaned in, curious to see what lived in what he recognized as a huge terrarium. Several old tree branches lay on a floor of fresh, pungent wood chips. An empty drawstring sack printed with the logo for a local nursery was still lying next to the table. It was dim in this corner of the room and difficult to penetrate the shadows in the terrarium. This would have to be the biggest fucking hamster on earth. Calvin leaned in and tapped a knuckle against the glass. One of the tree branches slid away from the glass and rolled into a coil. A lazy rattle flavored the air and died away. Calvin controlled his urge to flinch back, glanced at the brick weighing down the mesh and leaned a little closer. It looked like there were at least five full-grown diamondbacks calling this glass box home.
Calvin straightened, turned. Tree branches. Jesus.
A single fluorescent globe burned in the middle of the ceiling orbited by a disoriented, but determined moth. What looked like several years of his brethren lay on the inside bottom of the lamp’s glass bowl, turning to protein dust. Moths are drawn to light sources because they navigate by the moon. They need that single light in the darkness to guide them so badly that they’ll kill themselves circling and circling.
“Oh, god-damn!” came from a thirty-ish woman behind the desk. Calvin stepped in closer. She swore again and scratched away at a lottery ticket. He glanced back at the moth.
“Help you?”
Calvin looked back. “Sorry, yes,” he said. “I’d like a room please.”
“That’ll be twenty-nine fifty a night,” she said, giving him the once over. She softened and gave what Calvin guessed must pass in her mind as a smolder. He was a little dusty, but it weren’t nothing a shower couldn’t fix. “You in town on business or pleasure?” She wore an oversized sweatshirt that slid over one bare shoulder. An angry pimple stood out against her white skin.
“Neither,” he said. “I’m just passing through.”
“Shame,” she said. “You gonna’ need a wake up call?”
Calvin put his hands on the counter and spread his fingers until the knuckles went off like a string of Chinese firecrackers. “No thanks,” he said, trying not to smile at the look of disgust on her face. Subtle girl, this one. “I’d really just like to catch up on my sleep. Been on the road a while.” He pulled out a twenty and a ten and laid them on the counter.
She made the money disappear with a crinkle and flash of Vegas-red press-on nails, but didn’t offer a key right away. “Where you headed?”
Into darkness. Into blindness. “Up north a ways.” He looked at her. She didn’t ask for details.
“Welcome to the Rattlesnake Motel,” she said and slid him the key. “Room four.” Not the farthest room from the office, wouldn’t want to seem too impolite, but not too close either. He was cute and not from her town which made him better than ninety-nine percent of what passed for available around here, but he was also a little strange. People disappeared around here sometimes. Not enough to lock your door, but . . . shit, maybe she would tonight. She wasn’t unhappy to watch him walk away, and not just because it gave her a clear view of his behind. Definitely cute.
Ten minutes later Calvin stood in the shower and scalded away four days of dirt. He could feel his pores open and release their cargo of toxins and dust. He pressed his palms against the cool tile to either side of the shower head and hung his face down. The water pounded the tension from the back of his neck. He watched it swirl into the drain. He closed his eyes and saw the dark boy from his dream and the look on his face as the ground swallowed him. Missionary! Tomorrow afternoon Calvin would drive onto the reservation and find his target: Father Matthew Katey. His Eminence had said to make it look natural this time. Calvin thought about laughing.
Sleep didn’t come easy that night in spite of his exhaustion. Calvin lay between papery sheets that smelled of cigarette smoke and disinfectant, wondering about the man, the priest he was supposed to kill. A killer himself, this one. He’d molested the kids and made them disappear. Calvin wondered if Katey had worn the collar the whole way through, or if he had taken it off while he fucked them. Make it look natural.
Natural.
Was that supposed to mean something to a man like John Calvin? That smile, those endless eyes, that voice that was sometimes one, sometimes many. That horrid, boundless knowledge. That emptiness. Just how would he define natural?
“Fuck you, Your Eminence,” Calvin muttered and finally fell asleep.
He dreamed of a succession of hospital rooms, nurses and doctors. A thousand scenes flashed in and out of focus of machines, tubing, wires, needles, and so many questions. Someone was terribly sick and the healers didn’t know why. And anger so abundant it was like air.