Archive of Our Own ^beta

It’s one of those hot, muggy Michigan days where standing outside’s like being wrapped in rucksack and left to dry for someone’s jerky. Summer’s dug its claws in and won’t lose ground without a fight, and the humidity ain’t helping one bit. Doesn’t seem to care that it’s a losing battle to the endurance of time and autumn’s impending harvest, long as it gets its punches in. The air snakes its way in the pores—stuffing the throat full in the thick of it—until you could swear it’s drilled holes in you. Made you its little puppet to dance around and say “it’s getting about that time” over and over again.

Sheriff Reed Clements has lived in Michigan all 32 years of his life, and the weather never gets better. Only different. You got your muggy summers or your blizzard winters. Sure there’s fall and spring, but Sheriff Clements never cared much for either. Hay fever’s more of a doctor’s business, and he deals with enough dying shit that the look of the trees lost their appeal as soon as he got too big to jump in the leaf piles. And don’t get him started on the harvest bullshit.

His horse moseys down the road from Wilbur Pratt’s farm towards the Howard family home. Wilbur called the station early this morning to “report” that someone’s been stealing or killing his hens, asking for Sheriff Clements specifically. God only knows why. He’s been dealing with this sham of an investigation all day because of it. He believes Bill that something’s getting to his hens, what with the way the coop looked like a kid’s idea of a crime scene. The problem is, there’s no solid evidence ‘cept farmer’s intuition (and the carcasses) that it ain’t a wild animal doing the job. Something’s always hunting out here: could’ve been a snake or a coyote or a wolf or—hell—maybe somebody just passing through. That ain’t exactly admissible in a court of law.

As it is, all Sheriff Clements can do is put the fear of God in Jebediah Howard and hope that’ll be that. Does Sheriff Clements actually think they did it? Hard to say. But it never hurts to remind people who’s the law and what happens to law-breakers around here.

Sheriff Clements’s horse snorts. She hotfoots around a trampled stalk of corn, and he spurs her on to keep her focus.

The most notable thing about Paxton‘s Vale, the small town Sheriff Clements presides over, is the air. Even in the biting cold, you can’t escape the smell of it. It’s “fresh” which is a tourist trap’s way of saying there’s always new fertilizer to step in. His horse don’t mind the air—or if she does, she’s smarter than to let him see. Better horses got retired for less. He needs to know they’re gonna hold up in a chase against a prospective bandit, and if she couldn’t handle a little unkindly weather and strong smells, he can’t justify the cost of feed.

Sheriff Clements’s never been much of a farmer. Can barely stand the horse he needs for his job, and he sure as hell couldn’t take the monotony. It’s thankless work, farming. People praise the crops if they’re good, but curse the farmer if they’re bad. Bank don’t care if there were a drought or a typhoon: you shoulda known what acts God would be up to when you took out the loan. They’ll repossess your farm and call it even.

That all being said, some of Sheriff Clements’s best stories come from repossession work.

Based on the look of the corn around him, the harvest will be on its way soon. Maybe a month—two, max—if he had to guess, but again, he ain’t a farmer. The Howards are, but he ain’t gonna be asking Jebediah Howard anything anytime soon. He supposes he could ask Wilbur, but he’d rather not let Wilbur think they’re close, given how much work Wilbur always brings Sheriff Clements and his men.

Sheriff Clements ain’t fond of the Howard family. Jebediah Howard and his kin are the newest faces Paxton’s Vale ever got, excluding Henrietta Mason’s baby. Tired of city life out East, they figured just the thing for them was to pack their bags. As far as Sheriff Clements can tell, ever since then, they’ve moved towns every five or so years. They’re the kind of family that never got the memo that there’s no more Westward to expand to, and that running’s an acceptable option when you’re down to the felt.

The Howard family’s homestead ain’t much to look at. It’s new, but that gets old fast. Their plot of land sits about an hour’s ride from Wilbur’s farm, well on the other side of his corn fields. Sheriff Clements ain’t exactly sure where the Howards plant their crops, given all that corn is supposed to be Wilbur’s.

That’s worth looking into. Maybe he can knock the Howards down a couple pegs in the meantime. Start some kinda record on one of them. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?

His horse turns the last corner in the road around the cornfield. The Howard ranch enters into view. A brief glance around the house, and Sheriff Clements doesn’t see any crops that ain’t all Wilbur’s God-damn corn. Ain’t any chicken corpses neither. He supposes that was too much to hope for.

Jebediah is outside, splitting firewood, and he spots Sheriff Clements on his way up. He turns towards the house and calls something. The actual words are lost with the distance. His wife steps out onto the porch right as Sheriff Clements pulls his horse up beside him.

“Howdy.” Clements tips his hat.

Jebediah says howdy like he never left the city. Puts a bad taste in Sheriff Clements’s mouth.

“What’d we do to earn a visit from the local law?” he asks.

“Need to speak to you about something,” Sheriff Clements says. “Business.”

Jebediah smiles wide. Lord, he even smiles like he’s from the city: asking for junebugs to splatter against his teeth and get stuck in ‘em.

“Of course,” he says. He turns to his wife, who stands straighter. “Nina, would you get the good Sheriff here’s horse something to drink?”

“She’s fine,” Sheriff Clements says. Jebediah is taller than him, he can already tell. He’d rather not dismount, if he can help it.

“Nonsense.” Jebediah waves the air like something stinks. “Come inside, the wife just made the most delicious cobbler. You’ve gotta let us treat you for making the trip out.”

“This ain’t a personal call,” Sheriff Clements says.

“No reason not to treat yourself in the meantime.”

Sheriff Clements would like to do something about Jebediah’s attitude now, but it ain’t the time. This is business, and he’s gonna finish it before moving on to anything else, despite Jebediah’s best efforts. Still, he makes a mental note to see if there’s anyone in the area he can hire to keep a watch on the man.

“Alright,” Sheriff Clements says. “Where can I tie my horse?”

“I can get her!”

“Where can I tie my horse?” he asks again.

The wife smiles. “Prefer to take care of your own? I know the feeling.” She gestures to a post near the porch’s corner. “Jeb just reinforced our porch rails last week. She should be perfect there, and I’ll move the trough over for her to drink from.”

Sheriff Clements nods and dismounts. He leads his horse over and ties her off.

“Come inside,” Jebediah says. “We can talk there.”

“Too much sunshine?” Sheriff Clements asks. It’s odd, if so. He’s a farmer, for Heaven’s sake. He should be able to handle a little heat.

Jeb takes his hat off and fans himself with it. “Now that you say as much, I could cool off.”

Sheriff Clements grunts. He follows the couple in.

The inside of the place ain’t much better kept than the outside. It’s clearly… lived in. There’s toys and knick-knacks on the shelves and floors. The walls are covered in drawings and even some portraits: one painted and one from a camera. Interesting. That costs quite a bit of money. Why become a farmer if you have that kind of money and don’t like heat?

“Kitchen’s this way,” Mrs. Jebediah Howard says. Then she thinks better and turns back around. “Let me get your—”

Sheriff Clements takes off his hat himself and hands it over.

She smiles at him and hangs it on a hat rack before showing him to the dining room. Jebediah is there already, checking something in the oven. His wife makes an offended noise and slaps his hands away.

“Please sit,” Jebediah says, gesturing to a chair next to him.

“Dinner’s just about ready,” Mrs. Jebediah Howard says. She starts getting out dishes. “Gimme just one moment to fix you a plate.”

“No need.”

“Don’t be silly! It’s no trouble at all.”

“This won’t take that long,” Sheriff Clements insists.

“It ain’t about the time, it’s about the opportunity!” She laughs.

He narrows his eyes at her.

“An old family joke of ours,” Jebediah says. “It’s—”

Sheriff Clements holds his hand up to quiet him. “I could take a couple bites.”

She smiles wide, like he’s just done her a favor. Maybe he has. He wonders how a guy like Jebediah treats his wife when there ain’t a responsible guy around to keep him in check. Domestic abuse might be a case worth looking into as well. If he can peg Jeb on that, it’ll stick forever. No one likes a wifebeater.

Jebediah talks at him while his wife fixes a plate. Sheriff Clements hears children in the other room screaming at each other. He never understood kids. Lots of noise and effort, and for what? To get to name someone “Junior”? No thanks.

“There we go,” she says, placing the thing in front of Sheriff Clements, along with a glass of water.

“No one in all of the Vale who can cook as good as my Nina,” Jeb says.

“Oh, stop it.” She dusts her hands off. “I’ll go fetch Delilah and Junior. Then we can eat.”

Sheriff Clements almost laughs. “No, let them play. This ain’t stuff a kid should hear.”

That gets both of them to sober a little. Finally. Take the matter fuckin seriously. Lord knows what there is to be so happy about.

“What’s happening?” Mrs. Jebediah Howard asks.

“You know Wilbur Pratt?”

“Of course! He’s our toughest competition.” Jebediah laughs.

“Why?” Mrs. Jebediah Howard dries her hands on her skirt. “What’s—”

“I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t rush me. Either of you.”

She shrinks in on herself. “Of course. I’m sorry.” Jebediah opens his mouth to argue, but Sheriff Clements raises his finger.

“See,” Sheriff Clements starts, “someone or something’s been getting into his chickens. He says he’s lost half the coup in a couple’a days.”

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Jebediah Howard gasps. It’s a good act, he’ll give her that, but he didn’t miss the ‘Toughest Competition’ jab from earlier.

“That’s awful,” Jebediah says. His frown is much less convincing. “If you don’t mind me asking, why’d you need to ride all the way out here for that?”

“I’m getting there.” He puts some authority in his voice. Jebediah shuts the hell up.

Sheriff Clements takes a sip of his water. “He’s thinking it could be bandits, but bandits usually steal chickens, not kill ‘em.”

“He’s sure it ain’t coyotes?”

Sheriff Clements takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out all in a huff. The fucking impatience on this man, damn.

Actually, more than that. It’s one thing not to trust a two-bit farmer’s judgement on his left from his right, but Wilbur knows a helluva lot more on tilling and herding than these green-tipped cityfolk can claim, and if he said it ain’t a coyote, then it ain’t a damn coyote.

“He’s sure,” Sheriff Clements bites out. “Bill’s seen a coyote before—”

“Kai-yote,” Jeb says automatically. Sheriff Clements narrows his eyes.

“Something the matter?”

He pales, shaking his head. “No, sir.”

“Good.” That’s more like it.

Jebediah opens his mouth to rush him again. Sheriff Clements shoots a glare to shut him up.

“Coyotes,” he says slowly, wanting this one to get through the man’s damn skull, “usually eat the carcasses they kill, when it comes to chicken.”

That catches Jebediah off-guard.

“I saw the coop myself,” Sheriff Clements says. “Six hens.”

Jebediah soaks that in, color draining from his face.

“Do you want us to keep an eye out?” Mrs. Jebediah Howard asks. Now that Sheriff Clements is looking, Jebediah’s even paler than his wife. That would be funny if it weren’t suspicious. Shouldn’t something like that be making the fairer sex faint? “It ain’t much, but if we see any bandits or suspicious looking folks, we’d be more than happy to give Mr. Pratt and you a shout.”

Sheriff Clements tilts his head. “You got a phone down here?”

“She means I’d ride down.” Jeb’s voice is flat.

Sheriff Clements waves the thought away. “By the time you’d get to the station, a tip might be useless.”

“Might not be though!” she chimes weakly.

He hums.

“So what do you think we should do?” Jebediah leans in. “Should we get a gun? I’m not that good a shot but you should see Junior’s trophies.”

Fucking wandering city folk who couldn’t possibly understand how important Sheriff Clements’s work is. Pretending it’s everyone for themselves out here. Like there ain’t still laws: morals and order.

“Is that the kind of values you’re teaching your boy?” Sheriff Clements asks. “Vigilantism?”

If Jebediah could get paler, he’d turn invisible.

“We got laws out here for a reason, Mr. Howard,” Sheriff Clements leans forwards, elbows on the table. “If every Joe Blow could just go and get revenge whenever he wanted, we’d have a ghost town. Is that what you want?”

Mrs. Jebediah Howard clears her throat, and Sheriff Clements turns to bark at her.

There’s a kid hiding behind her skirt. Little boy with eyes the size of dinner plates.

“Dinner will be ready soon, Junior,” she’s saying, voice low. “Give us just a minute. Go clean your and your sister’s room, okay? You can eat when you’re through.”

“Hey,” Sheriff Clements calls. The boy and his mom look over. She puts her hand on top of his head. Sheriff Clements gestures for him to get closer. “C’mere, son.”

The boy looks up at his mom. She smiles at him.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I’m right behind you.”

Junior hesitates a bit but inches his way forward. He stops right inside arm’s reach.

Sheriff Clements nods his head to the side over at Jeb. “Your daddy here says you can shoot. That true?”

“Yessir.”

Sheriff Clements hums. “Why?”

The boy looks at his dad and back to Sheriff Clements. “I…”

“What’s this about, Sheriff?” Jebediah asks.

“I’m just asking the boy a question.”

“It’s a good skill,” Junior says.

“What do you use it for?”

“Sheriff?”

Sheriff Clements raises a finger to Jebediah.

“Not much,” Junior says. “I mostly do target practice in the backyard with a BB gun. Sometimes, when there’s deer tryna get to the garden, daddy lets me go and stick ‘em.”

Sheriff Clements tilts his head. “You wanna hunt?”

Junior shrugs.

Sheriff Clements looks to Jebediah. “You should get the boy a hunting dog.” He stands, pushes his chair in. “Thank you for the plate, Mrs. Howard. You keep a lovely home.” He reaches down and ruffles the boy’s hair. “You ever think about taking up hunting, feel free to drop by the station. We got the licenses you’ll need, but we can also give you some tips.”

The boy’s eyes glint, but his mom’s staring holes into her floors. Jebediah looks a horsetail flick away from furious.

“Pleasure dropping by.” Sheriff Clements makes his way to the door. He takes his hat off the hook. “Do keep what we talked about in mind.”

He lets himself out.

Sometime while he was in there, his horse’s lead came off the post. She’s over munching on a corn stalk.

Sheriff Clements tchs. “Figures.” He fetches her. He feels the Howard family’s eyes on him as he mounts and starts making his way out.

Good.

By the time he gets back to town, the sun’s set. Finally off the damn clock. Sheriff Clements stretches his arms over his head. His knuckles crack from holding the reins.

Only one place to go before home then. The only place around town fit for a real man to unwind. Every day, after work, Sheriff Clements hits his favorite watering hole before heading home. The town’s only got one saloon worth talking about: the Wagon Wheel.

He rides his horse the short block or two over to the saloon’s entrance. The dust and sand kicks up under his feet, and the radiating heat sneaks through the knit of his jeans.

Once his horse is all set up at the trough, he makes his way to the entrance. The building’s one of the older ones in town, and it shows. The floorboards are warped up and away from the foundation in places. A couple of the walls have fist-sized holes in them from less-than-pleasant drunkard antics. No one goes up the stairs in the back if they don’t have to, and there’s a bet floating about somewhere among the regulars about when someone’s finally gonna fall through the second landing into one of the rooms for rent below.

But the saloon knows to keep the real draw of the place well-kept. The bar’s clean, smooth, varnished: shiny as the bottles on the shelves. There’s a rug leading from the entrance straight to the stools.

Sheriff Clements opens the waist-high door and lets it swing closed behind him. The place is relatively crowded, smelling more of alcohol and sweat than usual.

Sheriff Clements’s usual seat at the bar is taken, God damn it. He taps the guy on the shoulder, who turns around.

Sheriff Clements tilts with his head to the other end of the bar. “Find another spot,” he says.

The guy’s eyebrows knit. “What?”

Sheriff Clements reaches behind his neck with the hand on the same side as his sheriff’s badge. “Well y’see,” he starts, giving the guy enough time to find the shiny part of his uniform. The guy’s eyes widen. “I hate to be—”

“N— Right, yes.” He gets up.

“Thank ya kindly.” Sheriff plops down. The seats warm—unpleasant given the temperature outside and the unusual amount of body heat in the saloon itself—but the smugness of earning the spot back without even throwing a punch makes it worth it. Sheriff Clements spreads his legs out and gets comfy. The drunkard sits at the only other available seat—one stool over to Sheriff Clements’s right—and he soaks in the drunkard’s discomfort.

The saloon has two barkeeps: his and everyone else’s. Sheriff Clements’s barkeep also owns the joint. Family business. The saloon itself may be doing better’n it normally is on a Thursday, but usually his barkeep’s smarter than to let people take his seat. He’s still got sense enough, though, to start moving towards Sheriff Clements right away.

“Howdy,” Sheriff Clements starts, but his barkeep doesn’t slow.

“One second,” he says, sweeping away to go deal with someone else at the counter.

Sheriff Clements huffs.

It takes damn near a whole three minutes for him to swing by again.

“Sorry,” is all he says.

“Busy.” Sheriff Clements waves his hand in a lazy circle.

“What’ll ya have?” his barkeep asks.

Sheriff Clements frowns. They always smalltalk when he first gets here. It’s a change of pace from the bullshit no-nonsense business he has to put up with from his job.

“Whiskey neat?” the barkeep rushes him, pulling out the glass.

Sheriff Clements’s frown melts into a scowl. So that’s how it’s gonna be today.

“Beer,” he says. “Leave a pitcher.”

The barkeep stills from where he’s pulling out glasses. He tenses, swallowing, before switching the shot glass for a mug. “Beer. Got it.” He all but throws it in front of Sheriff Clements before sidestepping for the pitchers. “Brew or bottle?”

“Bottle.”

The barkeep purses his lip before ducking under the counter to grab a baker’s six-pack of beer, reaching high over his head with each to pull them out.

“Hey!” someone on the other end of the bar yells. “What’s a man gotta do to get some service ‘round here?”

The barkeep slams the last bottle down while he stands before turning on his toes and stomping down the counter.

Sheriff Clements reaches over and grabs one. He uses the edge of the counter to uncap it and takes a long swig. He retches. God, whoever invented beer clearly didn’t have the taste buds to appreciate drink.

Despite the rancidness, Sheriff Clements hurries to chug the bottle empty. He glances over to see his barkeep still occupied by the rabble rouser. The other barkeep is waiting tables today, not paying the counter any attention. Sheriff Clements leans down and carefully sets the now-emptied bottle on the floor. He stomps. The shatter, dulled by his boot, can’t compete with the din of the full saloon. Sheriff Clements sweeps the broken glass to the drunkard’s side of the stools.

He’s thinking about whether or not he can go for two when the barkeep starts making his way back. Sheriff Clements drums his fingers.

The barkeep stops in front of him. He reaches for a bottle to fill the pitcher, then does a double-take. He stares at the bottles on the counter. His eyebrows furrow.

“Ain’t gonna fill itself,” Sheriff Clements says.

The barkeep frowns. “Right,” he says before ducking under the counter again.

Clements doesn’t pay the bartender the time of day for the rest of the night. Doesn’t leave a tip, either. Not for service like that.

There’s a lot of bodies. More dead ones than alive ones—always will be—but no one especially likes to think about that. People call their sheriff in when they have to.

Someone’s had to today, it seems. At five in the God-damned morning. Guy at the desk for today tells him as soon as he’s in the station that they’re waiting for him at the scene.

He’s gotta follow up on the dead livestock first and foremost. There’s a procedure, and unless something’s time-sensitive, his services are first come first serve. A dead kid’s not getting less dead.

Once his work with Wilbur’s finished, he spurs his horse to trot.

The kid was found dumped a ways out of town on a road ‘round a cornfield. Though that ain’t a particularly helpful description out here, it’s really the only way to describe it. It’s a road meant for farmers, people with nowhere to be and, today only, cadavers.

The golden hour for crime scene investigations: noon. Least number of shadows for evidence to hide in. Hot as hell. Really bakes you in, the way a crime scene should. Miserable. Sheriff Clements arrives on the scene just in time. From the ground, the corn always seems more important than on the back of a horse. It’s definitely close to harvest time—the stalks greener’n a face of pimples his first night out on the saloon and higher’n Sheriff Clements can see over. Tall things seem more important, for some reason. Closer to heaven, maybe. Or maybe just cause it blocks the sight. Anything could be in that space behind it, and the taller it is, the more anythings there might be.

His deputies are restless, impatient. He pays them no mind, stepping up to the first one he sees. It’s one of his better ones. Rick, he thinks. been on the force nearly as long as Sheriff Clements has.

“Nice of you to take time out of your busy schedule, Sheriff.”

He glares. The deputy stares right back.

“You’re excused,” Sheriff Clements says.

“Yes, sir.” He nods across the scene, towards another deputy: one of their greener rookies. “He can answer your questions.”

The deputy steps away.

Sheriff Clements hates that guy’s guts, but he’s gotta admit: he’s a hell of an officer. Knows how to take an order.

Sheriff Clements moves over to the rookie, who stands at attention when he notices the approach.

“Howdy, Sheriff!” the newbie says.

Sheriff Clements tips his hat. “Rick said you’re the one to ask about the scene.”

“Seems like it!”

God, this was gonna be a headache.

“Keep up with me,” Sheriff Clements orders, stepping away. The rookie stumbles after him. Sheriff Clements walks the perimeter of the scene. It looks normal, for the most part, save the bit where the corn stalks have been completely crushed down. “Who was here first?”

“The victim, sir.”

Sheriff Clements stops. He stares at him.

‘Course it had to be the newbie. Too green for a murder scene investigation, in Sheriff Clements’s opinion, but you gotta play the hand you’re dealt, and with Rick gone the only other person here is some… random. Somebody here to witness, probably. Doesn’t look like the helpful sort at all.

The rookie doesn’t like Sheriff Clements’s quiet. He starts getting nervous, swallowing down his mirth. He scrabbles in his pockets and pulls out a palm-sized notebook.

“I— I was, sir.”

Sheriff Clements starts walking again.

“Who called it in?”

“I don’t know.”

“Figures.” Could be a newbie’s incompetence. Could be an anonymous caller. The killer? Maybe. “What’d the voice sound like?”

“The voice?”

“Of the caller, son.”

“Oh, uh, a man. Deep voice that sounded kinda fake. Had a slur to his words?”

Better than nothing.

There’s three stages to a murder case, in Sheriff Clements’s experience: lead, investigate, conclusion. Stage one and two repeat until they can’t, then it’s time for three.

“What’ve you found so far?” Sheriff Clements asks.

“Not much.” The rookie reaches into his pocket and takes out a notebook. “When we got here, it was about six o’clock. There didn’t seem to be any blood around the body, which was—” The rookie stops moving. They’re about next to the crushed stalks. “Right here, actually.”

Sheriff Clements stares down at where the ruined crops have made a painful-looking thatchwork carpet.

“You say the body was here?” he double-checks.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is it?”

“Family picked it up a quarter of an hour or so ago.”

Sheriff Clements stands there and stares at him.

“Let’s try that again,” he growls. He steps in closer, until the newbie backs up. “The body. Where is it?”

The newbie looks down and back up. “I assume the family has it.” His voice squeaks.

“Why?”

“Wasn’t just gonna let the man hang out in the elements.”

Sheriff Clements stomps forward again. The rookie backs up. “And you couldn’t wait the five minutes for me to get here first?”

“You weren’t here.”

“I was on my way.”

“But you weren’t—”

“What’s your badge, son?”

The newbie pales, hand not holding his notebook coming up to cover the number. Sheriff Clements grabs his wrist in a vice-grip and moves it away.

“0803.” Sheriff Clements steps back.

He lets the air hang heavy, and for 0803 to scare himself with all the thoughts about what Sheriff Clements might want the number for.

“Now, 0803, let’s not waste any more of my time.” He crosses his arms. “What else did you find?”

The newbie gulps. He buries his face in the notebook. “Horse tracks leading by? Might be unrelated, though.”

The road’s out of the way enough that it shouldn’t have been busy at the time of day the kid said the call was at. Murderer might’ve moved the body, then.

“I figure it’s more bandits, or—”

Sheriff Clements gets in 0803’s face. “Why would a bandit group move the body?” he asks. “Or only have one victim, for that matter? Their go-to is raid and raze, 0803, so what about all this makes you think it could possibly be bandits?”

0803 backs up and trips, falling in the dirt.

Fucking ridiculous. They just let anyone join the force these days, huh?

“Forget it.” Sheriff Clements looks up and away. “Go take care of the horses.”

0803 doesn’t need to be told twice. He scrambles up and hustles over to where Sheriff Clements and the other on-scene officer have tied their horses.

Again: fucking ridiculous.

Sheriff Clements takes his time surveying the area from there. He carefully pushes aside the crushed stalks to see if maybe the victim or the perp dropped something. It takes a few minutes: corn stalks are heavier than they look.

Nothing.

He stands up, with full intention of cracking his back and calling this part of the investigation a bust. As he moves, the changing angle makes the sun catch on something a bit into the cornfield. He pauses, tilts his head slowly back the other way until the glare hits and holds in his eye again.

There’s something in there. Something shiny.

God damn it.

He thinks about sending 0803 in there instead, but who knows how long it would take that guy to find it. And Lord knows the other officer doesn’t look like he’ll be any help whatsoever.

Guess it’s gonna have to be him. Sheriff Clements takes a deep breath and steels himself.

Best to get it over with. He shoves the stalks to the side and forces his way in.

He keeps his eye on the glint. When he loses it, he tilts his head around until it catches and blinds that eye again. It takes a bit of a trek to get to it—shoving aside more corn than Sheriff Clements thinks he’s ever eaten in his life—but it doesn’t take too long to find.

Between one stalk and another sits a prospector’s gold mine: a knife. Specks of blood stain the leather grip, and there’s even a few drops still on the blade itself.

Sheriff Clements reaches down and picks it up.

You’ve gotta be kidding him that not one of the other—

Well. He can scream at them later. For now, time to throw it in their faces. Sheriff Clements turns around.

And around.

And… around.

Where did he come in here from?

The problem with cornfields: once you’re in, they may as well last forever. They’re fog in a nightmare—dense, impossible to see through, slowing every movement. Their only mercy is how loud they crackle when shoved aside, but even that’s little comfort when the only warning that you’re not alone is a noise getting louder.

Sheriff Clements is sure he didn’t wander too far in.

The stalks bar him on all sides: a cage more inhumane than any man could design. The sound of the outside world is dampened by the layers of greenery. The stalks reach for the sky to box with God on humans’ behalf. A man does not start fights he cannot finish, and he’s held hostage for the sin of stepping into their domain with arms too short to fight with them.

Sheriff Clements will die like this.

He’s ripped twenty stalks out of the ground. He’s crushed their leaves—the fruit of their owner’s labor—under his foot. He’s trampled everything in arm’s reach, leaving a circle of desecrated ground with him at the center, refusing to move in case he gets himself more lost.

He’s screamed before he realizes it, the slight scrape on his throat the only indication that he’s done anything of the sort. Sheriff Clements bites into a chunk of leaves and greenery and tears it off the stalk with his teeth, to keep himself from screaming again.

“What?” someone answers.

He spits the stalk on the ground. Barbs too fine for the eye to see stick to his tongue and hard palate. His mouth tastes of blood first, dirt second. There’s more spit-slick evidence littering the trampled carpet that he can’t remember putting there.

“Shout!” he orders.

“Shout what?”

Clements turns towards where he thinks he heard it from. “Read the preamble!”

“Why?”

Sheriff Clements tries to yell: “So I don’t fire you!” Instead, he screams wordlessly in hellborn fury.

There’s a pause. “We the people—”

The longer sentences make the echoes off the stalks around him easier to weed out from their roots. Sheriff Clements finds the sound of the officer’s voice and pushes through. When he’s submerged, the sound’s completely dampened. It’s silent, except for the rustling. But as long as he moves straight forward, he’ll be fine. He spits blood. Some of the stalk shit stuck to his tongue from earlier catches on his lips as he does. He forces his way through the corn with all his strength: stumbling, tripping, but refusing to lose his forward momentum. He feels sure, in this moment, that if he stops, he’ll never start moving again. That’ll be the end, for him.

When he finally breaks through the last row, the sun hitting his face is like Heaven. With nothing to grab onto, his stumbling finally catches up with him, and he falls face-first into the thatchwork crushed carpet their victim called a death bed.

He breathes in lungfuls of air. His limbs spasm a bit, adjusting to having the space to move again. He hears the other two people on the scene shout different degrees of surprise, but he focuses on not being in that fucking corn field.

He comes back to himself one limb at a time.

He lost his hat in there.

“Do you need a—” 0803 is suddenly talking at him over his head, blocking the sun. That’s why he didn’t notice the hat was gone until now. He ignores the rest of what 0803’s saying.

Sheriff Clements grumbles, pushing himself up to his knees. He rubs his hand down his face.

“I’m fine, 0803,” he says.

The guy freezes. The other officer walks up from somewhere behind him.

“Wow, Sheriff,” he says, and he’s the one whose yelling Sheriff Clements used to find his way back, “you ran outta there like a bat outta Hell.”

Sheriff Clements pushes himself to his feet.

“Got a bit turned around?” he asks with a bit of humor.

Sheriff Clements stomps up to him. The man’s eyes fall on Sheriff Clements’s right hand, and he staggers back, but Sheriff Clements grabs a fist full of his bolo tie to keep him steady.

“Next time I say ‘shout’, you say ‘how loud’. It’s not your job to be asking ‘why,’ and the next time you do, it’s your badge. Got it?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer or a reaction, shoving the officer away. He stomps back to his horse.

“I’m going to the mortician’s office,” he tells the area in general. He unties her and saddles up. “The rest of you, you’re dismissed.”

He rides away before anyone can argue.

It’s not until his right hand starts cramping about five minutes out that he realizes he’s got a death grip on the knife.

At least he kept a hold on the evidence he went in there for in the first place. Small victories.

By the time Sheriff Clements steps in the morgue, he’s not in any better of a mood, but at least he’s forgotten all about the feeling of being caged.

The news there doesn’t help his spirits though. The mortician’s already started preparing the body. The stab wounds—Sheriff Clements can’t believe he forgot to ask about the cause of death earlier—are sewn shut, the blood’s been wiped off, and every part of the victim’s body has been manipulated into a presentable shape, including: formal clothes, his black hair washed and combed through, and his mid-twenties face set as peaceful as can be.

Fan-fuckin-tastic.

“If I’d’ve known he was murdered—” the mortician is stumbling through.

“No one told you he was murdered?” Sheriff Clements really fuckin hopes someone told him so. He could provide a testimony about the state of the body, in that case.

He shakes his head. “I’d assumed he’d been killed—obviously—but thought it was regular ol’ bandits. Didn’t realize it was Sheriff business.”

“Shouldn’t’ve had to. Someone should’ve let you know.” Sheriff Clements drags a hand down his face. He’ll deal with 0803 later. For now: “Personal effects?”

The mortician gestures to a nearby table. “You’re welcome to take a look.”

Sheriff Clements’s spurs clang as he moves over to the wooden end table. There’s a bin on top of it, the pickings inside sparse. Sheriff Clements gets to work, sorting the effects he can see in his brain as he goes.

Bible, cross on a chain. Might want to check in at the church, but there’s too many people there for that to be anything more than a last resort.

Gloves. Heavy, leather, and worn. Works with his hands a lot, then. Weird to have on him while he’s wearing such nice clothes. Unless, of course, the mortician’s the one who provided the suit.

“Was he dressed like that when you got him?”

“No, but the stuff he was wearing was ruined with blood. I gave him the closest things I had available.”

Fan. Fucking. Tastic.

“Can you tell me when he died?” Sheriff Clements calls, putting the stuff he’s already looked at aside.

“Sometime yesterday afternoon. He’d definitely been out for a while before he got here, the poor guy. Wish there were more I could do for him, but I’m afraid the elements wreak Hell on a cadaver.”

Paper with something written on it but the words are illegible, soaked through in blood. If there was this much blood on the original crime scene, then there’s no doubt now in Sheriff Clements’s mind that the body was moved.

“We got an I.D.?” he asks.

“Yeah, uh… Edward Thompson.” There’s the slight ping of a metal instrument being set down against something else metal. “No family in town. I’ll have to drop by the post office later and ask if he’s got any somewhere else.”

Sheriff Clements’s brows furrow. Wait. “Who brought him here, then?”

“Jacob Holmes.”

Hm. Interesting. Why did 0803 say the family took him? Was that an assumption on 0803’s part, or did Jacob say what he thought 0803 wanted to hear? Why?

There’s a wallet in the bin. Sheriff Clements opens it. There’s Edward’s I.D., obviously. If there’s no family that can pay for the guy’s funeral, the church’ll be covering the burial. Clements looks, but the guy wasn’t carrying any money. Damn.

There’s a lot of dirt and dust sitting in piles at the bottom of the bin. “Is all this dirt from the guy or was this already here?”

“Wasn’t the cleanest body I ever worked on. A good deal of that’s probably his, but it’s hard to say. We’ve been getting a lot of wind, lately, and you know how much it can bring in.”

“Ain’t anything else on him?”

“Unless you need the dirt in his pockets, no.”

Sheriff Clements raises an eyebrow, looking away from the bin. “Dirt? How much dirt?”

The mortician shrugs. “Dirt. Enough to grab.”

Sheriff Clements sighs through his nose. He stares back at the bin and the few objects that might’ve meant something in there. He wonders if the perps took stuff off the body or if Edward was just an old-fashioned kinda guy. Either could explain why he didn’t have any money on him too.

“Nothing for it, then.” He pushes away from the table and walks over to the body. “Tell me about him.”

“Not much to say that I can prove.”

“You don’t need to prove it. That’s my job.”

The mortician nods. “Couple of stab wounds. One in the stomach from behind, the other in the sternum. Minor signs of a struggle.”

Sheriff Clements nods. “What kinda stab wound?”

“Looked like a proper knife.”

Jackpot. “Good. Glad I at least got something outta this.”

The mortician wipes his hands off on a towel. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help.”

“Not your fault. I’ll be dealing with it. Won’t happen again on my watch.” Sheriff steps away. “Thank you for your time.”

“Thanks for your service, Sheriff. I’ll let you know if I find anything else that might be helpful.”

“Not holding my breath,” Sheriff Clements says, and by the time he’s out of the morgue, he’s all but forgotten the empty promise already.

Sun’s going down when he leaves the mortician’s house.

Work day’s over. Nothing for it, then. He’ll just have to raise hell about it tomorrow.

The saloon door swings shut behind him. His barkeep looks up from the counter and waves Sheriff Clements over. His seat’s open today, thankfully, and he meanders over, letting the tips of his dust-covered boots drag against the carpet.

The barkeep stays in place the whole time, just in front of and to the side of his usual seat. The barkeep stays busy, eyes on the glasses in his hand like he’s tryna break them with nothing but the look.

By the time Sheriff Clements finally gets to the counter, the barkeep’s polished an entire glass and a half. He hums a ditty under his breath, quieting it when he hears the squeak of Sheriff Clements’s barstool.

The barkeep looks up and offers him a lopsided grin, friendliness back in full force.

“Evening,” he greets.

Sheriff Clements drums his fingers on the counter, offering a tilt of the head.

“Hard day today?” he asks.

Sheriff Clements grunts.

“Right,” he says. “Confidential. I get it.” He places the glass he’s polishing upside down on the counter and leans on his elbows in front of Sheriff Clements. “So? What’ll ya have?”

Sheriff Clements hums. He takes twice as long as normal, letting his eyes glaze over.

“Better have…” he drags out, “the usual, I s’pose.”

The barkeep’s brows furrow in sympathy. “That kinda day, huh?”

Sheriff Clements grunts.

The barkeep nods. “Right. One whiskey neat, coming right up.” He kneels under the counter and grabs a bottle of Sheriff Clements’s brand, placing it on the bar before turning around to grab a glass.

Sheriff Clements hums. Better, but not good enough yet.

The barkeep prepares his drink, humming to himself as he does. The saloon is quiet enough that Sheriff Clements can hear him tapping his foot to the beat.

“Order up,” he says, sliding the glass across the counter.

Sheriff Clements catches it, hand fitting around the glass like his house’s doorknob.

The barkeep taps his fingers on the counter, waiting for something.

Sheriff Clements takes a long, burning sip. He’s good with quiet. Soaks in other people’s discomfort with it.

The barkeep stills, tension sagging as he sighs.

“So…” he starts. “How was work, uh… yesterday?”

Sheriff Clements looks up. The barkeep is staring at a drying glass, though his polishing rag’s gone still.

“What for?”

“I was busy. Didn’t get the chance to talk.”

It’s rhetorical, obviously, but he’s not gonna forgive someone that easily.

“Does it matter?” Sheriff Clements makes a point out of his shrug.

His barkeep’s eyes slide to the side. “I suppose it don’t have to.”

Sheriff Clements downs the rest of it and slides the drink back across. His barkeep springs into action, refilling and sliding it back as fast as Sheriff Clements has ever seen him.

He glances up to Sheriff Clements for the first time today. He gestures to his glass with his eyes. “On the house.”

Sheriff Clements raises his eyebrows. He lifts the glass in an aborted toast. “Thanks.”

His barkeep nods. “Don’t mention it.”

The air is tense, expectant. Sheriff Clements prods at his memory from yesterday and doesn’t find the anger he’d had walking in.

He nods at the barkeep. “Alright,” he says.

The barkeep’s eyebrows furrow. “Alright?”

“Don’t push your luck. Won’t say it a second time.”

He looks down at the glass in his hand, mouth screwed up in thought again.

His barkeep nods. “Alright.”

Sheriff Clements doesn’t go out of his way to meet the other members of town. Makes it easier to be objective in investigations. It’s harder to suspect people you know. God forbid he actually need to accuse or arrest them.

That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know them, of course. Just that he’s not friendly with them. He’d be a shit sheriff if he didn’t know the people in his own damn town. It ain’t even the biggest place, after all, though he can count the number of families who’ve moved in during his tenure on two hands and the people who’ve moved out on one.

So far, the leads are: kid’s found by the cornfields, knife in the corn. The personal effects are gonna be harder to track down with, but the knife’s a pretty good lead as it is. Who moves a body and brings the murder weapon? The murder weapon with blood still on it? Must’ve been important to someone. Or, if it wasn’t, that’s even better. But that’s something Sheriff Clements plans to find out.

He’s figured out from his own collection that the knife’s a Bowie. He can count on three fingers the number of people who sell Bowie knives around town. He himself buys equipment for his job from all of them.

He flips the knife in his hand as he makes his way towards his first stop.

He’s got his battle plan all figured out by the time he steps in front of the place. The shopkeep’s kid moved away shortly after he came of age. Might be something there to use while they talk. He holsters the knife in the sheath he’s clipped on his jeans.

A bell over the door rings as Sheriff Clements nudges it open with his foot. The shopkeep’s standing at the counter, his pale highlights him against the dark wook of his shop like a firefly in the night. He glances up from whatever papers he’s working on, and then does a double-take. He shoots up, standing at attention.

Now, that’s what Sheriff Clements likes to see. Off to a great start already.

“Sh— Sheriff!” he scrambles to get his counter in a more presentable state. “I, uh— Didn’t realize you were— we haven’t gotten any shipments in a while, so I didn’t know you’d—”

God, he’s yellow-bellied. Sheriff Clements is so glad he picked this one first.

“I’m not here for a shipment,” he says, leaning on his elbows on the counter and flashing a smile he knows from experience is mean-looking. “Got some questions for you.”

Colt Gallo pales.

Colt’s a good name. Wasted on a shopkeep. Colt should be a rancher or one of Sheriff Clements’s deputies. Not someone who spends all day sitting behind a cash register. Gallo is a good last name for a shopkeep, though Sheriff Clements ain’t as picky about that. You can’t help a last name, if you’re a man. Women can, but he doesn’t really care about them as much. You can help the first.

“Did you see the papers this morning, Mr. Gallo?” Sheriff Clements pauses, tilting his head. “Actually, can I call you Colt?”

He goes by first names to take the authority of a “Mr.” out of the conversation. He’s Sheriff, but a suspect being interrogated ain’t a mister.

“I…” Colt looks down at Sheriff Clements’s hands and back. “I don’t see why not.”

“So, Colt.” Sheriff Clements reaches forward and takes one of the papers from the counter. Colt sputters like he’s about to say something, but one glance from Sheriff Clements shuts him up. It’s some kind of balancing sheet, with inventory and sold goods and blah blah blah on it. Sheriff Clements pretends to be idly reading it. “How’s business?”

“Good?”

Sheriff Clements hums. He sets the paper down in front of him and follows the rows with his finger. “Lots of demand for hunting gear lately?”

“Not… not really. Out of season, and all, but the— the farming t—”

Sheriff Clements holds up his free hand’s finger for quiet. He goes through a few more rows. The numbers seem to be adding up fine, at a brief glance.

He lets the silence drag on.

“Is there something—”

“So, Colt.” Sheriff Clements slides the paper back. “You’ve probably guessed by now that this isn’t any old visit.”

Colt swallows. “Yeah, I— Yeah.”

“Sell any Bowie knives lately, Colt?”

“Um…” Colt glances down at his stack of papers, his hands fluttering up to thumb through them. Sheriff Clements puts a finger in the middle of the stack, holding it down, and Colt aborts the motion. “I… I don’t think so.”

Sheriff Clements hums. “You sure about that?”

“Well, it’s—”

“In here?” Sheriff Clements drags the stack towards himself. He doesn’t miss the wince from Colt as he does. He peels back the pages by the corners, glancing at them. “You know anything about Bowie knives?”

Colt shrugs. “Enough to sell them.”

Sheriff Clements hums. He puts a fist on his hip, moving the top papers of the stack to the side and standing at a random inventory page. “Enough to identify them?”

“That… that’s not that hard, I’d say? Bowie knives are pretty—”

In one quick motion, Sheriff Clements flicks the sheath off his belt hooks and slams it on the counter as hard as he can. The whack rings out in the shop louder than a stampede, and Colt jumps.

Sheriff Clements doesn’t say anything right away, still pretending to read the gibberish of Colt’s chicken scratch. Everything but the numbers are pretty unintelligible, but it’s not actually about what it says. It’s about the disinterested way Sheriff Clements can look into Colt’s whole business. It’s a reminder for Colt that one of them here is a cop, and it’s not him.

“What can you tell me,” Sheriff Clements starts, lifting his gaze lazily away from the page, “about this?”

He pulls the knife slowly from its sheath so Colt can see it, but keeps an iron grip on the handle.

Colt’s eyes dance left to right on it, and he swallows.

“It’s not one of mine,” he says.

Sheriff Clement’s eyebrow raises. “That so? And how d’ya know that?”

“I really don’t—”

“‘Cause if there’s something you’re hiding that could be keeping me from solving this young man’s murder, that’s hard time you’re looking at.”

“It’s— I’m not hiding anything, I’m—”

“Cause y’know, I’ve been doing some thinking.” He hocks a noise from the base of his throat to the top, collecting the grit and dust into his mouth as he does, and spits it onto the floor. Colt flinches. “Wonder how a shop like this stays in business, with prices like these,” he says. “Especially considering how many stores like this there are in this place.”

“Sheriff Reed—”

“Clements.”

“Clements! Sheriff Clements— I’m sorry— I didn’t mean—” He swallows. “I don’t think— do you have a warrant to—”

Sheriff Clements taps his boot’s toe against the counter. Colt flinches.

Sheriff Clements pauses. Lets Colt unflinch.

“How’s that son of yours doing?” he asks.

Colt’s face tenses neutral.

Sheriff Clements hums. “I see.” He plants his hand and straightens. “Really, it didn’t have to go down like this, Colt.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Could’ve been a lot easier.”

“I know, sir.”

It’s hard to read his chicken scratch. Almost like he’s trying to hide something.

“You got funds you don’t want me to know about?” he asks.

“No, sir.”

Sheriff Clements hums. Something’s not adding up in these records.

“Now, answer this for me, Colt.”

He shrinks in on himself. and Sheriff Clements knows he’s onto something.

“How much damage is the mortgage ‘round here?” Colt is quiet. Sheriff Clements is close, he can smell it. “I’m looking at these papers, Colt, and—”

“Charlie sends the difference to me.”

Now they’re getting somewhere. Sheriff Clements lets the interrupting part go. “Don’t bullshit me.”

“I’m not! I swear, I’m not.”

“That’s quite a bit for your son to be paying between his own mortgage and this place.”

Colt doesn’t say anything, his eyes on the ground.

“Colt.”

“He—” Colt swallows. “He doesn’t pay mortgage.”

“You let your son be homeless?”

“He stays at… at a saloon.”

“You expect me to—”

“They let him stay for… in exchange for the business he brings in.”

“No barkeep—”

“Upstairs.” Colt’s voice is quiet. “He stays in an upstairs room.”

Ah. There’s the ticket. His son’s a painted lady. No wonder the man’s so nervous. Sheriff Clements wonders how long it would’ve taken looking through his taxes to find that out.

He lets the silence drag on a little, in case there’s any other confessions Colt might make in that time. He doesn’t, though. Keeps silent.

“Is that all?” Sheriff Clements asks, a bit of sympathy injected in the tone.

Colt blinks. He looks up, a fair bit of shock on his face.

Really, how does a man get by around here being as easy to tug around as he is? My God.

“Nothing wrong with an honest living,” Sheriff Clements says. “You should’ve told me from the start. I wouldn’t’ve had to press so hard.”

“But it—” Colt cuts himself off.

“It’s illegal, yes. Very. And if he were in my town, obviously I wouldn’t let something so perverted stand.” Sheriff Clements spreads his hands. “But he’s long gone, isn’t he?”

Colt swallows. “Yes, sir.”

“Out of my town.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s past my jurisdiction. Nothing I can do.” He leans forward on a hand again, resting the other on his hip where the sheath was. “And don’t worry about anyone around here finding out your son is a dandy from me. Ain’t none of my business.”

Colt winces at that.

“I’ll keep quiet. Promise. What are friends for?”

Colt’s eyes are on his shoes. He doesn’t say anything.

“I’m doing you a favor, Colt. Have you forgotten?”

“I— Thank you, sir.”

Sheriff Clements nods.

“Now that that’s out of the way.” He nudges the knife closer to the other side of the counter. “What can you really tell me about this?”

Colt glances up to the weapon. He reaches over, but flinches and stops.

“Can I take it out of the sheath?” he asks.

“Hold on.” Sheriff Clements takes his revolver out of his holster and puts it on the counter right in front of him. “Go ahead.”

Colt shivers. He reaches out slowly and pulls the knife close to him. The button pops as he undoes the leather strap and pulls it out. Sheriff Clements made sure to clean the blood off before he brought it here, and it’s dangerously shiny now.

Colt rotates it this way and that, holding the thing on his fingertips.

“It’s customized,” he says, the most confident thing he’s said all visit. “A— a bowie knife doesn’t— here, I’ll show you.”

Colt goes to move, and Sheriff Clements stops him.

“Tell me where they are, and I’ll fetch one.”

He juts his chin out past Sheriff Clements’s shoulder. “Straight shot behind you, at the wall.”

Sheriff Clements palms the revolver off the counter before stepping away. As he goes to fetch one, Sheriff Clements keeps an eye on the shopkeep for sudden movements or flashes of metal. He makes sure the revolver is always in Colt’s sight.

He puts the knife on the counter, and Colt puts them side-by-side.

“See this serrated edge?” He glides his finger along a safe edge of the evidence, framing the part he means. “You’re not going to find a Bowie knife at a store with one of these. The hilt’s custom too, from the feel of it.”

His wrist tilts a touch, and he frowns.

“Got used a lot, seems like. Blade’s loosened from the hilt over time.”

He turns it over a few more times.

“I think… that’s it. That’s all I can tell. I ain’t a weapons expert, I just sell the things.” He raises his hands like he’s being arrested and takes a step away. Good sense.

Sheriff Clements slides his evidence back off the counter and easily clips it back on his hip.

“Thank you very much, Colt. You’ve been very helpful.” Sheriff Clements shoots his hyena smile one last time. “I’ll seeya sometime next week.”

He turns before Colt has time to react and strides out of the store like he ain’t got a care in the world.

“How was today?” his barkeep asks.

Sheriff Clements shrugs. “Business as usual.”

He nods. Doesn’t ask about it or comment, which ain’t normal.

“You heard about it already.” It’s not a question.

“Had Colt in here earlier.” He takes a second to count the bottles on the shelf behind him. “Was crying his eyes out.”

Sheriff Clements scowls. “Figures.”

“Asked me for work, actually.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“That you’re my most faithful regular. Shut him up right quick.”

Sheriff Clements barks a laugh. “Guy ain’t cut out for working with people anyway.”

“Yeah, I got that.” He turns the bottles so their labels face out. “You’re one of the best regulars too. If he can’t handle you, I don’t know how he’s lasted this long.”

Sheriff Clements smiles in his glass. “You’d be surprised what a little coat of paint can do for a business.”

His barkeep flashes a confused look at him over his shoulder. He notices the empty glass and gestures at it. “Another?”

Sheriff Clements slides it across the counter.

They do their own thing in silence. The barkeep finishes the refill and whatever fiddling he was doing with the shelves. He busies himself with drying off and polishing the dishes.

Sheriff Clements catches the barkeep glancing at him. He looks like he wants to say something.

He downs his glass.

On the third one, the barkeep’s still glancing. It’s getting ridiculous.

“Alright, enough of this,” Sheriff Clements says.

The barkeep huffs a laugh. “Knew I was being too obvious.”

“Much. Now spit it out.”

The barkeep puts away the glass he’s working on. He’s finished washing less glasses than Sheriff Clements’s drunk tonight.

He grabs another drying glass and gets to work before finally speaking up. “You heard the word, Sheriff?”

Sheriff Clements shrugs a shoulder. “I’m a praying man, but no one’s told me the word in a long time.”

The barkeep hums. “Mind if I ask?”

“I do.” He tips back his drink. “It’s a long walk to church. Not worth it just to hear a damn whiskey priest.”

The barkeep snorts. “That’s one thing you could call him, yeah.” He leans on his elbows on the counter. “You know they replaced him?”

Sheriff Clements scoffs. “They had to, unless they wanted to hold services in the pen.”

The barkeep’s eyes widen. “That’s right! You’re the one they made arrest him, right?”

“No one made me. I was glad to. Can’t stand a priest who keeps more of Jesus’s blood than his own.” Another drink of his glass. His barkeep pours another one out for him, which Sheriff Clements raises in appreciation. “I’m assuming you’re a regular at the pews, then?”

“Not theirs, no.” The barkeep’s face curdles. “My faith’s important to me, but I couldn’t stand what Father Heath was doing to the place. Letting his… temptations get the better of him. And the new Reverend—Maverick, I think? He’s just another Heath sympathizer.”

Sheriff Clements hums.

“No, I go to the Church of His Word.”

Sheriff Clements raises an eyebrow over the rim. “Can’t say I heard of it.”

“It was started by another man from the clergy who couldn’t take Pastor Heath’s sin corrupting the place. He organized a lot of us who left. I’m surprised he ain’t reached out.”

“How long ago was it?”

“You’re the one who arrested him, you tell me.”

“No, when your man was recruiting.”

“Oh, yeah. A few months ago or so.”

If memory serves, Sheriff Clements had busted up some fake debt collectors around that time. Confiscated a case of moonshine with the rest of the evidence. Strong stuff. Makes sense he wouldn’t remember anyone who came knocking. He’s missing a lot of time in those three weeks the bottles lasted.

Sheriff Clements hums and lets the barkeep come to his own conclusions on what that means.

“Why the sudden interest?” Sheriff Clements asks. “Sick of seeing my face? Tryna turn me against the drink now?”

The barkeep laughs, but it’s a nervous thing. Doesn’t even make a joke back.

“So,” Sheriff Clements says, swirling the liquid round the glass, “this, uh… Church of His…”

“Word.”

“Church of his Word. How’s it hold up?”

His barkeep pauses, thinking. He smiles, eyes looking far past the counter.

“Best damn sermons I’ve ever attended,” he says, something wistful in his voice. “I’ve never met anyone closer to Jesus than Preacher Dodds. He makes everyone around him into better people.”

Sheriff Clements raises an eyebrow. “Hell of a claim.”

“He’s a heavenly man.”

Sheriff Clements snorts.

“Anyway,” his barkeep says, “I was wondering about something.” He lets the silence hang between them this time, drumming his fingers a couple times before grabbing another dish. “You said you ain’t been in a while. I know you might not’ve been looking, since there’s only the one official church building in town. If you’d like, though, there’s a sermon tomorrow. You interested?”

He’s looking down at the glass he’s wiping off like it’s the most casual question in the world. It’d come across a hell of a lot more casual if the glass were actually dirty.

There’s something personal about inviting a man to your church, to the point where Sheriff Clements ain’t got words for it. The gesture’s a hell of a heel turn from the impersonal service he saw just the other night.

He knows an actual apology when he hears one.

“What time?” he asks.

“Late. I go right after closing.”

“There a dress code?”

It must sink in what Sheriff Clements’s answer’s gonna be. The barkeep’s smile could light the room all on its lonesome.

“Not at all. It’s come as you are.”

“Is it far?”

“Closer’n the old building.”

“Not an answer.”

The barkeep hums. “It’s about a twenty minute walk.”

Sheriff Clements considers his glass. “Not too far, then.”

“Not too far at all.”

Sheriff Clements doesn’t usually come into the saloon on Sundays. He mostly keeps to himself those days. Gets food for the week. The usual chores, if he has to.

The Water Wheel closes early on Sundays. The barkeep yesterday warned him a few times to make sure he wasn’t late, only stopping when Sheriff Clements said he might be busy after all.

The next day, he makes sure to show up three or four hours ahead of schedule. The barkeep waves him over before the doors even finish closing behind him.

“Good to see you!” he moves like he’s gonna clap Sheriff Clements on the shoulder, but hesitates. He lands his hand on the counter instead. Smart guy. “You excited?”

Sheriff Clements snorts. “For church?”

The barkeep’s grin widens. “Well, I’m excited.” He gets a whiskey neat ready and slides it across the counter.

Sheriff Clements catches it, but raises an eyebrow at his barkeep. “Really?” he holds up the glass. “On a Sunday?”

“Nope.” There’s humor in his eyes. “On the house.”

Sheriff Clements tilts his head. “Well, can’t exactly argue with that.”

Sheriff Clements stays until closing. He’s a little more tipsy than he’d usually let himself get, but he figures his barkeep wouldn’t let him have all those drinks on the house if it weren’t okay to show up like this.

His barkeep finishes locking up behind himself and turns to face Sheriff Clements. He moves towards the troph where their horses are tied, but pauses.

“Wanna walk?” The barkeep looks up. “‘S a beautiful night.”

Sheriff Clements rests his hands on his hips. “Might as well. Lead the way.”

He does. Sheriff Clements walks a step or so behind him. The buildings are hard to keep track of, with the slight sway in his step. If the barkeep notices, he doesn’t mention it.

The walk sobers him up a touch, but he still feels the whiskey buzz in his blood. He’s focused enough to be able to pay attention now, though he’s not sure he’ll be able to make it back to his horse on his own unless he’s got a couple hours to spare.

“Ta da,” his barkeep says as they crest over a hill.

Calling the structure in front of Sheriff Clements a “tent” would be generous. Probably kind of an insult to tents. It’s more like a canvas tarp on four sticks. When his barkeep moves the flap of a door aside for Sheriff Clements to pass through, it moves a good chunk of the roof with it.

But damn, if it ain’t bigger than Sheriff Clements had been expecting. The whole place is the size of a cabin and a half. There’s sunk-in mud under their boots from sermons past, and someone walks in with a sanded down stump under his arm and sets it down with the confidence of a man with His Spot.

Looking around, there’s only a handful of people. Less than, even. “We early?” he asks.

The barkeep checks his watch. He hisses. “Not nearly enough. Sorry, sheriff.”

“Small service, then.”

The barkeep blinks, finally catching on to the real issue. “Oh! Oh, yeah.”

“Not a lot of people left the other church?’

His barkeep scratches at his arm. “I guess time made them forget how upsetting the whole thing is, so they let themselves forget.” He hooks his thumbs in his jean pockets. “Either that or… well, they gotta pray somewhere, right? And it doesn’t look good to have your whole family walking this whole way just to stand under…” The barkeep looks at the ground. “I know what it looks like.”

Sheriff Clements ain’t too sure what to say to that.

“Brother Fairbairn!” someone calls. Sheriff Clements’s barkeep jumps.

Lumbering over is a tall drink of a man. The kind who couldn’t hide in a corn field just before harvest, and that’s saying something. He’s wearing long robes over a flannel—looking way too hot for how horrendously high the temperature’s been all day—and his belly peeks out from the opening. He’s got nicer pants on too. With flannel? Hm. Odd.

“Good to see you,” the someone says. He claps his hands over both of Sheriff Clements’s barkeep’s arms. “We were starting to worry when—” his eyes slide over to Sheriff Clements.

There’s a pause, and a wide, wide grin stretches across his face. Like Sheriff Clements is too good to be true.

“Yeah, sorry I’m late, Brother Sherman,” his barkeep says.

“And who might this be?” Brother Sherman asks.

“This is Sheriff Reed Clements. Sheriff Clements, this is the preacher’s brother, Sherman, and the man himself, Preacher George Dodds.”

Stepping out from behind the beast of a man is a veritable toothpick by comparison. He’s nearly as tall, but he’s not even close to being as wide around as his brother. Despite this, the relation is obvious between their faces. Their faces look exactly the same. And their extremely strange hair, which Sheriff Clements only just notices is actually a tattoo of newsprint.

Preacher Dodds nods his head in greeting at Sheriff Clements. Sheriff Clements goes to tilt his hat in kind, and remembers, with the motion, to remove it now that he’s in a place of worship.

“Pleasure to have you, Brother Clements,” Sherman says.

Sheriff Clements straightens to his full height.

“Pretty sure that’s ‘Sheriff Brother’ to you,” his barkeep says.

“Ah! My apologies, Sheriff. I meant no offense.”

Sheriff Clements nods. “Happens.”

“But it won’t again.”

Good people, round here. Sheriff Clements tilts his head again.

“Oh!” Sherman claps his hands together. “Where’re the manners my mama taught me? I gotta introduce you to the missus!”

A woman a small distance behind Sherman smiles and steps forward. He turns just far enough to rest his hand on the small of her back.

“Sheriff, this is my lovely wife, Mrs. Sherman Rogers.”

“My daddy named me Kelly,” she says, holding out her hand.

Sheriff Clements takes it. She squeezes his hand hard enough for him to notice. “Good grip on you. Did your dad teach you that too?”

Her smile widens. “Said strength is a virtue.”

“Good man. The name’s Clements.”

Sherman chimes in. “Call him ‘Sheriff’,” he says. She nods.

“Nice to meet you, Sheriff. Glad to see none of my boys have made us need to meet sooner.” A flash of panic crosses her features. “Oh, was that rude? I’m sorry, where are my manners?”

Sheriff Clements waves it away. “Nice to meet you too.”

“Sheriff?” his barkeep starts from his elbow. “Let me introduce you around, before we start.”

“I haven’t committed to anything,” Sheriff Clements says.

His barkeep puts his hands up. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Just thought you’d wanna not—” he catches Sheriff Clements’s expression. “Didn’t mean anything by it,” he finishes.

Sheriff Clements hums. He’s already let the incident go. His eyes pan across the others around them.

Surprise, surprise. One of them is a friendly face. They seem to spot each other at the same time, and Wilbur Pratt lights up in recognition. He makes his way over.

“Bill,” Sheriff Clements greets, “fancy seeing you here.”

“You know each other?” his barkeep asks.

“There’s always trouble on a farm, seems like,” Bill says, “but we only officially met the other day. About the chickens?”

His barkeep nods his head back in memory. “So you did call after all?”

“And asked for him specifically, for all the good it did. Hope I didn’t waste too much of your time, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Clements grunts. “It’s the job.”

“Well, regardless.” Wilbur gestures vaguely with his hand. “I would love to have you for dinner sometime. To thank you.”

“Not necessary.”

“For you, maybe. I’m afraid my honor’s at stake here, though! I owe you, Sheriff. You can’t imagine how that feels to a proud guy like me.”

“Brother Bill,” his barkeep chides, elbowing Wilbur, “don’t say shit like that in God’s house! What if someone else heard you?”

“Can’t do shit to me here, Brother Hiram.” Wilbur laughs from the pit of his belly. “I’m in His hands.” He turns back to Sheriff Clements. “Just keep it in mind. It’s an open offer, but don’t wait too long! It’s about to be harvest season, and I’m worried we won’t have time to be good hosts.”

There’s the sound of a guitar strumming from the direction of the stage. The energy in the tent goes from friendly to anticipatory like the lighting of a match.

“That’s our cue,” Bill says. “Hope you enjoy the service.”

Sheriff Clements nods his head in an acknowledgement. He focuses on the front of the stage.

The guitar’s in the hands of Sherman’s wife. She strums the chords one at a time and with a purpose, fiddling with knobs at the top after each one. It’s strange. Sheriff Clements never heard of a woman with instrument training before, but he guesses there’s a first for everything.

Doesn’t seem like the strumming was an actual announcement, though. Just the preparations for the service. No one’s especially hurried to get to their seats, just frantic with directionless energy. Even his barkeep fidgets next to him.

Hiram. Bill called his barkeep “Brother Hiram.”

Sheriff Clements ain’t too sure he’s ever heard his barkeep’s name before. It feels like an oversight on his part. A good sheriff’s supposed to know everyone in town, even if he shouldn’t exactly be too friendly with all of them.

“I sit over here,” his barkeep’s saying. He gestures for Sheriff Clements to follow him. “I put two spots there earlier, but feel free to move yours if you’d rather sit somewhere else.”

“Where else would I sit?”

His barkeep looks away and down. He shrugs, opening his mouth like he wants to say something, then promptly shutting it. After that confusing second, he stutters into motion. He brings Sheriff Clements to a couple of wooden stools near the stage.

“Which one do you—” His barkeep starts to ask, but Sheriff Clements is already halfway to sitting. He huffs a laugh. “Ah, right. Should’ve figured you’d know without asking.” He takes the other spot.

Sheriff Clements gets comfy in his seat. The stool’s big enough that Sheriff Clements can lean back on his hands, and he does.

“Did you make these?” he asks.

“My daddy did.”

Sheriff Clements hums.

They sit in quiet.

“I ever tell you Hiram’s a good name for a saloon owner?”

Hiram smiles with all his teeth. “Daddy sure thought so.”

Right. The Water Wheel is a family business, ain’t it? Sheriff Clements was just too young, he guesses, to have seen the changing of hands whenever it happened. He should look that up, sometime. Might be an interesting read.

The chord picking from the stage becomes strumming. More musical, less methodical. The murmurs in the tent quiet down some.

Sherman hoists himself up onto the elevated platform. It takes no effort at all, despite how massive the man is. He walks to the center of the stage with his hands on his hips, proud to bask in the eyes of the audience. When he gets there, the conversations have all turned hushed, but remain present.

Sherman raises his hands, and the murmurs die completely.

“Before we start, we’ve got a few things to attend to. Just some housekeeping. Firstly, let us all take a moment to remember a fallen member of our community.”

All around Sheriff Clements, the people in the tent begin to hum.

From behind Sherman, the preacher steps forward. Sherman ducks his head and steps back.

“Struck down!” George continues from his brother’s example, raising his voice until it’s only barely audible over the din, “unfairly before his time.” The mass hums louder. George raises his voice in turn. “The Lord works in mysterious ways, but he does not work thoughtlessly.”

The cicadas outside go greener with envy if they heard the noise in the tent. The mass’s hum raises as one. Sheriff Clements adds his voice to the din, and his barkeep smiles at him.

“He will return the injustice done to the young man. He will! This child was God’s child! When Noah’s brethren wronged Him, what did He do?”

George Dodds swings around and slams his foot into the pulpit with his full weight. The pulpit crumples around his foot, wood splintering with a crack only barely heard over the deafening humming.

“He struck them down!”

Sheriff Clements can’t tell his voice from the chorus around him. The waterproof tarp seems to make noise bounce. He can’t pick up a direction to the hum, though he knows it should be behind and to the left of him, given he and his barkeep are stationed in the corner. Is a hum still a hum if he’s throwing it like a shout?

“Amen!” the mass around Sheriff Clements screams.

“2 Thessalonians, my brothers! My sisters! 2 Thessalonians 3:10. He who will not work, shall not eat. God provides for our needs through our work, and our work must be fitting of His vision for us or else He will not provide!”

Amen!

“He could provide any way He wished, so it means something that He honors those who pull their weight. He is a working God, and it is in our own work that we honor Him. To act in an unrighteous manner is to pervert that honor. It’s an insult to He who provides!”

Amen!

“Amen!”

Amen!!

Dodds whips an arm around in a pseudo salute. The momentum of it turns him, and he takes the handful of steps to return to his place at the back of the stage again.

The crowd whoops and hollers in a call and response. One woman’s voice stands out from everyone else’s: barking like a foghorn and screaming out passions that sound like they tear at her throat.

They quiet in increments, bringing themselves down the way they lifted each other up. Barring a few bursts of activity, the tent silences over the course of a few minutes.

It’s pitch silent. Sheriff Clements’s ears ring in the ghost of the memorial.

“In other news,” Sherman starts again. Sheriff Clements barks a laugh. No one else joins. He feels his barkeep glance over, and his skin goes a little hot under the collar. If anyone else heard, though, at least the preacher and Sherman didn’t seem to, attention never wavering. “We have a new face here with us today.”

Sherman gestures towards where Sheriff Clements is sitting. There’s suddenly a grip on his elbow, pushing him to stand. Sheriff Clements does a little bit, turning with a half a wave to the rest of the tent before falling back in his seat.

Sherman’s eyes are completely fixed on him, with a friendly smile accompanying them. “Would you like to say a few words?”

Sheriff Clements tenses.

“We usually like to start with some testimonies from the audience,” he explains.

“I wanna speak.” His barkeep stands.

The smile that takes over Dodd’s face is blinding, even from the back of the stage.

“Brother Hiram!” Sherman claps his hands together in one loud, booming noise. “You’re really pulling out all the stops for your guest!”

His barkeep stands and steps forward, hoisting himself up on the platform. He’s much less graceful with it than Sherman was, though Sheriff Clements imagines he’s an athletic guy.

Sherman gestures Hiram over and rests his hand between Sheriff Clements’s barkeep’s shoulders when he gets close enough.

“As you all know, Brother Fairbairn has been a friendly face ‘round these parts nearly since my brother started preaching here. Our newcomer today is a guest of his. Which reminds me, if you happen to talk to him, and this is an order, no pressuring, you hear! Let our work speak for itself.” He laughs and claps Sheriff Clements’s barkeep on the back. His barkeep smiles at Sherman with a twinge of embarrassment. Sherman steps away. “Let’s all show Brother Hiram some hospitality, shall we?” To his barkeep, Sherman says: “When you’re ready and not a moment sooner, a’ight?”

Sheriff Clements’s barkeep nods. “Thank you, Brother Sherman.”

He collects himself as Sherman climbs down off the stage. George sits on a stool in the back, and his presence all but shrinks until it seems as though Sheriff Clements’s barkeep is the only man up there.

He takes a deep breath. The lantern glow makes his brown hair shine red and orange. He looks properly nervous, in a way Sheriff Clements ain’t ever considered his barkeep could look. He clears his throat, and even though Sheriff Clements is sure it had been silent before, the mass grows quiet.

“We’ve heard plenty of tales in this tent before, and I can’t say I’m gonna be any good a storyteller, but it’s about time I confessed. So: this is the story of a drunken old bastard and the gift from God that what saved me.”

“Three generations,” his barkeep starts. “That’s how long we Fairbairns have been in this town. Three generations. My grandpa came here with his family, chased out—as he was—by the rules and regulations of restaurant owning in Maine.”

He spits the word “Maine” like a curse. Might be one, to him.

“Came here with his wife and three kids. Well—” his barkeep rubs the back of his neck. “Started on his way here with his wife and three kids. Ended up here with only his wife and a baby on the way.”

Sheriff Clements clicks his tongue. Fucking city folk. Never could understand how they ended up under preparing so damn often for travelling the entire States.

“You better believe they toughened my daddy up something fierce, after they lost his siblings on the wagon trail,” his barkeep’s saying. “Meanwhile, grandaddy started a little saloon.”

“All this to say, my saloon means a lot to me.” His barkeep sways from foot to foot while he’s talking. Thing about bartenders, Sheriff Clements guesses, they ain’t used to having eyes on them. They kinda fade into the background unless you’re looking for them. “But my daddy, may he rest in peace, he’s a gambling man.”

Ah. Here we go. Sheriff Clements knows how this story goes.

“Always tried to keep our heads afloat, God bless him. When that drought hit? Hoo boy, did it hit us hard. I don’t claim to be a smart man—never much took to numbers, even counting—but lemme tell y’all when you’re in the situation we were, you learn the meaning of the word “mortgage” right quick.”

“When times get tough, you take to praying, and Daddy… well, Daddy prayed on dice. Didn’t work out, as y’all can probably guess, and he ended up…”

His barkeep takes a breath in through his nose.

“Well, long story short, Daddy owes more than he can pay, and gets stabbed for the trouble. Stab wound gets infected. Daddy got sick. Bad sick. ‘Ride your wagon to the city for a proper doc’ sick. Now, that kinda thing costs money, and the bank don’t care about anything except their own bottom line. Learned that pretty fast after we had to mortgage everything we had.”

From the foghorn-volumed woman: He tests us cause He loves us!

Sheriff Clements jumps. Other people seem moved too, with scattered shouts adding onto hers.

Ain’t no soul alive ain’t been tested!

How’d you earn your keep, brother?

Someone’s stomping their feet. Once every half a minute, it seems. When did a humming start? It’s already up to a normal speaking tone, and Sheriff Clements rushes to catch up.

“It’s a, uh—” His barkeep seems as thrown off as Sheriff Clements feels. “Medicine ends up a lost cause. Only gives him another month. Long enough for us to know we’re losing something, and after a couple days, Daddy picked the house. Daddy dies in his hospital bed a day or so after. Last thing we ever talked about was how I wouldn’t let nothing happen to the Water Wheel.”

“Then, in what seems to be the first glimmer of hope, someone comes back and knocks on my door. He’s one of the guys from the bank, the one in charge of repossession. Scares the shit out of me, knocking on my door like that, but he’s all smiles and apologies. Says he knows people who can get me the money to pay back the bank, and the only difference would be that I’d have more time to get the money back to his boys.”

Multiple people are stomping now. Each one’s a different volume than the other. They’re all only half a minute apart, but at different points, so it’s a constant drumbeat against the ground. Sheriff Clements bounces his heel.

“I tell y’all, can the Devil ever tempt with the best of them. And like I said, I ain’t ever claimed to be smart. Before I know it, I’m borrowing all sorts of money from his people. Shook hands and everything.”

“Then my tab ran out. They said it was time to pay up, but they got a… an interest in interest, so to speak. Didn’t have the money, so they took my home again. Ransacked the saloon. Said if I didn’t have it in a month, they’d… well. Y’all get the picture. My dad’s saloon, the one his daddy built, ashes. And I’ll tell y’all that was when I hit rock bottom. I pulled liquor off my own shelves, slept in the broom closet. The saloon was the last thing I had to my name, and if I didn’t find the money, they would take that too.”

Tell ‘em what Job said!

“He said the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!”

Amen!

“And— and brothers and sisters had he taken!”

Oh, Lord!

“And then… I don’t even know how many days later, on my knees, heaving up whiskey and gin, y’know what I did?”

Tell us, brother!

“I looked up with my heart and soul past the roof of the men’s bathroom of my own saloon, and I said ‘God, if you’re out there’—”

Praise the name!

“If you’re out there, please help me. Please. I hadn’t meant to doubt You—”

We’re only ever men!

“Please help. Or— or give me some kind of sign. I don’t complain, and I ain’t never asked why me. I know why me, but please… don’t let the family name end with an indebted drunken gambler like this.”

Tell us what happened!

“Don’t you know it, out of nowhere, a warmth I’d never known glowed from my heart.”

Jesus saves!

“This feeling of love, the likes I’d never known, spread through me. It was a love that knew me as I am and forgave everything about it.”

Amen!

“I knew I was His child.”

Amen!

“I wasn’t just a drunken nobody!”

Tell it, brother!

“I was— I am Hiram Fairbairn, damn it all, and He made me in His image, and I was so swept up in His love for me, I wept, and I ain’t afraid to say it! Right there, on the men’s room floor my granddaddy built, I cried for the first time since I was a young’n, and I knew I’d made it through!”

Amen!

“He was gonna get me through.”

Amen!

“Slept finer’n I had in a year. And the very next day, do you know what happened?”

Tell it, brother!

“I said do you know what happened?”

Amen!

Scream it, brother!

“Officer Reed Clements waltzes through my saloon doors that very morning. ‘Biggest bust of his whole life’ he tells me. He’s got all those loan sharks behind bars that ain’t mine.”

Your time to receive!

“Says I got nothing to worry about anymore, exactly as He’d told me not twelve hours earlier!”

Praise the name!

“And you know what else he says?”

Amen!

“He says he wants a damn whiskey neat!”

That’s our man! Amen!

“And he keeps wanting a whiskey neat! But no matter how many he drinks, the man don’t seem a drop different, and here, I’m thinking: God sent an angel to protect me. Not even the sin of firewater can touch him.”

Amen!

“And he keeps coming back, over and over. Next thing I know, my saloon’s doing better’n even!”

The Lord giveth!

“Amen!”

Amen!

Amen!

Halle-fucking-lujah!

“Sing it, Brother Hiram!” a woman hollers from the pit of her lungs.

Hiram—his barkeep—stomps his feet on the stage and keeps on with it: hallelujah, hallelujah, hal-le-lu-jah.

Sheriff Clements’s throat scrapes. Like he’s been screaming. Has he been screaming?

Hiram takes a running leap off the stage. The congregation screams for him.

He half-jogs over to Sheriff Clements, a wild look in his eyes like he won his soul back in a contest with the devil.

“How was that?” he asks. He sweeps his hair back. “Talk about a rush!”

Sheriff Clements never much liked words. He lets his mouth take over.

“It’s Sheriff.”

Hiram blinks at him, wild smile tilting.

“You said officer up there. It’s—”

“Oh!” He laughs, loud and from the deep pit of his stomach. “Oh, dangit, I’m sorry, Sheriff. Won’t happen again.”

He claps Sheriff Clements on the shoulder. Sheriff Clements mirrors the move.

“If that’s the only critique, I take it I put on a hell of a show, though.”

Sheriff Clements hums, mouth hooking into a smile.

Had he been an officer at the time? He doesn’t think so. He feels like he’s always been Sheriff of Paxton’s Vale, but he supposes he must’ve taken the job at some point. No one’s been Sheriff their whole life. Not officially, at least.

The noise quiets a touch, and he looks up to see Sherman’s taken the stage again. His hands are raised, palms facing the rest of the tent for their attention. Hiram pats his shoulder one last time before moving away and taking his seat again. Clements follows suit.

“Thank you, Brother Hiram,” Sherman starts. “Your story is both touching and inspiring. And it exemplifies what my brother mentioned earlier. It is through your work for the Lord, your work to get sober and to try and save your heritage, that you honored your place as His child, and when the time came where you needed Him most, He saw all you had done and gave you food in return.”

Hiram beams at the ground.

When Sherman speaks again, he addresses the tent as a whole. “Take the rest of the evening to think upon that which you’ve heard, consider your place as one of His children.” Sherman turns slightly towards the back of the stage.

There’s an odd tattoo on the back of his head. What Clements had thought was salt and pepper hair, he’s now realizing is actually what appears to be newsprint. And, on the very center of the back of his skull: an image of a shrunken face.

“Do you have anything to add?” Sherman asks George.

George shakes his head. When he stops, Sherman turns fully back to the crowd.

“May the Lord bless you in all that you do. Thank you, everyone. Have a safe trip home.”

The crowd claps and yells for the men onstage. Clements leans over to Hiram.

“Do they usually cut the service off after one speech?” he asks.

Hiram shrugs. “If it’s long enough, or if they feel like it gets their message across alright. Really depends. I think they play it by ear.”

Next thing Clements knows, there’s a soul at his elbow. Nearly makes him jump, the damn thing.

“How’d you like it?” Kelly Rogers asks. She’s got a manic smile on her face that could paralyze a weaker man.

Clements hums. “A lot more participation than the other sermons I’ve been to.”

She smiles impossibly wider. Sherman waltzes over, and she gives him an acknowledging nod before turning back to Clements. “We pride ourselves on that, here. How— How we get to tell our own stories instead of just listening to the preacher’s.”

Sherman smiles wide and prideful.

“The thing is that, like—” she continues, twirling one of her stray hairs around her fingers. “God’s presence lies in our words and our lives and our stories, so we tell our stories in a confession of a time we experienced God, and that’s how we, uh…” She chews on her lip.

“Connect.” Her husband wraps his arm around her and pulls her in closer.

“Connect! Thank you, darling. Yes, how we connect with him.”

“We gotta go mingle,” Sherman starts, pulling his wife away gently, “but if you can, you should try and introduce yourself around. Even if you’re not gonna join us, it’s always nice to meet someone new, right?”

Sheriff Clements hums.

“Sure thing, Brother Sherman!” Hiram says, waving. He turns back to Clements and checks over his shoulder. When Sherman’s out of earshot, he leans in. “We don’t have to stay and mingle if you don’t want. Sherman’s just a friendly kinda guy. Doesn’t understand that not everyone else is too.”

Clements waves the offer away. “They’re gonna want to talk with you. I’ll survive.”

Hiram smiles.

As it turns out, Clements is more right than even he would’ve guessed. With the exception of a couple someones ducking out at the first opportunity, everyone wants to come over and give Hiram some kinda praise. Courtesy means Hiram’s gotta introduce them all.

Clements tries to remind himself he’s only gotta handle this one night, then he’ll never be forced to do this again.

“And this’s Henry Graham.” Hiram claps his shoulder hard enough for Clements to hear it. “Finest blacksmith in the whole of the Vale.”

Henry chuffs. “Just Graham’s fine,” he says, offering his hand for Clements to shake. His grip’s strong enough to crush, and Clements gives as good as he gets.

“Got some tumblers from this man that have yet to scratch still.”

Graham scoffs. “Now you’re just fishing for a discount.”

Hiram laughs from the pit of his lungs. “You always saw through me, you rat bastard.”

Someone calls Hiram’s name, and when the trio look over, Kelly’s waving him over again. Hiram clicks his tongue.

“You gentlemen get acquainted, I’ll be right back.” He takes a step away and shoves his thumbs in his pockets. “Got some business to take care of, apparently.”

Clements and Graham nod at his back then turn ‘round to each other again. There’s a blink or two of silence as they size the other up.

Graham nods down at Clements. “What’s that you got on your hip there?” He leans in a little, and his eyes spark in interest. He hums. “What kinda knife is that?”

Clements had forgotten he’d been keeping the evidence on him, honestly. He pulls the knife out of its holster and holds it up where Graham can see. “It ain’t mine. Just holding onto it for a buddy of mine looking to get his license but not wanting to pass up on a deal.”

He’s a hell of a liar when he needs to be.

Graham holds his hand out. “Do ya mind?”

Clements hands the knife over. Graham pulls it up to his face and looks at it carefully, poking at junctures and messing with it in ways that look like nonsense to Clements.

“You know your buddy’s blade is loose?” he asks.

Clements hums the shape of a question mark.

“The blade is loose,” Graham repeats. He holds the blade out where Clements can see: as he’s tugging it up and down from the handle, the metal bit is wobbling. “Might’ve been why he got such a good deal on the thing. That’s mighty dangerous. Depending on what he wanted it for, that could get you killed.”

Clements’s brows furrow. “How does something like that even happen?”

“Oh, lots of reasons.” Graham pulls the knife back in again and goes back to fiddling with it. “Natural wear and tear, mostly. Metal expands in the summer, shrinks in the winter. Happens enough times, and you’re looking at a— Oh—”

The blade pulls away from the hilt entirely.

“Oh, damn it all,” Graham curses. He goes to shove it back. “Sorry about th—”

“Don’t!” Clements yells.

Graham freezes. The tent seems to go silent around them.

Clements swallows. He considers his next words very carefully.

“You, uh… I wanna make sure he knows his knife’s busted. I’d hate for him to, uh… for me to forget to say anything and then he hurt himself.” Clements’s eyes are glued to the blade. “Can I see that?”

“Uh, sure. ‘Course.” Graham holds the metal bit out. Clements takes it. He holds it carefully in his hands like it were made of porcelain and one wrong move could shatter it. “I can put it back together, if you’d like. Free of charge, since I’m the one who—”

“No, no,” Clements says. There’s a marking on the blade, on a spot that must’ve been covered up by the hilt. He stares at it. It looks like a cross with two extra lines through it, one at an angle. He thumbs over the symbol, feels the etching slide across his fingerprint. “You’ve helped him out more than you know.”

There’s a million things going through Clements’s head, to the point where he doesn’t recall the actual “meeting everybody else”, but when they’re out in the fresh air, he recalls the details. There’s Jacob Holmes, the youngest, Isla Muir with a shock of red hair and freckles, Ian McRiley the grocer, and Belle Giovanni who had a permanent scowl and dark brown hair down to her hips.

Honestly, it’s a skill he’s honed in his time as a sheriff: the ability to remember people even when he’s not really paying attention to them.

As they actually make their way back, though, he’s thinking about something else entirely than evidence or suspect profiles. Hiram’s presence next to Clements as they walk burns with… something. Some kind of potential. Like Clements should say something, but hasn’t been given a script. For the first time in a while, he feels the need to fill the silence between them, even though he’s never been uncomfy with it before, and Hiram’s looking as at ease as he always seems to.

“Never heard that story before,” Clements says. Now that he thinks about it, he ain’t sure he’s heard any stories from Hiram. Seems like it’s always Clements that does the talking.

Hiram barks a laugh, but it’s embarrassed. “Yeah, well…” he rubs at the back of his neck, “ain’t exactly got my proudest moments in there, is all.”

Sheriff Clements doesn’t comment. His hand goes to his belt and grabs at air. He gave the knife to Graham to see if he could find out anything else unusual about it.

“You know,” Clements starts, pushing that hand through the hair at his nape instead, “if I hadn’t caught those guys, I would’ve been the one the bank sent to repossess the saloon.”

Against all odds, Hiram laughs. He claps Clements on the shoulder.

“Don’t I know it,” Hiram says, “but that ain’t how the cards fell, was it? Jesus had better things in mind for you than being some loan shark’s gofer.”

“Y’know what?” Clements starts. “I didn’t know what I expected coming out of this, but I’m starting to think you’re right.”

Hiram smiles like he ain’t got a care in the world.

“That’s great to hear. Really, I mean that.” He turns towards the saloon and starts to unlock the door. “G’night, Sheriff!”

“Clements.”

Hiram pauses. He looks back over his shoulder.

“Sheriff’s the title.” Clements mounts his horse. “The name part’s the Clements.”

They look at each other. Hiram’s eyes dart around Sheriff Clements’s face.

He nods. “Alright.”

Sheriff Clements nods back. “G’night.”

The next day, Sheriff Clements comes to work early. He wants to mull over the murder case a little bit, before he gets interrupted by normal paperwork and recordkeeping and such.

He ain’t been punched in for more than an hour when the doors open to some familiar faces.

“Brother Reed!” Sherman waltzes into the room. He throws his arms wide like they haven’t seen each other in months. “It’s good to see you!”

Behind him, again, is George Dodds, the preacher. He’s as silent as a shadow, standing with his hands clasped behind his back.

“It’s still Sheriff Clements. Especially when I’m on the clock,” he says. He stands from his desk and steps in close enough to clap Sherman on the shoulders with both hands. “Good to see you too.”

And, surprisingly enough, he really is.

Sherman nods, letting his arms fall back to his sides. “Of course, Sheriff. My mistake.” He gestures further into the department. “Do you mind if we sit? It’s a bit of a walk here from our house.”

Sheriff Clements nods. He leads the way back to his desk, pulling over a chair from an empty workspace for Sherman to sit in across from him. Sheriff Clements moves the files from the Thompson case to the side and folds his arms across his chest, leaning back in his chair.

“What brings you both all the way to see little old me?”

A chair scrapes, and Sheriff Clements realizes he forgot to pull up a chair for Dodds. If there’s offense, it doesn’t show on either of the brothers’ faces.

“We wanted to get your two-cents on Sunday. What’d you think and such.” Sherman glances to the stack of files, and his face goes sympathetic. He grabs the back of the chair like he intends to get up. “If you’re busy—”

“Not at all.” He leans back in his chair. “Could use a break, actually.”

“Hard case?”

“You could say that.”

“It’s the, uh… the murder, right?” Sherman’s hands jolt up placatingly, and Sheriff Clements realizes he’s tensed. “Preacher Dodds here caught wind that you’re investigating poor Edward Thompson’s death.”

Sheriff Clements does suppose it’s been a fair bit since the body was found, and word does get around quickly. Thinking about it, he’s surprised it’s taken this long for someone to ask.

“Plus,” Sherman’s continuing, “Edward was close to a lot of the members of the Church of His Word, you know.” He clicks his tongue sadly, shaking his head. “I’d hate to be in their position… Gonna have to hire a replacement before harvest starts.”

Sheriff Clements tilts his head. “Who is?”

“Brother Bill!”

“I thought he worked by himself.”

“Usually he does, but not with the corn.” Sherman smiles conspiratorially and leans in for a stage whisper. “They’re stubborn sons of bitches. Not smart to head into their fields by yourself.”

Sheriff Clements hums. Reasonable. “Do you know who else he has hired?”

“I don’t, sorry.” He snaps like he’s just had an idea. “You can ask him next sermon!”

Clements hums. “Guess that’ll have to do.”

Sherman hums.

Silence settles as the conversation prepares itself for a new topic. There’s a gulf where the old subject puts itself to bed, and Sherman looks Clements over as he figures out something to talk about when they’ve appropriately mourned the passing of the old conversation.

Sherman huffs and adjusts himself in the chair. The air around them seems to electrify as he finds and claims the chance to take the next subject by the reins.

“It’s a shame,” he says. “He was educated, you know.” Clements tilts his head, taking a second to realize that they’re still talking about Edward. “Some members of the other church were always asking him to read them their letters.”

Sheriff Reed leans forward in his chair. “Didn’t know he was the religious type too.” That’s a lie. He remembers, vividly, the cross necklace that was with Edward’s effects, but he can’t just go around blaring case information.

What he didn’t know was that Edward was literate. That’s important. That means that there’s a whole field of information that he could’ve been privy to. That would explain singling a seemingly poor man out: knowing something he wasn’t supposed to.

Sherman nods. “He was a regular at the Church of the Divine Name.” He chuckles. “I’m sure that made Thanksgivings awkward around the Wilbur place.”

Sheriff Clements’s head is racing, processing everything. Sheriff Clements cannot believe how many leads this one conversation has gotten him already.

Sherman stands, seemingly out of nowhere. “Welp. We’ll let you get back to it. You do important work around here, and we’d be remiss to keep you too long and distract you.”

“It’s no trouble,” he says.

“No nee—”

“Really,” Sheriff Clements says. He finds he means it.

Sherman smiles in the way that feels like he gets Clements.

“That’s good to hear.” He turns, and the face of his tattoo stares at Clements. It’s a stark difference from his empathetic smile, one that makes Clements startle. “We hope to see you soon.”

Sherman and Dodds take their leave. Sheriff Clements pulls a scrap of paper towards himself and makes sure to write his leads before he loses them.

It’s not until an hour after they’ve left that he realizes they didn’t end up talking about the service at all, that Dodds hadn’t even spoken, but the thoughts pass through his mind like water off a duck’s back: over before they began.

There’s a strategy to an investigation. The stages are part of that, but more than the stages, there’s a matter of time. The longer time passes, the less clues there are; the harder to pin anything on the murderer, but the more likely a murderer is to lower his guard and let something slip.

To keep from being suspicious, Clements will have to wait for a bit. He can’t just waltz up to Bill asking about his murdered farmhand. He has time to plan, make a real strategy, and he intends to use it. There’s only so many murder cases a sheriff in a small town gets to deal with in his lifetime, and he’s not going to butcher this one while he has it.

He figures the best time to approach Bill is before one of the services. According to Hiram, the Church of His Word has congregates on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Hiram’s only ever gone to church services on Sundays, and he ain’t about to become some kinda born-again lunatic after one particularly moving service.

That being said, he does ask if Brother Bill shows up to Wednesday services. Hiram says no, that he’s working on the farm those days. “It’s a wonder he can make it out on Sundays and a miracle on Fridays,” he says with more than a bit of a laugh to it.

So Clements is patient. He waits. A good deal of police work is waiting, and he’s practiced in good police work.

But a considerable amount of it is also luck, and there’s really no accounting for good luck.

There’s a familiar face next to Clements’s usual stool at the bar.

Henry Graham glances over while Clements takes his seat.

“Brother Clem—”

“Sheriff,” Hiram corrects.

“Ah, Sheriff Clements! Sorry about that.” He takes a swig of his mug of beer before setting it back down. “Don’t know if you remember, but we met last Sunday,” he says, holding his hand out. “Name’s Henry Graham. They call me Brother Graham. Local blacksmith and the second loudest sonuvabitch in the whole congregation.”

Clements snorts. He takes the man’s hand and shakes it. “Yeah, I remember. Hell of a claim. Who’s the first?”

“Sister Isla. Isla Muir. Pardon my French but that bitch can holler like nothing I ever heard.”

“It’s the Irish in her,” Hiram says, voice full of humor.

“Never heard that one before,” Clements says.

“That’s what she always says.” He juts a hip out and rests a fist on it, thumping the other against his chest and pitching his voice up. “If I couldn’t outpray a bunch of English cunts, what kinda Gael would I be?”

Clements snorts, but Graham full-on laughs. “That’s perfect! That’s her exactly!” He rests a hand to his chest and bats his eyes. “What I wouldn’t give for a proper ale and some damn airflow!”

“That’s more cursing than I would’ve guessed.”

“Yeah, well, she ain’t my wife.” Graham chuckles into his mug.

Hiram kisses his teeth and moves to go clear someone’s spot down the bar.

“You got a wife?” Clements asks.

“No, not yet. I’m just saying.”

Clements hums.

There’s a whiskey neat in front of him. He hadn’t noticed Hiram putting that down. Must’ve been too focused on the conversation. Clements picks up the glass and takes a sip.

“Well, anyway.” Graham reaches for a bag on the floor next to him, leaning far out of his seat in the process. Clements eyes his mug, wondering if he could sneak pouring some into his whiskey, but decides against it. Guy’s done him a favor.

Graham fishes out what he’d been hunting for and hefts himself back to sitting upright. “I got your knife right here.” He puts a bundle of terrycloth on the counter between them. “Isn’t much else to look at than what I found at the tent, but I figure you’re gonna want to see that for yourself. The handle’s got mildew on the inside, though, so be careful.”

Clements’s eyebrows furrow. Hiram’s shoes thud as he makes his way back over.

“I heard that. Don’t unravel that in my bar, please,” Hiram says. “Mildew smell is the last thing you wanna find at a saloon.”

Clements looks up, and Hiram looks serious. “Fair enough.” He shrugs and slips the bundle into his lap. “Thanks for the help, Graham. I appreciate doing business.”

“Ain’t business.” Graham smiles and toasts with his mug. “Anything for a brother.”

Clements huffs, but a smirk of his own pulls at his lip. He clinks glasses and takes a sip.

Getting the knife back tempered the curiosity a little, but it doesn’t last long. Not finding anything new about it sure doesn’t help. Neither does how high the corn’s gotten, with harvest time coming close.

You start not being able to tell the difference between corn and mountains, right before harvest. It stuffs around the edges of roads, nearly about to break the fences and pour in at any moment in a broken dam of waxy stalks and husks. It’s claustrophobic, choking, and Sheriff Clements is counting the days until it’s gone, even though he knows from years living in Paxton’s Vale: it’ll get worse before it gets better.

So even though Clements is accosted on all sides and burning for the chance, there’s a layer of subterfuge to the long-game he’s playing. The kid ain’t getting any deader, he has to remind himself, and it’s important to do this right.

By the time Sunday rolls around, the anticipation itches under his skin like he’s stepped in an ant pile and the little fuckers are making their way into his jeans.

“You seem excited,” Hiram says, locking up.

“Suppose I am.”

“I’m glad you like the services so much.” He turns away from the doors with a wide grin. “It’s a huge relief, actually. I didn’t scare you off with the big confessional and such.”

Sheriff Clements waves the thought away.

They start making their way to the tent. The fire in his lungs only gets hotter, and Sheriff Clements needs to talk about something or else the excitement’s gonna kill him before he can get any answers.

“So you’ve been here all your life, huh?” Sheriff Clements asks.

“Yee-ap.”

“I didn’t really know you growing up, though. Would’ve thought I’d see you around somewhere.” Sheriff Clements’s spurs jingle as they walk. He wonders how he knew they wouldn’t take their horses. Now that he thinks about it: does Hiram have a horse?

Hiram hums. “Dad usually liked to keep his boy on-hand to help him with the saloon. I got sick a lot too. Couldn’t play outside much or go to school.” He looks up at the stars. “Did his best.”

Sheriff Clements hums.

“You know how it is.”

Sheriff Clements doesn’t hum.

“I always wanted to do what he did.”

“And now you do.”

“Not yet.”

His eyes glance around the stars for something.

“Not yet,” he says again.

They spend the rest of the walk in silence, mulling over Hiram keeping Sheriff Clements from dying of curiosity.

“Welcome back, Sheriff Clements!” Sherman, of course, welcomes him with the same open arms as soon as he spots the two enter the tarp tent.

Clements snorts. “I’m off the clock, brother. Are we gonna do this every time?”

Sherman laughs and claps him on the shoulder. “It would be a shame to break tradition, now wouldn’t it?” He loops his arms around Clements’s shoulders. “What brings you down? Here for the good word?”

Isla pipes up from a few feet away. “Course he is! No one sure as hell comes to see your ugly mug otherwise.”

That startles a loud bark of a laugh from Clements. Brother Sherman waves her off, and she sticks her tongue out at him before turning back to Graham.

Brother Ian and Kelly meander closer to Clements and the other two, making a conversation circle.

“Wonderful to see y’all,” Kelly greets. “I was worried you might not be able to make it on a weeknight, Sheriff. Not that it’s a problem! Just, it’s not the same when people can’t make it.”

“Especially if we were down two people instead of just one.” Brother Sherman turns to explain: “Wilbur’s still at work.”

Hiram nods. “That’s what I thought. Hard to get away from it all on weekdays.”

“You sure said that confidently,” Ian says. “Know from experience, do you?”

There’s a sparkle of laughter in his eye, but the note hits wrong.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Clements asks.

Sherman shakes him by the shoulders. “Ian didn’t mean anything by it.” He claps Clements’s arm and lets him go, stepping away. “Now if y’all’ll excuse me, I should go help Preacher Dodds set up.” He leans in, but whispers loud enough to make the move worthless. “Guy’s worthless with Kelly’s equipment. Can speak like nobody’s business, but the guy might as well have two left hands.”

Sherman laughs at his own joke, from the pit of his gut, and steps away, and the group offers their various byes. Clements tilts his head.

“Sorry,” Ian says when the business is through. “I really didn’t mean anything by it.”

Clements sniffs.

“Water under the bridge,” Hiram says.

Sister Belle interjects herself into the conversation with the confidence only age affords. “Sheriff Reed! I don’t remember ever seeing you at the old church on Fridays.” Belle smiles, proud. “I’m glad to have you. You as excited to hear about the first ever Reaping Sermon as the rest of us?”

Clements frowns. “The what?”

“He’s new, remember,” Brother Ian tells her.

“Oh! Right. Well, remember the old harvest time picnic that That-no-good Heath would host?”

It’s funny, how his first name’s become That-no-good to the people in this tent. Reed hums an assent. He feels pretty much the same, though he hadn’t realized it until now.

“Well, Preacher Dodds and his brother are gonna put on their own celebration, in honor of God. More holy, less a chance for Pastor Heath to get away with public intoxication.” She scowls. “Tempting good, holy children to the drink.”

He hums, noncommittal. She gets in these moods where all she wants to do is talk about the evil of temptation, and Clements ain’t really in the mood to hear it right now. “So, what’ll this be like?”

“This year will be the first,” Hiram says. “Preacher Dodds and Sherman are putting it together. Brother Bill’s offered up a spot, since we can’t hold it at the church grounds.”

“It won’t be here?”

“He wants it to be more connected to the bounty of God,” Hiram says. “Hence the name. Like reaping fields? Here’s good, but Brother Bill’s land is better. If that makes any sense?”

Clements shrugs. “Enough.”

“Creepy name, though,” Ian says. “Reaping.”

Belle puts her hands on her hips. “Something to say, Brother Ian?”

“Don’t know what more I could say about it, really.”

“I’m sure they just wanted to move away from the Church of His Name’s event,” Hiram pipes in. “Not many words for ‘harvest’.”

Ian laughs and claps his hands with it. Clements doesn’t see what’s so funny about that, but at least it makes Hiram smile.

It’s weird how familiar Clements feels with the people in this tent already, even though he’s sure he’d barely even met them before last Sunday. Not to say he feels particularly friendly with them—he’s still a sheriff after all—just that he feels like he could say who’s likely to do what. In a more amicable way than trying to get in a criminal’s mind.

It’s a strange feeling, getting used to a person—a group—so fast.

Sherman calls the meeting to order, and the mass finds their seats.

“Before we begin,” he starts, “I’ve been reminded that a few of us don’t know about the Sermon of the Reaping we’re planning.” Sherman smiles and pointedly doesn’t look at Reed.

Hiram snorts. “Ears like a bat on that one.”

“I wanted,” Sherman starts again, almost pointedly, “to take a moment to talk about this most joyous of occasion, of which both Preacher Dodds and I are extremely excited for you to receive.”

He spreads his arms out wide to indicate the whole of the tent. “It’s a coming together of our congregation. Creating a union, a bond, between us in our faith and our love for Him.” He brings his arms in and clasps his hands together. “When it’s through, we hope you’ll leave with a permanent reminder of all the power His Word holds.”

“Amen!” Isla whoops. The rest of the tent cheers politely.

Reed doesn’t exactly know what that means in terms of the actual events they’re planning—dinner or a potluck or some kind of show—but he figures he’ll see it when it’s time.

“However, the two of us do have a very important task for all of you.” He clasps his hands behind his back. “You see, a very important part of the Church of His Word involves, as you might guess, language. Typically, we deal in the language of the Bible, but a special part of our Reaping Sermon involves the word of man as well.” He spreads out his hands. “We need you each to find a newspaper clipping.”

Reed’s mouth flattens.

“Ideally, a clipping of a story that features you.”

Reed takes a deep breath in, fighting the urge to tense his shoulders.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be about you, but the more personal the story is to you, the better.”

Reed sees Hiram’s glance towards him in his periphery. His mouth curls into a scowl, and he decidedly does not think about the trunk at the end of his bed.

“Thank you, everyone.” Sherman nods. “We look forward to seeing what you’ll bring.”

Sherman relinquishes the stage to his brother, taking a step back until he’s nearly through the tent wall. Dodds walks forward until his toes peek out over the edge of the stage.

Reed forces his face back into something neutral, but his breathing calms on its own.

“Welcome,” Dodds begins. “Today, if we don’t have any new confessions…?”

And just like that, the tension is back. The air in the room points itself and digs into Clements’s throat. He tries to swallow past it. Hiram ducks his head.

Dodds smiles. “Since there are no confessions, I’d like to tell a familiar story. Unlike most tellings, I’ll be focusing on a part that often gets missed for the trees.”

Hiram snorts. “Always mixing up his phrases like that,” he mutters out the side of his mouth to Clements.

“Now, it ain’t typical that the Old Testament, especially those parts which speak of the minor prophets, tells an actual story,” Dodds says. “Usually, when it speaks of prophets, it does so through their words. It gives the pamphlets of their oracles and prophecies.”

“But there is one, in a book which bears his name, which is told through the narrative of the prophet himself.”

A low thrumming throughout the tent. Clements is humming, and he only realizes when he needs to take a deeper breath for the lack of air.

“The prophet Jonah!” Dodds yells the name. “His tale in the Book of Jonah is one of a man with a duty to his Lord. One of a man who is ungrateful to the great honor he’s been given.”

Hiram tsks, a percussive beat, for a brief time, against the note of the rest of the tent’s humming.

“He runs away, takes to the sea in the opposite direction.”

“Now,” Dodds paces to one side of the stage. “Think about the Old Testament for a moment. Job is nothing but a faithful servant, and God destroys his land and family. Samson, in the Book of Judges, is betrayed by Delilah, the woman he loves, and yet God shows no mercy and takes away his tremendous strength anyway. Israel receives a coat of many colors from his father, a symbol of Joseph’s love for him of which he takes great pride in, and his brothers steal his coat and sell him to slave traders. And God does nothing to intervene!”

“And yet, despite the many punishments that God befalls to others in the Old Testament, for much smaller crimes or no crime at all, Jonah is spared.”

Dodds holds up his finger, body stilling completely. After a moment, he taps his finger against the air and paces back to center stage. “Remember this.”

In center stage, he claps his hands together. “On the boat, God sends a great storm to stop Jonah’s flight. And does Jonah cower? Does he hide from what he’s done?”

Hell no! Isla, from the back.

“Hell no!” Dodds stomps his foot. “He tells the crew, lines twelve and thirteen: ‘“Throw me into the sea, and it will become calm again. I know that this terrible storm is all my fault.’ And eventually they do! They throw him overboard, and a great fish swallows him whole!”

“Now,” Dodds waves his hand, “you know the interim, I’m sure. He goes to Nineveh, the land of sin, and he preaches the way he was supposed to, and bitter that the sinners might be saved, he goes a safe distance from the town and sits to watch God destroy them. And even though Jonah’s actively rooting against a city of which He in His divine wisdom told Jonah to help save, God grows a tree for some nice shade for Jonah to wake to. And in the morning, a great worm destroys the tree, and Jonah curses the tree’s death.”

Hiram tsks. It reverberates the humming around them like the twang of a banjo.

“So God tells him: you You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night, and perished in a night. And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

“What’s the point I’m getting at?”

The humming bends under his question: dips low in case someone is overcome with a passion to answer. Hiram takes a sharp breath next to Reed, but clutches at his own arm, nails digging in.

“The point is,” and Dodds’s voice is gentle, as though he might split the air in two if his words were too powerful, “that Jonah repented.”

He sweeps his arms out wide. His voice booms through the tent, yelling above the din of the mass’s collective white-noise. “At every turn! God was there to teach Jonah the lesson. And that man was stubborn!”

I know what that’s like! Ian’s voice, with its beautiful timbre like a crackling fire.

“That man’s journey brought him nearly across an ocean! It took a crew, a fish, a tree, and the lives of hundreds for God to get it through that thick skull.”

Hallelujah!

“Jonah spent three days and three nights in that fish! Think about that a moment. Three days. Three nights! More than enough time for digestion. Yet, when he repented he emerged from the whale as healthy as he’d been going in. God knows the soul of a repentant even before he repents, ladies and gentlemen!”

Amen!

Now that he’s listening for it, Clements can confirm: Isla can holler. He whoops himself, trying to match her energy. Stomps his foot until his leg aches.

“He recognizes sincerity, and he helps the guilty reach their confession. All they need do is ask for forgiveness, and he will give it. God helps those who help themselves!”

“Say it again!” The words rip themselves from the pit of Reed’s lungs. Hiram claps him on the shoulder with a hoot and an Amen!

Not to be beat, Isla from the back: Amen!

Amen!

“Amen!” Dodds shrieks. “God told him ‘should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left?’. That’s important, ladies and gentlemen, for in Latin, the word for left, sinistra, shares the same etymology as sinister. God is saying that they don’t know their good from their evil. Only God can cast judgement on the actions of good and evil, and thus when you repent for crimes against Him, you are repenting for sins of ignorance as well as those sins committed knowingly. There is no sin done in full consent because we as the impure forms of Him cannot truly know what is sin. We are blind, as His children, but through Him we may see!”

Amen!

“Amen!”

“His children do not wish to disappoint Him! And He knows that! His true children, at every turn, only seek to please Him and apologize for their wrongs to Him.”

He takes a deep breath, full of ecstasy and content bliss. The hum in the tent joins him in pitch: rising and falling in tandem.

“But in that lane,” his arms sink, slowly, the way a rock sinks through water, “for those whose apologies are empty…”

Dodds falls to his knees, pulls his elbow back.

He slams his fist into the floor of the stage. The floorboards under him break, his arm disappearing up to the elbow in splintered wood.

Kelly screams. Graham calls for his Lord. Hiram’s nails dig into Reed’s bicep.

Dodds pulls his fist back, dislodging the broken panels with the motion. Blood trickles down his arm already. He holds it high above his head for the mass to see. A splinter big enough to be more accurately called a “branch” sticks out from his wrist.

“Make no mistake!” he screams from the pit of his lungs, and Clements is roaring with the volume of that same note that he carries through the sermons. “If He knows those who will offer true forgiveness, then He also knows an empty apology even before the worthless words leave a sinner’s mouth. What does God do to sinners?”

Puts them in their place!

Judgement!

“He strikes them down!”

Where they belong!

Amen!

Say it again!

“He strikes them down to the pits of Hell!”

Amen!

Dodds grabs the splinter with his uninjured hand. Hiram’s nails dig to the quick in Reed’s shoulder. Reed is screaming, he knows it, and Dodds drags the shard of wood out from his arm in a long, agonizing motion, body wincing and protesting every centimeter.

“Matthew 25:21! ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord’! The faithful are rewarded! He will protect His children, His flock! He will reward them eternity!” The tent around Reed screams with him, and it is only the sheer power behind Preacher Dodds’s voice that Reed can still hear him.

Preacher Dodds gulps down deep, ragged breaths.

“The Lord,” and his voice is watery, “is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Reed recognizes it immediately: Psalm 23. The most devout among them, Belle, Sherman, Hiram, and Ian, pick up the next words right away: “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.”

“He restoreth” and Isla, Jacob, and Wilbur join, “my soul he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.”

Reed swallows. His voice picks up into a shout.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”

Reed’s voice is sore, scratched, and sandpapered until raw.

Dodds, arm still raised, drops his head back.

Sherman takes a long, confident step away from the back of the stage. He produces a handkerchief and a canteen. Wetting the handkerchief and lightly setting the canteen down, he gets to work carefully cleaning the skin of the arm still bared to them.

When he finishes, it’s free for the whole tent to see: Preacher Dodds’s arm is completely unblemished. Not so much as a scar.

The silence is ringing. Reed’s ears pulse with the change in air pressure of nine people holding their breaths.

Preacher Dodds lowers his arm slowly back to his side. He stands. It’s only when he’s fully up again that he lifts his head to look out across the rest of them.

“Please take the rest of the afternoon to think upon these words.” He smiles. “Good night, and God bless you.”

Reed only barely remembers to catch up when he sees Brother Jacob leaving the tent.

“I was thinking about it.” Clements scratches at the patch of stubble on his chin. The bristles dig under his nails. “Can you ask Brother Wilbur if that offer for dinner is still open?”

Brother Jacob blinks. A small, happy expression buds behind the eyes. “Yes, of course.”

“How about this weekend? That work?”

Brother Jacob lights up. “This weekend should be perfect! I’ll let him know.”

And just like that, Reed sets the pieces in place. All he has to do is watch his step, and he can knock the king off his high horse.

Even so, it takes him and Hiram twice the amount of time to stumble home: as dizzy and drunk as they are on what they’ve witnessed.

Reed’s been to Brother Bill’s house to take statements before, but he’s never been inside. It’s a real man’s place, with the exception of some quilts draped over the back of every possible place to sit.

“Heirlooms,” Brother Bill says when he catches Reed feeling a corner of one. “Every woman in my family makes one for her firstborn.” He walks over to a wooden rocking chair and runs his fingertips over the blue and white quilt draped across it. “You can trace these all the way back to my ancestors in Jamestown.”

Reed whistles. “I’d hate to be the second-born kid.”

Brother Bill laughs. “Yeah, Theresa was right pissy about it. Mom told her ‘you can start practicing early’, but that just made her madder.”

“Where is Theresa these days?” Reed asks. He didn’t know Brother Bill had a sister.

Bill’s smile wavers. “West,” he says, dropping his hand. “You mind if my farmhands join us?”

“It’d be weird if I did. I’d hate to meet a man I couldn’t eat with but would pray with.”

Brother Bill hums. “Fair enough. Let me fetch him.”

Reed tries not to be too obvious as he watches Brother Bill’s path. He can’t be caught staring. He sees through the corner of his eye and out the window as Brother Bill knocks on the door to what must be the farmhand’s quarters. Takes a minute, but eventually the door starts to open, and Reed stops watching. He helps himself to a seat on a couch. It crunches as he sits. He wouldn’t be surprised if it were stuffed with corn husks.

Now that he’s had the thought, he can see the bright green of the cornfield through the window out of the corner of his eye. He refuses to pay it more than a passing glance. He has to stay focused on the task at hand.

The door slams open. Thank God Reed’s as good a sheriff as he is, cause otherwise he might’ve flinched.

“Brother Clements!” Jacob greets. He thumps his arms around Reed in a high-five of a hug before pulling back. “When Bossman Bill said you were actually here, I thought he was in on a joke, but God damn if it ain’t really you.”

Brother Bill rolls his eyes.

“Brother Jacob.” Reed nods. “Lively as ever.”

“Life could only be better if I had a twin.”

“That ain’t gonna catch on, Jacob,” Brother Bill says.

Brother Jacob flops in a rocking chair. “But there ain’t harm in trying!”

“Glad things are good,” Reed says. It would be too suspicious to ask some questions, so he has to be smart about how he words them. “I was worried. Must be weird living there, what with…” Clements lets the unspoken speak for itself.

Jacob shrugs. “In a way. We never much went into each other’s quarters on a good day, and obviously I haven’t…”

Clements nods. “Obviously.” Good to know that they did live in the same quarters. If they hadn’t, Jacob would’ve brought it up.

“We keep the unused rooms locked,” Brother Bill says. “Couldn’t have gone in even if you’d wanted to.”

Clements raises an eyebrow. “Has anyone been giving you reason to think they might be tryna break into Edward’s room?”

“Come now, Sheriff.” Brother Jacob rears back and sets the chair to rocking. “Surely you didn’t make the trek all the way out here just to talk shop.”

“Jacob,” Brother Bill warns with a tone. To Clements: “Please excuse me. Food was just getting finished cooking when you came calling.”

Clements waves Brother Bill off, trying not to look too disappointed by the interruption.

Brother Jacob helps himself to the seat across the living room.

“So,” he starts, “I seen you talking to Belle in the tent.”

Clements raises an eyebrow.

“Not in a…” he rests his elbows on his knees and claps his hands together. “This’s coming out wrong, but I’m just wondering if you could put in a good word for me with her.” He offers a businessman’s smile that Clements’s knuckles itch with the urge to knock a few teeth out of.

Until the words catch up to him. A snort rips out.

“What?” Brother Jacob’s smile falters.

“Miss Giovanni’s a bit too ripe for your blood, don’t you think?”

“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Jacob flops back in his seat and grabs at his hair. “She’s a proper lady, and I—”

“Woman’s got a kid already. Barely even five years younger than you.”

Brother Jacob’s arguments stutter to a stop.

“Didn’t you hear? Kid ran a moonshine rig. I was on the team that broke it up and confiscated his equipment. He’s behind bars in the capital.” Reed personally helped get him on the bus to take him to the prison there.

Brother Jacob stares at him.

“You’re fucking with me,” he says.

“Wouldn’t do that to a Brother.”

Brother Jacob considers this. He chews on his lip.

“Okay…” he deliberates, “even if that were a dealbreaker—”

“That ain’t a dealbreaker?”

“Even! If that were a dealbreaker, I don’t believe you on that for a second. Look at you, you’d totally lead a Brother on.”

A temper simmers in his stomach, but it ain’t so bad. He laughs it away. “Guilty, but not about this.”

“This?”

“Ain’t nothing ‘bout women worth leading a Brother on about.”

Brother Jacob blinks, eyebrows furrowing.

There’s a knocking that startles them out of their conversation. It’s Brother Bill at the door. He wipes his hands with a towel.

“Soup’s on, fellas,” he says.

Reed claps his hands on his knees and hefts himself up. “Finally. I’m starving, and I gotta say that smells divine.”

Reed lets himself enjoy the dinner. Brother Bill’s a hell of a chef, which Reed figures comes from being a farmer. You know how food tastes.

“That really hits the damn spot,” Reed says, shoveling another forkful of lasagna into his mouth.

Brother Bill grins. “Fantastic.”

“I keep telling him to write a cookbook,” Brother Jacob says.

“And I keep saying I ain’t spilling family secrets for a couple of dimes.”

“Then charge more for it!”

“Pardon the family spat,” Reed interrupts. “Mind if I go to the outhouse?”

Brother Bill laughs. “If I minded, I wouldn’t have built one.” He gestures with his head towards the dining room door. “You need me to show you where it is?”

“I think I can find an outhouse, but I appreciate it. Little carving of a moon in the door?”

Brother Bill and Brother Jacob both chuckle as Clements makes his way out.

He’s glad neither of them insisted. That would’ve been a lot harder to slip out of. Now he won’t even have to bother going to the outhouse at all.

He’s mindful of the kitchen window, though. Keeps carefully out of its sight as he edges around the house towards where he saw Brother Bill go to pick Brother Jacob up.

Thankfully, Brother Jacob gave him the helpful hint that they did live in the same building, otherwise Reed wouldn’t feel as confident about entering. Clements goes up to the door and tries the handle. It’s unlocked, so Clements lets himself in.

Inside’s a living room with a door on its left and right side. He assumes there’s room for three farmhands, then, long as someone didn’t mind bumming on the couch. The first door he tries opens easily. He guesses that’s Brother Jacob’s. He closes it softly, like he might disturb someone.

The lock’s even worse for wear than it looks. Only takes a few good shoves. Clements practically doesn’t even break stride walking in.

Edward’s room is a right mess. If Jacob hadn’t explicitly said he hadn’t been in here, Clements would guess that someone had come ransacking the place before he could even have the idea.

Maybe someone did. Wouldn’t be the first time a suspect lied to him. Clements holds that in the back of his head as a possibility as he closes the door behind him: Could’ve been Jacob and he’s lying, or it could’ve been someone else and Reed just didn’t know.

Clements starts looking. He’s got to be quick about this—there’s only so long a man can spend “in the outhouse” before his hosts start to worry. He starts taking drawers from the nightstand first, dumping them out. Nothing catches his eye, so he shoves it all back in without worrying too much about getting caught. If Jacob hasn’t been in this room yet, then he likely won’t be in a while. If he has, though…

Clements opens the drawer again and makes a cursory effort to straighten the stuff in there up a little.

In this way, Clements goes through the whole nightstand, the armoire, even the box under Edward’s bed full of nudie mags.

Doesn’t find shit.

He can feel the tension of the time limit winding at his chest. They’ll be expecting him back soon, but he hasn’t found anything yet. He glances about the room.

There’s a writing desk. He’d missed it before—squished as it is against the wall with the bed in the way—but that’s something worth looking at.

He does the same thing he did for the drawers. The first two: nothing. On the third, there’s a thunk when he turns it upside down. It’s soft—he wouldn’t even have caught it if he hadn’t been listening.

Peering in the drawer, there’s a ribbon stuck in the corner. Hope itches at Reed’s fingers as he grabs and yanks on it.

A false bottom pulls out, and a wooden latch box follows. It clatters, but luckily doesn’t open.

Clements picks it up and shakes it next to his ear. The muffled ruckus of shuffling papers confirms his suspicions: this is it.

Clements takes off his hat.

The thing about a ten-gallon, Clements is pretty sure they don’t actually fit ten gallons in them. That being said, when Clements needs to hide something he’s carrying, it can be a big help.

He works not “quickly” but efficiently. He can’t rush this, if he wants to make sure the box don’t bulge a side and give him away, but he knows that with every second he spends “in the outhouse” the more suspicious his hosts will get.

When he’s set, he carefully places his head in the divot, and tips the hat with him as he rights himself.

There’s a mirror by the door—Clements ain’t ever heard of a vain farmhand before, but God’s got all sorts of creatures, he supposes. It serves Clements well here, at least. He shifts the hat a bit more left, makes sure it sits right.

Perfect.

“Speak of the devil,” Brother Bill says, taking his seat again. “We were just wondering if we needed to come check on you. Everything alright?”

Reed shrugs, hoping he pulls off a sheepish act despite the itch he’s feeling about the weight in his hat. “Just a little plugged up.”

Brother Bill laughs. “Good food’ll do that to ya.”

It’s not one minute after he gets home that Reed’s got his hat off and he’s pulling the latchbox out from it.

It’s the perfect size for the envelopes inside. Like it was built for them.

The edges of each envelope are all ripped, the letters carefully folded and slid back into them. Reed doesn’t waste any more time.

Dear Mr. Thompson,

Sure, that sounds good. Your loyalty to God will be rewarded eternally.

Love,

Rev. Maverick

Dear Mr. Thompson,

The 18th would be preferable.

Love,

Rev. Maverick

Dear Mr. Thompson,

There is no need to endanger your eternal soul as such. We will deal with them on our own time. Your passion and forward thinking are, as always, a treasure gifted unto you by the Almighty, but they are better put to use in other ways.

Love,

Rev. Maverick

Dear Mr. Thompson,

I will not repeat myself. Do not engage. There are forces at work already, and your interference is a liability we cannot afford.

Love,

Rev. Maverick

Dear Mr. Thompson,

Understood.

Love,

Rev. Maverick

Clements stares at the letters. Every message no longer than a paragraph, every sentiment vague. Reverend Maverick seems content that the reader understands what they’re talking about, which Clements guesses is fair enough, but some of these messages are so sparse he’s surprised Edward could keep up with them.

Why even save letters like this? Surely an educated man could at the very least remember “sure that sounds good.”

Reed hates finding something that only raises more questions than answers. Might as well have found nothing at all.

Well, not nothing.

Seems religion was more important to Edward than even Reed had been anticipating.

There are stages to a good murder investigation: lead, investigate, and—eventually—conclusion. They’re simple, but the most important things often are. Too many leads at one time tangles up the mind. Too much investigation without direction wastes vital time.

His next step has to be a smart one.

Reed’s never been to a church this many times in a row, not to mention this is his second time coming in on the optional Friday service, but Brother Bill definitely can’t make it Wednesdays, and the questions are burning Reed from the inside out. He supposes there’s a first time for everything.

He stands by the tent flap trying to puzzle out where he’ll sit. Hiram couldn’t close—Fridays before harvest are usually his busiest times—so Reed ain’t exactly sure if he should be using Hiram’s daddy’s chairs. For now, he’ll stand near the back.

Preacher Dodds nods from the stage when he sees him, but he turns before Reed can wave back.

“Sheriff!” Ian greets, passing through the tent flap. He sets down his usual sanded-down stump he uses for a seat and can claps Reed’s shoulder. “Good to see you!”

Reed nods a hello to him.

Not two minutes later, Sister Kelly rests a hand between his shoulders as she skirts by him. “Sheriff Reed, glad you could make it,” she says with a smile. She leans in conspiratorially, “I know you sit by Hiram, so just so you know, on Fridays, Isla gets real rowdy and screams like the devil. I’d cover an ear if you don’t want it ringing in the morn. She’ll understand.”

Reed snorts. “Listen, if there’s one thing I ain’t gonna do it’s feed into Isla’s pride.”

Sister Kelly chuckles. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you!” She strides over to where her husband’s trying to tune her guitar. She playfully bats at his hands.

Brother Jacob finally makes his way inside. Reed straightens.

“Brother Clements!” he greets. He pats Reed on the shoulder. “Good to seeya.”

Reed hums back, glancing past the billowing tent flap to look outside. Nothing but the glimpses of the very tops of ears of corn greets him. He frowns. “No Bill?”

“Busy.”

Reed hums, noticeably less happy.

“And Hiram? He couldn’t make it?” Jacob asks.

Reed raises an eyebrow. “What’re you asking me for?”

“He ain’t with you. Y’all always arrive together.”

“Work.”

Must be something in Reed’s tone, since Jacob holds up his hands. “Didn’t mean anything by it.”

Reed hums.

“I was gonna ask if you wanted to sit with me instead this time, but—”

Reed walks over to Jacob’s usual spot and lands on the stool before Jacob finishes his sentence. It’s not nearly as comfy as the spots that Hiram’s daddy made himself, but it’s better than the ground. And Reed does still have questions.

Jacob grins lopsided and folds himself to sit next to Reed. “You’re a big-old grouch. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Never quite so nicely.”

“How do they usually put it?”

“Not sure I wanna curse like that in His house.”

Jacob snorts hard enough to sound like it hurts.

Reed shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t need to be nice. I got people to protect.”

“Like who?”

Reed looks over. Brother Jacob winces with his full body.

“Sorry. I just… been thinking about Edward again, I guess. Makes me a bit bitter.”

Reed’s shoulders soften. “I understand. It’s hard.”

“It is. He was the closest thing to a brother I had anymore.”

It’s silent for a moment.

“It’s a shame he never got to see it,” Jacob says.

“See what?”

“This. Real faith.” He gestures around them. “How’s that for shit luck? I finally get him to agree to come save himself, and he dies before he even gets the chance to hear a good word.”

Reed hums. The words in the letters in Edward’s room spring themself into his mind like a sign from God. Come save himself, huh?

“Don’t forget, everyone,” Brother Sherman calls out when the service is over. “Cut out and bring your article to tomorrow’s Sermon of the Reaping. You don’t want us to have to pick one for you!” He points at the words on his own head. “You’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life.”

There are rules you learn fast out here. Ones that don’t apply in the city. The most important one is: don’t go outside at night if you have any reason to believe something’s out there.

Reed puts on his hip holster and packs three extra boxes of ammo.

He probably should have known he’d end up here. At the old church. In some ways, he guesses it’s where everything began. In other ways, he feels like that’s giving the old place—the people in it—more credit than they deserve. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and anyone who claims to be able to read or mess with the fabric of His plan is naive at best and a scammer at worst.

In other ways, it feels only fitting to say this is where it all began. This is where those who attend the Church of His Word got burnt out on empty promises. This is where he made that fateful arrest what feels like years ago.

This is where Sheriff Reed Clements himself was baptized. Though that’s not something he chooses to think about. May not count if the pastor ain’t the one who did it.

He chooses, again, not to think about it. He heads inside instead.

The church was always going to seem weird, given the amount of time it’s been since last he saw it, coupled with the fact it's nighttime now, and the latest he ever saw it before was in the fading light of winter’s early sundown. But it’s… worse, almost. The pews are a different color: metal instead of wooden. The floor tile’s been ripped up and replaced with carpet. The walls don’t have the popcorn stucco anymore. They’re smooth. No scuff marks in their newness. The font’s not made of ceramic, chipped from years of human clumsiness, anymore. It’s metal now. Can fonts be metal? He hadn’t realized they could.

Even the stained glass, the prettiest part, the part he remembers spending hours just staring transfixed at when he should have been listening to the pastor speak, are completely gone. Or replaced with scenes he can’t recognize now. The only reason he can even tell they’re different—given the sun’s not out to illuminate the scenes—is that he’s memorized so clearly from years of staring all throughout his childhood. They must be just plain glass, he guesses. He can’t make himself really recognize that, though. It feels… perverse, almost. To not have the faces of saints and their stories standing over him in this place of worship.

He decides, quickly, that he doesn’t like this place.

He quickly amends that in his head: he doesn’t like what His Divine Name has made of this place. It’s still God’s house, as defamed as it’s been, and Reed still holds respect and a hint of nostalgic love for it through the lens of growing up within these walls. Once a week, every week.

How can it change so much in only half a year? How could they do this to his church? How could they let the reverend or whoever owns the building do this? Even the crosses on the wall are different than Reed remembers.

With a knot in his stomach, he recognizes them. There’s a Bowie knife with the same shape carved into its blade.

If Sheriff Reed didn’t have a job, a purpose, to being here, he’d scream. Maybe punch something. But as it is, he needs to keep as low a profile as possible. Leave as little evidence.

Thankfully, the carpet is good for muting sound as Reed makes his way along the wall and towards the door he knows is in the front of the foyer, next to the stage.

He remembers this door being white wood. When did they change it to a heavy, natural colored oak? How much of his church has been perverted by people who, ironically, wouldn’t know the name if it’d been beamed directly into their minds by the Lord Himself?

He supposes it doesn’t matter. They can change the design of everything, but the fact of the matter is, the basic structure of the church has to stay the same.

He gets there much slower than he’d like. It takes maybe ten minutes to round the whole walls of the room. He tries the handle, and breathes a silent sigh of relief when it turns without resistance.

It opens to a room that Reed has, thankfully, never seen before. There’s nothing in here that should look a certain way, so it only looks like the rest of the church does now, which may as well have been as it always did.

Reed is getting too distracted. If he didn’t know better, he’d think they did all this on purpose just to mess with his head and distract him from his mission.

Reed slides into the reverend’s office and slowly closes the door behind him as silently as he can. There shouldn’t be anyone in the church at this time, no one lives in the building itself as far as he knows, but it never hurts to be cautious. The walls have ears, and there’s a lot of people listening to him nowadays.

He tip-toes over to the desk in the middle of the room. The desk, like every other piece of furniture in here, is heavy and natural wood. It looks like four men had to carry it when they were moving it in. Reed wonders if this was Pastor Heath’s or if the new guy brought this in himself. If this was the purchase of gluttony or vanity.

Ah, well. Doesn’t really matter, does it? A sin’s a sin, and even though the ring of hell might be different, it’s all Hell ain’t it?

Reed tries the top drawer, but it’s proper locked. He huffs. Thankfully, he came prepared for something like this.

Reed sits on the floor and unrolls the lockpick set. Brother Graham gave this to him, when he’d asked to borrow one. Didn’t even ask for an explanation. Cut Reed off when he tried to give one.

“Just have it back before someone notices it’s missing,” he’d said with a wink.

Reed owes him one. Reed’s not used to owing people but, again, that’s a thought for a different time.

Reed’s never picked a lock before. Usually, when he wants in something that’s locked, he just breaks it. The result is that he’s clumsy with the tools, pleading not to scratch the brass of the keyhole or leave any lighter scratches along the dark wood. It takes him way too long to get anywhere with the lockpicking set, and he’s sweat half his bodyweight by the time he hears the tell-tale click of it opening.

Sheriff Reed breathes a sigh, letting all the frustration and anxiety he can force out expel with it. He rolls up the tools again and slips them back into his satchel. He lifts the front of the drawer to pull it open, to try and make as little noise as possible.

There’s a lot of what looks like paper in here, but it’s hard to tell with it being so dark. There’s a window in this office, or Reed would light something—a match even—just to see. He looks around for something that he can light a lantern in to help block the light and finds a full armoire, big enough for two of him AND a Hiram to fit inside, probably. Perfect.

He pulls out the whole drawer, just to make sure he doesn’t forget anything, and places it gently inside the (thankfully unlocked) armoire. It’s full of dusty robes and sashes, but Reed doesn’t pay any more than a passing regard for those. He grabs a lantern from the corner and crawls inside, shutting the door behind him. He lights it.

From this point, he can see clearly an entire drawer full of ripped open envelopes.

Fucking jackpot.

He grabs the first one off the stack (carefully, with just the edges of his fingertips, to avoid crinkling it in a way that it hadn’t been wrinkled before). Reed teases the letter out from the ripped edge. He can see immediately that Edward put a lot more love into his letters than Reverend Maverick did. He wastes no more time and starts reading.

Dear Reverend Maverick,

I understand. Believe me when I say that nothing concerns me more than the purity of our community. This is the only reason I even think to ask in the first place.

I have witnessed the corruption of souls via the church of His Word—and by extension George Dodds and his brother—with my own two eyes. Every day, Jacob and Wilbur grow more radical in their faith, less gentle. Every day, they grow closer together. They do not wish to share the love of God and faith but instead endeavor to rid their lives of all who would disagree. Even now, Jacob begs me to join him at their services.

I tell you, Reverend, it is getting to the point where I am beginning to fear for my job. Where I mistake one for the other. They are so alike now. They call each other “Brother” where last year they would not be caught in the same room together. There is something sinister brewing.

I know your thoughts on the matter, but I must insist again that something must be done. We need to understand, at the very least, what we’re up against. If we act too rashly, we endanger all our souls, but if we allow this to continue unchecked, I fear the worst.

I have agreed with Jacob to attend a single meeting. I have no intention of joining their congregation, and I am confident in my ability to resist their pull should I only attend one Mass, but we must know what’s going on. It’s unnatural, Reverend. 2 Thalassians 3:10. I can take care of them myself. Please give me your blessing.

Love,

Edward Thompson

This is perfect. This is exactly the kinda shit he needed: a link between the Reverend and Edward to open up an investigation on the Church of His Name as well. He’ll have to go back and grab the other letters, sure, but this is—

Is circumstantial, at best. It just means they talked.

Hm.

It shows a motive, but he needs to find something that better proves conspiracy to commit murder. He… probably won’t find that in letters to Reverend Maverick from Edward himself, considering Edward got targeted, but maybe…

Reed shuffles through the drawer as carefully as he can, trying to not disturb the natural way the envelopes rest in case the pastor will notice, but all of the ones in this drawer are addressed from Edward Thompson.

Damn. Guess he’ll have to keep looking.

Reed blows out the lantern. He peaks out of the armoire and creeps out, back to the desk, and replaces the drawer.

The second drawer is even harder to unlock than the first. It’s below Reed’s line of sight while he’s kneeling and slightly, annoyingly, above it when he’s sitting. Reed has to pick that lock mostly blind.

He hopes to God the third drawer isn’t locked if he has to get in there.

Reed just starts to tease the drawer out when he hears the heavy doors at the entryway to the church creak and groan open.

He hisses in a breath and nearly drops the drawer.

Okay, he tells himself, don’t panic. He pushes the drawer back so it’s seated fully.

He can hear two voices. They’re getting louder.

Reed tip-toes back to the armoire. Each snail-paced step is agonizing.

The wood groans taking his weight. Of course, of all the furniture of the old church they could have kept, they picked the one piece whose creaking might give Reed away. He only lets the threat slow his movements slightly: aware of the countdown before the footsteps arrive.

He barely passes the threshold into the armoire before he closes the door fully behind himself.

Within a second, he hears hinges creaking.

“If there is suspicion, it is not for me.”

The voice sounds on the younger side. It’s hard to tell, with the armoire doors muffling noise, but Reed thinks he recognizes it from somewhere. Twin sets of footsteps walk into the room, and the hinges creak again as the door shuts behind them.

The answering voice is an older man’s. “Oh, I assure you, people are suspicious. A coop of chicken bodies will do that. I’ve had more than a few members warn me of someone asking questions. But they will be judged when their time comes, and you will be a saint by then. Nothing to concern yourself with.”

“Of course.”

The footsteps stop. They don’t sound close, but the muffle from the armoire doors makes it harder to gauge. “I did not call you here for idle chatter.”

“I thought as much, Reverend. Do you have a new task for me?”

There’s a brief pause. “They’re planning something, junior.” The chair creaks with a body’s weight. “You remember our duties?”

“To uphold and protect the moral sanctity of our community.”

“Very good. Remember 2 Thessalonians, chapter three, verse ten: For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: 'The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.'”

Reed digs his nails into his palms.

“God will reward those servants of his who shall help on his behalf. Those who refuse, however—”

“I’ll do it.”

“Good, my son.” There’s the sound of a drawer opening. “They hold their cult meetings out of a canvas tarp on some hill in the country. Should go up easily enough.” There’s rustling. He’s looking through the drawers, Reed is certain of it. “It’ll go up faster if you use gas, but that leaves more chance of evidence. I believe they keep some sort of device out there for their… musical accoutrements.” There’s a brief pause. “You know what you need to do? You did excellent work with the farmhand, but it is absolutely imperative that you burn everything down. No roadside corpses this time. Not one thing in or around the tent must be left. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Father.”

Reed’s stomach curdles.

This is the big plan? To— to burn down a church? Sure it ain’t a fancy building like this place, but isn’t it as holy a place as any other worship?

“Tell your parents that I need you to help set up for the harvest picnic, and you can go and finish that job before arriving here.”

A pause.

“Will I actually be set—”

“There is much to set up. I should think a young man of your fit would be happy to help his elder begin preparations for such a big celebration.

“Y— Yes, Father.”

Footsteps. “It’s important that we get this done before the festivities. Their ceremony is a twin to ours, and I do not under any circumstances want to risk giving them a chance to see it to fruition. Do you understand?”

The hinges creak as the office door opens again.

“Junior. I’ve asked you a question.”

“Yes, Father. I understand.”

“Good. I’ll announce your canonization at tomorrow’s festivities. Surely, you will be rewarded when you meet Our Heavenly Father for your faith and loyalty.” The hinges creak again, and the office door closes behind who Reed can only guess is Reverend Maverick.

Reed waits a few seconds and creeps open the armoire door.

With a shock that hits all of his nerves at once, he realizes he’s not the only person in the office. He closes the door again, but goes too quickly, and it creaks. It’s only in the dark of the armoire that his mind processes that the body had been turned away from him. He curses in his head.

“Hello?” the voice—the younger one, from the sound of it—calls out.

Reed holds his breath. Of course. Of fucking course he had to— He shuts that train of thought down before it can give him away, as though he were saying it out loud. He focuses on controlling his panicked lungs, keeping his breath as silent as possible.

It’s a moot point. The armoire door opens.

On instinct, Reed’s legs tense and he springs out, pouncing. The person is quick, though, ducking out of the way. Reed slams into the floor, rolling off the impact but even with the maneuver his wrist pangs wrong.

“What the—” the young man starts and reaches for something on his belt, but Sheriff Reed doesn’t give him the chance. Reed throws himself forward again and slams his shoulder into the kid’s gut. The teen wheezes, collapsing against him, and Reed restrains both of his wrists, twisting his arms unnaturally to force him to turn.

His eyes finally finish processing the face. It’s Junior. The same Junior from the Howards’ homestead. The one who knows how to shoot but ain’t ever been hunting before.

“You’re under arrest,” Reed says before he can think of it.

There’s a pause, as the situation settles fully in Junior’s head.

“Says who?” Junior asks.

“Sheriff Reed Clements.” With shaking fingers, Reed unclips his handcuffs from around his belt. He rearranges Junior and clamps them around his wrists.

Junior tenses, but bafflingly enough, relaxes with a mean laugh.

“Arrest me for what?” he asks. “You’re the one sneaking around, breaking into churches. You think the Reverend is gonna just let this go quietly? You think people around here are gonna turn a blind eye?”

Reed’s knuckles go white tightening the handcuffs.

“How many grudges you got on your tab, Sheriff?”

Clements yanks him up by the shirt collar.

There are a surprising number of sharp objects in a church. The pulpit, the corner of benches, the edge too, if there’s no cushion.

It’s a strange sort of calm that washes over Reed. This is something he’s trained for, he thinks as he smashes the kid’s (he can’t remember the name, and he won’t until he’s filing the paperwork, from experience) head against the wall.

Why the wall? That’ll only break his nose the first time. It cushions the slam of the blow. Sheriff Reed must really be panicking right now. He’s not thinking straight. He needs this kid gone, not injured.

The kid screams as he tries to put his nose to chest to quench the now roaring waterfall of blood dripping down his face.

Oh yeah, head injuries bleed a lot. Sheriff Reed had forgotten that. He’ll have to do something about that, before he goes. For now, though, he’ll just have to finish this before it gets to be too much evidence scattered around.

Sheriff Reed drags the boy by the back of the shirt collar out of the office and over to the font.

Drowning’s a nasty way to go, but anyone can drown you. Only someone with good strength can bash your head in. Drowning’s something that can be very impersonal. All you need is the ability to not pay attention for just long enough.

He should know. His dad—

No, no drowning’s not good for this kid. Sheriff Clements doesn’t want him to suffer, really. It’s not his fault that he doesn’t know when to keep his God forsaken mouth shut. It’s not his fault he’s been led astray from God’s pasture by some wolf in sheep’s clothing.

But, still, he’ll need to be dealt with.

God helps those who help themselves, after all. 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

The kid is clawing at Sheriff Clements’s grip. He seems to realize, like any animal would, that he’s in real danger now. He’s crossed the line. He’s saying something, but there’s a roaring in Sheriff Clements’s ears. He couldn’t understand the words even if he could hear them. He couldn’t hear them even if he wanted to. He couldn’t want to, even if he weren’t so full of blinding, all-consuming rage.

He brings the kid over to the nearest pew.

“Pick a God,” he says, “and start praying.”

He grabs the kid by the back of the head and slams his forehead down against the edge.

The kid wails. There’s blood pouring in his eyes now, as Sheriff Clements yanks him back upright by the hair. A twin trail of tears is washing away—as well as it can, being drops in a bucket—the blood.

Sheriff Clements does it again.

There’s hiccuping sobs now, interrupting a long unbroken wail.

The kid seems to realize he’s going to die, here. If he’s aware that there was something he could’ve done to prevent this, he’s certainly aware, now, that he’s past the point of Sheriff Clements’s forgiveness. An animal instinct has him clawing randomly, flailing for any purchase he can find.

Once, twice more—in quick succession—and the kid goes limp.

The deadweight and the slickness of blood make the kid slip out of Reed’s grip. He falls to the floor in an inglorious pile.

Bile tickles at the back of Reed’s throat. The feeling of it here, with the scent of blood, is unfamiliar enough that he feels slapped across the face.

Wheezing and gurgling echoes off the walls as the air leaks from the kid’s lungs.

There is blood cooling on his skin. There is skin cooling under his nails.

Sheriff Clements dunks his face and hands in the font water in a mad rush to clean himself in case he’s seen.

He runs.

He doesn’t stop running. It burns at his chest like hellfire. Three places in his body have daggers, stabbing and twisting at his guts.

He’s supposed to be in shape, but he’s fit for chasing criminals.

He realizes, now, that this has gone too far. Maybe, just maybe, he’s fucked up.

He can’t go home. They’ll look for him, if he’s at home. He won’t have an alibi, if he’s at home.

He needs to go somewhere.

Hiram’s face, as he opens the door, transforms between five or ten different emotions all in a fraction of a second. Reed is tired from a thirty minute walk being made into a ten minute run. He can barely breathe. He’s not sure anymore why he so badly feels the need to vomit. Probably a lotta things. He hopes he does throw up, if only to get the smell of blood off his tongue.

Hiram opens his mouth to say something. Reed forces himself to catch his breath.

“Do you have a room free?” Reed asks, hoping he didn’t waste precious time coming here.

Hiram glances down and back up. He holds the door wider and steps aside. “I’ll make one.”

The room Hiram shows him is bigger than Reed would’ve guessed. It has a main parlor area with a door that leads to a bedroom. Both have a door leading presumably to a bathroom.

“Sorry for the mess,” Hiram says, sweeping through and picking things up as he goes. “Didn’t think I’d have any visitors. It’ll be out of your way in two swishes of a horse’s tail.”

There’s personal effects scattered around, now that Reed’s looking. Family photos with similar faces between them, placed lovingly on the wall, an umbrella drying next to the door, clothes thrown over chairs instead of… not being there at all, he supposes.

“Where’s the bathroom?” Reed asks.

“Right over here.”

They pass the door Reed guesses is a bathroom for the parlor. Hiram takes him straight to the master bathroom.

“We’re about the same size, so I think I can just set out some of my clothes and you’ll be fine.

Reed grunts. He tries to get at his collar, but his muscles twinge at the motion of raising his arm.

Hiram starts magicianing toiletries from cabinets and drawers. Reed’s too tired to follow where everything comes from. “Feel free to use whatever you want. What’s mine is yours.” He curses to himself. “I should’ve grabbed my medicine from the kitchen. I should at least have a couple bandages somewhere in here.”

“It’s fine.”

“You look like you need them.”

“I don’t.” He gets his shirt over his head, finally. His shoulder aches. He might’ve pulled something.

“If you say so.” Hiram sighs. He eyes the blood that must be covering at least 80% of Reed. Jesus, there’s a lot of it. He must be tracking the shit everywhere. “I’ve got towels I’ve been meaning to get rid of anyway. You need help cleaning that off?”

“I got it.”

Hiram’s eyes cut to the floor. “If you change your mind, I’ll be in the next room over.”

Reed hums knowing damn well he ain’t changing his mind. He waits until the door clicks closed before unzipping his jeans.

He drags the stool with the stack of towels over to the bathtub.

It’s a miracle that both knobs work and get a decent amount of hot and cold each. Maybe it’s the time of night, he figures. It takes some fiddling on Reed’s part to figure out how to get it to the shower part, and as soon as the hot water hits him, he groans from the pit of his gut straight into the spray.

The warm water is soothing. Rare, out here, and rarer still in a place with a lot of people like this. It forces relaxation into his tense muscles. Makes Reed realize how tired he feels.

It’s a good time for reflection: washing oneself. Reed’s thoughts always come clearest when there’s water running down his back.

He’s fine. He’s okay.

He ain’t sure what’s got his knickers in a damn twist. He took down a criminal. Someone who’d been planning—conspiring—against a church, no less. Junior’s plan was an inexcusable act in and of itself. Reed did the town a service by impeding their progress.

His stomach doesn’t stop its knotting. God damn it. Maybe…

Maybe all this shit with the Church of His Word has Reed going soft. He can’t be going soft. That’s how Sheriffs get shot. That’s how good people get killed in the line of fire.

He’ll have to work on it when his head’s feeling better.

Hiram’s set out a fresh change of clothes on the bed by the time he gets out of the bathroom. Hiram himself is sitting on the couch, reading a book, when Reed finally opens the door to the parlor.

“You take the bed,” he says.

“I—”

Hiram doesn’t look up, doesn’t make any motion to indicate he heard anything at all. There’s a pillow and sheets on the couch already.

Reed swallows. He nods and shuts the door behind him.

There’s eggs and toast ready and waiting by the next time he steps out again. Hiram’s digging in already.

It’s silent until Reed’s halfway through the plate he makes himself.

“The cops were by earlier,” Hiram says as they eat breakfast on the couch together.

Reed freezes.

“I told them you’d had a few too many after work and had to crash here.” Hiram keeps eating, like they’re just talking about the weather. The same-old same-old. How they wanna get to church and when. “Brought your horse over last night so she’d be tied up round the back when they came.”

Reed doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do in this situation.

“Just thought you should know,” HIram says. “It’s important to keep the story straight.”

“I don’t—” Reed swallows.

“You were celebrating my third anniversary of being sober,” Hiram says. “I asked you to. You said no, you had work, but I wanted you to drink, since I couldn’t.”

Reed’s throat seems permanently dry.

“I apologized for the sick day. They said to just come in when you can.”

Reed sets his food down on the coffee table.

“They said there’s an—”

Hiram cuts off when Reed claps his hand on his shoulder.

Reed opens his mouth. He wants to say something. He should for all intents and purposes say something.

There’s nothing in the air between them, except that same weird comradery that Reed’s come to expect from Hiram.

Hiram claps his hand over Reed’s and squeezes it.

He drops his arm. Goes back to his food.

Reed counts down from sixty, gives his shoulder one last squeeze, and does the same.

The room, of course, should be paid for. Especially with all the fucking stains Hiram’s gonna have to get out.

“How much?”

“Wh— I— Reed, I already said what’s mine is yours.” He gestures to the bathroom door. “Now let me see the damage.”

Reed crosses his arms. “I’d rather take care of it myself.”

Hiram nods and pushes to stand. “Fine by me. I’ll get the cleaning stuff.”

Reed tilts until he finds the wall with his shoulder. When he’s sure he won’t fall on his face, he sinks his weight into it. He can hear Hiram thunking around somewhere else, going through cabinets or closets.

Reed remembers, suddenly, in a time that feels like a life ago, stealing bottles of beer from Hiram.

In the wake of everything that’s happened, really, a visceral disgust at the thought threads itself into the pit of his stomach. He doubles over a little with the feeling.

Hiram steps back around the corner, bucket in hand.

“Restaurant grade stuff.” He holds the bucket up by the handle and shakes it. “Ain’t nothing surviving this, so don’t breathe too deeply while you’re using it.” Hiram chuckles putting it on the table in front of him. Reed doesn’t feel like laughing. Hiram hesitates, eyes him. “You need help with any—?”

“I’m fine.”

Hiram hums. His eyes land on the bandage peeking through the cuff of Hiram’s slightly-too-small sleepshirt. “You should redress—”

“I said: fine.”

The cuts aren’t deep. Flesh wounds, at worst. Most of the blood, he’d reckon, wasn’t his.

He shouldn’t have left the body there. Rookie fucking mistake. Should’ve moved it into the office. The office is too specific, only a few people could be there without suspicion. Will anyone believe Pastor Maverick did it? He’s going to have to work hard to make sure they… they do.

No one usually likes to ask about the bodies, but this one’s just a teenager. There’ll be more grieving, more outrage. This one’ll be…

God. This is a mess. What is he supposed to do?

Hiram’s eyeing him weird. Reed doesn’t like it.

Before he gets the chance to say something, Hiram’s eyes cut to the floor again, and he turns away.

“We can talk about it later?” Hiram offers, moving to the couch.

Hiram doesn’t even realize he’s nice, does he? Seems to think that’s just average neighborly behavior, but they don’t live anywhere near each other. But Hiram’s at least a baker’s dozen down on bottles that never got paid for.

“I need to confess something now.”

Hiram pauses halfway down to the couch cushion. He glances from the corner of his eye, chuckles nervously.

“Church isn’t for another—”

“Not— not like that.” Reed isn’t good with words. He doesn’t like how they… how people look at him when he uses them. He runs a hand through his hair. “I did… something to you, specifically. I need to—”

“Reed, it’s okay. Whatever it—”

“No.” He puts all the authority he can muster into his voice. He’s gotta do this. Hiram’s opened up his whole-ass home, given him an entire alibi for a crime they both know he’s committed. Reed doesn’t like to owe someone. This barely even comes close to settling their score, but God damn it—it’s something.

Hiram looks at him straight on now. His throat clicks as he swallows, and he waves for Reed to go ahead.

“I’ve…” Reed swallows. Now that it’s his turn to talk, his throat’s gone dry, the fucking traitor. “It’s been gnawing at me, but sometimes when you were too busy for the usual service, I’d steal a few from you.”

Hiram stares at him.

“Beer, usually. I’d order it cause I knew it’d be easier than— And it takes more effort for you to fill a pitcher than most drinks, and giving you more work when you were already busy—”

“Is that all?” Hiram asks.

It sucks the rest of Reed’s babble from his lungs. He blinks at Hiram.

“Already told you.” Hiram rests his hand on Reed’s shoulder and gives it a light squeeze before passing, walking further into his home. He grabs the bucket on his way. “What’s mine is yours. I won’t hear any more of it.” He turns around after passing into the bedroom, one hand on the oak door. “I’m gonna clean up my bathroom. It’s a right mess in there.” He offers a smile. “Make yourself at home.”

He closes the door behind him. The sound punctuates the silence after it.

“Alright,” Reed says. The room doesn’t say anything in reply.

“Do you gotta stop by your house for the snippet?” Hiram asks. Reed pauses. It takes him a second to understand the question.

Reed swallows. “No, I, uh…” He pats his back jeans pocket and pulls out the folded newspaper. “Brought it. Just in case.”

Hiram nods. “That’s good.” Reed starts walking, and Hiram keeps pace. “What about?”

After everything, Reed wants nothing more than to tell Hiram. Share the whole story.

But there are a few things he needs to know first before he’ll feel comfortable forcing Hiram to hear it. First: that he can confess privately before the Reaping Sermon starts, and second: that he’ll still be allowed in the Church of His Word.

“Tell you after,” Reed says.

Hiram nods. That’s the end of it.

“I gotta do something,” Reed says as soon as they start seeing other members of the Church of His Word. Hiram nods. Reed claps his shoulder and moves away.

Doesn’t take much to find Preacher Dodds. Only two men here with that unique tattoo that looks like salt-and-pepper hair from a distance, and only one of them’s wearing robes.

He nods in greeting as Reed walks up.

“I have a confession,” Reed says immediately. No use pussyfooting around it. “Can we talk somewhere in… in private?”

Brother Sherman and Preacher Dodds look at each other. Oh God since when has Brother Sherman been here? Reed needs to get a grip on himself.

“Confessions are usually given publicly,” Sherman starts haltingly.

“I know, I just…” Reed scratches at the back of his neck.

“But I believe,” Preacher Dodds pats Sherman’s shoulder and steps forward, “that an exception can be made on this most holy of days. Come, Brother Reed. The stage is still good for speaking, even without an audience.”

Sherman looks blankly after Preacher Dodds as he goes. Reed thinks better than to try and say anything, instead following close on Preacher Dodds’s heels.

There’s a makeshift tent put up where the old, sturdier cloth was. Brother Bill brought it. Another one of his heirloom blankets, if Reed had to guess, but bigger than any handmade blanket he’s ever seen.

“I got something I need to talk to you about,” Reed repeats. It’s easier to talk with no one else in sight, but at the same time the words have more of a charge to them. They feel important, especially in the dim light filtered through the thin, moth-eaten family treasure.

Preacher Dodds frowns in a thoughtful pout. He gestures towards the stage, and Reed hefts himself up to sit on the edge of it.

It’s been awhile since he’s said these words.

“Forgive me, Father.” The words taste like milk on his tongue. “I have sinned.”

Preacher Dodds tilts his head. It’s weird, to be able to see who he’s confessing to, but he supposes it’s not much of a difference. There was only ever one Pastor at the old church too, so it was always obvious that he was speaking to Pastor Heath. Never much felt like talking to God. He thought that the screen might be to protect the speaker, but that doesn’t make sense either with the voices.

He’s stalling.

“I… have committed the ultimate sin, I think. I played God and have taken the life of one of His children.”

Preacher Dodds’s eyebrows shoot into what must’ve once been his hairline, before the shave.

“Back at the old churchouse,” Reed explains. I was investigating that boy’s murder from a few weeks back. Edward Thompson.

Preacher Dodds nods.

“He’d written letters to the Reverend there. One, uh… Reverend Maverick, I think. But the letters he’d received didn’t say much of anything at all, so I went to find if there was anything I could use to connect his killer’s to him. Some kind of motive.”

He digs at the dirt under his fingernails. When he was younger, he liked to feel the rosary beads roll around between his fingerprints. He doesn’t think he could stand to hold it, after all this time, but he misses the distraction of it.

“Didn’t find anything concrete in the letters either, nothing that could pin down for certain. But someone came in while I was looking around, and I found out that they’d gotten one of the kids there to kill him so he wouldn’t come pray here.”

Should he mention that Edward had only been on his way to take down the church from the inside?

Ah… what good would it do? Kid’s already dead. No use sullying his name on top of it all.

“The kid found me hiding, though, and he attacked me. I just meant to arrest him, but…” He runs a hand through his hair. “But I don’t know what came over me. The kid was talking about how people would find out I’d broken into a church and how that would look, and I just… I lost it.”

“How did you kill him?”

Reed’s brows furrow, and he meets Preacher Dodds’s eyes, but he’s still got that thoughtful look. It’s an honest question.

“I, uh… Does it matter?”

“Did you use any of the holy objects in the church?”

Reed blinks. He tries to think back on it, but the memories are fresh and smell of viscera. “Slammed his head into the… the wall. I think. And… and a pew.”

“Not the altar?”

“I don’t think so.” God he fucking hopes not.

“The font?”

“No.” Definitely not. He knows that.

Preacher Dodds nods. “I interrupted. Continue.”

“I, uh…”

“You slammed his head into a pew until he died.”

Reed’s eyes cut to the ground. His shoulders collar up by his ears, and he forces them lower.

“I guess I was in a wild state. I just… ran. Left the place like that. Didn’t try to clean it up or anything.”

“Where did you run to?”

Reed pauses.

“Brother Reed, I can’t help you if you won’t tell me. Remember that these private confessions are safe and completely confidential, even from the police.”

He figures he’s already in up to his holsters in it.

“Home.”

But he won’t rat out Hiram. Guy’s done enough for Reed. He doesn’t deserve to get his reputation with these people dragged through the dirt. Reed’s especially not gonna be the one who starts the rumors. Hiram’s tried to do so much for him without complaint and without Reed even needing to ask him.

Preacher Dodds doesn’t say anything for a few blinks. Reed wonders if he would nod if Reed were to look up.

“Is that the end?” Preacher Dodds asks.

Reed swallows. “Yes.”

Preacher Dodds steps in close enough for Reed to see his robes, even looking at the ground as he is. Preacher Dodds lays a comforting hand on his knee.

“Brother Reed,” he starts, and the name holds a power to it that Reed’s never heard before. Like it’s something precious and important and worth protecting. “You haven’t been here very long, but I’ve been mired in preparations for today’s festivities, so please remind me: what lessons were you able to attend here with us at the Church of His Word.”

Reed swallows. “Uh, the one about… about honoring God through your work—”

“2 Ecclestians! Yes, yes I remember that one. A couple weeks back, if I recall. Continue.”

“The one about Him protecting those who dedicate themselves to Him.”

“Ah, yes, Jonah’s time in the whale. A classic.” Preacher Dodds must tilt his head: his robes shift with the motion. “That was my latest sermon. Has it really been so short a time you’ve been with us?”

“Feels a lot longer.”

“Brother Reed, look at me.”

Reed takes a deep breath in through his nose and lets it out of his mouth. He tilts his chin up.

There is no judgement in Preacher Dodds’s eyes. There is none of the scorn or disgust or anger that Reed deserves. There is no trace of the distaste or hatred or even the fear. Instead, all there is, deep in the irises, is a permeating forgiveness. The one a mother might feel for a child close to tears for having screamed insults at her. The one a parent feels for a dog scared at having had an accident on the rug. Something fond and understanding. Something that rips the breath from Reed’s lungs.

“You are scared,” Preacher Dodds says. The hand not on Reed’s knee comes up to his cheek and rests there. Preacher Dodds’s fingertips are cold, but his palms are warmer. “You feel like you have done something heinous, completely irreconcilable. Something to be cast from the kingdom of His love and into the depths of Hell. You feel like you are undeserving of something so all-encompassing. That maybe He has somehow missed this part of your life, that His eyes were distracted from these actions of yours, and that as soon as He realizes that you have played Cain to another child of His’s Abel, that you, too, will be cursed with the indelible hatred of your creator. Is this right?”

Reed would agree to anything if only to keep such a kind look aimed for him right now.

“But this is simply not true, Brother Reed. You did work in His name.” Preacher Dodds squeezes Reed’s knee. “Which means that it was work in His honor. There is always sin in this life, it is something unavoidable in the nature of living in these complicated times as we are, but it is the sacrifice of His son that gave us forgiveness from these sins. We need only ask for it. And you are, Brother Reed. You are.”

Preacher Dodds has the same smile as Hiram does: one that seems to understand and share the very joys of life from the root of existence.

“Do you know why we do what we do here at this church? Have services led by our members and let the mass holler during the parables?”

Reed shakes his head.

“It’s because in The Church of His Name, they’d have you believe that the only way through to God is through people with ulterior motives. People with dishes to give all your money to; people who take joy out of having the devotion of a crowd. But you already have God’s love, Reed. Have had it all along. Jesus died for you because He loves you, so you could be with Him. It’s through our personal experiences that we get closer to Him and show Him we love Him too. By denying those as valid, the church does the greatest disservice of all: leads us to believe that He is a goal rather than the everyday norm.”

Reed blinks. He’s never noticed how… larger than life Preacher Dodds gets when he speaks. He’s always been on a stage, every time Reed heard him talk. Now, they’re supposedly on even ground, but Reed feels like a child again, looking up at the stained glass scenes that no longer sit in the churchhouse’s windows with an awe rivaled only by his faith. Made real by the first encounter. Brought to life, to literal light, by the shining of the sun behind it.

Reed takes his hand gingerly, the way Eve must have taken her first fruit from the Garden of Eden. Preacher Dodds helps him to stand.

There is something inherently heaven-sent about Preacher Dodds. Reed can see that now.

He owes Hiram more than he could ever begin to repay, for bringing these people into his life. He—

“What?” Reed asks.

Preacher Dodds smiles, fond, again. “Your article. Your newspaper article. Did you bring it?”

“Um…” he checks his pockets. “Uh, yeah. Yeah I did.”

Preacher Dodds claps him on the shoulders with both hands. “Wonderful, son. By the end of the day, I can share another secret: what it is that makes His Word so powerful.” He winks. “I’m very excited about it.”

He steps away, and Reed feels the space where he was like a vacuum.

“Are you hungry?” Preacher Dodds asks, conversationally.

Reed steps from the stage on shaking knees. He feels like he could kneel and kiss Preacher Dodds’s feet for the blessing he’s been given.

“I could eat,” he says.

Preacher Dodds nods decidedly and pivots in place, striding from the tent.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you talk this much in my life,” Reed says, trying for good natured.

Preacher Dodds pauses.

Reed winces at his own callousness. There was no need to go shouting out something like that, just because he thought it.

When Preacher Dodds turns, though, his smile is serene and sets Reed’s heart back from thundering.

“Sherman is rather a chattermouth,” he says. “It makes it difficult to concentrate and find a good spot to put in edgewise. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Reed’s brows furrow. “I… suppose. He’s a personable guy.”

Preacher Dodds’s smile cracks from ear to ear.

“That’s a good way to put it,” he says, a joke in his tone. “You’re absolutely right. We in charge of The Church of His Word try our hardest to be very personable.” He chuckles to himself, turning back to start making his way out of the tent again. “He wasn’t always like that, you know.”

Reed hotfoots it to catch up. “Oh yeah?”

“He used to be very shy, even.”

“No shit. You’d never tell it now.”

Preacher Dodds keeps his eyes straight ahead as he talks, but they cut to Reed to smile in a shared joke between them. “I suppose not.”

“What changed?”

Preacher Dodds shares another of those inside-joke-smiles. “He reconnected with God.”

The excitement between everyone tastes like corn. Only Sister Belle can seem to stand still, with Brother Jacob pacing circles and even Hiram curling and uncurling his fists.

Brother Sherman, as big a figure as ever as he walks beside the procession of them, carrying the tent they have all prayed and confessed and cried and screamed under, gestures to the group. His shadow from the sinking sun behind him reaches out and caresses a few of their ankles.

“What I see before me,” he bellows, “is eleven souls bound by our faith!”

Praise the name!

“Together in our spirit!”

Amen!

Reed’s breathing is too ragged to scream. He does anyway. Amen!

“We leave this tent separated by material goods, by sin! But on our return, we’ll be eleven souls united! In our goals! In our souls! In our purpose!”

The walk is long. They fill the space with their singing, hymns and praises the whole trip for the Lord to watch over them as they go.

The cornfield’s been harvested in a hallway just for them. They follow the trodden path until they reach a large circle, harvested perfectly for them. The group help set up the tent for mass, spurred on by their own singing, the comradery of each other, and the screaming praises of Sherman.

When the tent’s set up, only Preacher Dodds goes inside. Sherman stands at the entrance and tells the rest they’ll be called when it’s their turn. For now, though, it’s time for their sermons.

Each sermon is delivered individually.

Hiram volunteers to go first.

“Seeya on the other side, brothers and sisters!” he cheers, waving, as he walks through the tent backwards.

Isla scoffs good-naturedly. “I call dibs next!” The other eight of them laugh.

It takes an hour for Brother Sherman to step out again.

“Isla?” he calls. “I believe you had dibs?”

Isla smiles and starts walking forward. “Hell yeah, I do!”

The rest of them laugh.

“Wonder why Hiram didn’t come back out,” Reed mutters.

Brother Jacob snorts.

“Maybe,” Sister Kelly starts, voice wavering with nervous anticipation, “uh… maybe they want to keep the people who’ve already gotten their sermon separate so they don’t spoil it for us.”

Reed hums. The seven of them agree that that makes sense.

Sherman steps out again.

“Kelly?” he calls.

She jumps.

Reed can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy, even as the six that’re left congratulate her.

Brother Bill goes next. Reed’s nerves and worries creep up on him. He forgets to say bye with the other five, and Brother Graham side-eyes him for it.

Sherman calls in Reed next.

As soon as he’s in the tent, he finds himself babbling.

“Preacher Dodds,” he starts, “I know. I know you said that He loves me, and that He forgives me. And I believe you, but… I just— just keep wondering,” Reed yanks his hat off and runs a hand through his hair, “do I deserve it? Should it get to be that easy? After everything?”

“Easy?” Preacher Dodds asks. He pulls what looks like tattooing equipment out of a bag. “Who said this part was going to be easy?”

“So,” Sherman starts, speaking over the noises of Father Dodds setting up. “What article did you pick, Brother?”

Reed looks down at the newspaper in his hand. It’s something he’s kept in a chest at the end of his bed… his whole life? He’s pretty sure his whole life. If there was a time before the article, he can’t remember it. He’s heard from the therapist the station made him hire for a little that sometimes bad shit gets permanently taken from your mind. Figures, he’d steal that from Reed too. Wasn’t enough to…

Reed swallows. “Day my dad got arrested.”

Sherman tilts his head. Reed has it in his head, suddenly, that this means something to him. That maybe Sherman understands. He looks over Reed’s shoulder, and Reed gets the impression that Brother Dodds and him are making eye contact.

“Oh?” he prompts.

“That’s it,” he says.

“Brother Reed.” Sherman shifts forward and rests a hand on Reed’s knee. He’s maybe the second nicest man Reed’s ever met, after Hiram. What did Reed do to deserve these people in his life? He’s a killer and a crook, if he’s being nice to himself. Let alone what he could say if he were being mean.

Reed closes his eyes and swallows.

“You have to share for this to be a fully spiritual experience,” Sherman says. “I understand if it’s hard. Take as long as you need.”

Reed swallows again, throat locking up a little on it. He nods.

Father Dodds’s equipment clunks a bit. He’s doing stuff with it, Reed guesses.

“Is the tattooing supposed to start soon?” he asks.

Sherman gives him a sorry look. “You have to talk first, Reed. You can’t get around this.”

Reed closes his eyes again.

“Unless…” Sherman takes his hand away from Reed’s knee. It’s cold where it used to be. In the shape of a handprint through the knit of Reed’s jeans, “you’re not serious about—”

“No!” Reed shouts, standing suddenly.

He covers his mouth.

Sherman smiles apologetically at him. “Sorry to accuse.” He gestures to the seat. “We’d just… hate to have you doing something for God when you aren’t ready for that kind of commitment yet.”

Reed nods. He grabs his elbows. He’s not ready to sit down.

“I… I am. I’m ready, just…” he takes a deep breath in through his nose. “I don’t actually remember what my daddy did.”

Sherman tilts his head.

“If you read the—” he gestures to the article.

“It needs to come from you,” Sherman speaks quietly, like he’s talking to an animal who’s about to run. “It’s about being willing to share. That’s what’s spiritual. I can’t make you share with God, you have to open yourself up to Him.”

Reed rubs the back of his neck. “Okay. Okay, I get that. Makes sense. Just—” He rubs his hand down his face. “Fuck.”

“Take your time,” Sherman repeats.

“According to the…” Reed sits down. “I was supposed to have a mom, growing up, but daddy stole me. Rode away with me too early for me to remember, I guess. Grew up mostly just with him, and he was… strict. A real man’s man, you know. Took care of business. Article says I had to go to the hospital a few times ‘cause of him, I guess.”

Reed remembers flashes, sometimes. Cleaning supplies. The feeling of brute force. You’d expect to be able to describe a punch beyond just “the feeling of brute force,” but there’s something about pain that surpasses the ability to describe. And a punch isn’t like a cut or a tear or a rip or a scratch. It’s not like stubbing your toe or pulling hair or even the pierce of a gunshot wound. It’s a compression. It’s a bruise. It’s not about the moment, the way other injuries are, it’s about the aftermath. You don’t feel the punch, but the falling, the swell of blood, the discoloration. Sometimes, when you fall on a broken bottle or a splintered chair, you feel the stab of a wood chip or the slice of glass shards. So, sometimes, Reed remembers the vice of a chokehold and the crushing of a weight on his chest. But he doesn’t remember the things the paper says he went to the hospital for. It’s usually the smells he remembers. The… the cleaning supplies, obviously, but the blood. The steel smoke of gunpowder. Reed’s always liked guns. His dad was afraid of them, he knows that. He got a bb gun with his own sticky fingers and practiced in the backyard while his dad was at… somewhere. Reed’s not sure where. He wasn’t allowed far away from his house, much, when his dad was off work, and he was too busy being Outside to really mind where his daddy was.

The cleaning supplies though… why does that… why is that so prominent?

“The article says my mama found us,” Reed says. He twines his thumbs. “And he found my gun.”

Sherman’s eyes are wells of pity. The tent is silent. The tattoo equipment must be ready.

“Sheriff at the time—man by the name of Hank—” Reed always thought Hank was the perfect name for a Sheriff. Strong. No-nonsense. Nothing to question or find a deeper meaning in. Just Hank. If he has a kid someday, he’s gonna name it Hank. He’s known that forever. “Said it’s the easiest case he’s ever had to solve. Cut and dry. But…”

Reed swallows.

“But the police department ain’t in charge of cleaning up the crime scene. And I was the only one who lived in the house anymore. Hank’s the only one who was willing to stay behind and help clean it up.”

“What’s your name, son?” Hank had asked.

“Reed.”

“Reed.” Hank offered him a smile. “That’s a good name. Call me Hank.” He points to the corner where daddy told Reed to never go. “Fetch me the bleach, will you, Reed? We gotta get this shit out of the floor.” He winces. “Don’t say ‘shit’, son. Promise?”

“Yessir.”

“I wasn’t named Reed Clements at the time, y’know,” Reed says.

“What was the Sheriff’s last name?” he asks.

Reed swallows. “You really have to ask?”

“It’s about the sharing, Reed.”

He just can’t get the knot out of his throat. He swallows again. “Sheriff Clements.”

Sherman nods. “Go on.”

“I didn’t have no other family. Least not that anyone could find. Not near enough. So, uh… they didn’t really know what to do with me.”

“What do you mean the—”

“I mean, kid’s alone.”

“He can stay with his daddy in the cell over.”

Laughter. Reed hates these men, he decides.

“Knock it off!”

There’s Hank. Yelling. Keeping them in check.

“Hank took me in. He and his wife, they… they couldn’t have children, see. They’d never been able to. Hank…”

“Reed,” Hank says, “I want you to remember this.”

“What is it?” Reed’s not sure he’ll ever call Hank anything other than ‘Hank’. It’s so perfect for him, Reed thinks. It’s the name of safety.

“God may work in mysterious ways,” he says, tucking Reed in. It’s nice, being tucked in. Makes the blankets feel like a hug. Which is a different kind of vice, of brute force. He’ll have to think more on that. Make a better comparison. But not right now. He’s sleepy right now. “But He has a plan.”

“Hank’s the one who started taking me to church, y’know.” Or, his wife did, at least. Hank always pretended like she was dragging them somewhere awful, but they’d be smiling while he did it. Like… like it was their little game.

They loved each other a lot, Hank and Henriette. Reed thinks that’d be nice, sometimes, but he’s not sure it’s for him anymore.

He’s not going to say that. Not right now.

“At the old churchhouse?” Sherman asks.

Reed actually forgot he was there. For a second, Reed had been talking to God Himself. Huh.

There really is something special about Father Dodds’s techniques. He’ll have to tell him, when this is all over. Or… maybe he won’t tell him. Reed will tell Hiram, and Hiram, who gets Reed better than even Hank did, will definitely tell Dodds himself. When Reed isn’t around to be embarrassed about it, probably.

Reed is struck, suddenly, with that same guilt. Except he’s not sure why.

“Hey,” Sherman says. His voice is angelic. “I asked you a question.”

“Yes,” Reed says.

Sherman’s eyes cut into Reed’s. He looks into Reed’s very soul.

After what feels like the whole of Amazing Grace, Sherman finally offers Reed a proud smile.

“You’re ready.” Sherman nods at Father Dodds behind Reed’s head.

Reed sits up straight. “What’ll this look like?” he asks. Sherman passes the newspaper article back to Father Dodds. He stands up, and now that Reed can see behind him, he spots the razor and other shaving equipment.

“What’d you bring?” Sherman asks.

Reed’s brows furrow. “The article? You’re tattooing the article?”

“Not quite.”

The buzz of the razor fills the tent. It reminds him of the humming during services: all-encompassing and felt through your bones. Reed lifts his hat off his head and rests it in his lap, tilting his head forward.

“Not quite,” Sherman says again. “Remember when I said it’s about sharing?”

The empty metallic noise of the razor gains some meat to it as Reed’s hair clumps through the blades. He watches the strands of it fall to the floor.

“Yes, sir,” Reed says.

“Well, what does the scripture tell us? In 2 Thessalonians verse 3, line 10?”

“God helps those who help themselves?”

“Well, you’ve given us yourself. Sharing goes both ways, Brother Reed. It’s time for us to share ourselves back with you.”

The air is cool on his scalp.

“So what are you tattooing?”

The last of his hair falls away before he knows it. The machine behind Reed whirrs to life.

Sherman’s face is stern and sober. “Brother Reed, it’s time for you to officially join the Church of His Word. Are you ready to become one of us?”

Reed swallows. Father Dodds’s hand closes around Reed’s chin to steady him. The warmth from his other hand, and the anticipation of the needle in it, thrums through Reed’s nerves.

“Reed.” His voice is the paragon of authority. He rests his hand on Reed’s hat, as though to take it. “Are you ready, my child?”

Reed allows him to take his hat numbly. The relief has turned his nerves into cotton.

“Yes, Father.”

Sherman’s smiles. “We’re tattooing the article into your hair, to represent the you of the past. But in the center, we’ll be placing the face of God.”

Pain—searing, roaring, piercing, burning pain—and Reed screams his throat raw.

The echoes of the needle tears through his skull and down his neck in tremors. His vision goes double.

Something is horribly right.

“Shh,” Sherman soothes, drawing the noise out. He strokes Reed’s cheek. While he’s moving, George stops. Dodds stops. George Dodds stops. “It’ll all be over soon.”

George Dodds.

That’s a good name, he thinks.

A great name.

Best name he’s ever heard.

By the time he leaves the tent, it’s his name. And it’s perfect.

The merging of a mind into George Dodds’s Stand’s cache is a delicate process. One which must not be rushed. In order for a mind to be ready to accept another, a few conditions must be met. It must be malleable; it must be inviting. More than anything, it must be guilty.

The man who calls himself either “George Dodds” or “Sherman Rogers”, depending on occasion, is well-acquainted with the workings of the guilty. Once one gets past the lashing out, extending an invitation of forgiveness (or, for the particularly martyrous, of fault) turns the soul into a vacuum. It is through this vacuum that George Dodds earns their trust.

It is through this vacuum that George Dodds became:

Sherman Rogers, George’s shy brother, who left his sickly wife alone to go visit the brother he’d never really liked in the first place, but who’d written a letter asking to meet up and try anew again.

Kelly Rogers, who sent her husband, alone, to meet with his estranged and creepy Preacher brother and who has suspected for a full year that something wasn’t right with him, but always knew that she could have stopped it, if she’d just convinced him to hold back with her.

Hiram Fairbairn, who is in love with someone who he knows could never love him back, and finds himself too much of a coward to risk staying near him for the virtue of honesty.

Isla Muir, who skipped town on the day of her wife’s funeral and fled west to start with a new name and her wife’s old clothes, praying as loud as she can every day for her wife to understand why she had to do it.

Belle Giovanni, an alcoholic who destroyed her relationship with her son by choosing him over the bottle and calling the police on his moonshine brewing.

Henry Graham, the local blacksmith, who’ll give weapons to anyone who can pay, no questions asked.

Wilbur Pratt, who knowingly sabotaged his rivals’ plots so he could buy their land.

Jacob Holmes, who helped even though he knew it was wrong.

Ian McRiley, who used his forgettable nature to skip multiple towns after knocking the women there up.

It is through this vacuum that George Dodds becomes Reed Clements.

It’s front page news in the morning’s paper. They call it the Paxton’s Vale Massacre.

Eyewitnesses describe a group of men—supposedly brothers given their similar appearances—who rode into the Church of His Name’s annual harvest time picnic and slaughtered all in attendance. In a quote by Reverend Maverick, one of only two survivors of the massacre, thanks in part to a loaded revolver found on the church’s floor: Never before has Paxton’s Vale seen such violence. I can only hope that these men receive their justice from God for plotting against their fellow man. Reverend Maverick is currently planning on holding a mourning prayer in the Church tomorrow, despite his injuries.

“Keep on the lookout,” the paper warns. “The police still believe the eleven men to be armed and dangerous.”