The chicks didn’t possess a whole lot of upper-body strength. It took them nearly an hour just to drag him the fifteen feet to the door. Whoever said dead weight was a lot heavier than living weight wasn’t kidding.
Cordelia’s phone jingled, startling her into dropping the pastor’s arm. Belinda Sue immediately lost her hold, and his head hit the thick carpet with a soft thud. Thankfully, nothing cracked.
Distracted and flustered, Cordelia answered her phone without thinking of just sending it to voicemail. “Hello?”
“Sweetheart.” Her momma’s shrill voice pierced her eardrum. “It’s been an age.”
“It’s been a day,” Cordelia said.
Arline dropped the pastor’s ankle and glared at Cordelia like she was holding up the show, but it wasn’t like they were in a hurry. The pastor was already dead. He wasn’t going anywhere they didn’t take him.
“I was about to drift off to sleep when I bolted upright out of the blue with the feeling something terrible had happened,” her momma said. “Is everything okay there?”
She glanced at the pastor’s unhinged jaw poking out from under the pillowcase. “It’s as fine as it can be. Just settling in.”
“Then why do you sound so out of breath at half past ten?” Her momma didn’t miss a trick. One of the unfortunate side effects of her sobriety.
“I’m... um...” She glanced around. What was she supposed to say? “Moving a stack of Bibles.” She winced. It wasn’t the worst thing she could’ve said. Probably.
“What are you moving Bibles for?” Cordelia could’ve swornshe heard her momma narrowing her eyes. “Did you end up finding religion down there?”
“It’s more like it found me.” She pressed a hand into her back, already feeling the muscles knotting together. “Listen, I’ve got to go. It’s real late and I’m finishing some important work here. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Wait, I just—”
Cordelia hung up before her momma could finish her sentence. Her phone jingled again, but this time she sent it to voicemail. There would be hell to pay for that later, but she was already up to her neck in it, so what was a little more fire and brimstone?
“Finally,” Belinda Sue said. “Can we get on with moving this body now?”
Cordelia brought her car around. It took considerably more effort to lift the pastor’s body into the trunk. They ended up doing it in sections. Left side, then right. The upper half of his body, followed by the lower half.
Belinda Sue tilted her head. “We can’t drive into town with his feet sticking out like that. We’re gonna have to fold him up some.”
“Ew.” Daisy flapped her hands. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”
Arline spit and cracked her knuckles. Shoving Belinda Sue out of her way, she bent the pastor’s knees and shoved them up against his chest. “There. Done.”
Belinda Sue patted Arline’s back. “I do believe this is the most I’ve heard you speak in a single night in near thirty years.”
Arline grunted in response.
Cordelia opened her driver’s-side door. “Where should we take him?”
“We can’t drop him off at home,” Daisy said. “Stella won’t need that kind of trouble. She’s about to have enough on her plate.”
“We’ll take him to the church,” Belinda Sue said, her lips pressed into a firm line.
A sick feeling churned Cordelia’s gut. She didn’t know what the afterlife held, but planting the pastor in the church probably wasn’t scoring her any points in the game of eternity. “Is it appropriate to bring a dead body there?”
“Of course it is,” Belinda Sue said. “Where do you think they hold funerals?”
Cordelia found she couldn’t argue with that logic.
Belinda Sue used to skin jackrabbits, so she wasn’t as squeamish as the rest of them. She fished the pastor’s keys out of his pocket and started up his car without issue. The old Cadillac roared to life, and a small smile touched Belinda Sue’s stern face as she ran her hand over the buttery leather seat. Arline jumped into the pastor’s car with her and the two of them donned sunglasses like they’d just landed starring roles in a Miami crime drama.
Daisy opted to ride with Cordelia and remained mostly quiet, a worrying change for her, as they drove into town. They had a good ten-mile stretch of dirt road, and the only light came from the vast field of stars overhead. Halfway to the gas station that marked the outskirts of Sarsaparilla Falls, Cordelia could’ve sworn she saw the pinprick of headlights in the distance, but it was just a blink, then it was gone. Must’ve been a trick of the open sky.
It was right after midnight when dirt turned to tar, but it might as well have been three in the morning. Shadows stretched across the sidewalks and the ding of a tin can rolling down the street sounded loud as bullets against the otherwise quiet night. They passed a bar with five cars and a motorcycle out front. The neon sign for the Harbor Bar still had the same letters burned out as when she was a kid. The locals probably still called it the Orb.
