Excerpt

Nobody seemed surprised that Oscar Kelty had killed his wife Saturday, had gone to her father’s house and found nobody there but Clara and her holding their youngest in her arms and he not really taking aim, just shooting her as she stood there looking at him. They didn’t seem surprised at all, though they stood about the church door as if they were a swarm of bees drifting in and out of a hive for all of their lack of surprise, talking up a storm as if those bees were talking too as they buzzed about the opening to the hive.

No. Nobody seemed surprised and Johnny Weaver thought that strange because, though he had heard of shootings and hangings that had happened sometime in the past, it wasn’t something that was about to happen in the here and now, but Oscar had done it and he was sitting in the jail across the street from the courthouse now, or maybe he was lying for he had botched an attempt to kill himself too, and was nearly dead from loss of blood but was reviving slowly though some said it would have been a saving of taxpayer’s time and money if they had just left him there to die at Alexander’s house where he had dragged himself after failing to do the deed that would have saved so much time and money. Just where he had shot himself nobody seemed to know but it didn’t seem to matter to anybody anyway because Oscar was there in the jail recovering from his wounds, wherever they were, and waiting for a trial and a hanging which were sure to come if someone didn’t get there first and lynch him which was what some of the men beside the church door said should be done, even if they were good law-abiding citizens and Christians to boot.

Inside the church, after the opening prayer in which the preacher asked God to forgive Oscar Kelty for what he had done and to care for his now most certainly orphaned children though Oscar was still alive, he wouldn’t be for very long and would never see his sons again, even if the people of Dallas and Polk County didn’t get around to trying him right away because the judge of the Circuit Court wasn’t due in Dallas for two, maybe three months yet. Regardless, Oscar was as good as dead and his children needed his care and needed him to watch over them as they grew up without mother or father, and maybe God could even take time to heal the powder burn on Earl’s face where he had been blasted as the gun lay close to his head where he lay in his mother’s arms as Oscar Kelty shot her without any never-you-mind at all. All in all it was quite a prayer, thought Johnny, though he didn’t see what it had to do with the people sitting waiting for it to end and get on with the rest of the service, especially the singing which promised to be strong and lusty, what with the light of righteousness shining in the eyes of all the men listening to the prayer go on and on even though it didn’t take that much praying to get things in order.

When the first hymn was finished, the preacher dismissed the worship leader who would normally have read the scripture and did that himself, citing a passage that said something about “a time to live and a time to die.” From there he went into a tirade about the viciousness of liquor and what it could do to a man, which seemed to Johnny not to have anything at all to do with what was going to happen to Oscar Kelty. But everybody sat and listened as if it did, and some men even squirmed a bit now and again as a particularly fiery epithet was delivered about the harms of drink. Johnny looked about and saw faces that he had seen coming out of the saloon from time to time and wondered if those good church-loving men had been drinking while they were in the saloon, for he had heard Ma and Pa talking about just that and how some thought maybe they should be run out of the church if they were frequenting the saloon and giving in to the evils of drink, but Ma and Pa seemed to be of the mind that if someone wanted to go to church, it was for good reason and they shouldn’t be denied that opportunity, which seemed to Johnny to be just about right because he would have liked to have had George Henry in church with him, but it hadn’t happened that way, not that the Henrys hadn’t applied for membership but when the election vote was tallied there were only two votes to allow them to join and everybody knew where those votes came from even if it was a secret ballot written on paper and folded so tight it took some considerable effort to open some of them, so Johnny wasn’t unaware of what the preacher was saying, just didn’t see what it had to do with Oscar Kelty because the preacher didn’t use his name once during the sermon, which he wound up with dispatch with a look in his eye that seemed to say that he was as eager to get on with the talking about what had happened the day before as much as anyone else in he sanctuary. The final hymn was shortened and the benediction short too, though the preacher was given to long benedictions in which he exhorted his parishioners to go forth and do all kinds of good which he enumerated in detail, and to avoid the pitfalls of evil which he listed in equal number before letting the people drift away.