Preacher sat in a stuffed chair in the dark, staring at the television set. The screen was filled with static, the volume turned up full blast on white noise. But the images on the screen inside Preacher’s head had nothing to do with the television set in his room. Inside Preacher’s head, the year was 1954. A little boy sat in the corner of a boxcar parked permanently on a siding in the middle of the Texas-Oklahoma Panhandle. It was winter, and the wind was gray with grit and dust, and it chapped the cheeks and lips and dried out the hands and caused the skin to split around the thumbnails. A blanket draped over a rope divided the boxcar in half. On the other side of the blanket, Edna Collins was going at it with a dark-skinned gandy dancer while two more waited outside, their hands stuffed in their canvas coat pockets, their slouch hats pulled low over their ears as protection against the wind.
Preacher’s motel windows were hung with red curtains, and the lamps in the parking lot seemed to etch them with fire. He heard footsteps on the steel stairway, then a shadow crossed his window and someone tapped tentatively on the jalousie.
“What do you want?” Preacher said, his eyes still fixed on the television screen.
“My name is Mona Drexel, Preacher. We met once,” a voice replied.
“I don’t remember the name.”
“Liam is like a client of mine.”
He turned his head slowly and looked at her shadow on the frosted glass. “Liam who?”
“Eriksson.”
“Come in,” he said.
He smelled the cigarette odor on her clothes as soon as she entered the room. Against the outside light, her hair possessed the frizzy outline and color of cotton candy. The foundation on her face made Preacher think of an unfinished clay sculpture, the lines collapsing under the jaw, the mouth a bit crooked, the eye shadow and rouge both sad and embarrassing to look at.
“Can I sit down?” she said.
“You’re in, aren’t you?”
“I heard that maybe people are looking for Liam because of this government check he took into one of these car-title loan places. I didn’t want to have my name mixed up in this, because I’m not really involved or a close friend of his. See, we had a few drinks, and he had this check, and he wanted to party some more, so I went along with him, but it kind of hit the fan for some reason, and Liam said we ought to get out of there, and he thought you were gonna be pissed off, but that was all over my head and not really my business. I just wanted to clear this up and make sure nobody has a misunderstanding. Since we’d already met, I didn’t think you’d mind me coming by to answer any questions you might have.”
“Why should I have questions for you?”
“A couple of people told me this is what I should do. I didn’t mean to bother you during your program.”
Then she looked at the empty screen. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, out of breath and holding her hands in her lap, unsure of what she should say next. She placed one foot on the top of the other as a little girl might, chewing her lip.
“I don’t like touching the bedspreads in motels,” she said, half smiling. “There’s every kind of DNA in the world imaginable on them, not that I mean this place is any worse than any other, it’s just the way all motels are, with unclean people using everything and not caring that other people are gonna use it later.”
The side of Preacher’s face was immobile, the eye that she could see like a marble pushed into tallow. “Mona Drexel is my stage name,” she said. “My real name is Margaret, but I started using Mona when I was onstage in Dallas. Believe it or not, it was a club Jack Ruby once owned, but you can call me whatever you want.”
“Where’s Liam now?”
“That’s why I’m here. I don’t know. Maybe I can find out. I just don’t want to hurt anybody or have anybody think I’m working against them. See, I’m for people, I’m not against anybody. There’s a big difference. I just want everybody to know that.”
“I can see that,” he said.
“Can you turn down the volume on the television?” she said.
“Do you know what I do for a living?”
“No.”
“Who told you I was staying at this motel?”
“Liam said you use it sometimes when you’re in town. That noise is really loud.”
“That’s what Liam told you, did he?”
“Yes,” she said. “I mean, yes, sir, he just mentioned it in passing.”
“Do you know where Liam got the government check?”
“No, he didn’t tell me. I don’t talk with clients about their personal business.”
“That’s a good way to be.”
“It is, isn’t it?” she said, crossing her leg on her knee, her mouth jerking as though she wanted to smile. She watched Preacher’s face in the white glow of the television screen. His eyes never blinked; not one muscle in his face moved. Her own expression went dead.
“I have clients that become friends,” she said. “After they’re friends, they’re not clients again. Then I have friends that are always friends. They never become clients. They’re friends from the first time I meet them, know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t,” he replied.
“I can be a friend to somebody. I have to make a living, but I believe in having friends and helping them out.” She lowered her eyes. “I mean, we could be friends if you want.”
“You remind me of someone,” he said, looking at her directly for the first time.
“Who?” she asked, the word turning to a rusty clot in her throat.
He stared at her in a way no one had ever stared at her in her life. She felt the blood drain from her head and heart into her stomach.
“Somebody who never should have been allowed around small children,” he said. “Do you have children?”
“I did. A little boy. But he died.”
“It’s better that some people don’t live. They should be taken before their souls are forfeit. That means some of us have to help them in ways they don’t like, in ways that seem truly awful at the time.” Preacher reached out into the darkness and pulled a straight chair closer to him. On it were his wallet, a small automatic, an extra magazine, and a barber’s razor.
“Sir, what are you planning to do?” she said.
“You understood what I said.” He smiled. His statement was not a question but a compliment.
“Liam wanted to party. He had the check. I went with him.” Her breath was tangling in her chest, the room starting to go out of focus. “I have a mother in Amarillo. My son is buried in the Baptist cemetery there. I was gonna call her today. She’s hard of hearing, but if I shout, she knows it’s me. She’s seventy-nine and cain’t see real good, either. We still talk to each other. She doesn’t know what I do for a living.”
Preacher was holding something in his hand, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at it. She went on, “If you let me walk out the door, you’ll never see me again. I’ll never tell anyone what we talked about. I’ll never see Liam again, either.”
“I know you won’t,” he said in an almost kindly fashion.
“Please, sir, don’t.”
“Come closer.”
“I don’t want to.”
“You need to, Mona. We don’t choose the moment of our births or the hour of our deaths. There are few junctures in life when we actually make decisions that mean anything. The real challenge is in accepting our fate.”
“Please,” she said. “Please, please, please.”
“Get on your knees if you want. It’s all right. But don’t beg. No matter what else you do in this world, don’t beg.”
“Not in the face, sir. Please.”
She was on her knees, her eyes welling with tears. She felt his hand grasp hers and lift her arm into the air, turning up the paleness of her wrist and the green veins in it. The static-filled storm on the television screen seemed to invade her head and blind her eyes and pierce her eardrums. Her fingernails bit into her palm. She had heard stories of people who did it in a warm bathtub and supposedly felt no pain and just went to sleep as the water turned red around them. She wondered if it would be like that. Then she felt his thumb dig into her palm and peel back her fingers.