Haints by Clint McCown

Author:Clint McCown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-89823-275-2
Publisher: New Rivers Press
Published: 2012-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Moody Smith

Moody Smith couldn’t rouse himself enough to answer the pounding on his door. His head was too clogged with dreams. He wasn’t fully drunk, not like he had been a few hours earlier, but his will was gone, and the delirium that had plagued him through the night would release him only halfway. Dead men on horses still pursued him, and the hoofbeats were closing in.

He knew how close he was to waking. His mind tottered between nightmare and the light of day, ugly propositions both, and though he might have chosen to sleep forever, even under the dark weight of the dream, the pounding was too relentless, too insistent. It broke through the stupor he had spent his final paycheck on and dragged him, thrashing and gasping, up through the chaos to the bright surface of the world, back into the squalor of his moldering front room.

He tried to speak, but his throat was raw from vomit, and he fell into a deep coughing fit that burned to the bottom of his lungs.

“No God today,” he called out at last, his voice low and raspy.

He knew who was at the door. His brother-in-law, Tom Parsons. Tom always came by on Sunday mornings to wake him up for church. Not that Tom was overly religious himself, but he’d made a few promises to Kate before she died, and one of them was to try every week to get her brother, Moody, to attend services. Tom had taken things one step further, convincing the board of elders at First Baptist to hire Moody as their sexton. That way he had to show up every Sunday morning to ring the bell.

He would never admit it to Tom, but working as the church sexton was the best job he’d had in the eight years since he left the merchant marines. Ringing the bell was something he enjoyed doing, though not in some weird way, like the hunchback of Notre Dame. He just liked the sound of the bell, so strong and clear, traveling out across the rooftops of the town. He liked knowing that he was giving a signal people were listening for.

Besides ringing the bell, all he had to do was clean the sanctuary and dig graves. The cleaning was easy because people were always on their best behavior at church. He rarely had to do more than pick up the litter after services—the discarded bulletins and unused collection envelopes the children doodled on during the sermon. He would straighten up the hymnals in the backs of the pews, sweep the sidewalk out front, and lock the doors at night. Sometimes he had to clean up after socials and potluck dinners, but he didn’t mind that because he always got a free meal out of it without having to bring a covered dish of his own.

Digging graves was the worst part of the job, but even that didn’t bother him much as long as the weather was good—and as long as he didn’t know the occupant.

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