All The Bells on Earth by James P. Blaylock Read Free Book Online Page B

in a request and God had seen fit to grant it.
    “Henry and Jinx on the horizon, then?” Bentley asked, shaking Walt’s hand.
    Walt nodded. The Reverend Bentley was an old friend of Henry’s; they went way back—lodge brothers of some sort. Walt hardly knew Bentley, though, and he was slightly surprised that the man recognized him so easily, looking half drowned and hiding behind the umbrella. “They’re due any moment, actually. They were in Needles last night, and were thinking about taking a detour through apple country, but I expect them any time.”
    “Good,” the minister said, looking around. “That’s good. I’m going to drag that old sinner in front of the congregation and flush out his soul with a firehose.”
    “It’s high time,” Walt said. “What brings you out on a day like this?”
    “Trouble in paradise,” Bentley said. “How’s
your
soul, by the way? You look like a worried man, like maybe you swallowed some kind of sin.”
    The question took Walt by surprise. The minister could be a hell of an irritating old interloper when he was on a mission in the neighborhood. He was something of a local joke, in fact, and his church had a congregation you could put into the back of a pickup truck and still have room for the dog. He did good works, though, taking food around to shut-ins and the like. Lord knows how he continued to fund his projects. He had a sort of meals-on-wheels van that Uncle Henry had driven for a few weeks last winter, dropping off hot lunches at the houses of neighborhood widows. Aunt Jinx had put an end to it, though, after talking to one of the widows among the vegetable bins at Satellite Market. Walt himself had donated a hundred bucks to the meals program in a generous moment. That was a few years ago, when money had been a little easier to come by.
    “I guess it’s still hobbling along,” Walt said.
    “What is?” The minister was looking vaguely off down the street, not paying attention.
    “My soul. You asked how my soul was doing.”
    “Well … good. Keep at it, then. This is Babylon we’re living in, make no mistake about that. There’s a lot of temptations out there.” He looked meaningfully at Walt now, as if this tidbit of information had been hand-selected.
    “That’s the truth,” Walt said.
    “I can tell you that a lot of people fall,” Bentley said.
    “Like ripe fruit.” Walt shook his head at the seriousness of it.
    “Don’t be cocky.” The minister narrowed his eyes, convinced that Walt was making fun of him. “Pride goeth, as they say. Here—here’s a little something to read.”
    He handed Walt a pamphlet, maybe three inches square, with a picture of a lion and a lamb on the front, lying down together with such wide, dopey grins on their faces that it looked as if they’d just been hit over the head with a mallet. The title of the booklet was “Marriage as an Obstacle to Sin.”
    Bentley took Walt’s elbow suddenly and steered him toward the corner, pointing across the street, toward St. Anthony’s. “What’s going on there? My vision’s not …”
    Without waiting for an answer he let go of Walt’s arm and hurried forward. Walt followed him, noticing now that there was a police car in the parking lot. Half a dozen people milled around near the base of the bell tower. It looked like the top of the tower had collapsed. At least one of the bells had fallen, and the bronze edge of it, shiny with rainwater, was shoved out of a gaping hole in the stucco tower. That was the noise he’d heard twenty minutes ago.
    Bentley slogged through the water in the gutter, waiting for a gap in the traffic before sprinting across, two steps ahead of Walt. There was the sound of a siren from up the boulevard, and in moments an ambulance pulled up, slamming to a halt, its siren cutting off. The crowd parted, and for a moment Walt got a good look at the man who lay on the concrete floor at the base of the tower. Clearly the heavy bell had gone right