Page 83 of Turn That River Red

But it wasn’t the Holy Ghost, I realize now. It was Ambrose.

The monster. The murderer. The devil.

He stops, leaning on his shovel, and wipes at his brow. Then he looks at me, still kneeling in the grass.

I feel it again, a spirit arcing between us.

No. He killed Raul.

He did kill Raul. But look at what he’s doing now.

“Almost done,” he says softly. “Do you need more time?”

To pray, he means. But my prayers haven’t done anything for me. Not these prayers. Not prayers to God.

The prayers tohim, though?—

No. That’s sacrilege. What we did wasn’t praying. It was sin and abomination.

So why didn’t it everfeellike sin and abomination? Even yesterday, when Ambrose slid inside me, our bodies slippery with his blood—I had begged him for it. I had wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.

“No,” I finally say. “No, I don’t.”

Ambrose nods and scoops out another shovelful of dirt. I can’t tell how deep the hole is, not in the dark, but I can see that it’s smaller than it should be.

“We won’t be able to get into the coffin,” Ambrose says, as easily if he was talking about the weather. “But we can get him as close as possible.”

I go over to the grave and run my fingers over the metalmarker set into the dirt. No headstone. I suppose Raul’s family couldn’t afford one, and I twist with anger again, that Reverend Gunner didn’t cover this expense. Lord knows the church has the money. Lord knowshehas the money.

There’s a thump behind me. Ambrose has hit the coffin.

I look back at him just as he tosses the shovel aside. He picks up the bag—Raul, I tell myself. That’s Raul. Or at least it’s Raul’s earthly shell.

“I haven’t done a funeral in decades,” Ambrose says, a little sheepishly. “But I more or less remember what to do. What to say.”

“The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” I tell him, rising up to standing.

“I sure can.” Ambrose watches me in the dark. “And right now,” he says softly, “my purpose is whatever will make this right. Or as close to right as I can get.”

Something twists in my chest. Nothing can make this right, because nothing can bring back Raul, and nothing can change the fact that I found his decapitated head in the Concho River and stared into his dead eyes and recognized him.

But at least Ambrose is trying. When did Reverend Gunner, when did any of them, ever try to do right by me?

The realization leaves me numb.

“Are you saying you’ll do a funeral for Raul?” I ask hoarsely.

“As best I can.”

“Is it—is it safe?”

“It’s safe.” Ambrose tilts his head back and makes a show of sniffing the air. “No one’s here but us and the dead.”

“Can you smell them, too?” The question’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Yeah. It doesn’t bother me, though.” Ambrose steps up to the edge of Raul’s freshly dug grave, kneels down, and lowers him home. The wind picks up again, making the trees rustle around us.

“‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’” Ambrose recites in a rich, rhythmic preacher’s voice. “‘The Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’”

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