Murder Under the Oaks by Art Taylor

Author:Art Taylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: north carolina, crime stories, bouchercon anthology
Publisher: Down & Out Books

When she woke, she knew God had spoken to her through Jesus Christ. In a dream, He had appeared before her in the road with a new wagon and team of strong yellow oxen behind Him, not moving, and He had knelt and pushed back the hair from her eyes and lifted her chin in His fingers. She couldn’t see His face for the sun was too bright, but she could look on his boots and did, fine dark leather stitched with gold thread and no dust to mar them. She heard him say, Walk, witness what man can do if I live in his heart.

She rose, brushing away sand from her cheek, shaking sand from her dress, and started toward Coffeeville.

She had walked for two hours talking softly to herself when she heard the wagon behind her and stepped from the road into the grass to give way to its berth. The driver, a tall man dressed in a suit, tie and derby hat, whoaed the mules pulling it and touched the brim of the hat and looked at her with his head tilted. He glanced behind him in the wagon. Then he seemed to arrive at a kind of peace and smiled, said she looked give out, asked her would she like a ride to town. She thanked him and climbed in the back amid children, who frowned at one another at her presence, the haze of flies she’d grown used to. A young one asked was she going to the doctor.

“No,” she said, “to church.”

She slept despite the wagon’s bumpy ride and woke only when one of the children wiggled her toe.

“We here,” the child said.

Her neck felt better, but still she moved it cautiously when she turned toward the Coffeeville Methodist Church, a simple sturdy building painted white and with a row of tall windows along its side, the glasses raised, people sitting in them, their backs to the world, attention focused inside. In front of the building, buggies, horses and mules stood shaded by pecan branches. Women in hats were unrolling blankets on the brown grass that sloped down to the graveyard, itself shaded by magnolias. From out of the windows she heard singing:

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