All the Beautiful Sinners Read Free

the plates back just after Gentry stepped out.
    They belonged to a black farm truck from Nebraska. They hadn’t been registered since 1952.
    Jim Doe studied the radio.
    1952 ?
    “Look,” Terra said.
    Jim Doe did. It was the cloud, opening up. Streaks of blue sifted down like corn pollen, but there were streaks of white, too: hail. Pale and slight in the distance.
    “Watch the corners,” Jim Doe said. “The edges.”
    That was where the rotation usually started. Like eddies left behind.
    But 1952. Jim Doe said it again, in his head, then keyed Monica open, to get her to run the plates a second time, in case she was eating and typing. Beside him, Terra clicked her seat belt open. Jim Doe didn’t even know she’d put it back on again. The metal head reeled across her chest. She leaned forward to see the edges of the cloud, and Jim Doe was watching her but thinking about an old black truck, rambling down the road, past the Episcopal church, one of its tires slinging rubber.
    “Tom?” he said into the mike, holding his hand out for Terra not to say anything, and four miles away Gentry looked back to his car, into the camera mounted on the dash, then hitched his pants up on the left side, kept walking.
    The longhair’s car was a blue sedan, a 1985 Impala.
    Gentry hadn’t needed the cherries, either, the lights—the car had already been slowing, guilty—but had turned them on just for Mary Watkins and her sister Janna, crossing the church parking lot early for choir, like they’d done every Wednesday for twenty-two years. They’d waved to Gentry then tied their scarves down tighter over their heads, leaned inside. Gentry had smiled, raised a finger over the wheel to them, and hit the siren too, just to see the Watkins girls jump, just to hear them later on the horn, complaining about the screamers . It was their word. Gentry liked it.
    Behind him, on the dash, he’d drawn a black cross on the notepad suction-cupped to his windshield. It meant he’d stopped at the church again. He liked to take them as far as the litter barrel, to empty his ashtray, but this Indian had too much candy in his pockets to even make it that far. Gentry smiled, leaning down the slightest bit to be sure the chicken feather was still there, on the rearview, impairing vision , endangering the lives of every other motorist for miles around. It was.
    The Indian stood from the Impala when Gentry was still even with the bumper.
    “—no, no, son,” Gentry said, his elbow already cocked out, the butt of his service revolver set in his palm.
    The Indian was a longhair in faded jeans, a blue sleeveless flannel shirt open at the chest, a concert T-shirt underneath. Def Leppard. It figured.
    “You want to be careful now,” Gentry said. “This isn’t Nebraska, now.”
    The Indian just stood there.
    Gentry smiled.
    Maybe he was one of those mutes. Kawliga.
    “You know you can’t do that,” Gentry said, hooking his chin in at the rearview.
    The Indian just stood there.
    “Got some identification, then?” Gentry said.
    The Indian raised his head as if just hearing, just tuning in, then shrugged, leaned down into the car, across to the passenger side. Gentry stepped forward, shaking his head no, saying it—“Son, no, you can’t”—his elbow cocked again, but then the Indian stood, holding something out to him. It was white like registration and insurance should be, but it was wrong, too: a snub-nose revolver wrapped in masking tape or some shit.
    He was pointing it at Gentry.
    Gentry took a step back, lowering his hip to get his revolver out faster, but it wasn’t enough: the Indian stepped forward, pulling the trigger.
    Gentry shuddered, felt the grill of his car digging into his back, heard his gun clatter to the ground, wondered what the Watkins sisters were singing just now—for him—and said his wife’s name: Agnes. And that he was sorry.
    Then he raised his hands, just to see what his insides looked like after all these