John the Baptist, his head alone on the silver, was the first to go, shattering like so many hearts. First time didn’t take, but he was prepared, and tore another scrap from his soiled undershirt, stuffed it into the bottle’s lip like a gag, lit the scrap with his daddies’ brass Zippo, the one with “Fuck Communism” engraved across it like John Wayne’s; he wheeled back and threw the bottle through Noah’s ark and the it broke on a pew and there were no stopping things.

They found him sitting in the middle of the cracked parking lot when the fire trucks got there, first the VFD then the county crew, him sitting there under an oak they said as old as the church, as the country itself, smoking his way through a pack and drinking through the rest of his bottles, the gas can empty beside him.

You see what happened, boy, the captain asked as his crew got to work, running hose and already sweating through their shirts. It had spread at that point to the newer additions to the church, long since done it’s damage to the centuries old building, and there was no hope of saving anything but the foundations.

Went up fast. Once it got spread over the pews, the floor, all the windows crashed in on themselves, likely to get more fuel for the beast.

The captain nodded, watched his men as they worked in vain for a minute, then walked his way over to the unmarked cruiser that came to watch like it all was a matinee. A window rolled down as he approached.

Hi, Mike.

Llew. What’s the cause, he asked before taking a drink of his fresh coffee. Had been a slow night.

That had been. Slow month. Arson.

How you figure that?

Boy over there did it, I’d wager.

Lovely.

***

Boy didn’t seem in a rush to leave, so the detective let him finish his smoke, him his own coffee, before getting out of the car and walking a slow, calculated pace over to the gnarled old tree, one the kids of the area called the old man on account of some knots that resembled it’s namesake. Mike took the time crossing the uneven pave sizing the boy up, noting the muddy jeans, torn and dirty shirt that may have been white at some point but was reduced to a piss yellow in the light of the fire. He was far enough to be out of the heat, but Mike saw the withered leaves on the tree and figured it had been worse earlier. The summer night was still hot, the air thick with smoke and water, and would get no more comfortable once the haze cleared. He felt his shirt get sticky on the way over, like the feeling of his bedsheets the night prior, after he and his wife had their fill.

Hidy, he said for effect.

Hi. Boy was watching the crew at their work, already winning but the inch to victory nigh late.

You’re Martin Boyd’s kid, aren’t you? His youngest?

Yessir.

Junior, ain’t you? The smell on the boy was unmistakable.

Some call me, yessir. Hand was shaking as he took a drag.

See it go down?

Yessir, I did. His teeth were chattering like a blizzard was coming down.

See Marty taught you well. Manners, I mean.

Yessir, he did.

What’d you see?

It all.

See who did it?

After a shallow grave breath, said, Couldn’t really see myself.

Come on.

Yessir.

***

Mike put him in a room at the station with a can of Coke and told the boy he’d be back in a spell, then went out and over to his desk, most of the other’s gone for the night save them who didn’t see as there work was done, or those who hadn’t anyone to go home too. He checked the boy’s name into the computer. Was just past a minor so there wasn’t anything more than an sworn affidavit from five years back. Goddammit, he said like a prayer. His superior came out of the bathroom whipping his hands on his pants, went over to Mike’s desk and leaned against it.

Leland.

Open and shut, right.

Yes, sir.

Don’t like it.

No, sir.

He got a file.

No, just a victim’s statement.

The Brown case?

Yes, sir.

Goddammit. Mike couldn’t help but grin a bit. Leland saw and followed suit for a moment, his nicotine yellow teeth like a child’s first, small and set apart. Is there a retraction?

Yes, sir.

That wasn’t a good time, here, you know. Not for Brown, least, the poor bastard. Deacon over there for some such a decade, then all that shit comes piling up. Recollect even Reverend Ward tried to speak for him, old friend’s as they were, but he weren’t a very good character witness at the time. The shit you find on a computer, even with that Brown didn’t deserve what this town did to him.

Every statement was withdrawn after they found him roped up, weren’t they?

Most of all, yep. There was talk some of them were meant for someone else there, but the town buried it after Brown went and did what he did.

Was too much, I guess.

I reckon.

***

Detective Mike Todd walked in with a pen, pencil, and a paper cup of coffee for himself. You tired?

No, sir.

We could put you in a cell, let you get some rest, do this all in the morning.

No, sir. Let’s just get it on over with.

Right. The first sip was bitter, the second a weed that grew on him. He put the pencil on the paper and pushed it across the table, over graffiti from others that had sat where the boy sat. Just need a confession, here, but first, well, why’d you do it?

Went to that church my whole life.

Me too. Baptized there in sixty-eight.

Few years before my time. They partook in a small laugh, the boy’s like the wind passing through a scarecrow.

Find my name in your computers?

Yeah.

In relation to Deacon Brown.

Yeah.

Told my folks, after a couple years, what had happened to me. Was about the time that stuff was found on his computer at the church. Didn’t say who, scared, I guess, ashamed, whatever, they put two and two together.

Came out to five.

Yeah. Guess everyone else’s math was wrong, too. Always liked Deacon Brown.

Me, too.

He was off, everyone seen that, but he never as much as touched my shoulder in passing. After, folks left, more than when the Reverend did what he did.

So, why tonight?

Always liked the church. Until what happened happened. Then it was just a building. God wasn’t there.

No, he wasn’t. He’s else, they say.

They say. Can’t burn him down. Fire took everything else, crosses and hymnals and communion wine, but not him. He picked up the pencil and wrote out a sentence, wrote his name out then above that signed it.

Can’t burn him down.