The Blood of Heaven (6 page)

During the sermon Sister Magee stayed far aside, and did not weep as the other women. I edged towards them, and while they were mostly busy dabbing hems to their eyes I stood beside Emily, who remained quiet and tearless, hands at her sides. And so amid the lamentations I let my fingertips brush against her palm, once, and seeing that she didn’t move or pull away I did the same again and she closed her hand tightly around mine for but an instant, then let me go and began to sob after the fashion of her elders. I was too shook to know what it meant, and made my way back to Samuel, who gave me a sly look.

Afterwards, the grave covered over and the burial service done, the Chitites built a fire up and stayed there into the night. One man, after a custom, poured a few necks of whiskey from a cask into the earth. A cup was being passed and Preacher-father and Deacon Kemper drank of it grimly but with some satisfaction on their faces as they heard their teachings working in the people.

They seemed so clean, said one Chitite.

Well, they aren’t, said another. Tell about the prophet again, Preacher.

He is a wicked fool in black sugarloaf, their Prophet Thomas. When we came upon them he was reading aloud from his ridiculous apings of the true gospel. Said this was their promised land and an angel had told him so.

It sounded like Gospel, said Deacon Kemper, it did. But I knew his tricks and asked about all the other promised lands his angel had told him about, all the ones they’ve been run out of.

It might as well have been written on the skins of unrepentant whores and child diddlers, said Preacher-father.

The Chitites laughed uneasily and passed their whiskey, which came now to me and Samuel.

And that’s what you told them, wasn’t it, brother? said the Deacon.

Yes, indeed. And that’s what set them on us like wolves.

Y’all should’ve shot the lot of them, said Conny Fladeboe.

If we’d known about Brother Magee, said the Deacon, things would’ve been different.

Amens circulated amongst the Chitites.

We can have them now, said one holedigger. Tonight!

Samuel, smiling, nudged me with an elbow and I imagined him as his terrible Washington, the heads of his enemies pulped by ancient weaponry.

My father held up his hands and said, Not yet, brothers and sisters. Not yet, but soon.

But if it wasn’t them? said still another.

That don’t mean a thing, said Conny Fladeboe. They’re still rotten. Who here doesn’t have animals sick and crazed since they came along? Even the good Deacon’s medicine’s don’t help. The beasts grow worse day by day.

I shouldn’t eat them, said his wife. Lest I’m struck down by the same devils.

My plow-horse chewed off his own leg.

My chickens already pecked each other to death.

Had to shoot two of my oxes. Gored each other even with sawed-down horns.

My friends, said Deacon Kemper, you know as well as I do that there are demons in this world; the Book tells us of them slipping into beasts of the field and sowing trouble for their masters. And we will clear them out from your stock even as we banish these pilgrims from our land.

Amen, said Preacher-father.

Amen, said Sister Magee. And so all eyes were upon her where she sat, shrouded in a skin blanket. Get them all out, she said.

Casting Out Demons

Despite his punishments, my father’s love for me was such that he thought I could turn the tongue of any serpent, that I could be brought to the mountaintop and made to look down upon the cities of the world and say I didn’t want them. He was a man of faith, and like all men of faith he was blind.

I was faithful too, you see, and took it on their word that we dearly needed to go out amongst the Chitites and minister to their demonized beasts. And so I rode with Samuel the unhitched Kemper horses out to the northernmost family plots: the Augers, the Braenecks, the Scruts, even Sister Magee, who cared little for her animals nowadays, but did send us off with a draught a-piece of whiskey, her bereavement gifts. We carried with us a skin of water from Baptist Creek to sling purification upon the possessed and drive their demons out. Nathan was left at camp, now healed so much that he was doing small chores about the place; and for their part the fathers had taken the homesteads of the south and western corners of the valley as their exorcising territory. And maybe it was that Preacher-father did distrust me, for those tracts were the ones which housed the girls of age. Still, the path of our return would lead us along the edge of the hole where lived the only one I cared to know.

We had left the Augers and were heading south, done for the day and having accomplished little but Samuel getting bit on the wrist by a Satan-struck horse, which, when the Augers’ backs were turned, he punched in the eye. My brother’s swing had about as much effect upon the demon as our verses. But we weren’t dejected on the ride back, despite the drizzle, still bearing winter cold, and our failures; the sky cleared long enough for the sun to show a moment before it fell, warming our sides and reawakening the whiskey. The holediggers had done their best to keep the beasts corralled and separated, but some of the meaner ones had broken through their rickety yards and were said to be marauding around the countryside. Before full sundown a crazed ox had come thrashing out of a patch of soft-corn; frothing and red-eyed, the ox made for our horses before lumbering off towards the hills with the pair of shots we’d fired in its side. My brother looked to me, waving his rifle to dispel the smoke, and laughed loud and long. And so did I; but as we neared the Fladeboes’ my mind took dark and the worms were turning in me. Samuel mistook my shifty glances and silence for caution.

Don’t worry, he said. That big fuckerall’s in the woods by now. Probably troubling the damned pilgrims.

It’s not that, I said.

Samuel never was quick, but when he did come to understand a thing, he latched to it. Taking a squeeze from the water-skin, he said, So you’re aching for it?

Like Satan’s hooves are dancing on my bollocks.

You little letch—you’re struck hard, aren’t you.

Don’t pick.

O, just suffer and take it. There’s nothing for it here. Samuel flourished eastward with a great hand. Now, if we were in a city, things would be different. You could sneak with her in an alley or a privy.

Damn it, I said not to pick.

And I said I’m not. That’s how I dipped for the first time, and for several more thereafter.

I know, I said. You’re old and wise of the world.

Samuel slapped the neck of his horse and laughed again. Now you’re the one who’s picking, he said.

In the distance ahead smoke pinwheeled from where the Fladeboes’ crooked stovepipe stuck out the turf. And I heard faintly, above the whistle of wind in the tall grasses and my brother’s huff and chuckle, the squeals of the hogs. Homeward seemed a sorry course to take.

Sounds like they didn’t get any demons out either, I said.

You are a clever one, said Samuel.

I only want to do what’s right by the Lord and bless the beasts.

Naturally, he said.

By the time we’d come to the Fladeboe hole the sun was down and we took our bearings from the fire, where husband and wife stood turning a spitted hog that was blackened and already missing a fair chunk of throat. We passed those that remained, in their pen set against the ditch where I’d stood guard over Emily that first day. The hogs’ squeals were loud and awful, so that I couldn’t see how the family stood it. The Fladeboes hailed us and I looked around balefully for Emily, imagining her hid away in the cruddy dark of the family hole, stoking the fire beneath a pot where more pork surely cooked. We got down from our horses and approached the fire.

Your fathers already came, said the wife.

Yes, sister, I said. They told us to follow after them.

In case their efforts didn’t take, said Samuel.

Conny Fladeboe cranked the spit and the hog’s skin hissed and bubbled. They hadn’t scraped the hair from the hide and the smell was like a pyre. How’s that? he said. The Preacher and the Deacon rode south, and it seems y’all two have come from the north.

They told us this morning, I said, before we all headed out.

Didn’t tell us, said Conny.

Now, said his wife to hush him. Another try’s better than them all being dead—right, boys?

Yes ma’am, I said.

Samuel handed me his reins, saying, Why don’t you go tie the horses off and start with the casting.

I took them and, with a nod to my brother and the Fladeboes, headed for the pens.

I could hear him saying how I was really the one with the gift for the Word and he was mostly my helper. The Fladeboes agreed and said that when the hog was done he could go down with them and eat. After all, they said, it was late past supper.

The hogs had the horses jittery, and so I had to soothe them before I began, drawing out my Bible and not reading a bit from it, but hollering loud my own words and making a show of my godliness, hoping that the daughter would hear my voice through the ground and be moved.

Fly! Unclean come likewise out of the unclean. For there is not a place on this earth for you to take purchase that is good enough! Fly these hogs and trouble them no more!

I went on like that for some time, but the only answers given by the demons in the hogs were louder squealed appeals to their dark master. I leaned against the fence and hollered out, and the hogs gave me beady eyes lit by the fire, which cast my shadow and the shadows of the knobby bars of their pen down on them. Soon the fire was guttering and I looked back to see that the Fladeboes had retreated belowground and taken Samuel with them. It grew too dark to see and I preached to the shadows, out of which came on occasion snouts snatching bites from the toes of my boots. Pausing mid-cuss at the sound of the dugout door creaking open, I turned and saw amid the pikes a figure moving out, holding by the sharpest points and easing the door-trap shut behind.

I shouted more prayers for the casting out of demons, and I watched Emily—for it was plainly her, lit by the smoking fat of the betty-lamp—approaching me from the ditchward side. I guessed perhaps she’d told them that she had to pass, only when Emily came to the pens she set the lamp on a post and said they’d told her to bring me a light to read by.

I thanked her and tried to look loving even with the hogs’ squeals and their eyes now lit red from the lamp.

Why do you talk like that? she asked.

Like what? I said. Girl, this is the Bible I’m reading.

You hadn’t been reading and I know it’s scripture. I heard you do scripture before. But you talk like you’re chewing leather.

She was standing close enough to touch and I prayed on what she’d said, told her to come on over and I’d show her why I talked the way I did.

She did and both me and the hogs regarded her with our animal intents. And with the Word silent on the air one of them came to stick its snout under the gate and bite at her skirts. I swifted it a kick and the hog went squealing away.

Don’t kick at her, said Emily.

But it’s biting, I said.

They weren’t like that before those people came. Sadie even ate up all her piglets. That’s her was on the spit.

Well, I said, they won’t be that way when I’m done.

She thought for a moment, swooped her wild eye around, and breathed deep of the stinking tallow smoke. Do you think it’s God? she said.

Everything’s because of God.

I think it must be He’s mad at us.

Nothing’s happened to me, I said.

You already talk funny. So maybe something worse’ll happen to you.

You got the crazy eye, I said. Maybe you’ll get something worse than that.

Emily grunted and tried to squint her eye still.

Sorry, I said.

She gave her bony shoulders a rise. I’ve seen you looking.

Fat dripped and hissed in the pan of the lamp. I said, You can come and look me right here and I’ll show you why I talk funny.

She bent down to be in the light and I did the same, stuck out my chin as though to take a punch, let flap open my jaw and flop out my tongue.

God, she said, and screwed her good eye into my mouth. You’re all burnt up.

She looked so hard and close that all I saw was the top of her head, wherefrom a nit jumped to ping off my face, making me flinch and catch her with my chin. I looked down again and she’d turned to see inside with her other eye and that eye was wonderful, like it had to be wild and spin and search to take in all of me. She let it go crazy and with the other she looked dead into mine and asked me could she touch it.

I gagged yes, but when she reached her fingers in I gave my tongue the snake’s flicker and clamped shut and she giggled.

I can’t be long, she said.

We went away from the pens, not for the smell, for it was worse near the long grass at the ditch’s edge, where she made a cross of me, her opening to mine, plump line to my supine after she put me down in the grass and spread her legs to straddle my chest with the hems of her skirts tickling gentle at my nose, then squatted low above me and brought my face under that curtain, taking me by the hair, saying, I washed on it.