The Blood of Heaven (9 page)

I know I tortured Samuel, telling him things like that. He would listen like a disciple, then cuss me half-heartedly, say he hoped they found me out soon; that he couldn’t stand waiting anymore and would threaten to tell them. Behind it all there was the older brother, the long pull of the Ohio River, and at last Cincinnati.

We could go, he said. If you mean to deny her.

That’s what you always say. You can go.

Come with me and we’ll be rid of it all.

But my brother was as bound to his father as I was to mine. Or it was that he was bound to me and would wait for judgment at my side. I like to believe this; that his truer sight let Samuel know that we would be delivered, though in such a way that all our future courses and endeavors were the Devil’s own.

No. There is no power greater than God’s. And if I deny His purpose and His workings in my life, then I deny my life entire. And whether I have suffered for it or gained, the pain and glory are not mine. What happened was His will.

Israel a Wretched Infant

By September Emily’s belly had risen like a boil from her ribs to her mound—not enough to truly show, but I still could not believe that her parents didn’t know.

Pa’s blind and Momma thinks I’ve got the worms, she said. But she suspects.

Emily was sitting back against a tree, sullenly enduring as I went longingly at one breast she’d let out from her dress, when I pulled away to find my mouth still full as though I had her still enlipped and, choking down what was there, I saw the yellow early milk on the beads of her paps, sliding down the hairs that had so often tickled my tongue.

I scrambled away as Emily hitched the top of her dress back, regarding me with such a look that said I was the worst thing in the world, but she would take me on like a burden.

And while her eyes burned into me, two more eyes soaked through the front of her dress.

I knew it’d come, she said.

You brought the milk too soon, she said, and, eye spinning, lifted up her dress to show the veined belly split down the middle by a rippling long dark line. Bared like that it was an awful revelation.

Samuel had come thrashing through the bushes at her sound, and now he stood beside me panting, unwittingly faced with her house of conception. He threw down his rifle, averting his eyes from the hurriedly fastening and covering Emily, and stormed off.

I tried to help her up but she tossed me off and we followed Samuel silently like children back towards the Fladeboes’ hole. She didn’t hang on me as we walked; I hung on her. But she was hard as her belly and gave me no smiles or sign of love. Samuel turned when we were at the edge of her family tract. God damn it, he said. Will you look at her! She’s wet at the tits! We’ll have to wait for her to dry off.

Shut the hell up, I said.

He ignored me and told Emily to get in the sun.

They’ll know soon enough, she said.

I don’t care, he said. They won’t yet.

I told her to do what Samuel said, that we should wait till she was dry.

And Emily nodded, found herself a place full of sun, and sat, hunched in a way which showed her belly even more and sent my mind lurching to know that the little thing I’d made was turning over in her. She rested in the light, and perhaps it was the sunlight warmth but she wore a smile of inexplicable contentment, radiant and alive even as the world around her began to die and chill.

The Lord’s Punishment

Trudging to that Sunday’s meeting, I lagged back from the fathers, from Samuel even, as we gathered up the congregation. My cowardice howled loud enough to shake the plates of my skull, and yet I heard the voices saying, What will your father preach today? And will we have a word from you? The Chitites dimmed and the land was wavering, for I gave nothing my full sight until we reached the Fladeboes’ tract.

I might have hidden in the dirt, dug myself a hole, so as not to be seen by her. As it stood, I slunk behind the bodies of the chattering faithful, hoping to prolong the time before I would come under Emily’s eye. But, so it went, the only soul about that bitter patch could not have seen me if he tried. It was Conny Fladeboe’s voice, calling as he came from out their hole: Brothers? Preacher? Is it you?

Samuel by then was shouldering back through the congregation, bearing down on me; the fathers were at the dugout’s mouth to help the wobbling, reaching Fladeboe out. Wife and daughter had gone at sunrise to do some washing in the creek and hadn’t yet returned. It was, he jabbered, not like them at all to dally.

Perhaps they’re waiting for the service to come, said Deacon Kemper.

Save themselves a trip, said Preacher-father.

No, no, there’s dinner to be put to cook—

Preacher-father took up the man’s arm, wound it with his, and led him into the crowd. Don’t worry yourself, brother. We’ll meet them on the way.

Yes, yes, said Deacon Kemper. Or they’ll be there waiting.

Samuel, before me now, waited until they had started off again to speak. Looks like you’ve got yourself a little time to cower.

I shook my head and my brother had me like I was the one blind. Come on, he said, and hauled me away from the pens emptied of hogs, away from the hole with its door lolling open in the first cold wind of the fall, which blew now with increasing fury as we trailed the congregation snaking through the hillsides of shriveled grass. It was a gallows-way march that September day, the sky hemming in all us fools, cupped within the leaden hands of God. Samuel let me go, but now I followed close on him, hiding behind his back for the sight of the smiling Chitites: youngsters capered round women who clucked about fevers and bowel-trouble, men gave each other shrugs over hoof rot, and from out this din of commonplace misery a pair of daughters, young as ten, together started up a hymn. Gruel-fed voices made a song of thankfulness and grace that such a glorious day the Lord had made. That our lives were so blessed.

Faltering again, I strayed from them, wandered upon a high hillside, and, turning, looked back upon the Fladeboes’ cut of the valley rendered small; their works—home, crops, ditching—faded into earth as will a corpse left afield too long.

Not far from Baptist Creek, my father broke from his place at the front, fell back through his people, and sought me out. Samuel picked up his stride and gave space for him to walk beside me, smiling.

You’ve been so quiet lately, he said. It’s been a long time since you were this way. Then, with a laugh of recollection: Remember how you’d get after a coaling? You wouldn’t speak for days.

I was afraid, I said.

Ah, you learned well by it, I’d say. Left the imprint of the Word on your mouth.

Yes, it did.

That’s why I hate to see you not speaking. You’re a fine preacher. Better than I was at your age. He took my hand, gripped it hard as he continued. And that is why the sermon today will be all yours. No one else will take the rock.

I matched my father’s smile with a false one and bowed my head as though grateful, when really it was all I could do not to hang it low with the fear that I would, that day, speak before my Emily whatever lies of goodness I could muster. My voice would choke, wither within me, to stand before her and all the believers and tamp down the lies I held inside with the greater falsehood: that we are all beloved of God, and for us He wants only the best.

I prayed on it recently, said Preacher-father. I want to hear your voice lifted up again, so today is yours. He raised his head, surveying the horizon, as we ascended the hillock which would lead down into the meeting place. After all, he said, some day this will all be yours.

So he brought me with him to the head of the flock, telling each as we passed them that I was to give a ringing sermon this day. Blackbirds swept in peals across the sky, fluttering stormcloud formations, and as we came to the lip of the hill there could be heard the voice of a woman, talking, down below. With Preacher-father’s hand at my shoulder, I strode foremost in descent.

My eyes at first refused the sight—a mad stitch-work of weeping mother, laundry enwebbed upon the rocks, and among the soap-fat foam the daughter lying prone. One of the Chitites screamed and the mother Fladeboe then raised up, where she knelt beside the body of her daughter, and answered wail for wail. Preacher-father’s hand was gone and he rushed past me, the congregation trailing in growing frenzy and bewilderment, until I was borne by them, stumbling downhill. Samuel ahead of me muttering Jesuses, we came to the stones and he stopped, turned away with his eyes shut as the people huddled in a crush. I tore through them, their voices crying out, Drowned, drowned, drowned, and when I’d broken free it was to fall out of their midst and to the bankside, where I looked upon Emily.

Her clothes had been torn mostly from her, gooseflesh spread across her legs and even to her belly; and, dear God, her face—twisted and pale, teeth bared upon swollen tongue; eyes open, the left gaping heavenward and the wild right frozenly regarding me. I had not long to look before her mother, at the sight of me, came clawing across her daughter’s corpse with such awful jerking speed that her hands were at my throat, her bony withers atop me, throttling, screaming that it was because of me she’d done it—You, you bastard boy! You made me!—before the others could pull her off. The father Fladeboe was yowling to know what was happening, and his answer came in pieces from the shrieking wife—that I had put a baby in her, I had ruined her and disowned her. And the people’s hands were now upon me, but I was crawling for Emily, clawing at her breast where blood in livid patches rose to pallid flesh, and, weeping, tried to hold her up, sucking water from her sopping hair as I wept and pressed to her face; that awful face; against my cheek the cold purple bloat of the tongue which had only asked of me to love.

I was on hands and knees, spitting blood, when Preacher-father tossed the shovel to my side. Samuel had been sent to fetch it, and had returned a-horse, he said, for speed. He’d left, running for our camp, as the blows began to fall—from the Chitites, from my father until he grew exhausted, and I was lifted up and held in place so that even blind Conny Fladeboe could strike me; but that man was too far-gone with grief to deal much punishment, and the helpful Chitites took hold of his arms and swung them for him until the man doubled, gibbering, and was brought away by Deacon Kemper, who had the wife also apart; and I could hear as Preacher-father, wringing busted hands, approached me, the yelp from the mother Fladeboe as her husband went for her. With Deacon Kemper hollering, the commotion died even as my father said, Now speak. Tell it all.

By the time Samuel returned, I had. To the gasps and wails and lamentations of the people, I told it all. Confessed myself unto my father in halting sobs, all the while dead Emily bore gruesome silent witness.

The blade struck me at the hip, and with fingers clawing dirt, I pushed myself up as Preacher-father spoke.

You did this. No one else. Whatever demon is in you overtook Sister Fladeboe, just as you corrupted and overtook her daughter. You did this, he said. Now dig.

He sent the congregation, who cursed me softly, off a ways, so that, he said, he could counsel me in my evil. And so we were alone when I took up the shovel.

Where? I said.

Preacher-father shook his head. Right here where I preach and wrongly let you do the same. Right here, so you’ll know it all the days of your life.

I went and stood not far from Emily, pale corpse in the corner of my eye, the patches of risen blood blossoming about her darkened paps. I let the shovel fall and slipped off my coat, with which I draped as much of her as I could.

No, said Preacher-father.

Let me cover her at least, I said, my hand at her forehead.

Your sin won’t be covered till there’s earth over it. Six feet.

Silently, I left my coat atop her and held the shovel. So Preacher-father did the job himself—a flutter of dark cloth cast amid the washing abandoned at the rocks. I bowed my head and split the earth. And as I dug, the awful hour of turning, shaping the hole, he would speak to me.

You must think you’re some kind of great cocksman, eh? he said.

I was knee-deep and said nothing, worked the blade and tried not to see Emily as I went further down. In the distance, above the Chitites’ gabble, I could hear Samuel and his father, shouting.

Well, you must think yourself one. You’re grown enough to have that dead girl and that dead child, but you were supposed to be a man of God and wait for Him to show the way. Instead you gave her a bellyful of maggots. And are you proud?

Another inch down, another inch closer to a Hell which seemed unreal, for all around me were the marks of damnation.

Answer me!

A split worm twisted in the dirt at my feet, hacked root-works flayed raw the air. I was quiet, my throat choked shut with the memory of coals.

You turned your back on God, he said.

I managed to say, I know.

You don’t know a damned thing. You don’t care what you’ve done. . . . You don’t know your wickedness same as you don’t know my love for you. Don’t know or never did.

The sun, now in its full prominence, fought the clouds but couldn’t staunch the chill. The burning eye of God, unblinking, regarded me in my labors: my arms afire but moving machine-like, turning shovelfuls out upon the growing mound. Shoulder-deep now, so Preacher-father had to bend.