Ashes (27 page)

No one answered. Confessions were usually
rewarded with material goods, sustenance, the manna of the damned.
I called again. Gran, who was asleep at the table, twitched once
and fell still.

"Ruth," came a guarded voice. Saints weren't
supposed to use mortal names.

"Who is it?"

"John. From school."

John. I recognized the voice. He sat behind
me in Social Studies, quiet and smart, his hair always a little
unkempt.

"You can get in trouble," I whispered through
the hole, wondering how he had escaped the school. Unless, like me,
God had chosen him to be tardy that day.

"I'm a soldier now."

My pulse raced. I pictured him outside the
house, in his crisp uniform, a hammer on his belt, a rifle strapped
over his shoulder. I wondered which of the nails he'd driven into
our doors and windows.

"Has it caught you yet?" he asked. The dying
day had made the sky more deeply red. A little of that
blood-colored light leaked through the wall.

"No," I whispered. "My brother Bobby died.
Mother, too."

"I'm scared."

Soldiers weren't supposed to be scared. They
were doing God's work.

"Why are you here?" I asked.

"The Penance is catching some of the
soldiers. I heard a rumor today that even the Commander-in-Chief
has it. I just wanted to tell somebody I was sorry."

My stomach ached, my face flushed. I wondered
whether it was the first rush of fever or just hatred of this
unwanted confession. "Don't say these things," I said. "God will
strike you."

"Let Him strike," John said breathlessly.
Night had fallen, leaking through the hole in the wall like a black
oil. A truck sounded on the street, men shouted, and a siren wailed
several streets away. I lit another candle and waited near the
hole, but I heard no more of John.

Father bathed himself in the light of the Web
screen. In the beginning, the videos had been of bodies piled high
in the streets as solemn news anchors reported the latest death
tolls. Health officials spoke of concentrated efforts to find a
cure. Eventually these gave way to army television. Most of the
time the Commander-in-Chief occupied the screen, his fist lifted in
righteous indignation, his eyes bright with hate, his mouth
contorted by his sermons. Father raised his fist in unison with the
image.

"Kill them all, and let God sort them out,"
was one of Father's favorite slogans. I avoided him after he began
wearing the mask. Most of the time, I stayed in the kitchen with
Gran, the farthest room from the bathroom, where our wastes had
fouled the air. We slept in the room that I had shared with
Bobby.

One night I heard a tapping, a squeaking of
metal and the slight crack of dry wood. I was afraid, because the
sound meant change, and all change was for the worse. I prayed the
night away, and somehow God spared us. The next morning, as I
pressed at the wood that covered the window, anxious for a glimpse
of the new sun, one of the boards fell away. Others were loose,
too, enough for a person to wriggle through. I could hardly keep
myself from bursting through and falling onto the green grass
outside, but I was afraid soldiers might be watching.

I waited until evening to tell Gran. Her eyes
misted over. When I was through describing my plan, she lowered her
head.

"It's our only chance," I whispered.

"It's the Lord's will that we be punished,"
she said.

"Maybe it's the Lord's will that the boards
are loose."

"The wicked can't flee their own wretched
hearts."

"Gran, Gran," I said. "Not you, too. Why
would God want to punish you?"

"No one is clean. All have come short of the
glory of God."

Father gave a shout from the living room,
joining in a televised cheer for the Commander-in-Chief.

"We only have enough food left for a week or
so," I said. "We'll die in here."

"I'll die anyway. Here, there, what's the
difference?"

Her words hung in the air like smoke from a
fatal gun. She would die, sweating and shivering, writhing in the
sheets, chewing her tongue as the blood poured from her ears and
eyes.

God is blind to suffering. We make our
prayers anyway.

"In the autumn, the mountains look like a
rumpled patchwork quilt," Gran said. "Your grandfather would sit on
the porch with his easel and paints. He used oils because he
believed that the long drying time made him more patient, more
careful."

One of his paintings hung in the living room.
It was of a neglected flower garden, bright marigolds and morning
glories and tulips fighting the weeds for sunshine. Grandfather had
been Jewish. The Commander-in-Chief said the Jews may have brought
the pestilence among the faithful. God delivered it, but the Jews
spread it. Either the Jews or the Catholics. Oh, yes, and the
scientists, as well. Satan's forces were legion.

"I would make him tea," Gran said. "Hot tea.
He would blow on top of the cup until it was cool enough to drink.
I can still see the funny face he made when he blew, his eyebrows
scrunched down and his lips curled."

"Did Father want to be a painter, too?"

"No, but he liked tea," she said. She
coughed, and a fleck of blood appeared in the corner of her mouth.
"You look a lot like him, you know. When he was your age, I
mean."

I couldn't believe my father had ever been my
age. "When did he join the Church?"

"When he was your age."

"Is that why you joined?"

She blinked. "I just...joined. Like we were
supposed to."

A new sore was erupting, above her right
eyebrow. I dabbed at it with the towel. She weakly pushed my hand
away.

"In the mountains, you can touch the clouds,"
she said. "You're closer to God there. Even the rain is sweet. Your
father used to catch it on his tongue."

"Thou hast given them blood to drink, for
they are worthy," I said, repeating one of Father's slogans.

"Why hasn't the Penance moved into you?" Gran
asked.

Who can know the workings of the Almighty? I
shrugged. "By the grace of God," I said. "Though I am wicked and
surely deserve the Penance as much as anyone."

She seemed satisfied with this, and let her
chin droop against her chest.

I stood and went to the refrigerator. I
wasn't hungry. I thought of the mountains, of exodus, of flights
from persecution. I closed my eyes, shamed by my cowardice and
doubt.

Father turned up the volume on the Web
screen. The Commander-in-Chief was raving, his voice like thunder,
saying "And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the
seven angels, 'Go, and pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God
upon the earth.'"

I remembered the time I was twelve and Bobby,
then six, got a goldfish for his birthday. One morning the fish had
floated to the top of the glass bowl, belly-up, lips sucking for
life, gills undulating weakly. I took it from the bowl and flushed
it down the toilet. When Bobby came in the room, I told him the
goldfish had crawled to the river during the night. Heading for
bigger water.

I wondered which sin I would pay for, the lie
or the killing of a fish.

I turned to face Gran. "I'm sorry for talking
about it," I said.

She merely nodded, too weak to argue.

"It's a test of faith," I continued. "I
suffered a moment of weakness. I promise to be strong."

"Don't make promises to me," she said. "Make
them to the One that matters."

"Please don't tell Father," I said, clasping
her hand.

She pursed her pale lips. Father came through
the curtain. The sound from the Web screen filled the kitchen as he
held the curtain open. The army was singing a hymn. Even though I
couldn't see his mouth, I knew Father was moving his lips to the
rhythm. His eyes were moist, fogging his goggles.

"Sing," he shouted, the mask vibrating from
the force of his voice. "Sing that we may find salvation."

Gran joined in with her thin and sweet alto.
"...I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind..."

I added my voice to the multitudes. "...but
now I see."

Father removed his mask, his face wet with
tears. The candle's flame bobbed and swayed with our breathing.
Beautiful music flooded the house, overpowering the silence of
corpses and drowning out the rumble of the army truck rolling down
the street. We soared into the second verse, a family united, a
nation united, all under God. Father rubbed at his cheek. The first
reddening had appeared there, the sores a day or two away.

We sang the hymn, and half a dozen more.
Father went back to the Web screen and his Bible, the bottle of
wine open on the table beside him. Gran hobbled down the hall to
pray over the two bodies, then I heard the door close as she went
to bed. I filled my pockets with canned meat, cheese, and
crackers.

That night we went through the window. As I
pushed the boards away, I wondered if a saint could come disguised
as a soldier or if an angel might carry a claw hammer. The Lord
worked in mysterious ways.

Gran may have heard the noise, may have been
awake in the darkness mouthing her prayers. But she said nothing.
Or perhaps she was already dead, growing stiff as her fluids leaked
into the mattress.

Bobby was heavy, but no heavier than a wooden
cross. He would slow me down, make me an easier target for the
soldiers. But my blood is certainly no more precious than that of
Him who had gone before.

I headed north, toward the mountains. Sinners
have little to lose. We can't run from the Penance. But the sinless
surely deserve to rest in peace. Bobby will sleep in a blue heaven,
where the dust of his flesh shall mingle with the clouds.

And this I pray.

###

SCARECROW BOY

The sun raised a sleepy eye over the north
Georgia hills. Short-leafed pines shivered here and there in the
breeze, surrounded by the black bones of oak. Ground mist rose and
waltzed away from the light. A stream cut a silver gash in the
belly of the valley on its way to the Chattahoochee, the only thing
in a hurry on the late-autumn morning. Inside a warped barn, the
scarecrow boy rose from its dreams of brown fields and
barbwire.

Jerp rubbed his eyes to wipe away the glare
of dawn as he walked with his grandpa to the barn. The grass
crunched under his boots and his breath painted the thick vapor in
the air. A banty rooster bugled a reveille. Wrens fluttered from
under the tin eaves of the barn, on their way to scratch earthworms
from the hard ground. The sky was ribbed with clouds, a thin threat
of snow.

Jerp glanced at the second-story windows of
the barn. No scarecrow boy yet. But Jerp knew it was in there
somewhere, flitting between cracks with a sound like dry paper
crumpling. But maybe it only came alive at night, when the darkness
kissed its moon-white face.

"Quit your daydreaming, boy. Got chores to
do." Grandpa roped a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. Steam
drifted from his spit and he shifted the bucket from one gloved
hand to the other.

Jerp wanted to tell Grandpa again about the
scarecrow boy. About how it smiled at him when he was alone in the
barn, how it danced from its nail on the wall, swinging its ragged
limbs as if caught in a December crosswind. About how Jerp got the
feeling that the scarecrow boy wanted something, a thing that only
Jerp could give it. But Grandpa would say, "Got no time for such
foolishness."

Grandpa held open the barnyard gate and
waited until Jerp followed him inside, then closed the gate as
carefully as if he were performing a ritual.

"Always close up behind you. We do things
right around here." Those were the same words he had said every
morning and night when they came down to do chores.

Grandpa passed the bucket to Jerp and removed
his gloves. Jerp watched as the big-knuckled hands slammed the hasp
into place. The noise echoed across the hill, maybe waking the
scarecrow boy.

The milk pail banged against Jerp's knee as
he followed Grandpa across the barnyard. A sow grunted under her
breath in one of the side pens, mistaking the sound for the arrival
of the slop bucket. She rolled over in the marsh of her own waste
and glared at Jerp. Jerp wasn't scared of her. He was more worried
about the scarecrow boy who would be waiting in rafters or cribs or
dark corners for Jerp to step within reach.

Jerp followed Grandpa to the front of the
barn. Its rough gray planks were split from decades of harsh
weather and ten-penny nail heads stuck out like little brown eyes.
Grandpa slid open the heavy door, which hung from wheels that
rolled across a steel track overhead. They ducked under the oily
ropes that had been dipped in chemicals and stretched across the
barn opening. The horse and cows liked to rub their backs against
the ropes and the chemicals were supposed to keep the flies away,
but the flies were like the sun, reliable and stubborn.

"Gonna be a real corker of a day, Jerp."
Grandpa crinkled his eyes, the closest he ever came to smiling.
"Maybe we can get some work done around here."

"Yes, sir," Jerp said, checking the barn
windows once more for any sign of the scarecrow boy. The windows
were empty.

The barn air smelled of hay and dust, manure
and animal hair. The cows mooed from their stalls, in a dull hurry
to be turned out. Grandpa took a three-legged stool down from the
wall and carried it to the milk cow's stall. He sat on the stool
and reached underneath the cow and began tugging up and down as if
picking fruit. Jerp held the pail so that the cow couldn't kick it
over, watching the shadows for the scarecrow boy until at last the
pail was full.

"Fetch some ears of corn for the chickens,
and I'll meet you back at the house," Grandpa said. He was going to
leave Jerp alone in the barn. No, not quite alone.