Ashes (34 page)

She shivered again, either from nostalgia or fever. "I'd say, 'It's a magic fire.' And the next day, frost would be thick on the trees and grass and creek stones. We would put on our mittens and go walk in the woods, the leaves like a crisp carpet under our feet. Our breath made clouds in front of our faces." She glanced at the curtain that hung over the entry. "He believed in magic, back then."

"Blue heaven," I said, trying to make her forget her pain. Gran used to say, "When I die, Lord, take me back to blue heaven."

"Looks like He'll be taking me there soon."

"Do you want to go?" I asked.

Her eyes narrowed and her mouth collapsed into creases. "Only the Lord knows the proper hour."

I felt for her hand. Her skin was like damp tree bark. "No. I mean, do you want to go now?"

"Don't tease an old woman," she said.

I leaned over the table and lowered my voice, even though Father was in the warm cocoon spun by the Web screen and alcohol. "I found a way out."

She looked at me, her eyes cold, dead of hope. "No. I heard the hammers and nails. The soldiers buried us. In here with the Penance."

The Penance had started in the cities,
New York
,
Los Angeles
,
Miami
. We watched on the news, the videos of hospitals and people in ambulances and doctors trying to explain the Penance away. Father would shake his head and say that the sinners had brought God's wrath. When the army closed off the roads leading from
Charlotte
, my parents shared a prayer of thanks that we had been spared.

But the Penance didn't stop among the highrise buildings, and barbed wire and barricades couldn't hold it back. It reached the foothills where we lived, just as surely as it stormed the beaches and jetted across the oceans. And the army chased it, growing in might along with the Penance, two great careening forces. They both came to Barkersville and hemmed us in.

In the beginning, it was only one house. Megan, from my eleventh grade class, came to school one day with the sores on her face. The school officials sent her home. After school, as I walked down her street on the way to our house, the trucks pulled up. Soldiers in gas masks got out, carrying guns, boards, ladders, and tool belts. They nailed the doors and windows shut, then added a layer of plywood over the boards. Megan's father tried to fight them off, but they hit him with the butts of their rifles and pushed him back inside. Megan screamed as they boarded her window.

I heard her screams every day, even when I crossed to the other side of the street. On the fourth morning, I tried a new route to school, one that took me well out of my way. On those other streets, more than half the houses were boarded up, an "X" spray-painted in red on each barred door. A thin dog rooted in the garbage that covered the sidewalk. The few people that were out looked at me warily, and moved away as I passed their yards.

I ran the rest of the way to school, anxious at being late. Soldiers covered the playgrounds, their shouts the only sound in a place once filled by games and laughter. They were sealing off the building, chaining the doors closed. I hid in the trees and watched as students tried to escape from the upper windows. The soldiers climbed their ladders and hit the kids with hammers. I went home, my stomach aching, my hands trembling.

The next day, Mother came home, her face in her hands. She was a doctor, and we thought she was crying over the misery she witnessed as the Penance devastated her patients. Prayers hadn't helped them. Neither had medicine.

  Father pulled her hands apart.  She had sores on her face. Father slapped her. "Wicked whore," he said. "You have brought the pestilence among us."

She was packing her clothes when soldiers rolled their trucks into our yard. Father had called them, hoping they would take her away and spare the rest of the family. After all, why should we suffer for her sins?

The soldiers grunted from behind their masks. Father held his arms wide in welcome. He was a big disciple of the Commander-in-Chief by that time. The army was doing God's holy work, only following orders, he said.

They drove their nails even as Father cursed them. He pounded on the door that had been slammed in his face. He kicked at the wood that surrounded and bound us. He picked up his Bible and slammed it against Mother's head. He fell to his knees and wept prayers.

The soldiers drove away. Gran and my younger brother Bobby hid in the bathroom until Father's rage subsided. I helped Mother to her room. She collapsed on the bed.

"I'm going to hell," she said.

"No, you're not."

"I have sinned." She shivered and grabbed my hands.

"We have all sinned," I said. "But God is merciful."

"I helped them," she said. "I worked with the scientists and I prayed for the saints."

"Just try to get some rest. I'll bring you a cold drink."

Her face was raw and red, her eyes wide. "What have I done?" she gasped to the ceiling. "What have I done to deserve this, O Lord?"

God may have forgiven her, but she never forgave herself. She died two weeks later. Then Bobby got the sores.

"What did I do wrong?" Bobby asked. He was ten years old. He was Father's favorite, everybody's favorite. Even mine. But then, he was the son, and I was only the daughter.

"Nothing," I said. "Sometimes even God makes mistakes." God would forgive me this blasphemy, because my intent was pure.

I kept him hidden from Father. By then, Father was so obsessed with the Web reports that he didn't even notice Bobby was sick. When Bobby died, I put him in the spare bedroom with Mother.

Gran stayed in the kitchen most of the time. The saints had chopped out a small hole in the kitchen window, just large enough for Gran and me to send out whispered confessions. Sometimes at night, cheese or canned foods or bottles of water would be shoved back through the opening. Some nights, the streets were filled with the noises of trucks and gunfire. On those nights, no food arrived.

One time, just as the sun was sinking and throwing its red light through the opening, I heard a scratching sound outside the wall. I thought it was a saint. I whispered, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God."

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."