Ashes (35 page)

"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.

"But what about—" Jerp knew he was going to sound like a whimpering little city boy. He gulped and finished, "What about breakfast?"

"We see to the animals first. You know that." Grandpa juddered his head as he drew up to spit again. Jerp nodded and turned, walking to the corncrib with feet as heavy as International Harvesters. He heard Grandpa teasing the sow out in the barnyard. Jerp put a trembling hand on the latch.

He turned the latch and the door creaked open. Rats and their shadows scurried for the corners, their rustling making them sound as big as bobcats. He looked under the stairs that led to the hayloft, searching the darkness for movement. At first he saw only rotted pieces of harness and a broken cross-saw blade, its teeth reddened with age. Then he saw the scarecrow sitting among the sun-bleached husks. A smile stitched itself across the faded face. The scarecrow was looking at Jerp as if one of them was a mirror, with eyes as flat as old coins.

It was the boy in the barn, the one he had tried to tell Grandpa about. The one he had seen many times from his bedroom window, through the fog his breath had made on the glass. The scarecrow boy that had swayed like a sheet on a clothesline, its skin glowing sickly in the dark loft. The scarecrow boy that had stared from the barn window as if knowing it was being watched. The scarecrow boy that looked as if it were waiting.

But it's not real
, Jerp told himself as he reached down to the grooved skin of the corn husks.
The scarecrow boy is not there if you don't see it.

Jerp tried not to look under the stairs, even though the sweat was coming now and his eyes strained toward the corners of their sockets and the sunlight wasn't pouring fast enough through the cracks between the siding planks.

Had it moved? No, it was only a pile of old crumbling rags. Rotten cloth and straw never hurt nobody, just like Grandpa had said. Even though Jerp had seen the scythe of its smile. He gathered an armful of corn to his chest and ducked back, slamming the crib door shut with his foot and elbowing the latch into place.

Jerp's heart hammered in his ears as he shucked the corn and rubbed the grains loose with his thumbs. The kernels fell like golden teeth, and the chickens gathered around his feet, pecking at the grommets of his boots. He was trying to tell himself he
hadn't
seen the boy in the barn. That the scarecrow boy
wasn't
wearing a ragged flannel shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. It
didn't
have skin as white as raw milk and eyes that glimmered with a hunger that even biscuits and hamfat gravy wouldn't ease, nor was its hair as black as a crow nor its teeth as green as stained copper. It
hadn't
sat there through the frozen night, chattering until whatever served as its bones worked themselves loose.

It had to be a straw puppet, tossed in the corner until growing season. Only weeds and fabric. Only a scarecrow. But Grandpa didn't use scarecrows.