Bright's Passage: A Novel (7 page)

They ate the last kid in late February, when the world was at its coldest, and by early March he had butchered the billy. By then they had both developed a rank distaste for goat meat, and this last sacrifice to their hunger and the hunger of the unborn child was the worst. When he cooked it, the room had filled with gamy, clinging steam.

She milked the she-goat every day, though, and somehow, slowly, the world began to get warmer and the slant of the sun began to find their faces when they would leave the cabin and tramp through the melting snow to the hutch where he had resettled the chickens. The horse was moved back from the side of the cabin to its customary spot under the chestnut tree. The she-goat began to get fat again, and Bright suspected that she came down off her perch on top of the hen hutch in the night and foraged, when she could be sure that he would not come out and slaughter her as he had the rest of her family.

By May, his wife’s belly was big and they were happy. At night he would hold her close and she would tell him wild stories that came from her own mind. She never talked about her father and brothers. It was as if since her rescue they had ceased to exist for her, and if that was so he saw no need to remind her of them or of the awful threats the old man had made
as they turned their backs on him and rode away together. Sometimes he would tell her about the War, but when he did it was always about little things: the finding, once, of a lemon, or the unlikely discovery of a bottle of clear liquor standing untouched in an exploded bar, the thick white towels at the hotel where he had stayed in Paris during his leave from the front. He never told her about the church or the angel or Bert, and if he ever got too close to those things, he would stop mid-sentence. She, sensing something in him, would help him to steer his stories until the tension in his voice was gone and the pounding in his chest had slowed.

“And where were you then?”

“In Saint-Mihiel.”

“That’s a pretty name. San Maheel.”

“Yeah. In a graveyard.”

“In a graveyard? You were in a graveyard?”

“Yeah. And we were all on our hands and knees, and the one guy next to me, Ezra, he froze because he saw a gravestone with his last name on it.”

“Really? What was his last name?” Her fingertips stroked at the thin hair on his chest.

“I don’t remember what it was. Ezra Something-or-Other. He saw it and he just froze there, and all the rest of us, we crawled on and didn’t see him. Then someone noticed he was gone so I went back to find him and he was still there, down on all fours, staring at that gravestone like it was telling him something he didn’t want to forget.” Bright looked up into the ceiling rafters. “I said ‘Hey, Ezra, hey, hey,’ but he wasn’t listening to me, he was listening to the stone, so I reached over and I grabbed him and hauled him around in front of me so that I could get him going. After a bit I got him moving again. He was real young, younger than me. So we were crawling around the stones to join the others when a shell landed right next to me. It
shattered another gravestone and there was rock everywhere. I got some in my eyes and I was coughing on dust and for a second I thought that I was dead, but the shell didn’t explode.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was—” He broke off and she waited for him to continue. When he didn’t, she helped him finish the story.

“It was because God saw you helping that man and he said, ‘Hmm! I like that boy Henry! I’m gonna keep him safe.’ ” She laughed quietly and held him and kept laughing to herself until she fell asleep. It was a playful laugh that bubbled up around them like a spring of freshwater. Sometimes he thought it was actually the child laughing inside her. He would fall asleep to that music, and some nights he would escape his dreams.

He saw the horse caroming wildly about the small chamber as he rounded the final curve of the steeple staircase. Whoever had led the animal up these perilous spiral steps had finished cruelly by tying its tail to one of the ropes that rang the bells above. He stood still in the entrance of the room and allowed the horse to see him. More boots were coming up the stairs behind him. He waved a hand behind his back and the footsteps halted. The whites of the horse’s eyes sliced at the air fearfully, its mouth was specked with foam at the corners. Bright stayed at the edge of the room and did not move, and eventually the animal began to quiet. It stamped uncertainly in a pile of dung, but its huffing slowed and it focused on him, watching for what he was going to do.

Bright moved slowly across the room toward it until he was close enough to reach out and rest his palm on the animal’s twitching flank. The bells above had fallen silent as it had stopped moving and the rope tied to its tail slackened. The horse whinnied a few times, but Bright kept his hand where it was, and when he judged it finally calm enough, he ran his palm down the length of the shivering body until he was holding the slack of the belfry rope in his hand. He slipped the rifle
off his shoulder and, holding it by the stock, sawed through the rope.

Above them in the belfry, the bells jangled loudly at their sudden release from the horse’s tail. Hearing the dreaded things unexpectedly once more, the animal spooked clattering across the stone floor and hurtling in headlong panic past the men pressed against the staircase walls. From below them came a frantic whinny followed by a single shot as the horse reached the sanctuary.

Bert stood at the bottom of the stairs, the officer’s pistol dangling loosely in his hand. The horse lay a few feet away, nearly dead, its tongue tasting the dusty marble of the floor, its eyes watching the heavens painted above them.

They all stood around it dumbly until Sergeant Carlson stepped forward and shot the horse in the head. The animal lay still. He looked down at it, rasping a hand across his face. “Well,” he said, raising his eyes and looking around him at the others, “we’re not leaving a dead horse in a church.” He removed his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. There were the beginnings of a smile at the edges of his mouth. “Anyone see anyplace to get a drink in this town?” he asked. Then the smile disappeared and he stepped back to survey the problem of the dead horse. “I’m buying for anybody who’s ever moved a dead horse before.” Bert was still standing by the door, the gun swinging slightly back and forth like a pendulum.

“Bert,” he said, but Bert’s eyes were far off beneath his yellow hair, as if he were looking at reflections in the pooling blood there on the checkered slabs.

“Bert!” Carlson stepped between the boy and the dead horse. “If I
ever
see that Kraut gun of yours again, I’m going to kick your teeth in.”

It took ten of them to push and drag the horse by its legs and neck across the blood-slicked marble floor. Finally they got it
down the nave and from there pulled it bruisingly down the steps and out under the full ominous weight of the afternoon sky. Then there was nowhere else to drag it, and so they all straightened and looked around at one another and then around at the shattered village, unsure of what to do next.

Bright took off his helmet and walked back up the steps and into the church for a last look at the girl on the ceiling, but the light through the transept windows had begun to fade and he had to squint now to read her features. Then, hearing the sergeant call his name, he turned and walked out past the immense wooden doors to rejoin the company. He had just replaced his helmet when the air above them screamed and the church exploded.

Back in the sunlight, a sack of rag diapers in his arms, a new box of matches in his pocket, and his son clean and dry in the sling on his chest, Bright watched the girl named Margaret as she glided down the street above her throng of children.

“The Future King of Heaven needs that woman, Henry Bright.”

Bright said nothing, tying the bundle of diapers to the saddle pommel, where they would hang next to the bucket of goat’s milk.

“The Future King of Heaven needs a mother,” the angel said again.

He untied the goat and then swung the animals around in the direction from which they’d come into town.

“She will suckle your child. Your son needs a mother or he will die. He will starve.”

“He ain’t gonna starve. I been feeding him, haven’t I?”

“Your child cannot live long on goat milk. See how skinny he is. How slight.”

Bright ignored the angel and began to lead the party up Main Street. Off in the distance the smoke from the fire painted the sky a sulfurous gray. The wind picked up, its hot tail whipping against their faces as it sucked past them.

“Bithiah,” the angel began.

“You’re talking nonsense and I don’t want to hear it,” Bright said as he watched the darkly spreading wings to the west. “Did you see that car? A girl like that, and all them kids dressed up so pretty, ribbons in their hair? Did you see her?” He coughed. “What would a girl like that need with my boy and me?”

“Bithiah,” the angel continued, “was the daughter of the Pharaoh. She found a baby boy floating in a basket of reeds and she raised him as her own. This child was the prophet Moses. He grew up to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt.”

“I know all that,” Bright said. “My mother read that to me all the time when I was little.”

“The Pharaoh’s daughter was named Bithiah,” the angel said again.

Bright pulled the animal up short. The goat continued on until it reached the end of its lead and came to a stop in the middle of the road. “I said I know all that,” he said, exasperated.

“Her name is there in the Bible. Bithiah. You could look it up.”

Bright scuffed the macadam with the sole of his boot and turned to look back down the street. Margaret was ushering the children into the big black auto. “Now you’re just trying to make me mad,” he said. “You know that it
ain’t
her name we’re arguing about. And,” he added, “I
couldn’t
look up her name if I wanted to, because you made me go and tear up the Bible to start the fire, remember?” He leaned toward the horse, waving his arm toward the wall of smoke. “Maybe you don’t remember this, but my wife
just
died! Rachel? The one you liked so much? The one who gave you apples and corn?” His eyes were watering, and he spit to clear the catch from his voice. “You told me she was gonna be safe!” He gave the lead a jerk and got the animal moving again. It plodded stubbornly along behind him.

“The girl’s many children need a father, Henry Bright.
When she approaches, you will tell her of the Future King of Heaven. The words will be put into your mouth.”

Bright turned and saw the big black auto rolling slowly toward them on its way down the street. The car stopped a few yards away and waited for Bright and his animals to move out of its path.

“Do it now,” the angel commanded. “The child must be fed. He must be taken in by a woman and cared for. He will surely die otherwise …”

For a moment the horse looked down its nose at the driver and the driver looked across the leather steering wheel and back at the horse. Bright wavered and then left his animals blocking the road and went to bend down level with Margaret’s face in the back passenger window.

“I mean to say thank you for your treating Henry so good back there in the store.”

The children were up on their knees in the wide backseat, giggling at the funny-looking horse and goat in the middle of the street.

She smiled. “Are you going to name him Henry?”

“I guess I am.” She squinted at him against the sunlight, his mouth hanging part ways open as he waited for the words the angel had promised would be given to him. Then he closed it and turned to glare at the horse, but the animal seemed oblivious to his discomfort and continued staring down its nose at the car and its driver.

“Henry needs a mother,” Bright said. “He … He’s … an important child,” he said. “He’s to be important. I think.”

He paused painfully again, and waited for any kind of help at all from the angel. “I’m a good man,” he said. “Your children need a father.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger and closed his eyes briefly in tribute to his own frustration.
“I mean,” he said, opening them again and speaking more slowly, “I believe … that you and I … that maybe you and I could …” When the words didn’t come he thrust a hand into his pocket, pulling out his mother’s ancient ivory comb. He offered it to the girl through the car’s window. “I’m sorry if this don’t make much sense. My wife died two days ago.”

Margaret turned in her seat to look at the children. They were watching the strange man and his animals in rapt fascination, as if a single sound might break the magic spell of their presence there in the middle of the road. The wind peppered stray bits of grit against Bright’s face, and the goat began to snuff her nose at some message in the air. The lights in the girl’s eyes did not dim but became sadder somehow. She looked at the comb in his outstretched hand and then gently placed her fingertips against his palm and pushed it back at him. “I’m sorry she died,” Margaret said. She reached her hand through the window and brushed it against the child’s copper-colored head in its sling. She smiled at him, a beautiful smile, like a dream in passing. Then the driver backed up and swung around them, leaving Henry Bright and his livestock to stand dumb, dirty, and still in the rising heat of the afternoon.

The concussive shock of the first shell hitting the church was the only one Bright actually felt. After that came the now-familiar feeling of capsized calm in which the world seemed viewed from beneath a great depth of water. It was as if all sound and feeling were gone suddenly, and, within that watery silence, death was not something hurtled from above but more like a meadow of wildflowers that blossomed from the ground in radii of plaster, mud, and dust, swallowing buildings and bodies, chewing them in the air a while and then spitting them back out upon the trammeled ground like the ends of gnawed bones. When the flowers finally stopped blossoming, the earth lay back down again and the senses returned.