Engines of the Broken World (6 page)

The ground in the barn was packed down hard, which we expected, but it was also nearly frozen with the cold, which we hadn’t expected. But then, we hadn’t thought it would get so very chilly in the barn. For all that he jumped onto the shovel with his weight, and pushed and thrust and gave it his best, the ground would barely crack for Gospel. It was obvious after a few minutes that we couldn’t bury Mama here, any more than we could outside.

“Told you we shouldn’t have even bothered,” Gospel said, tossing down the shovel fifteen minutes later, when it was obvious even to the Minister that it wasn’t going to work.

“We had to try, Gospel, for your mama’s sake. But I guess you’re right, it won’t happen, and we got to take her back to the house and settle her in there.”

And we did, Gospel and I managing the body again, though he was tired and sore and I was chilled right through and the Minister seemed desperate upset, which isn’t something a body should be able to tell about such a thing.

“Can we do something with her, instead of setting her under the table again?” I asked as we came through the door.

“I don’t know, child. I recall that, once, bodies were laid out actually on the table, and anything less would be awful disrespectful,” the Widow said.

“But right here, where we live and eat and all? I don’t think I could take that, Miz Cally.”

“No, and we shouldn’t have to, neither,” Gospel said. “Let’s set her in the cellar. She’ll keep there as well as anyplace, and not be there for tripping over or…” My brother didn’t say or what, but I think he was as disturbed as I was about having Mama sitting out in the open, though probably not for the same reason.

Strange enough, the Minister didn’t say a word against it, though it didn’t say anything for it either, but in the end we carried her down the stairs, straining at the job and gasping for breath when we were done. Gospel grabbed up a stack of firewood while we were down there, and we shut up the cellar behind us and each took a seat, chatting for a time before we saw the Widow on her way. By that time the chicken was clucking a little, and I was more content than I had been in a day, and still outside the snow was falling, and the cold was growing, and maybe the fog was closing in, but for a bit, I just didn’t care a whit for all that.

S
IX

Gospel hadn
’
t taken off his coat and hat or any of that, though he did have another cup of hot tea, and then he announced that he was going out to try to find Jenny Gone.

“What in tarnation are you doing that for? She’s hours away without the snow, and you might not make it back here before dark.”

He shrugged. “The fog, Merce. The fog might’ve got to her by now, and if it hasn’t, I want to get her out. If it has, I want to know. Either way, it’s worth it, unless you just want me to leave her out there.” He had leaned in real close to whisper to me, and the Minister was back again on Papa’s chair, so maybe it hadn’t heard what Gospel said.

Of course I didn’t want to leave Jenny out in the wilds dying by her lonesome. I still only half believed him, that there was this cold fog rolling in over the hills and the mountains and the plains and over everything, but it had gone on a bit long for a joke. I didn’t think he would try this hard to trick me, not with Mama just dead, even if he maybe hated me. So I told him to be careful and tried to sound like I meant well and surprised myself because I did. He gave me a look that I couldn’t quite place. The Minister when we called it said a prayer over him, that he should come back safe in the protective grip of the Lord God and all that sort of thing, and a pretty good prayer it was. A moment later, in a whirl of snow because the wind had picked up something fierce, he was gone.

The instant he was out the door, I took up the heavy chair that the Widow had sat in and dropped it down on the hatch to the cellar. The Minister looked on but didn’t say anything, didn’t really react except to watch, and I remembered how terrified it had seemed for just that instant when it scrambled into the bedroom last night.

“Have you seen her?” I asked.

It turned yellow eyes up to me but said nothing at all.

“Fine, don’t answer. But I think you know something’s going on, and that’s more than I can say about Gospel, him who thinks he notices a lot out in the woods and can’t even see things in his own house. Just don’t move that chair, all right?” I said. I thought it couldn’t do anything like that anyways, but you never did know.

I pressed down on the chair as if to give it more weight, and then took up the coat I had set off for a spell and went into the sitting room. It wasn’t as cold as outside, that was for certain sure, but it was plenty chilly enough, and I was glad to have the coat. I wanted to be about something useful, and on the loom was a rug Mama’d worked on when she was in a good patch. I’d worked on it the rest of the time, and I thought it would be nice on the floor with the cold like it was, and it was almost finished besides. So I set to the task, not as good as I wished to be, but practice could only improve me, and it at least let me not think for a time about anything but the movement of threads and the clacking of the shuttle. Other than that there was just the sometimes fierce wind outside, and once or twice a pop from the fire in the stove, and nothing else to bother me for who knows how long, since the light never seemed to change and the room stayed cold and Gospel wasn’t come back yet.

For a time there was a sound that I didn’t even react to, not at first, and then all of the sudden I knew what it was and my hands clenched on the loom’s frame and I stopped breathing. For I knew that noise well, knew it and had once loved it, but now it was nothing but dread. It was the sound, soft and creaky, of the rocker in the bedroom rocking away, slowly and regularly, and I had been so used to it as a girl and now, too, that I hadn’t barely heard it. Even in her worst days, Mama would take to that chair for a time, and sit a spell rocking, and it made her more calm and biddable for a while so that we could sometimes get her to bed when she was otherwise antsy and fretful. For a minute I thought maybe it was the Minister, what set itself there at times, but then I recalled that the Minister couldn’t really make the chair rock, not more than a back and forth when it jumped up, and this rocking was going on, slow and steady, like a body was in the chair. Just like a body was moving it.

And then I heard her singing. “
And if that mockingbird don’t sing, Mama’s gonna find you a diamond ring
.”

I turned my head and looked over at the kitchen, where I hoped the Minister would be rising up, coming out to find me, protect me, drive away whatever it was, but if the made thing heard anything at all, it truly didn’t want to face it and was staying put.

“
And if that diamond ring don’t shine, Mama’s gonna see about a mist so fine
.”

I moaned for terror, because the voice was just what it should be, but the words, oh, the words. It wasn’t just that they were the wrong words, that they were so dreadfully possibly true, but that she sung them just as if she were singing a lullaby still, and I couldn’t hardly breathe for a horror that stirred my stomach and made me want to run away.

“
And if that mist should cloak the land, Mama’s gonna put out a helping hand
.”

“Shut up!” I screamed suddenly, throwing myself from the loom’s stool toward the bedroom door and into the room, and there was the chair, rocking softly back and forth with no one in it, and the fire poked up to a merry glow when I knew it had been low and soft since morning. The bed was turned back just as if it were ready for someone to climb into it. I didn’t see any sign that she was there, but still it seemed like the song hung in the air, that I heard her voice singing when it wasn’t.

The Minister loped into the room, sniffing with its black, wet nose and stopping, in a moment, at the chair. For just an instant I blinked at it, because it looked so strange right then: big and brown with too-large paws and dangly ears. That was the way it had always looked, but there was something about it, about the Minister, that felt different. It looked back at me with soft eyes and whined a little, and I knew what was wrong. It was as terrified as I was, though I didn’t know why it would be, a made thing that didn’t feel like a person and was supposed to comfort and protect us, anyway. But I went over and knelt beside it and scratched it along the flank, and it licked me just as you would think it should, if it were really the dog it looked like. For as long as I could remember it had been big and strong and loyal, warm and furry and comforting, and I wanted to stay leaning against it for a long spell, but I needed to be sure, I needed to go and look. And my courage, such a little thing as it was, wouldn’t last for long. I needed to go right away, before I curled up with the Minister and didn’t move again until Gospel came back to laugh at me, or the fog closed in on us all.

So with my hand on the Minister’s head, and it pacing along beside me radiating strength and warmth, I walked across the cold floor of the sitting room, and into the warmer kitchen, where the hen was pecking around as if there were somehow food on the floor. The big chair was still sitting on top of the cellar door and nothing had been moved out of place, and I felt a mix of happy and confused and scared because it didn’t make any sense, and I looked down at the Minister with its tongue hanging a little out.

“Are there ghosts?” I asked it, really softly.

“The dead go to Heaven,” the Minister said, which was true but didn’t answer the question. Its voice was softer than you would think from such a thing as it was, and not just because it was trying to be quiet, like me.

“But do they ever come back?”

It whined, the Minister who was supposed to protect me and steer me from evil, and I wanted to cry because I felt so lost and alone. I knelt down right then and started to pray to the Good Lord to bring Gospel back lickety-split and to keep me safe and to hold Mama close to Him, so that she couldn’t come down and sing to me any longer, couldn’t move around, couldn’t … I don’t know what all. And the Minister gave me an Amen at the end, and I realized I had breathed out my prayers loud enough to be heard, but that, I supposed, didn’t much matter right then.

I didn’t want to be in the kitchen, and I didn’t want to sit back at the loom and maybe find myself hearing the song again, so I went into the bedroom, where even if there’d be a bit of awfulness, at least I was far from the worst of it. The Minister paced beside me, tossing a look behind us over its shoulder that made me even more nervous. I climbed onto the big bed and curled up with the covers pulled over me. The Minister flopped down just beside me, next to the hearth, where the fire was still stirred up. I was feeling so fretful and fearful that I thought I’d lie there, eyes open, for hours, but instead, I was dead asleep in minutes.

S
EVEN

There were voices talking but I couldn
’
t make out the words, and for a moment in my slumberous state I thought it was Mama and Papa, which caused me to jolt awake all at once and then realize it was just Gospel and a voice I recognized right quick as Jenny Gone, talking in the other room. They weren’t very loud, and I wondered how I had woken up, but then I thought about what was in the cellar and I knew. I was scared right through, and I didn’t think I’d ever sleep very deep again, whatever came.

It was barely light outside, the bit of the end of the day when it got all dim and special, only with snow falling it was just almost dark and nothing pretty about it. I rubbed at my eyes and then got up out of bed still in my coat and all. The Minister looked up at me from by the hearth and then dropped its head back down, but I could tell it was listening close like always. I paid it no mind and walked out to say how do you do to the company. It wasn’t quite what I expected, though. Gospel was sitting in Papa’s chair, layers piled up around him, looking almost the same as when he had left but for being more pale, like he was a little scared. It was Jenny that was wrong, or different at least, in that part of her wasn’t there at all. She didn’t have her left arm, and maybe not her shoulder, either; though it was hard to tell because she was all bundled up too. But there was definitely no arm, and there was something wrong with that side of her face, too, which was turned mostly right at the bedroom. They both looked at me as I came in, and I could see what it was that was wrong—she didn’t have an ear, though her hair was tucked down over where it should’ve been. I tried to not stare.

“What happened to your arm?” I blurted out before the sensible part of me could even say a hello.

“And good evening to you, too, Merciful Truth. So glad to be here,” Jenny said. Her voice was tart and mean, like she was most times, when she wasn’t just out of sorts. She’d got a touch of what Mama had, a bit of wandering eyes and mutters, but not all the time and not so bad when it came on her. It made her right cranky, which was why after the Widow Cally’s son died she took herself away. Not that she didn’t like people, because she was social as anybody else, but they didn’t often like her for long, not even those of us who were used to her. The last time a tinker come through, six years ago, she had cursed him up one side and down the other before he was gone. For a long while we all blamed her for no one else coming, before we realized there maybe just wasn’t anyone left to come our way.

“Sorry, Jenny. Hello and how do you do, I see Gospel already set you up with some tea, now what in the name of Heaven happened to your arm?” I plopped down on the bearskin rug as I finished, looking at her with a smile that I hoped didn’t show how fretful I was about the matter.

It was Gospel who spoke, and he didn’t even answer me. “I found her partway up the mountain. She was already coming down, and guess what? The fog was coming down behind her. Not that I could see it, but that’s why she left her place.”

“You saw the fog?”

Jenny nodded. “Saw it, went into it, and came out with a little less, if you get my meaning.”

I breathed out slowly with terror and awe. Jenny Gone exploring the fog and losing her arm. “How come you’re still alive, then?” It was a stupid question, but I couldn’t help myself.