Thinking like He’d done the night after He took her, said He’d marry her, meant to marry her, but then did and didn’t. Meant to but stopped. Something had frightened Him in that ghostly flesh. Disgusted Him, maybe. He’d meant to get her up and send for a witness and her Pa to make it official. He had already spoken to his third and favored wife about her, and the quiet threat she clearly was, and his plan to subdue her and make her a regular wife. But then he hadn’t and that very night after he’d let her walk out the door—that night he had wavered, had let her walk out, had kicked at her undergarments until He finally bent down, picked them up, and put them in His pocket, that night when his third wife lay asleep unworried beside Him —He deigned to speak to God.
He reminded God that He had meant to kill her when He became Prophet. He remembered aloud to the darkness and me that when she was born with a blue twisted limb they tried to straighten it by binding it to a board, but it would not take, and her Pa had looked to His father, then Prophet, and His father had said, Let this child be and then He had known that His father was too weak. He knew, He told God, that they hadn’t built a Great Peoples in the desert by being weak, by allowing this clear sign of witchery to thrive just because it was attached to a baby girl. He had vowed He would cut her down and when He came to power He watched her. Watched her for five years. He was not surprised when she became beautiful, a creature of the Devil would embody temptation, but He was surprised how much harder He found it to hear God on the subject of her. He asked God, why didn’t I hear you? I did not hear you tell me to kill her. And He knew He had to be sure on that point, to kill a young woman was different than a babe. So He just watched her and in fact didn’t hear God at all on this (Why?) until He had the dream when He was doing to her exactly as He did that day in His parlor and so had woken up that very morning and had sent for her Pa to speak to him about it and then later that day, the dream image so fresh to Him, had sent his son to fetch her, and readied Himself for a new wife as He always did. I had watched Him clipping all the hair on His body, even in His nose and ears, and He told God in the darkness how He had felt completely sure even as He entered into her. Felt sure until He stood up and saw the leg there before Him, saw closer than ever before what He had not dealt with. His own weakness. He gaped and saw that weakness grow only stronger as she walked out the door. Now that He remembered, He told God, He could have sworn she did not limp as she left. He had thought He would conquer the Devil in her leg by bringing her into His house, thought the dream would answer itself, but instead he knew it was the Devil that had spoken in dream, not God, knew by the look in her eye.
He had lost.
So that night after she came back to House, He tried to speak again to God. He tried to ask His forgiveness. He asked God for a plan. He knew he could send for her, He knew it was careless to do what He had done and to not bring her into His house. She had a father after all and her father, along with that Josiah, were not entirely without power. If He did, He could keep her close, He wouldn’t have to touch her again, it would mean she would be there, among his most pious, and He could tell the Devil to submit daily. Now with His third wife snoring behind him, used to these conversations as she was, He asked for confirmation from the whitewashed ceiling above His head, from the moonless night outside the window.
Was God silent on this subject? What was the later dream of the orange mountains? Did I whisper, Let her go, Let her be? Did He also feel to wash Himself the next time He saw her at House, after He watched her limp away from Him? Him on His pulpit, wavering ever so briefly in the world of words He lived and heard and spoke for God, wavering so that His people looked up from their folded hands in brief surprise.
Jeremiah
She wanted him until she sometimes didn’t. He didn’t remember the first time, or if he thought anything of it. But when it started to be a few days, a few days that he would show up, drink his Diet Coke, go downstairs and get a “I’m trying to read,” or “Not, now, Jer, Jesus, not now,” he noticed. He would back away a little, play with the small troll figures on her shelf, but it was never long before he was back, pulling her hair, trying to tickle her. Once it worked, she laughed and rolled over onto her back, and let him kiss her. But eventually she’d kick him out, say Don’t you have anyplace else to be?
Even though she knew he didn’t.
She started to change, too. Her hair, her clothes. Darker. Black fingernails. And then one day black hair, the color of raven feathers. When Jeremiah saw this that voice, that old voice spoke up inside him again. She is wicked. Still, he told her he liked it even though he didn’t.
When he went to school, less and less now that the weather was getting a little warm again, winter waning, he saw her hanging out with kids that had black hair too and didn’t say hi to him. A couple of guys in black jeans and T-shirts and piercings all over their faces. She didn’t carry her backpack with the smiley face anymore. He would see her laughing with them and then she’d see him and her smile would disappear.
But she always came over to him.
He never approached them. They looked mean. Like they wouldn’t care where he was from or who he was.
She came over to him and was kind at school. She let him put his arms around her waist and kiss her neck.
Until one day, not even that. She squirmed away.
What? He threw his arms up in the air. What’s wrong with you?
She said she needed a break, she told him not come to her house for a while.
She said this in front of the school building. She had to go back in for class. She said this and then went to hug him, and he pushed her away.
Whatever, dick. Is what she said and then she disappeared into the building. Jeremiah didn’t know if he was angry. He wanted to break something or kick something or hurt something but he wasn’t sure that it was anger behind it. Confusion maybe.
What did I do?
He told me he had a dog once, even though dogs were not abided, he said, and the dog would meet him in the creek brush and he would feed it scraps of hide and bone until the dog, who had honeycomb eyes he said, allowed him to put his hand atop his matted head and so became his.
He told me this in the dark, how the Prophet watched him one day while he cooed the dog and that the dog suddenly growled and bristled and he looked up and the Prophet was there, watching, from nowhere, like a true body to some God. That day was the closest he came to believing that that man had some kinship with the Celestial.
But the next day, he unbelieved again because he came to the soft bank where his dog would find him and instead he found his dog, throat slit, heart cut out. He put his hand atop his fur-matted head again. The honeycomb eyes were dull and blood teared down into the water, so it was as if the dying had the same sound as the creek.
He told me he wondered what He had done with the heart, he thought maybe He’d taken it back to his house, still warm and wet in His hand, heavy. He thought maybe He’d taken a knife and cut a flap of His own skin and pressed the heart in below His own ribs, under His own heart, and as he told me this in the dark he traced a line on my ribs with his finger, a stuttered line where the cut might be. He told me he thought that maybe his dog’s heart was inside the Prophet, so that He had two hearts, one beating, one still, but both listening.
Jeremiah
After Haley said she needed a break, Jeremiah left the school and walked back to the Home. The house was empty when he got there but he kicked his bedroom door closed anyway and left a caved-in spot on one of its cheap panels. He lay on his bed and thought he might cry but didn’t. He could taste the salt of crying but there were no tears. What would he cry for anyway? Slut.
He’d already lost family, home, horse. So what was she? Besides she’d be back. She just said a break. A pause. A moment. Slut. Bitch.
And why? He sat up and punched his pillow. Again, and again. For a long time he let rhythmic blows hit the pillow. It didn’t react. No feathers, nothing. Finally he gave up, put hi
s head into the well he’d punched and fell asleep.
Duke came in sometime later, it was almost dark.
Whoa, Dude, I didn’t know you were in here. Dude, what’s wrong, your face is all . . . are you okay?
Jeremiah told him: Haley said she’d needed a break. What does that even mean? He asked Duke. When girls say that?
Oh man, hold on, and Duke reached into his backpack and he pulled out a pint of Jack Daniels.
First, it means you should have some of this. He twisted open the plastic cap and handed it to him.
It burned in Jeremiah’s mouth and he had to cough a little. That’s strong, he said. Tastes like gasoline.
’Cause you’ve drank gasoline?
No, but I’ve tasted it. He’d left the gas can cap only loosely screwed on once, in the back of his father’s truck on their way back from town. They drove over a pothole and gas sloshed onto a box of peaches. They rinsed them well but some of the peaches still smelled like gas. And tasted like it. He knew because his Pa had made him eat all the spoiled ones, Lest you forget again. It took him over a week. He never ate a peach again. The sweet yellow flesh still burned his throat even the next summer.
He didn’t tell any of this to Duke, who was now saying not to worry: Girls get moody, they be one way one day, and the next day all over you like nothing happened. Just wait, you’ll see. Just leave her alone and she’ll come right back. Besides, man, you guys are like super intense. As a couple. You guys like practically live together.
Jeremiah nodded and took another drink from the bottle Duke held out. It was less hot than warm now. Medical.
Man, I’ve got something to show you. Make you forget all about her. Duke pulled his black backpack up on to the bed next to him and opened it. He pulled out a magazine and tossed it at Jeremiah. The woman on the cover had her head tossed back and her bare breasts jutted forward. She was on a beach and had nothing on, even on bottom. Her skin was the color of the butter caramels his Ma made every winter. The magazine paper was wet with shine and Jeremiah could hear the Prophet, They will profane every possible thing, the wicked, and abuse even the act of procreation in their lust for obscenity. He kept the magazine closed, but resting in his lap.
This, man, this is what I’ve been looking for. My girl. Duke pulled a bundle of dirty T-shirts out carefully, opened it, and laid the gun on his palms to show Jeremiah.
It’s a nine-mil. Always wanted one. Then suddenly this week a guy I know was looking to get rid of one. His girl got knocked up and now she’s tripping about having the gun in the apartment, so he says, and decides to sell it to me for cheap. Well, maybe not cheap. A good deal. You want to hold it?
Jeremiah nodded and Duke handed it to him. Careful, it’s loaded.
It felt heavy in his hand. Maybe not heavy. Substantial. Like Haley’s breast. But no, not at all. Just kind of filling in the same way. It felt, maybe, like the answer to a question he had never thought to ask.
He wagged his hand up and down to feel the weight of it. Shit, he said, that’s cool. He handed the gun back to Duke.
Well, man, let’s get drunk and forget that bitch of yours. Duke tucked the gun into his sagging jeans and handed him back the whiskey bottle.
It wasn’t until a couple of days later that Jeremiah and Duke tried firing the thing. They went outside on the back patio, if you could call it that, of the Home and set up some empty beer cans. It was just past dark, and you could feel the way winter was starting to lighten up, the warmth of the day lingering. They’d been drunk for almost two straight days. The other boys had been pretty much ignoring them, with Taylor joining in last night but gone back to work tonight. He told Jeremiah he’d better do the same or there’d be no job to go back to and Jeremiah had said, Fucking, Boo. Hoo. No more pizza making.
Taylor had shrugged and left. Jeremiah felt something in him wanting to feel bad, bad for not working, bad for not doing better at a job Taylor had gotten him but it didn’t quite get there, this bad feeling. And he forgot all about it when Duke suggested they try out Cinderella.
That’s what Duke had named it, Cinderella. A rags-to-riches thing, he said but Jeremiah didn’t know that story. Duke had been keeping it under his pillow at night in their room the past two nights and it seemed to Jeremiah like some sort of pulsing heart. He felt that everything in the room that one couldn’t see seemed to tilt toward the small black shape, and Jeremiah always knew, even when he wasn’t thinking about it, he was always aware of where it was. It reminded him a little of a story his grandfather had told him long ago. About a golden arm. The arm was buried with its owner, a woman, and then dug up by a poor man and taken home to his dark cabin where it shone, Jeremiah had imagined, like a small fire until the dead woman came looking for it. The kind of thing no one could really own. It always being part of another world, and that other world was always going to come looking for it, and maybe take you too.
But they set up beer cans on a turned-over garbage can and a few on sticks about twenty feet away. Jeremiah had shot with Pa maybe three times, but Duke never had.
Duke fired first, and Jeremiah couldn’t believe how loud it was. With his Pa, they’d had bits of cotton in their ears.
Three quick shots. Duke kicked over a half-broken lawn chair after his third miss. I thought this was supposed to be fucking easier. He handed Jeremiah the gun, and shook his hand out. Thing kinda fucking hurts, Duke said.
Jeremiah held it and felt all that other, unseen world tilt toward him. This thing, its pulsing energy, reminded Jeremiah of the way the Prophet was to Redfield, you always knew where he was, could feel it. Wonder if this is how he feels. He held it up, letting the black extend his reach, he took a breath. A streetlight had come on behind him. He looked into the shadows of the scrap of yard just beyond the patio toward the cans stuck on sticks like marshmallows. He looked down the length of his arm, of the gun, like he was looking down the long road at home and for just a flicker he saw it.
Like a channel had changed and then changed back, he saw flash an image: The red road, Emma in a blue dress, a large belly, she turned to him and his breath drew sharp, a weight in his chest.
He fired.
Dude, that wasn’t even close.
No, Jeremiah said. And he handed Duke the gun, looking at the small and lilting beer cans, the absence of the road. In the dark yard, a lit square where he’d seen the light of that other world still wavered on his retinas.
Not much later Duke finally hit a can and then Jeremiah hit one and was celebrating with the same little dance he’d watched Duke do when he turned and saw Jimmy standing in the back door. Arms folded.
I could kill you right now, motherfucker, just a simple point. Click. Pow.
He let the gun fall at his side.
Put that away and come inside. Now. Jimmy’s voice was gravelly. He turned and went inside.
Jeremiah looked at Duke, who nodded. Jeremiah handed him the gun and Duke put it in his pants, pulling his T-shirt over it.
Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen table, hands clasped in front of him. Cool. Sober.
Jeremiah didn’t sit but stood. You love this, love being the boss.
There’s no weapons allowed in this house, Jimmy said, and he pointed to a laminated poster taped to the kitchen wall behind him. “Rules for a Safe Space” it read in bright green marker. Right under No Drinking or Smoking and No Roughhousing was No Weapons.
You’ve broken the rules twice now, he said to Jeremiah. I’d say third strike you’re out, but I think we are past that. Jimmy stood up. I’ll be back next week. I better not see you.
He turned to Duke. You should know better. Get rid of that thing.
Jeremiah wanted to punch him. Grab him. Choke him. Wanted to yell, what about no fucking sicko touching? What about that fucking safe space? But he let the message travel from his brain to his mouth and muscles and then just sit there, echoing, twitching. His Pa would say: he’s not worth it.
But worth what? What do I have to lo
se? And it is worth it sometimes, isn’t it? To have the last word? When someone is really wicked? Isn’t that the least you can do?
Duke put his hand on his shoulder after Jimmy walked out of the room. They heard the front door close.
Come on, man, Jimmy will chill, he knows what we got on him. Ain’t nobody kicking nobody out. Not on my watch, and he lifted up his shirt to show the gun and grinned. Yeah, bitches, and he held up a hand for Jeremiah to slap. Am I right?
Yeah. Jeremiah nodded and hit Duke’s hand; Duke clasped it and pulled him so that their chests were touching. That’s my brother!
And it felt good, briefly. Even though he knew he would leave, it felt good to hear someone call him something besides his name.
Manti
Murder. Blood. Fire. These are the words I know, words I know, words I know are bad in my head all the time now like fruckin birds flyin round.
It’s the Devil, my bitch mother say when she hears me when I don’t even know I talkin out loud but it ain’t, it ain’t, it ain’t.
It’s since the Prophet came to our house to do what he did when I wasn’t there, except I was there. It’s since then my heart burned until it made birds of fury and they cracked their shells in my chest and then my anger taught them how to fly. Then they flew up, up to my brain when I was sleepin and built a nest in my brain for me and my Daddy to see.
God Damn. Damn God. I hate God. Fruck him. Stops the bounce, kills my father, makes my mother’s heart clay as corpse. And now she is seein a bloody girl. A ghost. It’s the Devil, she says now.
Strange Children Page 14