And now I picture myself at this moment in my story as God must have seen me, in need of reminding of the light that existed outside of the body, that someday transcended flesh, and in need of reminding that if we listen, and listen hard as I know now to do, the sky is always singing in rounds.
I whispered to Emma: If you turn your mind-dirt over to where it’s dark, where you don’t often go and it smells cool and mineral, then maybe I can teach you to listen.
Listen, really.
Mary
My brother is alive and I knew this before it was told by Levi whose mouth gave news of him in Pine Mesa or before anyone said he was alive and up to bad. And I don’t believe this last part because I did not dream it but I know it’s true he is alive and have known it longest, before anyone, because I dreamt it and also because I prayed to Him, our Lord that art in Heaven that he would not be dead so that he could be saved whilst walking His Green Earth.
When I pray I do not stutter, the words are clear in my head for God to hear, without my epigene mouth to make them tremor. It sounds like this:
Father in Heaven, in the name of your Beloved Son, I speak unto you as your humble girl servant setting my faith upon your ears and also to ask for your blessing upon my brother who they say is gone, and with you, and if he is, to ask you from my small place in your brood to take care of him, and if he isn’t, take care of him too so as to keep him always and eternally within the softcloud fleece of the Lamb of God.
Amen.
This is how I know that when I get to Heaven I will not stutter. I will speak clear and I will know what has happened without having to wait until Levi bears witness to my brother, who he says has fallen from His Good graces as the Prophet tells it, but is in fact not dead, but alive, like I knew him to be from my dream. And while I know he is, alive, I also know the Prophet had his reasons for saying otherwise. He got to.
I had a dream like Lehi’s dream in the good and holy Book. Lehi had a dream and he was in the dark and dismal wilderness like our desert but he was not hot but cold and fearing of where the caverns of his own dream soul would take him and then as in a revered miracle, he saw a golden tree the color of hay and it glowed with the moon fruit of God, and he knew if he ate it he would be happy. The fruit was magic and so that it made the throat so sated one had to feel nice in the eyes and heart and spleen. You would feel all this, but first you had to get across the vast and baleful darkness, and follow an iron rod which was cold to touch when Lehi grabbed it, and he saw the other people of the path, following the rod, and you had to have the faith that the cold pole would take you to the tree and Lehi had faith and so he got there and he ate the fruit and in my own dream I got there too and the tree was bright like noon water and there was a sound of womanscream like the coyotes make but I ate the fruit and was happy and full even when I saw the people who didn’t eat the fruit because they did not want to, and they were the dog howls, swallowed in the darkness or drowned in the errant river of sin and in my dream I saw my brother standing there waiting to take a piece of fruit but not moving. He was pale with no more muscle and I thought him dead, he need not eat fruit but then he said, No, I just already done ate some, but I saw he looked hungry and not sated and so I knew he could not be truthing. And so I remembered unto him that in the dream in the Book, the brothers that don’t eat the fruit fare not well, and they are bad, bad, brothers of Laman and Lemuel and in the dream he nods like he remembers and then he walks away with triste face, and old in it too, leaving me with the sticky supernal fruit in my hand, half-eaten and unsad and so I woke sweating and thirsty for wanting a sweetness in my mouth that would be like that in the dream but then I thought.
I thought: I want no brother of mine swallowed by darkness.
I had this dream and so knew he alive and told my Ma Lizbeth and she near slap me because she said I was mixing backbrain dreams with God’s good work and she wouldn’t listen past the part of the dark and the tree, telling me not to steal old prophets’ dreams, neither, and pressed my lips shut for me with her fingers. All this until she found out that it was true, that her boy was living and then she hugged me large and asked if I remembered my dream that I told to her, and I said, Of course, and she said, the Lord doth truly guide us and then she let me have a bowl of cherries and it was like the dream was His Beloved Son’s truth in all ways, except I hoped now that wherever my brother was he would eat the fruit already and not be amongst the openmouthed drowning faces of purgatory and so I set to dreaming once again so I could see him and I lie in bed thinking of his bony face and tried to make him come in my dream so that I could tell him Not to harrow up his soul, but to get amongst the straight place where hands were not idle but in prayer. But he would not come to my dream, even though he was alive for certain and working the world over in atonement, so they say, he would not come so I turned to Him instead in hopes of making the other him hear me that way.
Father in Heaven, in the name of your Beloved Son, please bring my brother back from the land of Gentiles, so that he may repent, and not bring down or up the full wrath of God to himself or to his family or to the inhabitants of Zion. Bring Ether to him and convince him to eat your fruit. Bless him and me and the fruit eaters and deliver my brother from the venison of the universe. Quit them folks from saying he’s bad to the core, gone to hell early. He sometimes hit me but I know he wouldn’t do nothing so bad really.
Amen.
And I been saying this at night before bed, and when I sleep I dream not of my brother but of other things more reptile that I don’t remember, and I hear nothing back from my prayer and so there are only my blank sleeps and silence for an answer and it makes the dark darker, even darker than in my dream.
And I wake sometimes thinking I hear his steps outside, coming home, coming to help turn the field and speak not of the forsaken path of flies and it’s not never him in the sound but I know he should get back here where the people like us, soft babies of His Beloved, belong. Because out there, there is no tree, no straight iron rod to follow, no fruit and no one to remind him bout his hands.
I saw the Prophet on his knees asking. It was morning for he could not wait until night and so he waited until the house was quiet upstairs, all playing outside, someone doing dishes, an infant banging a table with a chubby fist, a squeal, the house upstairs full of morning sun. Then he knelt by his bed. I saw him asking Why?
What had he done wrong?
That Downs boy, another one that bothered the way a splinter under a fingernail bothers. That boy telling his father that Jeremiah was alive. Hadn’t he dreamed him dead? Hadn’t he seen a boy turn into a vulture with black wings for arms and red neck sagging like testicles? If that did not mean death, then what? Perhaps he had wanted it too much as now he wanted this other one. He must be dead. The other one lies. For God would not deceive him such, would he?
There was one Prophet long ago, I whisper, Remember him? Lied in God’s name and the people saw fit to help him atone. To spill his blood into the already red earth. It’s his blood that stains the road, the rocks, the mud in the creek, I whisper.
Don’t be wrong, I whispered. Even as I knew he was.
Emma
Then after the news of Jeremiah alive and not dead, the black metallic sinners came through town again, following hot on Levi’s trail back from town and making two visits from the authorities in one year. I actually saw it and did not just hear it told through the mouths of others or through the hollow siren of our sounding bell. I was out front of the house, in the green green yard that Josiah had just replanted for us after winter and that he was mighty proud of, seeing as it was only the lawn in Redfield, save the Prophet’s, and he even had a mower to keep it trim. I was out sitting in the spring weather on a blanket with my babe, watching Lizbeth’s littlest two playing in the grass, crawling around and sticking every little stray blade straight into their wet little apple mouths so that I could hardly take my eyes off one before the other one was up to something new, what
with their four little hands. But I did hear the sound of wheels on the gravel, or I must have though I don’t remember it, because I looked up and saw the sleek black car with mirrors for windows reflecting the blue sky like shimmering snakeskin and rolling slowly through, like it didn’t want to get itself all red with our dust. Like it was taking its time to see what to eat first.
When I first saw it, my mouth turned baby just like the rest of them, and I was gaping too, and I didn’t move, nor try to hide my child nor Lizbeth’s two, nor did I get inside quick as can, something Lizbeth would later scold me for. No, I just sat there and watched at how much this thing didn’t belong among us. It was low to the ground, not like a truck, and it was clean, clean, like it had just been shined up three minutes before I seen it. The engine, too, was quiet, with no sputter nor sign that hands had worked on it ever. It looked bad, like the evil in the Book, in the way no body could be seen driving it, and that slow creeping, wide and low, the bumper like a hungry mouth. I just sat there in the grass and watched even as it drove right by, slowing almost to a stop not far from the edge of our lawn, and I just sat and watched when one of the windows rolled down part way and the lens of a camera stuck itself out like a mechanical dog’s nose but instead of flaring its nostrils it click click clicked and even then I did not say to myself Run. Rather, I wanted to see the face behind the camera, if it was a man or a woman and what they might be wearing and how old they were. I had always imagined faceless beings in white shirts and black pants, men I guess, though perhaps women, women dressed like men and this is what I pictured when we heard the stories of them taking the Browns away, or questioning the men. But when I saw that mechanical apparatus like an extension of a hand of a will of a mind, I wanted to see the face. So I did not think to cover my own face, another thing Lizbeth would later scold me for, nor the faces of our children. Rather I sat looking curiously and did not think they are taking my picture but rather while I waited to see the face look out from behind the camera thought will they at least wave? And it was this last thought and the realization that they would not, and that they were not here to be friendly, which finally propelled me off the grass, and so picking up my infant Warren Jessop and Lizbeth’s little Sally not too hurried like and netting her little Jacob with my dress between my legs as he toddled and we made our way back into the house. I did not look back again, and felt my face to be flushed.
It was on the third step of the porch as I waited for the toddler to crawl up it, that the bell finally did sound and I heard the car drive on behind me and Lizbeth’s heavy steps making her way to the door, her stout figure through the screen a ghost in the shade of the house, then fully embodied as she opened the door for me and held it, already with a look on her face like you should have been in before now, as if the bell echoed not only after it rang, but also before it rang, and it was these first faint intonations that I should have heard. I should have heard, smelt, tasted in the air the blood of those not ours.
And she didn’t even know I’d seen them, that they’d seen me. She did not see them on the far end of the road as she bent down and picked up her youngest by his arms, the black car turning down toward the Prophet’s house, its tail of dust hiding its dark head just so briefly.
She did not know I had not really felt afraid of them then and am still not now, knowing as I do now that they can never take eternal salvation away from us, and try as they might, they only drive us closer to the time when we are all reunited.
Levi
My life is complex in many ways, and most specially after I had my special trip to the lips of Hell’s mouth and felt the Devil’s breath on me and learned that some death is really a poor life. At this time some half-truth cloud was a hangin o’er my head and making the ground all muddy round my feet ’cause Pa came into the barn one night as the birds were singing their day over and the sun was bedding down and I’d just turned on the naked bulb crusted over with dead bugs and he said he had to talk to me and so I quit my cleanin of Star of Celestial, a pregnant white mare with whiteblue eyes who makes it her business to get dirty. Rolls in mud even, kickin her legs up toward heaven like she fightin her own holy name. I quit pullin at clumps of mud in her hair and then he told me not to quit, just keep working, he said be good for us both to do something and then he picked up a horse brush and started pullin her greased mane through the wires.
There’s some trouble, he said then. And then I looked at my Pa over the horse’s lowin neck and saw he ain’t lookin at me. He said then that the Prophet said it was a lie bout Jeremiah, that he dead like he done spoke months ago and that the mouth that says otherwise is full of blasphemous teeth spouting the Devil’s gangrene mind.
I heard Prophet’s lilt and knew Pa was speakin His words and I kept at work at the horse but I knew my hands were shakin and sure enough Star of Celestial trembled under my touch.
It was getting warmer every day, but at night you could still feel that fresh bite of winter on your neck. I hoped Pa would just think we was cold, me and Star.
Pa soothed her then, speaking softly while I tried to think of a way to tell my Pa he gotta believe me and then he just said it, like God heard my own clenched thoughts, he says: I believe you. And I found a breath in me I didn’t know was there and I let go and Star of Celestial stomped her hoof and I wondered how she knew my relief, but then Pa said, Still, though, we in a fix.
I nodded but couldn’t see him ’cause the horse’s head and I put my hand to her warm snout to feel her iron breath and we groomed her a while, not saying nothin before my Pa spoke again to ask what exactly was the nature of my business with Ellen Mai.
I liked that one since Mercy Ann left and liked her black hair I did ’specially since my horse was taken and gifted to Cadence but I never did see her all that much and the only time I saw her lone we went on walk and I found a geode broke open and gave it to her and she laughed and asked me if I thought that all the stone in this world were broke open if it would look so lovely and I told her I don’t know the secrets rocks keep, but probably. Except for gravestones, I told her, and that was the one thing I wish I hadn’t said that whole long walk because her face changed and she just nodded and did not laugh. But that was it, so I just told my Pa: Barely seen her.
You got to tell me if there’s anything, he said. And so I wished more than ever there was somethin, because there I was atrial before my Pa and probably the other men, somewhere, too and certainly the Prophet was speculating on how I touched her, and even if it meant the exile that was maybe comin anyway, at least I would have. Touched her.
But I worked a burr out of Star of Celestial’s matte tail and cleared my throat and told him I talked to her sometime but only once took her on a walk and nothin happened and my face burned hot when he said That’s it? So I told him about the geode and he walked around to my side of her flanks and nodded with some musement and maybe relief.
Still, he said, you know she’s meant to marry our Prophet, right, you know you can’t do those things. And I nodded and hoped my eyes would not water for the heat behind them and I swallowed and felt my tongue to be not a part of mouth but somethin in it, instead.
My Pa took the comb from my hand then to work at a knot in her mane and I thought it was strange, him helpin me, and he gave me the brush and I started my strokes along her dirt-white body, makin her shiver all over again and turn her head towards me so as to aim a marble eye my way.
We did this for a while and I knew my Pa had work and business, and so I knew there must be something else to say and I could see in his face he was workin toward it and when I was done brushin and waitin for the comb to do the rest her tail I saw my Pa was just combin through straight hair, like he was one of my sisters bout to braid.
Outside the light was gone, and the barn glowed like it should be warm but it was not, the evening birds quiet now.
I waited and did not say anything until he saw me standin there, my hand restin in the gap of Star of Celestial’s back, low with colt
weight, and he turned to me and the light from the barn door backshadowed him so as to make him a dark shape rather than some exact face and then he said:
Levi, thing is. The thing is, Levi, is that I believe you. But someone here is lying, and according to everybody, and I don’t mean Josiah, but I mean our Father who hath helped elect Our leader, the situation is this: Someone is not truthin. Someone is lyin. And it either got to be you, or Him. Boy can’t be both dead and alive, see.
I started to argue, saying But you said you, but then he turned his face so that the light shone on part of it like some midmoon and I saw what he was sayin.
Star of Celestial shifted her weight.
And He thinks you been disrespectful bout Ellen Mai.
Star of Celestial swatted at a fly with her tail.
And He knows you took that little trip to Pine Mesa.
Star of Celestial blew air out her lips.
And He wants you out.
She did not move.
I turned way from the door-shaped light and picked at somethin on her hind. I put the back of my hand to my nose and felt the cold wetness of it from workin in the barn since dawn.
Pa coughed a little and put his big cat hand on my shoulder and I did not turn toward him.
You ain’t to go, he said.
Not just yet, let’s wait it out. Josiah is Jeremiah’s father and he don’t want you to go just yet, whether that boy be dead or alive, he said. We got to wait a while, he said. We know what’s right, and we got to trust the Lord will help that be seen. In the near-time, though, you stay out a town, don’t go to House, and nowhere near Him, and just do your work right round here, in the house or in the barn, don’t tell no one, and if you got to get out, go quiet to the woods.
Strange Children Page 17