My Ma spoke then and her voice was shaking and she said, what you see child, what you see and I told her nothing Ma, just went to feed the chickens and looked out in the field and saw him lying there, so I went to look. But even as I said this I was already knowing what made me go over to the pasture and it was a horse neighing, high and hurting, neighing as if being whipped or fouling that I heard from the pen but as I came closer there warn’t no horse jumping but all looked scared and that’s when I saw that body down but I did not say this to Ma because, again, for the second time that day, I didn’t want to stutter none especially when talking about a boy whose body I found and ain’t no other witness but God and his six beasts know what happened.
So instead I asked Ma if Pa would shoot a horse now, and she said she didn’t know. Be different if we knew which one, I figured and for a moment I imagined us asking all the horses to confess their varied sins, looking for the guilt bulging like a vein in their tethered necks, the eyes going big with the thought of the inferno God would surely send them to, because though I do not know, I do believe God punishes all murderers, men and horses alike and now I wonder especially as I do believe a large purification is upon us, what with a fire and Jeremiah most certainly lost.
We stood there for a while and my legs began to ache so I sat down on the threshold even though Jeremiah used to say that be bad luck, and as I did, I did look around to see the bump of the boy under my blanket and for a moment I thought maybe he moved and felt my skin hair go all cactus and made a note on exactly what floorboards he was on so I would know for sure if he moved again. Then I turned back toward the front room and said Ma, that boy’s got my blanket.
I know, she said, but nothing else so we just waited there and I could hear all sorts of sounds that were never before scary but were also never so loud and rhythmic so I felt like the room had started to stutter, too. There was a drip of something slow, like a wet rag melting its water off into a bucket, and a shrill bird outside and somewhere upstairs the voice of someone of our blood, probably Emma, singing a little song to sleep a babe over and over again whose words we could not hear.
I heard my Pa returning because I heard Manti’s baby sister crying, crying like a baby does, not like someone bereaved does, but now she was both so I didn’t know if she already understood, or didn’t, and she came in the front door sucking her thumb and holding her mother’s hand and their ma looked frightened, her head a nest of blackbirds, and also like she with child, but cleaner than usual and she mad, too, like she ready to beat the Devil out of her son soon as she lay eyes on him so I stood up and quick got out of her way and walked clear around the room so as not to step over him and went to stand by my Ma but she was already crossing the room too so as to offer a hand to her Sister, who did not take it but was looking down stone-faced at the body under my blanket like it was a shape of something besides her boy, then she very slowly knelt down like she in temple though this was one woman never go to Sunday House, which I thought in secret might be why she was having to kneel like this, now, to see the face of her own misfortune and she went slow and pulled back the blanket, a quilt with blue and white and red flowers that my Mama Tressa made that had a white underside. I saw now with more fear in my heart that it got splotched with the blood of the boy and when I saw that I saw her face and it was still stone as she stared a moment and then reached to the boy’s face and closed his lips which were parted like he was about to speak, and she herself made no sound and even the baby, who was already three or so and no baby really, stopped crying, and everybody looked as if he might wake up by our own eyes staring until the baby girl said it.
Manti, she said. Manti, Manti, Manti, and it was as if she was calling not only him back but all the people of his great namesake and I heard my Ma choke as she began to cry and watched my father pick up the little girl as she began to point at his face saying his name again and again and Beth stood up slowly and stared at my Ma as if wondering why she was crying and then she took her child from Pa and walked out of our house leaving her son still uncovered so that the door swung back and all we heard was Manti, Manti, Manti going back on down the road.
They buried the boy that very night in my blanket. It didn’t make no sense to take it off of him, especially because when my father loaded the body into the cart he was all wrapped up in it. I watched as they disappeared down the road, going to pick up his mother, maybe his sister, so that they could watch over the body till night.
I wished I could go too, as I knew the Prophet would be there to comfort and pray words over him, but Ma said I had to get back and water the chickens I had abandoned in the day’s events and here it was the first real hot day and them without water so I went back to work head-down, noting that if I heard anything else not of usual I would ignore it, let it waft through me so that I would not regret again my stutter, thus by never having anything else of that measure to say again, and never wanting God to punish me thus, and never having to stand watch again over something that may or may not be moving.
I worked in watering and feeding and in the smell of the wet wood troughs, but Pa came back and watched the horses in the field until dusk that night. He stood there, leaning on the fence for most of the day, but he did not shoot one or all of them. He saw when they went back to grazing, and at the end of the day he brought them all in one by one, cautious, speaking gently, not even checking their hooves for blood.
And I went into my bed with a new blanket that Ma had found in a trunk above the barn and it was a brown quilt and smelled like moths and hay and was heavy with dampness and it felt like it was not mine so I imagined I had switched blankets with Manti, and was then glad that it was only this blanket above my body, and not the freshly turned dirt of God’s red earth enclosing my earthly form for all eternity within the shapeless arms of silence.
Manti. I didn’t listen when your skull fractured, nor to the quick footsteps walking away, the horses scattering like leaves in a quick gust. I didn’t listen and so heard only my own silent scream that will echo all the way back to where I came from.
Haley
+
Jeremiah.
= Love
On my notebook. History class. He leans over and writes it. Grinning.
Levi
If I go like Jeremiah, I won’t work fences but really I won’t go to Phoenix neither ’cause I asked my mother and she said it’s far, far way. Might as well be another planet, she says. And I don’t think I’ll murder nobody, not even some sinnin body, but it’s hard to say ’cause once I leave here, if I leave here, I’m bound to get real bad. I’ll hear the music and see the TV and the other things that will make me think evil, even if I am trying my best not to be. And I’ll be among the bad, and getting bad, and set to damn in Hell for eternity for not livin pure and clean and havin lots of wives so I guess it won’t matter so much what I do. And anyway, probably won’t have much time anyway since I hear coyotes at night, yipping at me that the end is nigh.
It only matters if I can stay. If I can be still on high. But I got to be good, no joyridin and no thinkin, ’specially bout Ellen Mai. So for now I got to stay out of the way and be in purgatory, mostly workin in the barn, walkin in the woods, botherin the womenfolk since I can’t get to findin the boys. And I can’t be seen by those who might tell Prophet. Those beside Pa’s and Josiah’s. So I wait and I wait and it’s my private waitin for earth judgment in the middle of all our together waitin as a people for the Redeemer and the Great I Am and our second death and our resurrection. And it is as dull as a spoon in the meat. But I have been good, was all good about it for nigh six weeks even as the weather got warm, and even when I saw Josiah with a body in his cart this morning and the body was Manti and this night a funeral and all got dressed, the men in their black and the women in their white and I paced and I paced and I dressed too, and my Pa shook his head, and then they all left and I had to get back in my work clothes and sit at the kitchen table with a pile of napkins to fold which my
Mama had set before me like I was some home-curled girl.
And I sat there with the knobby corners and the washed creases and I wondered if it was best my only secret had died with Manti midst all this trouble, even though I knew God still knew. And I wondered what Manti did to get himself kicked in the head by a horse like a fool. Manti should have known animals, but his Mama didn’t have any more, poor and widowed as she was. Maybe he didn’t really know no horse sense, probably not ’cause he barely had any regular sense.
And I was smoothin napkins against the wood table and I got a sliver. A black seed straight in my pointy finger. And I sucked it with teeth hard and gave up on the napkins for a woman’s job; God signing me with this table bite that I should be in the barn. His language only a small wound, but I could read it.
But the barn was dark and dull. Horses out to pasture. Only three shovelfuls to clean for Pa. No new hay to get. Not quite time to bring the horses in for the night.
And I knew that the service would end and they’d head to the cemetery as dark fell. A warm day and now a warm evening. And they’d close up the casket before I saw him. I wanted to see him dead. I didn’t know how they’d clean up a horse wound. I remember when a tractor rolled over Hal Jens’s boy and they had the casket open and the Holy come to bury him all went green, his neck and half his face crushed like pound meat and even though there was nice dressin and some quilt his ma had made to cover him, it wasn’t no quiet mark of death and the Prophet had to speak to us of the absolute renewal of our bodies at resurrection just to keep his Mama breathin.
And now it was Manti. I was bettin there was no hiding a hoofcrush like that, skull like a caved pumpkin. I wondered if it was Blackie who done it, Blackie who was mine no longer. Blackie wanting to get back to me and my careful hands, smiting other boys. It might have been Blackie. And I wanted to sneak in, hide among the hundreds, and the hundreds would be there ’cause who would miss a funeral. Not here. Not in the boxing away of one of ours til the day when we’d see them again. Not even if it was a no count like Manti. Not even if it better his sad life with his mother and her no good head was done. Not even if he had started that fire at the Prophet’s house, as is whispered among the children but not the elders.
We have our secrets too.
We have our secrets and right then I was one of them.
And Manti had his secrets, and most of them are now in one of the red clay mounds of the graveyard.
My grandmother says in Phoenix they bury folk below ground. But here the ground turns to stone not four feet down. Here we stay afloat for the time when he will come and be both the End and the Beginning and we will enter into wide-circle time; rock time.
But not me, not if I have to leave. And I was good that evening and thinking bout bein good and so I got to wipin Pa’s tools with a rag. Shinin up the handles, layin them neat and rowed like silverware. Housework in the barn. But one can only do that so long.
And everyone, I knew, would be at the House. Listening to the departure. So maybe I thought I could take walk. I would still be good, but walk too. I hadn’t been ’bout for weeks. Not since my big trip. So I set Pa’s tools in a line, quietly, like I was already sneakin and took path on the far edge of the fields so as to stay off the main road ’fore I made certain all was still. And I walked east toward the mesa and thought I might wander to the top of the town, where the crick come down from the canyon, and no one would be. And I did and I walked past orchards hanging with fruit new and green, and it was still hot out, the heat the reason for the hasty burial I thought, and everyone was at House so I decided then I would take the road home since no one was ’bout to see me who shouldn’t be seen. And I did and so I saw. The answer to the question I hadn’t thought of. Who was pickin up trash with other boys and Jeremiah gone and now even me out. The drainage ditches on either side of the rosy road were stacked with white bags tore open. The first one I saw I almost went to pick up by habit but when I got close I saw it was tore up anyway, eaten through by somethin. A raven picking at one bag in front of Josiah’s place. And I stood there for a minute on that hot road and squinted at this empty place, what with everyone at the service for a dead boy, and heard that raven squawk out a lonely broke song so that for a minute I thought the whole town was gone, and no one even pickin the tree fruit, like it was already end times and it was in this moment, where it seemed I was standing outside myself, in some other time, that I did not hear him comin.
Daniel. Prophet’s favorite son. I was lookin at the dusk and then out of nowhere. There. He was in front of me. In front of me with a one-sided grin on his face. A head taller than me with hair so light it’s like he got none. Why he was not at the funeral with everyone else I could not tell you. Maybe he was in fact supposed to be doin somethin ’bout the trash but instead he was in my face sayin, I got you, I got you and Didn’t I know it? Didn’t I know yer Pa hadn’t a driven you out? You just wait until Prophet hears about this, my, my, aren’t you gonna get it? And he rubbed his hands together, all lick-lippin and I thought for a minute if I had anythin to be offerin Daniel to keep his mouth shut but I knew I did not, as Daniel wanted one thing, and that was to be the Prophet’s arm and hand and eventually whole body and this news would get him closer to that. Just like me tellin my Pa stuff made me more his son too. So I just looked past him down the vacant road, that would soon be peopling up with a procession to the cemetery and I thought a Pa, and how I’d disappointed him again and I looked back at Daniel and he was grinnin so I thought to punch him in his white teeth but did not but rather turned and walked away while he said things to my back ’bout how I better get packed and I looked good and hard at the fields and houses on the five-minute walk home because I knew it may be the last time. And I went home and started this waitin, a waitin different from the first one since I thought this one was bound to end with my leavin.
And when I have to leave I’ll be buried below ground and the maggots will eat me and no one will even say words over me because no one will know me and I’ll be bound for Satan’s darkness and my body be plagued with that oncomin journey and no one will want touch me.
Might as well be a murderer. And a bandit. And I could steal Ellen Mai away. But not yet. First I wait and I pray and I think about the menfolk and the Prophet who might find out soon and who might be right to banish me and I don’t know. He might kill me too, or just say I’m dead.
Or maybe He will remember that when Jeremiah left it made trouble, someone following that trouble right back to us, and that makes more trouble. I heard my Pa say this after the morning when the bell rang, and someone tell us they were back—the black cars. Like black flies that buzz until the end is spelled. This is why I guess I am still sittin tight in barn-purgatory. ’Tween house and field. This is why Pa believes me. Never likin that one, but always followin, always obeyin even though they seemed to think somethin not quite right, like a door stickin in its frame. But Prophet could find out and take away their wives. But not their land. The earth has been cut up by older prophecy and God was good to Josiah. Josiah feeds a lot of us. He is why I haven’t yet been driven out and if that’s true I know he will make sure I stay.
But I will bring in the horses. A full moon rises over the red mesa like a giant horse eye.
I won’t be no maggot food. I’ll be in a pine box like Manti. People can look at me lying there, all old, and say their prayers to me while I go sleep for a while. I’ll be tucked tight in a mound and the Prophet or somebody will dedicate it to my spirit and I’ll be in a flood of Celestial water while all of me waits there in the red earth. Like when I return to the barn and wait for them all to come back, only for longer.
He had told his Daniel: The last boy I let slip had thrived in the Devil’s world, but that would never happen again. This one, this Manti, would not get away. We will not let malevolence fester. He had said: a wound, if left, infects and spreads until it streaks a red arrow right to the heart. We will not, he had said, gripping his son’s shoulder,
we will not feed Lucifer one more.
He had not told of his own adultery with Manti’s mother, had said nothing of his own festering wound. For him, excused, perhaps, by all the work he did for God.
Daniel had no trouble finding a large crumpled stone and he palmed it against his thigh and set out. Even less trouble to find Manti, out in the back fields, with the animals, where he always was. And Manti had his back to him and he was crouched and he was looking at a big black horse like he was talking to it. And Daniel had his stone.
And even I, in my ghostly in-between, wanted to scream. To tell the strange boy to run. And I remembered what we are working our way back to, I remembered death coming up from behind.
But I didn’t hear the sound that a rock makes on a skull. I wasn’t listening. I was listening again to my own death.
Annalue
We came back from Manti’s funeral quiet. No one had much to say about such a strangeness, both his life and death otherworldly but still I was sad. Sad for him, for the two he left behind like stray dogs. How could he, dark and light, man and child, be an anchor? But seeing mother and child it was clear he had been the weight that tethered them to us, and now they were unmoored. Sister Beth’s oily eyes staring to one side of the grave, dark wells in a face so white it was like she seen a ghost and the little girl sucking her thumb with eyes large in her jaundice face. I watched them and thought I would go soon, bring them food, clean their house. If they let me in.
Strange Children Page 19