All Things Bright and Strange

by James Markert

  A bullet whistled by, grazing Ellsworth’s coat sleeve. He dropped to the ground, not bleeding, but stunned. He closed his eyes and listened—bullets, crying, fear. The sounds switched a trigger in his mind. He wasn’t in Bellhaven anymore, but in France, and these were his comrades, his fellow soldiers.

  Ellsworth opened his eyes and then opened fire—not aiming, just shooting toward the tree line and the yellow house on the hill. People on both sides fell in pain. He couldn’t stop shooting. He’d been given a gun and a map as a teenager and trained to kill. He walked in clear view as others hid behind cars, buildings, house corners, trees, and hedgerows. He didn’t hide, didn’t flinch. He’d been born from a miracle, and he’d gather the people. They would win this fight.

  Atop the hillside, Lou Eddington cantered on a horse behind his line of men, firing his rifle down the hillside. They locked eyes, and briefly time slowed. But then it caught back up in a flurry of bullets and pinging ricochets.

  Uriel was right in the middle of the fight, firing a rifle like the rest of them, while Gabriel moved through the crowd, trying in vain to call a cease fire.

  Up on the hill, Brother Bannerman stood behind a machine gun, letting loose a barrage of bullets. Redbirds circled, intermingling with the vultures, squawking and flapping as if in a sky fight of their own. Bullets cut blooms of every color from flowers and trees and bushes, and soon the air was littered with floating petals, the grass dotted with color.

  Ellsworth saw visions of severed arms and legs from the war.

  He kept firing anyway.

  Frank Jessups stepped out from behind a purple crape myrtle and fired a pistol up the hillside. He’d once told Ellsworth he’d come to Bellhaven so he wouldn’t be shunned for being different. And he’d found a home in Bellhaven, until Reverend Beaver kicked him out of the Methodist church he’d grown to love. Now his bullets had Reverend Beaver’s name on them.

  “Linda May! Linda May!” To Ellsworth’s left, Alfred walked blindly toward the town hall, where dozens of town folk hid behind parked cars, firing over trunks and hoods. He carried a rifle and kept calling his wife’s name. “Linda May! The dance is over, Linda May.”

  “Alfred, no!”

  Alfred kept going, right into the no-man’s-land between the town square and the woods. He raised his rifle. Fired. Fired again. Bullets whizzed. He didn’t flinch. He reloaded, fired. “Dance is over Linda May. Time to come home.”

  Ellsworth ran toward his friend. Omar, too, still firing as he ran, his white mask askew and his hat off-kilter. A bullet whistled—thunk—and Alfred went down on his knees. Another bullet tore through the back of his beige suit coat and another four inches below.

  Omar got there first. He picked up his fallen comrade and ran with him draped over his shoulder until they were safely behind the town hall. Ellsworth backpedaled to safety, then gave a man he didn’t know an order to retrieve Raphael from the house.

  Alfred lay bleeding in the gravel dust parking lot. “Did I get’m? Did I get’m?”

  “Dem got’m,” said Omar, crying. Tears dripped from the bottom of his mask.

  “Linda May,” said Alfred. “Is she coming back?”

  Raphael arrived, slid next to Alfred’s body, put his hands on the wounds. But there were too many. Alfred’s eyelids fluttered, his face ashen.

  “Is Linda May coming back?”

  Raphael leaned to Alfred’s ear. “She’s come back, Mr. Dennison. She said to tell you she loves you. She always has and always will.”

  Alfred smiled, coughed blood, then gripped Raphael’s hand. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “For what, Mr. Dennison?”

  “For not . . . coming back . . . whole . . .”

  Alfred stopped breathing. Ellsworth reached over and closed his eyes.

  Omar sat like a masked statue for one minute, two. Then he jumped up, screaming, and turned his anger back toward the woods, firing with reckless abandon.

  Gabriel ran after him. She’d been too busy trying to keep the rest of the town from killing each other to fire a shot of her own. But after watching Alfred take his last breath, she stormed over toward Donald Trapper and John Stone and bullied the punt gun from them. What had taken two men to carry was now maneuvered like a rifle by one woman. She leveled the punt gun toward the trees and fired, felling a live oak behind the line of men and forcing them to scatter. She fired again and toppled another tree, this one landing on the legs of a man who might have been the town’s tanner.

  Ellsworth surveyed the carnage. Anna Belle now fired her rifle from behind Jake Wagner’s market wagon. Someone had removed the horse but left the wagon filled with produce, so shreds of shot-up cabbage littered the ground around Anna Belle’s feet. Glass shattered and wood splintered from the town hall, the place where the town folk had broken bread and shared drinks and music and laughter for decades.

  “Gather the people.” A bullet hummed. Ellsworth ducked.

  “Show them.”

  “Show them what?”

  “Show them normalcy. Gather the people.” It was his father’s voice.

  Raphael still sat emotionless next to Alfred’s body. “Show them normalcy.” He and the boy locked eyes. “Go get my gloves,” Ellsworth said.

  “What? Now? Mr. Newberry?”

  “The baseball. And the gloves. Go get them. Go on now.”

  Raphael hesitated, then took off toward the house. He returned a minute later with a baseball and two gloves, the same ones Ellsworth had used during his Sunday games of catch with his father.

  “You afraid to die?” Ellsworth asked the boy.

  “No, sir.”

  “Didn’t think so. Come on then. There’s nothing more normal than baseball.” Ellsworth walked out from behind the parked cars, and the boy followed him into the no-man’s-land.

  “Raphael, no!” Anna Belle had stopped firing. “Ellsworth, what are you doing?”

  I’m gonna remind them, Anna Belle.

  He’d made it out to the middle of the clearing. He and Raphael stood about fifteen yards apart. The firing had decreased already. Whispers permeated the lines on both sides. “What are they doing?” “They’re playing a game of catch.”

  Ellsworth rotated the ball in his grip, felt the stitches against his palm and fingers. He tossed the ball across the field to Raphael, who caught it and looked surprised that he’d done so. He surveyed both sides and flinched as another bullet scuttled through the air. “Toss it back,” said Ellsworth. “Don’t pay them attention. Just you and me out here.”

  Raphael nodded and concentrated, the tip of his tongue jutted from the corner of his mouth. A bullet whizzed by, but this time he didn’t jump. He reared back and hurled the ball as hard as he could.

  Ellsworth’s glove popped from the impact. He shook his hand just like his father used to do, pretending the throw had hurt his palm. He plucked the ball from his glove, located the seams, and threw again. Raphael caught it. Ellsworth’s eyes blurred from tears. First time he’d thrown a ball since Eliza’s death.

  The fighting and the shooting had all but stopped. Someone fired, and it echoed, but there was no return fire. Both sides watched as Ellsworth played catch with Raphael.

  The only sound now was the pop every time a pitch hit its mark inside the glove. Ellsworth tossed another one, harder this time, and Raphael caught it. The boy stepped back a few paces before returning the throw. Sunlight beamed from a bright blue sky, and Ellsworth welcomed the warmth on his face.

  Guns lowered on both sides as Ellsworth threw another strike.

  Pop.

  Raphael laughed, went into a windup, and fired the ball right back.

  Ellsworth caught the ball and watched the woods.

  A distant rumble resonated, grew louder, like a pack of animals trampling across a tundra. Eddington’s men turned toward the woods behind them, the approaching sound. The men and women in the town square who’d been using the cars for shelter now walked in front of them to watch the woods.<
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  First, birds flew out, red and blue birds, sparrows and egrets. Then came the smaller animals—chipmunks, squirrels, and mice, followed by raccoons and woodchucks and a few skunks. A deer darted from the shadows, and then another.

  The rumbling came now as a wall, as dozens of deer scampered, ran, and zigzagged from the tree line. All running from something, running in waves into Bellhaven proper as Eddington’s line of soldiers parted for them.

  A cow from down the road walked into town and barreled headfirst into Gary Henshaw’s grain silo, then backed up and did it again. The side of the silo gonged, and the cow backed up for more. Two horses ran in circles in front of the avenue of oaks, both of them leaping up to rub their heads in the draping moss.

  On the hill, Lou Eddington’s horse bucked and reared, flipping him to the ground.

  The rumble grew louder. More deer poured from the woods.

  Ellsworth recalled Old Man Tanner’s story from decades earlier, his description of strange animals hurrying from the woods as he was going in with his gun and lantern. He found Tanner in the crowd beside the town hall. The old man stared at the sky, concerned, and then looked at his arm—in particular, at the hairs that were now standing on end.

  “Main quake,” Ellsworth said.

  And then the earth started shaking.

  CHAPTER 27

  The ground shook and roared for thirty-five seconds.

  Ellsworth dropped to the grass after five and began counting as he crawled toward Raphael. “. . . Twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven . . .” He reached the boy and held him. They counted out the rest together as trees uprooted, cleaving waves of soil around slanted trunks. Birds fled boughs and took flight, blotting sun and sky as shadows flashed across the ground and the screaming intensified. People held on to whatever they could. Two narrow fissures opened, ran jagged up the hillside. Eddington’s men dropped to the ground. Another tree uprooted, bringing with it a ten foot wall of the dirt-clotted root. Birds filled the sky with shrill, hysterical panic.

  Raphael covered his ears. “. . . Thirty, thirty-one . . .”

  Behind the town hall, Anna Belle was on the ground with her head covered.

  Ellsworth and Raphael started crawling toward her as colorful flower blooms floated through the air. Sand mounds spouted over the grounds like small volcanoes, spewing water and dust into the air. One formed next to Anna Belle. She rolled away from the blast and tucked into the fetal position. Another erupted right beneath Gus Cheevers and bucked him a foot from the ground.

  “. . . Thirty-two, thirty-three . . .”

  A loud crack echoed from atop the hillside. Eddington’s yellow house swayed while Lou Eddington walked toward it.

  No, thought Ellsworth. Back away!

  Shingles popped from the roof and the chimney bricks crumbled. The foundation moaned and creaked like an ocean liner splitting at sea.

  “. . . Thirty-four, thirty-five . . .”

  And then everything settled with as little warning as it had started.

  Silence crept across Bellhaven. One by one the citizens stood from their crouches, surveying damage in every direction. Chimneys had collapsed. Foundations had cracked. Verandas had separated from facades, many of the roofs collapsing to the porch boards in heaps and splinters.

  The animals lingered. Deer nosed the spewing sand volcanoes. Horses trotted and neighed. The cow by the silo walked in a tight backward circle. A squirrel on its hind legs stared at the blue sky where thousands of birds soared.

  Old Man Tanner surveyed the sand blows, studied the sky and trees, smelled the air, watched the animals. “It’s not finished.”

  Rabbi Blumenthal staggered from the jailhouse, which miraculously had not collapsed in the quake. Plaster and brick dust billowed from the hole in the back of the building. He’d been locked inside the cell during the gunfight, but apparently the shaking had loosened the lock. A raccoon and three chipmunks skittered by the rabbi’s feet. The smell of sulfur permeated the air.

  Ellsworth and Raphael made it to their feet and hobbled toward Anna Belle. But the earth shook again, and the screaming began anew. Ellsworth put his arms around Anna Belle and Raphael, held them tight, and began counting.

  “. . . Four, five, six . . .”

  Everything settled again. The first aftershock. A quick burst, but enough to shift what had been on the brink moments before.

  The yellow house was the oldest in Bellhaven. It had survived the ’86 quake, but although many of the structures in Charleston and even surrounding towns like Bellhaven had added earthquake bolts to reinforce unstable masonry, the old plantation house had added none. Now it cracked and splintered, shifted near the roofline, and then crumbled inward—slowly at first, bricks at a time, then faster. Then the walls collapsed altogether, and puffs of dark dust spun out like tornado smoke.

  Captured in all the smoke and debris was Lou Eddington, who’d never stopped his approach toward the house after the main quake. Ellsworth could hear him screaming as the dust settled. He was still alive, though surely his limbs would be smashed pasteboard thin.

  The three of them hustled up the hillside, dodging sand cones and fissures. They covered their mouths from the dust and squinted through haze, following Eddington’s screams. The man’s lower half was pinned under a pile of debris. They tossed it aside piece by piece—the arm of a chair, the cracked porcelain of a bathtub, shingles from the roof, multiple bricks. Then half of a wooden chessboard, shredded trousers, a lone shoe.

  Linda May appeared on the backside of the hill between the old slave quarters and the house, her face blackened by dust and smeared with tear trails. “Is he dead? Where’s Alfred?”

  Anna Belle ran to her, and Linda May fell into her arms.

  Raphael knelt beside Eddington’s head, gripped his hand. As soon as they got to the wound he would heal him. Eddington stared up at the boy, confused, while Ellsworth tossed and shoved the bricks away as if trying to rescue a long lost friend.

  Eddington’s men approached from the tree line with caution, joined by a group of town folk coming to help free Eddington from the rubble. Within minutes, two dozen men and women from both sides were working together to remove the debris, Gabriel and Uriel among them. Gabriel lifted armfuls of bricks at a time. She hurled away splintered wood like spears.

  Five minutes later they pulled Eddington and his mangled legs free. They were bloodied and oddly contorted. His shoes were missing and his pants were darkened and torn. His eyes bulged red, but he’d stopped screaming. Shock dampened pain, but that was only temporary. Raphael closed his eyes, put his hands on the leg wounds.

  Eddington relaxed, found a steady breathing rhythm, and then offered his hand to Ellsworth. “Is it too late to sit down and make sense of all this?”

  “Focus on the living. Then we’ll talk.” Ellsworth patted Lou’s shoulder and stood. Down below, most people were either injured or tending to the injured. But a dozen men and women now skirted the tree line, testing it like some of the deer were doing. But while the animals wanted to return to their homes, the people felt the pull toward the chapel.

  The ground shook again, this time for only three seconds. When it was over, the relief sighs everywhere were palpable. The worst was over. Fear turned tears joyful.

  Berny the mail carrier took a step into the woods. Dooby Klinsmatter followed him. Then someone else, and then another. Their walks became jogs, then sprints as they disappeared into the trees.

  Four more people entered. Linda May tried to follow, but Anna Belle wouldn’t let her go, even as she slapped at her arms and clawed at Anna Belle’s cheek. Eventually Anna Belle wrestled her to the ground, and Linda May stopped resisting.

  Ellsworth ordered Gabriel and Uriel to follow the town people into the woods. “Don’t let them into the chapel. Don’t even let them into the clearing.”

  They sprinted at an angle that would allow them to cut off the mail carrier’s path before he even hit the yellow trees.

 
; “Sometimes they slip through.”

  It was Eddington talking. Ellsworth focused his attention back on him. “Who?”

  “They come up through the magma.” Eddington winced. The shock was wearing off, the adrenaline slowing. “Like gas and steam. The angels cast them deep into the fires, but sometimes they slip through. Come back up from the pits.” Eddington was sweaty and pale, delirious. His eyelids fluttered, and he motioned for Raphael to scoot aside. His lips pressed together firmly, like he was accepting of his fate.

  Ellsworth gently shook him. “Eddington. Lou?”

  Lou’s eyes popped open. “Real name’s Lucius, but I always hated that name. Thought it sounded too much like the devil’s namesake.”

  “A name is just a name,” Ellsworth told him. “Now hang in there.”

  Father Timothy hovered over Ellsworth’s shoulder. “The name Lucius—it’s a Roman name derived from the Latin for light. So’s the name Lucifer, for that matter.”

  “Ain’t that a hoot, Father?” Eddington grinned, winced as pain surged. “There’s cracks everywhere, but none bigger than here in Bellhaven.” He was on the verge of passing out again, but then his eyes shot open, alert and wide. He gripped Ellsworth’s forearm and pulled him closer. “It got me the day I first visited that house. Entered my body like a disease and got right down into my bones. But I visited that chapel. I heard the voice of my wife and kids, and I wept. You know why?”

  Ellsworth shook his head.

  “Because they told me I was forgiven.” Tears welled in the sockets. “They told me they still loved me.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Including Alfred, five had died in the shoot-out.

  By late afternoon they’d lined up the bodies on the gravel outside the town hall and covered them with blankets for the locals to claim, which three did, including Linda May, who hadn’t left Alfred’s side since they placed his body on the dust. She wore remorse like a cloak as tears gushed. Anna Belle sat with her, fearing she might make a run for the woods. Who could blame her? She’d abandoned her blind husband. He’d died trying to win her back. And forgiveness was only a quick jaunt through those woods. Alfred’s voice was probably already in that chapel right now.