Ashes

by Haunted Computer Books

  "No," I whispered. "My brother Bobby died. Mother, too."

  "I'm scared."

  Soldiers weren't supposed to be scared. They were doing God's work.

  "Why are you here?" I asked.

  "The Penance is catching some of the soldiers. I heard a rumor today that even the Commander-in-Chief has it. I just wanted to tell somebody I was sorry."

  My stomach ached, my face flushed. I wondered whether it was the first rush of fever or just hatred of this unwanted confession. "Don't say these things," I said. "God will strike you."

  "Let Him strike," John said breathlessly. Night had fallen, leaking through the hole in the wall like a black oil. A truck sounded on the street, men shouted, and a siren wailed several streets away. I lit another candle and waited near the hole, but I heard no more of John.

  Father bathed himself in the light of the Web screen. In the beginning, the videos had been of bodies piled high in the streets as solemn news anchors reported the latest death tolls. Health officials spoke of concentrated efforts to find a cure. Eventually these gave way to army television. Most of the time the Commander-in-Chief occupied the screen, his fist lifted in righteous indignation, his eyes bright with hate, his mouth contorted by his sermons. Father raised his fist in unison with the image.

  "Kill them all, and let God sort them out," was one of Father's favorite slogans. I avoided him after he began wearing the mask. Most of the time, I stayed in the kitchen with Gran, the farthest room from the bathroom, where our wastes had fouled the air. We slept in the room that I had shared with Bobby.

  One night I heard a tapping, a squeaking of metal and the slight crack of dry wood. I was afraid, because the sound meant change, and all change was for the worse. I prayed the night away, and somehow God spared us. The next morning, as I pressed at the wood that covered the window, anxious for a glimpse of the new sun, one of the boards fell away. Others were loose, too, enough for a person to wriggle through. I could hardly keep myself from bursting through and falling onto the green grass outside, but I was afraid soldiers might be watching.

  I waited until evening to tell Gran. Her eyes misted over. When I was through describing my plan, she lowered her head.

  "It's our only chance," I whispered.

  "It's the Lord's will that we be punished," she said.

  "Maybe it's the Lord's will that the boards are loose."

  "The wicked can't flee their own wretched hearts."

  "Gran, Gran," I said. "Not you, too. Why would God want to punish you?"

  "No one is clean. All have come short of the glory of God."

  Father gave a shout from the living room, joining in a televised cheer for the Commander-in-Chief.

  "We only have enough food left for a week or so," I said. "We'll die in here."

  "I'll die anyway. Here, there, what's the difference?"

  Her words hung in the air like smoke from a fatal gun. She would die, sweating and shivering, writhing in the sheets, chewing her tongue as the blood poured from her ears and eyes.

  God is blind to suffering. We make our prayers anyway.

  "In the autumn, the mountains look like a rumpled patchwork quilt," Gran said. "Your grandfather would sit on the porch with his easel and paints. He used oils because he believed that the long drying time made him more patient, more careful."

  One of his paintings hung in the living room. It was of a neglected flower garden, bright marigolds and morning glories and tulips fighting the weeds for sunshine. Grandfather had been Jewish. The Commander-in-Chief said the Jews may have brought the pestilence among the faithful. God delivered it, but the Jews spread it. Either the Jews or the Catholics. Oh, yes, and the scientists, as well. Satan's forces were legion.

  "I would make him tea," Gran said. "Hot tea. He would blow on top of the cup until it was cool enough to drink. I can still see the funny face he made when he blew, his eyebrows scrunched down and his lips curled."

  "Did Father want to be a painter, too?"

  "No, but he liked tea," she said. She coughed, and a fleck of blood appeared in the corner of her mouth. "You look a lot like him, you know. When he was your age, I mean."

  I couldn't believe my father had ever been my age. "When did he join the Church?"

  "When he was your age."

  "Is that why you joined?"

  She blinked. "I just...joined. Like we were supposed to."

  A new sore was erupting, above her right eyebrow. I dabbed at it with the towel. She weakly pushed my hand away.

  "In the mountains, you can touch the clouds," she said. "You're closer to God there. Even the rain is sweet. Your father used to catch it on his tongue."

  "Thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy," I said, repeating one of Father's slogans.

  "Why hasn't the Penance moved into you?" Gran asked.

  Who can know the workings of the Almighty? I shrugged. "By the grace of God," I said. "Though I am wicked and surely deserve the Penance as much as anyone."

  She seemed satisfied with this, and let her chin droop against her chest.

  I stood and went to the refrigerator. I wasn't hungry. I thought of the mountains, of exodus, of flights from persecution. I closed my eyes, shamed by my cowardice and doubt.

  Father turned up the volume on the Web screen. The Commander-in-Chief was raving, his voice like thunder, saying "And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels, 'Go, and pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.'"

  I remembered the time I was twelve and Bobby, then six, got a goldfish for his birthday. One morning the fish had floated to the top of the glass bowl, belly-up, lips sucking for life, gills undulating weakly. I took it from the bowl and flushed it down the toilet. When Bobby came in the room, I told him the goldfish had crawled to the river during the night. Heading for bigger water.

  I wondered which sin I would pay for, the lie or the killing of a fish.

  I turned to face Gran. "I'm sorry for talking about it," I said.

  She merely nodded, too weak to argue.

  "It's a test of faith," I continued. "I suffered a moment of weakness. I promise to be strong."

  "Don't make promises to me," she said. "Make them to the One that matters."

  "Please don't tell Father," I said, clasping her hand.

  She pursed her pale lips. Father came through the curtain. The sound from the Web screen filled the kitchen as he held the curtain open. The army was singing a hymn. Even though I couldn't see his mouth, I knew Father was moving his lips to the rhythm. His eyes were moist, fogging his goggles.

  "Sing," he shouted, the mask vibrating from the force of his voice. "Sing that we may find salvation."

  Gran joined in with her thin and sweet alto. "...I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind..."

  I added my voice to the multitudes. "...but now I see."

  Father removed his mask, his face wet with tears. The candle's flame bobbed and swayed with our breathing. Beautiful music flooded the house, overpowering the silence of corpses and drowning out the rumble of the army truck rolling down the street. We soared into the second verse, a family united, a nation united, all under God. Father rubbed at his cheek. The first reddening had appeared there, the sores a day or two away.

  We sang the hymn, and half a dozen more. Father went back to the Web screen and his Bible, the bottle of wine open on the table beside him. Gran hobbled down the hall to pray over the two bodies, then I heard the door close as she went to bed. I filled my pockets with canned meat, cheese, and crackers.

  That night we went through the window. As I pushed the boards away, I wondered if a saint could come disguised as a soldier or if an angel might carry a claw hammer. The Lord worked in mysterious ways.

  Gran may have heard the noise, may have been awake in the darkness mouthing her prayers. But she said nothing. Or perhaps she was already dead, growing stiff as her fluids leaked into the mattress.

  Bobby was heavy, but no heavier than
a wooden cross. He would slow me down, make me an easier target for the soldiers. But my blood is certainly no more precious than that of Him who had gone before.

  I headed north, toward the mountains. Sinners have little to lose. We can't run from the Penance. But the sinless surely deserve to rest in peace. Bobby will sleep in a blue heaven, where the dust of his flesh shall mingle with the clouds.

  And this I pray.

  ###

  SCARECROW BOY

  The sun raised a sleepy eye over the north Georgia hills. Short-leafed pines shivered here and there in the breeze, surrounded by the black bones of oak. Ground mist rose and waltzed away from the light. A stream cut a silver gash in the belly of the valley on its way to the Chattahoochee, the only thing in a hurry on the late-autumn morning. Inside a warped barn, the scarecrow boy rose from its dreams of brown fields and barbwire.

  Jerp rubbed his eyes to wipe away the glare of dawn as he walked with his grandpa to the barn. The grass crunched under his boots and his breath painted the thick vapor in the air. A banty rooster bugled a reveille. Wrens fluttered from under the tin eaves of the barn, on their way to scratch earthworms from the hard ground. The sky was ribbed with clouds, a thin threat of snow.

  Jerp glanced at the second-story windows of the barn. No scarecrow boy yet. But Jerp knew it was in there somewhere, flitting between cracks with a sound like dry paper crumpling. But maybe it only came alive at night, when the darkness kissed its moon-white face.

  "Quit your daydreaming, boy. Got chores to do." Grandpa roped a stream of tobacco juice onto the ground. Steam drifted from his spit and he shifted the bucket from one gloved hand to the other.

  Jerp wanted to tell Grandpa again about the scarecrow boy. About how it smiled at him when he was alone in the barn, how it danced from its nail on the wall, swinging its ragged limbs as if caught in a December crosswind. About how Jerp got the feeling that the scarecrow boy wanted something, a thing that only Jerp could give it. But Grandpa would say, "Got no time for such foolishness."

  Grandpa held open the barnyard gate and waited until Jerp followed him inside, then closed the gate as carefully as if he were performing a ritual.

  "Always close up behind you. We do things right around here." Those were the same words he had said every morning and night when they came down to do chores.

  Grandpa passed the bucket to Jerp and removed his gloves. Jerp watched as the big-knuckled hands slammed the hasp into place. The noise echoed across the hill, maybe waking the scarecrow boy.

  The milk pail banged against Jerp's knee as he followed Grandpa across the barnyard. A sow grunted under her breath in one of the side pens, mistaking the sound for the arrival of the slop bucket. She rolled over in the marsh of her own waste and glared at Jerp. Jerp wasn't scared of her. He was more worried about the scarecrow boy who would be waiting in rafters or cribs or dark corners for Jerp to step within reach.

  Jerp followed Grandpa to the front of the barn. Its rough gray planks were split from decades of harsh weather and ten-penny nail heads stuck out like little brown eyes. Grandpa slid open the heavy door, which hung from wheels that rolled across a steel track overhead. They ducked under the oily ropes that had been dipped in chemicals and stretched across the barn opening. The horse and cows liked to rub their backs against the ropes and the chemicals were supposed to keep the flies away, but the flies were like the sun, reliable and stubborn.

  "Gonna be a real corker of a day, Jerp." Grandpa crinkled his eyes, the closest he ever came to smiling. "Maybe we can get some work done around here."

  "Yes, sir," Jerp said, checking the barn windows once more for any sign of the scarecrow boy. The windows were empty.

  The barn air smelled of hay and dust, manure and animal hair. The cows mooed from their stalls, in a dull hurry to be turned out. Grandpa took a three-legged stool down from the wall and carried it to the milk cow's stall. He sat on the stool and reached underneath the cow and began tugging up and down as if picking fruit. Jerp held the pail so that the cow couldn't kick it over, watching the shadows for the scarecrow boy until at last the pail was full.

  "Fetch some ears of corn for the chickens, and I'll meet you back at the house," Grandpa said. He was going to leave Jerp alone in the barn. No, not quite alone.

  "But what about—" Jerp knew he was going to sound like a whimpering little city boy. He gulped and finished, "What about breakfast?"

  "We see to the animals first. You know that." Grandpa juddered his head as he drew up to spit again. Jerp nodded and turned, walking to the corncrib with feet as heavy as International Harvesters. He heard Grandpa teasing the sow out in the barnyard. Jerp put a trembling hand on the latch.

  He turned the latch and the door creaked open. Rats and their shadows scurried for the corners, their rustling making them sound as big as bobcats. He looked under the stairs that led to the hayloft, searching the darkness for movement. At first he saw only rotted pieces of harness and a broken cross-saw blade, its teeth reddened with age. Then he saw the scarecrow sitting among the sun-bleached husks. A smile stitched itself across the faded face. The scarecrow was looking at Jerp as if one of them was a mirror, with eyes as flat as old coins.

  It was the boy in the barn, the one he had tried to tell Grandpa about. The one he had seen many times from his bedroom window, through the fog his breath had made on the glass. The scarecrow boy that had swayed like a sheet on a clothesline, its skin glowing sickly in the dark loft. The scarecrow boy that had stared from the barn window as if knowing it was being watched. The scarecrow boy that looked as if it were waiting.

  But it's not real, Jerp told himself as he reached down to the grooved skin of the corn husks. The scarecrow boy is not there if you don't see it.

  Jerp tried not to look under the stairs, even though the sweat was coming now and his eyes strained toward the corners of their sockets and the sunlight wasn't pouring fast enough through the cracks between the siding planks.

  Had it moved? No, it was only a pile of old crumbling rags. Rotten cloth and straw never hurt nobody, just like Grandpa had said. Even though Jerp had seen the scythe of its smile. He gathered an armful of corn to his chest and ducked back, slamming the crib door shut with his foot and elbowing the latch into place.

  Jerp's heart hammered in his ears as he shucked the corn and rubbed the grains loose with his thumbs. The kernels fell like golden teeth, and the chickens gathered around his feet, pecking at the grommets of his boots. He was trying to tell himself he hadn'tseen the boy in the barn. That the scarecrow boy wasn'twearing a ragged flannel shirt and jeans with holes in the knees. It didn'thave skin as white as raw milk and eyes that glimmered with a hunger that even biscuits and hamfat gravy wouldn't ease, nor was its hair as black as a crow nor its teeth as green as stained copper. It hadn'tsat there through the frozen night, chattering until whatever served as its bones worked themselves loose.

  It had to be a straw puppet, tossed in the corner until growing season. Only weeds and fabric. Only a scarecrow. But Grandpa didn't use scarecrows.

  "Scarecrows are for the birds," Grandpa had said. He used pie pans on strings and shotgun blasts and bait laced with battery acid to drive away the magpies and crows. He said every scarecrow he'd ever put out had been covered in droppings by the end of the afternoon. As far as Grandpa was concerned, all a scarecrow did was provide a shady picnic area for the little thieves.

  Jerp wasn't going to think about the scarecrow boy in the barn. He had more chores to do, and he didn't want Grandpa to give him the look, the one where he raised one white eyebrow and furrowed his forehead and twitched the corner of his mouth a little. It was a look of disappointment, his wordless way of saying Jerp, you've come up short, can't cut the mustard, maybe you really oughta be in Atlanta with your parents, where you can be just another big-city sissy and everybody can call you "Jerald."

  Jerp would rather run through a barn full of thin, silent scarecrow boys than to have Grandpa give him the look.

  So
Jerp pretended to forget the scarecrow boy as he curried the mare and turned it out for the day, then gathered the eggs that the game hens had squirreled away in their dusty nests. He checked on the two boars to see if they had enough water and dumped a bucketful of mashed grain and sorghum into their trough. Grandpa didn't name any of the animals. He said he didn't think it was right that people gave names to things that they were going to eat.

  "What's good for the goose is good for the gander," Grandpa had said, without bothering to explain what that meant. Jerp thought that maybe he meant everything died just the same.

  Death was part of life on the farm. Thanksgiving brought a blessing to all but the turkey. Hens who went barren because their eggs were stolen soon steamed on the table, stunted legs in the air. Hogs and cattle found a hundred different uses in the kitchen, baked, broiled, fried, or barbecued.

  "God bless this bounty on our table," Grandpa said before each meal. Jerp thought maybe he should do the prayers while the animals were still alive. The way he had done for Grandma.

  Jerp had peeked once during the dinner prayer, and saw Grandpa looking out the window to the barn at the same moment he added the part that went, "And, please, dear Lord, spare us from evil."

  Jerp shivered with the memory of that word, evil, and the way Grandpa's voice had cracked just a little as he said it. Jerp put away the currying brush and feed bucket, but the chill continued down his spine. Because he heard a soughing, scratchy sound from the hayloft above. He looked up just as a few strands of straw fell through the cracks in the floorboards. He hurried out of the barn, careful to latch the gate just as he had promised Grandma before she died.

  Jerp had sat with her one night, when her spark of life was fading rapidly. She looked at him with burning, fevered eyes, looked past and through him to the window, to the long shadows of the barn.

  "There’s a season for ever thing," she had gurgled. “The gate...”

  Jerp thought she meant the Pearly Gates. He waited for her to say more. But she closed her eyes to the lamplight and slept.