Nineveh's Child

by Gerhard Gehrke

  Karl also prayed when Uma wasn’t looking, as if it was a secret activity when done away from the dinner table, a ceremony that could be shut down by Uma’s glower of disapproval. But more than once, Karl invited Dinah over, and in a solemn tone he would ask whomever he prayed to that she one day find her brother. Later, Dinah would wonder if he’d understood what he was asking for. After an “amen,” he would send her off without any explanation as to how his request would help. When she would ask him about her brother afterward, he’d tell her they weren’t supposed to talk about it. Sometimes she spied on Karl in his workshop with his eyes closed and his mouth moving. He never bothered with crosses or woodcuts with faces or anything else she had seen at their neighbors’ or in the villages among the pious. No one in Nineveh had ever prayed.

  With Karl away, they ate their lunch of vegetable stew unblessed.

  After lunch, they had chores. Dinah was out tending the goats in their pens when she saw a line of black smoke coming from the cluster of small homes where their closest neighbors lived, a ten-minute walk away.

  Dinah ran to tell Uma. Uma was busy with the wash, the gray water turning grayer as she turned the clothes and sheets by hand in a large basin.

  “There’s smoke coming from the Garza place!”

  Uma looked at her and gave the slightest nod. She took her hands from the laundry and dried them on her apron.

  “Come into the kitchen,” she said. Dinah followed her.

  She took a stack of wrapping cloth from a cupboard. “Wrap bundles of food.”

  Dinah started to place cheese, nuts, bread, and dried fruit in even portions in the center of each cloth. Uma left the kitchen, and Dinah heard her speaking with Rosalyn. They headed upstairs, Rosalyn asking “Why?” over and over. Dinah couldn’t make out Uma’s words until she shouted, “Just do it!”

  She heard panic in Uma’s voice.

  She began to pack with less deliberation, dumping food into small piles and only tying each bundle off once it was bulging. Uma returned to the kitchen. She had a coat on, even though it was hot. She plopped an armload of blankets on the floor and said, “Fill skins with milk.” Uma left her to it.

  Dinah opened the cabinet to get the skins, then stopped. Through the window, she saw someone out back. A man of slight frame stood by the hanging laundry. He wore a long overcoat and a broad hat and was looking at something in his hands. When he looked up, his eyes reflected the light as if they were mirrors. She ducked. Then she heard the front door open.

  Heavy boots clomped on the floorboards of the entryway. At first, she thought Karl was home. Then Uma screamed. Before Dinah could do anything, the back door clicked. Someone pushed at it first, then pulled it open. She crawled under the preparation table. It had a long, draping tablecloth that hid her. A shadow came into the kitchen. She saw black boots with thick rubber treads unlike anything any of the locals wore. Whoever it was moved past her and into the hallway toward the front of the house. He made a soft clicking noise with his mouth, like a nervous tic.

  Uma said something in an urgent tone, followed by “No! No! No!”

  There came a soft sound, followed by a heavy thud. Dinah didn’t hear Uma say anything after that.

  She crawled to the wall next to the tallest cupboard. One panel came off. Behind the wall was the cool crawlspace where they stored butter. She squeezed inside and pulled the panel closed.

  Two sets of footsteps went upstairs. She heard a shuffle, and Rosalyn screamed. Dinah started to cry into her hands. She pressed her fingers against her mouth and nose and tried to suppress the sobs. She couldn’t move. There was butter jammed thick into clay pots on all sides.

  Someone was coming back down the stairs. Rosalyn squealed. Dinah heard more footfalls and boot scrapes. Rosalyn was putting up a fight, and Dinah burned inside knowing that she would do nothing but hide.

  The sounds faded until the house was quiet. She waited, trying to control her breathing. Her lower lip bled from biting down on it. She began counting to get her mind off anything that might have happened or was still happening to Uma and Rosalyn. The numbers in her head were unfaithful. They didn’t line up. Then she heard a floorboard creak right in the center of the kitchen.

  She hadn’t heard anyone come in. There must have been a third man. How long had he been there? Had he heard her? She almost gagged as she held her breath, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She smelled the briny butter and felt some of her hair sticking to the pots.

  A cabinet door opened. Closed. A soft step. The cupboard next to her made a sound. Some jars inside were moved. She put an eye to the seam of the panel. She could just make out the table and the cloth bundles of food. A man backlit by the window stepped across the light. The floor creaked, the vibration traveling to where Dinah was hiding.

  He stopped.

  He held a device in his hand, one that looked just like her own device. But he was distracted. He spoke softly, barely saying his words. He paused and nodded as if someone had spoken back to him. Then the light and shadow played again across the seam of the panel, and he was gone. She thought at first that he had vanished, but then she heard a floorboard creak down in the hallway. It had taken her months of practice to master walking soundlessly in the house, and she still missed spots. She listened as he moved toward the front door.

  She could do nothing but wait. Her arms and legs were trembling, and she had to pee.

  The house fell silent. Her mind raced in anger and frustration, but she dared not move from her hiding place. She calmed herself, focused on breathing, did some long division in her head. Then the smell of smoke reached her. What had happened to the Garzas was now happening here. If their device was what had led them here, they hadn’t trusted it enough to keep searching for her.

  She slowly opened the panel. The kitchen was empty. One limb at a time, she extracted herself from the cubby like a spider emerging from a crack in the wall. She heard screaming come from the goats out back. They were terrified.

  A trail of dark smoke came from the front of the house and down the hall. She got down on her knees and crawled that way. She saw Uma lying on the floor. One arm extended in Dinah’s direction, as if she were reaching toward her for help. Uma’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly. The image seared itself into Dinah’s mind. But she didn’t see any blood or external wounds. What had they done to her?

  The front door was open. Someone moved about outside carrying a burning bundle of twigs and walked out of sight. She heard the popping sound of fire come from the front porch and smelled the sweet fragrance of burning wood. An orange glow danced on the door. If the fire was only outside, she knew she had just a few minutes before the entire house went up. She crawled forward past Uma’s body and tried not to look.

  “I’m sorry,” Dinah whispered.

  The left side of the stairway would make the least amount of sound. She hoped no one outside would see her through the doorway. The smoke was being drawn into the house from the outside, and it stung her eyes no matter how low she stayed. She went up the stairs and into her room and quickly collected her things. She double checked that her own device was still hidden in her pack where she had put it early that morning. From there she went to Rosalyn’s room. The shutters were open. She peered outside, keeping her head low. No one in sight.

  Rosalyn had always been able to exit the house the easiest, as she only had to swing down to the top of a small attached woodshed. This wasn’t possible from Dinah’s room. Anytime she had wanted to sneak out, she’d had to come to this room or go down the stairs. She looked down. She would have to drop at least a foot, and that would make noise. At least here the smoke would help conceal her as it cascaded up and around the side of the house from the front.

  She had no other choice. The pack would have to go out first. She didn’t want to take the time to tie it to a sheet and lower it, so she dropped it. Thump. It landed on the shed. She swung both legs out and dropped down with a soft thud. Once on the shed, she pu
lled on the pack and climbed to the ground. If there were men out front and back, they would see her as she fled. The only nearby cover was Billy’s pen.

  The shaggy beast was watching her through the beams of his fence. His nostrils flared. Then something distracted him. Rosalyn was screaming again, this time further away toward the road. Dinah wanted to go and see, to look for an opportunity to help. This would involve moving to the corner of the house. True, the smoke might conceal her, but at any moment another of the attackers might appear. She had no idea how many there might be. She ran toward Billy’s pen.

  He bleated at her.

  “Shut up,” she hissed as she got down and crawled behind his water trough and to the rear of the pen where Billy’s hutch could conceal her. She paused to catch her breath and took a quick look. More smoke rose, as the fire now burned in several places. No doubt the invaders had used their torches on the drying shed, the tool shed, and the other goat pen. The ladies were screaming.

  The intruders would soon come around to this side of the house. The crackling flames began to roar. Toward the front of the property she saw two men walking away from her, their details obscured by waves of heat. Beyond them was a white truck.

  Rosalyn was nowhere to be seen.

  A man approached Billy’s pen from the back of the house. He carried a flaming brand. He wore gloves and leathers and had on thick boots like the ones she had seen inside the kitchen. Under his broad hat, a brown bandanna was pulled over his nose and mouth like some storybook bandit. His eyes were covered with goggles that shined like silver coins.

  She sank lower into the weeds and stickers stabbed at her face. If Billy’s pen went up, the grass around her would quickly catch fire. Billy started to pace about. He bounced and kicked. Dinah crawled on her belly along the back of the pen. As long as the man continued walking in a straight line he wouldn’t see her. The gate was tied with a rope at its corner, and the knot was just above her. She reached up and began to work the hitch to free the rope. Billy snorted as the man drew close. She got the rope free. Billy would have to do the rest.

  Nothing happened. Billy didn’t explode from his pen like a demon jinn from his lamp, eager to devour the souls of any bad men he could catch. Instead, the goat retreated to his shelter. She heard the man’s boots crunch on the gravel. The brand landed atop Billy’s house, and the fire spread immediately. Billy made his deep bleats, but he didn’t come out, and the man said nothing. Soon the grass around Dinah would burn.

  She sprang to her feet and froze. The man had rounded the pen without her hearing him move. They stared at each other for a long second. She could see her reflection in his eyes. She took a step back, and someone called out from the front of the house. The others had seen her too.

  She dashed forward toward the edges of the property, trampling pea sprouts and carrots. The corner of the pen blocked the man’s path for a fraction of a second as he moved to catch her. She veered in the direction of the tree line, toward the paths to the meadows and the thick undergrowth that she knew well. After a minute, she couldn’t tell if the man was still behind her or not. She pumped her legs and gritted her teeth and vaulted downed branches and rounded dead trees. Her heart felt like it would explode out of her chest. Finally, she chanced a quick look in the direction of the house.

  All that was behind her was a rising curtain of dark smoke and the echoes of a goat’s screams.

  ***

  No one followed her, or she had evaded them. She returned that evening to Uma’s place to watch it finish burning. Not much was left of the house but its black skeleton, which still churned out plumes of gray smoke. Part of her couldn’t believe any of what had happened. None of it made sense. Her head swam, and she felt dizzy. The smells of the fire were most perverse, as the flames had incinerated all the food stores as well as Uma’s corpse.

  The men and their vehicle were nowhere to be seen. She heard little but the occasional pop and snap from the house and the dying flames. A few remaining embers stirred upwards on waves of heat. It was time to go.

  She made her way to the road, staying in the shadows. She could see another fire burning further down toward the valley, maybe two miles away, a telltale line of dark smoke rising into the copper sky. This would be the home of the two widows. Uma had never liked them. She had been neighborly when necessary, but had told Rosalyn and Dinah to keep their distance. Now they had shared the same fate. Dinah felt sad that she couldn’t remember their names.

  She crossed the road and stuck to the grass, trotting along while keeping low. The sun set as she walked. She saw the glow of dancing flames play on a row of trees up ahead. She got lower to the ground and moved forward.

  The white truck was parked near the side of the widows’ burning cottage. Four men stood at a small campfire in front of the vehicle. They ate food from small foil packages. One passed a bottle, and they all drank. They spoke in low tones too quiet to hear clearly. One of the men chuckled. The scene was casual, as if it was a group of farmers having just broken the spring soil and now relaxing after the day’s work.

  The rear of the vehicle was an enclosed cargo space with a hinged rear gate. If Rosalyn was inside, she had to get her free. The men wouldn’t be eating for long, and she couldn’t count on them settling in for the night. She kept the truck between her and them, rolling her feet on the dirt and gravel. She put her hand on the rear latch and tried to turn it, but it was locked. A burst of laughter erupted. One man broke from the group and walked toward the house. If he turned, he would see her. She ducked down and crawled under the truck.

  She had a good view of the men from the waist down. They wore boots and long coats. They also had on baggy pants with pockets and belts with attached pouches. The one closest to the house kept laughing louder and longer than the other three. It was a braying sound that grated on her ears. He pitched his food container into the fire where it popped and melted.

  “Did I show you what I found?” the braying man said. He stepped into view and pulled a book from his pack. It took but a moment for Dinah to recognize Uma’s kitchen book with the orange cover. He opened it and began to flip pages.

  “Relics of the past,” he said. “Pornography in the form of food.”

  They all laughed. Dinah flushed with anger.

  “And look at their idiotic grins in this picture, fat children waiting for their cake to be sliced. The worst of the fantasies.”

  He flipped more pages.

  “This is a catalog of selfishness. All these yummy treats that Mummy will make me while the rest of the world starves.”

  Another at the fire said, “I don’t know, brother. It all looks pretty good to me.”

  Uma had read from that book and had written copious notes in the margins where substitutions or changes were needed. All the blank pages in the front and back were filled with her tight, precise script. The book was all that was left of her.

  Dinah noticed a pair of black rifles leaning nearby against an upside-down wheelbarrow. These weapons were so rare she had never seen one since leaving Nineveh, and there they had always been locked up and never carried by security personnel, except the ones in the greenhouse preparing to go outside. A third rifle was set against the truck’s front bumper. She knew she could crawl forward and grab it. They would see her, but not before she got her hands on the weapon. Could she figure out how to use it in those few seconds? It was a risk worth taking. She started to emerge from underneath the truck when she heard someone inside the cab speak.

  “Finish up! Let’s go!” a trembling, old voice called.

  This startled her. The three at the fire threw their food containers away. The braying man laughed once more to himself as he turned the open book upside down and shook it as if there were a foldout or a map inside. She backed up so that she was completely under the truck again. Boots shuffled around all sides of her. One man got into the driver’s side of the cab. Two of the others got into the back.

  “What do you have there?
” the man in the cab asked. “You know the rules. You can’t bring that back to Nineveh.”

  “It’s just a cookbook,” the braying man said. He tossed the orange book into the flames.

  When the engine started, Dinah rolled to the dark side of the road and watched them drive away. In one afternoon, these strange men had destroyed her world. They had kidnapped her stepsister and murdered the closest thing she had to a mother. But the man had mentioned Nineveh, the place she had been taken from, the place where her brother had been left behind. So Nineveh was where she needed to go.

  2. Wally

  “What secrets the ground can hold,” Dinah whispered, something Karl had told her when teaching her how to hunt. That wasn’t all of Karl’s proverb. The rest of it went, “but keep your eyes peeled.”

  She crouched and found a footprint between several small islands of broken asphalt. The print looked old, as the mud where it had formed was cracked and dry. She traced a finger along the deepest parts of the indentation and detected no moisture, not that there would be any, as it was another broiler in a series of hot days.

  “Are you here?”

  She pulled her sensor from her pack and raised its steel pin into the air. The device had a mousetrap-sized electronic box attached to its end. She hit the button and watched a red light blink for the next thirty seconds. The green light stayed unlit. An LED screen with a virtual needle spun and pulsed but told her nothing. A soft beep signaled the device had completed its scan.

  “You’re not here.”

  She picked her way through the shell of what had once been a restaurant. She didn’t like entering these old buildings, as there was little to find, and they obscured sight, sounds, and smells. But the sign outside looked so inviting.

  A mosquito buzzed around her head. She swatted it away. She had a few fresh red bites on her olive arms and thighs. Flying, biting bugs told her there might be water nearby, or at least some mud. Water would be good.