Tarry This Night

by Kristyn Dunnion

  Father Ernst tightens the lid and sets the water jug down. “I keep my women happy,” he says with his wide pulpit smile.

  “What about your children?” she blurts. Each little face lines up in her mind, desperate for clean water. While they shrivel to bone in their cold room, Father Ernst camps like a king, drinking, eating his secret supplies. Fury casts a winged cloak upon her: oh, how she rages now.

  “You have food and water! Yet you deny us.”

  “It’s not like that,” he says.

  Her eyes dart. “What else do you have? Are those guns?”

  He shuts the door.

  She gulps air. “Paul was right.”

  “He is born of his father’s demon seed, evidenced by his black hair and wicked heart. We may each have our soulless hour, but we shall have our—”

  “Deliverance.” She spits the word like bad porridge.

  “Cousin. You’re a woman now. Woman’s rage is more fierce than man’s because she cannot understand.” He taps his fingertips together. “These are Sacred provisions. God alone tells me when we may use them.”

  “Lies,” she shouts. He reaches for her. Ruth’s arms flail. She trips on the too-long skirt. He catches her waist and she pushes back against him. “I believed you! I defended you!” She is really crying now, snotty, with loud hiccups, and he crushes her against his chest.

  “Shh,” he says as he roughly pulls her onto his lap, onto the bed. His baritone deafens her, his stink smothers. He says, “Resistance is sin. It is the mind closing, the spirit dying. I cannot bear it. Resistance will destroy us. Are you infected? For shame, woman, for shame.”

  Shame. That word seeps through to her bones.

  “Don’t you love the Family? Don’t you trust the Doctrine?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “But nothing.” His profile—cliff-drop nose perched above sunken stone lips. “If you refuse to be mine, I must cast you out. Tonight.”

  Cast out? Alone, topside, where the sun burns a wicked inferno all hours of the day and lawless night while demons stalk the earth and evil prevails. She whispers, “I’m not a Philistine.”

  “Aren’t you? Wearing trousers, carrying on like a man. Playing your games with me. I’ll not be fooled by Lilith lies and crocodile tears. Defying God’s will. Perhaps the Underworld will claim you instead of me.”

  His eyes look past, unfocused, as though he is seeing something else beyond her.

  She pushes against him. “No.”

  “Whores and witches have no say among us.” Beads of sweat stand on his forehead.

  “I’m neither!”

  “Yet you refuse me. Accuse me. Who do you think you are?” Hands move to her throat, closing around it. “Memaw weeps. How your Judas father rousted our only daughter away, it’s still a mystery.”

  “You’re my Father. I have no other,” she says, and then there’s no more air.

  Nerves tick under Father Ernst’s pouchy eye when he squeezes tighter. “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: that it defileth the body and setteth on fire the course of nature, and it is set on fire by Hell!” His hands squeezing her neck, he shakes her like a doll, and her braids sway. Eyes bulge. She strikes, tries to kick. Every ounce of her fights. Her vision begins to fade, and she slumps into his grip. His breath comes ragged, his arms shake—she draws her skirts up a little bit for him, and he relents.

  “There’s a good girl,” he sighs, laying her back on the bed.

  She’s coughing, retching, desperate for air. Large hands drop on her, one on her chest, one pulling her thighs apart. Beard scratches her bare skin.

  Help me, she prays. But there’s no one.

  He closes his eyes. Moustache parts to yellow teeth. His mating face, dear God. She’s past this part already, out of her body. She’s her own ghost, older even than him. Her hand snakes under the skirt, finds the belt. Unsheathes her knife. Hand on the grip.

  Blade tip held to his torso, she hisses, “Stop.”

  His eyes widen. Palms raise, warming on an invisible fire. The white of his skin, his hair and beard, makes the whole room darker. “Put that down,” he says.

  “No.”

  His weight shifts and the blade tip sinks a little, tearing the fabric of his robe. His face slackens with disbelief. He slaps her arm and falls onto her with all of his weight. Ruth is pinned, her arm stretched wide, the knife flattened uselessly. “Jezebel!” Father Ernst heaves onto his back, pulling her halfway upright. Her skirts are caught under him; she can’t get free. He lands a punch on her throbbing temple and she falls forward. The knife is still there on the bed, and she reaches for it, she holds it in both hands, and with a thrust, it is up to the handle in his hot stink. His eyes roll, hands curl to protect his guts. Ruth pulls out the dirty knife. For one moment, they both stare at the stain oozing through the fabric, the gore pooling.

  “Repent!” cries Ruth.

  Howls let loose from him. Hands beat at her. She forces the knife again, wet and deep. He keens, that tuneless high-pitched sorrow, thrashing on the bed. She is buffeted, bruised, but the knife lands true. She unzips her gown the rest of the way and, in her plain slip, struggles free.

  Ruth runs to the door. The handle turns, but the door won’t budge. Something’s blocking it. She bangs and pounds against the door, screeches, and it creeps open a tiny bit. Through the crack she sees their large dining table propped close. Silas is waiting. He drags the heavy wooden table away, one inch at a time.

  “Keys,” he shouts. “Get the keys!”

  Ruth twists and the room spins round and round. Keys. Father Ernst writhes on the bed, groaning. She tiptoes close and pats the sides of his robe. He swipes the air between them. Ruth shakes the stained fabric but there’s no jingle, no weight from holding the key ring. Think. The sound of keys shifting when he leaned to kiss her during the ceremony. As they hopped and swayed during the dance. But not when he sat on his bed, not when he opened the hidden door, and not when they fought. Ruth scans Father’s chamber. Framed photos, desk is bare, bed sheets a jumble, carpet rumpled on the floor. Keys—the ring is suspended from a lone nail on the wall beside the door. How did she miss it? It fits around her wrist like a charm bracelet.

  “The children,” she shouts to Silas. Now that she’s free, he pushes the table back against Father Ernst’s bedroom door, barricading him in.

  “Susan took them to the Mission Pole.”

  Ruth runs the corridor faster than the old man ever could. Her body tingles with the hot pulse of power, harder than cement, darker than death. Heat bursts from the tight spot in her chest. She passes the cairn. The ladder is just ahead. She leans forward, gasping. She cannot hear for the pulse rushing through her ears. Tiny faces come into focus: the terrified children clutching Hannah’s hands in the shadows.

  Susan says, “Mind you take them up. I’ll stay with Father.”

  Ruth shakes her head, but Susan thrusts Leah at her, and the little girl hugs onto her back. Ruth’s bloody hands slip on ladder rungs. She sheathes the knife, wipes her hands on the cotton slip. She squeezes Leah’s tiny hands clasped about her neck. Susan flicks her apron at them and, gasping for breath, Ruth begins to climb. Her strength wanes at the seventh rung.

  “Lazy,” shouts Susan, and that spurs her on.

  Here comes Silas, stampeding the tunnel. Dust billows up the hatch, coats Ruth’s teeth, sticks to her swollen, drying tongue. On the ninth rung, she begins to cough.

  “Ruth!”

  Slowly, she climbs.

  There is darkness and there is the light—one lamp circle below when she peers down. In it, moths, the flutter of pale skirts. Bare and stockinged feet crowd around the ladder. Silas and Susan lift the twins, and they scramble up the rungs. Hannah carries Abel. Skirts flick above the lamp, shadows lurch high up the hatch. Elbows, fists, and feet work to climb careful steps. Little cries rise up.

  Finally, Ruth reaches the handle, and while Leah breathes hot in her ear, Ruth slides the bolt, turns th
e key in the lock. Pushes the heavy door. There’s a catch. The seal breaks, but the hinges stick. She pushes again, puts her injured self to it, all the want in the world, all the faith she ever had. It gives.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for generous financial support of this project. Thank you also to the Ontario Arts Council Writers’ Reserve grant, recommended by ChiZine Publications. The Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (in particular Wired Writing, under Fred Stenson’s fine direction) and the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences in Georgia are artists’ refuges; a great deal of this book was dreamed up and written in their respective residency programs. I am deeply indebted to the generous and insightful Marina Endicott, who lent her careful eye and gave invaluable time and attention to early drafts of this work.

  Esteemed writers who gave thoughtful consideration and encouragement to various drafts—including my dread bantling attempts—include Carolyn Beck, Anne Laurel Carter, Paige Cooper, Jani Krulc, Kanaga Kulendran, Frances Key Phillips, and Shannon Quinn. I am humbled by and grateful for their support over the years. Special thanks to Frances Key Phillips for graciously hosting the inaugural Little Stones reunion, and to Anne Laurel Carter for sharing her beautiful home in Nova Scotia. Thank you to Sarah Selecky, who published an excerpt in her Author’s Spotlight series, and to Annetta Dunnion, who shared personal knowledge of quilting techniques and tradition. Marita Dachsel’s Glossolalia compelled me to dig deeper into the lives of my fictional wives. I was lured into the survivalists’ parallel universe by Neil Strauss’s Emergency, and am forever changed.

  Big Love to the incredible Arsenal Pulp Press team—Brian Lam, Oliver McPartlin, Cynara Geissler, and especially my editor Susan Safyan, whose kind and careful attentions enriched this book—it is such a pleasure to work with you.

  To my parents, Annetta and Patrick Dunnion, for their steadfast support; my siblings and their remarkable families for timely distractions; and John MacDonald, for keeping it real.

  PHOTO: LIZ MARSHALL

  KRISTYN DUNNION’s most recent novel The Dirt Chronicles (Arsenal Pulp Press) was a 2012 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Previous novels include Mosh Pit, Missing Matthew, and Big Big Sky (Red Deer Press). Dunnion is the 2015 Machigonne Fiction prize winner and a Pushcart Prize nominee. She lives in Toronto