The Wisdom of Evil

by Scarlet Black

  Even as she sat under the oak tree that shaded her grave, listening to the only sounds around her, the melancholy cooing of the mourning doves and the shrill cries of blue jays, she pictured the body below her decaying. These hideously intrusive thoughts were unstoppable.

  Glory pictured Olivia slowly rotting away down there in the dark, a short six feet away from her. Deep down in her heart, she was certain there was no heaven, only the dark, dank earth, which in the end, embraced everyone. Death was the end of all things. Period.

  And so it was that one day, right before the Thanksgiving holiday, Glory removed the tiny crucifix she’d worn around her neck since receiving it at First Holy Communion long ago.

  She placed it solemnly in a drawer of her jewelry box, which held nothing in it. As far as she was concerned, the item she placed in it held nothing in it either.

  On Thanksgiving Day of that year, she cooked a turkey. Kate’s and Sophia’s families joined them for dinner. Glory wasn’t thankful for anything. Everything she had was due to her and Michael’s own initiative, not God’s divine help. Never had she seen a vision or felt a whisper that God, or any other higher power for that matter, was watching over them. Only the Reaper was real. He did not watch over them, he loomed, and was hateful, not loving.

  She sat in a corner rocking chair next to the fireplace and drank glass after glass of wine before dinner.

  When at last Michael called everyone to the table while he carved the turkey, she got up. She knew that she was outright drunk by then and cared less about the sideward glances she was getting from everyone.

  Up until then, she’d kept her lack of faith to herself, telling no one, not even Michael, that she no longer believed in God.

  Both of them had been brought up Roman Catholic with all the dogma and rituals the church entailed. Glory was happy to shed it like a snake shedding its skin and live by her own rules.

  “Glory, would you please lead us in the blessin’?” Michael asked.

  She’d been saying the blessing in their home for the last twenty years on holidays. She did not see how she could do it this year.

  “Maybe someone else should do it this year.” She was slurring her words and reminded herself of her own mother, a thought that made her even more miserable.

  “Mom, you always do it,” Mickey said.

  “Okay, okay, I’ll…do it.”

  Heads were bowed, hands clasped around the table.

  “Every year, we speak of what we are thankful for,” she began, and paused. She would keep it brief, hoping that none of the hatred in her heart would be conveyed in her words. “This year is different. I have only you at this very table to be thankful for and I love you all. Thank you for being here,” she said quickly.

  “Mom, you didn’t ask God to bless our food and thank Him for this meal.” Mickey stared at her in amazement.

  “Why should I thank Him for anything, Mickey? He doesn’t even exist. He’s nothin’ but a concept, a fairy tale, that’s all! What kind of God takes so much away and gives nothing in return? I would rather believe there’s no God than to consider that there is and He is infinitely cruel to his followers. You want to know who I thank for this meal? Your dad and me. We earned the money to buy these things. Fuck God…damn him if he does exist!”

  “Glory, stop it now!” Michael whispered urgently. “I’m thankful and you should be too that I wasn’t arrested and we weren’t put through a grueling ordeal because of Sean’s death. I believe we all have a guardian angel watchin’ out for us and everythin’ happens for a reason. We just can’t see what that reason is right now, but in time….” His words drifted off into silence.

  Glory was sorry not for her words, only for the fact that she’d exposed her lack of faith to everyone there. They gawked at her in shocked disbelief, eating the meal in awkward silence.

  Glory could see on their faces that everyone there was thinking she didn’t mean any of what she’d just said. Right now, she was full of self-pity and anger and still loved and believed in God and the inherent goodness in the human race.

  She did not believe in either of those things. In fact, she believed in nothing.

  Chapter 14

  Admitting to others, that she no longer believed in Heaven, or Hell for that matter, didn’t liberate her from that which she believed now to be a fairy tale. Far from it. With nothing to believe in, she was as a piece of driftwood, riding the waves, tossing and turning on a far stretching lonely ocean.

  The thought horrified her. Her fear of death was even more intense than ever before.

  At home, Mickey had just graduated from college and Glory continued to work as a veterinary technician. Her family and job were the only things keeping her grounded, the only things that provided her with any sense of purpose in life.

  Feeling cut off, isolated from the world that still spun around her, Glory failed to notice that the country and society itself was crumbling. Michael knew it. His once enjoyable job as a police officer in Cliff’s End was changing…fast. Crimes unheard of in the small town, where police officers mostly showed up at schools for the D.A.R.E. program and chatted with local business owners, now patrolled neighborhoods to make sure they were safe from vandals and other criminal elements.

  All of the earmarks of another Great Depression era were upon them. As in the first depression, people refused to see the truth until it was too late.

  “The foundations of our economy are still strong,” their leaders insisted, but to look at the bare faced truth with their own eyes told an entirely different story.

  The corporate scandals, which were so abundant in the early years of the millennium, now gave way to pleas to the government for bailouts. Banks were struggling as foreclosures soared; credit grew tight and some were outright failing. The stock market plummeted, taking with it many people’s retirement savings.

  Of all that was lost in home values and stock, the biggest blow for most was the loss of a job, reducing motivation to a single minded purpose only—the struggle to survive.

  The extravagant lifestyle of the wealthiest two percent of Americans was still protected, but for the middle class living the American dream, the nightmare was only just beginning. If they should have learned anything, it’s that history always repeated itself.

  The difference between the first depression and the “Depression of the Millennium,” as it would later be called was that, as a nation, the moral fiber was not as strong.

  The morals of 2008 had been corrupted by endless greed and self-absorption. People may have been unemployed and in dire circumstances, but they were often unruly and outright rude.

  How one chose to embrace past history, as well as the future, was shaped in part by the character of the individual.

  In the first depression, lasting from 1930 to 1941, people stood patiently in lines, hoping for a job. There was no unemployment insurance, no federal insurance on savings accounts, and no social security.

  They were on their own and had lost everything, but most had not lost their humanity.

  Neighbors helped neighbors; parents went without food for to give it to their children. Men went in search of work, taking their duty to care for their family very seriously.

  Wives made do with what they had without complaint and took charge of the family needs while their husbands were gone.

  Times were very different now. The middle class was thoroughly entrenched in the materialism that had become increasingly important in the country. People simply didn’t have the skills to live frugally.

  The individual was under crippling debt, as was the government.

  Despair turned to hopelessness as the months and years dragged on, more jobs lost, health benefits lost, a way of life lost. Michael and Glory still had jobs, but for Michael, the crime rate and the lack of morality were very depressing indeed.

  The early evening twilight of that summer day as Glory drove home was stunning. The day had been warm and humid, the sun a blaze of fire engine
red high in the sky. Blue, purple and orange sky appeared as a background canvas for the spectacular red sun. It almost made her believe there may be a God in heaven after all. Almost.

  When she arrived home, Haley, of course, came running to her, tail wagging so hard his entire backside wagged with it, smiling with his wrinkled upper snout and big white teeth showing.

  No matter how bad life could be, he could always be counted on to somehow make it a little better.

  Michael was waiting for her just inside the door.

  He didn’t look well these days. The loss of Olivia, coupled with the long hours at work, seeing people at their worst, was taking a dreadful toll on him and he looked much older than his forty-four years. Deep worry lines creased his brow and mouth. His eyes appeared sunken and his skin had a pasty whitish gray color. He looked worn out.

  Glory was always a homebody, enjoying her time in her gardens or sitting out on the large deck, watching nature unfold in its own ritualistic ways. But now, with the danger from crime inherent in the country, home was more important than ever before because it was safe. As safe as any home could be. “If criminals really wanted in, they’d get in,” Michael often pointed out.

  The Piscataqua River Bridge, which separated Maine from New Hampshire, once graceful, was now a place to be avoided. It was on that bridge that poor souls at the very end of their ropes jumped to their deaths. Others attacked motorists driving across it, stealing whatever they could from them, even if it meant assaulting them or even killing them. Still, it wasn’t as bad in Maine and New Hampshire as it was in Boston. Nevertheless, one would have to be blind not to see that it was getting there.

  Here was where she’d built a family and raised two beautiful children. Where Olivia had crawled and then walked upon the worn, pegged wooden floors. Home was the place where she could still see signs of her daughter having walked the earth for such a short time.

  Her smell still lingered in the clothes in her closet, which Glory still had not removed. There was still hair left in her brush, strands of brown and gold mingled together.

  There were pictures scattered about her home in various frames; pictures of she and Michael’s wedding, pictures of soccer, baseball, football and dance, the many activities of her children. There were pictures of Haley as a pup, and other treasured mementos Joan had left to her when she’d passed away, as well as her mother’s beloved statue of the Madonna.

  Trophies lined the mantle of the fireplace from little league, dance class, drag racing, music, football , Mickey’s high school diploma, she and Michael’s college degrees, and other miscellaneous things that told her family’s story.

  Sunflowers over seven feet tall graced the yard, serving as a friendly border along the woods.

  All these and more were what separated a house from a home. This was their refuge.

  Life had become a shade of gray for Glory. In her naïve youth, she’d thought only in terms of black and white. But, the world didn’t work that way. Even the colorful world of nature was muted since her daughter’s death.

  Watching as her fellow man struggled to hold onto their humanity even as the world grew colder, crueler and more chaotic, she often thought of a story she’d read in college. One she’d never forgotten. The story of the Ik, the mountain people from Africa, who because of their lack of food had lost any humanity they may have had. Instead, they were self-serving to the point of cruelty. They sent their children out into the world at the age of three, where they’d group with other children, all differing in age. However, these children didn’t stay together out of anything as human as the need for friendship. It was just a necessity. In turn, when parents reached old age, these same children wouldn’t take them in and they were left to die a painful death from starvation. This way of life was incomprehensible to western civilization. Then again, Glory thought, why couldn’t it happen here if the choices became as hard as theirs were?

  The multitude of the unemployed and homeless increased the crime rate by staggering numbers. Burglary; armed and not, was an everyday occurrence.

  By the year two-thousand and eleven, as the Great Depression of the Millennium got worse, crimes were more violent in nature. Without any regard for human compassion or empathy, mankind was going backward, it seemed, once again becoming driven by instinct.

  Just as the lioness takes down a deer to feed herself and her family, without regard for the fear and pain of the deer, the same was true for those individuals without any other way to survive.

  The faces of those in need were hardened by a society that wouldn’t employ them and had cast them aside.

  And so they were pushed violently into the age of anarchy.

  Those still fortunate enough to have jobs had to protect what they had.

  Bars were placed on the windows of most homes...reinforced steel doors replaced wooden ones. Elaborate alarm systems were installed in most homes and small businesses—what few small businesses were left—and large, forceful guard dogs were bought and trained to kill on command.

  Haley wasn’t brought up to be an attack dog and Glory refused to train him to be anything but the sweet, loving animal he’d always been. As far as she was concerned, he was the only natural creature in their home. It saddened her that a dog was more “humane” than some people. And she and Michael wouldn’t expect a dog to do that which they could not do themselves.

  No matter where Glory, Michael and Mickey were, once a week they went to Olivia’s grave. Olivia, with her gentle heart, how would she have adjusted to what was going on in their country, their beloved town of Cliff’s End, Maine?

  Each time they visited her grave, the grief was still overwhelming, but they needed to be there.

  While they saw others toss aside the dead and take whatever belongings they had, they still could feel the very human emotion of grief.

  On one of their weekly visits, there was a single yellow rose in a simple vase in front of her grave. No one in her family had put it there. Each week thereafter, a fresh yellow rose was there. She’d asked friends and other family members about it, but none had left it. Glory, Michael and Mickey all wondered who’d left it there—and why?

  Chapter 15

  In the year two-thousand and twelve, theories abounded. This was supposed to be a pinnacle year, a turning point for the entire world. There truly was a feeling in the air; the winds of change were no doubt on the horizon. Biblical theologians pondered the idea that this may be the year which bore witness to the second coming of Christ. The year that the Rapture would occur; where “the faithful” would be swept up into the sky from whence they stood, up into the Kingdom of Heaven. Thereafter, the great tribulation would occur, causing suffering on a massive scale. The earth would quake, the waters rage, the very magnetic core of the earth would shift. The world’s economies would fail, taking down the government with it. All this before the new age, one of peace and enlightenment, could come to pass. At that time, the truth of all things would be revealed.

  Against this canvas of uncertainty and fear, Glory’s own life was about to dramatically change. Everyone made choices, some good ones; some people are not proud of and would rather forget. Once a choice becomes an action, there would be consequences. Sometimes the consequences cost a little, other times they cost a lot, and at other times, they cost all you have.

  It was on that hot and humid night in July when Glory was sitting on the back deck of her house, Haley at her feet, that she made a choice that changed everything. The house was deathly quiet. Mickey was in his room on the computer. Michael was at yet another domestic violence call.

  She knew as the sun began to set that little time was left before she’d have to get indoors and shut down the house. She kept her gun holstered at her side all the time now. Most days were relatively safe to be outside. However, the nights were not.

  It started with a sudden quivering in Haley’s hind legs and before Glory knew what was happening. He was enmeshed in a full blown seizure. His eyes we
re glazed and his tongue hung to one side. His breathing was very shallow and quick. This was an emergency. I’m only a vet tech, not a vet, she thought. What the hell should she do?

  “Oh God, not Haley,” she thought. She couldn’t bear it. “Don’t take him from me, please, Lord.” She spoke the words as an expression more than a plea for help. No “higher power” was listening. No one could save him. He was twelve years old and his time had come. That was all there was to it, no more, no less.

  His breathing became haggard and every few seconds, he stopped breathing altogether. Glory knew exactly what that meant!

  “Gloooo-reeee, I’m going to take him. Soon, he shall be mine…” The voice of the Reaper! Since some time had passed since she’d last encountered the entity, she assumed incorrectly that she was rid of it.

  “No! You can’t have him!” she shouted in the empty air.

  An echo of laughter, surrounded her, enveloped her, was literally within her, relentless! She ran into the house in a blind panic, Haley in her arms.

  “Hang in there, Haley. Hang on my good boy. I’ll be right back.” She placed him on the couch and hesitated for only a moment, not wanting to leave the room not wanting Haley to die alone.

  She dialed her cell, hands shaking on the numbered keys.

  “Kate! It’s Glory. Haley’s havin’ a seizure. Can you please open the hospital so I can rush him over there?” She’d called Kate because she lived a few doors down from the hospital.

  “I can, Glory…but the bridge! You’ll have to come over the Piscataqua to get here.”

  “I don’t care! I’ll get Mickey to come with me. We’ll be armed…I can’t just do nothin’, Kate!”

  Kate sighed and finally agreed. “Okay. Be careful, Glory. I’ll be waitin’. Use your key to get in. I’m not gonna open the door for anyone. I’ll call Dr. Moulton right now. He’s the only vet I’m sure will come. See you in a bit.”

  Glory frantically raced around, wrapping Haley in a fleecy blanket.