And just then Max nuzzled my arm and I felt him lick me, and it felt just like that woman’s tongue had, and I jerked my hand back.
“What’s wrong?” my mother asked. “He hasn’t left your side since your father dragged you back from the barn. You both almost got swept up.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. I got sucked up in a tornado and I was as certain as a saint that the Colonel had never been closer to death than sending me to that barn.
I looked past my mother. “He,” I said to her, but loud enough that I knew he could hear me, “he sent me out there and those pigs… I got sucked out of the barn and then—”
“Benito,” she said, more reprimanding than I had ever heard her. “He is your father and he would never do anything to purposefully harm—”
“I died again, mother,” I said, “didn’t I? Thirty-three minutes? How can you…? The playground, the river, and in that barn, I died! … And then I went … somewhere … somewhere bad. And not like you said, either!”
“Leave him be,” I heard the Colonel’s voice behind her. “He’ll find his faith soon enough. She’s only got one card left to play and there’s nothing more I can teach him.”
I sat up and Max whimpered next to me. But he growled when my mother took a step into my room.
“Hush, Max,” she said to him in her “voice.” It was usually all it took, but Max growled even more.
“Jesus, Monica,” the Colonel said from the table. He wasn’t even looking toward the room—he just stared straight ahead and took another sip of his liquor. “Time’s up. Even the dog knows he’s coming. Let the boy rest. It’s probably the last warm bed he’ll feel for a while. We’ve done all we can.”
“What?” I asked, probably more to her than him, because he was in one of his matter-of-fact statement moods. “Done all you can for what? For me? I don’t even know what’s happening!”
And Max growled even more. I could feel him tensing up and it felt like he might jump off the bed at my mother.
“Easy, boy,” I said to him.
“Leave them alone,” the Colonel said to my mother. “He needs some time to say goodbye to the dog.”
Max relaxed a little as my mother backed out of the room. “He’s not even going to let him keep the dog?” she asked my father, because she certainly wasn’t asking me. “Who will…?”
“He has to face the flames on his own,” the Colonel said. Then he put his glass down. “Trial by fire, he always says. No other way to be sure.”
I didn’t recognize either of them. Both of them talked like I was leaving. “I’m not going anywhere,” I said to them. “Who’s not letting me keep Max?”
My father stood up and walked across the kitchen and then through the living room. I could feel the light getting brighter as he got closer. And my mother stepped to the side of the door—just outside my room—before he got there. Like she could feel the bright coming.
When the Colonel stood in the doorway, he looked at me like he never had before. It was almost like he felt … sorry for me? “It’s a helluva thing, Benito,” he said. Then he smiled and chuckled a little at his own words. “Remember what I told you—the end is all that matters.”
“It’s not funny,” I said. No idea where the words came from. I would have never spoken to him that way. “You sent me into that barn … to die.”
Now Max was really wired up. He and my father stared at each other for a good minute—Max tense and angry and the Colonel simply stone.
“You’d do well to let me end your companion’s suffering,” my father said. “You are on a precious path and have yet to understand its hardships, however I have bestowed benevolent favor … thrice.”
I ignored the way he was talking. “Kill him?” I said. “No one’s killing him!”
“Sometimes death is the easiest road to redemption,” said the Colonel, “but deadly decision is yours alone. Hell, you own more decisions than you know now, Benito. From here, Heaven requires you remember that. Right or left—free will.” He stopped staring at Max and then he looked to his side at my mother down the hall. “It is a cruel comedy, I realize.”
My mother said something back to him, but I couldn’t hear what it was.
“Precious Bible will not save him,” the Colonel said to her. “He must author script … to save us all.” He looked back at me. “Irksome irony, though it may be. So, choose choice? Backyard to bury the bag of bones or burned by the benevolent?”
“I said nobody’s killing him!”
And Max growled at the Colonel again.
“Calm,” said the Colonel, “both of you.” He stared at Max and then looked back at me with what looked like another one of his hidden lessons brewing. “Very well, if that is your choice. But I give godly warning, there are no hounds in the halls of Heaven. And he only allows the meanest ones passage to Hell.”
I just stared back—no idea what to say or do.
Then my father did something that scared me worse than anything he had ever said. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a little leather-covered metal flask. He started to walk into the room, but Max growled and gave him a look that made him pause briefly—unsure whether to come across my room, maybe? I’d never seen that before either.
He looked at me and his head bobbed just a little and then he cocked it to the side. He tossed the little tin flask at me and it landed on the bed next to Max’s paw. I reached over, picked it up, and read the letters punched into the fresh leather. B.O.B. I thought. My initials? I was wrong about that, too.
When I looked up, the man I would always remember as the Colonel was gone. It was the last time I would ever see him … or my mother.
Then I felt dizzy and I laid back and fell into a deep sleep. Only this time there were no dreams, no scary people, and no death—only darkness.
— CLXVI —
“BENITO OCTAVIO BENEDETTI,” the voice was not one I recognized, and I sat straight up in my bed, jerked out of the black nothingness of my sleep. The voice sounded like it was right at the bottom of the stairs up to our house.
I rubbed my eyes. Max barked wildly at the door to my room.
“Easy, boy,” I said, sure that I had dreamt the entire thing. My father would soon be “tuning up” whoever was yelling up our steps. He was not one to suffer shouting.
I eased myself out of bed—still exhausted from basically dying in a windstorm. Another horrible dream I hoped to forget sooner rather than later. Yes, that is a Colonel-ism, too.
I walked slowly toward the door and peered around the corner, half-expecting to see my mother and father smiling and giggling at each other in some crazy joke they were playing on me. “Mom?” I asked.
There was no answer from inside the house.
“You are hereby remanded to the protection of the State,” the voice shouted up the outside stairs again.
I walked to the front door, and then I peered down, out between the cracks in the boards my father and I had nailed over the windows on that door.
The farm was a mess. Broken tree limbs and boards littered the property. And I could see half of a pig impaled on a snapped off tree. There was … a tornado?
“State your compliance to this order,” the voice was getting more insistent, but I couldn’t quite see the person shouting. Only black jackets and boots shuffling around at the bottom of the steps. State agents and a—my father would not be happy about either of them.
I opened the door a little, not really sure what to do. “Father?” I shouted down at the voice.
“We’re the only ones down here,” the voice yelled back up.
“Where are my parents?”
“We know you’ve been living here alone, Benito,” the voice said. “You can’t do that anymore. It is time to go, my son.”
“Where’s my mother?”
There was a pause, just like in the barn, and everything was silent. “They’re long gone, Benito,” the voice said. “I thought you were, too. It’s
Father Dominic from Saint James—your church. You’ve got to—”
“State your compliance,” the first voice shouted over him. Then I heard the three of them argue briefly.
Max nudged up behind me and started barking. Then dogs growled from down the steps. They were vicious sounding animals, and they started snarling and barking and that drove Max crazy.
“Shh,” I said to him, “heel.”
But Max burst by me—through the cracked open door—and I heard his toenails clicking as he raced down the steps. And then there was wild barking and the sounds of—I had no idea how many—too many dogs for Max to deal with, I was sure.
And then Max cried out and yelped and whined and then howled in pain.
I flung open the door and raced down the stairs at all of them. There were three men with guns—all in black and helmets and goggles—and two pit bulls were busy biting and shaking their heads on top of Max. I don’t know what came over me, but I jumped on top of the whole pile and started punching those dogs and then one of them bit me in the arm and I yelled out. And my arm was flapping and jerking as the dog shook me. And blood sprayed onto my face and Max cried out again—the other dog still latched onto him, shaking and pulling at Max’s ear. “Stop!” I screamed. “You’re killing him!”
I hadn’t noticed him—too focused on the three State agents and their dogs—but the fourth man, a stout little brick of a bald man in the black clothes of a priest, yelled, “That’s enough!”
The priest from church! I thought he was yelling at the agents, but then the little brick went to his knees, grabbed the head of the dog that was jerking my arm, and then that dog went limp—I felt the anger leave the beast’s body and his jaws go slack around my arm. I pulled my arm back and rolled away, clutching at my ripped flesh. Blood ran freely between my fingers.
Then the other dog let go of Max and lunged at the man, but before the second beast could get his jaws around him, the little brick man caught the dog’s face in mid-air and I heard a loud CRACK! By the time he slammed that animal to the ground. The dog was limp.
“Dominic of—” the first dark clad agent’s words were cut short by a blow to his neck. He flew sideways into the agent standing next to him. Then the little brick priest rushed at the third agent, grabbed that man’s rifle with both hands, and then spun it so fast I almost couldn’t see it.
And that agent flipped almost full circle and slammed to the ground on his side with a huge thud and a gasp for air! And the priest was on him and jamming his thumb behind the agent’s goggle strap. And quicker than that, the priest rolled sideways at the second agent that had been knocked down by the first, and he swung his arm sideways as he came out of his roll and chopped at the man’s neck.
I thought I saw blood spit out of the agent’s mouth—he didn’t move after that. None of them did.
And then the priest was up and standing in the middle of it all—squatted a little at the knees and staring down at nothing in front of him—calm and still just like the middle of that storm in the barn.
Then the searing pain hit my arm, but I looked over to Max and he was lying on his side in the mud, his coat covered in blood, and chunks of his beautiful chocolate fur next to him. He whined softly. One of his ears was torn off and he was pushing his feet sideways at the dirt … through his guts.
I crawled over to him, holding my arm and wincing through the pain. The priest barely moved, but I could feel his eyes following me. When I got next to Max, I knew, and I started to cry—Colonel-ism toughness or not. “It’s okay,” there wasn’t much I could say. “You’re gonna be… Look what they did to you, boy.” I rubbed his coat a little and he whimpered hard and his muscles flexed and he cried out. “God, please don’t take him,” I whimpered along with my dog.
“God cannot save him,” the priest said, breaking his stillness. “Only you can end his suffering.”
“Why did they…?” I asked. I looked up at the priest. He was more relaxed now and stood with his hands gently clasped, staring down at me and Max. “Where are my parents? … My mother?”
The priest looked around our farm and then up the stairs at our house. “Their time in this eternity has long ended,” he spoke at our house. Then he looked back down at me, and then he looked at Max. “It is up to you to end his.”
I looked at Max. He was going to die. I had seen hundreds of ducks plucked from the sky by our shotguns, but I had never considered their deaths—they were animals. I moved my good arm toward him, but Max whimpered before it got there.
“To prolong his suffering for your own weak—”
“He’s not dying!” I yelled, fully knowing that it was a lie. I looked up at the priest, my eyes begging him to find a way.
His own face relaxed and he closed his eyes a little, but quickly opened them back up. “My son,” he said to me, “all of us are already dead. If you wish … I will end his suffering for you. However, it will be the last time I tend such a service. You would be wise to do it yourself—push through your fear here and now … in this moment. For there is no other.” Then he unclasped his hands and stepped toward me.
I stared up, knowing that I couldn’t do what he was asking. I would not. “No…”
“Very well,” the priest said, “I had hoped that she would have strengthened you according to the Word. Yet, it is written that even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall. Come now, the Lord shall renew your strength. I will teach you to soar on wings like an eagle, run and not grow weary, walk and not be faint.” He reached down. “In time, Benito, you will control such emotions. And eventually, you will only have need of them to deceive the enemies of God.”
Then, with no more than a lightning quick twist to the back of Max’s neck, my only friend … was gone.
— CLXVII —
I HELD MAX’S limp body and stared up the steps at our house—my home. More to avoid looking at Max’s broken neck, but still bewildered at the speed that my entire world had fallen to pieces. “Where are my parents?” I asked again, not satisfied with the cryptic answer the priest had already given me. “Are they … dead?”
“They will rest from their labor,” the priest said, “and their deeds will follow them into the next eternity. They have fulfilled their duties, as I shall now fulfill mine.”
Resting… My mother used to describe it that way to me. Death was simply a break from the hard work of living. But the Colonel had imparted one underlying theme during my brief time with him, and that was that learning and experiencing are two entirely different things.
I wasn’t ready for them to be gone any more than I was ready for Max to be … gone, either. “What do I … what do I do now?” I asked the priest.
“You live,” he said, “as life intended you to, serving God’s Word. Or … you survive alone in the world until the end of your time. The choice has to be yours.”
Where would I go? There was nothing left and the only thing I knew of this priest was seeing him talk to my mother and the rest of the church ladies each Sunday. Because he was the father at our church and he was the same man who had let me die on the playground, and he was also the man who had just killed three State agents in front of my house. “What does that mean?” I asked him.
“Choices, Benito,” he said, “are simple things really. People make them complicated by trying not to have to make them. But make no mistake, free will is about making choices. Many of them will be between two seemingly equally … ‘distasteful’ options. But whichever one you choose will have its own consequences—its own path to Purgatory.”
As I listened to him, I began hearing something else. A little voice inside me that began to wake me up to the fact that this priest had just killed three State agents on our front steps, and someone would be along shortly to start sorting that out. From what the Colonel had taught me, I knew that anyone they found hovering at the scene would be black-bagged and taken away, never to be heard from again. Yet the priest seemed unconcerned with that�
��he had to know it better than I did. I mean, he was the one who killed them!
As if he could read my thoughts, the priest put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed into it. His hand was like a vise tightening—nothing but hard pressure. “Time to go,” he said. “Someone will be along for all of this shortly. You can stay and tell them whatever tale you think will save you. But if your parents taught you anything, you will know that even the truth will not help. Most likely, your story will be written the way that the State Agent In Charge wants it … or … you can come with me and write your own story—your own ending.”
My dog was dead, my parents were gone, my world was, too. I reached up and held onto the priest’s hand, and as I did, I felt that something was … missing—the littlest finger on his left hand. I turned and looked up at him. “What’s your … name?” I asked. In all of our trips to church, I had only ever heard my mother call him Father.
“Dominic,” he said, “Father Dominic. That is what you will call me.” Then he chuckled a little. “Though by your third year you will most likely call me Father ‘D.’ All the other Candidates do.”
I stood up and looked at the dead agents and the dogs on the ground. I didn’t want to look at Max. “They’ll come after you, won’t they? Come after … me?”
He chuckled a little. “A priest?” Dominic said. “They wouldn’t dare. Besides, there is no one left who can tell them I was ever here. Ipso facto, I was not.”
“Ipso-what?”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you will begin language next week.”
“What about all the…?”
The priest’s eyes followed my stare. “The bodies?” he said. “That is the wonderful thing about fire, Benito. It has a cleansing effect, bordering on magic.”
I finally looked down again at Max’s ripped and torn body.
But before I could get the question out, Dominic answered it, “And there is no time for grave digging.”
Just then, one of the pit bulls raised its head and whimpered a little. My face went tight on its own and I reached down and picked up one of the many broken-off branches from the storm. I walked toward that dog with a hatred welling up inside me that I had never felt before. I wanted it to feel the same pain I did—that Max had.
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