“Why are you laughing?” she shouted, but began laughing, too.
Feeling completely insane, he began dancing around her, nothing brilliant, no steps, no special moves, just dancing the way he felt children must dance when they’re happy. He was laughing, and she began dancing, too. The joy was absurd. He had got her pregnant, she was going to have a baby, they were far too young—it would never work. He’d probably work the lobster boats now, no college in his future, maybe no high school graduation. They’d live in some tiny one-room apartment and she’d get fat from boredom and he’d get sullen from resentment, and they’d raise a goofy child. We can get around that. I know we can, something within him whispered. Nora had always said, everything can work out fine if you just plant your feet on the ground and look straight ahead. Nothing is a tragedy unless you buy it a suit of clothes and give it a free meal. Something within him told him it would be okay, and better than okay, it would somehow make itself work. It would fall into line. There was a dead swan in the water, but other swans, together two by two, far off in the cove, ignored the dead and moved in tandem across the disturbed surface.
“Why are we so happy?” Lourdes shouted, clapping her hands together. Her dark hair was flying side to side, her hips moved in circles to an invisible hula-hoop, her grin was enormous, infectious. The world could go to hell! Stony thought. It can go to hell and we can be here dancing on this dock.
“Because I love you!” Stony cried out, throwing his arms up in the air, the rain pelting them.
“You look stupid!” Lourdes yelled. Her voice echoed round. She was laughing too, drawing her hands up to her mouth as if to stop the laughter. “You look like a fool!”
“I love looking stupid! Let me be as dumb as they come! I dare the universe to strike me with lightning! Come on, lightning! Hit me now!” He almost jumped into the water, but when he got to the edge of the dock he thought better of it. He raised his hands up, looking at the sky as the pale blue clouds darkened above him. He wanted to reach up and feel lightning in his hands. He felt it all surge through him—the power of the world, the power of his youth, the power of love. It was insane what he was feeling, but he looked at the sky as if it held all the mysteries of the cosmos. “I know the secret of the universe now! I know it! Life can do its worst and it won’t touch us!” He began to jump up and down, rocking the dock. The dinghies tied to it bobbed up and down. Small fish came to the surface of the water, attacking the raindrops.
The raindrops felt fresh on his face. He closed his eyes, face up to the sky, and opened his mouth slightly to taste the freshness of the world. He imagined touching the clouds, his hands clutching at their vanishing...and beyond them, the moisture of heaven. I am a rainmaker! He cried out within himself. I am the Storm King! Come on, rain, hit me with all you got! Throw the bolts down on me and the buckets of tears and the drums of thunder! I am the Storm King, and I’m gonna bring the heavens down on us, down on Lourdes and me and we’re gonna have heaven on earth right here and right now! I am in love and we are gonna have a child and it will be the most wondrous child this stinkin’ piece of hellhole earth has ever known!
* * *
2
* * *
Sweat all over Van’s face, from riding the horse, from excitement, from a fever that grew within him at the thought of her touch.
“What is it you want from me?”
Diana wiped her hands across her skirt. She looked Van Crawford directly in the eye. “What everyone wants.”
“People want different things,” Van said.
Diana glanced out the window, into the darkness. “All I can get. It’s all I ever wanted.”
Then, she smiled. “Want to see something?”
“Depends,” Van said. “What is it?”
“Our own private chapel.”
“Shit, I don’t want to see a church. ‘Specially after what we just did.”
“It isn’t a chapel like you think.”
“No crosses?”
“No Jesus, don’t worry,” she said. “Come on.”
He followed her as she took him through the pool room, with its wide Olympic-sized swimming pool, the billowing cover stretched across it. Past her father’s orchid greenhouse, and the small gymnasium full of weights and bicycles. One wall of the house was made almost entirely of glass. The glass was warped in some way so that when Van looked out across the dark water, it seemed to have flecks of yellow and green light dancing on its surface.
“Come on,” Diana said. “My, you’re slow.”
“I’m coming,” he said, slightly testily. He didn’t like some girl telling him things, nagging him. His father got that, too. He did not intend to end up in that kind of life. Diana was a rich girl with a hot body, but that was it. He was sure that as soon as he could, he would move on to some other local girl.
Finally, they came to a small door. It was curved in an arch, and looked positively medieval to Van. “What the hell kind of chapel is it?”
Diana turned, her mood solemn. “No teasing. What are you, Catholic? Baptist?”
“None of the above. A goddamned atheist,” Van chuckled. He stepped forward, slipping his arm around her waist. He tugged her against him.
She pulled away. “You’re something. Everyone is something. You a good Christian boy, Van?”
“I don’t believe in nothing,” he said. “How many times do I have to tell you? All right,” he finally relented. “I believe in this.” He pressed his hand down to the cleft between her legs, feeling that part of her that he most desired. She let out a small gasp. “And this,” he said, reaching up to press his fingers around her left breast. Then he covered her hand in his, and brought it down to the bulge in his jeans. “But mostly I believe in this.”
He felt colder than he’d ever felt in his life, yet there was some spark he wanted to ignite. Something had been missing in his life up to this point. This shit-heel town, this dead existence, the way he knew where he’d be if he just went along with things. He would be in a goddamned lobster boat looking at his old friends getting older, smelling the fucking lobster and crab on his skin till it got into his blood...
Warmth emanated from her hand beneath his, and he felt all of a fever there.
“I am your religion,” Diana said, her voice turning throaty the way it had when they’d fucked before. “I am your church.”
Her mouth pressed against his lips, swallowing his mouth up in shimmering moisture, her greedy tongue thrusting across his teeth as if trying to find the heat and excitement within his body. Just as quickly, she drew back from him. She reached her hand up and wiped her wet lips. “Inside,” she whispered.
She turned her back on him again, but his body would not let her go. He wrapped himself around her back as they stood there, his lips finding her delicate smooth neck. She shrugged him off. “Inside,” she repeated. She turned the key in the door, and opened it. The door swung outward. A musty scent assaulted him. A rush of warm air from inside the dark chapel. “Follow me,” Diana said. She stepped into the darkness. It was too dark to see. Too dark, but still he followed her.
He stepped over the threshold.
Diana was already lighting a third candle by the time he walked down the center aisle between the pews. “Holy shit,” Van said. “Oh my god.”
Diana kept her eyes on the altar.
“It was a gift to my great-grandfather at the end of the First World War. A token of appreciation.”
“Jesus,” Van said, feeling the piss run down the inside leg of his pants. “Goddamn.”
He closed his eyes. His mind was blank; he could not escape the darkness that surrounded him. He began shivering all over as if he’d been sprayed with ice water. But within that growing pain, something else pushed at the back of his head as if there were something in him, some darkness, waiting to find its moment of freedom.
“Once a person looks upon it, he will never be the same,” Diana’s voice faded even as she spoke, and then it grew and he w
ondered how the hell she managed to be talking inside his head.
Then he remembered how much he wanted this, wanted this kind of experience. To break free from this village and its small minds and the horrible existence that doomed him to a prison of family and dead ends. The darkness within him seeped across his mind.
Opening his eyes again, he felt fear like a thousand lasers graze his skin.
Chapter Fourteen
OUR LADY, STAR OF THE SEA
* * *
1
* * *
It was as if something busted inside Stony Crawford. He squeezed Lourdes’ hand, and pulled her along.
They ran laughing across the bridge, towards the Borough. Rain pelted them like endless tears, and they were soaked to the skin by the time they made the Common. “The library!” she shouted, but when they got there, it was closed (BACK IN TEN, the sign read). “No, there!” he cried, pointing to the church next to the post office. It was Our Lady Star of the Sea.
“Oh my god!” she said, as he grabbed her hand and pulled her. They almost slipped on the muddy grass. “I can’t! It’s sacred ground!” She laughed nearly as hard as he was doing, and her hand was warm within his grasp.
He drew her into the church, its inner whiteness like the bone of some desert animal. As soon as they got inside, they slowed, quieted by the statue of the Virgin Mary. It stood sentinel next to the font of holy water. They both stood there shivering before it, the chilly dampness soaking them through.
“Oh Mary,” Lourdes whispered, nodding her head slightly, crossing herself. “You who are the blessed mother of God, bless this child.” She pressed her hand to her stomach. Stony noticed for the first time that her stomach was getting a little bit of a paunch. The baby was forming. The baby was growing.
He went to her, pressing his hand over hers to feel it. “It’s a lump,” he said.
Lourdes put a hand over his. “Look at Maria,” she said.
Stony glanced up at the statue. It was pure white like ivory. The statue’s face was almost expressionless. Round white eyes, Romanesque nose, rose-petal lips. It bothered him, all these statues that Catholics had. It seemed idolatrous.
“I don’t worship statues,” he said.
“I don’t either, you Protestant-atheist,” Lourdes whispered. “It’s not a statue I’m looking at. It’s the idea of purity and holiness. It’s a human face for that idea. Do you believe in that?”
Stony shrugged.
“I need to know if you do,” Lourdes said, applying more pressure on his hand against her belly. “It’s important to me.”
Stony closed his eyes. The idea of God or Jesus or anything like that had always been abstract, like a cosmic tangle of nerve endings shooting out the birth of the universe and then pretty much staying in the background. He rarely attended church with his mother, and his father never went. But for Lourdes’ sake, for her sense of religion, he concentrated. In his mind, he saw a woman who might have been the Virgin Mary, but then all the color drained from her face until she was white as bone. “Do you really think she was a virgin?”
“I think she was pure,” Lourdes said. “To give birth to God, she had to be pure. Do you believe in purity?”
Finally, opening his eyes, he nodded. “Yeah, I do. You’re pure.” He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. Drawing back from her, pulling his hand away, he glanced at the statue. It almost felt pagan, not that he considered that so awful. He pulled the crushed flower from his pocket. It was purple and red. He pressed it into the statue’s open hand. “Sanctify our love,” he said.
“Silly, she doesn’t need it.” Lourdes grabbed the flower and set it up behind her ear.
* * *
2
* * *
Van felt the power of the universe thrust through his skin, burning his blood, sending him wild-eyed into the rainy night.
“The horses!” Diana shouted. “We hunt!” Her hair twisted in the wind, practically a mane itself. Her clothes clung to her slender form, outlining the breasts he had so recently sucked at, the belly he’d nuzzled, the legs, so smooth and refined, he’d spread like she was the cheapest whore from New London...
“That’s fuckin’ crazy!” he laughed, but he raced her to the stables. “Fuckin’ nuts, it’s damn insane!” He shouted against the rain, feeling the spirit of her life overtake his, raise him up, make him feel as if there was a purpose to this damned existence.
He no longer felt like stupid Van Crawfish, the lout who could never understand why his mother disliked him so much, why his father disciplined him too harshly, why the whole damn town wasn’t on its knees to him—
He felt bigger than life itself, and here he was, with a goddess from the summer houses, a fucking beauty, and they were mounting horses in a rich man’s stable, they were riding out across the gravel road, through the mud of rain, beneath the sheltering trees, great canopies of orange and gold and yellow leaves above them, holding back all but a trickle of rain. The lightning brought instant daylight to the trail ahead.
Van felt like a goddamn god himself, he felt beautiful and strong and unstoppable. Within minutes, Diana had spotted their prey, a deer that bolted at the sound of the horses. But Diana had her bow out, and aimed an arrow—
She let it fly, and it was the most perfect arc—
Her fingers, the bow, the arrow as it moved, and the deer as it leapt up to dive into the brush, with the arrow that caught its left flank. And then another arrow, then another, and the horses seemed to know the trail of the woods, and followed the wounded doe.
Finally, feeling as if wings were on his ankles and a tidal wave of pure energy carried him, Van leapt down and grabbed the doe’s throat, exposing it in the lightning flash. His hair was wild and floated in static wind, his eyes redder than he could’ve known, his grip on the deer’s throat as the animal breathed its last—
“The knife!” Diana clapped, pure joy coming from within. She was so fucking beautiful, and it was all for her. He was going to finish off this deer for her. She had brought the animal down, and he would glory in the kill.
He reached around to his belt, bringing out his hunting knife. Unsheathing it, he raised the blade up. Lightning whitened the woods around them—
The trees, for a moment, seemed to be men and women, shrouded in cloaks, the branches and leaves their hair, their eyes on him as if in some solemn event—
The knife flashed as the early dark of evening returned. He brought the blade deep into the deer’s heart, once, twice, raising it and hacking at the creature—
Blood flowed across his arm—
Diana, throwing her head back laughing—
“More!” she cried. “More!”
Lightning flashed—
She held her hands near him to catch the spray of red. It felt like he had struck oil deep in the creature’s wound. The torrent did not cease for several moments as the woods went from white to black and white to black again.
His energy grew, as he dropped the dead animal—his dick got hard, he wanted her all over again. It burned inside him, this unquenchable fire she had kindled. Both of them, covered with the animal’s blood, like wine, her skin, her breasts...she crawled to him on her knees and their tongues entwined, their lips, their hands, he felt her buttocks moving rhythmically as they coupled against the carcass in the leaf-shattered woods as night and rain descended.
Just as he was about to climax within her, she drew away. “No, no,” she whispered, “Later. One more creature to hunt tonight.”
But his arousal began to hurt, he wanted to be inside her, not just his dick, but all of his body, his soul...he wanted to stay within her wet heat and not be outside anymore. Rage filled him, then exhaustion. He lay back on the blood-dampened animal. “I’m too tired to hunt. Too tired, baby.”
He closed his eyes for what seemed like the first time in days, and the darkness behind his eyes exploded—shattering his mind—he saw demons leaping from the fires of Hell, smelled the
tortures of men, the cries of women as they were thrown into lava pits—
Opening his eyes to a flash of lightning, she was so close to him that her face was out of focus. “One more hunt tonight, and then, you have me forever,” she said, licking blood from his cheek. “And I have you.”
* * *
3
* * *
Stony Crawford followed Lourdes as she passed the statue of Mary, and went into the main part of the church. The stained glass windows depicting the Stations of the Cross were dark with the pelting rain. It felt so clean, the way the rain hit the glass, the way the colors in the glass mutated from light to dark. It was as if they were being washed, yet kept dry by the church. A coldness settled into the church, dispelled only by a lingering scent of incense. Above the altar, a great wooden cross, with a nearly naked Jesus nailed into it, agony across his gaunt features. It made Stony think of Nora’s story about sacred crosses and scarecrows and the Halloween Man of her story. Was the carving of the man any different from Nora’s tales? Could one man, being tortured to death, actually be a god, and not just any god, but THE God? It was as hard to swallow as the Halloween Man story. It was a nice legend, but how could it be? How could a man be God? Men could be monsters, men could be devils, but there was no way in heaven or hell they could be better than other men. Religion was a nice fairy story. He would have to play along with it if he wanted Lourdes to love him, but he did not really believe in any of it. It seemed ridiculous. Virgins giving birth. Gods being crucified and then rising from the dead to point out their wounds. Drinking wine and eating bread and pretending it was blood and flesh. It made no sense at all.
Stony and Lourdes sat down on a pew, and she kneeled, praying. Then, she sat back.
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