The Devil's Own Crayons

by Theresa Monsour

  Before he joined them, MacLeod had to look one last time at the town’s website, to the statistic that made him sure they were headed to the right place.

  Population of Wormwood: 593.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Trey Petit got back from town, he had an excuse to see Baab: He had a sack full of art supplies to deliver.

  No one but the girl needed to know what else he had in the bag.

  Petit pulled open the backdoor, which led to the kitchen. Lunchtime was over and some sisters were drying dishes while others were gathered around the commercial mixer, whipping up another batch of bread dough. As soon as he walked inside, they all stopped talking and moving.

  The whir of the mixer filled the dead air.

  One of the younger ones finally set down her dishtowel and opened her mouth. “How’re you doing, Trey?”

  “Great.” As he unzipped his jacket, their eyes were glued to the hand that held the bag. He wondered when they’d stop treating him like a walking freak show.

  “Want a sandwich?” she asked, her eyes darting from his hand to his face. “Grilled ham and cheese.”

  “No thanks.” He hurried out of the kitchen with the sack.

  The nuns who weren’t in the kitchen were in the chapel, so he managed to get upstairs without bumping into anyone. The girls were always sent to their rooms after lunch. They were supposed to take a nap, but he knew they stayed up. Many afternoons, he’d heard them laughing and talking while he was mopping the second floor hallway. He sidled up to their room and tapped twice. On the other side of the door, he heard them hushing each other. They thought they’d been busted by one of the nuns. He tapped again. “It’s Mister P.”

  Baab opened the door and immediately spotted the bag. “More colors?”

  “The big box with the built in sharpener.” He pulled one out and held it up.

  The other two came to the door, jostling for position. “Give me mine.”

  “Me, too.”

  He handed each of them a box. “Here you go...Ada.”

  “I’m C.C.”

  “Sorry.”

  Ada took hers. “Thank you, Mister P.”

  Petit scanned the hallway. No one else around. “Can I come inside for a sec?”

  Baab opened the door wide, let him through and closed it. “You remembered the paper, didn’t you? We can’t draw without paper.”

  As soon as he pulled the sketchpads out of the sack, Baab grabbed them greedily. “Take it easy,” he said. “I got enough for everyone.”

  Their room was about the size of his basement digs, and nearly as dingy. The floor was covered in the same gray linoleum tiles that ran through the rest of the convent. A bunk bed lined the wall to the right of the door and a single bed was up against the opposite wall. The mattresses were topped by faded bedspreads, each a different floral pattern. In the middle of the room was a round, kid-height Formica table surrounded by midget chairs. The wall opposite the door had the room’s one window, an old double-hung. On the walls on either side of the window, the girls displayed their artwork by slapping long strips of masking tape across the drawings’ top corners. He saw sloppy renditions of trees and flowers. A yellow ball with yellow scribbles around the perimeter. The sun? Blue birds and striped bees. A house that was probably supposed to be the convent. One thing he didn’t see were people drawings akin to the one Baab had done of him.

  “Your new fingers,” said Ada.

  “Let me see,” said Cecelia.

  “Show them what I did,” Baab said.

  The freak show continued. He switched the bag to his right hand and held out his left. Wiggled the fingers. “Good as new.”

  “I like you better that way,” said Ada.

  “Me, too,” said Cecelia.

  Baab eyed the bag. “What else did you get, Mister P?”

  Petit hesitated. Even to a kid, his request was going to sound nutty. Would it scare Baab? He didn’t want to upset her. He’d promised Marta, though. Reaching down into the bottom of the bag, he pulled out a color photo: A shot of Jim before he’d lost his right leg.

  “What’s that, Mister P?” asked Baab.

  “This here’s a buddy of mine.” He squatted and held the photo out so all three girls could see. Jim was in the Schultz family’s living room, standing in front of a Christmas tree. He was damn near as tall as the spruce, and his torso was as stocky and round as an oak’s trunk. Dark brown mop of hair. Since the accident, poor guy had lost weight and was turning gray.

  “What’s his name?” asked Ada.

  “Jimbo. His friends call him Jimbo.”

  “What did he get for Christmas?” asked Cecelia. “Anything good?”

  “Those boots. They’re hunting boots.” He handed the photo to Baab and stood straight. “Kind of sad, though. He never got to use them. Not even once.”

  “Why not?” asked Baab.

  “See, this guy’s a farmer. About a year ago, he was out in the fields, on a tractor, and it tipped.”

  “Did he die?” asked Ada, grabbing the photo and examining it with bug eyes. “Is he dead? Is this a dead guy?”

  “He hurt his right leg real bad, and well...the doctors had to cut it off.”

  “Oh,” said Ada, obviously disappointed that she wasn’t holding a picture of a dead guy.

  “It made his wife sad. His four kids real sad. One of them is about your age.”

  Babette with wide, brown eyes: “You want me to fix him the way I fixed you?”

  He suddenly felt guilty for putting the weight of a guy’s health on her little shoulders, but his mouth kept moving. “If the photo isn’t good enough, I could make up an excuse. Get him over to the convent.”

  “You don’t have to,” she said sweetly. “I can draw him using his picture.”

  “Let me do it this time,” said Ada, hugging the photo to her chest.

  “No, me,” said Cecelia, doing a little hop of excitement. “It’s my turn.”

  Petit’s eyes widened. So all three could perform miracles. Between them, they could heal the entire world. Mother Magdalen was crazy to keep this stuff secret.

  “How do you girls do it, exactly?” Petit asked. “I mean, do you pray to God and...”

  “You want us to fix him or not?” asked Ada.

  Petit reached to take the photo from Ada. “We could wait on this.”

  The girl hid the photo behind her back. “No. We’ll do it. I’ll do it. I draw fast.”

  “No offense, Missy, but how do you know you can do it? What if only Baab can do it? What if she could only do it with me that one time? How do you know you can...”

  “You have to go.” Baab pulled the door open and held it.

  Petit hesitated.

  “Mother Superior is going to be mad that you told someone about us,” she said. “You’d better leave before she finds out. I don’t want you to get in trouble, Mr. P.”

  Petit retreated to the basement for the rest of the afternoon and into the night. He listened to music. Contemplated lighting up a joint, but resisted. Sister Jane came by with a tower of ham sandwiches and a slice of apple pie. When he took the tray from her, the young nun’s eyes darted to his restored hand. As she turned to leave, he saw her make the Sign of the Cross.

  Miracle hand or not, he was getting to hate this place.

  Mother Superior checked on him once before bed, and he said he was fine. A little tired. When she asked how it went in town, he lied. He told her that he’d purchased the art supplies without incident, and had dropped them outside the girls’ door.

  “You didn’t talk to Mary Babette at all?” asked the abbess.

  As she stood in the doorway to his room, the black habit wrapped around her and the dark basement behind her, she was a white face floating in the night. No body. Only a face. A tired, lined face. He felt guilty for lying to her, but remembered how she’d threatened him. The fear and resentment overruled the guilt.

  “Uh...no. Knocked once, set the stuff in the
hallway and left.” He paused. “What’s the problem?”

  “They skipped afternoon lessons and dinner.” She studied his face. “Do you know what they’re up to, Trey?”

  “The fuss you ladies made over my hand...”

  “Yes?” she asked, folding her white ghost hands in front of her.

  “It wore me out. Could be it wore out the girls. Spooked them.” Leaning a shoulder against the doorframe, he tried to act casual. “Best thing might be to let them be for a while. Let this whole thing cool down.”

  “You could be right.” She rubbed the ghost forehead with her fingertips. “We all need time to absorb what has happened.”

  A fat ghost face suddenly came up behind her. “Mother, the girls won’t open their door. They have a chair up against it.”

  “Leave them alone, Sister Rose,” the abbess said.

  “They need to brush their teeth and say their prayers,” the older nun sputtered.

  “Let them say their prayers by themselves. They know how.”

  “Who’s in charge of this convent?” Sister Prune was so mad, she was spitting. “Are the brats in charge?”

  “They aren’t brats.”

  Sister Prune looked past the abbess to Trey. “You should go to chapel in the morning and get down on your knees. Thank God.” She looked back to Mother Magdalen. “God is the one to thank. Not those...girls.”

  “Trey needs to rest and reflect.”

  “He’s not the only one,” growled the older nun.

  With a swish of black fabric, both ghost faces turned away from him and melted into the darkness.

  Petit closed the door and leaned his forehead against the wood. Like the abbess, he wondered what the girls were doing up in their room. Would Jimbo wake with a new leg? He’d warned Marta that her husband could get sick during the healing, but Petit had made her promise not to take him into town. If a second amputee with phantom limb pain turned up in the ER in the middle of the night, it might alert the docs that something strange was going on. Above all else, he’d made Mart swear to keep her mouth shut. Even Jimbo couldn’t be told what was happening to him.

  “What’s happening to you?” Sister Rose asked Mother Magdalen as she followed her up from the basement.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said the abbess.

  By the time the pair reached the main floor, the elder nun was red-faced with anger. “Trey Petit was not healed by those brats. Why are you putting them on a pedestal? Mother, please help me to understand. Was it because one of them happened to draw Trey’s picture? They draw pictures of the sky. Should we thank the brats for the air we breathe? Why are you giving them credit for God’s work?”

  “The girls are God’s work.”

  Sister Rose gave a dismissive sniff. “I’m marching back upstairs to check on those little...”

  “Go to chapel with your rosary and pray for forgiveness,” snapped the abbess, spinning around in the middle of the hall.

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “You’re doubting His work. Those girls are His work. Pray the rosary and ask our Lord to forgive you.”

  “Have you contacted the diocese? Does the bishop know what’s going on here?”

  “What happens inside this convent is not your...is not the bishop’s concern.”

  “So you’ve placed yourself above church authority.”

  The mother superior’s arm shot out as she pointed to the chapel doors. With a huff, Sister Rose yanked open one of the double doors and vanished inside.

  The abbess glided up the steps to see the girls herself – not to chastise them but to suggest another art project. She hurried. She knew exactly how long it took for the old woman to say the rosary.

  When she got to the girls’ door, she leaned into it to listen. The television was on. She tapped twice, and immediately the volume of the set turned down. “It’s Mother Magdalen.”

  The abbess heard a chair move. Clever.

  Babette opened the door. “What?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  The girl looked over her shoulder nervously. “You can’t come in.”

  They television was still on; she could see the glow in the room. The abbess didn’t care. “Let’s talk out here.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a secret,” Mother Magdalen whispered. “You can’t tell your sisters.” Babette would relish that. Anything to put her ahead of her siblings.

  Babette grinned from ear to ear and stepped into the hall, closing the door after her. “Tell me.”

  “What are you doing up so late?”

  Babette didn’t answer.

  “I don’t care about the television.”

  “We’re coloring.”

  The nun clasped her hands together. “Coloring what?”

  “Flowers.”

  “You’d tell me if you were...fixing another person, correct? Any healings you want to do, any special people drawings, you must tell me first. We have to be careful.”

  “You’re not my boss.”

  “Babette...”

  “Fine. I’ll tell you. Is that all you want? That isn’t really a secret.”

  Mother Magdalen smiled pleasantly and asked in an even voice, “Can you make your drawings work the other way, too, Daughter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Crouching down in front of the child, the abbess spoke in a low voice. Babette nodded repeatedly and giggled twice. The nun straightened and Babette started to go back inside.

  “Wait.” The abbess drew something from the pocket of her habit and handed it to the girl. A key. “Do you know how to use that?”

  Babette cupped it in her chubby hand as if it were made of gold. “Cool.”

  The girl went back into the bedroom. After the abbess heard the metallic scrape of the key in the lock, she went down the hall and descended the stairs. As headed toward her office, she glanced at the closed chapel doors.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Jimbo’s photo was propped atop the table in the triplets’ room. Adeline was already coloring in his pants, plaid Christmas flannels that in the little girl’s hands morphed into bold red and green checks. Babette sat on one side of her and Cecelia on the other, each working on drawings of flowers. All three kept an eye on the newest addition to their room – a small television set, propped atop an end table shoved into a corner. The set had a built-in tape player. While they worked, they watched Ariel the mermaid swimming around the ocean floor.

  “What did she want?” Cecelia asked Babette.

  “She wanted to know if we were fixing up more people.”

  Adeline froze. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her we were coloring flowers.” Babette peeled the paper off a crayon. “She doesn’t need to know everything.”

  “We can do what we want,” said Cecelia.

  “Right,” said Adeline, and she returned to coloring Jimbo’s pants.

  Babette looked over at Adeline’s work. “That’s real good.”

  Cecelia eyed her sister’s effort. “Are you gonna do the boots next?”

  Adeline nodded and slipped the red crayon back in the box. She took stock of the different shades of brown.

  “You should make one foot bigger than the other,” Babette said. “That would be really funny.”

  Adeline eyed the television screen. “No, no. I know. I’ll do it over. Give him a mermaid tail instead of legs.”

  The pair giggled.

  Cecelia’s face and voice were serious. “Do it nice, so his little kids stop being sad.”

  “Fine,” sniffed Adeline. “I’m almost done anyways.”

  The three paused in their coloring to watch Ariel’s merman father on the television screen.

  “You ever wonder about our dads?” asked Cecelia. “Our moms, too?”

  “I’m starting to forget them,” said Adeline.

  “That’s good,” said Babette. “We need to think about our real daddy.”

&
nbsp; “When is he coming back for us?” asked Adeline.

  “Soon,” said Babette.

  “How do you know?” asked Cecelia.

  “I just do.”

  Adeline finally decided on a brown, and carefully extracted it from the box.

  A knock made all three children freeze with crayons in their small fists.

  “Open this door,” demanded a female voice on the other side.

  The girls put their heads back down and resumed their coloring.

  The knob wiggled. “Who gave you a key? Unlock this immediately.”

  Babette picked up the remote and cranked up the volume on the cartoon.

  “What’s that noise?” yelled the voice on the other side of the door. “Have you got a television set in there?”

  Babette ripped her flower drawing off the tablet, balled the picture and dropped it on the floor. She picked the black crayon out of her box.

  Banging on the door. “What are you doing in there?”

  “We’re drawing flowers!” Babette barked to the door. “Leave us alone!”

  A loud bang and more knob rattling. “Open this immediately!”

  “I’m going to shut her up for good,” whispered Babette, drawing a shape that looked like a mountain with a wide base and pointed peak.

  Adeline: “You made her too skinny.”

  Inside the peak, Babette drew an oval. Inside the oval, she drew two black lines for eyes and a flesh triangle for a nose. With a yellow crayon, she colored a jack-o-lantern grin.

  “I’m coming back with a hammer,” snarled the voice on the other side of the door. “I’ll break it down.”

  Adeline scowled at her sister’s drawing, a simple head-to-toe line drawing. The habit wasn’t even colored in. “That isn’t going to do anything.”

  Babette inspected the picture under Cecelia’s hands. A giant daisy with a smiling face. “I’m going to add flowers.”

  Cecelia withdrew a green crayon from her box and started coloring her daisy’s stem. “That’s silly. Flowers aren’t going to do anything.”

  “Wait and see.” Setting the box of crayons on her lap, Babette searched for the right shade of pink. A rosy pink. She found it and pulled it out.

  Mother Magdalen was at her desk, trying to catch up on some paperwork. The events over the previous days had kept her from her day-to-day duties. More distracting were her personal worries about her future. While Trey Petit’s restored hand was wonderful, she had no idea where to go from this miracle, and none of the others had contacted her – not even Jehu. She felt as discarded and useless as the day her lover had told her to go back to religious life.