One, two, three, four, five, six, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn one, two, three, four.

He stopped, scratched his ear and his neck. Several drops fell from the ceiling and he put his fingers to the wet then brought the wet to his mouth and sucked at it. Then, he picked up where he left off.

Five, six, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two.

And then he remembered, and he remembered hard, and he dropped to the damp concrete, his bare knees accustomed to this move after two years, cushioning the fall with thick, bulbous layers of scar tissue. His butchered hands went together, his blood vessels picked up a rhythm of familiar, sweat-driving dread, and he prayed his impotent prayer.

“Lord is my shepherd. Shadow of the valley of death. Do unto others all the days of my life. I pray the Lord my soul to take. Little hands be careful.”

He repeated it until the words lost their meaning and he was freed again from the knowledge of his past, his present, and his inevitable and horrific future. Standing, he felt his way in the darkness to the corner and began again.

One, two, three, four, five, six, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, turn.

His name was Marcus. He knew that. He knew he was thin; he could feel the rib bones and hip bones beneath his naked skin. He knew there were people beyond the darkness, and these people were his jailers. He knew he was fed once a day, and he knew that sometimes, the water he was given through the slot in his door was fouled with urine. But he drank it, anyway.

He knew these things, but he didn’t think about them.

Thinking made him remember, it opened the door of his mind and the truth came in and if he couldn’t pray it away, he would spend the next hours screaming and crying in a corner. And so, he walked. He counted. He prayed. And when weariness came mercifully, he slept, curled against the door in the single tiny sliver of silver light that came through the food slot, his arms wrapped around his knees, his penis tucked between his legs to keep it safe from the centipedes and spiders that shared his cell with him.

Marcus stopped walking and looked at the sliver of light. For a moment, he saw his father’s grim mouth, set hard in soft, fat flesh. Then the vision shifted and he saw the indecipherable countenance of God.

“Shadow of the valley,” he whispered. He went to the wall by the door. His hands suddenly dove forward as if they’d forgotten that the wall, as was the floor, was solid, cold. Immovable.

Like his captors in their judgment.

His hands banged on the wall, and he counted. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.” He could count no farther because there was nothing past eight. The cell was six feet wide, eight feet long. The door was six feet tall, three feet wide. The ceiling, which he could touch on tip-toe with up-stretched arms, was seven feet high. He had eight fingers, four on each hand since he’d had his thumbs removed for an infraction he couldn’t remember.

A shiver caught his bare spine and shook him like a mouse in a dog’s mouth.

Dropping his hands from the wall, he turned. He walked.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn.

In a tiny nick in the long wall, six feet from the floor, was a spoon. Marcus had kept the spoon from one of his daily meals. In truth, he hadn’t kept it on purpose. It was only a thin metal spoon and could not have been much of a tool for burrowing a hole in the concrete. That was, if Marcus had considered trying to burrow from his cell of eternal night. And he hadn’t. Even if the spoon were a chisel, it wouldn’t matter. He was in a center cell. He knew this; he remembered being brought down here from the main population on the ground floor so many months ago, and remembered the guards stripping him of his clothes, hosing him down to get rid of fleas and lice he didn’t have, then throwing him in and locking the door, shutting off all sounds, nearly all light.

His cell was in the middle of the prison cellar. If he dug through a wall it would only be to find himself in another solitary cell. And then another and another and another. This was not the movies. There was no air vent system to hasten him to the outside world, no sewer system to slide through, no rivers in which to float unseen to a safe haven.

And even if there were, there was no safe haven. Safe from what? His torment in the cell? The random tortures by the sergeant guard? Perhaps. But not from eternity.

Nothing could save him from eternity.

Five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, turn, one, two.

“Little hands be careful. Shadow of the valley of death.” He hit the floor on his knees, his clutching fingers finding each other in the dark like brittle insects driven to copulation, his mind, his heart, his soul tearing at each other, clawing each other to shreds in certainty of his eternity.

He’d been told by the old, craggy minister of his fate.

“God will not forgive you,” the minister had whispered after sentencing had been pronounced. “You are beyond the grace of God and no prayer, no supplication, no pleading will deliver you from the eternal damnation in the lake of fire.”

To Marcus, who had been sitting in the jail cell awaiting delivery to the state prison, the minister’s words hadn’t registered. He’d been angry, furious beyond reason that he’d been sentenced to life for a murder his brother had committed. He’d been there, certainly, he’d even taken the Twizzlers they’d found in his grimy pockets. But he hadn’t killed the shop owner. Brad had done that with a blow to the skull with a tire iron. Marcus had stopped in his tracks in the shop’s candy aisle and had stared as the owner dropped to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Brad had screamed for Marcus to come on come on come on let’s get the fuck out of here when a shopper came in, the little door chime tinkling. The man had been carrying a concealed weapon, newly legal in their fine state, and had shot Brad with a single blast directed at the forehead.

The tire iron had been in Brad’s fist, but the shopper didn’t feel there was enough dramatic justice to have a dead murderer to present to the police. You can’t discipline a dead murderer before the public. And so he’d claimed that Marcus had wielded the iron, and as Marcus had used the iron many times in the jack when helping Brad change blown retreads on his truck, his prints were on it. He was convicted.

The shopper had been praised for attempting to stop the robbery and save the already-dead owner’s life. Marcus, sixteen at the time, though tried as an adult had not been given the death penalty as most citizens had screamed for, but life in prison. Two times over.

Five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two, three.

He was sorry now. He knew he shouldn’t have listened to Brad. Brad was his brother and Marcus loved him but Brad didn’t know shit about right and wrong. God have pity, fuck it all, where was Brad now? In the never-ending lake of torment? Of course he was.

Forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, turn, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, turn, one, two, three, four…

The mockingbird was singing, and it was morning. The bird was alone, but close by in a shrub, and its song was forceful and clear. From somewhere beyond the roof of the tool-shed, the baleful medley crossed the yard. It drifted in the stifling summer air and entered the tiny attic window where the flies and the gnats and the smoke came in.

Anna knew the song belonged to a mockingbird. Very long ago, her mother had told her of a bird that knew how to sing many different tunes. A bird that could change its melody in a heartbeat. This was a survival skill for the bird, and it flourished. Anna remembered her mother’s story clearly, although she could no longer remember her mother’s face.

As the bird sang to the sun, Anna and all Greta’s other friends sat in the sooty dust in a circle on the attic floor. They wore dirty, sleeveless summer tops and matching short pants, but they sweated just the same. Greta’s mother had sewn the clothes for the friends, a large set for Joseph, who was fifteen and the tallest, a small set for Margarette, who was nine, and sizes in between for the others. Anna was twelve, William ten, and Susanne eleven. No one in the circle spoke because they didn’t have permission to speak.

It was time for class.

Greta sat on a short-legged chair. She had her fingers linked about her knees, causing the hem of her pretty pink dress to hike up around her ankles, revealing pink embroidered socks. Her blond hair was curled about her chin. She smiled at her friends as she looked them over. She had an elegant smile. No living soul, regardless of race or class, could have seen that smile and not said it was elegant. The dimples on the smooth cheeks, the gentle parting of lips over perfect teeth. Greta gave the smile to the friends frequently, and it made their blood run cold.

“Good morning, children,” Greta said.

“In unison, the friends said, “Good morning.

Greta tilted her head and licked her upper lip with a slow motion of her tongue. Anna thought Greta must have had a teacher once who had used that very gesture. Greta was enamored of the adults in her life—her relatives, her parents’ acquaintances. Sometimes she talked to the friends at great length about the adults she knew: her father’s coworkers, her mother’s dressmaker, her grandmother and her uncle Geoff. Greta’s eyes danced, and her hands were dramatic understudies to her lively voice. When Greta talked this way, Anna would nod as if she were listening while throwing all her concentration to the sounds of the birds outside the window. She knew the other friends did what they could so they would not have to listen either. To hear of family, to think of family was to open wounds that would never heal.

“Joseph,” Greta said.

Anna felt her own body draw up in unison with Joseph’s.

“I see that your hair’s grown long. How could you come to class like that? You look such the ruffian, like a boy from the ghetto.”

Greta smiled a horrible and elegant smile.

Joseph, tall for fifteen and as lean as a willow branch, turned his good eye toward Greta and shrugged.

“What is that? What is that shrug?”

Joseph, now having permission to speak, mumbled, “I don’t know.”

“Hmmmm,” said Greta. Like Anna, she was twelve, but she already had gained the matter-of-fact conversational style of her father, Erik Bnimmer, the adult she admired the most. “How can we conduct class with a ruffian here on the floor? We should cut it, then, shouldn’t we?”

Joseph said, “Yes. We should.”

There was, of course, no other possible answer.

“Good,” said Greta, and she smiled her smile at them all.

She went to the small chest near the open window and lifted the top. From inside she brought her sewing set and from the set, a small pair of scissors. She stood and turned to face the friends in their circle on the floor. She smiled.

“I should like to be a beautician someday, like my Auntie Kate. She is a wonderful woman. She plays the piano as well as she can fix hair and polish fingernails.”

Little Margarette raised her hand.

“What do you want, little one?” asked Greta.

“Would you need help for the cutting? I could catch the curls.” Margarette sat still. Her tiny smile was not as elegant as Greta’s, but it was a true smile. Margarette was the treasure in the attic; she was the friend of the friends, and Anna knew if she would ever allow herself to use the word love, it would be for Margarette.

Greta, who because of Margarette’s youth was usually more patient with the girl, said, “No, you stay in the circle and see how it’s done. See the scissors, how sharp they are? Dull ones tear the hair. And see how they are short? Long scissors can snag and make a mess.

All the friends were silent. They had learned the importance of paying attention.

“Tip your head my way,” said Greta. She sat back down on her stool, and Joseph slid around on his bottom until his back was almost touching Greta’s knees. He stared straight ahead, and the other friends averted their eyes from his. It was best not to look and see the fear that had flared there. Joseph would have to handle the haircut as best he could. Whatever the haircut would entail.

“Head back,” said Greta.

Joseph put his head back. Anna could see, from the corner of her vision as she looked at the barren bookshelf beyond the soft tousle of Joseph’s hair, the thin fifteen-year-old put his head back. She could see his blind white eye, but not the good one. She was glad because the blind eye was dead to emotion. Emotion was a dangerous commodity.

Greta slid the scissors’ tips into the mass of black curls. They came together. A curl dropped to Greta’s lap, and she brushed it off with the brusque movement of someone slapping a fly away. In a matter of minutes the haircut was done. Anna let herself look at Joseph then. The haircut was poor, but no other harm had been done.

“Now, isn’t that much better?” Greta said. No one moved except for Margarette, who nodded slightly.

“Isn’t that much better?” Greta’s voice held a sudden, sharp edge.

Everyone on the floor nodded vigorously and said, “Oh, yes.”

“Good, then,” said Greta. “And I hope you watched carefully and listened to the lesson because I will ask someone to cut hair very soon, and it best be done the right way.”

No one moved.

“Joseph,” said Greta.

Joseph glanced over his shoulder. “Yes?”

“You may go back to the circle.”

Greta stood and shook the remaining hair from her lap. As soon as she was gone down to her family for lunch or for piano lessons or for whatever else she did when she was not in the attic with her friends, Anna and the others would scoop up every strand and throw them from the open attic window. Listening was a lesson they had learned well, and so was cleanliness. Not so much cleanliness of themselves; Greta did not see much use in giving soap and water to the friends in the attic. Greta believed as her father had taught her; children such as these were used to being dirty. They liked being dirty.

“Now,” said Greta. She walked to the open window, fanned herself with delicate motions of her hand, and then moved back to the chair. “I’d like to hear a story. William, you tell the class a story. A story about a day at the beach because it’s so hot in here. A cool day by the lake where the children go swimming and the parents sit under umbrellas and talk about their work and their duties in the world.”

William, who had been a pudgy little boy when Erik Brummer had first selected and gathered the friends together for his daughter, rubbed his face frantically. The palm of William’s hand bore a shiny burn scar. William had a nervous tic in his right cheek.

Anna looked at William, then at Greta. If it took long for William to tell the story, Greta might get angry. William, Anna feared, had never been to a beach, had never seen a lake, because William’s family had been poor.

“William,” said Greta. Anna felt her shoulders pinch. Her lungs hurt in the heat and hurt in anticipation of what might happen if William could not think of a story. She grit her teeth. Panic swirled in her gut, and she fought it down. In a gentle motion, Margarette leaned over and squeezed William’s hand.

“There was a lake,” said Margarette.

“There was a lake,” said William, and Anna’s lungs heaved a burst of air in relief. She hoped Greta did not hear it.

“A big lake and with a lot of water,” said William. “And a lot of fish.” He rubbed his face again. It was stretched and scarred with so much rubbing. His eyes were rheumy with torment. “There was a family, a big family with lots of children, very pretty children in nice clothes. Pink dresses and blue trousers. They all went to the lake on a hot afternoon and sat down and took off their shoes.”

Anna looked at Greta seated on her low chair. The girl’s lips were pursed, but she didn’t seem dissatisfied with the story. If William told a good story, and a long story, Greta would be happy and would go back downstairs to her family and leave the friends alone. If William did not tell a good story and made Greta angry, she would teach a new lesson to the class. It was the angry lessons that had, just days before, made Joseph climb into the tiny open window where the flies and the gnats and the smoke and the mockingbird song came in and try to squeeze himself through to fall to the dog-guarded yard four stories below. Only Margarette could talk him back inside by promising him silly but lovely things when the bad days were over and they could go home again.

“The children went swimming and they swam for a long time,” said William. And then he stopped. It was obvious he couldn’t think of what to say next. He did not know the beach of the lake and could not even imagine it well. William rubbed his face and looked around the circle at the friends. Susanne looked at the empty bookcase. Joseph licked his lips and folded his hands. Anna looked at William for a moment before looking away. She knew about lakes but was afraid to speak up and help William with his story. William’s burned hand was the result of a music lesson Greta had given one morning. William had no rhythm, and Greta had insisted on all the friends clapping to her song. Try as he did, William could not keep the rhythm. When Greta had come back with the friends’ daily meal, she had also brought one of Erik Brummer’s cigars. William still could not clap in rhythm, but now he bore the rightful sign of the failed lesson.

“And what then?” asked Greta.

William’s eyes squeezed into red slits.

Margarette’s hand went up. Greta turned to her, the smile gone. “Now what, little girl?”

“Please, I’d like to tell some of the story, too.” Greta crossed her ankles like her mother must have done. Her eyebrows strummed a rhythm of irritation across her brow, but then she said, “All right.”

“They liked to go fishing, these children,” said Margarette. “They caught many colors of fish, red and blue and green and gold. Some they caught with nets and some with hooks.”

Greta said, “Did they eat the fish?”

“Oh, some of them they did. Some they cooked and ate on the beach. They made a fire and cooked them, and the smoke went up as high as the clouds. Everyone sang songs. There was a girl named Greta, and she could sing better than any of the other children.”

And the story went on. It wound around the bitter air of the hot attic, in Margarette’s lilting, little-girl voice, laced with distant bits of Margarette’s memory, embellished with daydreams.

After some time, Greta held up her hand to halt the tale, and she left the attic. She promised, in reward for the story, to come earlier with the daily meal. The dust and soot swirled where her footsteps had been. The door closed with a click. No one spoke. Margarette closed her eyes, and shivered.

Then Joseph said, “Thank you.”

All the friends looked at Margarette and whispered, “Thank you.”

Anna said, “I’ll give you half my meal,” although she knew Margarette would refuse, and she knew that was part of the reason she offered.

The friends stayed in the circle for a while longer. Then, slowly, they fell apart, moving to their own spots on the attic floor where they rested between lessons and dreamed their own dreams and fought their own nightmares. Anna curled up beneath the tiny window and looked at the crude beams of the ceiling. Outside, the mockingbird sang the tunes of the robin, the jay, the chickadee, the sparrow.

After a few minutes of silence, Joseph said, “The children sang as they sat on the beach. They sang as they sat with their parents in the boats and fished. They sang the same song as their parents, and there was no harmony, just melody. The melody was flat and ugly.”

William grunted as he turned to face Joseph.

“The fish were not different colors,” Joseph continued. “They were all the same, silver and blue, like shining gems. But some were big and some were small. Some had twisted fins, and some were blind. The parents drew the fish in on the lines and put them into buckets. When they got to shore, they put the buckets on the muddy bank.”

Anna turned her head slightly, her nostrils blowing the soot on the floor beside her, listening.

Joseph’s voice was tight, and it trembled. He said, “The parents only fished for sport, to see the creatures struggle out of the water. The big fish with no flaws were sorted into one bucket. The fish that were not perfect went into another. The baby fish were taken from the parent fish and given to the children as pets.”

Margarette said, “Joseph, I liked my story better.”

Joseph said, “This is a good story. So listen. The fish with flaws were tormented then set afire. The fish with no flaws were kept longer, but were set afire as well. The smoke did not rise to the clouds, it was so thick it hung low and made the sky stink with soot and death. The little fish were tormented by the children, and flopped in the buckets, trying to find the air they needed.”

Susanne, by the empty bookshelf, whispered, “Margarette’s story was about fish, Joseph. Don’t do this to us.”

“And my story is about fish. Haven’t you learned the listening lesson? I am telling about fish. This is a little story about people at the beach. People playing and having fun, nothing more, and of the worthless fish they caught.”

Anna stared at Joseph. The badly cut hairs of his head were wild beneath the linked fingers of his hands as he lay on the floor. He looked like a prophet; he looked like a mad lion.

“No more story,” said Susanne.

“Please,” said William.

“I want to kill her,” said Joseph.

No one answered. Anna lay, listening to her heart, listening for the mockingbird that had grown silent, watching the fine mist of gray gossamer smoke drift through the window over her head.

Margarette began to sing a nursery rhyme, and Anna faded into sleep.

The opening door woke them all on cue. They sat abruptly, having learned the lesson of quick attention. Anna’s head spun but her eyes were open wide to appear alert. Greta was in another dress, this one green with a White collar. She had brushed her hair up and back, and it was secured in silver. She sat down on her low chair, and the friends scurried to their places in the circle.

“Good news!” she said.

The friends waited.

“My father has found a new friend to join us. He is a little boy, younger than you, Margarette. I had asked my father for a little boy, but my father is a very busy man. But this morning he said he’d found a nice one during the selection, and shall bring him to us tonight after he’s been checked over.”

The friends watched and waited. Obviously Greta had forgotten her promise of bringing the meal early.

“Are you happy?” asked Greta.

All the friends nodded.

Joseph’s fingers slid upward along his neck, found the ragged ruins of his hair, and began to play with them. Anna glanced at him then looked quickly back at Greta. Joseph’s good eye had been hard, bright, and twitching.

“Today’s lesson will be a math lesson,” said Greta.

“I have cards here that I borrowed from my uncle.” She pulled white cards from the pocket of her blue dress. “I’ll hold up the cards and you will tell me the answer to the problem.”

Anna balled her fists in her lap. She was not good at numbers. If Greta would only give her an easy problem.

“You,” said Greta to William. She held up a card that read “5 + 12.”

“Tell me, what is the answer to this?”

William rolled his lips in over his teeth. The tick in his cheek was vivid. Then he said, “Seventeen.”

Greta had to check the back of the card, and said, “Yes, good.” She put that card down and held up the next. To Susanne she said, “Tell me this answer.”

Susanne looked at the card. It said, “18 — 9”

“The answer is nine,” Susanne said immediately. She was good with math.

Greta checked. “Fine,” she said. Then she looked at Joseph. “Your hair looks nasty.”

Anna looked at Joseph. His hair, where his fingers had clutched and pulled, sat up in pointed strands. Joseph flinched and began to rub it down again.

“No, no, no, no,” said Greta. “I think it needs doing again. I think you’ve played with it and ruined the cut. I best cut it over.”

Joseph rubbed harder, trying the flatten the spikes against his scalp. The bright twitching of his eye had become a nervous flutter. His mouth opened as if to say, “No,” but it closed again then, silently.

Margarette said, “I can do a problem. Please show me one.”

Greta stood, the cards falling to the sooty floor. She said, “Joseph, come here and I’ll do your haircut again.”

Joseph looked from Anna to Greta to Margarette. His teeth began to clap together.

“Please let me do a problem,” said Margarette.

Greta opened the chest by the window and took out the sewing kit. She lifted the lid and stared inside.

Joseph licked his lips. William’s tic picked up speed. Susanne looked in confusion between the friends. Margarette folded her hands and trembled. Anna’s heart leapt into a fear-driven arrhythmia.

Greta stared into the open sewing case. Then she slowly lowered the lid. She turned to face the friends.

Margarette said, “Please, let me do a problem. I like numbers.”

Greta said, “You have all been my friends for many weeks now. I’ve brought you good food and have taught you good lessons.” She pressed her fingertips together into a steeple of consideration and control. “Music lessons, art lessons, things other children of your station would beg for.”

Greta walked to her low chair and sat, smoothing down the hem of her green dress with the white collar. “If not for me, you would not have learned to listen, you would not have learned manners at a meal. I have been a good teacher.” Her face clouded over then, darkening storms growing at the corners of her eyes. She said, “But oh. You are still very selfish, selfish children.”

Anna needed to cough, but she swallowed it down. The hairs on the backs of her hands were prickled and alert. She looked at the window and back at Greta.

“My father has told me that I shouldn’t expect very much of you. I don’t want him to be right.”

Joseph began to groan. It was a soft growl that, by the twist of his face, Anna could see frightened even him.

“Joseph,” said Greta. “Is it you who has been selfish?” Joseph’s growl grew louder, a pinched animal sound almost musical in its intensity. Susanne put her hands over her ears; Margarette held a hand up as if to quiet him.

“Joseph,” Greta said. “I asked you a question. Answer. Is it you who stole from me?”

And Joseph stood suddenly, driving his hand into the waistband of his filthy short pants and pulling out the hair scissors. He screamed and lifted the scissors into the air, pointing them at Greta. His good eye was wide and ready. Greta stood from her chair and backed up a step.

Joseph took a step forward, the scissors poised.

Greta said, “Children, if he hurts me none of you will eat for a week, perhaps two weeks. And you know I never lie. I was taught not to lie. Lying is a sin.”

Joseph took another step forward, but Greta did not move. She knew she was safe now. At once, William, Susanne, and Anna were up, taking Joseph’s arms and wrestling them down. William pulled the scissors from Joseph and presented them to Greta like a kitten presenting a prized mouse to its owner.

Greta brushed a tiny strand of hair from her face. She went to the chest and returned the scissors to the kit. Susanne and William and Anna sat down in the circle. Margarette took Joseph gently by the hand and helped him sit.

With her hand on the rough wall, Greta stood for a moment and looked out the tiny window. Anna looked at Greta, at the slice of shed roof outside the window, at the dark tops of the smoke stacks beyond the yard of Greta’s home, at the smoke that hung, like the smoke in Joseph’s story, too thick to reach the clouds.

Greta went to the door. She did not turn back as she whispered, “Selfish children.”

When she was gone, Margarette said, “This won’t be forever. We won’t be here forever.”

Anna did not sleep for a long time that night. She listened as William and Susanne tossed restlessly on the floor. She listened as Joseph buried his face in Margarette’s little-girl arms and, with her words and lullabies, she tried to soothe the insanity away.

Morning came with rain outside the tiny window and stale, humid air in the attic. The mockingbird’s call was faint, as if he had found shelter from the rain in the branches of a distant tree, somewhere outside the yard. Anna lay awake for a long time. Her neck ached from the hard floor and the change of weather. No one spoke. Joseph was up, standing by the empty bookshelf with his face pressed against the slat of one shelf. His eyes were closed. Susanne and William were still asleep, or trying to be asleep. Margarette was making play shadows in the gray, rain-shrouded light on the attic floor.

The door opened and Greta came in, wearing a smile and a yellow dress with big front pockets. She did not push the door shut, but stood in the center of the room and put her hands on her hips. The friends moved quickly to their circle spots.

“A new lesson and a new friend today!” Greta said. She smiled individually at each friend on the floor. Her hair was in yellow ribbons. “First the new friend! Michael!”

The friends looked at the partially ajar door. They saw tentative movement, and then a small boy was standing in the doorway. He was no more than five. His dark eyes huge and numbed.

“He was to go with his mother, but my father brought him to me! My father is a good man to do this for us. Michael, sit with the others. We have many lessons in the circle. Susanne, make room there for Michael.”

The little boy did not move. Greta’s smile faltered.

Margarette said, “Michael, come sit with me.” She patted the floor. Michael shuffled to her, and she eased him down. Margarette touched his hair as if in apology.

“I have a new lesson today,” said Greta. She sat on her chair. “The selfishness yesterday was a surprise to me, though father would say I shouldn’t be surprised. And so today the lesson is learning to give. I have given to you many things, and unselfishly so. Today you will learn to give to me.”

No one spoke. The bird outside the window, far away in its tree beneath the rain, changed tunes from bluebird to wren to starling.

Greta pulled a revolver from one deep dress pocket. She made a sweeping circle, pointing it in turn at each of the friends. Then she trained it on Joseph. “You were very selfish yesterday. Ah, such a bad boy you were, Joseph. I could have my father take you away but I’ve decided there is still a chance for you to become good. Today you will learn to be good. You will learn to be unselfish. I want you to give me something you treasure.”

Joseph’s good eye blinked at the revolver.

Greta then took a small white-handled pistol from her other pocket. She smiled and held it out to Joseph.

“Take it,” said Greta.

Joseph’s lips twisted into a silent, numbed grimace.

“Take it,” Greta said.

Joseph took the pistol.

Greta said, “Give me who you love most, and I will forgive your selfishness.”

Joseph stared at the pistol. His hand did not shake. “Give me who you love most,” said Greta. She nodded at the revolver in her own hand. “And if I think you want to turn it on me, if it even looks as if you are thinking of turning it on me, I will use this on everyone here. Now, give me your treasure.”

Joseph turned the gun toward his face and lowered his mouth to the barrel.

“Ha!” Greta barked, leaning over and smacking Joseph on the side of his head. “You don’t love yourself! Look again. I know your silly little heart, boy, and know what you love. You cannot fool me. And if you act incorrectly, all here will suffer for your stupidity.”

Joseph looked around the room. His good eye batted crazily, as if a gnat had gotten inside. Then, he raised the gun to Margarette, across from him in the circle.

Greta clapped her free hand to her cheek. “Yes! Give me who you love most.”

Joseph did not pull the trigger.

Greta said, “If you don’t give her to me, I will kill her and then Anna and William and Susanne and you. My father sees hundreds just like you every day. I can watch from my bedroom window what goes on beyond our house, beyond the high fence. Many silly, weeping children are sent off with their parents, passed over by my father and gone in the blink of an eye. There are more friends if I need them. More than would fit here in the attic. I can have as many as I want. There are always more of you to be found under any stone.”

Joseph slipped his finger into the trigger loop. Anna put her hands to her ears, her face into her knees. There was a crack, and a squeal of delight. Anna drove her face into the hairs on her legs; her jaws ground together. Then Greta said, “Cleanliness! Haven’t you learned? Clean up this mess and I’ll teach you some new ballads and you can clap with me.”

Anna lifted her face. She went with Susanne and William to the chest where the rags were kept. They wrapped up the mess and put it outside the attic door. Joseph spit on the floor to wash up the red stains. It was futile, but the effort seemed to please Greta.

Back in the circle, Greta sang new songs to the friends; Michael threw up and cried, but Greta, for the moment, was too happy with her songs to notice. She would see it after the music was done. For the moment, however, she was the magnanimous queen in a pretty dress and the friends the willing servants of her humid court.

Even William clapped, his enthusiasm almost masking his inability to keep a beat.

And Anna sang her heart out. Her voice was forceful and clear. And her song rode the damp air and sailed out to the yard among the flies and the gnats and the smoke. Her melodies skipped effortlessly from one to another, and the mockingbird had met its match.

Katie Flory had gone on ahead, her Toyota’s backseat crammed full with groceries, lighter fluid, matches, and target pistols. She knew where they had planned on camping, and by the time Bill Flory and friends Joshua and Melinda Asterton had finished packing the van and caught up with her, she had promised cleared tent spots, gathered wood, and a cozy campfire blazing. It was obvious to Melinda that Katie needed to do this to prove she was okay, that she was at least on the road to becoming okay.

“Just wait ’til you see it,” Katie had said. “I wasn’t a Girl Scout for nothing.”

She left a full hour before the other three had found the lanterns hiding behind the Easter baskets in their garage. By the time all was secured in the van and ready to roll, it was past two o’clock.

The camping spot was isolated, a good forty-five-minute drive from the city, back in the mountains where roads no longer qualified for paving and there could be a mile or more between houses. Most of the homes along the steep, graveled roads were small and colorless, sitting inside wire-fenced yards with cows and goats grazing nearby.

“It’s Americana,” I said Melinda with a chuckle to Bill and Josh as the van groaned into another gear. “I wonder how many of these people all look mysteriously like each other.” Bill glanced in the rearview mirror at Melinda in the backseat. His eyes, nervous and twitching, blinked several times before he spoke. “Quite a few, I’d bet,” he said. “I’ve seen them come out of the mountains to the emergency room, and the resemblance to each other is amazing.”

Josh, seated in the front passenger’s seat, took a bite out of the Hostess cupcake he’d bought at the service station.

The two couples had discovered the camping spot on a Sunday afternoon drive just weeks before. Just inside the boundary of the National Forest, it was off the road several hundred feet, down a dirt path in the dense trees. There was a creek, a canopy of sycamores and oaks, and across from the creek, a sheer cliff of rock that seemed to beg to be climbed by weekend vacationers. Large patches of humus would make great spots to pitch tents. A central dirt area could be honed into quite the place for a fire.

“Turn here,” said Josh, his mouth full of cupcake. Bill steered from the main road onto the unpaved stretch. Melinda settled against the door as the van began its climb up the foothill. Sunlight winked through the branches of the tall pines and deciduous trees. It was a beautiful afternoon, just as Melinda had hoped. They all needed a beautiful afternoon, but for Katie and Bill, it was more a necessity than a luxury. Katie was managing, it seemed. But Bill, sweet little chubby Bill, a nurse at St. John’s Memorial Hospital, was still struggling to keep his sanity.

The van hit a bump. Josh said, “Hey, I dropped part of my cupcake!”

“Sorry,” said Bill. His voice was soft and anxious.

“No problem,” said Josh, leaning over. “There’s more where that came from.” And he held up a second pack he’d bought.

“Katie said she was going to make us a snack,” said Melinda. “It’ll be ready when we get there. Baked apples with raisins. Banana boats with nuts and chocolate and marshmallows. Maybe deep-dish peach cobbler, cooked in the coals. Doesn’t that sound amazing?”

“Katie’s a good cook,” said Bill. “She never could teach me how, but she tried, bless her. She was teaching Gillian, though, and Gillian was getting pretty good.”

Josh said nothing.

Melinda said, “That’s nice, Bill. That’s really sweet.”

Not having a child of her own, Melinda couldn’t fathom the anguish at the death of a child. Gillian Flory, seven years old, had been killed by a drunken, hit-and-run driver who had slammed into her on the sidewalk in front of the Florys’ house six months earlier. No one had been caught or convicted. Katie still grieved, but her stoicism helped keep her rational. Bill’s grief, however, had the man walking an edge that was sharp and dangerous.

It was Melinda who had talked Bill out of suicide two week after Gillian’s death.

Melinda poked Josh in the shoulder. “You aren’t going to have room for Katie’s snack after eating that.”

Josh swallowed a bite of the chocolate cupcake, turned around, and grinned. There was chocolate on his tooth. “I always have room.”

“Watch to the left,” said Melinda. “The dirt path to the site will be any minute.”

They watched. The van bumped along, spraying gravel dust out behind it, dipping around curves and smacking potholes. And then out of nowhere a man stepped into the roadin front of them. He turned and stared like a deer caught in headlights. His black hair was greasy, his eyebrows as bushy as a bear’s. Over one shoulder was a fishing pole and tackle bag. In the other arm was an ax.

Bill stomped the brake and laid on the horn. The van shuddered and skidded to a halt.

Bill’s head shot from the window. “Get the fuck off the road, asshole!”

Melinda’s heart jumped at Bill’s shout. The man in the road squinted then sauntered off into the trees.

“Goddamned moron,” Bill said. His shoulders began to shake; his voice was tremulous. He sounded close to tears. “Goddamned inbred insipid moron. Why don’t people look?” All three sat for a moment. Bill’s breathing was heavy and loud, like a steam engine roaring. His neck was flushed red. Josh caught Melinda’s hand and gave it a squeeze. After a long moment, Bill said, in a near whisper, “I m sorry.”

“No problem,” said Josh.

“It’s okay,” Melinda managed. Goddamn it all!

“I want us all to have a good time,” said Bill.

“So do we,” said Josh. “We’re going to have a good time. I promise.”

“Thanks for being our friends,” Bill said. “I’ve never had such good friends as you two.”

Melinda said softly, “You’re welcome.” Goddamn it to hell, we don’t need any scares this week.

Bill pressed the accelerator; the van moved on.

And then the dirt path was there. Bill slowed the vehicle. “Ah,” said Josh. “My bet is banana boats. Please let them be banana boats.”

“I forgot my camera,” said Melinda. She smacked Josh on the shoulder. “You let me forget my camera!”

“Nothing to take pictures of, ’cept lions and tigers and bears.”

“Oh, my,” said Melinda.

Bill steered the van onto the rutted pathway. The branches above were quite low, and Melinda instinctively dipped her head a bit as they drove under them.

The van stopped beside the trunk of a wide sycamore. The three friends hopped out and stretched. A cheerful fire burned in the center dirt spot. A pile of wood was gathered and laid beside the fire. Two tent spaces had been cleared of twigs and rocks.

“Hey, nature girl really does know what she’s doing,” said Melinda.

“Katie?” called Bill.

“Open the back,” said Josh.

Bill reached in and popped the hatch, still staring out among the trees for Katie. His hands crawled slowly into his pockets. “Katie? Where are you?”

Melinda walked past Bill to the campfire, picked up a stick, and lifted the lid of a large pan that was nestled within the glowing logs. Above, a small breeze rustled the leaves and a red-winged blackbird squawked.

“No banana boats,” she said. “It’s peach cobbler.”

“Okay, that’s the next best,” said Josh.

Bill walked to the back of the van, pulled out his blue tent case, and carried it to one of the raked tent spots. “I wonder where Katie is?”

“Probably taking a nature break,” said Melinda. She put the lid back on the pot, then walked to the other raked tent spot, where Josh had already upended their red tent bag onto the ground.

“Well,” Bill said, dusting off his hands. “I don’t remember how to set this thing up.”

“Just wait a few minutes and we’ll help you,” said Melinda. Josh untied the strings and flipped the tent open on the ground. Melinda picked up the stake bag. Bill looked around, his eyes drawn up in concern. “I’ll find Katie. You have your own tent. We can certainly do ours.”

Melinda shrugged. She dumped the stakes onto the pine needles by her foot.

Bill walked through the spiny branches of young dogwoods and disappeared down the knoll leading to the creek.

“Don’t worry. The weekend’ll be fine,” Josh said to Melinda.

“I hope so,” said Melinda as she picked up a tent pole and unfolded it to snap it into place.

From down near the stream, they could hear Bill calling, “Okay, Katie! Finish your business. Your man is a wimp in the woods and needs your cunning to put up the tent!”

“God, I’m glad to hear a little humor coming back to him,” said Josh. “Remember his sense of humor? He used to have us rolling in the aisles.” Melinda nodded.

Down at the creek, Bill belted out a Tarzan howl.

“Listen to him. Maybe we’re going to loosen him up a little too much,” said Josh. “He’ll want to go in to work Monday with a chimp and a loincloth. Won’t the sick people just love that?”

“Would that be considered sexual harassment?”

“Depends on how bad Bill looks in a loincloth.” Josh helped Melinda thread the first pole through the tabs on the tent, then poked the ends through the metal rings into the ground. The tent swayed like a kite.

“Get that other pole,” said Melinda.

Bill howled again.

“He won’t be fit to live with,” said Josh, shaking his head, bemused.

Melinda stopped, and tilted her head in the direction of the creek. The howl was longer this time and didn’t end with the traditional wavering Tarzan vibrato. It held in the air, guttural, clear, and loud.

Melinda dropped the pole.

“What?” Josh asked.

Bill’s howl cut off, then resumed. It was not a shout of playfulness.

“Oh, God!” said Melinda. She stepped forward toward the small trees, her mouth caught in her hand.

It was a cry of torment.

Melinda raced toward the trees, batting branches away and skidding down the knoll to the creek. Behind her, she could hear Josh drop the tent stakes and call after her.

“Bill!” Melinda shouted. She looked up the creek, where water swirled around rocks and rotting branches, carrying leaves and minnows down its course. She stumbled several yards down the creek and saw the top of Bill’s head above a thick jam of logs on the bank.

“Bill!”

Bill looked up over the top of the jam.

His face was the stretched face of a haunted, demented clown. Melinda made herself walk to the jam. She looked over. Katie lay on the creek bank. Her neck, face, and chest were covered with gaping wounds. Blood covered her clothes and body like a slick coating of dark, nearly black oil. Her eyes were open to the sky, but she was beyond seeing. Her red hair was matted in dried gore.

Melinda dropped to the bank in the sand, her knees instantly soaked. She threw back her head and screamed.

Mail was in.

Elliott Mitchell stepped out onto the front stoop, pleased and shocked, as he usually was, at the cool roughness of the concrete beneath his bare feet. From the mailbox he pulled assorted flyers and bills, several final notices, and two copies of the new phone book, wrapped in brown paper. Elliott flipped through the collection, taking mental notes of the exciting variety of places from where the mail had come and filing this information away in the hungry places of his mind.

Washington, D.C. Chicago, Illinois. Pueblo, Colorado.

If there had been an atlas in his home like there had been in school, he would have looked them up. But the names themselves were intriguing enough.

He moved back into the house. His feet found the familiar, sticky warmth of the worn living room carpet. The cats peed here, and food from Elliott’s mother’s tray were spilled here. Elliott couldn’t keep up with it all anymore, and so the cats continued to pee and his mother’s trembling hands continued to knock portions of her dinners onto her lap and onto the floor.

Elliott dropped the stack of mail onto the top of the console television. He moved into the small kitchen. The windows were closed and locked in defiance of the cool May air. Orange flowered curtains hung, dead weights against grease-iced window glass.

There was a two-liter Dr. Pepper in the refrigerator.

Elliott took a long swing from the bottle. “Ellie?”

Elliott’s stomach fluttered. He turned toward the call. A drip of cola caught in the corner of his mouth then slid to his chin. “What, Mom?”

“Can’t hear my set. Come turn it up, honey.”

Elliott put the drink back and closed the refrigerator door. On the door, held by an eclectic collection of magnets, were some of Elliott’s best school papers from seventh grade. A spelling test, “A+!” A letter written in social studies to George Washington, “96, Good job Elliott!” Numerous charcoal, pastel, and watercolor artworks, each praised in red ink on a Post-It Note by Mrs. Pugh, the middle school art teacher. He would have had Mrs. Pugh in eighth grade this year for advanced art if he had not been so sick.

But he was homebound now.

He was sick. He knew it, Mom knew it. So very, very sick.

“Just like me, Ellie,” his mother had said. “If you go to school today I might just be dead when you get home.”

And so homebound was the only answer.

“Ellie? The set, I can’t hear it and I can’t get up. My back’s doing it again.”

Elliott went down the short dark hall to his mother’s room. The door was open. Smells of stale cigarettes, medicated vaporizer, and illness hung around the doorway, a heavy, eye-stinging, invisible fog.

“Set, baby, fix it for me.”

He stepped into the bedroom. The floor here was bare linoleum. It was not the pleasant coolness of the front stoop; it was clammy on the skin of his soles. But it was familiar. It was never a shock.

Mom was on her back in her bed, three pillows against the wobbly headboard, one set of white fingers curled around the bedspread at her chest, one set around a cigarette. In the blue light of the television set the skin on her thin face seemed to jump and crawl. When she smiled, Elliott could see her bad teeth. There were three of the cats on the bed with her. Next to the bed was the wheelchair the health department had given her.

“Can’t hear it,” Mom said. She drew on the cigarette. The smoke blew back out in the wind of a violent cough. She found her voice and said, “Just a little volume, honey.”

Elliott stepped to the tiny black and white set on Mom’s dresser, and poked at the volume button until the chattering voices were uncomfortably loud. Mom said, “That’s just fine, Ellie.”

“Anything else?” There was a cat turd on the bottom of Elliott’s foot. He looked at the bottom of it but couldn’t see except that it looked dark and it felt soft and warm. “You need anything else?”

“Teacher come yet?”

“No. Mrs. Anderson won’t be here until two.”

Mom sucked on the cigarette like it was the tube on an oxygen mask. She let the smoke out then said, “I just can’t rest good today. I’m hurting. My back, my heart is just hammering like it wants to come out. Lay with me ’til I’m asleep.”

I thought you wanted to watch T.V., Elliott thought, but didn’t say. He went to the bed and lay down beside his mother. The mattress was lumpy. When his mother turned to him, her breath was familiar and strong.

“I feel a little better, honey.” One side of her mouth went up in what might have been a resigned smile. It looked as if even her face hurt her.

Mom always called Elliott honey. Never “Wee-wee Boy", or “Poop-Man” like the kids at J.E.B. Stewart Middle School did. Elliott’s mother loved him, even as she was dying. And she had been dying since Elliott had been in third grade. Her heart was bad, she told him. She couldn’t breathe very well because she was born with bad lungs. Her stomach made juices that were poison. Her muscles were giving up inside her skin and her nerves had so many short-circuits the doctors couldn’t even find them all. Month after month she begged him to stay with her and not go to school. Daddy had insisted, getting Elliott onto the school bus when he could. But most of the time Daddy left for work before the school bus came, and three days out of five, Elliott would stay with his mother because if she died when he was at school, what would he do then?

Elliott awoke to the tune of All My Children. He had slept next to his mother for almost two hours. It was time to find something for them to eat for lunch. At two o’clock, the teacher, Mrs. Anderson, would come.

Mom didn’t eat much of the bean with bacon soup Elliott fixed. She let Elliott wheel her to the bathroom but she would not eat with him in the living room. She insisted on a tray in bed, and then only sipped a couple of spoonfuls and ate the chips Elliott had put in a bowl for her. She didn’t want the Dr. Pepper he’d poured for her. She wanted Sprite. There wasn’t any Sprite, so Elliott told her he would make a list for Daddy when he came home. He could go into town and get Sprite for tomorrow. Mom settled down with another daytime show, and Elliott took the tray to the kitchen, ate his own soup and Dr. Pepper in the living room, and looked through the mail again.

He opened the bills and put them back on top of the console television in a pile for his father. He slid the paper cover off of one of the telephone books, and stopped.

The cover was not the normal photograph of the mountains or a rolling cattle farm, as the phone company was prone to use. It was, instead, a painting. A reproduction of a childish watercolor, splashed in its brilliant colors across the book’s broad cover. The painting was of a bright blue-green ocean, and a sailboat with smiling people all lined up together on the deck. White sparks flashed in the water; the sky was pink and yellow. At the bottom of the painting was the title, “The Adventure on the Sea” by Mosby Paulson.

Elliott cleared his throat, feeling the raw pain of his own illness, his own poor blood and bad lungs and short-circuited nerves.

Inside the front cover was a description of the painting.

“Mosby Paulson is a sixth grade student at J.E.B. Stewart Middle School. She is in Mrs. Connie Pugh’s art class this year, and entered the phone book competition along with over one hundred middle school students throughout the county. All the entries were judged by a panel of artists in the area, and Mosby’s work, ‘The Adventure on the Sea’, was selected as the winner for its lively depiction of movement, brave use of effective colors, and originality of shape.”

Elliott looked back at the cover. Happy people smiling, going somewhere on a silly sailboat in a bright sea. Going places that Elliott would never know, places he would only see as return addresses on the mail that came daily to his dented mailbox.

He could have done better. If he’d been in Mrs. Pugh’s art class this year, he would have entered the contest. And he could have won. He could have had his art somewhere besides on the door of the greasy refrigerator.

“Ellie?”

“What?”

“Can’t find my lighter. It fell down under the bed, I think.”

Elliott went into his mother’s bedroom and dug under the bed while his mother coughed above him. In the shadows beneath the bed, one of the cats blinked at him. He found the lighter on top of a dust-softened sock then crawled back out.

“Thank you, honey.” Mom took the lighter, pulled a cigarette from the pack on the little table by the bed, flicked it three times before it would catch, and then settled back into the pillow with a long, raspy draw.

Elliott watched his mother. Her eyes were closed, her cheeks sharp and skeletal. Her nose was runny and her hair was thin and short. The cigarette smoldered in her mouth, the tip glowing and dimming as she sucked on it and eased the smoke out through her lips without even taking the cigarette out.

“Mom?”

“Huh?” The cigarette did not come out; the word was muffled.

“The new phone books are in.”

“So?”

“Thought you’d want to know.”

The tip of the cigarette grew longer, glowing, smoldering. Then she said, “Our number ain’t in it, is it? They put an unlisted number in there I’ll sue ’em, I tell you that.”

“No, we ain’t in there.”

The ash on the end of the cigarette trembled.

Elliott wondered how long until it fell to the bed covers.

“Good then. You go watch your T.V. until the teacher comes. I’m tired.”

The ash wobbled. If it fell to the bed, it would catch the covers on fire. People who smoked in bed sometimes burned themselves to death, Elliott had heard.

“Go on now,” said Mom.

Elliott went on.

Mrs. Anderson knocked on the door just after two o’clock. She was a young woman, hoping to get a permanent job with the county as a reading specialist. Now she was teaching two students on homebound, Elliott and a boy named Richard who lived on the other side of the county and who had polio real bad because his parents never got him his vaccination.

Elliott opened the door and Mrs. Anderson put on her happy-to-see-you smile. Sometimes, when Elliott heard her car out front, he would watch her get out of her car and come up the walk. She never wore that smile when she thought he wasn’t watching.

“Elliott, how are you today?” Mrs. Anderson’s eyebrows went up. They were funny

eyebrows, drawn thin with a black pencil. Mrs. Anderson always smelled strongly of perfume, as if she didn’t like the smells of Elliott’s house.

“Okay.”

Mrs. Anderson came into the living room, her huge, unbuttoned white spring coat billowing out when she moved.

She removed the coat and hung it on the door knob of the closet. She studied the sofa a moment, and then sat down with her briefcase in her lap. She said she liked cats but Elliott knew better.

Elliott sat on the lawn chair, the only other piece of furniture in the living room except the console television. His teeth found a loose piece of skin on his lower lip and began to chew.

“And your mother,” said Mrs. Anderson. She opened her brief case and took out Elliott’s lesson plan book. “How is she today?”

“Same,” said Elliott.

“Mmm-hmmmm.” Mrs. Anderson looked up at Elliott then. Her happy-to-see-you smile was getting heavy, folding back down into an expression of perfunctory purpose. “How are the exercises going?”

“Exercises?”

“We talked yesterday about your weight gain, Elliott. You’ve put on quite a bit of

weight since you stopped attending school. Without a physical education program daily, you’re doing your body a disservice.”

“I didn’t do any exercises yet. I tried one but my stomach hurt so much I stopped.”

Mrs. Anderson sighed. Elliott had heard that sigh many times, from many of the adults at his old elementary school and at the middle school. On the days when Elliott had been put on the bus by his father, he would have severe stomachaches during homeroom. He would go to the guidance office but the counselors would try to talk him into staying. They would sigh that sigh and say, “Elliott, if you just stick it out through lunchtime you’ll feel better.”

Some of the days he would make it through art class, but then insist on calling his father to pick him up. Most days, however, he would wet his pants or have a bowel movement and the counselors had no choice but to send him home.

He was a sick boy. He was sick like his mother, and he needed to be home with her. If she died when he was at school, he would never forgive himself.

Elliott looked at Mrs. Anderson. Mrs. Anderson looked at Elliott. She said, “Are your parents treating you all right, Elliott? How are you getting along with them?”

“Fine.”

“Anything you’d like to talk about?”

“No. We’re getting along okay.”

She rolled this around on her face a little then let it go. “How about your math, did you finish the page of fractions?”

“I finished some of it.”

“Why not all of it, Elliott?”

“I didn’t feel good.”

“And your civics?”

“I didn’t have civics.”

“Yes, you had a chapter to review. We were having a quiz today.”

Elliott said, “Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

“Get out your books,” said Mrs. Anderson.

They spent the next two hours working through civics, pre-algebra, and English. Elliott wondered if a homebound student could have entered the phone book contest. He wished Mrs. Pugh could come at least one hour a week out of his required twenty and let him paint for her.

Mrs. Anderson left at four, and Elliott watched cartoons until six. He made supper of canned chili and chips and talked his mother into coming into the living room and eating on a T.V. tray next to him. She spilled half of her chili then went back to bed. Elliott rubbed most of the chili up with one of his father’s dirty work shirts from the laundry basket.

He lay on the sofa and looked at the phone book. He could have painted one of his horse pictures. Mrs. Pugh had loved his horse pictures. She said they made her feel free just to look at them. He could have made a picture the judges would have loved. He could have had his work on all the phone books in the county.

Elliott fell asleep on the sofa. His father woke him when he got home from work at ten, and sent the boy to bed.

Then Pilate went out to the people and saith unto them, Behold, I have found no fault with this man. The chief priests and officers cried out, Crucify him!

Pilate held forth his hand towards Jesus, who bore a crown of thorns and purple robe, and saith, I may release to thee a man on this day of feasting. Whom will ye that I release, the man Barabbas or this man Jesus?

And the crowd cried, Give us Barabbas! Jesus must die!

When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing to save the man Jesus and that Jesus was indeed to die to please the crowd, he offered the execution of noble captives, to have the man’s wrists slashed with sword and thus causing him to bleed quickly unto death. But from the crowd called up the man Andrew, son of Phinneas the shepherd, who said, Jesus must suffer for his words! Do not give him the gentle death! Crucify Him! The crowd joined in the mocking call, He must suffer for his words!

Then Pilate went from the crowd and washed his hands, and turned Jesus to the officers and soldiers, who gave unto Him a cross and bearing such went all unto the place of the skull which is called Golgotha.

There they crucified Him, and two others on either side with Jesus in the midst.

Across the kitchen table from Chloe sat Nannie, her right hand holding a melamine cup full of hot tea, her gnarled left hand trembling on the surface of the table, stirring grains of salt and sugar into miniature whirlwinds. Afternoon sunlight strained through the dusty window, and June bugs hummed a relentless tune in the woods beyond the side yard. Nannie lifted the cup to her lips, the nubs of the missing two fingers of her right hand beating the air. The bandage on her left elbow had begun to ooze again. Brown and red stains bubbled up beneath the gauze.

The rotary fan on top of the refrigerator rattled as it moved back and forth. Nannie’s smell wafted back and forth with the moving air.

“Stony say it’s gonna make tumors,” Chloe said. She held a cup of tea as well, although her cup was a fine piece of blue china, inherited from her mother. The steam drew a pink glow from her face. Although only seventeen, her hair was bound up and back like her grandmother’s. A handmade ragdoll sat in Chloe’s big lap, its face flopped over. “Stony say you gotta stop.”

Nannie swallowed, then looked at Chloe. There was kindness in her eyes. There was even kindness in her reprimand. “You do the embroidery?” Nannie asked. Chloe shook her head. “You do the needlepoint, and the dolls? Honey, you’ll just never understand this. We won’t never be rich, but we don’t care. We make enough from the people that come and see. You seem to be eating fine. You’s getting to be such a big girl.”

Chloe’s fingers played across her pudgy face, and then dropped to her big stomach.

“You’re my girl,” Nannie went on. “We’ll be all right. Enough talk of Stony.”

There was a click beetle on the floor beside Chloe’s foot, and Chloe stepped on it with her toe. She held the doll’s head down for it to see. “Bad old bug,” she said. Then she said, “Nannie, Stony said you being bad.”

“Child,” said Nannie. She put her cup down and swiped her lips. Some of the drips were wiped away, many were left. A small string of spit followed the hand down to the table. “You’s simple, but I love you. Trust me. Them boys’ll never have the best of me long as I live. You’ll always be my girl who needs me and I’ll do right by you.”

Chloe was silent. She watched her grandmother pull herself up from the table to put the cups away. There was no telling Nannie what to do. Stony, Chloe’s older brother, was always trying. He would continue to come over once a week after a day at the turkey plant and try to scold some sense into the old woman. It did no good. Nannie would tell Stony to go home to his wife and son and take care of them because she would be all right. Then Nannie would take the knife to her side again.

At the sink, Nannie braced herself and rinsed out the cups. It was hard for her to walk. She hadn’t gotten used to hopping on one foot yet. One cup clattered as it slipped from Nannies grasp. Chloe flinched, and grabbed the straps of her sleeveless sundress, her forearms coming up over her breasts. She said, “Break, Nannie?”

“Nah,” Nannie said. “It was my cup. Plastic don’t break like glass, honey.”

“Oh,” said Chloe.

“Goin’ to the porch?” asked Nannie.

Chloe nodded and helped her grandmother out of the kitchen and down the short hail to the barren living room at the front of the house. The doll went, too, crammed under Chloe’s unshaved armpit. A breeze blew through the screened door, lifting the stench of Nannie’s wounds and making Chloe rub her nose with her free hand. Out on the porch, the fresh air made sitting next to Nannie more tolerable. Nannie settled down on her chair, the wood barely giving under her wasted body. Chloe’s own chair creaked mightily under the girl’s weight.

“Want me to read you the funnies?” Nannie asked after Chloe had retrieved the folded Virginian Dispatch from the base of the porch step.

Chloe shook her head. She sat the doll on her lap and stroked the yarn hair.

Nannie fumbled the newspaper open with the three fingers of her good hand. “Fine then. Don’t forget to fix that sign ’fore you go on your walk,” said Nannie. Chloe nodded. “And you’ll watch out for boys?”

Chloe said, “Uh huh. But you got to tell me what letters to put on the sign.”

Nannie smiled at her granddaughter. It was Nannie’s great pleasure to take care of Chloe. Chloe had been twelve and Stony sixteen when their mother died, the result of massive head injuries after being struck by a pickup truck on the road outside their home. Stony inherited the old family car and the gun that belonged to his long-since-run-away father. Almost an adult then, Stony had said he was ready to be on his own. He secured a cheap room with a friend and a job plucking turkeys at Plenko Poultry. Chloe, who received her mother’s set of china, an old collection of perfumes and Avon decanters, and a little pocket change, moved in with Nannie. She grew up in her grandmother’s house, quiet and obedient. Each year school classified her as mentally deficient, and her absence was subsequently ignored when Nannie took Chloe out of school in the eighth grade.

The old woman and girl sat on their porch chairs, watching the road as no one came by, squinting until the sun was gone behind the clot of maples at the road’s shoulder. Nannie sighed, then shifted down as if to fall asleep,

Chloe got the paint cans and the brush from inside the house and walked down the short graveled driveway to the large sandwich board sign. The sign was gritty and as worn as the siding on Nannie’s house. The bottom of the wood was frayed like an old hula skirt.

Nannie’s old sign had been painted over and over many times in the past weeks. Originally, large once-red letters proclaimed that here was “Blue Ridge Country Crafts.” Ever since Chloe had lived with Nannie, Nannie had been a maker of crafts. She designed marvelous cornhusk dolls, embroidered hankies, and warm, thick quilts. The entire front living room had been Nannie’s show place. Travelers from the Skyline Drive, looking for another isolated route to wherever they were heading, came down the mountain in all seasons, driving the hairpin turns and cracked pavement to view the forest in its fall-splashed or snow-shrouded beauty. At the bottom of the mountain, the road passed Nannie’s house. Nannie would sit on the screenless porch, sunning her arms, waving a gaily painted fan and wearing a homemade bonnet. The travelers, intrigued, would stop by to chat. And to buy.

Money from the vacationers’ purchases as well as a little Social Security had kept Nannie and Chloe in food, craft material, and heating oil.

Chloe stooped down and pried the top from the paint can.

She flicked a few chunks of dried paint from the bristles of the brush. She called for Nannie to wake up, it was time for the spelling. Then she began to work on the correction.

Three months earlier, on a cool spring evening, some local boys had come riding by Nannie’s house. They were loud and drunk, hooting over the roar of their trucks and throwing empty liquor bottles to smash on the driveway. Nannie had been awake at that late hour, embroidering a tea towel in the living room. Chloe had been awake as well, lying in bed and counting the allowance savings she kept in a paper bag.

The boys had crashed into the house, breaking the simple hook lock Nannie had on the front door. Hearing the screams and the laughter, Chloe stayed behind her bed on the floor. The assault was quick. The boys grunted and howled; Nannie’s demands that they leave were reduced to muffled screams. Two minutes later, it was over. When Chloe heard the boys head outside to their trucks, she got up from the floor and looked out of her bedroom door. When the trucks roared out to the road, throwing rocks in their hasty departure, she crept into the living room.

Nannie was on the floor on her side, her legs drawn up and her arm spasming. She was bleeding from holes in the left side of her body. The craft shelves were overturned, and the crafts lay among the blood and wreckage, a carnival of carnage, a slaughterhouse of Nannie’s dreams.

Chloe fell beside her grandmother. “Who done this, Nannie?”

Nannie’s head moved slightly. Her eyes seemed almost ready to shake loose in their sockets. One went wall-eyed, and Chloe thought the eye would pop out.

“Want the doctor?”

Nannie shook her head. Blood pooled in her mouth, and she pushed it out with her swollen tongue.

Chloe stared at Nannie, and was silent. She was certain Nannie would die. Nannie’s right ear had been torn from her head. Large hanks of hair had been ripped out, and numerous knife scars traveled the length of her left arm and her torso. Her leg was mauled. But the old woman weakly demanded that Chloe leave it be. She said she would mend at home.

And so Chloe put Nannie to bed in the back room. Nannie only lost consciousness once, when she was stitching herself up. Most of the time she slept or stared out of the window. Sometimes she had Chloe bring in the newspaper and hold it up so she could read it a little. Chloe changed bandages and kept the sign on the front door flipped to “Closed".

Chloe went on her walks when Nannie was asleep.

It was five days from the attack that Nannie got back on her feet. She asked for tea, and drank most of it, then pulled herself up on her good leg and said, “Enough of this. I got work to do.” She limped into the kitchen and tried to butter some toast. The severed nerves in her hand would not allow it, so Chloe tried to butter it herself. Then Nannie went out into the living room to see what was left of her craft shop.

She stopped in the middle of the room, put her good hand to her mouth. She said, “Oh, Chloe.”

The room was nearly empty and the cash box was gone.The boys had broken most of the crafts, and Chloe had swept them up and tossed them out. The shattered shelf boards lay on the floor and against the wall where they had fallen. Only a few button-eyed chickens still sat on the floor beneath the window, and painted brick doorstops lined the back wall. The braided rug had been thrown out with the ruined crafts, having been stained with Nannie’s blood.

Nannie sat down then, fell actually, onto the bare floor. She hid her face in her good fist.

Then she said, “Chloe, you cleaned up. What a good girl. But you could have hurt yourself with the bits of glass and all those splinters.”

Chloe said nothing.

Nannie sobbed a few silent tears, then said, “What am I going to do?”

“Make a craft, Nannie,” Chloe offered. “That’s a happy thing, makin’ crafts.”

Nannie shuddered then her back went rigid. She sat up as straight as her damaged body would allow.

“You’re right, honey. Get me some material from my trunk, and find my sewing kit. Bring them to me.”

Nannie spent the next hour trying to thread a needle with her dead hand.

Then she tried to shuck a dried cob for a doll’s body.

She tried to dab paint onto a brick from the pile out back, to make a flowered stop. The paint fell in large blue droplets to the wood floor. She looked at the drops and took a shuddering breath. She said, “Chloe, this is a good time for you to go on your walk. Take a stick in case you see any boys.”

Chloe took a stick on her walk, but she left it in the woods just past the side yard.

When Chloe returned, Nannie had made it into the kitchen. There was water on the floor where she had tried to fix tea, and a burned biscuit in the oven. Nannie was sitting at the table, with a knife in her hand. Chloe stood and waited for Nannie to say something.

“No more crafts,” Nannie said, finally looking at her granddaughter. “Boys took it away from me. Stole it from me. Criminals, all of them.”

Chloe was silent.

Nannie brushed bread crumbs from the kitchen table with the blade of the knife, and said, “We ain’t gonna make no more money with the shop.”

Chloe said nothing.

“Your granddaddy was alive he’d go after them boys. But we’s just two women.” She laughed. “An old crippled woman and a woman with a baby mind. But never you bother. Maybe we can’t get them boys for what they done, and maybe that’s for God, anyway, but I got an idea.”

Chloe sat down and picked her doll from the chair beside her. She held it close to her bosom. “What idea, Nannie?”

Nannie smiled, only one side of her lip going up the right way. “Fix dinner, honey. I’ll tell you how to do the stove if you’re real careful.”

Stony came over at seven thirty that evening, relieved that Nannie was up again, and not unduly surprised that she would not be making crafts again. He sat with them on the porch, holding his ball cap in his hands and alternating his gaze from Nannie’s bandaged wounds to a patch of poison ivy by the porch step.

“There’s state aid,” Stony said. “And I got a little saved up. You got Chloe here to keep the house, ’though God knows she ain’t half as dumb as she puts on. You ought to put her to work somewheres, least ways part time. Then she could take care of the house in the evenings.”

Nannie shook her head. Her hair had not been brushed in days. “You don’t know nothing ’bout your sister. She’s a poor child God gave a body and no brains. She got a home with me long as I live and I’ll take care of her. I’m making a plan. Leave us be. Go home.”

“Damn it, Nannie, you can’t work no more. I brought money, and I want you to take it.” Stony shoved one hand deep into his overall pocket, and pulled out a wad of dollar bills. Nannie would not reach for it.

Chloe said nothing.

“Don’t ’barrass me now by dying of starvation. You’re family. Take the damn money,” said Stony.

“You never tried to help before this. Just you and yourself. Then you get married and you never come over to show me your wife or your baby. That’s family, Stony? That’s how family acts? Go home.”

“Nannie, you make me look like a fool. Everybody at work asks how you are. I have to look at ’em and say, ‘She can’t work no more but she won’t take money from me, and now she’s gonna eat dog food and roots and shoe leather’? Take the money.”

“Go home.”

He went home, and Nannie sat on the porch for a long time, while Chloe played with her doll and caught lightning bugs in her fists.

The next morning, Chloe found Nannie down the gravel driveway on her face, a paint brush in one hand and blue paint bleeding into the coarse gray rocks. Chloe pulled Nannie up with much effort, but the old woman’s face, though stone-bruised, was smiling.

“What’cha happy about?” Chloe asked.

Nannie pointed at the old sandwich board sign by the road. Large, runny blue letters were painted in bold strokes over the faded “Blue Ridge Country Crafts.” The new sign read, “Victim of Violent Crime. No Solicitors, Curious a Quarter.”

Chloe shook her head. “What’s that say?”

Nannie’s smile did not fade. She tapped the bandages on her left arm, and on her hip beneath her cotton dress. “Crime gonna pay this time, honey. It’s gonna pay for us.”

On the way back into the house for breakfast, Nannie flipped the “Closed” sign on the door back over to “Open.”

At first nobody came. Nannie told Chloe the local folks were not ones to peek too soon, but after a few days there was a trickling of women and men and children, slipping up the driveway and coming hesitantly to the door. The first of the curious pretended to be on church work, bringing along homemade pies and fried chicken. They were anxious to see, but didn’t want to appear anxious. The hands which held the pies and chickens were sweaty hands, and the pockets on those dresses and trousers were full of quarters.

Nannie sat on a stuffed chair in her living room where once her dolls and toys had sat. She wore a loose skirt and blouse. When the quarter was dropped into a can by the door, Chloe would pull up Nannie’s blouse and the curious would ooh and ahh at the ragged, red scars of Nannie’s violent crime. After an uneasy start, the flow became steady for more than a week. People came and paid, acting as though they were embarrassed to be there, making Nannie promise not to tell anyone about their visit, hurrying down to their cars as if they were afraid they would be seen and chastised. Everyone wanted to see; no one wanted anyone to know they wanted to see.

Chloe took the money on her walks. She would be gone a while, and would pick up groceries at the little country store on her way home. Half of the time she bought what Nannie had asked her to buy, the other half she got an odd assortments of pretty shapes and brightly colored boxes and cans. She and Nannie ate well.

Then the money slowed and nearly stopped. Nannie’s scars weren’t so bad anymore. Kids even scowled and rolled their eyes after they saw what their school lunch quarters had bought them.

So Nannie gave the proof of her assault a little boost.

With a keen kitchen knife, she opened several of the healed wounds, making them a bit bigger than they originally were, and the curious came round again. Nannie upped the price to fifty cents, and displayed the red, draining cuts to those who would make crime pay.

Chloe watched the money clank into the can, and she helped Nannie undo her blouse and lift her skirt. In the late afternoons she took her walks. And after supper she sat and played with her doll while Nannie put on the nighttime dressings.

When Nannie took off her first finger, Stony was back in a rage. He would not come up on the porch, but stood at the bottom of the front stoop steps and shook a fist at the woman and the girl.

“You’s crazy! No wonder Chloe ain’t right upstairs, she got it from you.”

“Go home, Stony,” said Nannie.

“They are talking ’bout you at work now. You’re the bathroom talk, Nannie. You’re the lunch room talk! You can’t do this to yourself. Take some money. I can’t handle this shame.”

Nannie licked her lips and patted Chloe’s face with a four-fingered hand. “Go home, Stony. We don’t need you.”

“There’s openings out at the turkey plant. Let Chloe come work there. She might be crazy but she ain’t dumb like you think she is, Nannie. She’s fooling you in a big way.”

“She can’t, Stony. Don’t fool yourself. Go home.

“And why the hell’s she getting so fat these days? She got bad glands or something? Won’t take yourself to the doctor, won’t take her, either, I guess.”

“We’s eating good,” said Nannie. “Chloe’s just a healthy girl. Go home.”

“You pregnant, Chloe?” asked Stony.

Nannie stepped down to Stony. Her good hand shot out and cracked her grandson on the side of the face. “You speak trash on my porch?”

Stony almost exploded. “You ain’t my family!”

“I always knew that. Go home.”

Stony went home.

And so it went. Nannie cut herself in the daytime, while Chloe held a cloth to catch the blood and sometimes put a rag in Nannie’s teeth so she wouldn’t groan so loudly. At night, Nannie wrapped herself up good so as not to bleed to death.

Stony didn’t come back when Nannie took off another finger, nor did he show up when the left big toe came off. Nannie upped the price to seventy-five cents. The locals knew it meant more gore, and coins filled the bucket again with new fervor.

“What’s a ‘r’ look like, Nannie, I forgot,” called Chloe from the sign.

Nannie made broad strokes in the air to show her granddaughter. “Take your time, now, you’ll get it.”

Chloe put the paintbrush to the sign and formed a lopsided V. Then she sat back and painted the length of her forearm with the paint. She held it up to show Nannie. “Pretty!” she shouted.

“Chloe, honey, now you got to wash that all off.”

Chloe brought the can and paint brush to the stoop.

“All done,” she said to the doll on the porch floor.

“That sign looks right nice all done over again,” said Nannie, raising her one good hand and squinting out at the sandwich board. “Now with me asking a dollar, they’ll know they got some real crime to look at.”

Chloe sat on the stoop and rubbed the doll’s face in the paint on her arm.

Nannie turned awkwardly in her chair. Severe shadows shadows cut down the side of her face. She stroked her throat and pulled at the wrinkles. She leaned over and pulled at the end of the sock on her left foot. The sock was orange with drainage. “Threads catching on that gone toe,” Nannie said. “Ought to get me a prop-up chair.”

“Nannie, Stony says I crazy like you.”

“Stony don’t know crazy,” said Nannie. “You and me, we’s just practical. Give me a hug.”

Chloe leaned into the rancid dress and gave her Nannie a hug.

Nannie sat back. She said, “Stony tells me you can do more than I think you can. In a way, he’s right.”

Chloe put some of the yarn doll hair into her mouth to suck. She strummed the now-blue doll’s face.

“I know you can do many things. You can help me move ’round the house. You help me do a little cooking in the kitchen. You paint the signs for me, don’t think I don’t love you for it. But there is something else…” Nannie’s voice trailed. Chloe licked the palm of her hand, and watched her grandmother.

“Want you to do my eyes,” said Nannie. Chloe blinked, and rubbed her own.

“I can hold still I think. If I cry don’t stop.” Nannie scratched at a curly eyebrow hair. Then she took a butter knife from her skirt pocket. “Dull one’ll do better.”

Chloe flinched and she drew back from the knife offered in her direction.

“George Stewart lost a thumb in his thresher last Thursday,” said Nannie, her voice thoughtful and sad. “Mrs. Stewart told me when she come ’round with her money. Ain’t nothing to see gone fingers now.”

Chloe squinched her nose and shook her head.

“Honey, crime got to pay. We got to eat.”

“How I do it?” asked Chloe.

“Just a little twist, like scooping oleo margarine from the tub.”

Chloe put her doll down. She gingerly took the knife.

“Like oleo?”

“Yes,” said Nannie. She leaned over to Chloe and kissed her on the forehead. “I’m the tub, honey.”

Chloe licked the knife once, for luck, she told Nannie.

There are things you want to forget. Like when my cat got run over by the snowplow and the night my Dad drove off in our new 1962 Chrysler and never came home.

Then there are things and people you don’t want to forget. But how can you care that you forgot them, if you forgot them?

Our neighborhood was like most in my small town — tree-lined streets, warping sidewalks cross-hashed with chalk for games of hopscotch, fenced yards, and tidy frame houses. My sister Jena and I, seventeen months apart, spent the summer between my third and fourth grade year collecting rocks from the road that looked like gemstones and building a tree house out of lumber scraps we dragged across the alley from where Mr. Richards was putting in a new sunroom.

There weren’t many kids in our neighborhood, and I played with them though they liked to get me into trouble. David lived across the street and Marla lived two doors up. They helped us with our tree house and we helped them do other stuff, like train David’s fat beagle to pull a wagon and teach Marla the alphabet in sign language.

This particular summer was especially buggy and sticky. Mom was pregnant, which didn’t alarm us but which made David snicker because he said, “Your Dad’s been gone more than a year.” The baby was due in September, so she was pretty big and didn’t chase us around us much as she usually did. This gave us a delicious freedom we’d not had in summers past.

Miss Dowdy lived near the end of the block where the road curved down and to the right. Her home was a grayed, wood-shingled bungalow with a front porch with a low-riding roof. She was a really old woman, at least 200 Jena thought, but I knew people couldn’t live that long so I put her at 150. Neither of us had seen her, though. Until that summer we had never played as far away as Miss Dowdy’s house, not that we’d wanted to. We’d heard the rumors. She was a witch. If you got too close, you’d be cursed. Nobody knew what kind of curses she wielded, but they couldn’t be good.

On July 2nd David’s dog got away from us. Usually the dog, as round and short-legged as a footstool, never went far when he tired of our attentions. He’d just trot a few paces then role over on the gravel. This time, though, he must have smelled or heard something enticing, because he dashed down the sidewalk, cutting catty-corner across to the other side, never looking back, his tail sticking straight out like the flag the crossing guard holds when we walk to school.

“Buddy!” called David.

Buddy kept on running.

“You better catch him before he gets hit by a car,” Marla said.

“Damn stupid dog,” I said.

“Ah, Annie, you cussed!” said Jena.

“It’s not cussing if you’re not saying it to somebody.”

“Oh, yeah, it is,” said Jena.

 "Buddy!” shouted Marla.

“Buddy!” David called again.

After a good full minute of calling, David kicked at a discarded Mountain Dew bottle and said, “Ya’ll coming with me?”

“Not my dog,” I said.

“Yeah, but…”

“Yeah, but what?”

“But if he went, you know.”

“What?”

“Near that woman’s house.”

“What woman?”

“You know. Miss Dowdy.” He whispered it so softly I really only read his lips.

“You mean the witch?” asked Marla.

“Shh!”

“She’s not a witch,” I said, though the word chased a chill down the back of my t-shirt. “That’s baby talk.”

“Then you get Buddy since you aren’t scared,” said Marla.

It took almost ten minutes to catch both the beetle and the centipede, but Hannah Livick’s paper cup finally had the captives securely inside, and she walked them down to the grassy stretch behind the dumpster and let them go. Best to be out in the wild than in her apartment, where they might get stepped on or caught by one of Hannah’s cats. It was more time consuming now to keep up with her promises. With the onset of fall,more insects sought warmth inside, and she spent more time chasing them and putting them out.

But promises she had made and promises she would keep.

She went back inside and dropped down on a kitchen chair. On the table before her was an opened letter from her father. The bastard. She flipped her hand and the letter fluttered to the floor. The two stray kittens she’d rescued from the college parking lot blinked at her from the hall. Timothy jumped onto the table. Hannah kicked off her shoes and tucked her hair back behind her ears. She waited as her breathing eased and her heart slowed. She needed to let things like this go. She was thirty-two, for heaven’s sake, no teenaged flower child. She should no longer be thrown for a loop when others didn’t understand. In fact, their lack of under-standing only clarified her own. It clarified that of Karla Casey and little Allen and Joe and the other student members of Voices for the Voiceless, people who had true commitment to great causes.

“Great causes,” she said to Timothy. She gave him a kiss.

Last night had been a glorious moment for a great cause. Another round won for the animals. Hannah and her friend Karla had led Voices for the Voiceless in a midnight raid on the county animal pound. The pound was clean enough, and part of their purpose, that of placing unwanted animals for adoption, was humane enough, but Joe had said the holding cell of unclaimed animals was now full and an execution was pending. Joe Farrish, a psychology major at the college and one of Hannah’s brightest students who worked part-time at the pound, had stolen a key and he break-in was not a break-in at all but a calm open-the-door-and-help-yourself-in.

Dressed in a denim skirt and black sweatshirt that read, “A Crow is a Cat is a Cow is a Dhild", Hannah had hacked the padlock from the holding cell, then stepped back as Karla’s nine-year-old son, Allen, was allowed the first rescue.

“Go in, sweetie,” Karla said, giving the little boy an encouraging push. “Those kitties and puppies are going to be poisoned if we don’t set them free. They will cough and shake and vomit and suffer. Go get the first one out.”

Allen, in his little red “Peace Now” ball cap, had gone into the dingy cell among the condemned, cats in a cage on the right of the cell and dogs in a cage on the left. The condemned watched him with hesitant wags of tails and blinks of eyes. He pulled the pin to the cat cage and lifted out a scraggly calico. As he turned to face the other rescuers, Joe snapped a Polaroid photo.

Grinning child and living cat. The crow is the cat is the cow is the child. Bless the beasts and the children.

Equality beyond specieism.

The photo was now displayed on her refrigerator along with photos of other events in Hannah’s activist life; protests, marches, passing home-computer generated pamphlets out on the street in front of the college and the nearby grocery stores.

Commitment and courage. Promises kept.

As little Allen would say when asked if he would always look out for the weaker creatures, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Hannah stared at the photos, letting pride in what she was doing squeeze out the irritation at her father’s selfishness. It took a little while, but it worked.

(Inspired by an actual, ghostly 1980’s photo taken in the cellar of the Bartlett House in Parkersburg, where Dr. Charles Bartlett’s daughter died in 1879.)

The moon is a chalk rock, hanging in the sky in the black of the night and the blue of the day. It is there because it has room there; it is comfortable there. The moon is not its light, though some would say it is. The moon is a big round body with a purpose which I don’t understand but don’t need to understand.

I am a woman with a bad foot. My foot was crushed last month by a passing car on Ocean Front Boulevard. I didn’t get out of the way fast enough and it was run over and now my foot is dying. It is purple and fat and aches when I move it. I have washed it in the salty surf when no one else was around. I have pressed on it to pass the pus but it is still dying.

The boardwalk along the beach is where I live. I scour the rusted barrels in the sand in the blue of the day and curl up under the lip of the walkway in the black of the night. I have room here, but I am not comfortable. My swollen and pounding foot smells very bad. My body is covered with old sweat from my arm pits to my ankles and new sweat from each new day, but I am not my smell. Some think I am. I am a body with a purpose which I just now understand.

Last week I found two wonderful things. One was a brand new tee-shirt in the trash outside Surf Side Souvenirs. I clawed it out before the manager chased me away and threatened to call the police. It was tight but I ripped it up the sides and pulled it on over my sleeveless blouse. The other treasure was a dog. I named him Sunshine.

A dog has never been a treasure to me before. In fact, when I first found Sunshine, I thought he was ugly and gaunt. He growled at me and snapped, but I offered him some French fries I’d found in the dumpster behind Dairy Queen, and he calmed down. And then he sniffed at a small gash in my bad foot and began to lick. This amused him, or pacified him, I’m not sure which. His ears went up and his tail began to wag. It didn’t hurt me at all. I shut my eyes, sitting there behind a beach bench on the boardwalk, and let Sunshine lick my swollen, dying foot. I squeezed on the foot, letting it drain for him. Sunshine licked. I pretended I was having a massage from the Man I Love.

As I sat, not bothering any of the vacationers, a child with a red ball cap leaned over the back of the bench and said “Mom, look. That’s gross !”

The mother, face all painted and plucked, also looked over the bench seat. Her face registered my smell and then my foot. She contorted. “Disgusting.”

I said, “In the Bible, Lazarus let the dogs at the gate lick his sores.” But the mother and child were gone already, off in a hurry down the sandy walk and they didn’t hear what I had to say.

Sunshine nipped my foot then, a love bite like cats give to their owners, and licked some more.

The dog had bonded with me, and we stayed together. I had little to feed him; I barely can keep up with the demands of my own growling belly. But we slept together and he would lick my foot and ease the heaviest of the throbbing. His hair was warmer than the grit of the ground under the boardwalk lip. He smelled, too, but a dog is not his smell. Even the richest of people know that. They laugh at a smelly dog and excuse him because they love him and because he is not his smell. He is a body with a purpose and they understand.

The Man I Love came out to the beach several days after I found Sunshine. The Man wore his yellow swim trunks and an unbuttoned red shirt that billowed in the breeze and let me see his tanned chest and black chest hair and little pink nipples. He comes to the beach once a week, on Saturdays. Therefore, I know he is a working Man. A good Man who is a sane Man. A sane man can hold a job.

I haven’t held a job for two years, since I was twenty three. Am I insane? I don’t understand insanity, or if I am insane. But I know now that I have a purpose. If sanity is purpose, then I’m sane. My purpose is dreadful, but it is as sure as the beauty of the Man I Love.

The Man I Love is sane and good. He walks with his chin up and he stretches out to the sun and sea before settling down on the rolls of beach sand. He smiles even when no one is looking at him.

I watched him from my shadows under the boardwalk, but Sunshine trotted across the hot sand and sniffed at the Man’s crotch. The Man laughed and pushed Sunshine back a little, then petted him on the head.

“What a good dog,” he said.

Sunshine wagged his tail and didn’t growl.

“If you were a little healthier,” said the Man. “I’d take you home with me. Go on, now, boy.” He petted the dog again, and Sunshine just stood and wagged his tail until the Man shed his shirt and went for a swim in the waves.

Sunshine came back to me. I sat in the shadows, my bloated foot resting on a mound of sand I’d made, and rubbed the dog’s head. The dog’s nose was wet and probing, first on my hand and then back to my foot. What a wonder to pet something the Man had pet.

As I ran my rough fingers through the dog’s fur, I began to understand my purpose. I began to realize why I existed.

My heart hammered, and the painful rhythm echoed in my foot.

I slept restlessly and feverishly that night. A barb was in my chest, cutting with each breath and making it feel as though blood were seeping out to my stomach. I was nauseous, but swallowed it down as I stroked Sunshine.

The next day was Sunday. A lot of people come out on Sunday, even more than Saturday. The sun, in its purpose, was bright and hot. The moon held its position at a distance. It was white and faint.

I moved along the boardwalk. My good foot was bare. My bad foot was wrapped in a rag that had once been a beach towel left behind on the sand by a careless family. Pain sang with each step, hitting high notes when the weight was on the ball of my bad foot. I sweated hard, as the heat of the infection climbed around inside me. Sunshine trotted along, hoping, I suppose, to be given more french fries or to have the chance at my foot again.

The Dairy Queen was busy. Gaily striped inflated floats were propped up against bike stands. Customers ate inside in the air conditioning and outside at the umbrella-shaded tables. I stood beyond the low chain fence, watching the people eat. Dusty sparrows fared better than I; they flew freely among the tables to gather the scraps. Vacationers watched them with smiles. But I was gawked at by those who noticed me. Their stares held me back behind the chain fence.

To the rear of the restaurant was the Dumpster. I limped around and waited until a pock-faced boy had emptied a container, then I dug inside. Sunshine sat at my feet and waited, chin up. I found some ketchup-covered buns for him. For me, there were chunks of cheeseburger and a third of an apple pie.

I went to a small tree and slid down to eat. I studied the beef beneath the bright orange varnish of cheese. A cow had its purpose. If the cow knew it, would she be distressed? Or in knowing, did a cow embrace life for what it was? The meat was cold.

As I licked grease from my fingers and Sunshine nosed into the towel to get at the fluid from my foot, I saw a flash of open white shirt. My head turned, and there, not ten feet from me, was the Man I Love. He was fumbling in his shorts pocket for his wallet. Seeing his nipples, my own grew hard. I wished I could have licked them like Sunshine licked my foot. I wanted to give them a love bite, and not have the Man push me away because of my smell.

Sunshine ran to the Man. The Man didn’t see the dog coming, and when Sunshine jumped up and wagged his tail, the Man stumbled back. Sunshine dropped down and the tail-wagging increased.

“Hey, boy, you’re back?” he said.

Sunshine’s whole body wagged. I thought, if I was the dog, could I make the man like me enough to take me home? I sucked my fingers and scratched at a sweat-inspired tickle on my stomach.

“You ugly old thing,” he said. He rubbed Sunshine vigorously beneath the gangly, whiskered chin. “What do you want from me? You’re a mess, now get away.”

Sunshine’s claws clattered on the concrete of the sidewalk, a happy dog’s dance.

“I can’t take home an old, skinny dog. Sorry, pup. Vet bills aren’t something I want to get into.”

The Man I Love squatted down and played with Sunshine’s ears. My own ears tingled, imagining the sensation. “Now get. You made my hands stink.” He laughed, sniffing his hands. Sunshine’s body wiggled with joy.

The Man left, wiping his hands on his shorts, certain to wash them once he was inside the Dairy Queen. But certain not to think the dog was bad because he had a smell.

Sunshine came back to me, sat on his haunches, and dipped his tongue to my foot. I pushed him aside and went back to the Dumpster. Beneath mangled Styrofoam, I found a half a fish sandwich. I took it to the tree, slid down, and worked my fingernail into the gash in my foot. It hurt, but the sharp, rough edge of the nail tore the gash into a substantial hole. Sunshine watched. I stuck a small piece of the meat into the hole.

“Sunshine,” I said. I pushed his nose to the hole. He sniffed, licked, and then gave my foot a bite. It was gentle at first. I gathered handsful of grass to each side of me. “Sunshine,” I said.

Sunshine licked, then bit again, this time harder. A pain that was not the pain of infection drove up through my ankle into the calf of my leg. I sucked air through my teeth. The grass in my fingers ripped from the ground. “Sunshine,” I whispered.

The dog began to chew, working for the fish in my foot. Blood and clear liquid oozed out between Sunshine’s working jaws. Bright stars prickled the edges of my vision.

Not here, I thought.

My foot jerked away from Sunshine. He whined softly, and then reached for the running wound again.

“Not here,” I said. I put the rest of the fish sandwich down the front of my tee-shirt and tucked the shirt into the waist of my shorts. Then I pushed up from the ground, holding low, thin branches of the tree for balance. My weight was on my good foot, and I was afraid to shift.

A young couple, arm-in-arm, walked by me. The girl wrinkled her nose and nudged her boyfriend. He frowned in my direction and said, “This place wants tourists, they should keep the trash out of public view.”

I wobbled; my bad foot caught the brunt of my weight.

A groan scrabbled up my throat and whistled through my lips.

It took me a very long time to walk back to the boardwalk.

The railings of the steps to the beach were hot and welcomed. They eased the burden on the bad foot and allowed me to slide down to the sand. Sunshine kept by my side. His tail didn’t wag. He was all business. That was as it should be. I crawled beneath the lip of the boardwalk, then under the steps where the sand was wet and dark and white ghost crabs scuttled about as if it were night.

I eased down onto my butt. My lips were dry and my throat full of the sand of my soul. I wedged my good foot against the back of the bottom step to hold me in place when the real pain came. I pet Sunshine on his gaunt, fur-covered dog skull, and then pulled the fish sandwich from my shirt.

Dogs, I’d heard once, had germ-killing saliva. That was why they could lick their own wounds and not get ill. That, I supposed, was why the dogs who licked Lazarus’ sores didn’t die. That was why I knew I could feed Sunshine and make him healthy, and then the Man I Love would take the dog home with him.

Through the slats of the steps, the vacationers cannot see me, but I can see them. I can see the hairy legs of the men and the shapely legs of the women as they descend to their temporary paradise by the ocean.

Happy people, oblivious to the crabs and the ugly dog and the stinking woman beneath the steps.

I poke more of the fish sandwich deep up into the gash in my foot. Sunshine nuzzles, licks, and then chews. My eyes squeeze shut against the razor-screams of my foot. I feel the hot blood rush out onto the cool sand and the rhythmic stroke and pull of the dog’s teeth.

Sunshine won’t eat all of me. He will lose interest after a bit and will go off after a Frisbee or a toddler, looking for a playmate. I saw a black and white documentary once, a long time ago. A Nazi dog chased down a Jew and mauled him, but even a trained Nazi dog did not eat a whole Jew. The Nazis had to give the man to the wild pigs to finish.

But what I give Sunshine will be plenty, more than I could ever salvage at one time in a dumpster without being chased away. And what I give him will be my end. My bleeding is profuse. Even a towel-rag could not stop it. If I wanted to stop it.

My teeth clench and I search out through the step slats for the moon. I can’t find it, but I know it is there. The chalk rock in the blue sky, the meaning of its existence a mystery.

I loosen one hand long enough to cram in more fish. My foot screams the agony of the crucified, offered for a higher purpose. Flesh rips within the canines. Then I feel the bone snap, crunch.

Sunshine will blossom and be fat and full and healthy and go home with The Man I Love. I will be part of it. I will be pet even as the dog is pet and loved even as the dog is loved. I will lick the man’s chest and pink moon-nipples even as Sunshine does.

I howl into my shoulder and grab the steps.

Sweat pours from my flesh, thick and sour. My breath on the air is that of a corpse in the grave.

But the smell of my blood is sweet.

Their chapel is a gutted service station at the edge of the blistering city, situated between an abandoned warehouse and a lot choked with briars and detritus. They only come to pray at midnight, for that is when no one is there to stare at them or shoot them for sport.

There is nothing left to the station but four walls, a sagging roof, a restroom in the back that requires a key that has been long since lost, and a counter with a shattered glass case that once held candy, quarts of oil, and colorfully illustrated maps to places far away. The floor is covered with leaves blown in on countless winds and bits of glass or metal or cloth the worshippers leave behind as offerings. Sometimes they cut off tiny pieces of themselves, too, pieces decayed and dead, and leave those, but the vermin that scour the small building in the wee morning hours find them and clean them away, carrying the bits home as treats to their nested families.

There are teens and children, men and women, none so old as most of their kind die before they are forty. They come from the darkest, most hidden places in the city. They are the hated ones, the abandoned ones, those looked upon by the Ordinaries as less than human. They are the Discards — distorted and twisted, deformed and ravaged. Born to destitute mothers who have drugged themselves so badly that nothing whole could grow in their wombs, dumped out with the trash. Rescued by their own, one generation to the next, squirreled away and fed and kept warm as best as can be done, clothed with cast-offs, sheltered wherever shelter might be found.

Their pastor is Ryan. He is like them in many ways, thirty-four, dark-haired, jobless, homeless. His is missing an eye and one of his ears is melted down his neck. His left arm ends at the elbow at three nubbed fingers that flex poorly. He limps violently, for his right leg is twisted. Ryan sleeps on the damp earth in the cellar of an empty garage. The Discards love to hear him preach, though his sermons are short. Most of the services are dedicated to prayer and songs.

Each night, they shamble to the chapel. Ryan locks the door behind them, lights the candles. Those who have knees kneel to pray. Hands, where there are hands, rise toward the heavens. Eyes, where there are eyes, close in humble respect and penitence. Tongues, where there are tongues, recite the prayer of acceptance:

“We are as You have made us. We ask nothing but nourishment for our bellies, covering for our bodies, and darkness in which to hide. We ask that the Ordinaries find other means of entertainment than us, and that when it is our time to die, that You remember us well.”

Ryan always brings food for the service. Half-rolls, cooked potatoes and chicken scraps, lumps of cheese, mangled pastries. The Discards never ask where it comes from, the tasty and plentiful offerings, wanting to believe in at least one miracle. He would tell them he found them in bins behind diners if they asked but they don’t. They pray, listen, sing, eat, and then wander off through the shit-black shadows.

It is a cool, late September night when the new Discard comes, inching along in a wheelchair that looks like scrap from the early 20th century — scarred wood, caned backing ripped and rotting, two large wheels with one small, wobbling one in the back. He is no worse off than the others, thin, dead legs, hands twisted and skeletal, and a big hole where his right cheek should be. The bones and teeth that are visible through the hole are blackened, and his breath smells like a fire-pit that has been doused in urine. No one makes a fuss over him. They merely nod and offer him weary looks that accept him into the fold.

He rolls toward the counter where Ryan is shrugging out of his tattered coat and tells Ryan that his name is Ben. Ryan looks at him, says, “Bless you, Ben,” and then inclines his head toward an open space beside one of the benches where those who are able to sit, sit.

Ben maneuvers his chair to the assigned spot, thumping into some of the others as he goes. A woman drops down onto the bench beside him. Her head is oddly shaped, as if someone has crushed it in a vice. Her skin is scaled like that of a shedding snake. She looks at Ben and tries a smile. It is the ugliest thing Ben has ever seen, outside the Master when he is enraged.

Ben watches as the rest of the Discards find their places. He breathes in and out through the hole in his cheek as his nose is clogged. He hates this place. This station, this city, this fucking world. He grinds his stubbed molars together, recalling how much the Master wants Ryan, how much he drooled over the prospect of such a tasty morsel sucking his dick then being roasted and served on a skewer for dinner. Ben hates the Master yet must please him. To please him is to suffer less. To not please him is to suffer profoundly. Ben shivers, as much from fear as from cold. He is always cold.

And now, added to the cold, a damned headache. It started the moment he got inside the station, hurting like someone digging at his brain with a nail. He’s not sure if it’s the Master’s doing. It might just be the shitty air inside this shitty place, unfiltered through the shitty hole in his face, the fucked-up face of the fucked-up body the Master gave him for this task.

A one-legged devil walks into a bar, lookin’ for a good, stiff whiskey…

The Master never appreciates Ben’s jokes. He has no sense of humor at all. Yet Ben can’t help it. He was always a joker before, always quick and witty in hopes of a laugh, and can’t help himself now. He offers puns or wisecracks or stupid stories, hoping someday to make the Master like him more. Hate him less. Whatever.

Ben crosses his arms, hard. The chair creaks beneath him.

The prayers begin, then the songs. There is nothing melodic about the wailings of the twisted creatures, and it’s all Ben can do to keep from putting his hands over his ears. It makes his head hurt worse. He pretends to sing and pray, as well, moving his jaw, waggling the stubby tongue the Master gave him.

The service lasts several excruciating hours. At some time during Ryan’s speech about earthy temporals and eternal peace, some of the Discards begin to scrape at themselves and drop pieces of flesh on the floor. Ben knew they did this, had been told by the Master, but seeing it makes his gorge rise. Ryan says nothing, as if he doesn’t notice, doesn’t mind, or has some strange understanding of the acts. Some of the Discards wriggle in place, working out sounds and smells that cause Ben to tuck his nose under his elbow. The place grows hot and thick with the stink of blood, diarrhea, and resignation.

What do you get when you cross the devil, an angel, and a politician…?

Another joke that fell flat.

Ba-dump-bum.

At long last Ryan raises his good hand and offers the final benediction. The Discards who are down push themselves up. Those who are up push themselves forward, and, silently, they eat the food Ryan has spread out on the countertop. No one speaks, but they nod their thanks then wander away. Several hold hands as if they are lovers, or friends, or are just afraid they might tip and fall over. The rest keep their distance from each other. Out of fear or respect, Ben can’t quite tell.

Not that they matter.

It’s Ryan who matters to the Master. It is Ryan who has the Master’s tongue and loins tingling in delicious anticipation. If Ben can’t please the Master with humor, he’ll please him with obedience.

The last Discard, a child who looks more simian than human, blows out the candles in the windowsill by the door.

Then there are only Ben and Ryan in the shadowed station.

Ben sits in silence, rubbing his temple, trying to press out the pain in his head. Ryan stands at the counter, gathering the plastic trays, wiping off the crumbs. For all his hideous deformity, Ryan moves with a certain grace that pisses Ben off. It’s all for show, though. Certainly Ryan knows Ben is sitting there, watching him. And so Ryan has to play his part as long as there are eyes…or eye…to see. When he leaves this place, he tries to get himself drunk with left over puddles of beer found in bottles on the side of the road, and then he jacks off into the empty bottles, breaks the bottles, and proceeds to cut his legs with the shards. He hates himself more than any person has ever hated himself, so says the Master. And the Master should know. He watches. He sees. He hears. He tastes the fear and the angst within the human race, and he savors it all.

“So…” begins Ben.

Ryan looks up from the trash bag where he’s secured the plastic trays, ready to drag them back home to use again tomorrow night.

“How can I help you, Ben?”

“Actually, I was just wondering how I could help you.” Ben replies. The words sound hissy without a cheek to help hold in the air and fashion the sound. Couldn’t the Master have given him a body that wasn’t quite so pathetic? One that at least had an intact face? “Seems nobody else is willing to hang around long enough to ask.”

“Yeah, well.”

Ryan slings the bag over his shoulder and limps from behind the counter. He looks like Santa in a child’s worst nightmare.

Santa, Ben thinks suddenly. Poor little Julie was scared of Santa, even a smiling Santa in his white beard and red suit. I tried to tease her, to make her laugh so she wouldn’t be scared. It didn’t work too good but I tried….

He shakes his pained head and clenches his jaws. The last thing he needs are memories of Julie. “Master, don’t make me think of her, not now,” he whispers.

“What’d you say?” asks Ryan.

“Nothin,” says Ben. “I’ll get the door.”

The night air is a bit fresher than that inside the station, scented with wet leaves and exhaust. Ben struggles with the chair; why he had to be this crippled to do the job is beyond him. His head continues to pound. The wheels snag in deep gravel, and Ryan reaches over to takes the chair handles to wriggle Ben free. Ben is caught immediately by the heat roiling off Ryan, pouring from his body in waves. Clearly, the man has some kind of sickness. Ben holds his breath until Ryan steps away; a knee-jerk reaction, left over from the days when he was alive and catching someone else’s disease was a thing to avoid.

Ryan then says, “See ya, Ben,” and turns north to head into the deeper bowels of the city. His strides are lopsided and wretched, though he picks up a good speed. Ben stares after, then calls, “Hey!” He shoves the heels of his hands against the wheels and, with great effort, chases after Ryan. It’s harder steering the thing than he would have imagined. When he reaches Ryan, he is panting.

“What do you want?” Ryan doesn’t seem angry, just tired, distracted.

Ben makes sure he stays at least five feet from the preacher. The man’s body heat is still detectable. “Listen. I got a couple bucks in my pocket. How about a beer?”

“Beer?”

“Yeah, you know. Bud. Miller. Corona. A beer?”

“I know what a beer is.”

“Well?”

One of Ryan’s brows furrows; the one over the bad eye looks paralyzed. Then he says, “If it’s on you, okay. I’m flat broke. But you sure you want to be seen in public? The rest prefer their privacy. This is a dangerous city, especially for us. Ordinaries have little patience with Discards.”

Ben cringed at the name. He was no more a Discard than he was God. He was what he was, a dead, joke-cracking fuck-up who’d gone to hell for living a miserable life he’d pretty much forgotten after seventeen years. Now he spends all his time just trying to humor and please the Master, trying to keep him off his back, trying to keep hell’s tortures to a minimum. “I’ll be all right. Where’s the nearest store?”

The nearest store is up a couple blocks past empty tenements, some closed junk shops, and several bars with blacked-out windows. The store is half the width of a typical shop, with only enough room to squeeze down the narrow aisle between the counter and the single row of shelves. Unable to fit inside, Ben watches from the street as Ryan limps in with the wad of bills Ben has given him and selects a six-pack. The guy at the counter — old, white hair, sneers — growls, “Didn’ I tell you damned freaks to stay out of my shop?” until he sees the money in Ryan’s hand. Then he shuts up.

A freak preacher walks into a store to buy some beer… Ben can’t think of a punch line for this one. Later, maybe.

Ryan comes out with the six-pack, stands holding it in the puss-yellow light that leaks from the shop’s door. Just looking at Ryan makes Ben’s head hurt all the more. That damned ear and screwed up eye. The arm that looks like it should belong to some freaky doll. He tries not to let his discomfort show.

“So, where you live?” asks Ben, though he knows. The Master has shown him all he needs to know, told him all he needs to hear. In won’t take long to toss out the hook and reel this one in.

Ryan says, “Not too far.” The way he says it lets Ben know that Ryan’s ability to keep up the kindly minister act is waning fast. He’s tired. He’s starting to sound irritated.

The devil was sitting on a tombstone one afternoon, waiting for the next soul to come along….wait, you’ve heard this one? Shit…

The empty garage is a dung-hole, that’s certain, situated at the back of a small, ruptured parking lot. The faded sign, “Martin’s Auto Repairs,” has long been down off the top of the building and is propped up against the front wall. Ryan hobbles on, over the potholes and briars, the beer case thwapping against his leg. He glances both ways before pushing through the door of the garage. Ben follows with effort, grimacing, his brain rattling in his skull.

The place still smells of the work that had been done here years earlier. Sweat and oil and gasoline and cold metal. Yet it is as hollow and forlorn as the service station where the Discards go to pray.

Ryan opens a small door near the back and descends the narrow steps. Without looking back he says, “Shut the door behind you, and flick the lock.”

Ben sits in his chair at the top of the stairs and glares down. He shivers hard, so cold not only in this forsaken place but cold beneath his flesh. “How the hell…” he begins, but Ryan calls up, “Just crawl down. It’s not that far.”

Fuckedy-fuck! Ben thinks. He has to keep with his charge, but now he’ll be even more gimped. Again, the Master is having him on, somewhere out there in the darkness, enjoying Ben’s misery.

What do you get when you cross a hole-faced, sluggish mutant with a set of cellar steps? One big splat at the bottom, that’s what.

Rim shot…

He shivers hard inside his skin.

Thump-thump-thump-thump. The rough wood of the steps scrapes the palms of his hands, leaving countless, needle-sharp splinters. His ass bounces heavily, his dead legs trailing at odd angles. He works hard not to lose himself and become the splat, the butt of his own stupid joke.

No candles in the cellar, only two battery-powered camping lanterns. It’s hard to see at first, and Ben’s eyes adjust only partly. There is a cot in a corner. A pile of blankets on the floor. Windows up near the ceiling, covered in wire mesh.

As he slops off the bottom step, he is hit in the face with the stuffy heat in the room. It’s like someone has turned a radiator way up. It’s Ryan’s sickness, whatever it is.

Shit on it all.

Ryan sits on the cot and rubs his knees with his good hand. Then he snatches a beer bottle from the carton on the floor and twists off the top with his teeth. Ben finds this mildly impressive.

“Your place sucks,” says Ben.

“You shut and lock the door?”

“No, I couldn’t. You know I couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Ryan. His voice is softer now, drained, weakened. He’s almost ready for my offer. This shouldn’t take long. Good!

“Hey, Ryan,” says Ben. The pain in his head flares again. He grunts through his teeth.

“What?”

Ben drags his sorry body across the concrete floor toward the cot, over a damp drain hole in the center, through several dried and flattened mouse carcasses. “How long you been livin’ here?”

“A while.”

“You always been like….that? All messed up?”

Ryan shrugs. “Why?”

“Born that way?” Ben cocks his head, and the jaunty motion, meant to display cocky confidence, only makes the pain worse. He pretends it doesn’t. “How do you say it in that prayer? ‘We are as you have made us?’”

“Why do you want to know, Ben?”

“All that shit you talk about to the other…Discards. Telling them to accept how they are. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking brain damaged? I know you hate the way you are, the way they are, hell, the way I am right now. Look at me. A bag of human garbage on your floor! Could it get any worse?”

Ryan takes another swig of the beer. “Could it?”

Ben arranges his legs beneath him and pulls a beer from the carton. It’s so very hot near Ryan, like being too close to a bonfire. He fumbles with the bottle but his hands are sweaty and he can’t get a grip on it; Ryan takes it, opens it, gives it back.

Ben scoots away from Ryan and the man’s body heat, clutching the bottle. He takes a draw; some goes down his throat but the rest trickles out through his cheek-hole. The brew is wet and cool, but doesn’t taste as good as he remembers from his living days. Or maybe the Master has decided his crappy tongue should have crappy taste buds. He drinks the rest hard and fast, tilting his head to get it down, draining the bottle in just moments.

“Why’d you follow me home, Ben?” Ryan has finished his beer and he drops the bottle onto the floor. It falls over and rolls toward the drain hole, clack-clack-clack, past Ben and through the dead mice.

“You don’t believe the crap you tell those monsters,” says Ben. “I know you don’t. You only do what you do because there is nothing else for you to do. Pretend it’s not so bad. Pretend you…they…are as they are because of some kind of fucking divine intention? Do you ever look at yourself? Do you ever listen to yourself? It’s like watching a bad comedian on the stage, dying with every joke. You’re pathetic! Well, my friend, I’m here to turn your sorry life around.”

Ryan reaches for another beer bottle but what Ben has said makes him pause. His good eye blinks. He paws at his melted ear with his stubbed fingers. It looks as if he is now trembling, ever so slightly.

Good. This is good. I’ve got him now.

Ben tries to sit up as straight and tall as he can for a man on the floor with bum legs. He needs to appear confident, in charge. Pain continues to pulse back and forth beneath his skull. The sooner he gets this done, the sooner he can get out of here. The Master will have his hands otherwise full with others he is tormenting, and will leave Ben alone for a while.

“It can be different, you know,” says Ben. He glances about, sees a floor-length mirror nailed to one of the damp walls. It is covered for the most part with a ratty, mildewed bath towel. He drags himself over to it, panting, catches his breath, then gestures. “If I pull down this towel, you’ll see what I see. You’ll see what the world sees. You’ll see something no one in her or his right mind could care for. You’ll see why people in the city take potshots at you when they get to feelin’ feisty. You’ll see why nobody would ever come close to you, let alone touch you, Ryan. As He made you? You mean God? He made you a piece of shit, a cosmic joke, that’s what.”

“I don’t need to look.”

“Yeah, you really do.” Ben starts feeling a bit better, now that he’s into the job and through with the small talk. He yanks the towel away and watches as Ryan considers himself in the mirror. He can’t quite read the expression, but it certainly isn’t one of joy.

“When was the last time you got it on?” Ben asks.

Ryan coughs, doesn’t answer. He reaches for another beer, cracks off the top, swigs, burps, takes another drink. He gazes again at the mirror.

“Did you ever get it on with something other than your hand, Ryan? Ever get some real juicy pussy? Pussy with a smile? Free, willing pussy? Not one you had to be buyin’, Ryan?”

Ryan says nothing.

“You know, you could be a good-looking guy, if you wanted to be. Time to step up and take your golden ticket, boy. Time to claim what you deserve. And I’ve got it for you.”

Ryan looks away, up toward one wire-covered window. “Cover the mirror, Ben.”

“No, no, look again, Ryan. See what you are, and let me show you what you can be.”

“I don’t want to.” The voice is very soft now. The one eye appears sad. Ben’s spiel is working.

“Seriously, look again.” Ben pats the mirror. “Do you see yourself as you can be? I see it. So can you. Look, right there in the mirror! Tall, straight, whole man, handsome, confident! This could be you. Women will want you, fucking throw themselves in your direction! You’ll be sought after to work for companies who want an enigmatic, entracing front man with just that right look. You’ll make money. You’ll be rich. You’ll be more powerful than you could have ever imagined. You’ll never have to live like this again; hell, you’ll never have to think about this part of your life again.”

Ryan struggles up from the cot and limps toward the mirror. As he gets closer, a wave of heat rockets off the man and catches Ben in the face like a slap. Ben wobbles, feels himself losing his balance even as he is sitting on the floor. What is wrong with Ryab? Why is he so goddamned hot?

But Ben keeps talking. He has to. No choice. Get it done. Get it done! “Just say the word, Ryan. Just say your soul isn’t worth that much to you, anyway. Offer it up. An easy trade. Crappy soul for a perfect, flawless, incredible life.”

Ryan is closer now, glancing back and forth between the mirror and Ben. The heat from the man is blistering. The hair on Ben’s head crisps. His skin reddens. He scoots away. Sweat pours down his check, neck, arms, and buttocks in slick, salty waves. His heart pounds.

“Just say the words, Ryan!” Ben manages, his tongue baked dry. “Just say, ‘I want to be handsome, I want to be rich, I want to be out of this body. I give my worthless soul for such a treasure!’ Say it, Ryan! And I promise you, you’ll start living your new life!”

Ryan stops a few feet from the mirror. Then he looks at Ben and smiles for the first time. The smile is unexpected.

Relaxed.

Peaceful.

Ben is pissed and scared. “What are you smiling about? Are you taking the deal or not?” He can barely breathe now; the heat burns his eyes and nose and the hole in his face. “Shit, what is wrong with you? Do you know who I am?”

“Who are you, Ben?” asks Ryan. The voice is different now. It isn’t tired. It isn’t drunk. It’s calm, steady. Terrifying. Commanding.

“I’m a representative of the Master! Don’t fuck with me!”

“What Master?”

Ben blinks, swallows a gulp of stagnant air. “The Master! The Dark One! The Lord of Eternal Torment!”

Ryan chuckles softly. “There is no such thing, Ben.”

“Of course there is!” Ben scoots back even farther, slamming up against the cinderblock wall. “Wait! No, no, oh shit, wait! Are you him? Disguising yourself? Are just screwing with me because you can? I was trying to do what you wanted me to do! Don’t hurt me anymore! Please!”

“I’m not going to hurt you, Ben.”

“You’ve said that before! You lie! You’re the Master of Lies!”

“You’re mistaken,” says Ryan. “Now I ask you again. Who are you?”

Ben drives the heels of his hands against the floor, as if he could get away by sliding up the wall. The heat continues to stream off Ryan. Ben is certain it will soon melt his skin away.

“Who are you, Ben?” Ryan repeats kindly.

“I’m dead, I’m one of the dead! One of the cursed!”

“Why do you think you’re cursed?”

“Fuck you, Ryan!”

“Why, Ben?”

“I killed my daughter, okay? She was twelve. I was drunk, drove my new convertible into a tree. I…I…” Ben closes his eyes. He does not want to think of it, to remember it.

“Tell me, Ben,” says Ryan.

“Fine! Fuck, you want to know? She smashed into the windshield. Split her head wide open. And I left her there to die! I blamed everybody but myself! The guy who sold me the car. The man who sold me the goddamned beers. I blamed Julie, for God’s sake, for begging me to let her have a ride! Fuck me, right? Three days later I killed myself, still blaming everyone else. So I went to hell. Now I do whatever the Master tells me to do. I’m one of his groveling, obedient minions. He torments us. He torments me! Sometimes I get out to claim a soul, and if I’m successful he gives me a little break. But then he’s back to the tortures. But…but…you know all that! You’re him!”

“I’m not him.”

“You are! I can feel it! You’re hot like the eternal flames they told us about when we were kids! Hot like the lake of fire!”

“You say you’re in hell?”

“Hell yeah, I’m in hell!”

“And you mentioned eternal flames? The lake of fire?”

“Yeah! All that Biblical crap!”

“Then why do you feel so cold all the time?”

“I….what?”

“If hell is fire, why are you cold all the time?”

“Shit, why’d the chicken cross the road? Why’d the angel buy an umbrella? Why’d the devil rob the barbershop? I don’t know! Who really knows anything?”

Ryan nodded gently. “Think about this, Ben. When those who are frozen come close to something that is warm, they hurt. They feel the warmth as painful, as if it were fire.”

“Shut the fuck up, Ryan! My head aches! I’m burning up! Leave me alone!”

“Look at yourself in the mirror, Ben.”

“No!…Why?”

“Just look.”

The voice is so certain, so authoritative, Ben finds himself reluctantly dragging his body back across the floor to the mirror.

“What do you see, Ben?”

Ben stares into the reflective glass. He sees himself as he was when he was alive. Ruddy-skinned, healthy, whole. Not handsome but not the worst looking of mankind, either.

“What do you see?”

“Fuck you.”

“What do you see?”

“Me. As I was. You know that, though, don’t you?”

As Ben stares at his reflection in the glass, something stirs from behind it. It rises deep and dark, a silhouette of ominous shape. No clear features but a perfect and terrifying darkness, stretching out with arms that end in clawed fingers, a head huge with nubs that lengthen upward into pointed horns. Then, punctuating the darkness, two coal-red eyes and white, razor-sharp teeth.

“There!” shrieks Ben. “There! See him? He’s there! He’s coming for me! I didn’t do my job! Can’t you just let me have your stupid soul?” He spins about on his ass to face Ryan.

Ryan continues to smile, patiently, kindly.

“He’s there!” Ben cries. “In the mirror! Look!”

“You want him to be there, so he is. Just a reflection of what you think should be there.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Who are you, Ben?”

“I already told you!”

“You don’t really know. You haven’t figured it out.”

“Figured out what?”

“You are Ben. You are as I have made you. Free to do wrong, free to do right. I have to admit, though, you’ve tangled yourself up pretty bad. You couldn’t wrap yourself around the terrible thing you did, figured you could never be forgiven, so what the hell, you up and put yourself in hell. Peopled with all the crap you believed, even hoped, would be there. The Master. The tortures. The demands. The horrors you’ve faced. The pathetic chores, trying to steal souls. This twisted body you gave yourself for this, your latest, unnecessary venture.”

“No! All that was real! It all is real!”

“You wanted them to be real. It’s been your death-dream. You never stole a soul from anyone.”

“I did too!”

“Did not.”

“Did too!”

Ryan chuckles. He crosses his arms. His nubbed fingers grip his elbow. “Time to get warm again, Ben. We can take it slow, if you want.”

Ben recoils. “Listen to me. Just shut up and hear me out! The Master told me all about you, Ryan. He told me where you preached, and there you were! He told me where you lived, and here you are! It wasn’t just lucky guesses!”

“I made those suggestions to you, and you assumed it was your Master talking. You were so into the hell game with all those self-imposed rules and expectations. But you’ve played at it long enough. It was time you and I had a little talk. Face to face.”

“Who are you?” Ryan wails. Then he stops. He shakes his head. He stares.

“Oh, Christ.”

Ryan laughs lightly. “Not this time. Just Ryan.”

“Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Shit…just look at you!”

“I know. A bit dramatic.”

“So you really aren’t a preacher?”

Ryan just smiles.

“Who are all those others? The Discards?”

“Some are angels in human form, here to help me out. Others, they’re truly as they are. As I have made them. Good people. Perfect. Innocent.”

“You preached to them as a person, what, for months already? And what about them now? You’ll go off and leave them alone?”

“Don’t worry. I’ve got it covered. One of the angels’ll take over. And I’ll be watching and listening, of course.”

Ben’s fists, which were clenched, begin to loosen. He licks his lips, runs his tongue along the hole in his cheek. “You put on this whole scenario just for me?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think you’ve put yourself in hell long enough?”

“I…” Ben mind crashes back to the wreck, his drunken stupor, how he’d crawled out of the car and ran away, thinking if he didn’t see his daughter dying then she surely couldn’t be dying. But she was. And she did. Thinking he could not have done what he did. But he had. Julie, the little girl scared of Santa. The older girl who loved every stray dog that ever came along. The almost-a-teen, excited because her father had just bought a brand new yellow convertible. The kid who knew nothing of drunks and idiocy and irresponsibility. Reduced by his pathetic defenses and denials that he took his own life to escape. Ben begins to weep.

“You okay, Ben?”

“I’m….I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry for what I did. I’m so goddamned fucking sorry! What I did was horrible! The worst!”

“It was.”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Ryan nods. “I know.”

Ben clenches his skeletal fists. “Oh, God, Julie, forgive me! Please forgive me!”

“That’s all we wanted to hear. Now come here.”

“No! I can’t! You’re too hot!”

“You’re warming up already.”

“I can’t!”

“Come here. It’ll be fine.”

Ben wipes tears and snot from his face, and slowly, hesitantly, scoots over to Ryan, his hands palming the uneven flooring, his twisted legs scraping out behind him like thin, fleshy contrails. He feels Ryan’s intense heat licking his skin, but as he gets closer and bears into it, it eases. When he reaches Ryan’s feet, there is only warmth.

“See?” asks Ryan.

“Yeah. Wow.”

“You ready to shed that skin of yours? It’s really just an illusion, anyway.”

“I guess.”

Ben looks down at the floor. He sighs. All this, all he’s been through, his imagination. His spirit wrangling itself, punishing itself.

He looks up.

There, hovering over him, standing where Ryan had stood, is the Master. Dark, cold, red-eyed and claw-handed, snarling and stinking of ash and sulfur. Ben shrieks and covers his face and wails.

“Ben, I’m kidding with you!”

Ben looks up again. Ryan is there once more, a sheepish smile on his distorted face. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. Not funny?”

“Damn! No, not funny!”

“Okay, okay. I apologize. But dealing with sin and death and life and eternity, sometimes you can appreciate a sense of humor. You know that. You’re pretty funny yourself. You crack me up sometimes. All those jokes.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I like that.”

Ben feels the corners of his mouth tug into a small smile.

“Hold still now,” said Ryan. He reaches out and touches Ben’s forehead, and in that instant Ben finds himself standing straight and steady. His headache is gone. He is warm. And Ryan is no longer in the Ryan body, but is transformed into Light.

“Just don’t tease me like that anymore, okay?” Ben asks.

“I won’t. I promise,” says God. He reaches for Ben’s hand. Ben’s fears fall away. “I love you. And I never break my promises. Oh, and did you hear the one about the one-legged devil who went into the car wash, looking for a whiskey?”

“Yeah. I made that one up.”

“Oh, that’s right. That was good…really good! Got a big chuckle out of that. Glad to have you back, Ben. Glad to have you back.”

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

© 2012 / Authog

Cover Design By: Cortney Skinner

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