Chapter 4 – There Goes the Neighborhood...
Mark could not keep his brothers and sisters away from the window. He scolded them when they pulled back the curtains to peek at the crowd gathering on their front lawn. Mark wished they had not exposed their curious stares in the windows to announce to the fool and those gathered around him that the Pence home was occupied, no matter how dark the rooms remained, no matter how long Mark ignored the knock.
“He’s going to keep knocking.” Kate spoke.
Mark pulled another of his siblings from the window. “I’ve nothing to say to him.”
“Maybe he has something to say to you,” Kate replied.
Mark held his breath between each knock. Those moments between lengthened. Mark prayed the fool would leave. Only, one knock after another shook the Pence walls.
“He only wants a few words.”
“A few words can be as harmful as many, Kate.”
Kate’s eyes narrowed. “You shake behind our front door while father continues to turn to stone.”
“I swore to father not to open the door to that fool.”
“Father is a dying man!” Kate pointed at Mark. “You would just let him die in the attic!”
“You don’t know that the man pounding the door can help.”
Kate’s eyes glistened. “I can see easily enough. I’m not afraid to look out the window.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Look out the window, Mark.”
Mark’s knees rattled as he inched towards the window and peeked through the curtain. A crowd spilled from the street onto the Pence lawn, and Mark grimaced to consider the damage so many feet would do to the front grass. Several hands waved at his face in the window. It appeared a diverse crowd, mingled with the young and the old, sprinkled with the black, the yellow, the white and the red. Most faces were those of strangers, but Mark recognized a handful – the cashier at the local grocer, parents Mark saw when he picked up his younger siblings from school. He knew the name of none of those faces, but he recognized them nonetheless, and such stole the comfort he might have enjoyed in knowing that his neighborhood possessed solidarity against the fool.
Mark’s stomach soured as further details emerged upon those strangers. Those who followed the fool displayed the symptomatic splotches of the stoning sickness. Yet they had, somehow, followed the fool to arrive at the Pence door. Their limbs had locked none of them into an attic’s anonymity. Their lungs breathed easily no matter that the stoning sickness’s dark blemishes spotted their skin. Mark’s spine trembled as he counted splotches in the crowd. No matter what father told him about an affliction’s blessing, Mark felt a great temptation to open the front door.
“Trust your eyes,” Kate squeezed Mark’s arm. “He can heal father. Only open the door to him. You don’t need to do anything else.”
Instead, Mark kept peeking out from his curtains. He directed his vision past the fool knocking on his front door, aimed his sight above the crowd lingering upon his lawn. Rather, he directed his sight onto Mr. Hussey’s grand home across the street. The home reminded him of his father’s wisdom. Mr. Hussey’s three car garage reinforced that a man who remained diligent required no charity. The tall windows reinforced what hard work might build. Competent men built castles. Those who possessed purpose, focus and conviction needed the pity of no fools. Those who walked upon the cobblestones of faith and wisdom did not need to suffer the tongues of strangers who knocked, uninvited, upon the front door.
Mark pushed his siblings away from the windows. He pulled Kate away from the front door. He twisted the doorknob to test the locks and the latches, but he did not open the door to any knock.
“We’ll call the police if he doesn’t move on in another ten minutes.”
Kate’s eyes raged. “You make a statue out of father, and you hide the stone in the attic so neighbors don’t see.”
Even the youngest of the Pence children understood the gravity of their father’s affliction as the silence suffocated their hope after the fool’s final knock. The stoning affliction would prove terminal to Russell Pence, whose family would protect his wish that no hand be raised against the disease that stiffened his body into a monument hidden from sight amid the shadows of the family attic.
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