The glove. The blood. The moon. All signs not gone unheeded.
Ah flung the messy glove over the wall.
Ah looked down at the town and a cold stake of hate brought mah heart to a standstill as ah thought of the devilry Beth had done there. Thought of the devilry Beth done there. Thought of the devilry Beth done there.
And so passed the night, like that.
Down below – in the valley – all hell and ferocious vaultings of fire raged, sweeping through the cane-fields at a tremendous rate. A gusting south-westerly blew. Roaring walls of flame hissed and crackled, fouling the firmament with voluted bloats of evil black-green smoke.
Ah saw the valley as a great lake of dark oily blood, and me, sickle gleaming between mah teeth, taking elegant swooping dives into the claret, describing scarlet arcs through the steaming ether.
It was morning. Late morning. Celebration Day. The ‘burn-off had begun.
One crow, stranger. Two crows, danger. Three crows, a summons.
A gang of four black hecklers perched at equal distance along the sole dead bough of the gallows-tree. Four bad black birds!? Four? Double-danger Double-danger!!
Mah beasts paced, prowled in their cages.
This is the day! This is the last day!
Ah stretched mah arms outward and then upward, and as mah body fell prey to an excruciatingly delicious muscular cramp, ah allowed mah arms to flop to mah sides, mah body folding forward into breathless relief. Ah love cramps usually, but this one left me exhausted. Ah felt spent. Ah felt weak and sick and dirty.
Gradually the day’s business dawned on me and no longer did ah feel just exhausted and weak and spent and sick and dirty, but ah felt pretty doubtful as well, doubtful that mah reserves of courage were sufficient for me to unnertake such a terrific task. Ah mean, Christ knows, ah was no more capable of killing Beth than ah was of killing one of mah own flesh and blood – unless ah be fuelled with a little of His strength and determination, of course.
So, ah climbed down from mah turret – never had those steps been such a slow and serious obstacle – and began to limp and ache mah way through the shack.
Did ah tell you that mah beasts paced, prowled in their cages? And did ah tell you how they all fell silent when ah entered their quarters, and all about me ah saw dog-eyes wink derisively, fangs and flews snickering, how ah could smell the cold mockery of those brutes fill the sunless room? A blood-shitting anger coursed through me – a blood-shitting anger and a fearful shame – and ah threw mahself at one particularly smug kennel, kicking it all over the room and throwing it and striking it with mah bandaged fists and jumping up and down on it until the tea-chest split wide open and a swarm of blowflies rose from the opening like a dirty brown cloud. Smirk gone, the dog cowered at the bottom of the cage, covered in slimy straw and scared stiff, making no attempt to escape, even to move.
Ah walked a tense circle around the room offering the remaining beasts the chance to ridicule me, but not a peep sounded from their kennels and hutches and coops and cages. Nor could ah see the laughing eyes or the jeering dog-teeth anymore, and to tell you the truth, ah let out a sigh of relief as ah stepped on to the porch, glad to be out of there, the silence being a little too silent, a little too respectful.
Ah threw mahself down the porch steps and fell to mah knees in the middle of the yard, wringing mah hands and beating at the sky and wailing and reeling in the red dust and petitioning the Almighty with perfervid prayer.
Ah left Doghead a little before midday, covered in red dirt and still damp with the morning dews. Mah cheeks were raw and drawn and salt-stung. Mah wounds throbbed beneath the gauze bandages and ah hoped to hell they wouldn’t open up and become a problem.
As if the palm wounds weren’t a severe enough impediment, ah had badly barked mah knuckles while meting out dog-pain that morning and ah could feel them weeping and seeping and sticking to the bandages even as ah strode down the track toward Maine – toward town – toward her –
Rolling eructations of black smoke rose from the fields in thick, fat coils. They moved across the colourless sky and gathered together in the valley’s south-west corner like a herd of fretting buffalo. Fields yet unlit, heavy with the crop, rustled excitedly as they awaited the fiery lustration that would purge them of trash, whilst walls of flame romped hell-like through others, the scorching fire dying by way of its own paroxysm as suddenly as it had leapt alive, leaving the sky filled with wind-whipped cinders, sparks and flakes of black ash. Those crops already put to fire stood in silence, black and smouldering. Men coated in soot jockeyed around the perimeters of the crops, shouting oaths and orders into cupped hands. Groups of moon-faced children stood in craning clusters on the side of the main road, hypnotized by the fire, by its fastness, by its effervescent fury. Already the children were smudged and smeared by the very air that engulfed them. Trucks and trolleys moved slowly back and forth.
So entranced were they by the fires sweeping the fields, none of the townsfolk noticed Euchrid, dressed in a filthy over-sized naval jacket, sickle slung through his belt, as he hobbled down Maine. His eyes shivered and his sick, cachectic complexion was smeared in muck and blood. Hanks of greasy hair stuck to his face. Both hands were swathed in dirty gauze wraps. As he walked he hunched over nervously, peering through his hair, suspicious of everything – of every sound, every shadow, as he scrambled along the roadside ditch behind the clusters of children watching the burning fields.
God put blinkers on them. He did. He blinded them to mah progress – or rather we blinded them, such was the pure force of mah determination, the sheer power of my intention. Yes, and ah strode down that road.
He passed under the city limits sign, crawling along the roadside ditch as it grew shallower, arriving at last at the gas station. The streets were nearly completely empty. The womenfolk who usually filled them around this time were busily preparing for the banquet, either cooking in their kitchens or helping set up the Town Hall, where everyone would eat before spilling into Memorial Square for the singing and dancing and fireworks.
Euchrid slipped up the bank and squatted between two petrol pumps. He surveyed the street before him, and finding it empty he crossed and disappeared into a wedge of shadow, coffin-shaped, thrown by the hedgerow. Every six or so feet a picket broke up the hedgerow making a small gap in the shadow so that the blocks of shade gave the impression of many coffins, lids open, arranged end to end, all down one side of Maine. And Euchrid hopped from one to the other, casket to casket, like an illusionist involved in a macabre folly of deception.
The wind was forcing all the smoke from Hell down over the town and the visibility was a touch on the caliginous side as you might well imagine – yes? – well, anyway, the more ah ventured into town the more caliginous it became. Ah mean it was nothing compared to the great all-engulfing fogs that would come rolling over the sides of the valley in the winter months, but even so, the very nature of the air now had the power to transform the ordinary, the commonplace, into something else altogether – something queer, unearthly, eerie, ah found. Everything was a little dim, a little obscure, and this was at once a bain and a blessing, for whereas they couldn’t see me, ah couldn’t see them all that clearly either.
Still, ah crept along, doing mah best to maintain mah confidence – to ignore the tricks’ of the air, of the light, of the shade, of the smoke, of mah eyes, of mah ears, of mah nose, of mah mind, of mah mind and of mah mind.
Clutched shadows made suggestive humping motions behind things, but faded from sight before ah could disentangle their thrusting forms. Ah saw a glistening arm gripping a machete covered in blood and flies appear from a belch of smoke. Ah ducked, but it was gone. Ah heard the whistle of a blade slashing dim air, and ah thought ah felt the same air fanning mah cheek. Ah heard the hum of flies, coming, converging, growing. Ah crept on, keeping low. Ah passed an ancient cast-iron horse trough full of scummy water. Ah parted the skin of slime with the tips of mah fingers and peered in. At the
reflection. Mah head appeared like it was being ambushed by tiny black flies. Mah face, mah hair, mah head, mah eyes, mah mouth, mah mind, all infested by tiny black flies, and then the water was disturbed by a very fast silver fish on the rise. For some reason, ah recalled the time ah found the corpse of a skinned puppy on our junk-pile – its four little paws had been tied together with copper wire – ah was six years old. Ah scrambled over the steps of the Town Hall undetected. Ah could hear the women nattering as they worked. ‘They sound like flies,’ ah thought, ‘and ah guess that’s what they are.’ Ah crawled unner the hedgerow that formed a fence around Memorial Square.
Ah peered through to the other side, surveying the grounds, the monument, the playground, but there was no one there, no one there at all. And ah guess ah drifted off for a bit, as ah waited there, unner the hedgerow.
Beth entered the Memorial Gardens by the wrought-iron gate, opening and closing it behind her like she was entering a fast marble hall, and she gazed up at the smoke-filled sky with a kind of awestruck intensity, as though it were a fabulous ceiling that stretched above her. As she made her way across the Square birds twittered nervously, but to Beth’s ears the sounds came rather as songs of confirmation, fortifying her belief that this day, above all others, would hold the key of understanding, and that the thousand baffling questions that HE alone could resolve would be answered. For Beth, everything about her – the sun, the flowers, the trees, the wind, the birds – all seemed to augment this belief, that on this day HE WOULD COME – to make her see, yes, and make her know.
For how long had Beth been subjected to endless, convoluted explanations of her ‘divine pendency’, of her ‘preparation’, of her ‘numinous destiny’? How often had she heard the women speak in low voices of ‘the tokens of virginity’ or ‘the odour of sanctity'? – words that loomed monstrously in her mind, that took bestial forms and haunted her sleep.
Now, sitting on the monument steps, dressed in a gleaming white cotton smock, a chaplet of pale violets woven through her curls, with the great marble angel, girded and male, hovering over her like a thought, Beth appeared dwarfed by her own grandiose imaginings. She clutched to her breast a crude cross made from two broken wood slats and she murmured a song beneath her breath.
It was late afternoon and the townsfolk had already begun to break bread in the Town Hall, and Beth knew that her time alone in the Square was limited, and that soon the people, having eaten their fill, would be spilling from the Hall into the Square to continue the night’s festivities.
But Beth waited patiently, there upon the steps, content in the belief that He would come.
And on the other side of the gardens, down by the Town Hall, under the hedgerow, Euchrid lay upon his back with his eyes rolled back in his head. The collar of his naval jacket was meshed in spittle strings and his tongue hung from his mouth coated in red dust.
Ah woke to a child singing and scrambled to mah feet. Ah felt weird standing there. Ah felt – ah felt strong. Yes. Ah felt full of – of motive. Motive. Yes! Ah felt strong and very fucking full of motive. Ready to go. Ready to move. Ready to rip. Yes. Ready to rip.
And ah removed mah boots and slid them unner the hedgerow.
‘There is a sleepy river I know
Down that sleep river we go.’
Beth grew silent. She squeezed the wooden cross to her breast and closed her eyes and she sat, just so, on the monument steps, head inclined slightly as if listening for something.
A full minute passed.
And then she drew a short breath and, trembling, smiled.
Shoeless, ah crossed the Square to the monument. Beth had fallen asleep it seemed and ah congratulated mahself on such a stroke of luck as ah mounted the four stone steps on the other side of the great marble angel and unslung mah sickle. Ah sidled around the statue until ah stood behind her, towering over her.
Ah raised mah sickle high into the air, tightening mah fist around the handle.
At last Beth opened her eyes and the smile was in them too, but there was something else in those green eyes, something akin to wonderment, expectant and reverential. And with her thin fingers clasped around the rough little cross, the child turned, arching backwards, and as she did so a billow of purple smoke rolled down from the fields and engulfed the tableau of flesh and stone.
Beth gazed up. She saw Euchrid. She saw the angel, chiselled from marble. She perceived the uncanny echo in their attitude, of pose, of purpose. She saw one, winged, bone-white and suffused with grace, and she saw its fleshy manifestation, impennous and wretched and covered in muck. And she saw his wounds, his long hair, his naked feet, his palpitant breast. And she saw a faint, new evening moon slung in the sky and a syzygy of sickles, upraised high, and Beth lifted one trembling hand to her mouth. And staring up at Euchrid’s mad face, she spoke.
And Beth woke up at that point and swung around. She fixed me with her eyes and then she spoke.
’ At last, Jesus, you have come.’
And it was as if those words sprang a trigger inside of me, because mah heart just burst. And such was the rush of blood to mah head that ah started to reel on mah heels, spinning wildly, and ah could feel the blood pouring from mah nose, smell it, taste it, feel all mah wounds opening up, hear the chanters going, going, feel the nerve running from mah hand – mah sickle hand – so that it began to shiver and shake and ah stumbled and ah steadied mahself and ah put mah sickle inside her.
Ah had placed mah boots on the crushed and eaten body of a lark and they were teeming with a family of tiny red ants, so ah left them there beside the hedgerow, and wearing nothing on mah feet but the dust from the road ah took off down Maine, heading north.
Back inside Doghead silence prevailed. Everyone was lost for words, it seemed. Ah had demonstrated the effectiveness of direct action and suddenly words seemed futile – idle confabulation, mere procrastination.
Mah Kingdom was one very fucking hushed arena, that is true, but it was far from being asleep. Expectancy and anticipation charged the air with muted urgency, like everyone was holding their breath, and walking across the yard ah could smell the electricity in the atmosphere, taste it. The booby traps trembled with restrained energy. All about me things pended release. Pitchforks, skewers, snares, saw-teeth, nets, all seemed ready to leap, impale, plunge, slash, stab, rake, or drop. Ah made a quick check of them and then climbed up into mah turret.
Ah manned the scope.
The air was warm and windless. The fields had ceased smouldering and although most of the smoke had drifted from the valley the sky appeared tainted and the underbellies of the clouds discoloured.
Pungent wafts of rot drifted up through the trapdoor, and ah pinched mah nose lest ah gag, taking the air orally, and reluctantly. Ah wondered how the beasts could stand it, living like a lot of pigs.
Ah foked the scope on the Town Hall, and just as ah had expected the townsfolk were still engaged in their feastings. But ah calculated that it would not be too much longer before the great oaken doors would swing open and the enemy would saunter down the front steps and into Memorial Square.
Ah pointed the scope at the Memorial Gardens, drawing it down toward the blurred white shape that ah recognized as the monument. Ah screwed it into focus, dragging the structure of stone neatly into mah one super-eye, sizing up the scene in its entirety before zooming in for a more detailed appraisal. In this moment of clarity ah was struck by the effect of the new addition to the tableau and the sight of the angel and the child, and by the sublime relationship set up between the two, as if the one depended upon the other, like good and evil, Heaven and Hell, and indeed, life and death. Each illuminated the other by virtue of its essential difference. And ah pondered that idea for a moment as ah studied the monument – the very embodiment of this notion – the flesh and the stone – the erect and the super-incumbent – the upraised sickle and the sickle brought down – the pooling shadows and the puddling blood – the Heavensent and the Hell-bound – the caducity of
flesh and the endurance of stone – the frailty of one and the other’s enduring might and, y’know – well, ah don’t really know how to say this, but – well, ah mean, that thought – yes, that idea seemed to me, at the time, like one very fucking bright and beautiful thing to think – yes, it did – and what with the living proof of the simple beauty of it there before me, ah found mahself getting hot in the face and kind of puffed up and ah bit mah lip and ah found mahself choking back the tears, and saying to mahself, ‘ Stay brave, Euchrid. This is not the time to come apart.’ Saying, ‘Unner no circumstances will ah cry. Unner no circumstances will ah…’ And ah sobbed but once, then embarked on such an unbridled bout of weeping that ah thought mah heart would explode, so fucking God-swollen up with – not sadness – O no, not that, no – the tears ah so furiously wept were tears of – of – of pride. Yes. Pride. And you know, it is mah guess that this is the unique feeling enjoyed by those who exist only to achieve Greatness, to achieve greatness despite the odds, even if they must pursue it to the grave. This day ah had proved mah rightful existence beyond the petty dictates of ordinary men, and ah wept proud waters, tears of greatness, rivers of salt and glory.
Up jumped mah heart! For now the gardens were swarming with people! All about the monument, yes, all about her, all about and all around and all over the fucken place they gnashed their teeth and raged and wailed and beat their breasts, and ah saw a man, sharp and dark, his face all twisted up and frenzied, lift Beth’s limp little body from the steps and draw the sickle from her body.