[Note: This Story Contains Strong Language]

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The newsroom of The Star Gazette, where Nick Catellis sat squinting into his monitor, was a large unimpressive space, filled with tightly packed cubicles and glass offices for the big shots along one wall. The carpet was the color of mold, and the banks of fluorescent lights overhead made the pattern dance when you looked down. The effect had tripped him up several times when his brain told him there was a bump in the floor that wasn’t there. The air was bad as well. It reminded him of how those little slices of shrink-wrapped American cheese smelled when you peeled off the cellophane. The opposite wall, directly behind his own cubicle, was all windows. They threw too much light on his screen, making it difficult to work. His shoulders ached from the strain.

But, on the other hand, the place fairly crackled with the energy of thirty-seven egos rubbing up against one another. It didn’t matter who they were, what their names were, what they were like as people. Nick didn’t care about any of that. What mattered was this privileged space they inhabited, this newsroom, set apart and reserved for those initiated into the rites of journalism. Its energy calmed him. Its buzz reassured him. If the constant click of computer keyboards in the background had been a relaxation CD, he would have paid good money for it.

“Ernie’s looking for you,” a voice behind him said.

It was Donovan, the intern. He was a tall, thin, weedy grad student out of Columbia. Nick Catellis hated interns. They reminded him that not so long ago he had been an intern himself.

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“Tell him I’m busy.”

“Okay,” Donovan said. His reflection in Nick’s monitor showed a pair of jumpy eyes. Nick could feel the intern’s confusion.

“What!” he barked.

“Ernie’s looking for you,” Donovan pleaded.

There were the people who mattered at the Gazette, who made a difference, who did the hard righteous work of the news, and then there was everybody else. Editors, for instance. A class that, in Nick’s estimation, fit somewhere between croupiers and prison guards. Ernie Potts was the newsroom’s managing editor.

“Shit.”

Nick pushed past the quaking intern and crossed the large floor making for the glass offices. Ernie’s glass office was at the end of the row, in the corner.

“What’s up?” he asked, opening the door without knocking. Ernie Potts was middle-aged and overweight with reddish-brown hair and thin red eyebrows. At one time, he had been a reporter for a small local newspaper in the Midwest, a fact that earned him exactly zero respect in the Gazette’s newsroom. Ernie knew what they thought of him. He’d learned to live with it, the way people learn to live with leprosy or a criminal record. Nonetheless, over the years the effort had hollowed him out.

He’d been leaning back in his chair with his hands locked behind his head when Nick burst in. Now his feet and the front legs of his chair hit the floor at the same time with a loud thud. Embarrassed, Ernie steadied himself and cupped his hands on the desk. He managed a wilted smile but it didn’t sit well on his worn and sour face.

“Ah, Nick. Um, take a seat, wouldya?”

In front of Ernie’s desk were two chairs. He motioned Nick into one. In the other sat a girl, twenty-three, maybe twenty-five years old. She had not looked around as Nick entered nor did she acknowledge him as he sat down next to her. Since she was too young to be the new reporter he’d heard they were interviewing, he ignored her.

“I’d like you to meet Tiffany Bell Starr. Tiffany, Nick Catellis.”

It wasn’t until after they shook hands limply and Nick had slumped back into his chair that it hit him.

“That’s right,” Ernie said. “Miss Starr is, you know, Noah’s daughter. Her Dad believes it would be a good thing if she, um, learned a little something about the news business.”

Noah Starr not only owned The Starr Gazette. He also owned two radio stations in the city, a TV affiliate and the local minor league baseball team. If he didn’t own anything else, it was only because his father-in-law, Milton H. Bell, wouldn’t sell it to him. The girl in the chair was their one and only collaborative transaction.

“I’m in the middle of a story,” Nick said, rising involuntarily from his own chair and taking up a defensive position behind it. He grasped its high back and swung it between himself and Tiffany Bell Starr as if he thought she might lunge at his throat. “I’m in the middle of a …of a big story. I mean, I’m in the middle of something, no offense.” He directed this last comment to the girl. She was large-boned, with thick arms and legs, and looked as though she weighed more than either of the men. She’d been staring down into her tightly clasped hands since Nick arrived and she didn’t stop now. Nick felt a twinge of sympathy for her father.

“Well, maybe you’d be good enough to show her around anyway, spend a little time with her,” Ernie said. His eyes clung to Nick’s face like trapped animals, desperately seeking safety. “You know, give her a feel for the business.”

“Stop saying that, Ernie. It’s not a business, goddamit. It’s a vocation. That’s what’s wrong with this whole enterprise. That’s Noah Starr’s idea of journalism. It’s not mine.”

“Well now, Nick, you’re not showing us off to our best advantage here in front of Miss Starr,” Ernie said, his smile flickering like a 25-watt bulb with a failing filament. “Don’t let Nick here scare you off, Tiffany. He’s a crusader, you know. He doesn’t believe newspapers have any business being in business. They should operate like a public trust, I guess. The market be damned, hey?”

The girl nodded. Ernie nodded back. Nick glowered at the mold-colored rug. It made his eyes hurt. He blinked and glanced up poisonously at Ernie.

“Say, though, here’s a funny coincidence,” Ernie said. “You’ll appreciate this, Nick, speaking of vocations. At one time, Tiffany was just telling me, a career path she’d considered was, you ready for this? Becoming a nun. Guess you two have more in common than you thought, hey?”

Both men swung their eyes to the girl now. Her cheeks pulsed with a phosphorescent blush. “It was only a threat,” she murmured. “My father had plans for me I didn’t agree with. It was the one thing I knew would change his mind.”

“Well there you go,” Ernie beamed, spreading his arms out wide and opening his eyes even wider. “You see, Nick? Even more in common. She’s a regular anti-authoritarian. She’s got the makings of a journalist already. That’s great inside reporting, Tiffany. Hey, Nick, now when we want to push back on old Noah Starr, that’s what we’ll do. Threaten to become monks!”

“Hook her up with Donovan,” Nick growled.

“No, no, no,” Ernie laughed. The coward in him was feeling around frantically for a backbone, and not finding one of his own, grabbed Noah Starr’s by proxy. “I think we can safely assume that Mr. Starr wouldn’t appreciate his daughter tagging around with an intern. I don’t think Noah Starr would appreciate that at all. And remember, he does sign our checks, so I think if you were to take Tiffany here under your professional wing, well, I just think that would be closer to Mr. Starr’s expectation…and, and Tiffany’s too,” he added hastily, turning a fatherly eye to the girl.

“I won’t do it, Ernie. Forget it. Why don’t you hook her up with the new guy, whenever he shows up. Maybe they babysit interns where he comes from.”

“But Nick. Tiffany is the new guy.”

He had spoken without thinking. Now the enormity of the situation hit them both. For a terrible moment, neither spoke. They stared at one another like duelists, each waiting for the other’s bullet to arrive.

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“You’re fucking kidding me,” Nick said.

“Um,” Ernie mumbled. “We didn’t have any choice, Nick. We weren’t consulted. They didn’t ask me, they told me.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.” Nick turned and walked out of the office.

Two hours later, after he’d walked three times around the block and grabbed a sandwich and a beer, he returned to his cubicle. Tiffany Bell Starr had pulled up an extra chair and was camped out next to his empty one. Nick sat down, tapped the keyboard to bring up the story he was working on, and leaned into the screen. He read through what he’d written so far, right from the beginning, leaving the girl to sit there and stew. When he finished, he got up and went to the bathroom. Returning, he found her still sitting there like a statue. She hadn’t moved a muscle as far as he could tell. She seemed to have just one way of occupying a chair, the pose she had assumed earlier, head down, legs together, hands clasped tight on her lap. He could almost believe Ernie had wheeled her out of his office and across the floor and left her here, rolled up next to his desk, except that the chair she was in now was a cubicle chair, not one of Ernie’s leather jobs.

“Who’s your friend?” Donovan’s long thin face loomed above the cubicle wall.

“Nobody here but me. What do you want?”

“Oh. I finished the backgrounder on the Carter story.”

“Great. Go away.”

Donovan slid around to the opening in the cubicle and introduced himself to the girl. They shook hands briefly, like prisoners sharing a cell.

“Donovan, there’s nobody here in this cubicle but me. Get it?”

“Okay. Sure. So I emailed it to you, the Carter backgrounder.”

“Good. Seeya.”

“Hey,” Donovan said, suddenly brightening. “I didn’t know you were religious.”

Nick’s head snapped round as if he’d been spit on.

“I’m sorry! Geez,” Donovan whined. “What’s that, then, a joke?”

Following Donovan’s eyes to the side of his desk where he kept his dictionaries and reference books, the side against which the girl’s chair was pushed up, he saw it. An incursion from that Hell-World outside the newsroom, an advance scout from The Land of Unreason. With growing horror, Nick realized that it might have stood there for days, hidden among the books, if Donovan hadn’t spied it.

It was a small religious statue of a woman in a long brown robe and beige veil. She cradled a single red rose in her hands, which were chastely crossed over her bosom. Nick looked at the little figurine as if it had been carved out of solid anthrax. Here was The Enemy, clothed in the hateful garb of superstition. In the artlessly carved face, he saw the ardent vacuousness of the true believer. In the simple, unambiguous features, he saw ignorance, pomposity, judgmentalism and, worst of all, impregnable certitude. To worship this carving was to worship death, the death of the mind. Her pathetic little rose glistened with the hard, bright brainlessness of all believers in all fundamentalisms. Nick pinched it between his finger and thumb like a dead cockroach and dropped in the girl’s lap.

“Take your little voodoo saint and move yourself over to Donovan’s cube. He’ll show you around. I’ve got work to do.”

The next day, Nick arrived late at the office. He hadn’t slept well and when the alarm sounded, he’d swept the clock radio off the night stand and dropped back into a fitful, angry sleep. He dreamed he was wrestling a large, heavy woman in a brown robe and that he was doing all the work while she lay there on top of him, breathing peacefully. The more he struggled the heavier she got until he could feel the last ounce of his strength draining away. At last, pinned beneath her pitiless weight, he could no longer breathe and darkness closed in on him. He had awoken to blackness. Terrified, he’d jumped out of the tangle of sheets to find himself standing next to the bed, one foot crushing the clock radio, and in his hands the pillow that had been suffocating him.

Donovan was waiting for him when he got off the elevator. Nick walked past him but the intern scampered ahead. There was a new and annoying energy in his movements; he quivered and pulsed with kinky electricity. Even his voice seemed to crackle with it.

“Where have you been? Ernie’s, like, nuts.”

“Fuck Ernie.”

“Yeah, well, you better get in there.”

“Fuck you, too.”

“Yeah, well, wait till you see who’s sitting at your desk.”

Entering his cubicle he found Tiffany Bell Starr sitting in his chair, staring blankly at a web page on his computer. She faced away from him and all Nick saw was a round hump of dirty blond hair atop a thicker hump of shoulders encased in a tight-fitting dark blue sweater.

“Get up,” Nick hissed.

The girl’s shoulders hunched up toward her ears as if in expectation of a blow from behind.

“Get up, goddamit.”

The girl stood up but did not turn around. “Mr. Potts told me to sit here and wait.”

“I don’t care what Mr. Potts told you. I want you out of my cubicle and out of my sight.”

“Um, Nick,” Ernie’s voice said. Nick swung round, his coat still in his hand, his backpack still on his shoulder. Ernie was standing behind him. His hands were stuffed deep in his pants pockets, his tie was askew and he looked as though he hadn’t slept all night.

“Want to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Nick said.

“Nick, c’mon wouldya? The language.”

“Fuck the language. Tell me what she’s doing at my desk. I told you I wasn’t going to babysit any interns, no matter whose kid they are. And I mean it.”

“I know. I know,” Ernie said, freeing his hands from his pockets. They waved about apologetically, like two fat idiots broken loose from their straitjackets. “Can we, um, take this into my office?”

Not waiting for Nick’s answer, he lowered his eyes, backed away, swiveled on his right heel, stumbled on a holographic bump in the rug, caught himself against the wall, and lumbered back up the aisle. There had been times—not many—when Nick had grudgingly conceded Ernie’s authority, but always privately. Now he was forced to follow along behind him in full view of the entire office, like a schoolboy hauled to the front of the room for throwing spitballs. He was nearly blinded by the injustice of it. In retaliation, he marched into Ernie’s office and took his stand, arms crossed, in the center of the floor, defiantly leaving the door open behind him. Ernie was lowering himself into his chair but stopped midway, and heaving a tired, beaten sigh, came back around his desk, retraced his steps to the door and slid it shut.

“I was going to say, whose side are you on anyway,” Nick said, “but I think I can guess.”

“This is Noah Starr’s company,” Ernie said, now back in his chair. He spoke with a nervous flutter in his voice, and loudly, as if there was courage in volume. “Noah’s Ark. And we’re all just the animals in the ark, Nick. That’s all we are. You people can joke about it, but we’re safe as long as we’re in the ark and don’t do anything stupid. We can ride this thing out by everybody understanding their role, you know? But if one of us starts kicking down the walls, then maybe we’ll all sink.”

He picked up a promotional baseball, inscribed with the name of the minor league team Noah Starr owned, from the ashtray it rested in next to his computer.

“They’ve laid off five hundred reporters in New York, Nick. A thousand in Cleveland and Chicago. They’re all drowning, Nick. They’re off the ark. No ark, get it?”

“Which animal are you, Ernie?” Nick asked. “That what kept you up all night, choosing a mascot?”

“No,” Ernie said, his voice softening. He looked sick. “No, Nick. Something else.” He rolled the baseball underneath his hand. “I got a call from Mr. Starr. He’s pretty pissed. Yesterday did not go down well at the Starr home.”

“She squealed to her old man?”

“Uh huh.”

“Fuck Noah Starr. And his ark.”

Suddenly, Ernie bolted out of his chair. It was not anger Nick saw in his eyes. Like a withered limb, that emotion no longer functioned. Fear had replaced it many years ago. Ernie made a show of slamming his fists on the desk, but the effect was greatly vitiated by his lack of conviction. Too long out of practice, he could not recover even the forms of anger.

“No, Nick. That’s not the right answer,” he pleaded. “You don’t say ‘fuck you’ to Noah Starr, okay? He owns all the ‘fuck you’ there is or ever will be. There’s no loose ‘fuck you’ lying around for anybody else. He’s the Fort Knox of ‘fuck you’, okay? So just cut it out with the ‘Fuck Noah Starr’ crap, Nick. This is serious here. You gotta grow up and play ball.”

“Like you?” Nick asked.

“Yes.” Ernie said. “Like me.”

“You’re a businessman,” Nick said, meaning it as the insult they both knew it was. “Do what businessmen do. Call up old Noah and negotiate a truce. Tell him we’ve had a nice frank discussion, laid all the issues out on the table and we understand one another. Yeah, team! Business as usual shall resume forthwith. Provided you keep that cow away from me.”

“I, um…I will be calling Mr. Starr, Nick. In fact, he’s expecting my call.”

“You do your editor thing. I’ll do my reporter thing. Everything’s hunky-dory. Just get that person out of my office.”

“Um,” Ernie mumbled. “See, Nick, yesterday was not good, not good. And so…well…that’s not, strictly speaking, your office any more.”

“What the hell are you talking about? There are at least six empty cubicles out there. Why does she have to have mine? What the fuck, Ernie? Just move her to an empty cubicle, okay, and we can all get on with the ‘business’ of the news.”

“I’m sorry, Nick. It’s not my decision anymore.”

“Daddy lets her choose whichever cubicle she wants, regardless of who’s already sitting in it? Un-fucking-believable!”

“Well, technically speaking, nobody’s actually sitting in that one…now.”

Nick made an effort to respond. His chest even contracted to force words out through his mouth. But no words came out. He felt as if his entire vocabulary, especially those cynical and supercilious words that were always nearest the exit, had been erased from his memory. A realization had flashed across his mind like an electromagnetic pulse, wiping out thought and emotion.

“Oh fuck,” Nick said.

“I’m sorry, Nick. Honest,” Ernie said.

“Yeah. I know. Business,” Nick said and backed toward the door. He turned the knob and walked out into the newsroom. It looked different to him now. The sounds that had soothed him earlier annoyed him. The people, too, seemed different. Instead of acolytes to a high calling, a strange instantaneous evolutionary regression had occurred, and all the reporters and interns and office help now struck him as slower, dumber, uglier, and shabbier precursors of their higher selves.

Tiffany Bell Starr was standing up in his cubicle, her head above the partition, watching him advance toward her. Nick had the impression she’d been standing there since he’d left her, immobile, attentive, on the lookout, a silent thick-shouldered sentry wearing a greasy blond helmet.

“Congratulations. You’re Daddy’s little reporter now,” he said with bright sarcasm. He threw his backpack down on the desk in front of his computer and his jacket on the floor. “Excuse me, I’ve got to collect a few things. You don’t mind, do you?”

The girl backed up against the partition, giving him room.

“Nobody owns the news, you know,” he said, digging through his filing cabinets. “Not even your old man. All guys like him can do is, soil it with ugly advertising and colored borders and self-help columnists and vapid Sunday inserts. And of course, let us not forget, replacing real reporters with their talentless offsprings.”

“I’ll be a better reporter than you,” the girl said. The sound of her voice shocked him. It was her father’s voice pitched higher, as hard and commanding and disdainful as his. “I don’t care,” the girl explained. “That’s why.”

“You know what? I don’t care either,” Nick said, shaken by the voice and frantic not to betray his surprise. “The sooner Noah’s Ark sinks into oblivion, the happier I’ll be.”

“But it won’t,” she said with certainty. Nick felt her eyes on him. “You, though. You’re screwed now, aren’t you?”

Nick turned to her. “Happy?” he asked bitterly.

Tiffany Bell Starr looked at him, curiosity mixed with derision in her eyes. “I don’t know. I guess. I don’t really care.”

Nick tripped over his coat reaching for the pen drawer. He opened it and began tossing its contents into the trash can. Tiffany Bell Starr watched him. After a time, she shifted her weight and crossed her arms and said matter-of-factly, as if she were describing a crime scene, “When I met you yesterday in Ernie’s office, I thought, wow, what a freak. All that talk about the news as a vocation. It made me remember the statue they gave me, the nuns. They hoped it would bring me a vocation. I thought, somebody ought to make a statue of this guy and hand it out to all the interns. A real reporter. A true believer. The Little Flower of the Newsroom.”

“That’s right. I believe in the news. You know. Speaking truth to power. That’s who I am. And who you will never be. You know why? Precisely because you don’t care. You can’t not care and sit in that chair. Not morally anyway. Physically, you can do anything you like. You’re a real Starr after all.”

“I take after my father.”

“Shock.”

The urge to get away from her, to get out of that cubicle and out of the building, was becoming unbearable. Nick heaved an armful of his belongings over to the computer and hurriedly jammed the whole pile into his backpack. He hoisted it over his shoulder and kicked his jacket in the air, catching it with his left hand.

“If he’d been a guy like you,” the girl continued. Nick realized she was enjoying this. It made him shiver. “We’d probably have been a nice, comfortable, Sunday-go-to-services kind of family. Morally speaking. And we’d have been brought up to care about stuff. Stupid stuff, but we’d have cared about it.”

“Yeah. OK. Whatever. Have a nice life. I sure as hell wouldn’t want it.”

Tiffany Bell Starr shifted out of his way and Nick lurched past her. She looked after him as he moved toward the elevators. “That’s the difference between you and us. We don’t care about anything, so we can do anything. It’s called firing the truth with power.”

He pushed the elevator button. As he waited, he imagined the girl watching him, drilling her eyes into the side of his head, possibly humming some inane ditty that would have made his skin crawl. But instead, as he glanced back, she had turned away and was seated at his station, half hidden by the cubicle wall, over which Donovan was already draped, making nice with an honest-to-god Starr.

The backpack was heavy. It hurt his shoulder and constricted his lungs. The elevator doors sighed open, he entered and let the heavy backpack thud to the floor. He had forgotten to zip the small key pocket. Its contents spilled out onto the floor of the car. There were his keys, a pack of matches, a ball point pen, some change, and the little plaster statue.

C.S. Crane has been writing off and on for decades, but only broke through with a story called “Perfume and Cigarettes” published in The Berkeley Fiction Review #39. They thought he had a unique voice; he’s hoping you will, too. He has since published it on Amazon as the title story in a collection along with two novels: Catatonia and Ordinatus.

Act III, Scene 1

Huronia. The Mission of St. Marie. July 1647. Brebeuf and Lejeune stand at the door of a longhouse as cries ring out from the nighttime forest, which is oddly lit, as if with distant flame.

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Lejeune: What light is this as of a rising queen
Bearing aloft her mantle in the south?
Has the aurora borealis swung
And stooped like Elmo’s Fire to the treetops?
Brebeuf: I fear it’s no such show of nature’s play.
I feel as then when noble Jogues set forth
Amid the well-provisioned fleet and found
The swift and mordant maw of resurrection.
But look, here comes a man who might relieve
Our wonder–or at worst confirm our fear.
Messenger: Good father—how much more our father now
To us this hour bereft of ours–comfort!
Speak some comfort to this cannibal night!
Brebeuf: The requiem that quickened in my breast
First at the distant flicker of the flames
Hears in this bereft its sickly descant.
But tell us now the measure–what’s occurred?
Messenger: Our Pere Daniel has passed through flame to Christ.
This night a thousand Iroquois beset
Our sleeping St. Ignace. Well-fortified
A mission as it was, they somehow struck
The sole unsound escarpment and broke free
To shriek their murder in our dreaming ears.
Some fled and peered, all trembling, from the trees
As others gathered arms and were struck down
Before the faintest battle could be brought.
And many, many—horrid now to think
How many souls fled weeping to the church.
Whipped up to keener vengeance yet, the foe
Assembled again before the bleak portal.
Within a hymn was raised and bravely pressed
Its confidence athwart the artful killers.
With no more course to follow, Father rose
And opened wide the doors, so fierce of mien
The enemy at first fell back in fright
As if beset by an assailant horde.
He advanced before them, bearing on high

The sign of man’s salvation, till, enraged,
Encouraging each other’s hate, they ringed
Him round with shouldered guns and bows all drawn,
Creaking the anguished ecstasy of yew.
And still the quiet fire of his gaze bayed
The blows, until a single shaft let fly,
Defying the exquisite tense accord,
Gave vent to sprays of life that gasped and glared
In the firelight that flared to silent heaven.
He staggered, still upholding to their eyes
The Cross until, as full of arrow shafts
As shiver on the porcupine, he fell.
They stripped him, ripped away the killing shafts
And tore the tatters of his cassock clear
Till there he lay, a man of many mouths
That oozed the utter testament of love.
They flung the tortured wreckage through the door.
The flames leapt up. The song inside died out.
Then coursing house to house to satisfy
Their sense that no more death was left to deal,
They vanished into silence in the pines.
No scream remembered them. No plaintive prayer
Rang out to score the flickering tableau.
The sole sign left to score the horrid scene
Came in the breath and crackle of the blaze
As sounds wherever men have wandered earth.
Lejeune: And how did you then leave the realm of death?
Brebeuf: Did the abiding dark disguise your flight?
Or errands bear you far away in time
To spare you their annihilating flood?
Messenger: Beneath the cooling body of a friend
Whose ebbing blood gave credence to my death,
I lay and spied this swift apocalypse,
And when the red exterminating tide
Rasped again into the bosky black night,
I breathed a mingled bitterness of grief
And fearsome joy at my unlooked for life.
At last I rose. There rose no second. I
Staggered through night the darker for the press
On the drowning lakes of my eyes,
And though the stars concealed themselves from me,
I stumbled through the grasping wood to find
This momentary manger St. Marie.

Nothing’s left to tell. I’ll slip into sleep
Despite the horror I’ve descried. I’ll pray,
If one who’s seen such flames can pray at all.
Pray. Pray this pain soothes your souls more than mine.

Exits.

Lejeune: God guide us as the maelstrom turns and tips
Our little bark that rides in Peter’s wake.
Is this, dear John, the issue of our task?
To see the ones we’ve ushered to the Cross
Cut down before they’re grafted to its grace?
Brebeuf: I know not where the middle paths will lead,
And yet I know that souls inured to God
So surely as to seek his kindly face
Will rise as fire that leaps to Heaven’s spheres.
Look up. The burning of the ruined church
Yet blots the constellations from the sky.
And now as cowardice and quick acclaim
Each quit the field obedience has called
Our mission, we might now meet, without fear
Of pride, the Cross that’s kept for all good Christians.

Act III, Scene 2

St. Marie. Winter of 1648. Brebeuf sits with a group of children.

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Brebeuf: And what are we to ask a loving God?
A father whose thoughts are bent on our good
And bids his children ask him what they need?

First Child: Courage.

Second Child:	          And strength.

Third Child:		 	         And speed to flee from death.

Brebeuf: Brothers, the things you name are noble ones,
As any who have met you would expect.
But think for now of good apart from fear,
Of pleasant things that lift a moment’s time
To silent joy at God’s abiding now.
What pleases you, my friends, and lends you life?

First Child: The snow.

Second Child: 		The snow.

Brebeuf:			      Tell me about the snow.

First Child: It wraps us up like clouds come down to earth.

Second Child: It traces every passing creature’s steps
And shows us where they’ve ghosted through the night.

Third Child: It thickens up the rabbits’ coats of fur
And keeps us warm as well all winter long.

Second Child: And stews turn gold with rabbit fat and fill
The smoky houses up with hungry smells.

First Child: And bellies filled give way to songs and tales.

Brebeuf: The winter brings its quiet trove of comforts.
And sleeping in their midst there comes the king
Whose birth is birth to all of us anew.
These goods you’ve spoken harbor good for him
As well who, needing nothing, nonetheless
Allows our hands to give him good and serve
In smallness all the glory of the Lord.

First Child: But how can ones as small as we do good
To one you name a chief, and chief of chiefs?

Brebeuf: You serve him praising all the things you’ve named
And thanking those who, sharing in his strength,
Give good to you and ease the weary world.
You see the naked forest in the snow.
You know the stars that soon will light these limbs
And make our winter gleam like faintest flame.
You know the bear, the beaver, and the wolf,
The deer who dot the woods in dappled young,
The pleasant-burning pine, the birch, the elm,
And all the race of creeping things who sleep
The winter through as if at ease with death.

Second Child: Such things are old with us as words or breath.

Brebeuf: The little king kept warm by breath of beasts
Is Christ the Word through whom these things were made.
And at a sign among the stars three kings,
Three chiefs renowned in wisdom, strength, and sense,
Set out to greet the foretold Lord with gifts.
They came as far, almost, as I have come
To you, and when they found the Lord a babe,
Of simple parents, swaddled in a cave,
They made him gifts of gold and frankincense
And myrrh, the substances that spelled the doom
To make his kingly life our own at last,
When age on age of winter worse than this
Took flight before the summer of his face.
And all the kinds of warmth you’ve named this night—
The coverlet of snow, the hides of game,
The work of loving hands to make the cold
A gentle guide to home’s attended flame—
These all remind the grateful heart of him
And welcome us to welcome him with song
As winter brings his birth once more along.

Third Child: Come, Echon, teach us how we ought to sing.

Second Child: And not another word besides. We’ve heard
Enough of words alone. The music now.

Brebeuf: The words are yours. You’ve given them to me
This day and all the kindly days before.
But let us sing for now and sigh no more
To Echon’s wandering philosophy.

He sings the Huron Carol.

Act III, Scene 3

St. Marie. Spring of 1649. Brebeuf gathers tinder in a glade. A child skips along, singing the Huon Carol.

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Brebeuf: To sing gives glory to the one who moves
The stars and sets their music in its motion.

Child: I know, Echon. You taught us how to sing.
My father says you gave us back our tongue.

Brebeuf: Your father is a wise and Godly man,
Though here as often in another’s praise
He makes his speech too generous in scope.

He sits on a large stone. The child looks at him, walks over, hugs him, and skips on with song renewed. He exits as Brebeuf rubs his collar bone, wincing.

Brebeuf: Though I’ve vowed to take the Cross as it comes,
This pain recalls how very far all vows
Depend on God to reach their stated ends.

Child emerges at the edge of the woods, peers out.

Brebeuf: These woods are home to myriads of monsters.
I fear some creature stalks me even now,
Planning to pounce and reveal itself
And in a moment’s dreadful doom to draw
Its revelation all at once to silence.

Children: Attack!

      		     Attack!

        			      Get Echon!

     					  Now’s our chance!

Six boys plunge from their hiding places and fling themselves upon Brebeuf, who falls beneath them, laughing.

Brebeuf: Your bravery, brothers, belies your years.
To take a bear unarmed is no mean feat.

He rises, shaking them away as they cling.

Brebeuf (rubbing his collar bone): Maybe you knew this bear already harmed
And worn and toothless with declawing time.
And where there’s nought to fear there’s nothing braved.

Child: We play the fearless act to keep
Ourselves in readiness for fear that comes
As sure as joy. Do not discredit us.

Brebeuf: No, rest assured, you’re credit’s good with me.
Keep up your mettle and the use of it.

Distant shouts.

Brebeuf: But go, my boys. The days to pace these woods
At ease have melted into memory.
Offer your mothers’ hearts no further fears
Than those the course of every day demands.
Go. Comfort them and make all speed for home.

They exit, running. 

Children: Goodbye, Echon. And see you save yourself!

Brebeuf: Keep safe. Keep safe. Can there be safety here
Below except on Calvary’s dark crown,
Where but to be is to incur the world’s
Worst frets and agonies? Keep safe. Keep safe.
Have I, in offering the Cross to these
Afforded them the repudiate shame
That sweeps the would-be martyr into gloom?
No, the false word flecks and flays falser thought
Shaping its fecklessness upon the wind.
If Christ will gather to himself the wheat,
Then let me sing the sower’s thanks in tears
Of keenest joy. But let the reaping come
With music to attune the clean-cut souls
To the rhythm of the perilous God.

He stops, lifts his hand, rises, peering into the woods.

Is that the whispered crush of blade and pine
At slippered feet in flight? Now heaving breath,
Now distant flash of flesh confirm my sense.

Two Huron break into the glade. They do not slow but merely cry…

Fly, Echon, fly! Our peril’s close behind!

They vanish. A third arrives, wounded. A rifle shot sounds and he falls against Brebeuf, who lifts him and moves off after the runners.

Brebeuf: Now give courage, Christ on high, and grant me 
The time and speed to reach our St. Marie
And face the rending horde before the flock.
Now, dear Lady, if ever I’ve implored
Your aid, pray, grant your intercession now.
This final furrow runs before the plough.

Act III, Scene 4

Brebeuf, bearing the dead man, comes within the walls of St. Marie. Alerted by the runners, a crowd led by Lejeune has gathered to await him. He sets down the body, which is borne away by others.

Brebeuf: Let the bravest lead the people away
In secret, by the narrow gate, while we,
Lejeune, with those prepared to be undone,
Give shows of strength to set the hostile band
In patient menace.

Lejeune:	       Father, as you wish.

Joseph: But Father, why flee? Rather band within
The church, where surely safety lies against
The jaws of hell if not the Iroquois.

Brebeuf: Your heart as always, Joseph, spells the truth.
But if in prudent flight the people might
Escape the sacrilege of genocide 
This enemy endeavors to devise,
Then let them not ascend as holocaust 
Today but live and spread the Gospel light
We have at every moment strained to shed.

Joseph: Let me then remain, sharing in your death
As by your ministry we’ve shared the life
Of Christ whose blood engrafts the sapling vines.

Brebeuf: No, my son. Your courage has sustained us
These years of toil in the distant vineyards.
And now I must encourage you to bear
Your wife and child through the gathering dark
To such a place as grace prepares for you.
Go now and remember us in your prayers.

Joseph: But not without a father’s blessing first.

He kneels. Brebeuf blesses him. Exit.

Lejeune: Come, Jean, and hear my folly once again
And grant a final measure of reprieve,
If now the day has come when we’re to live
At last the limit of our company.

Brebeuf: Provided you’ll hear mine. These portals yearn
For us as churchyards do for holy bones.

They enter the church. All is quiet as Huron ranged along the palisade peer out into the woods. An arrow lodges in the rampart, and a voice like thunder follows.

Iroquois: Curl up behind those paltry battlements
And beckon on the doom that comes to glut
Itself at ease upon your creeping flesh.
Or better still despair and cast yourselves
Upon those knives so feckless in defense.
Hide, hide, little Huron. Here comes the end.

A silent instant as the Huron peer from between the planking. Then the sorcerer emerges, draws himself up.

Sorcerer: Wicked ones, glance, if you can, to the West.
See where the Sun who overpeers all deeds
Declines and cedes, as you think, your heart’s darkness
The mastery. Not so! This night shall close
In endless judgement on your wasted hearts.
I call on the tottering gods to flood
You in the malice of their own unmaking.

A shot rings out. The sorcerer clutches his throat and falls. With monstrous shouts arrives a hail of arrows. More gunfire follows. Several Huron fall. The rest take cover as a wave of Iroquois rush on, breach a gate, and enter, slaying the remaining warriors as Brebeuf and Lejeune emerge.

Iroquois: Hold back, hold back the bitter rage an hour.
This, this, brothers, is that Echon whose strength
Resounds throughout our ranging wilderness.
Now we’ll compound the savor of his death
With tortured courses of the sacraments
He’s claimed will set these wretches free from hell.

Brebeuf: I make no claim beyond Christ’s claim on me.
You, too, must turn to him and save your lives.

Iroquois: Turn to him? To Christ to save our lives? Christ
Who hangs in weeping, iron agony
On cross trees cobbled by pathetic hands
That fold themselves in prayer to impotence?

Brebeuf: If you would see his power and his might,
Accept him, and profess, and be baptized,
And he will grant you eyes to see his reign.

Iroquois: These eyes see fair enough by the moonlight.
You need not sell your sickly God to me.

Brebeuf: All that we give, we give as we’ve received.
No gospel put to sale is worth the name.

Iroquois: If what were free were worth the having, we
Would surely not have ventured out this night
To risk our blood in battle with our foe.

Brebeuf: And if the rage that moves you from your camp
Could be allayed by shedding Huron blood,
Would there be cause to venture forth again,
Again, for blood and blood and blood until
The land you name your own should run all red?
But come to him whose blood heals all our wounds.

Iroquois: Enough. You speak of life. Now look on death.
Whatever faith you have, our faith’s in him.
And he, we know—we know—will always come.

They seize Brebeuf and Lejeune, bear them offstage. All is quiet a moment. Then the sorcerer rises and, in guttural, wounded tones, advances.

Sorcerer: Now all advances to its fated end.
Is this the death of the adamant gods?
What more’s to tell? What else is mine to say?
I cannot see. And yet somehow I speak
When fretful fire allayed my final prayers
To gods who claimed me from my mother’s womb.
Were they deceivers ever? Who can know?
But certain is it that my death is bound
To theirs who bore the sickness to our land.
If only life could court the throes of death,
We mortals might abound in wisdom yet.
No more, no more. Perhaps the ones to whom
I bound myself from speechless youth will spare
Me time enough to see my killers dead.
I’ll follow now the pall has gone ahead.

Act III, Scene 5

Brebeuf: All night as we’ve flown through the darkened wood
I’ve watched an eastward pinpoint burning bright
And brighter past the measure of all suns
Save that through whom the sun was made to burn.
The Lord, the Lord, he comes to greet his friends.
Look! Look upon him, brothers, and rejoice.

His voice is strange, jubilant almost to the edge of madness, and in their astonishment the captors pause, gaze as he gazes, and glance in silent question at one another.

Iroquois: There is nothing where you gaze. Here is good
As anywhere to consummate our rage.
Strip these sapling birches and re-bind them.
Now, Echon, share with us your famous strength.

He draws a knife, cuts the robes from Brebeuf’s breast, makes a shallow incision along his chest, and touches the knife to his lips.

Iroquois: The savor of your blood’s the same as that
Of those who’ve gone before you by this knife,
However much you cry the blood of Christ.

He comes close, peers into Brebeuf’s eyes. Brebeuf, smiling softly, looks as if through him upon a universe whose vastness has just begun to disclose itself.

Brebeuf: If you would taste that blood, you’ve but to ask.
Whatever lust and fear have bound your limbs
To such unmanly deeds as these, the cure
For your embittered, churning heart
Awaits you in the Gospel’s ancient leaves,
Which like so many lords of your forest,
Endures the heat as calmly as the cold.

Lejeune: Good Jean!

Brebeuf:	           Lejeune!

Lejeune:		                 Thanks be to God for fleas!

Brebeuf: And keep those thanks at hand, my friend. I trust
The sum of thanks wheels round to greet us now.

Iroquois: Summon the flames. Let sacraments commence.

Brebeuf: Do you remember what we sang when first
We left Quebec for this limitless land?

They sing Tantum Ergo. Their captors shriek, chant, stoke the blaze to boil water and heat their axe heads. The chieftain kneels before Brebeuf with his hands clasped in mockery.

Iroquois: A lovely hymn to recommend our task.
If time ran on forever I would sit
In silent adoration at your knees
And let the stars unscroll themselves and fade
Against the blackness to eternity.
But night’s accounts endure no simple waste,
And neither will we wait another hour
To light the liturgy your song’s invoked.
Pour out the flood, pour, pour, brothers, the boil
That stirs as with the Spirit’s present life.
Pour, pour, and cleanse them of their pagan faith.

The water is poured. Steam rises from the scalded flesh.

Brebeuf: Already, friends, who usher us to meet
The God whose rites you mock, you stutter out
A babbling faith that cries to be converted
And justified to Christ who makes man just.

The water flows again.

Iroquois: If you would greet this God, then cease, and die,
And let us end our dread solemnity.

Lejeune: Did John the beloved feel such as this
When pagan anger put him on the boil?

Brebeuf: Or Lawrence stretched to roast upon the grid?

Lejeune: Or Jeanne d’Arc, daughter of our nation, staked
And set aflame for following Christ’s call?

A third time the water.

Brebeuf: Perpetua, Agnes, Felicity.

Lejeune: Peter and Paul, Polycarp and Stephen.

Brebeuf: And Christ, our Lord, raised high upon the Cross.

Lejeune: All around the blood-bedewed throne they rank,
With angel legions taking up the song
That even now elides our certain pain
And makes of death a passing paradise.

Iroquois: Come, Father, now the water’s purged your sin,
Be dressed in this the stole of your new calling.

They drape a necklace of red-hot axe heads about his shoulders.

Iroquois: Beneath these blades you’ll learn a perfect poise
And bear yourself as stately as a king.

Brebeuf: As the Cross made Christ the model of man,
So may your measures model me on him.
Again I ask: believe in Christ the Word,
And even now elude the torments stored
Against these violations you invent.

Iroquois: Stop this speech.

Brebeuf: 		        I will when you accept it.

Iroquois: Has nothing that we’ve done to you made clear
That yours is not a faith we can abide,
Wretched and pale and sickly as it is?

Brebeuf: Full many bitterer than you have said
At last Amen when grace became their light.

Iroquois: You’ll speak no further word. Bid Christ farewell.

Brebeuf: My God, I give you thanks. Now by your death,
Be life to me and these, your sons as well.

The chieftain cuts out his tongue, flings it like a venomous thing into the flames.

Lejeune: The day is coming, Jean, the day is—

He is gagged. The torments continue. Their eyes are gouged, their fingers gnawed. As this continues, the light fades, and the sound of the Huron Carol rises in the background. At last against the gloom we see in silhouette Brebeuf’s heart cut from his breast and eaten. The darkness gathers still until Brebeuf’s body is set ablaze. It burns as the Carol mounts in strength.

Epilogue

The Carol continues.

Women: We prayed. We wept. We knew that this would be.

Joseph: This death I’ve dreaded now has come to pass.
And yet it is a thing as if achieved
Eternally, as must have been, and is,
And always yet will be.

Women:		    We prayed. We knew.

Joseph: Does any more remain that you can say?

Sorcerer: Only this: that as the flesh was eaten
And Echon’s heart now breached the bloody maw,
The bodiless dawn descended unseen
Until attired in the sight of themselves,
Our enemies appeared for once afraid.
They shrank and slipped in silence from the glade.
And though the gods have vanished from our land,
We few remain, this ragged Huron band,
Preserved, a weeping remnant of our tribe,
To bear away beneath the hard world’s gibe
The life the Blackrobes gave their own to save.
The Lord they worshipped took, and then he gave.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

The air conditioner began to drip on Tuesday morning, a short while after he sat down at his desk. For hours, the dripping continued rhythmically, but he ignored it. He forgot the sound for a time, focusing instead on his work and, when his mind did wander, thinking of coming home to his wife and son, not letting his thoughts drift towards the malfunctioning machine suspended from the room’s only window.

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As he watched his monitor, intent on his work, he heard an off-beat droplet hit the now damp carpet, breaking the rhythm, breaking his concentration. His screen blacked out, drawing his attention briefly, before his mind wandered back to the now-arhythmic thuds of water on a wet carpet. Instead of immediately returning to work, he rolled his office chair back and stood. A few more flakes of the cheap, faux leather chair detached themselves from the fabric underneath, and drifted down onto the carpet.

He walked over to the A/C unit; the dark, damp spot on the drab gray carpet wasn’t large, but it was growing. He stepped on the damp patch, compressing the carpet and momentarily revealing a mire of filthy liquid. A few lonely strands of carpet fiber kept above the water-line like reeds reaching out of a swamp. He held his hand in front of the unit’s vent, which still seemed to be blowing cool air.

Walt looked up from his desk.

“Is it still working?”

“Yeah, seems to be.”

“Good, it’s too hot for it to give out now, I felt like I was gonna die just walking to my car yesterday.”

He walked back to his desk and sat down. Except for a brief moment around 4:30, when he thought he heard the dripping speeding up, he ignored the sound until it was time to clock out.

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***

He went home to his family, and forgot entirely about his day: his routine tasks and brief distraction. His wife told him about Kerry’s dog, how it ran into the yard again and dug a hole in the lawn. She was afraid their son would trip in it and break his leg. He promised absentmindedly to fill it in after dinner, and to talk to Kerry about the dog when he drove Eric to his baseball game on Saturday. Kerry’s son was a better player than Eric; but he made more than Kerry.

***

By Thursday afternoon, he could no longer pretend the unit was working; he began to sweat, his legs sticking to his pants, leaving damp patches on what remained of the faux leather on his chair. No clouds blocked the sun; it blazed onto and through the corrugated steel walls of the office with the penetration of the final judgement, prefiguring its verdict

As the clock moved towards 2:00, the heat became unbearable and he stood up, intending to do something about the unit. He noticed that Walt was slouching in his chair, and appeared to be asleep. There was nothing important on-screen, so he decided to let Walt sleep-out that last few sweltering hours of his shift. He walked up to the unit again, stepped in the puddle, and felt the water seep through his right shoe, dampening his sock. This time, he couldn’t feel the unit blowing; he thought he felt warm air near the vents, but that could have been the ambient temperature. He put his arms around the unit and pushed the window up. Water flowed out of the dead machine, spilling down his shirt and leaving a wide, dark, mold scented, mark on his clothes.

“Shit”

He set the A/C down on the already soaking patch of carpet, shut the window, and tried to pry the machine open. After yanking on various pieces of the appliance, he broke off the small piece of plastic meant to shift the direction of air flow, and gave up. He had no idea how to fix the machine, but he couldn’t take another day without it.

Now wet with the fetid drippings of the A/C as well as his own sweat, he decided to go out to the front office and requisition a replacement from storage. Walt had begun to snore while he fiddled with the dead window unit. Before he stepped out of their office, he walked up and checked both their monitors.

His displayed an ariel, stationary view of traffic passing by in a city. The only new notice from his boss told him to continue monitoring the area, so he did nothing. Walt’s screen showed a muddy field, dappled with craters and cut with trenches, but nothing had changed since last he checked, and he wasn’t about to read Walt’s messages. He left his computer alone, walked to the door and stepped outside.

Bright the star was, and unrelenting, heating the cracked desert ground like brimstone. He squinted. The central office wasn’t far from the metal box he shared with Walt, and he began walking under the sun’s imperious glare, demanding that he walk hunched, with his eyes on the ground, lest he be blinded. A drop of sweat fell from his brow and the parched earth consumed it.

He stood straighter after he entered the central office, relieved to be in a building with proper cooling. For a moment, he almost forgot the heat outside and his own haggard appearance, dripping though he was, until he noticed the other people in the building staring at him, some with concern and sympathy, but most with irritation.

“What happened to you?” asked Jason.

The two had shared an office for a few months when Jason was new. The man was harmless, but garrulous.

“Our air conditioner died, it’s hot as hell in our office, and I came over to see about getting a new one.”

“Aren’t you supposed to wait until the shift-change for things like this?”

He ignored Jason’s question and kept walking. The woman at the requisition desk hardly looked up, but handed him three papers worth of documents he needed to fill out before he could get new equipment of any kind. He sat down at a nearby table and filled in the information. The process took him about 20 minutes, after which he handed the papers back to the woman at the desk. She glanced briefly at the forms, more interested in whether all the fields were filled in than what filled them, then crammed them into a cabinet.

She asked him what he wanted, and he explained the situation, emphasizing for her benefit that the heat in the office could be considered an “unsafe working environment.” She told him that she wasn’t authorized to order any new equipment, but directed him towards a storage room where he could find an old replacement.

Stacks of boxes and mysterious equipment from eras past filled the room; a layer of dust, more a sticky paste than powder, covered them. Looking round, he could discern no order among the stacks, and wondered when last the arcane contents of that chamber had been catalogued. He kicked up a haze of dust as he sifted through boxes, coughing but continuing to work. Despite the dust, the storage room was still properly air conditioned and allowed him to hide from the heat. After putting his foot through a moldering box containing radio equipment from the Great War, he finally found what he sought. He used his already sweat-stained sleeve to wipe away the grime over the label; it was an aged window unit from the 90s, but didn’t look like it had been used since then.

He lugged the dusty box out of the storage room, drawing glances once again from his colleagues milling about the central office. Jason glanced at him but didn’t say anything; the woman at the requisition desk didn’t even look up.

The heat lashed him like a whip when he stepped outside, fast and searing. Though it was now almost 4:30, near the end of his shift, the sun was far from passing below the wide and flat horizon, and no redness yet showed in the west. His trek across the cracked and burning sands was made more arduous by the weight of the cumbersome box. He felt like an ant under the magnifying glass of some sadistic child, unable to escape either the heat or the eye above.

When he got back to the office, dripping and exhausted, it offered no reprieve from the heat. It was like moving from the direct light of the sun into a volcanic cave heated on all sides by magma without. Walt wasn’t at his desk; he likely left early, hoping that no one would notice and that nothing pressing would arise before the shift-change.

He set the new air conditioner down with relief, and extracted it from its dusty box. Bits of cardboard flaked off and fell into the shreds of his chair on the ground. He put the unit in the window, plugged it in, and waited for it to start working. After a few seconds, he felt cool air blowing from its vents. He stood, watching the clock tick down until the shift change, letting the cool air dry his sweat and help him forget the heat of the day.

The minutes passed by: fifteen until the shift change, then ten. He saw an urgent message appear on Walt’s monitor. He was exhausted, and ready to leave, but Walt was an easy man to work with: not too talkative, not to quiet, easy and amiable—easier than Jason had been. He walked over to Walt’s monitor and read the message. He sat down at the desk, finished Walt’s work for him, and clocked out for the day as the two men on night shift arrived to relieve him.

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***

Kiril Isidorovich Sokolov sat in a trench with mud in his boots. He hadn’t taken them off in days; even when he slept, he kept them on. He’d seen a man dead once who’d fled without his boots, his feet covered in sores, shredded by barbed wire, bleeding and pestilent. So Kiril Isidorovich kept his boots on, though they pained him, though he longed to feel the air upon his feet; he kept them on. He heard nothing but the tranquil sounds of the now-barren land he guarded, land that had so recently echoed with the deafening barrage of artillery, and the monotonous buzzing of drones. He hadn’t spoken aloud in two days, hadn’t heard another voice in three. Kiril Isidorovich was tired of war; the overcast day dimmed, and he slept.

A distant sound of buzzing woke him up, an innocuous sound that had long since become part of his nightmares. Kiril Isidorovich had lost his rifle two days before, and he grabbed frantically at his sidearm. It was covered in mud from his days running, trudging through, and sleeping in trenches. The buzzing grew louder, and the drone came into view, flying towards him. Kiril Isidorovich aimed his sidearm at the machine, and pulled the trigger; nothing happened but an impotent click.

He pulled back the receiver and the mud-covered round in the chamber flew out. He quickly took out the magazine, looked with despair on the state of the rounds inside, and re-inserted it before preparing to take another shot. He aimed again at the drone, and again pulled the trigger, again to no avail. Kiril Isidorovich ran.

He jumped over the top of the trench and sprinted away from the drone. With the sound of buzzing growing louder behind him, he couldn’t resist the temptation to look back, and, in that moment, he tripped in a crater left by an artillery shell. A sudden pain coursed up his leg and he collapsed into the hole. The pain was minor compared to others he’d suffered on campaign, the injury more fit for a careless child at play than a man at war. Nevertheless, he cried, though not for the pain.

His father had been so proud when he volunteered for the army, and Kiril Isidorovich, just 21, had been certain the fight was just, and filled with the false surety of young men that death was something seen through a tv, or read of in history books—a reality, but one others had to face. In the year he’d been at war, he’d lost his certainty. He still believed in his cause, but that belief was only abstract and distant; proximately, he wanted to go home, and he cried because he knew now that he wouldn’t. He only had his parents and sister to return to, no girlfriend or wife to mourn him. He’d never even slept with a woman, though not for lack of trying—and he never admitted that to his friends. Kiril Isidorovich wasn’t religious. The last time he attended divine liturgy was on Easter when he was 15, the last time his mother forced him to come. Nevertheless, as he thought, crying, of his mother, he was reminded of a short prayer she and his sister used to recite. It was probably the only prayer he remembered. It can’t be said that he prayed the words; he’d had no faith for years, and he had no time to reconsider his doubts while lying in a crater with a twisted ankle. Instead, he recited them because they reminded him of home, his childhood, and his mother, and because he knew that she would want those words on his lips as he died.

“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

Kiril Isidorovich heard the drone directly overhead, and continued to speak through his tears.

***

An aging pickup a few cars ahead honked its horn, and he inched forward before stopping quickly to avoid rear-ending the sedan in front of him, visibly rocking with a played-out beat. It sounded as if they had the same song on repeat for the past ten minutes. His commute home was usually a 20-minute drive, but he’d been in traffic for the past half-hour, waiting for a tow truck to clear remnants of a crash. No ambulance arrived on scene, and no one appeared to be injured, but it was enough to clog-up the rush hour traffic. He called his wife to tell her he’d be late. In her usual fashion, she was understanding, and told him not to worry since dinner would be late anyway. Dinner was never late, and he knew she was just saying that to alleviate his irritation, but he appreciated it nonetheless. By the time he ended the short phone call, the traffic was beginning to flow forward again, steadily gaining speed. He turned his own radio back on, felt the cool air from his car’s A/C blowing on his face, and sang along for the rest of the drive home.

Kerry’s dog was in the yard when he pulled into the driveway. It was digging another hole inches from the last one he’d filled in. He stepped out of his car, found a rock, and threw it at the mutt. The stone fell in the grass, but the dog ran away, back to Kerry’s pristine lawn.

When he opened the door, Eric ran over and hugged him before embarking on a long and convoluted story about spending most of the day with his friends at the neighborhood pool. From what he could tell, Eric had been learning to swim underwater without goggles, and his red eyes supported that interpretation of the stream of consciousness. Lasagna was keeping warm in the oven. He went over to kiss his wife, who was slightly puzzled by his dirty clothes, and unpleasant smell. Over dinner, he told Eric and his wife about his battles with the air-conditioner, and his search through the storage room. Eric said that the description of the storage room reminded him of a scene from Indiana Jones.

“I don’t see how they let things like that happen, it’s not like they’re hurting for money. They really should be held to the same standard as other employers,” his wife said.

He nodded and made a vaguely affirmative sound. The conversation moved on to her day and her trip to the grocery store while Eric was at the pool. He listened without irritation or interest. Eric asked if they could watch a movie later, and he said yes. His wife looked at him, but didn’t want to contradict him in front of Eric; instead, she added “a short one.” Eric settled on an adaptation of the Journey to the Center of the Earth that he’d seen at least a dozen times before, and they sat down to watch it after he helped his wife with the dishes.

The sun had mercifully set by the time the movie ended. Since he was already dirty from the day’s struggle, he decided to go fill in the latest pit in their yard.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said, as he got up to grab a shovel from the garage. “The dog dug another hole today.”

He walked outside with the shovel, a full moon casting a mellow, cool light on the neighborhood. By that light, he could see the white sheen of bone in the hole. It looked like something from a cow—the kind they sell to dog lovers. He used the shovel to poke at the bone, then decided to leave it in the ground. The hole was about a foot deep; he filled it in quickly and went inside to shower.

Afterwards, he brushed his teeth and left the master bathroom. When he walked out, his wife was changing. He kissed her, stopped her from dressing any more, and pushed her onto the bed.

***

Next morning, as he left for work, the sun glared down as bright and penetrating as before. He turned the car’s A/C dial all the way to the right, and felt the cool air on his face. As he passed the place where the crash caused traffic the day before, he noticed that air coming from the dashboard wasn’t as cool as it should be. By the time he got to work, the air conditioner had completely stopped. He felt the warm and humid breeze on his face, and he turned the air off before he stopped the car and walked into his office.

Seamus Othot is the head editor at Reveille. When he’s not reviewing submissions, he is working as a full-time investigative reporter. He graduated from the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts with a bachelor’s degree in 2023.

“They put a hook through the dead guy’s nose and pulled out his brains,” Jude said gleefully as he shared his history presentation. It was on the process of ancient Egyptian mummification, and his audience of other sixth-graders, mostly boys, was listening in rapt fascination. “The rest of his organs they put into the capricornic jars.”

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“Not capricornic,” interrupted Hugh urgently, “that’s the thing you fill with fruit at Thanksgiving!”

Canopic. It is canopic, isn’t it? It sounds like a church phrase. Canonical, canon law…Wait, canopic is right, I’m thinking of Coptic. Miss Bailey felt the old warning of a migraine behind her eye even as her stomach flipped at the ghoulish description. Maybe shoebox research presentations were not quite as clever an idea as she had thought. Meanwhile, Jude proceeded to take out the jar he had modeled out of clay, and with a joyous face shook it so that it rattled to convey its gruesome purpose.

The children were delighted, but Edith said, “You should have filled it with water so that it would sound right.”

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Jude had no need to be told twice, and started skipping around the room displaying the jar in one hand while shaking his water bottle in the other.

Miss Bailey was in her first year of teaching. Nothing on earth could have prepared her for what she faced as teacher. It was not that it was a hard job—the children were lively but more or less obedient and good-tempered and never got into fistfights or undue drama.

A “young twenty-something,” she was introverted and high-strung, but full of life and a theatrical sense of humor. Miss Bailey was idealistic, optimistic, and her ambitions often outstripped her physical ability to cope with them. She knew that the purpose of here is the great Hereafter, that it was her solemn duty to keep alight the flame of Western Civilization, and that life would be to her an exciting quest of true love and high adventure—somehow.

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Till then, she was required to maintain dignity and a solid responsible presence with eight pairs of young eyes watching her every move—if they were even paying attention, which was not always a given. She was new to being the ultimate authority and the staggering realization that these kids spent more time under her care and protection than their parents. Further was the challenge of reconciling the idea that each life is a unique and beautiful drama with the prosaic reality of making Latin noun endings comprehensible to twelve-year-olds. No, it was not a dramatically arduous, but it was a constant and grindingly mundane pressure: corralling wandering minds, trying to keep the chatter down, and reminding students to for heaven’s sake close their a’s and capitalize their proper nouns! Each day she prayed for patience, each day it was sorely tested, each day promised an identical renewal of the trial. The only cultured mind in the room all day every day trying to civilize small and energetic, albeit lovable, barbarians. For how long? Months, years, decades?

The sixth-grade classroom at Regina Academy was predominantly brownish. The floor was tiled the color of oxidized pea soup, the walls were pinky-beige cinder blocks. Khaki-colored curtains screened equally khaki-colored lockers. The six little windows on one wall were staggered in two rows in an oddly brutalist fashion and the film was peeling off the glass—Miss Bailey planned on taking a razor to them one of these days. However, the room was saved by two huge and noble blackboards along the walls lined with a leafy paper border. The central blackboard behind the teacher’s desk had a crucifix above it as all good classrooms ought to have. The other blackboard had, between the leafy border, a prayer written in a series of daintily lettered posters about giving without counting the cost and toiling without seeking rest. There was a gloriously old and comfy leather sofa in the corner, facing, across a blue rug, a battered but comely round table with sturdy wooden chairs, making a cheerful little living room. The students’ desks were arranged as carefully as possible to keep the most talkative children from being able to form easy alliances. In the opposite corner, a white statue of Our Lady of Grace radiated a gentle presence.

The wooden teacher’s desk was like the deck of a ship, spacious and solid. Upon one side was small painting a depicting Gabriel appearing to Mary, distaff in hand. There was a photograph of her parents, and a scented candle which she perpetually forgot to find matches for. On the other side a little Russian teapot perched atop a leather-bound copy of The Brothers Karamazov. A forest worth of papers and random objects generally sprawled madly across it—tests in various stages of grading, classwork plopped there by her pupils, her lesson planner with looseleaf school announcements spilling out of the cover, the book she happened to be reading (at the moment it was Don Quixote), and myriad orphaned pens and pencils. Every couple of hours she would fall upon the chaos like an avenging angel, but it was a war never fully won.

“Thank you Jude, you really put a lot of enthusiasm into your project! Your presentation was, shall we say,” with a mischievous look at the students, “to die for.’”

Latin commenced. No one in the class could wrap their brains around this strange language, and Miss Bailey had not been teaching long enough to have any idea of how to rephrase the grammar. The warning behind her eyes was no longer a warning but the sickening reality of warm throbbing pain which blurred the mind and sapped the strength. She went around the room checking her students’ translations.

“Jude, tidy your desk, you don’t need your math book right now. What did you put for ‘The queen calls the girl?’”

“Reginae vocare puella.”

Dear Heaven, every word needed to be overhauled. She took a deep breath and pressed her hand to the back of her neck. “Ok. What is the subject of the sentence?”

“The queen.”

“Good job. What is the predicate?”

“Girl.” It was obviously a guess.

“No…”

“Miss Bailey, I’m done, can I go read at the back?” Hugh piped.

“Not right now.”

“Queen,” said Jude.

“That’s the subject, Jude, remember? Who or what the sentence is about. The predicate is the verb. The queen does what?”

“The queen calls. Oooohhhh, I get it. I’m stupid,” declared Jude good-naturedly.

“You’re not stupid, you’re just not applying yourself,” she snapped. The daintily lettered posters stared down in disappointment. “We went over all of this before. Now, if the queen is the subject, what case should it be in Latin? Regin…”

“Miss Bailey, I’m done!” said Jerome.

“Uh, regina.” Jude hazarded.

“Yes,” she replied, “Ok, so what is the girl in the sentence?”

“The direct object.”

“Miss Bailey, can we do an explosion this year?” asked Hugh.

“Good. What ending do we need?”

“Puella?”

“No no no, that’s the nominative, for the subject. You need the accusative singular, puellam.”

“Wait, you have to use the accusative for the direct object every time?” asked Jude incredulously.

“Yes! That’s the whole point of endings!” she wailed. The other students looked as though they had just learned a profound new truth, and she could hear several of them saying, “oh wow bro, I’m so cooked,” which was their preferred method of expressing that they had not done the assignment properly. Just then the intercom turned on for Angelus, which was always followed by lunch.

Saved by the bell. After prayers the children trooped out, and the benevolent sofa received her in its venerable embrace.

***

Between ibuprofen and lunch she was, if not vigorous, at least somewhat steeled for the afternoon. Gray-faced and gripping a coffee mug, she nodded to the children peeping through the door to signal that they might come in from the hallway.

“All right everybody, time for Religion.” Here at least was a subject that usually suited the inquisitive and oddly philosophical minds of this class, and was unlikely to go any worse than a theological rabbit-hole or two.

Rubber-footed chairs were thrust back and forth and papers flapped as the children settled back into their desks. Miss Bailey found it necessary to admonish a couple of them to put their books in their desks rather than on the floor.

“We’ll discuss the Gospel of Mark that we read yesterday. Thomas, what verse did you choose?” Turning to the side she saw that there was an unacceptable situation and asked, “Jude, is your desk tidy?”

“No.”

“Please clean it up. Order is the foundation of the Good Life.”

“Miss Bailey?” asked Jerome.

“Yes?”

“When is the Latin Test?”

“Are we doing Latin right now?” asked Miss Bailey, trying to keep out the frazzled edge to her voice.

“No,” replied Jerome.

“Then we are not worrying about it right now. This is distracting us from listening to Thomas, and from religion class. Thomas, you may read us your verse now.”

Thomas replied respectfully in his soft Pennsylvanian drawl, “I chose Mark 5: 41 an’ 42, ‘And taking the damsel by the hand, He said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which is, being interpreted: Damsel (I say to Thee) arise. And the immediately the damsel rose up, and walked.’ I thought of it because of my dog, Carlo, one day he ran outside into the road, you know, and was hit by a truck…but the truck didn’t kill him, it should’ve, but it broke his leg…I don’t know, it was like a miracle, like Jesus raised him up like He raised the girl.”

She was touched by his simple frankness.

“And after a few days, Carlo got up, and he walked…” And at this Thomas broke down in tears.

Shocked, Miss Bailey frantically sought to deflect attention away from the poor kid. Carlo had evidently gone the way of all flesh, and she reflected ruefully that she had explained to them Aquinas’ teaching on the mortality of animal souls only the day before.

“Ambrose, what was your verse?!”

***

The afternoon progressed without further misadventures, though the preserving power of both painkillers and caffeine gradually wore off. Miss Bailey was highly gratified when, in English, the recovered Thomas succinctly described appositives as “a noun sandwich.” Eventually the time came to assemble in the gym for closing prayers before each student was shepherded to the appropriate bus or car. She stood, dazed but determined, until the final child in her class was at long last called for dismissal. Miss Bailey went back to the classroom, shut doors and windows, gave a last attempt at her desk, and flipped off the lights. The homework assignments could wait for tomorrow morning. Buttoning her coat and collecting her bags, she gave a last look around the classroom and sighed as she saw Jerome’s coat inside-out and flung rakishly across a chair. She locked the door behind her.

Another day done, another series of little failures and victories, so pathetically small to look at but yet were the drops that fill the cup of life to overflowing, the painfully mundane opportunities that have the power to polish the selfishness out of a soul like infinitesimal bits of dust sanded off a sculpture. She had read somewhere that the soul grew by leaps and bounds, but really it must grow by millimeters, like the body in which it dwells. Maybe only with such gradual progress could the heart be made strong enough to endure the raging storm which is the romance of Divine Providence. Her pounding head swirled these inklings vaguely as she drove along the winding country roads, but soon forgot them. At length Miss Bailey pulled into the driveway and was home. Only one idea was left for that day.

“Well, I made it,” she gasped as she collapsed onto her bed.

Madeline Eastman graduated from Thomas More College in 2024. With a love for books and travel, she has taught in Europe and currently teaches in eastern Pennsylvania.

Immaculate Heart was the only school where Janelle hadn’t gotten into trouble. This was partly because no one there reminded her of all the trouble she’d managed to get into, first at Holy Rosary, then at the Cabrini girls’ school. Fr. Smith, the pastor of Immaculate Heart, who had spent twenty years in China, had only ever looked at her with kindness. When she saw him or when she thought of him, blue seas endlessly unfurled before her, with men like paintings of men descending into the purity to draw up jags and slivers of jade. But the days at school and at home passed quickly, and the moments of revery faded fast and faster as autumn drew on to winter. Though as the myth of him faded, Fr. Smith himself came more and more into focus, and his kindness, which she met at first with mingled gratitude and suspicion, came more and more to merit confidence.

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The year might have passed without incident if not for the killings. A pair of Sicilians killed a police chief one day as he strolled down Canal Street in broad daylight, tipping his cap to the ladies awaiting the streetcar. And the streetcar skittered and clanged to a stop, and two men stepped down, said “Eh, chiefy, beautiful day ain’t it?” and pulling pistols from their jackets shot him in the face and walked off smiling into the Quarter while the ladies screamed and wiped with frantic white gloves the shards of skull from their hair, and the chief lay on his back, they said, looking up through the palm fronds to the lovely sky with the ghost of a smile graved forever on his mouth as somewhere beneath the screams a trumpet chuckled.

Then the two Sicilians were dead, and they said they’d fallen still smiling, too, as they stepped from the awning of the grocery on Decatur, a few doors down from the machine shop Janelle’s father owned.

Everyone was smiling, and everyone was dead, and the music oozed on under a perfect sky.

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Janelle’s father was Sicilian. He’d changed the family name from Motta to Moats, and he’d seen that his daughter had a French first name. But he looked Sicilian, and so did she, who shared his hooked nose and his dark skin. Janelle hadn’t seen him since the start of the school year, but the shadow of his performance at the family welcome night after Labor Day lingered and crept along behind her shoulder as if to mark it. He’d come in drunk and sweating and handsome and kissed Janelle’s mother on the mouth and swung Janelle up, stiff as stone and burning, up onto his shoulder and said, “Whatcha say, Treat?”

And seeing Fr. Smith as if he were an enemy he’d long hoped to meet, he set Janelle down and strode over through the silence amid the pallid faces and taken the priest by the shoulders and smiled and said, “Well now, Father, you’re in charge here, right?” And he’d looked into the priest’s eyes, tilting his head down and smiling from under his arched eyebrows. Janelle’s vision had blurred and she tried to summon the image of the Chinese sea. Fr. Smith had only smiled, with his fingers clasped mildly at his waist, and Janelle heard him say, in his calm, clear, lightly inflected voice, “Yes, Mr. Moats, I am.” Her father had not removed his hands, and he said, “Well, let’s just you and me be sure little Janie here gets taken care of. She’s a little, ah,” and he patted Fr. Smith on the shoulder, “delicate.” And the priest had only continued to smile, and Sister Imelda, standing at his elbow, had smiled, too, and looked up at Janelle’s father and said, “Oh, she’s a darling, Mr. Moats, and you can be certain she’ll be treated as such.” Her father seemed to see the woman for the first time, and Janelle slid deeper into sickness as his eyes went down the habit and up and he turned and moved his hands from the priest’s shoulders to hers and said, “Well, I’m sure you’ll take care of everything there, Sister. After all,” and he looked her over again, “under all that habit you’re a whole lotta delicate yourself.” Sister’s gaze fell and Janelle looked on in wonder at her face which seemed full of shame, and then Fr. Smith had taken her father and turned him and with a hand around his shoulders led him from the room saying, “That’s quite alright, Mr. Moats. I think what you need now is a bit of fresh air and a walk.”

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So she hadn’t seen her father since then but he had followed her through the school. First it was a little scrap of paper that fluttered out onto her desk when she opened her catechism. Dago, it said. She didn’t look around. She didn’t tell anyone. She just slipped the paper into her pocket and threw it in a trash can on the playground. In the halls whispers stalked her. Once a squashed tomato appeared in her backpack, and she silently took the detention for a dirtied piece of homework. She would not say anything, she told herself. She would not tell. She wondered if Fr. Smith knew anything, but his eyes contained only their customary kindness.

One day in November someone slipped three cloves of garlic into her peanut butter sandwich. She took a bite, suffered an allergic reaction, and was taken to the hospital. Sister Imelda sat beside her as her breathing returned to normal, holding her hand, stroking her arm.

“What’s wrong, Janelle?” she said.

“I’m fine now, Sister. Just a little tired.”

The hand squeezed. “Little one, is someone playing tricks on you?”

“No, Sister. I’m fine. Mama must’ve just made a mistake. She works a lot and she’s so tired sometimes.”

The kindly eyes met hers and held them, and Sister let out a long sigh and squeezed Janelle’s hand again and sat in silence.

For all the mess of her father’s ghost, Janelle did well. She made good grades and sang in the choir, and at the start of Advent Fr. Smith came into the classroom and said, “Children. Children. You’ve done so well this term. You’ve made Our Lord and His Mother so very glad. It is a joy to be with you these days. Have no doubt that there are saints being made among you.

In a few weeks, before the holidays, we will have our Christmas pageant. Many of you have already been looking forward to our Living Rosary, and I know it will be as beautiful this year as ever. You each, along with those in Sr. Henry’s room, have been assigned a prayer. The list is posted in the hallway. God love you, children.”

In the hall, in the press of the bodies, Janelle looked down the list, down and down and down without a glimpse of her name until, at last, beside the “Hail, Holy Queen,” she saw herself. She looked again, thinking that perhaps she had misread. But no, there she was, standing alone at the end of the joyful mysteries.

She was not along in remarking the honor. She felt the eyes, she heard the little hiss of their disdain. She thought that now it could be put off no longer. The final confrontation she’d have gone to any lengths to abjure now looked just before her. Nor was she long in waiting. As the crowd left the hallway for the yard and recess, a sweaty hand pushed her by the back of the neck. A leg stuck out before her and she tripped but did not fall, and as she gathered herself up she found them gathered in a circle, Benny Parent with his broad, dumb, shiny face, Alyssa Jeansonne with her blonde plait, Mack Beters and Betty Fitzmorris and Elinor Crapanzano. She thought they did not look angry, most of them, simply curious. Except for Alyssa, who stepped up a little and shook her braid and said, “How’s the special treatment feel? Or do Dagos even know when they’re getting a handout?”

Janelle raised a fist and shook it and said, with her head cocked and one eye shut as though sighting along the knuckles, “How bout ya shut ya mouth or I’ll give ya a buffaloona?”

Benny said, “My daddy makes those sandwiches at his grocery store.”

And Mack said, “That’s muffalettas, Benny boy.”

“Yeah, alright,” said Benny.

“No wonder Father feels sorry for you, Dago Jane.”

“Yeah, it figures. Twenty years with the little chinks makes you all kinds of sorry.”

“Well what does that make you then?” Janelle said.

“What?”

“How’s it feel to have the little Dago girl feel sorry for you?”

“You–you–feel sorry for me?”

“Sure.”

“What for?”

“For how ya gonna look after I get finished with ya later.”

“Yeah, alright.”

“You and me. After school. Corner of Pitt and Cadiz.”

“You won’t show.”

“Keep telling yaself that.”

Janelle turned and walked toward Benny, who grinned and turned sideways to let her by, watching her and grinning as though she were a fabulous animal of his own discovery.

“See you later…treat,” Alyssa said.

Janelle knew she would go, but she didn’t want to, and she sat silently through the afternoon, not thinking, not preparing, but simply awash in the sadness that welled up, assuring her that trouble had come and always would, however she might try.

When three o’clock came she needed to go to the bathroom. But she didn’t want to be late. So she left the school by the front gate, walked a block down St. Charles with a streetcar grinding down the neutral ground right across from her, then crossed beneath the spreading oak trees to the other side of the Avenue. There were plenty of cars out, and she kept her eyes down, afraid to see, afraid to see herself being seen.

Alyssa was waiting at the corner of Pitt, and the others were there, too. They were all looking around, none meeting the others’ eyes, except Alyssa, who fixed her gaze to Janelle’s and did not look away.

“Well,” she said. “Got something to say?” She stood with her back to an oak tree, and her gold hair flowed against the grey-brown background.

“Yeah,” Janelle said, still walking toward her, entering the circle of wandering eyes. “Simple.” And she cocked her right fist and punched Alyssa in the nose. Alyssa doubled up, blood pouring through her fingers, blood spackling her golden hair, blood dripping onto the pavement and the oak leaves and the yellow grass as Benny yelled, “Jesus, Jesus” and Mack and Elinor ran back toward St. Charles and Betty bent beside Alyssa saying, “You ok? You ok? You ok?” and holding out a handkerchief.

There came a step on the pavement behind Janelle, slow and light and grave, and a laugh that rose up strong and obdurate as if to dare all demurral. “That’s right, Treat,” came the voice, still clothed in mirth, and Janelle, still watching Alyssa bleed, feeling as though she were the one bent, flowing onto the earth, said, “Hi, Daddy.” His hand came to rest on her right shoulder and he spoke down over her left, “Well, I’m sure you two fine young ladies can get yourselves home from here, now can’t you?” Alyssa looked up at him, and tears were running down into the blood as terror and wrath contended in her eyes. And her father laughed again as he turned Janelle away and said, “Let’s get you back to school, darling.”

“Daddy, school’s out.”

“Oh, I think you got a little more school today, darling.”

“It’s past three.”

“I’m sure the father and that sweet little nun’s still around. Not like they got anywhere to be.”

There was another streetcar easy by on St. Charles, and Janelle looked at the faces this time, searching for some slightest mark of pity she could take along with her. Their eyes ignored her, though she saw several, mostly women, seeing her father.

In the hall, Janelle said, “Daddy I gotta go to the bathroom.” She started to walk for the bathroom door, but he caught her arm and said, “This’ll only take a minute.” But he stopped, and looking up she followed his eye to the Living Rosary listing on the wall above the water fountain. He stepped closer and she smiled and shook his head as he looked down and said, “Huh. Some kinda queen.” Then he went on, and she came close behind.

The door to Fr. Smith’s office was open, and the priest sat writing in a large brown book, leaning a little over the paper, in a close, neat script. Janelle’s father did not knock, but strolled in and sat and said, crossing his left leg over his right, “Well, Father, how’s the souls game?”

Fr. Smith did not answer at once but finished writing and closed his book and set his pen aside and said, “Mr. Moats. It’s good to see you.”

Her father laughed. “You know, that’s what I love about y’all priests. Lying for a living. I love it. Wish I had the balls.”

Janelle had remained standing. She did not want to look at the priest but felt she could look nowhere else, thought he was, for once, frustrated when he said, “Oh, don’t sell yourself short, Mr. Moats.” Then a shadow seemed to pass from him and he said, “But tell me now, what can I do for you?”

Her father paused, then leaned forward slightly, gripping the arms of his chair. “Father. You allow fighting in this school?”

“No, Mr. Moats, we do not allow fighting in this school.”

“Well then it’s hard for me to understand how come Janie here could bloody up some pretty little blonde girl practically in your front yard.”

“Daddy, that’s not–”

“Let the Father speak.”

“Mr. Moats, whatever happened after school, I will certainly speak with everyone involved tomorrow. For now, why don’t you take your daughter home?”

“In a minute, Father. No rush. There’s nothing I care more about than Janie’s education, and discipline’s the key. Let’s fix her up with a punishment now, you and me.”

“Daddy–”

“Hush.”

And Janelle stood where she was and bounced a little on the balls of her feet and felt herself sweating with the strain of holding it. Every second felt like the last and still the seconds poured on and the sweat ran down her back. The words between the two men vanished until she heard her father say, “Now listen, this queen business.”

“Janelle has worked hard this year. She deserves a small honor.”

“I’ll not hear of it, Father. You’re not gonna honor violence at a Christmas program.”

“Mr. Moats–”

“Father.”

Fr. Smith rose from his desk, leaned toward Janelle’s father, and opened his mouth. But before he could speak, Janelle gave a stifled gasp and began to cry. Urine soaked her skirt and ran down her legs and puddled on the floor between her shoes. She wept, and the smell rose around her, and her father leaned away, lifting his shoes clear of the mess, and said, “Now Father, this is exactly what I’m saying, the girl is just not fit–”

“Mr. Moats, you will leave this office now, and I will thank you never to return.”

“Hey, suits me. Your mess, you clean it up.”

And Janelle wept as her father rose and stepped through the door and said, “There y’are, Sister. Was just thinking about you last night. Say, after you get through mopping, whyn’t you give me a call?”

“Mr. Moats!” Father said, and Janelle’s father vanished. Sr. Imelda entered.

“Sister, kindly stay with Janelle for a moment.”

“Yes, Father.”

Sr. Imelda came and put an arm around Janelle and knelt beside her and kissed her cheek and said, “That’s alright, dear, that’s alright. You’ve not done anything wrong.”

Janelle cried harder, and Sister held her tighter till Father returned with towels and a mop. Sister dried Janelle’s legs and wrapped her in a towel and had her step onto some paper napkins and then led from the room as the mop began to swish across the floor. In the classroom across the hall Sister stood Janelle in a corner and brought from a cupboard a clean uniform and said, “It might be a little large, dear, but why don’t I leave you go change into this and then I can walk you home?”

Janelle undressed and wrapped the wet clothes in the towel. She put the fresh uniform on and picked up the dirty things and stood for a minute at the window, looking out over the yard. Sister knocked and said to leave everything there, that she would take care of it. Then the two left the school and walked, mostly in silence, with a gentle word from Sister now and then, the several blocks to Freret Street and home.

The days before the Christmas break passed, and the laughter of the children rose and danced alongside Janelle’s silence, which she broke only for the words of her prayer in the pageant rehearsals. Fr. Smith and Sr. Imelda encouraged Janelle. They seemed to fear something in her had been lost, and when the Friday before the holidays came, Fr. Smith stood at the gate, telling the children goodbye.

“We’ll see you tomorrow night at the pageant, won’t we, Janelle?” he said as she walked by.

She stopped, her eyes following a streetcar before climbing up toward his. “I’ll see you, Father.”

“Goodbye, Janelle. God bless you.”

“Goodbye.”

Her mother had to work the night of the pageant, but she walked Janelle to the streetcar and saw her aboard and waited, waving, until Janelle could see her no more through the oak trunks in the gathering gloom. Janelle sat with her chin on her fist and her forehead canted against the glass, and as the darkness outside grew the reflections around her brightened, but she remained fixed between, her eyes on the glass, which solidified against the night or flickered faintly into translucence as a porch light or street lamp scrolled by. When the car halted before the school, she thought of just sitting there, or riding, her face to the glass, until the car could follow the river no more. But even as the thought appeared she rose and saying thank you but without looking at the driver or into the faces of the men and women waiting to board, disembarked. The oaks rose against the hidden stars. The moon touched little leaves like eyes. A gate creaked at her touch, and her feet rasped lightly on the pavement. She took the steps. She watched her hand reach for the handle of the door. But before she could enter, she found she had turned and, stepping quickly through the pine needles brightening the garden beds at her feet, rounded the corner of the building. Above her the windows of the cafeteria shed their silvery glow among the trees. Her hand felt the smooth cold skin of a crape myrtle, and she found herself rising into the air, loose bark scraping away at the touch of her shoes, until, resting in the crook of a branch, she could see inside the school.

The children were assembled. The girls wore white dresses with red bows about their waists. The boys looked little in their suits, with their hair slicked down, their necks and ears red with scrubbing and with cold. Parents sat at tables our poured punch or picked petit fours from two tables at the back, near the doors. And Fr. Smith looked at his watch, looked at the doors, looked at Sr. Imelda and shrugged and shook his head. Sr. Imelda stepped to the children arranged rosary wise at the head of the room, bent and whispered to Alyssa, who smiled and nodded sharply and stepped from her place in the third joyful mystery to the center, into an empty space where Janelle was meant to stand. And a younger girl, who had obviously been watching for this and who had practically become two of herself in the speed of her excitement, ran to take Alyssa’s place from a table in front where a beautiful golden-haired woman and a beautiful golden-haired man, both dressed in beautiful golden clothes, with gold at their wrists and on their hands, watched and smiled.

As Fr. Smith, smiling, stepped to the center of the room and raised his hands in welcome, Janelle climbed back down. She did not hear the singing and the bells and the high voices lifted in prayer as she walked around the neighborhood, looking at the lights in the azalea beds before the beautiful houses, at the trees trimmed and shining in the picture windows, hearing the radios and the laughter rising from yards arrayed in wrought iron. She heard the click of her small heels and the clang of the streetcar as she wandered nearer the Avenue. And then, as she came back to the school, she heard the shutting of a gate and the voice of Fr. Smith: “Well, Sister, you must congratulate yourself. A beautiful evening.”

And Sister: “Yes, Father.”

And he: “What’s the trouble, Sister?”

And she: “Ah, Father, you know already, don’t you?”

And Janelle approached them now, appearing out of the gloom, and said, “Merry Christmas, Father. Merry Christmas, Sister.”

And Fr. Smith, as if unsurprised: “Why, if it isn’t our missing prayer.”

And Sister: “Dear girl. What are you doing here?”

“I’m just out for a walk.”

“Well,” said Father, “we’ll join you, I think. Let’s see you home.”

They seemed to know the way. Janelle walked between them. For several blocks the silence lay comfortably about them. And Father said, “Sister, Janelle, I wonder if you would join me in the Rosary. I would like to pray for the children of the mission.”

“Yes, Father,” they said. And their beads began to click, and the voices chimed lightly beneath the oaks as moonlight ran down over the sidewalks. At the end, Janelle said her Hail, Holy Queen, and Father and Sister said, together, quietly, “That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.”

They had reached Janelle’s house, and the silence rose up around them, and Sister said, “Good night, d—“

“Wait,” Father said, holding up a hand. “Who’s there?”

A figure had emerged in the moonlight at the end of the block. He stood for a moment, facing them, it seemed, a black shape like the shadow of a man. And it seemed to shake as if with laughter. And was gone.

Janelle watched a moment longer and then opened the gate. The priest and the sister followed her to the porch. “Is your mother home, Janelle?”

“Not yet, Father,” and she lifted the mat and took a key from beneath it.

“What a lovely bike you have, Janelle,” said Sister.

“I don’t have a bike,” she said as she put the key in the lock.

“Then whose is that?”

Janelle looked down the porch. There was a bicycle. The moonlight silvered it, and tassels rose faintly from the handlebars in a chill breeze. A helmet rested in the wicker basket, and lifting it Janelle saw inside the basket a card in an unsealed envelope. The card was purple, with a golden crown embossed on the cover, and inside a note: Treat, you ain’t no queen, but you a fighter. You deserve better. Keep fighting and you might just get it. Merry Christmas. Daddy

There were five twenty dollar bills, more money than she had ever held, more than she had ever seen. Looking up toward where the shadow had been, she thought she heard laughter. She opened her mouth, but there was only the silence with the moonlight spreading along it and in the distance the gleam of Christmas lights in the oaks and azaleas.

“Well, Janelle, are you alright?” Father said.

“Yes, Father. Yes.”

“A Merry Christmas to you then. We’ll see you at Mass, I’m sure. Sister?”

“Father, wait,” Janelle said. She stepped toward him, holding out the money. “Take this, please.”

“Janelle,” Sister began.

“No, Sister, please take it. Please. You can help, can help someone else have a nice Christmas.”

“Bless you, child,” said Sister, turning away and looking up from the porch through the oak leaves.

And Fr. Smith took the money and said, “Yes, bless you, Janelle. You know, Sister,” he said over his shoulder, “this is why the Lord sends us old folk to teach the young.”

“Yes, Father,” said Sister.

“Good night, my dear. Give your mother our best.”

“Good night,” Janelle said. She opened the door, entered, and stepped to the front window to watch them on their way. She watched still when they were gone, and she thought a shadow moved after them across the street. She blinked and rubbed her eyes and stared, but a cloud came over the moon and she saw nothing more, except the mild waving of the trees against the darkness.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

[Note: This Story Contains Strong Language]

Arnheim stood in front of the small packing box on his desk, peering down into it with vacant, unseeing eyes. It hadn’t taken him long to pack up his cubicle. He was not one of those people who made their offices over into little museums of personal history. Cubicle curators! People like that annoyed him. It had always been his staunch belief, a moral imperative even, that an office was a reflection of the man or it was nothing. In his office, the only exhibit on display was him, a one-man show whose complete oeuvre was himself.

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After six years on the job, he had finally been moved into this office. It was not large but it did have a door. Of course, the door was a large glass panel set in a metal frame. Even the wall onto the corridor was made of glass. He had asked for an office because he wanted more privacy, more separation, more recognition. And then when it had happened, he had thought to himself, “Finally, somebody around here appreciates my value.” But when Phil, that pathetic excuse for an office manager who spent all day chatting up Gina, their completely inept receptionist, when Phil told him which office he’d been assigned, Arnheim realized they had tricked him. There was no other way to think about it.

With his back to the glass, he could feel his co-workers passing outside, glancing uncomfortably at his hunched-over figure, trying to divine in the foggy necromantic way people do, whether his fate might somehow be linked to theirs. To him they were little more than ghosts. Shades. Pitiable spirits of an underworld he had once inhabited. If they tip-toed now outside his office, like little children past a dark closet, all a-tingle with terrified anticipation that he might turn at any moment to face them, it was only what they deserved. Through the glass, he could sense how his presence discomfitted them. He enjoyed the sensation.

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But oh, the raging insecurity of the common everyday office drone! Was it possible, he wondered, that he had lived and worked amongst them for six years? That he had danced at Christmas parties with them, gone on company picnics with them, joked and fooled around with them, gone to lunch with them, gone to bars with them after work, that he had sat around the conference room table in meetings with them, as if he were just like them, indistinguishably one of them? Him! Allen Arnheim! However, that was all in the past. Today, he could even smile about it. And, in fact, a smile did break across his face just then, a wild angry squiggle of a smile like a child’s crayon drawing of an angry man smiling.

He smiled because he felt like it was time now to leave, to walk out through the glass door into the corridor, across the floor of cubicles to the elevator and out of the building. Deliberately, as if there were some world-historical meaning to it, he pulled his last remaining personal item—a Beretta 92 semi-automatic pistol—out from where he had secured it earlier beneath his belt, between his shirt and his trousers, and placed it gently on top of the stack of books and files. Before closing the flaps on the packing box, he thought how his life would be different from now on, and how, back on his first day, he could not have dreamed of the portents and possibilities he possessed today. People sure did change, Arnheim thought to himself, that was true. What was truer, though, was that people sure did change people. For that insight, he grudgingly admitted, he had his co-workers to thank. You can learn from anyone, I guess. But he only half-believed it. It seemed a dismaying thought. A glint from the Beretta’s oily black metal frame caught his eye, and the thought died. Once again life’s potentialities overwhelmed him, rushed up at him as if shot out of a gun. His heart raced as he folded over the four flaps on the box, locking the first into the space created by the other three. How different his last day of work was from his first! How strange and wonderful and complex, how packed deep and tight with meaning! He lifted the box off the desk and turned. Sammy Chin was frozen there in the corridor.

“Chinny-chin-chin.” Arnheim knew he hated that nickname. He smiled his jagged smile and tilted his head up so Sammy could feel the corrosive force of it.

“You know I hate that.”

“Yes.”

Sammy was half a foot taller and three sizes wider than Arnheim. On any other day, he would have stiff-armed him into a cubicle wall and blown on by. But not today.

“You’re a piece of work.” Sammy shook his big shaggy head like a frustrated grizzly come late to the salmon run. “You really are.”

Roughly, Arnheim brushed past him, unafraid.

“I deserved it.”

Arnheim turned.

“What?”

“Everything. All of it. The way you look at me. What you think of me. I just wanted you to know I don’t blame you at all. You’ve taught me a valuable lesson. I know now what an awful person I am. Thanks to you, Arnheim.”

Kim, the staff designer, came up behind him.

“Arnheim! Oh, Arnheim! Don’t I look cute today?”

“Very cute.”

“For you.” And she twirled around. “It’s your last day. I wanted to look special. This morning, you know, I was getting into the shower? And I look down and see a cockroach ohmygod! But apparently my cat had gotten hold of it first? And its ugly little legs were scattered all over the tub, can you imagine? This revolting cockroach body and these little, like, hairs everywhere? Yuck. And I thought of you.”

“That’s touching,” Sammy Chin said.

“Isn’t it? I mean, it was a crisis! A goddam motherfucking crisis, and who comes into my mind? Arnheim. Why you? Why today? I don’t fucking know! But all I wanted to do, I wanted to rush in here and throw myself at your feet and say sorry-sorry-sorry, Arnheim. It shouldn’t have taken a legless cockroach to make me see how awful I’ve been to you. And now here you are, walking out with a box. Sad.”

“Now that’s a crisis,” Sammy Chin said.

“Fuckin’-A,” Kim agreed.

Arnheim shifted the box onto his right hip and waded into the cubicle pen. It did his heart good to see all those heads turned toward him, as if he were the big full moon and they were the helplessly attracted tides of small, unmapped streams. Arnheim smiled his angry, crooked, self-satisfied smile. The heads all smiled and nodded in response.

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“Good luck, Arnheim.”

“I’ll miss you, Arnheim.”

“Call me sometime, Arnheim.”

“The place won’t be the same without you, Arnheim.”

“Hey Arnheim! Don’t be a stranger.”

The commotion he caused in transit was something of a novelty in the small office. It was generally a quiet and reserved place. So Arnheim was not surprised that it attracted the attention of the president, whose office was on the far side of the room. He spotted him, tall, thin and, as always, encased in his black cashmere turtleneck, emerging from his office.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this, Arnheim. You were the best employee we ever had. I realize that now. I can’t imagine how I could have been so blind all these years. Promoting Elliot over you. What was I thinking? And…and that office. A nasty, nasty trick.”

“Forget about it,” Arnheim said.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget about it, but thank you, Arnheim. Thank you.”

Arnheim took one last slow look around. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement over by the copier. It was Eddie, the mailroom guy. He’d been watching Arnheim, fearfully, sheepishly, like he always did. Never meeting his eye. Never speaking above a whisper. Never offering any kind of greeting as he timidly dropped the day’s mail on Arnheim’s desk.

Arnheim walked through the double doors to the elevators. He was at peace. There was no more anger in him. It had been pumped out of him like bullets out of a gun and now his chamber was empty.

What was anger? He didn’t know. He could no longer define it or understand it, because he no longer felt it. He was unable to imagine a time or a place that could cause him to feel anger, or summon up the face of a single person who could reignite in him that strange and unfamiliar emotion. His new life had begun. He could feel that.

When the elevator doors opened in the lobby, it was as if the whole world had come to celebrate with him. A great gathering of well-wishers, anxious to receive him into their society. With outstretched arms and loud acclaim, they called to him, and their voices reverberated throughout the glass and marble expanse. A large number rushed to greet him while others kneeled in every corner, looking up at him in adoration. Two of them relieved him of his packing box while two others in their excitement took him roughly by the arms, lifting him off the floor, as if in his ecstasy he needed any help to float!

“Doesn’t look the type, does he?” the one on his right said to the one on his left.

“They never do.”

“They find the gun?”

“Right there in the box with his stuff.”

“That mailroom guy was lucky, that’s all I gotta say.”

“Call the precinct.”

Arnheim let their adulation wash over him, the force of their love carry him. For the first time in his life, he experienced that fountain of gratitude which wells up inside those who have been saved from the pit, redeemed against all hope. His words spilled out of him in a gush of uncontrollable joy.

“The last day is better than the first!”

The one on his right looked at him with surprise. Arnheim desperately wanted to embrace him.

“For you maybe, pal” he said. “Not for them eight dead people upstairs.”

To Arnheim, at that moment, those were the most beautiful words he had ever heard.

C.S. Crane has been writing off and on for decades, but only broke through with a story called “Perfume and Cigarettes” published in The Berkeley Fiction Review #39. They thought he had a unique voice; he’s hoping you will, too. He has since published it on Amazon as the title story in a collection along with two novels: Catatonia and Ordinatus.

[Note: This Story Contains Adult Themes]

Men don’t know what they want, but they want what they know. He’ll sooner lie to his married lover to lie with a paid lover then will a man search for a solution to his dying marriage. Men refrain from confessing workplace sins, expressing self-doubt, or revealing ridiculous ambitions to their wives all to safeguard a sense of self-reliance for which they seldom acknowledge. An isolation between the spouses ensues.

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She will pretend not to notice, but will begin putting extra effort into his lunches and present her Sunday best every 5pm, but after six months or so of his consistent distance and somehow worse indifference, she’ll learn to hate herself for a fault not her own. The purgatorial marriage will condition her to feel for her husband something worse than disdain–despair. One day she’ll wake up no longer longing for her husband’s loving glance, but accepts the reluctant smiles, the cold kisses, the quiet dinners, and will get through each day with domestic obligations.

He will get through each day with professional obligations, but will begin to thirst for the intimacy which his instinct won’t let him ignore. But for whatever reason, nature wouldn’t allow most men the patience to multitask, so instead they compartmentalize. He will acquire a second bed for relief and designate the first exclusively for rest. His latest distraction will keep the husband from paying enough attention to realize his wife has grown more of a stranger than the stranger he now pays to keep. But such flaws only too common to men I could never attribute to Mr. Jonathan Hill.

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The first August afternoon he came, he was no less content then he was the last day I saw him. Bell, Leah, and Delilah all worked Wednesdays as well, none of whom were above 25. Bell, a curvy Puerto Rican, lived in Bushwick. Leah, a blonde from Borough Park, had an average height, but the vertical lines commonly across her outfits and her thin frame gave the illusion of a taller height. Delilah, a Sicilian from Coney Island, either attracted or frightened clients with her loose temper, incessant cigarette breath, and soprano pitch. No one felt indifference for her. Well, no one except perhaps Mr. Hill.

Sarah hadn’t booked any clients for that afternoon, so we played Texas hold em’ while on standby.

“Maybe I have so much time to read because I don’t need to take care of a dog.” retorted Leah. She threw in a nickel.

“Maybe if you got a dawg like me and Bell,” said Delilah, matching Leah’s raise, “you wouldn’t be so damn uppity about everything from meals to poker minimums.” Delilah flicked half a centimeter of white crust from her Marlboro into the ashtray. “Why we only gotta cough up just 50¢ for a hand of poker is beyond me Leah. I know you got enough regulars to not be so damn stingy with your money.”

Bell tossed in a nickel.

Leah responded “I have enough to worry about these muggy afternoons when we waste time smoking and gambling when we all know how Sarah feels about doing either.” She paused to take a swig of her gin and tonic. “I don’t need to stress over losing more than what’s worth a lunch.” A fourth nickel was thrown. The first three cards were placed down facing up. Leah checked, and continued, “And frankly Del, I’d be more worried over my pocket change if I had as many customer complaints as you do.”

“Up yours Leah! And up Sarah’s!” Del snapped, throwing in a dime, “For Christ’s sake, it’s not my fault all these Wall Street rats forget they’re not damn royalty when I tell em’ I’m not bending over backwards whenever or however they say!”

Bel matched Delilah’s dime and inserted with a vexed smile “You’re Sarah’s favorite Leah.” She lit her second Marlboro. “Why you worry?”

The third dime was thrown in.

“I don’t worry. I stress.” She simultaneously flicked a dime to emphasizing that last syllable. “The more I stress, the less my clients tip. There’s a direct correlation”. She swallowed the rest of her drink.

After the fourth dime was thrown in, the fourth card was laid next to the first three.

“Check” said Leah.

“Boys don’t keep their tips in their pants because you’re having a bad day,” Delilah took her last drag and smothered the butt in the ashtray. “They keep em’ in their pants because they’re greedy bastards.” She threw in another nickel. “Men tip, boys don’t. And there’s nothing you can do behind that door that’ll make a man outta a boy.” She looked quite pleased with herself, so she lit another Marlboro.

“I fold.” Said Bel.

Before the third nickel could be thrown in, the buzzer went off. Leah rose to answer.

“I hope it’s an old broker” , wished Delilah, “Why do the married ones always tip better? I swear if I get one more penny-pinching CUNY rat from Flatbush, Imma start enforcing a damn age limit! I’m not taking anymore kids!”

Just before Delilah finished, Leah walked in with a man no taller than 5’9 with an average build. He wore round spectacles, a dark suit, held a dark gray fedora and looked about the waiting room with eyes half curious and half settled.

“Ladies this is Mr Hill.” Leah began. Mr Hill wasn’t exactly looking at anyone in particular, but sort of stared into the space which his company surrounded.

“This is Delilah,”

“Pleasure’s all mine Mr. Hill.” Delilah smiled as she shook his hand from the couch. His suit did not impress her enough to stand but his sufficient age had comforted her enough to replace her cigarette with gum. He looked 30.

“And here we have our exotic Bel,” Like Delilah, Bel only smiled and rose just enough to shake his hand over the card table and ashtray. “Lovely to meet you.” She said, almost exaggerating her accent.

As soon as his and Bel’s hands released each other, he seemed to automatically but without any rush turn toward the gray chair right of the couch, hoping to find someone else to settle for. When his inquisitive eyes landed on the pair belonging to the fourth card player on the gray chair, he asked,

“And what is your name?”

“Ninette.” I answered.

“Ninette, lead the way.”

“Can I get you anything to drink?” I asked.

Do you have any milk?” he inquired. No client had ever asked me that in the waiting room before.

“No, we do not.” He looked equally surprised as disappointed. After a moment or two looking around the waiting room, he asked, “Well uh, water will be just fine.” I poured him a glass of cold tap water. “This way” I said.

Mr. Hill brought the daily Wall Street Journal from the waiting room. Most clients preferred liquor, but he carried literature. His first sober motion upon entering the first room was to take a seat, open the newspaper, and read. His eyebrows exhibited a mood disgruntled but resolute. But he looked too complacent to desire any attention. Perhaps, as is not uncommon for new customers, he was shy.

To get regulars, you need to establish a consistent banter, sell whatever lie he wants to hear. Leah was born with the gregarious nature to make profitable conversation out of anything. Delilah never acquired the shame to keep herself from talking whenever the opportunity presented itself, which at least a third of her clients loved. Bel carried conversation in her second language easier than I did in my first. So I deliberated to begin small talk.

After fifteen minutes, I asked “What are you reading, Mr. Hill?”

“Jonathan.” He replied. His voice conveyed no anger, but the tone revealed that he found no joy in responding. Frankly, I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, nor what to make of his answer.

“I’m sorry?” I asked, refraining from any form of hostility or offence in my volume.

“Call me Jonathan.” He asserted. His serious tone kept such a declaration from being a friendly gesture. But was he demanding that I receive it as one?

“What are you reading, Jonathan?” I inquired. Perhaps he was enjoying himself, though his grave face gave no such indication.

“The Wall Street Journal.” He replied sardonically. He was enjoying himself. His voice was too stern to suggest that he was shy and his calm demeanor dissuaded any suggestion that he was nervous. His eyes stuck to the newspaper not out of fear of meeting mine, but out of no desire to do so. On the cover of his magazine, I read, “Social Workers Unionize: Commissioner Mitchell Renegotiates Raises”. One of Bel’s regular clients–a social worker–spoke of his interest in an impending strike for weeks. The Department of Social Services must have laid him off; he stopped seeing her just after the riots began. But Mr. Hill didn’t care about Bel, her former client, or the union. What did he care about?

“Well yes, I gathered that from the cover facing me. But on what news is the article which you’ve chosen to read, Jonathan?”

Mr. Hill’s eyes rose to meet mine. Even if not an iota conveyed it, one way or another, he was enjoying this–or he was a pompous idiot. “Welfare Workers’ Strike. Those damn social workers are starting some union or another.”

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“Do you sympathize?” I asked.

He raised his eyebrows. His face said, “Dear child, grownups have no reason to fight for labor rights or increased pay. Activism is for the youth with excessive energy or the jobless with excessive time. But how could you know? The world is such an opaque, unclear labyrinth for such a pretty thing like you. If you’re unlucky enough, you might understand when you’re older.” But whether he lacked the energy or the patience to speak his mind out loud, I still couldn’t tell. All I fished out of him was,“Any man ought to continue searching for a job if he doesn’t like the pay. Otherwise, he should take the pay he agreed to work for.”

His eyes had returned to the newspaper before he spoke. So, to learn whether or not he really did just want to read for the remainder of his time slot, I injected,

“I can’t say I agree.”

Mr. Hill gave no verbal answer, or any response for that matter, as if he were ignoring me to keep me from opening my mouth again. I couldn’t tell if I was more embarrassed, amused, or curious. I surrendered to reading an edition of “Better Homes & Gardens” that I found in the bathroom. I deduced that he wanted nothing more than to read, so I made no attempt to stop him. Neither of us raised our eyes again from our magazines for the remainder of the hour.

I didn’t spend very much time the following week thinking about Jonathan Hill. Behind the closed door, clients have conducted far stranger behavior than reading silently. Sure, I remembered and considered him a rather odd man once or twice those seven succeeding days, but odd men are not infrequent in this line of work. He did not stand out, not really.

On the warm Wednesday afternoon of the following week, Leah sat, reading Vogue, and Delilah read Brown’s “Sex and the Single Girl” in the waiting room. Bel was working in the first room.

Delilah raised her head from her book. “Why do men care so much about what we do and don’t do anyway? We don’t bother em’ over where they spend their nights or what they wear. Why they gotta worry so damn much about us and mind their own business?”

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re bored of their business.” Leah responded. Her eyes hadn’t ceased running over her magazine when she spoke.

Without giving Leah’s response any regard, Delilah quickly continued, “How can they prance around telling us to dress like nuns and drink like moormans when these same men smoke, drink, and tramp about with their own secretaries behind their wives’ backs. It’s ridiculous. I was just telling Sam the other night after I caught him at Giuseppe’s. I was saying ‘Sam, we been together for two years strong because we have trust. I can’t trust you around that bar with all those dishonest broads left and right.’ I said, ‘Sam, how can you expect me to stay loyal with you if you won’t with me. That’s not a double standard I can live with Sam. I have a lot of rich regulars I could call up at the drop of a pin. Remember that.’ I know I have a dirty mouth, but I ain’t no cheater.”

The buzzer rang. Leah shot a quick look in my direction to show her gratitude for an excuse to disrupt Delilah’s sermon. When she answered the door, I heard her greeted with that voice I hadn’t given too much thought to. Although I recognized the voice without effort, I hadn’t heard it conveyed in that tone before. I wouldn’t call the tone energetic, but it ran through the air with energy. A car works as an imperfect analogy. I wouldn’t call an automobile “electric”, but it needs electricity to run. There was an absence of energy in Mr. Hill’s voice before. Now there was, at least, a presence of energy.

“Ninnette,” Leah returned with an affable but possibly envious smile, “You remember Mr. Hill don’t you?”

I rose without haste as my eyes met his. “Of course. It’s good to see you, Mr. Hill.”

“Please, call me Jonathan.” He smiled with his hand extended.

I didn’t like his smile. It was too newly introduced to me to show off its teeth with an air too calm or too confident for my liking. I didn’t know his smile. It was a stranger to me but flashed its teeth like a new husband flashes his wife. But his smile had no right.

“Would you like a glass of milk Jonathan?” I shook his hand.

“That would be great, thanks.”

“Soy or whole Jonathan?”

“Uh, do you have 2%?”

I turned from the fridge to look at him with an indifferent expression. I probably stared for two seconds.

“No.”

He stared back with an incredulous smile for his own two seconds.

“Whole milk will be just fine.” His smile politely widened, introducing me to his canines. I poured him the glass, handed it to him, and walked to the second room. Neither of us spoke until we both sat in our chairs.

“Do you have any coasters?” He asked like he was in my parents’ house, preparing to meet them.

“Yes” I reached in the coffee table’s drawer, pulled a silver coaster out, and handed it to him. He placed his milk and coaster on the coffee table. He hadn’t brought literature.

He put his hands together with his fingers interlocked. His legs were spread and his feet were at the feet of his chair. He was leaning forward with his forearms on his legs, and looked about the room with a curiosity that he hadn’t brought last week, a curiosity that wielded little suspicion and bore a puerile, effortless hope. He looked around the room with a polite smile, and nodded his head almost restlessly.

“How has your week been?” He asked.

“Ordinary.”

I have never considered myself socially inept, or rather, socially awkward. But Mr Hill’s incessant dependence on conversation and my necessary curiosity of him for our dialogue’s continuation almost planted a social insecurity that I hadn’t known.

“How has your week been Jonathan?” I complied.

“Not half bad. My department only filed half the average number of claims and we signed triple as many plans as last week.” His smile beamed with pride, dying for me to ask about any of the jargon that he had just used.

“What is wrong with claims?” I asked.

“Well there’s nothing wrong with claims in and of themselves. You see, we need claims. Or at least, our policyholders need to be able to make claims. Otherwise no one would purchase our plans.” His tone wasn’t patronizing, but he was certainly happy with himself.

“If you need claims, Jonathan, why do you want as little as possible?”

He gave a half chuckle, removed his glasses, folded them, and proceeded to wave them like a wand.

“Well, when claims are proven, we need to pay the policyholders. And I’m not paid to hand out checks. I’m paid to sign new policyholders. But they’ll only sign if I promise we’ll write off a check when the disaster hits.”

I gave up and took the bait, “What do you do for work Jonathan?”

His smile had exhausted its powers. It was now his eyebrows which took point in showing how happy he was with my question. He raised both as high as he could and answered,

“I’m the manager for State Farm’s homeowners insurance policy in the New York City branch.”

“What do your policyholders file claims for?”

“Well, whenever someone’s house suffers damage, whether it’s, for example, storm damage or a fire, they file a claim so that we pay for the repair.”

“Does the revenue of State Farm paying for the repair of a loyal customer’s home upset you Jonathan?”

He squinted his eyes, but his smile remained as large as when he had finished talking. He breathed something that sounded like a half chuckle and a half scoff.

“I just don’t like to hear that a policyholder’s house has been damaged. It’s only salt in the wound that it hurts my quarterly reports.”

“It’s odd that we’re sometimes paid to keep our clients from being satisfied.” I pointed out.

He took a sip. “Yes,” he replied, his eyes then glaring but his white smile as wide as ever. He licked the milk from his lips. “It is odd.”

I had a salad for lunch and read in the waiting room. When the buzzer went off, I looked at the clock above the couch. “1:00 sharp” I thought. I hadn’t looked at the time two weeks ago when Mr. Hill paid his first visit, but I ran our session from 1:15-2:15pm. Last week, I looked at the clock as soon as I heard his voice greet Leah’s, at which moment it wasn’t 40 seconds past 1:00. In spite of his oddities, the obsessive punctuality might have stood out the most to me among all of his characteristics. I rose and opened the door, without any surprise to find an unscheduled Mr. Hill waiting on the other side of the door.

“Hello Ninette!” His smile introduced me to the newest member of its orchestra; the dark space in between his top and bottom teeth. “It’s lovely to see you! May I come in?”

“Of course.” I led him to the kitchenette.

“You look quite lovely today.”He said.

“Thank you.” I opened the fridge, took a quart of 2% milk and pulled a glass out of the cabinet.

“Where are the rest of the girls?”

“Working.” I poured him a glass.

“You’re a gem, Ninette! I don’t deserve you.”

“Sarah’s general ledger says otherwise.”
I led him to the fourth room. I picked up my novel from the card table on our way. After we entered, I offered him the Lawson chair opposite to the bed and I pulled the cuckchair from the far corner until it was within two feet of him. He sat once I did.

“Not half bad weather we’re having.” He exclaimed with a smile as large as ever.

“Well, it’s a bit hot. But I suppose we can’t expect any less from an August afternoon without any overhead.”

“I’m used to worse.” He playfully bragged.

“Are you not from Brooklyn, Jonathan?”

“Not originally, no. I’m from Pasadena, a town outside Baltimore. I came up here to study business at Columbia, got an internship with State Farm my junior year, and haven’t looked back.”

“Do you ever miss Maryland?”

“Not often. The view from my office alone is better than any you’ll find in Baltimore. And my flat in Carroll Gardens beats any suburb I’ve ever seen on the Chesapeake. You should come by sometime.”

He spoke with such joy and pride that you would’ve thought he inherited George Calvert’s charter and bartered a ship of blankets for New Amsterdam.

“Do you like baseball?” He asked with innocence.

“I’ve never watched a full game.”

“An absurd tragedy! I’m not sure if there’s any pleasure quite as rewarding as participating in an Orioles’ victory.”

“When did you last watch a baseball game Jonathan?”

“Last night!” He nearly jumped out of his chair, “We played the Yankees. I took the subway up to The Bronx. The weather was perfect!” He was growing dramatic and began incorporating his hands in his storytelling.

“We were down 4-6 at the top of the fifth inning, you see, with only one strike out left. Thad Tillotson was pitching. Curt Blefary was on third base and Roznovsky was on second. Dave May walks up to bat.” He knelt in his chair and pivoted his torso toward me, sort of crouching over.

“Dave hits a single. Blefary runs home!” His eyes began flaring.

“Dooley Womack replaces Tillotson. Russ Synder walks up to the plate. It’s a wild pitch. Roznovsky slides for the home plate!” He propelled his right hand six inches past my face like he was pretending it was an airplane.

“Paul Blair steps up and hits a double! Dave May scores a run!” Almost to my shame, I have never seen a man look so happy in that room before or since.

“Frank Robinson swaggers up to the plate.” There was something mischievous in his eyes, without losing any of the bliss.

“Str-uuuu-ike One!” He began announcing in a hoarse voice, imitating the umpire.

“Str-uuuuuuuu-ike TWO!” Although he was still kneeling on the Lawson, he had erected as tall as he could, like an unpredictable cobra.

“Womack wants to get Robinson out. He’s one pitch away from the bottom of the fifth inning. He gets fancy, tries to throw a low ball, but Bob Tillman can’t catch it! It’s a wild pitch! Snyder and Blair run home! We’re up 9-6! We’ve sealed our victory!” Even if he only lifted himself an inch, Mr. Hill jumped in his chair. Without any rush, he sat back down as if he remembered that he was in a civilized part of the world. I think he had a drop or two of sweat on his forehead.

“They made a comeback, but they never took the lead again. We won 11-10.” He took out a handkerchief, wiped his glasses and gave a satisfied sigh.

“What a fantastic exhibit. It’s a real shame you don’t watch baseball.”

Brooklyn was cool the following Wednesday. I can hardly recall a cooler day in August with sunshine. Leah spoke of the price of eggs while she ate her salad. I had made sure to finish my lunch by then. Just as expected, he rang the buzzer at 1:00 sharp. With his milk I met him behind Leah in the waiting room. He held the daily Wall Street Journal in one hand, took the glass with the other without looking at me and stared at the wall.

“This way.” I said.

I brought him to the third room. He sat on the left side of the loveseat. He had begun reading by the time I sat on the end of the bed.

“How has work been this week Jonathan?”

“Probably no worse than yours.” He didn’t stop reading.

“Oh no. Did a policyholder ask that you repair a roof to shelter his family?”

He paused, then raised his eyes and shot me a look as resentful as surprised.

“I don’t pay Sarah for your questions, I pay her for your company. The details of my honest work are of no concern of yours.”

“I would hardly call it ‘my company’ Jonathan. Half the time you’re paying for a stranger to sit three feet away from you while you read a newspaper.”

“And that’s queer to you isn’t it?” He rose and began speaking with a tone of authority along with resentment.

“I know you prefer the predictable man, the man who speaks to you with the familiarity and comfort that he had on his honeymoon. And why wouldn’t you? It makes for an easy customer. You’re like a cigarette dispenser watching your addicted clientele pay, get a temporary fix, and come back waving their bills higher and wanting your product even more than before. You pray on the starving, the desolate, the weak.”

“You’re not weak Jonathan?”

“I’m resolute. I don’t come here every week out of desperation but for a simple pleasure, a pleasure no less natural than enjoying a ribeye on a holiday or a drink at the end of the week. To survive, our species rewards itself with enormous delight for the most simple but most important chores to continue the human race; eat, drink, and reproduce. And as long as we keep such activity within moderation, we have the formula to live pleasant lives.

“But like mules that won’t stop eating, men in every corner of this world follow these simple pleasures to no end. They eat themselves to obesity, drink away any rationality they have left, or grovel into the most shameless establishments and contract diseases looking for a love they have neither the patience nor the self-control to obtain honestly. But I’m thankful. They remind me that, without moderation, man is an animal. What separates man from his neighbors of the animal kingdom is this choice–No, the difference is making the right choice. Any man who follows his passions like an animal is worse than an animal; he threw away his birthright for base pleasures out of fear of something greater. Beasts can only be brutes, but a brutish man is also a coward.”

He stood by the window by then, looking down on the brutes scrambling across Washington Avenue.

“Would you not call this a shameless establishment Jonathan?”

He continued looking out the window. “I won’t be contracting any diseases here. You see, I have the antidote. I found it a few years ago in Prospect Park.

“As a young man, I counted down the days until I graduated high school. I longed for the pleasures that I had not had access to in Pasadena. As soon as I made my way up to Columbia, I tried it all: women, whisky, weed. But I grew tired, tired of the repetition, and tired of losing the drive. What I really loved was the drive. But do you think I have any drive for another drink when I’m facedown in a toilet? Do you think I have any drive to speak to a woman lying in bed after I’ve spent her? In that intolerable and long aftermath of such a short glimpse of satisfaction, I would rather be anywhere else than in bed with a stranger.

“One night, I was entertaining a blonde I had met in a bar on Union Street. We started for her apartment in Windsor Terrace and cut through the park. She stumbled onto a bench. Before I could ask her if she needed a minute, I smelled a puddle of vomit at my feet. In that moment, I looked at that poor, pathetic creature barely able to sit up straight, let alone string a sentence together. I could have brought her back to mine and had my way, but an overpowering sensation silenced my lust. This feeling dwarfed any brief pleasures I had begged for up until that point. I named this new antidote Self-Respect. I paid for the degenerate’s cab and sent her back to her apartment. I walked home more satisfied than any woman had ever made me.

“Men don’t want sex Ninette, they want the ability to have sex. They waste money, energy, and pride chasing women merely to insure themselves that they can. That’s why we leave as soon as we finish. Once we’ve surpassed all of your defenses and you show us the most vulnerable part of yourselves, we have nothing left to prove to ourselves.”

That’s it. That’s why he would never meet me in public, let alone watch a baseball game with me. Even though the decency of our conduct always remained within the limit of the public’s toleration, he would never enjoy such conduct without the constant opportunity to engage indecently. He got off to the potential, not the activity.

“That night, that dame made herself as available to me as I could have wanted. But I’m not brute, I’m a man who chose moderation. That night, I marched triumphantly back to my apartment, enjoying my conquest over that beautiful girl longer than any brute could with a Self-Respect no beast could taste. Knowing the inevitable dissatisfaction of any based pleasure paired with restraint will transcend any man beyond the beast he was born as.

“That’s not to say sex is a disease. It has its purposes. I’ll gladly hold a door open for a beautiful young lady, but that’s only thanks to my reproductive instincts. Such instincts are quite lovely when they’re held in their place. Or for another example, I quite enjoy our little sessions Ninette. You’re like a…dry salad that a healthy man enjoys every day. Or, a glass of milk.” He took three long gulps.

I might have been able to keep my mouth shut, as I normally have no problem doing. But just before his lips had touched the glass, that audacious smile showed itself again, and I snapped.

“You’re not Special Mr. Hill. You’re actually quite regular.”

His smile disappeared. His face returned to what it was when he looked at me from his newspaper, but with a hint of shock.

“As difficult as it may be for a man as sad and alone as yourself to fathom, not all people use sex as a tool for pleasure. There’s more to sex than strangers. There are families. There is love.”

“What do you know about love? You think I come here because I love you? I love you as much as I love a brand of lettuce. You are nothing to me! You are nothing! Nothing you do, nothing you are is of any value to me! Your value is your availability. You are flour at the bottom of a grain reserve that will spoil before any John Deer will ever make a dough out of.” He stomped through the third room’s door and let himself out. Better men have made me feel worse.

Peter Shanley graduated from Thomas More College in 2025 with a Bachelor’s in Liberal Arts. He works as a bartender near his childhood hometown along the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

“And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place!” –Genesis 28:17

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Comes again summer’s end: when the evening cool tastes of gin, grilled salmon, and citronella; when the screened verandas brim with pool club gossip, lamentations over rained-out barbecues, and complaints about the approaching school-year schedule; when the pallid glimmer of the first star, lonesome in the purple field of heaven, induces an intoxicating admixture of melancholy and desire. Soon the trees will stand their long naked vigil, and the days grow hard and dim, and the townspeople trudge down Main Street in duck boots, cursing gray slush. But tonight, these inevitabilities hover just beyond the languid glow of tabletop lanterns, menacing but fundamentally abstract, like the rumor of Vandals crossing a far mountain. And the moment, haunted by memory of foregone opportunities, prepares to ripen, and burst — in this, the last hour, the very last hour, of the sunburnt season.

See now this scrap of time and space: sweet New England, shortly after the millennium! A stately Queen Anne manse at the corner of Rector and Academy, across the street from St. George of the Empty Parking Lot and the grassy common where ghosts of revolutionary militiamen still bow their heads at the whisper of Liberty. This abode, the jewel of the hill district: all gables and bay windows and gingerbread trim, anchored by an imposing tower and circumscribed by a wide porch, from which one may espy the sailboat-specked harbor. The porch, adorned with potted geraniums and illumined by tasteful wrought iron fixtures, is presently populated with the flower of the local gentry: men and women, etc., of superior education and ordinary piety, equipped with admirable manners and the truest ideas yet conceived by society. Despite variously hyphenated and acronymized identities, they share a uniform sense of righteousness and predestination, mysteriously inherited from the saints who planted the town just ere the regicide of Charles I. Pure souls! Advanced souls! Each and every fluent in the idiom of progress, attuned to the signals of the daemon who regulates this dismal aeon. Not one guilty of forbidden prejudice or ignorant of the sentiments that guarantee moral sophistication. How earnestly these blessed of the earth yearn to “do better,” how ferociously they undertake penance for yesterday’s crimes. When not otherwise occupied by the luxuries and recreations of their class, of course. Watch them — see them — chitter-chatter in the vesperal shade, in the sharp and creeping chill.

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Then round back the house. In a spacious yard enclosed by a wall of rhododendron and hydrangea, two brothers at the threshold of adolescence sprawl unselfconsciously on the lawn, watching the darkness gradually reveal itself from the water. For here night is birthed from the sea and conveys the sea’s strange and frightening allure: the promise of being submersed, washed clean, obliterated.

One of the boys, a gangly creature framed of bone and sinew, without a pinch of fat or muscle, taps and taps again the entrancing gadget that never leaves his hand. He groans with exaggerated abandon as he absorbs the spectacle of mirth and cheer emanating from the contraption, exasperated that such delectable amusements should be unfolding without his participation. Rolling onto his side, he props himself up by the elbow, his visage fixed in a rictus of anguish. “I’m done,” he bellows. “I’m totally done. The thing is, it’s going to be lit. So, yeah, I don’t care about being grounded or whatever. I’m going.”

The other boy, broad and corpulent with a bulbous chin sporting an intimation of acne vulgaris, emits a sequence of tortured gurgles. The rude quality of his speech and the porcine cast of his looks create the impression of a somnolent intellect tenuously manipulating a malformed physique. Indeed, at a glance, he appears to wear a look of pathetic vacuity and mild bemusement, as if perplexed and perhaps a little stunned by the relentless churn of the visible realm. But to peer carefully into his eyes is to apprehend, behind the superficial sheen of startled witlessness, a keen and lustrous innocence, which betokens the presence of something lofty, celeritous, immaculate. The first boy, the narrow boy, snorts. “Don’t sweat it. I’ll say we’re snagging snacks from the store. Hey, stay here if you want. But I’m bouncing. I’m not missing it because mom’s nuts. School’s next week. m’I supposed to just sit here and rot or whatever? Bro, come on. Don’t be like that. She is nuts. You know. Just facts. Anyway.” He pauses and pats his brother’s shoulder, sorry for having subjected him to such ruthless judgments and enthusiastic declarations. Changing tones, he explains solemnly that the matter at hand entails no deception, since they will indeed “buy some junk, maybe a couple Gatorades” before pursuing more pressing business. The logical power of this equivocation seems invincible, and the two rise confidently from their bed of grass, hastening to secure the maternal benediction.

The porch is thick with partygoers. Their mother sits cross-legged on a loveseat, gulping excitedly from an immense goblet of white wine while enumerating the gross indecencies of the present administration to a guest whose earnest regard suggests either the recognition of mutual political sympathies or the dawning of (misguided) romantic ambition. She chastens the boys for interrupting her most excellent indictment of the president and, regaining composure, turns to her companion on the loveseat — smiles. “Finally,” says she, “we managed to get Everett in with Dr. Chadha. Exactly. Chadha. Outside Cambridge? But you wouldn’t believe the hoops. I’m serious. Cray-zy. Thankfully, James knows someone — Barry? Berry? Can’t quite...” She pauses and wipes away the film of perspiration from Everett’s upper lip. “But it goes to show,” their mother continues, “the nature of things. I mean, just change the circumstances. Can you imagine if we — well, you know. It’s just — privilege.” And having uttered this noble incantation, she bows slightly, as if to render obeisance to a brooding idol. Her seatmate, too, reverently inclines his head, then inquires about the other boy’s academic fortunes. “Actually, Nolan starts AP this year,” his mother responds gaily, flush with a species of gratification approaching the sensual. She spends the next few minutes surveying his achievements in subjects scientific and mathematical, but suddenly her pleasure wanes, and she concludes sorrowfully that “questions of equity” may “preclude advancement in STEM.” Evidently perturbed, she studies her companion’s solicitous face. He respects the delicacy of her predicament: one must succeed, but not by offending principles of first importance.

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Taking advantage of the interval of philosophical quietude, Nolan discloses that he and Everett intend to “go hang around, if it’s okay.” Their mother glances at the electronic bauble on her wrist and queries their proposed itinerary, which (Nolan elucidates) consists mainly of “not much, just walking around downtown, or the tennis courts,” and perhaps “grabbing some drinks from CVS” — but, he adds hastily, “nothing sugary.” Satisfied by these representations, she demands a text every thirty minutes and orders their return by ten o’clock, since they have a “busy agenda tomorrow” (Sunday). Nolan bounds off into the night, a whizzing rocket; Everett lumbers behind, bringing up the rear at a cow-like trot.

There they go! Free and in motion. Accelerating, moment by moment, toward their appointed portion. The night tonight is vivid and cavernous. High set in the chambers and the upper chambers, the constellated host exudes a transmogrifying glamor, so that the features and fundaments of the town — the raised gardens and hissing sprinklers, the painted fire hydrants and rose-festooned fences, the yard signs trumpeting ethical axioms hitherto unguessed by man — assume a wonderful and heartbreaking aspect. Downpouring from the firmament, this stellar apaugasma anoints the mundane suburban arrangement, and the children who mingle with the superlunar energies find themselves hallowed and converted from one substance to another. Mark well the footfalls of the generation of this place! The younglings wander and roam, bedecked in moonray, possessed by the spectral glow of their devices, with which they capture and catalogue the pretenses of youth. Through the grotto of night — its ceiling soundless depth, its pillars age-old light — they proceed as supplicants, performing a rite comprehendible only in review. (And this temple, did not you once enter therein? Once make its liturgy your own? Remember the door? Approach it again if you would — extend your hand — take the latch!)

“It looks so sick,” gasps Nolan as they make their way downtown, his eyes absorbing an interminable ribbon of significant pixels. He squints at Everett. The quivering pudge of his brother’s face suggests inchoate reluctance. (Or is it regret? Or is it mourning?) Nolan sighs. “Look,” he explains, “this baddie” he knows from Baybridge, who has a “kind of sweet name” (Lotty), and who “sends freaky stuff,” is, or will soon be, at the cemetery; moreover, she will, surely, remember him from “that dumb rager on the cliffs,” a memory he hopes to exploit to achieve some ill-defined end. “What I’m trying to say,” Nolan summarizes, “is you have to chill. It’s good vibes. Plus, this could be important. You get what I’m getting at, right?”

A few minutes and the brothers are walking among weatherworn headstones. Shortly, they arrive at a beech tree of prodigious dimensions, the leafy baldachin of which overhangs a platoon of chirping and giggling adolescents — utterly oblivious to ultimate consequence, and enduring judgment, and impenetrable gloom — whose unsettled faces are jaundiced by the dull communication of light from the screens of compulsively scrutinized devices, those ubiquitous instruments of manufactured experience.

Music extolling the benefits of opiated cough syrup seeps — now in jerks, now in undulations — through the interstices of the variegated and overlapping conversations. Time melts, dissolves in the strong solution of teenage frolic. Through the curtain of darkness, a figure emerges, a lean kid in basketball jersey and flat brim cap, bearing a plastic shopping bag: “Yooooo!” “Yooooo Colin, what’s good,” someone calls. Colin hoots and rustles the plastic shopping bag teasingly. “I got the grimmest thing,” he announces, and empties the contents of the bag onto the ground. Nolan pushes to the fore of the assemblage and looks upon the treasure Colin has procured: the mangled corpse of a housecat, tender midsection flattened and imprinted with tread marks, tongue lolling from its mouth, one eye dangling from its socket by a red rope of nerve. Colin sneers at the onlookers, who gasp in revulsion — all save Lotty (that Lotty), a tanned wisp with pink braces, arched eyebrows, and a sherbet orange vape pen.

She titters-titters, documenting the grizzly remains with her device while offering commentary for the entertainment of digital familiars: “This thing’s eye — OMG — so gross — like a cherry on a string.” Meanwhile, Colin scans the crowd with a frigid and deliberate gaze, a flicker of mischief gaining shape in the murk of his simian consciousness. “I thought of something dope,” he laughs. “It’ll be wicked funny.” As he explains the plot aloud, Lotty’s pupils dilate with venomous glee. “I’m dead,” she screeches, and frantically attempts to enlist Nolan in the conspiracy, explaining how it will be “perfect,” “absolutely wild,” and “the funniest thing — ever.” She grazes his shoulder with her fingertips, murmuring “don’t be lame.”

Nolan tests the faces of those around him. He intuits their expectation, their fervent and inexplicable yearning for an act of gratuitous humiliation. Unsteady, sweating from the armpits, he approaches Everett, who lingers on the periphery, beyond the snickering knot, his mien impassive. “Close your eyes, man. Just close them. Uh, it’s — like a game, sort of a joke,” Nolan offers haltingly as he guides Everett to the altar of sacrifice. “Just, like, be cool. Alright? Keep ’em shut!” Lotty bites her tongue with relish, shudders with delight as Everett passes, his brother leading him by the hand. “Let’s go, moron,” badgers Colin. Chanting, shrieks, exultation. “Don’t worry,” croaks Nolan as he positions Everett in the center of the seething mob. “You’re — you’re a king.” So, Everett stands by himself — blank, blind.

Colin thrusts a stick, spear-like, into the wretched cat carcass, producing a wet thwck. Then hoists the impaled creature before Everett’s face, so that the boy and the lifeless beast are nose to nose, all but smooching. Lotty squeals and prances triumphantly, working her gadget with a sort of insane virtuosity, capturing eternal seconds, lest a shred of mortification should escape exhibition. At the tremendous roar of laughter, Everett opens his little pinched eyes. He looks upon the animal — close enough to smell — with its blood-matted fur, its dislocated bones, its swollen tongue, its awful eye: he looks with consideration, tenderness. Colin scowls, dismayed by Everett’s tranquility, and casts aside the stick. Lotty, too, abruptly grows bored, her frenzied exhilaration giving way to affected tedium. “This is why you love me,” she coos to her device, and turns around.

BUT AS SHE DOES, THERE COMES A SOUND: THE CLAP OF THUNDER, THE TUMULT OF WAVES, THE TURNING OF WHEELS!

Everett speaks. He utters a command — or something more? The terrible gravity of his voice causes everyone to freeze, fall silent. Everett steps forward and grasps Lotty’s hand. His motions betray no hint of congenital oafishness. He seems to have shed the vile body altogether. Drawing Lotty to his breast, he lifts her off the ground, kisses her forehead fraternally (forgiven, forgiven!), and returns her to the earth. She stands absolutely still: delivered, transported. Tears of myrrh flow down her cheeks, soaking the ground in great droplets. “You stupid slug,” Colin exclaims incredulously. He advances toward Everett — then stops, arm half-raised, fist half-clenched, overcome by fear: genuflects. Nolan, too, staggers and reels, surpassing perplexed, for he looks upon his brother only to find a stranger — to find strangeness, and Blessing itself. He peers upon him anew, as if for the first time. Has his mother ever seen this? (Oh, his mother — on the loveseat, with her agenda, in the thrall of night!) Has anyone in the world ever seen this? Nolan stares — they all stare, together and alone — rapt in wonder. Behold the face: awful, shining, resplendent. Holy dread!

Round about Everett, the infinite compass of creation contracts to a point, tense with the germinal power of that hidden and informing radiance that everyone has glimpsed and no one has expressed. Yea, the splendor is with him, and with his place. It is as wrath, elemental and transcendent; it is as ecstasy, excruciating and magnificent. It searches out the recesses. It tends unto an ineffable end. Obscurely at first, and then with understanding, the watchers discern the manifestation and its import. They realize and they tremble. This — this — is the bringing down and the raising up, the trumpet and the triumph, the sifting and the sentence. As they become (now!) all light, there rings the everlasting and everpotent echo: O divine countenance, O charity, O annihilating charity!

Philip Primeau writes from Rhode Island. His work has appeared in Crisis, Catholic World Report, and Homiletic & Pastoral Review, among other places. He publishes regularly at his Substack, Gladsome Light (gladsomelight.substack.com). He can be contacted at primeau.philip1@gmail.com.

It was easy pulling the big buck down the hill. He was a man, as the bow hunters in the Deep South say, not an ounce under two hundred pounds and with a fine symmetrical rack coming up to eight high points. I put him down fifteen yards from the back porch of the hunting camp at the forked trunk of an old red oak with a load of number four buck in the heart and lungs. He was still breathing when I walked over, with the late November light slipping quickly from the hilltop and the chill creeping up to ghost the smoke from the barrel. His breath came in short, rapid grunts, and I fired again and he fell silent and I stood in the cold letting my heart slow down.

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I thought I might pass out when I first saw him edge up over the shoulder of the hill. There were two does feeding in front of me, and I’d nearly given in and raised the gun, not knowing when I’d hunt again, when he came into sight. I couldn’t turn my head, the does were so close, and I watched him from the corner of my eye feeling like I’d keel over any second. He came, dipping his head to sip acorns from the red and yellow litter of the oaks and the hickories growing dim in the fading day. He came in range, and I raised the gun as he passed behind an oak and held the bead on his shoulder as he kept coming and kept coming and passed behind the nearest tree, the forked oak, and when he paused to eat again, just beyond the tree now, I fired.

That was the easy part, killing him, even if the sight of him about knocked me out, and dragging him down the hill to a low place where I could gut him and leave the pile for the foxes and the coyotes and the raccoons to glut themselves. Having killed him, I had to clean him and get him to the processors and that was the part I didn’t really feel like fooling with, the part that almost stopped me pulling the trigger to begin with. But I killed him and dragged the heavy body down the hill, hauling him by a horn, with the belly and the legs sliding, almost catching me where the hill ran steep and the leaves slicked underfoot, and the thick animal stink of him rose up around me in the dusk.

Down in the trees it was truly dark and as soon as I reached into my jacket pocket I remembered that I’d left the headlight on the shelf in the garage back home. So I went to work almost blind. I cut a hole around his anus and then, gripping his balls, feeling them slip around in the hairy sac, I sliced them off and flung them away and heard them clatter in the leaves. I spread the hard, muscular hind legs with my knees and lifted the cut skin in the groin between two fingers and, lifting to keep the blade from puncturing the intestines, I slit the belly up to the breastbone. I sawed through up to the throat and reaching in, feeling my hands go warm with blood, I cut where I thought the windpipe ought to be and gripped what I hoped was the esophagus and pulled, and somehow the guts all came free and poured out into the leaves, the intestines gleaming wet and silvery in the dark and the stench of the body swelling around me, and I stepped away, panting in the cold.

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That was still the easy part, and even gutted he still half-killed me dragging him back up the hill. I knew I’d never get him to the processors before they closed but still, feeling there was no other choice, I pulled him as hard and as fast as I could. After fifteen steps, I stopped and sat gasping on my ass in the slithering leaves. The rush of the hunt had faded and I almost wanted to cry for a moment, sitting there beside this thing I’d killed in the dark with the next day’s work creeping up toward me through the night.

That’s when the rumors came back to me.

They’d called me out to the police station to snake out their sewer line, which usually happens a couple times of year, depending how heavy the rain is and how much time the deputies have to be sitting around eating Sonic and bombing the porcelain. The station sits at the foot of a hill with a gleaming white Catholic Church on top, St. John the Baptist, and I always used to joke about the name with my first wife, who’d brought me along every Sunday with her to First Baptist. I’d say well how bout them Baptist Catholics as we drove home on Sundays or past the hill on a trip out to fish and picnic at Lake Degray. Then we had my wife’s funeral and I didn’t joke about it anymore. But I did start going to St. John’s eventually because my second wife, Lily Ann, is Catholic. She was the nurse who looked after Maddie most days, and a long time later, things happening as they sometimes do, I started coming to St. John’s. The kids, too. They took to Lil even when their mom was sick, and Lil treats them like her own, but we’re still hoping we might get to have another one of these days. Anyway, I still don’t joke about St. John’s, but if anybody asks, I still say I’m Baptist.

The ladies at the station are all a lot older than me and they all like flirting with me. It’s always old ladies who flirt with me and that suits me just fine. But today they hadn’t wanted to flirt. Today all they wanted to do was talk about the serial killer. He’s out up the Northwoods, they said. He’s up around Blacksbake. He’s watching the trails up in the mountains. They said he killed women and cut them up and God knows what all else. They said he’d killed three men, too, and that no, the police wouldn’t put anything in the news yet because they wanted him to slip up.

It was hard, in the cool autumn light, with the breeze shaking a million stars from the lake and the pine tops swaying on the ridges and the Cadillacs and Lincolns easing sleepily up and down Grand Avenue to think that Hot Springs, which over the centuries has been a neutral ground to Indians and Chicago gangsters and everybody else with a tooth or gut ache, might now be hosting a serial killer. But I called Lil once anyway when I stepped out to the truck for another box of gloves, trying to tell from her voice if anything was wrong, and I called her again sitting there in the leaves with the dead deer and the cold wind starting up in the trees. She said the kids were sleeping and she was glad about the deer. She sounded happy, and my breathing eased and I couldn’t feel my heart beating anymore. We said goodbye, and I started once again up the hill.

It took me seven stops to bring him up, and every time I pulled and the blood beat in my ears I felt afraid again, looking around in the dark that had mounted to its fullness, but we reached the top, and I ran a hose from the camp to the body where it lay beneath a little dogwood and set the hose in the body cavity and let the water run the blood out into the moss.

I called the processor and they asked how soon I could be there. I told them half an hour and they said they were closing up in fifteen minutes. We were both silent for a moment and then I said, “Well, what do you think I oughtta do?”

“Hm. Ain’t too cold tonight. You might could throw him in back the truck with a bunch a ice.”

“Alright,” I said. “What time y’all open tomorrow?”

“Bout eight.”

“See y’all then,” I said.

It was hard to put it in the back of the truck because I didn’t have a truck. What I had was the old Chevy plumber’s van with the paint chipped off half the hood and a cargo load of brass fittings, copper pipe, PVC, channel locks, hammers, meter keys and O rings and all the other things that squeak and rattle around from drain clearing to toilet replacing to winterising to outdoor fireplace installing all week long. Today I could hunt because Mr. Wilson out by Lake Ouachita called me when I was finishing up at the police station to say he wanted to go try for walleye this afternoon and would I mind if we rescheduled. So that was when I called Lil, both to hear her voice and to ask without asking if she was ok, and it was her idea for me to go try for a deer and I mean you deserve a little break and the girls and I are having a good old time, so go on.

I shut off the hose and opened the van and cleaned out the middle of the bay where I’d left some discarded pipe and the cardboard box from the new toilet I’d put in at Frank Dozier’s. I broke the cardboard down and spread it in the floor and pushed the old toilet up against the back of the cab. I unrolled a tarp and spread it over the cardboard, folding up the edges like tin foil to catch grease in a roasting pan.

The hardest part was getting the deer’s front end up into the van. I stood there looking at him in the starlight falling on me from a hundred thousand pinpricks in the cold air. I got up in the van and squatted on the bumper and tried pulling him up by the horns but that about broke my back. I got down and stood there panting for a minute and finally bent down and grabbed him from behind under the forelegs, his shoulders against my chest, and shoved him over into the bay so I was laying down next to him on the tarp with my head between his horns. Then I crawled up, gripping an antler to make sure he wouldn’t slide back out, and sat on the toilet and hauled him the rest of the way in. The stink of him blended with the baked-in odor of the plumbing business and I got out and left the doors open while I washed my hands and arms at the outdoor sink and gathered up the gun and the knives and rolled the hose back up in its place.

I drove up around the edge of town for home, the van creaking around the curves of the roads as they followed the creek beds and the junk in the back rattling and the body sliding a little on the tarp as we went up the hills and down.

There’s a Walmart in the last valley before our house, at the start of the steep that climbs up into the North Woods where we’ve lived these five years. I pulled into the gas station at the head of the parking lot, parked next to the ice freezer with the penguin and the polar bear looking at each other on the silver doors, and walked up to the glassed-in booth like a house of fluorescent light where a lady in her fifties sat glowing in a neon vest.

“Whatcha need, honey?”

“How about a hundred pounds of ice?”

“Shew! Must be some kinda party, huh?”

“Well, you might say that.”

And I paid her and she gave me my change, still laughing, and I tossed the ten ice bags in back with the body and drove off.

So I got home in the deep dark, with the children asleep in their beds and Lil reading in the green chair in the corner of the living room. She stood up when I came in and tiptoed across the room to me, stretching and then reaching up to kiss me.

“Mm,” she said.

“Mm yourself,” I said.

“You smell like a deer.”

“I oughta. Scared I might make you jealous telling what I had to do to get him in the van.”

“You put a deer in the van?”

We went out to have a look. She told me Jamie’d got a tick on her leg that afternoon playing in the rocks out back and I said it was mighty late for ticks and she said we hadn’t had a good freeze yet which was true but she’d got the tick out, head and all, and the bite had already gone down. Then the van doors creaked open and the tail lit up all jaundiced in the flood light over the garage and the ice gleamed like a hundred pounds of eyes.

“Lord, I hope you did that tarp right,” she said.

I climbed up and straddled him and started stuffing ice bags in the body cavity. Then I outlined him with the other bags and climbed back out.

“Think he’ll keep alright?” she said.

“I suppose. Oughta be like a cooler in here.”

“Well. Come on and get you a shower.”

“Anything to eat?”

“You just get yourself cleaned up.”

When I came back to the kitchen she had a steak out for me with mashed potatoes and broccoli. She poured me a beer and herself a glass of wine and she asked me what the ladies down the station tried on me today and I laughed and said nothing they ain’t tried before and she said they better not or they’d have her in the cells to keep ‘em company. But it got me thinking about the man maybe somewhere out in the woods so I asked her if she’d heard anything good today and she said no had I, and I said nothing but the sound of a shotgun.

She finished her wine and set the glass beside the sink and stood at the kitchen island and stretched up on her tiptoes again and yawned with her head thrown back and her arms raised and her hands behind her head like a statue I saw in a book one time, and the white light seemed to fill her yellow hair like water and it gleamed on the points of her teeth like stars.

“Well,” she said, “I’m going to bed. You come on when you’re ready.”

There was something in her voice and in the way she glanced back and waved, like a child, as she vanished down the dark of the hall that pricked my ears up a little, so to speak. But I sat and finished my food and drained the beer. Then I washed the plate, the fork, the knife, and the two glasses and set them on the drying rack. Then I, too, went down the hall into the dark.

It was one of the times, which isn’t every time, but I thank the Lord often enough with Lily and with Maddie before her when everything else vanished. The freak in the woods. The deer gutted and dragged up and iced. Mr. Fenton’s sprinkler system and the slow drain at the church and the new garbage disposal Mrs. Winter wanted out in. They fell away without my noticing as we found each other and kept finding until everything vanished into one. And slowly it all came back, our breathing and the beat of blood and the weight of myself against her and I prayed well if that doesn’t make a child then what in this world could. And I lay beside her and she held me close and slowly I felt her heart slow and her touch grow gentler and gentler as she drifted off to sleep.

It took me a while to cool down. And while I waited the day past and the day to come came back to me, too. I started figuring what I’d need to pick up at the supply house, ticking off the jobs in my head. I’d have to be quick at the processors, make sure I was there right at opening. Might have to run by the self-wash, too, at least to spray the tarp down. Then I got to thinking about the head. I wasn’t gonna mess around with a shoulder mount. Too many things needed saving for. But I did want to keep the horns. I figured they could cut the head off for me at the processors, but that might mean another trip out to pick it up, and besides, I wanted to get the head in the ground as fast as possible while it wasn’t frozen too bad. It was tough ground alright, full of rocks, and when it froze it turned about to stone.

Lily was sleeping hard, breathing deep and silent. I let her go, and stood and watched her a moment as she rolled toward where I’d been and slept on. Then I pulled on a pair of jeans from a chair in the corner and a burgundy sweater and went outside. The house was well-built and silent beneath me, and the doors swung in silence, and outside the stars, too, glittered in the silence of their distance. The van doors creaked and moaned and the chilled stench of the buck glided by me.

I took the sabre saw from its compartment in the van and ran an extension cord to the outlet at the outside corner of the garage and came back and edged up around the body onto the toilet again, which wasn’t comfortable but at least it let me leverage my elbow on my thigh to lift the head as I fired up the saw and cut up through the fur and fat and meat and kept lifting the head, the cut throat yawning blackly in the dark, and then with a final whine the blade came up through the vertebrae and I let the head rest on the body a minute as I unplugged the saw and detached the blade to clean it later and rolled up the cord and put it away. Only a little more blood had come, so much had drained on the hill, and the tarp caught the rest. I wiped the blade in the grass and hosed it off and wiped it dry. Then I took the head and a shovel, shut the doors, and walked behind the house to a clear space between a pair of naked hickory trees.

The earth was hard, warm as it was out, and thick with quartz, and I panted and felt the sweat tick down my back as the lifeless eyes glinted up at me in the tree-skimmed starlight. It started to drizzle and the earth softened the slightest bit, and finally I had not so much a hole as a ragged gash in the ground, and I lowered the head into it and just as I was straightening up the flood lights out back flicked on and there was Lily in her night gown, with her hair running wild around her throat, and the pistol I kept in the nightstand pointed at me.

“Putcher hands where I can see em, pervert,” she said.

“Lil,” I said.

“Don’t you say my name, you murderin sack of shit,” she said.

“Lil, it’s Ray,” I said. “It’s Ray.”

“Oh, God, how could you do that to him? How could you put him in the ground like that, all, all…”

“Lil, I am your husband. I am Ray.” I’d jumped when she put the gun on me but then I almost started to laugh but now I was getting pretty nervous again, hearing her wedding ring going tap tap tap on the grip.

“Ray?”

“Yes. Lil. It’s me. Ray.”

“How do I know it’s you?”

“Hell, I’m the one just spent an hour trying to put a baby in you.”

“Oh, Lord. Oh Lord.” And she put her gun hand to her forehead and I started to walk toward her, letting the shovel fall with the deer head looking after me like he was begging me to have a little decency.

I took the gun from her and felt from the weight that she hadn’t loaded it, and I put it in my back pocket and held her and she said, “Oh, Ray, there’s a baby already. There’s a baby.” She cried into my shoulder, her neck all stiff, hands in fists on my chest.

“You mean all that earlier was just celebratin?”

She cried even harder.

“Well, what’s the matter? You did it, girl. What’s wrong?”

“It’s this…this... People keep talking about this psycho in the north woods killing women and, and chopping em up and doing, doing Lord knows what else. And I heard the sound out there and I thought…I thought.”

“Yeah, I heard all about him, too, today. Shoot, you thought some crazy man come and got me?”

She was relaxing, little by little, loosening up her hands then sliding them around to my back. I felt her touch the pistol before her hands joined up and she rested against me.

“Do you ever get scared living out here?” she said.

I turned my head, rested my chin on hers, looked back off into the woods. A thin breeze came up in them, rattling the leaves still clinging brown and dead. The deer was staring at me and I almost thought I could feel the cold glutinous touch of its eyes.

“Don’t know I’d call it scared,” I said. “Does make you wonder sometimes, I’ll give you that.”

She turned so her forehead was against my chest. “Some days I feel like I could go crazy. All them leaves looking in the windows like a billion little eyes. And me just sitting here, playing with the kids, thinking about some crazy man squatting in the woods.”

“How come you didn’t tell me you was nervous when I called you earlier?”

“Well, seems like sometimes you talk about an evil it’s like calling it to you, calling it by name. And besides, I like talking nice with you.”

“Come on inside, Lil. There ain’t no crazy man.”

“You think so?”

“In Hot Springs? First rumor of a thing like that and every redneck’d be out in the woods with his coon dogs pounding PBRs and drilling every darn thing that moves.”

“I guess you’re probably right,” she said.

She let me go and walked back into the house. I jumped in the shower again and then got back in bed with her. She moved a little and said, “I like you Ray. I like talking to you.”

“I like you, too, girl.”

“You sure there ain’t no crazy man?”

“I’m sure.”

“Good night, Ray.”

“Good night.”

“Ray.”

“Hm.”

“If it’s a girl.”

“Hm?”

“Let’s name her…”

Don’t say it, I thought. Don’t say it. I’d been afraid of it all along and I prayed good God don’t let her say it.

But she must have drifted off. And I lay there worrying about it, but then her breathing was easy again and I lay there relaxing again, almost falling asleep when I remembered I hadn’t buried the head. Well, I thought, it’ll be there when I wake up.

My eyes opened like they did every day at the first rays of light filtering over the ridge and through the woods. I looked at Lily for a minute, like I did every day, too, and then I got up and got ready for work. It doesn’t take long, since I don’t eat in the mornings, just run a pot of coffee while I shave and grab the sack lunch Lil makes me in the evening. In ten minutes I was ready to go. I wanted to wait till the kids woke up and thought about just going in to see them, but Lil was still asleep and I looked down at her, curled up under the blankets with the baby curled up all small and silent inside her, and I kissed her and went to work.

I didn’t think about the deer head till I went and got in the van and smelled the cold thick buck smell. The temperature had dropped late in the night, so I left the van to warm up, the tick of it fading off into silence as I went around the house. And just when there was nothing I could hear but my own steps muted in the lank cold grass I saw it, the rough scrape in the earth where the deer had been, empty now. I walked to the spot and gazed down into it for a minute and looked around into the woods, but it was gone, carried off by something beyond where I could see. The lights were still off in the house, and for a minute I thought about killing the van and going back inside. But I thought about the body in the van and the jobs lined up and after a minute there in the woods with the day blowing up gray and cold around me, promising one of those early winter lights that hung around dismal and unaltered till dark, and then, and this was the hardest thing of all, I turned and got in the van and drove away, not knowing what to think.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

His old Ford pickup creaked to a stop along the unlit city road like it used to so many times in the past. He hadn’t thought before about what it would be like. The feeling of desolation that would accompany his homecoming.

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He looked out the window at the simple church door. It would be nice to be seen by Him, to ask to feel worthy of His Gaze, of His Love. But deep within, he knew that he was far from worthy. Why had he even driven all those miles to his hometown? It’s not like anything would change. His family would still feel the same, she would still feel the same, and he would have nothing here, as he had nothing there.

He could clearly remember the day he left that little chapel he now sat parked at, begging God to show him what to do. He felt homeless then and felt homeless now. The roadside preacher he met on his journey home reminded him of the uncomfortable reality – the world is not your home.

Home and theoretically, happiness was beyond the world. Beyond that little chapel where he had felt glimpses of serenity. His forehead dropped to the steering wheel and he sighed. Maybe it was worth it to drive past his parent’s house. He hadn’t spoken to them in roughly two years and maybe they’d give him the love he yearned for.

He shifted the truck into drive and turned down the side street that would lead him home. A chill passed through him when his father’s words rang through his head again. He had been the last one to leave home. His father called him selfish and ultimately, worthless for deciding to leave home for obviously nothing. His girlfriend had broken up with him about a week before and he made the decision to leave somewhat rashly in his father’s eyes. But it wasn’t rash to him. They had been planning to leave this town since they started dating. Then she had started college and started working and all of it was to “work towards the dream”.

Her roots to the place grew while his had continued to recede and she believed she was holding him back. They didn’t have the same dream anymore. But maybe he would realize how special this little town was and that he could settle down here, they could settle down here. Yet all he ever felt was that he needed to leave. He tried to make it home as long as he was there but he always felt like he was on the outside, like a child looking into the model Victorian village his grandmother always had set up on a sideboard. All the town knew each other and welcomed each other but he was never part of the fold. He had to leave to find his own.

So he had left and now he had returned. If there was nothing at home for him, and nothing out in the greater wide world for him, where was there anything for him? The only thing he really had left to his name was his truck. His girlfriend was gone, married now to some other guy. He hadn’t spoken to his parents in months. He had no home. No friends. Nothing.

He slowed as he reached the end of the street, the familiar curve of the cul-de-sac opening before him like an old wound. The house was still there, the siding had faded, and the mailbox had been recently set aright. His father prepared every autumn for the challenge with the plowman who seemed to always target his father’s mailbox and no one else’s.

The porch light was off, though he had once sworn it never went dark. For a moment, he let himself believe they might welcome him home, despite the coldness of the exterior.

He parked across the street and watched the still house. It was late so it was likely they had gone to bed maybe an hour or two before. Could he wake them? Would they ignore it as they so often do when someone knocks? Or would they feel a pull to get up and see who stood on the doorframe and welcome him?

Conflicted but still knowing he had nothing left to lose, he stepped out of the truck. The night air was colder than he remembered, the kind of cold that makes the world feel hollow. He walked up the front steps that he rebuilt shortly before leaving those few years ago. His hand brushed the cool metal door and formed the fist to knock. He knocked once, then again, softer. Nothing.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and shuddered before turning and going down the stairs. His feet stopped at the curb and he turned again towards the house. Walking towards the little garage behind the house, he peeked into the window. Their car was gone.

The door to the garage hadn’t changed, just more weather beaten than the last time he was there. He shimmied the door open and found the spare housekey hidden in the cinder block near the door. Left there in case he or his siblings got locked out or forgot their keys.

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His thumb rubbed over the newly minted key. Walking towards the back door, he saw the new locks and felt more like a stranger. The spare key that he kept, stashed deep in his duffel, wouldn’t even work on his parent’s locks anymore. He didn’t belong here.

Still he stuck the new key in the new lock, unlocked the door, and stepped inside. He proceeded up the stairs into the kitchen, feeling like an intruder. The kitchen was clean, perfectly staged as if it were a showroom. His mother always had to make the house, especially the kitchen, look spotless and almost unlived in before she left.

A note on the counter was scrawled out for someone who was not him. “Thanks for checking on things and grabbing the mail! We’ll be back on the 20th. Call if you need anything.”

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The words hit him harder than any silence or changed locks could have. He traced his mother’s handwriting with his eyes, as if touching them might change what they said. He could almost hear her voice saying it – gentle, practical, unaware of the distance between “if you need anything” and everything he actually needed.

He stood there for a long time, taking in the empty kitchen. It had changed. He had changed. Feeling disgusted with himself, he retreated out of the house. Hands shaking, he relocked the door and returned the key to its hiding place. He leaned back against the siding of the garage and let out a shuddered breath. Staring out into the darkness until the motion light blinked off again. Somewhere down the block, a dog barked, then stopped. The street slept. The world went on.

He walked back to the truck, got in, and sat there with his hands on the wheel. He thought again of returning to the chapel and perhaps going in this time. Despite the darkness, the sanctuary candle would still be burning – still, patient, waiting. The thought of it felt strange, almost dishonest.

He turned the key and the engine stuttered awake. The truck groaned, just as it always did, and he turned off his childhood street. The backroads kept him going. He was unsure if he was leaving or returning anymore. The old roads guided him.Muscle memory carried him past the park, past the hill that was always prime for sledding in the winter, and past that one house that he and his friends had decided would be a perfect homestead for setting up a fortress if the apocalypse ever hit.

Before he knew it, he had turned down her road. Her house looked smaller than he had remembered, but warmer somehow. Last time he was here, she had just bought it and told him that she was staying and that he should too.

The porch light glowed amber against the siding, and there hung a wreath of ferns on the door. A child’s stroller was tucked up against the porch, out of the elements. He could picture her there, laughing softly at something her husband said, her hair wisping in her face as she bent to pick up the child from the stroller. He could remember how pretty she looked under the porch light, as tears streamed down her face, as she watched him leave. He remembered hoping she’d change her mind and leave with him but she didn’t. He had tried calling her a year ago and that was when he learned about her new love and new life…without him.

Separated now by the years and different lives, for a moment, he imagined stopping. Waiting until morning perhaps, just to see her, to tell her he was back. But what would he even say? That he’d made it out, only to find nothing waiting for him? That he still carried the version of her who believed in him, when she herself had long since let him go?

He watched the sleeping house a while longer. A light turned on in one of the rooms and he felt something in his chest tighten and release all at once. She wasn’t his to miss anymore. Maybe she never had been.

He drove on, the road passing under his headlights, the warmth of her house fading in the mirror until it became just another point of light swallowed by the night.

He drove without really seeing the road, the hum of the tires steady and low like a lullaby for the weary. The world around him was just shades of grey and the faint outline of trees, reaching up like hands in the dark. Every few miles, he’d pass a home with a porch light and watch it vanish in the rearview, each one marking the same emptiness he carried within him.

He wondered, not for the first time, what would happen if he just stopped driving. If he simply turned off the headlights and let the dark take him. If he simply let go of the wheel and kept his foot on the accelerator. The thought didn’t come as a shock, only as a quiet suggestion, as it had so many times before. There was no one who would miss him. He was written out of the lives of everyone he once knew.

He knew he did not want to die; he just didn’t want to be this anymore. The hollow ache, the wandering, the constant feeling that every door had been locked long ago. But as his hands began to loosen on the steering wheel, another thought formed, softer and slower. He remembered the roadside preacher again. The world is not your home.

Perhaps the preacher had meant that life itself wasn’t supposed to fit, wasn’t supposed to feel easy. Maybe this ache was the proof that he still belonged somewhere, just not here. And if he took that last turn, if he ended the waiting himself, he wouldn’t be escaping the emptiness but sealing it forever.

He pulled the truck to the shoulder and let the engine idle. The heater rattled, the ABS light flickered. He beat his fist against the dash. The road stretched on, unending and blank. He sat there, looking out into the unlit darkness that the road led into, his breathing slow, his hands trembling faintly on the wheel. He didn’t know where he’d go or what he’d do when it came.

He shifted the truck back into drive. The tires rolled forward, steady and the ABS light disappeared. His heart still ached.

Molly Hugo is a proud Michigander with a wide array of skills and passions, ranging from writing to outdoor skills. Two books that have had great influences on her are Tolkien’s “leaf by Niggle” and Hillenbrand’s “Unbroken.”

Act II Scene 1

Huronia, five years later. Brebeuf and a group of Huron at a river’s edge, about to begin a baptism.

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Brebeuf: The God who treasures souls in the storehouse
Of his wisdom calls you now to his death 
And through it to eternal life in Him.

Joseph: This death and any deeper are as nought
To that eternal way you walk below,
The life that courses in your every glance
And calibrates your motions with the tracks
Of Heaven’s stars that spin their jubilance.
On, therefore, and forge me in depths divine.

Brebeuf (turning to those assembled on the riverbank behind as at a Mass):
Look out across the river to the plain.
Observe how vast a host is gathered there.
What’s that? You see them not. Look closer still.
See assembled on the plain two standards.
Beneath the iron crackling of the one
Lurks hell in crabbed and scrabbling plenitude.
The reek of them fumes at the sickly king’s
Folding and re-folding of his black wings
Batting in vain at the unfallen stars
Whose merriment mocks his impotent wrath.
There at his flanks his bitter children stalk,
Avarice and pride, lust and wrath and sloth,
Green-skinned envy and gluttony’s rapine.
Their longing is for you and for your sons,
Each steeped in such loneliness as but longs
To work its own infection on the world.
Renounce them and their sunken sire. Renounce
The odor of evil that craves your life
And let that standard slouch beneath the weight
Of its own undying indignity.
But see the glory of the standard there
And turn to take its sweetness for your own.
Hear how tenderly the hymns of the Lamb
Endure the dour blasts of hell’s alarms.
Feel how the milk and honey of his breath
Abide the noisome humors of the foe
And feed the soul until it feels itself
Akin to those divinities whom myth
Would mount upon the summits and sustain 
With distillations of ambrosial air.
His will is you, your body and your soul
Set free upon the earth to tread the way
To Heaven through the Heaven of the Cross,
Where God on high lived out the depth of love.
The blood there breaks from the snow of his breast
Like water struck from stone in Meribah.
There beyond the river is the river.
There ascends the anchor chain of the hope
That holds the pilgrim Church on earth secure
However searchingly the storms of woe
Might flail her with their cold and waves and wind.
Day by day the choice is set before you:
Life or death, soul or self, Devil or Lamb.
This day our brother encamps with the Lamb.
This day the angels chant his quickened life.
Let all who witness this advance in kind
And quit the dark of ignorance and sin.

He turns, completes the Baptismal rite. He and Lejeune sing a hymn. The crowd disperses, some smiling, others muttering. Brebeuf, Lejeune, and Joseph are left alone.

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Joseph: Father, were I one in whom speech ran smooth,
I know no words I could command could meet
The infinite address of this your gift.
And as it is, I’m hardly more than mute.
But know that not a fiber of my heart
Can stand the thrill of this eternal weight
Except by burning in the fiercest joy.
I’ve never known its like, this cautery
That kills or seems to kill at every touch.
Can joy as sweet as this invest our world
While souls in endless array know it not?

Lejeune: Your dauntless faith is the sum of all thanks,
And so repays any gift we bestowed 
To place us once more doubly in your debt.

Brebeuf: The Father in his goodness makes all good
Expand in being spent. If you would feel
The ardor in your breast breathe doubly strong
And multiply itself full forty-fold
And more, then race to seed your tribe with love.
The harvest that you reap will feed the ache
That whispers God-bound souls the truth that this,
This earth and its revolving crown, this pain
That pleases to its thorny core, can not
By any means play false. Go then. Be glad.
Today is simple prelude to your joy.

Joseph: There is another matter, Echon.

Brebeuf:				     Yes?

Joseph: You know how near my people’s enemy
Have ranged, how sickness has assailed and drought
Drunk up our labors in the pale parched earth.

Brebeuf: These terrors of the day are known to us.
And more, the many sense our presence pulls
This fearfully heaped oppression upon
The people by the violence of a God
Who claims Himself sole portal of true life.

Joseph: Even so. Many feel the spirit stalks
These plains and glades to wreak a recompense
And bring a wayward people back to heel.
What’s more, the magic men are gathering
Their craft to calumnize your every work.
I know you’ll never tire in the attempt
To bring our tribe to blessedness in Christ.
And so I fear their mockery may turn
To murder and your labor all amount
To solitary martyrdom alone,
While, left to my orphan faith, I’ll affirm
Their unbelief in failing what I’ve claimed.

Brebeuf: The end that you envision for your work
May come to pass and worse as far as eye
Can see. But know that in your baptized life
You’ll bear at worst the loneliness of Christ
Upon the Cross, where angels in their ranks
Attended Him, where the full communion
Fostered in His blood cheers the Holy Rood.
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, Paul,
Peter, John, Joseph, and our blessed Queen,
With every soul the living God has claimed,
Will stay you in the strife along the way,
However few your friends in Christ below.

Lejeune: In any case, the day is yet to come.
The joy you’ve spoken, here, now, in the wide
Silence of this space, testifies to grace
That. makes of time and time eternal now
So that the one whose eyes have been made light
May know the dawn that rests on high and walk
Each day in the single day of the Lord.

Joseph: If only you could mark my inmost thoughts
And ferry them as if enchanted back
To the strong and fruitful harbors of faith
Where your souls float at anchor in the midst
Of elements so inhospitable.

Brebeuf: Such hope will rapidly advance in you,
As reason plied by light of your belief
Unfolds its formal monuments and makes
Your newborn heart a fortress of Christ’s love.

Joseph: Again you’ve spelled me. Again I give thanks.

Lejeune: All thanks to Christ and to the human heart
That tends, if unimpeded, unto him.

Brebeuf: And now let good give birth to good as well.
Return and solemnize this day with feasts
As fit the first fruits of our ministry.

Joseph: I go in fear but unafraid, for Christ
Who throws the shadowed path in purest light.

Act II Scene 2

Brebeuf lies sleeping on a bed of skins within the Jesuits’ longhouse. A cold wind blasts without. Brebeuf, illuminated by moonlight shaken by the shudder of branches, lies with hands folded in prayer on his breast. His face begins to twitch faintly when with a gasp he wakes, sits up in bed. Lejeune, asleep farther back in the house, stirs in his sleep and sleeps on.

Brebeuf: Why, O Lord, does this vision affright me?
For many months the enemy has met
My momentary nights with effigies
Of beauty, Sirens rising from the deep
To sink me in the satisfactions moaned
From the Huron beds where, like the bluebirds
In their lechery, our charges address
Themselves to any passing whim of lust.
By grace of constant toil and the array
Of cold discomforts you’ve dispensed these years,
I’ve woken with a laugh for his inane
Attempts to tear me from your patient side.
And you have torn the trappings of these hags
To let the stench of their distended guts
Ooze out across the verges of nightmare
And leave my daily intercourse with Eve’s
Dear daughters undismayed by burning thoughts.
Again, when the phantasmic mendicants
Advanced to ply me with sententious groans,
With bitter age’s wrinkles to allure
My dreaming sense of charity and spring
The blind of lovely bodies at the last,
Your power purged imagination’s sense
And welcomed me awake with peaceful prayer.
But now, now, the very pulse of prayer fades
On the surface of the words as they flake 
From my lips to shatter in the chill air.
How? A priest? And one of our company?
But what was it that horrified me so?
Even now, O Lord, let memory fail
If the failure’s your defense against him.
But no, no, the creature comes round again.
I see the priest upright beside the stream
Whose waters flow in scarlet as the sun
Descends to silence in the ocean wood.
And lurid turns the visage from the light
And lo! The visage is no human thing
But hisses in the gloaming, cataracts
Its breath and clicks its black skeletal legs 
As claws like withered hands assault the dusk
As if to eat the last light’s guttered hope.
The crab descends the sin-anointed robes
And creaks and fizzes its way beneath waves
Which seem to part as if to intimate 
The terror of the budding blood for death.
And still on the brink of my vein abides
This vampire priest, while there, beneath the flood
There lurks the corpse-glutted cannibal crab,
Relentless in its taste for fallen flesh.
A dream, a dream alone, but somehow fired
To infect my imagining with dread.
Lord, O, my Lord, O, let me not be thus,
Be no such priest as crowns himself in death
And gluts himself on humors of the earth.

He weeps. An owl cries, cries again. Brebeuf grows easier, raises his eyes to the moonlight.

Virgin, if ever I’ve offered my love
As solder in your service, recall now
How small your son remains and mantle him
Against the devious delusive wights
Who haunt the blood-caked earth about the Cross.
I hear the muscled pitter of their feet
Along the narrows of my aching mind.
Prepare me for such surgery as must
Attend the tuning of my heart to full
Communion with your sore-afflicted Son.
I’ll sleep no more this night but rest in prayer.
Grant rest as to the one who, born to die,
Still slumbered at your breast that night
When shepherds heard angelic heralds strain
The bounds of time with eternity’s touch.
Grant rest, dear Lady, grant your servant rest
In your Son who illumines all that is
As well as all that was and is to come.

Act II Scene 3

Mass is concluding in the little chapel in the Jesuit longhouse. Brebeuf and Lejeune process to the door. Joseph and his family remain in prayer a moment, then rise, cross themselves, and pause before the Jesuits for a blessing.

Lejeune: Joseph, your devotion inflames my own.

Brebeuf: And the sight of your bride and your children
Gathered to you in your prayer prompts the thanks
Of those whose care accrues to your account.

Joseph: You show us Eve in giving us the Church
And Adam in her sacrificial head.
Our presence is the least of recompense
(To her) Go on ahead. I’ll stay a minute more
In conference with our penitent friends.

She exits with children.

Lejeune: Beside your customary joy in Christ
Come to rest in you in the Eucharist,
I sense some semblance of the fear you spoke
That day we dried you with the river’s reeds.

Joseph: As usual your glance discerns aright.
This bitter winter bears so many down
To coward death that fresh dissent has sprung
From many hitherto discerning lips.
The coming days are grave with ill intent
To each of you and our unstinting creed.
Dark magic and its ministers have slunk
From all the hollows of our woods to pare
Your ocean-broaching heresy away.

Brebeuf: We, too, have taken rumor from the air
And felt the quiver of its ragged heart
As proof of the violence you predict.

Lejeune: The way to Heaven is the way to what
To Hell’s eyes—or the unconvicted world’s—
Seems simple horror. We notice what lurks
And longs to turn our mission to despair.

Brebeuf: Something more than fear for us disturbs you,
Does it not?

Joseph:         In truth, there creeps through my dreams
A new more dread disdain within the eyes
Of my tribesmen. In short, I am afraid—
Afraid of being made a medicine
To slake a fraction of the parched earth’s thirst.

Lejeune: There may be means of easing this affright.
What would you say to a sojourn among—

A shadow comes over the daylight at the door. A figure looms there. It is one of the Huron sorcerers.

Sorcerer: Will you, Blackrobe, divide a word with me?
I know that you’re no stranger to our tongue.

Brebeuf: Stranger, sojourner, always on this earth.
But not estranged from any son of God.

Sorcerer: I claim no kinship with the God you sing
In this, his hide-bound penitent retreat.
His kingdom, regardless, has cracked the calm
That wound its serpent way about our tribe
Since speech itself had hardly mounted
To thread the earth with its imaged self.
War stalks our ancient boreal fastness,
And plague beyond retrace of memory
Prowls and plumbs the smoking depths of our homes.
All these pains you see and seek to assuage,
But, failing to find the root of their force,
Can only inflame. The great spirit burns
For your destruction as for your God’s flight.
The power is mine to banish, to kill.
But I would have you leave of your own strength,
And let the people see the faith you claimed
Proven in its folly. This is your chance,
This your warning. Remember and be gone.

He turns as if to leave.

Brebeuf: The words you would divide have not been said.
Turn back and take a word against the shade
That creeps at your shoulders in mastery.

Sorcerer turns back.

The God who made the heavens and the earth
Will neither cringe nor skulk beneath the blows
Of infant demonry who scourge themselves
To fury over their own impatience.

The room darkens as candles burn more fiercely.

And so I say to you, repent of this,
Your service to such gods as mock Godhead
And avail themselves of nought but their death
And the specious sharing of death’s-head hell.
Repent and cling to the blood-rooting Cross
That cracks all hardness of our clay and molds
Our shattered forms anew to be made whole.

Sorcerer (turning away once more and looking over his shoulder):
You have been warned. Remember. And be gone.

Exits.

Lejeune: This is not the limit of his bitterness.

Joseph: The fear of him hangs heavy on the tribe.
Therefore leave us to our pitiless sins.

Brebeuf: No. Though a mother abandon her son,
Yet does God not leave his children alone,
No matter the darkness they’ve assembled
To cloak their most treacherous amusements.
We will not leave you except to obey
His will whose wisdom has to rule our own.

Lejeune: Nonetheless, our course must be soft and shrewd.

Brebeuf:  Yes. And as we’ve planned these months to attend
The people in the regions to the South,
Such a journey commends itself anew.
Joseph.

Joseph: Father?

Brebeuf:	  Will you go as guide
To Lejeune, whose fame for losing his way
In the wood was legend even in France?

Joseph: The thought of such a pilgrimage calms my soul,
But what of you, Echon? Will you, too, come?

Brebeuf: I’ll not let it be thought that God’s friends were cowed
By shows of sickly priestcraft. I’ll remain,
Accomplishing what ministry I may
And seeing that our altar and its king
Stand unassaulted. Fear not for me, friends.
I sense our time must flow to further ends.

Act II Scene 4

Joseph and Lejeune descend a steep hillside, cutting back and forth along its face at slow intervals.

Lejeune: In this face of stone, rain-sculpted and swept
To passing cleanness in this constant wind,
It seems I see the figures of those doomed
To work the weight of sin from their braced souls,
Which feel the torments as of hell without
The sole undying sadness of the damned.
Here (he points) is one bowed beneath superb pride.
See there another’s weeping eyes are sewn 
To blindness by those iron filaments
That won’t allow the bitter tears their course.
These three huddled in a cleft are confined
As those who race all in haggard array
The chutes of will their slothful living scorned.
And here, where flame once arced across this place,
The file of those who paced in sleepless lust
Await the purifying blaze of love.

Joseph: To one acquainted with the choruses
Of sin such figures must mount easily
To mind. But gaze, if your feet can abide
A moment unguided but by the feel
Of the sin-inscribéd earth beneath them,
Upon the clouds that furrow heaven’s brow.
Those mime the initiate mysteries
Of the faith that’s beckoned us forth from him
And bids us turn again with empty hands,
But trusting that no labor made in love
Is made in vain. Neither are nature’s ways
To be marked separate from art. And there
Where the high clouds pillow and flow this morn
Ride Peter and the others through the storm.
Mark the dimpled sheen as of biding fish
Flashing back the lightning in the calm deep,
And see that pillared light come striding noon
Like Christ in unsung mastery aloft.
I see the Virgin humbly greeting grace
And racing out to serve the Baptist’s birth.
I see great Moses’ host amid the waves
And glimpse Elijah outstripping the steeds
Of waylaid Ahab and the wanton queen.
I see all time’s unfolding to the end,
All tending to the supper of the Lamb
Who suckles sinless masses white with blood
And, raised up, gathers all that is to Him.

Lejeune (looking now at Joseph, whose face is radiant with sorrow):
Your faith, as always, Joseph, succors mine.
And moreso for the sorrow you advance
In grasping beauty’s passage through a world
So thick with sin as sickens Satan’s brood.

Joseph: Such sickness swells to thwart my better cares
When fostered and affected in the mind.
And even the solemn race of men’s loves
Drapes the beauties of the earth in its pall.
I long, for instance, now to see my wife,
More even, if the inward man be known,
Than to bear a plentiful harvest home.
The thought of the cares we’ve left behind us
Has set them hour after hour before me
Such that prayer’s enchantment alone has kept
These frets and phantoms from infesting thought.
I long for home, and every step thereto
More keenly whets the coming appetite.

Lejeune: Like the father from whom you take your name,
You’ve known the long loneliness that abides
Still in deepest faith. And the fisherman
Whose tempest-startled bark you just descried
Amid the topmost clouds knew, too, the pain
Of pressing to the limit his new call
Beside the cares of customary home.
There the daughter to the fever-beset
Woman who rose at Christ’s command and served
As the sabbath drew on to its Sunday
Might, imagination admits, have moved
In unrequited silence, while the rock
On whom the Lord established Mother Church
Worked out his privileged place among the twelve.

Joseph (he has stopped): More than upon discomforts in my home,
My musing reels and falters on my tribe.
When Christ, awaited ages in the lore
Of Israel, came at last unheeded
Except by twelve to seed his dozen sons
And those thousands who were fed all fell back
At teaching of the Eucharistic truth,
The black hour of the Temple was at hand.
And some who saw the Crucified on high
Would see the Temple where that day the veil
Was torn thrown down and dedicated horribly
To falsehood. And now, as many of us
Take up the cross and sing beneath the hands
That cleanse us with the waters of Christ’s grace,
My heart draws back and bitterly misgives.
For as the faith has spread as if with winds
That seed the borders of our streams in blooms
When winter’s cold encasing yields the year
Its seemly blandishments, now, too, the hedge
Of choking thorn has sanctified its place
On every border of our peaceful land.
What more can the Huron hope than to be
Breathed out in weeping to the searching winds?

Lejeune: Thank God in whom no hope belies itself
That hope indeed has broken in upon
A people who’ve excelled themselves in faith,
Flocking to the standard unfurled for them
When once the Gospel rang across the plain.
But look, like heralds crossing bounds of time
Come men as with a message on our path.

Messenger: What haste you may, make now. A word has come
To steep our Christian mission in dismay.
Once more has Echon been recalled from us.
He craves your present company as now
He sets what work he may in readiness.

Joseph: We’ll hasten, chased by charity and grief.

Lejeune: Again the present call comes like a thief.

Act II Scene 5

The Jesuit longhouse. Brebeuf kneels in prayer before the altar.

Brebeuf: Is this the issue of inconstancy?
Have I, by faulty prayer or by some work
Set hastily aside in sinful will,
Brought down this desertion as a penance?
Burn away what feeble tissue abides
Within my breast and make of me what love
In cross-exalted agony demands.
I bind myself afresh to serve you, Lord,
And vow at every moment’s turn to choose
What course would render my heart more perfect.
Inflame me for the sake of your promise.

Lejeune and Joseph enter.

Lejeune (gasping): Father—Father—what horror have we heard?
Can it be our order calls you away?

Brebeuf (rising, wincing as he rubs his collarbone): 
Even so. Nor should this give you pain.
I go to serve our order and its Lord.
As all events resolve we should rejoice.

Joseph: We will walk in sunshine as we sorrow,
Echon, praying betimes for your return,
But what fresh pain assails you as you rise?

Brebeuf: Nothing—a small bone broken as I crossed
The icy lake one evening at my tasks.
Yes, pray, and spread the faith so that if I
Should know the grace of coming back to you,
I’ll find the work advanced beyond my strength
And know the Lord is God beyond all pride.

The sorcerer emerges from the new-fallen dark.

Sorcerer: So strong a man as you will surely not
Be ordered from the service of his God
By letters penned a thousand miles away.

Brebeuf: To be as God would will is to obey
Wherever our obedience is due.
Between the banks of wisdom men can flow
To Heaven just as readily as streams
Unto the sea. But surely you’ve not come
To tread the measures of philosophy.

Sorcerer: No, nor to gloat at your show of weakness.
I’ve come to vent the ancient rage that looms
In the disease that ramifies in lungs
And limbs of children and stalks the cold verge
Of our fastness. Death has come as you go.
Will your going guide the grim specter hence?
And will you risk returning at his side?
Well? Well? The all-abiding gods have reigned
These speechless centuries, and now you’ve drawn
Down ruin on the world you came to save.
Go, then, and attend your god in safety.

He turns to the outer shadows. Joseph makes as if to follow.

Brebeuf: No, Joseph, think not to contest his hate.
I leave tomorrow morning for Quebec.
Let’s spend these hours left in tending the sick
And speaking hope and comfort to the flock.

Lejeune: Who knows, Joseph? Perhaps when John returns
He’ll find we’ve worked the miracle of faith
In the lightless soil of this prophet’s soul.

They exit. The sorcerer, as if unfolded from the darkness, reappears, approaches the altar, lifts a hand as if to touch it, draws back.

Sorcerer: I am sick and cannot stand the stone touch
Of this abominated God. And why?
Do deities enshrined within my heart
Command me not to court the wretched stuff
They’ve turned to the service of the dead man
Whose hanging grimace commands them to love,
Or is it—what?—can it be that this fear
Marks the conclusion of a faithless time
Whose term has come? No, no, it cannot be.
The coming of this Christ has spelled our end,
And this breathes life anew to my belief
In the cruel reality of the gods
Who pressed me from my mother’s breast
To serve upon their stony, silent knees.
There’s whoring in the forest this grim year.
The giant spirit whips his consort lewd
And crushes her against his wiry breast
When lewdness skews her gaze to these insane
Christ-eaters in their priestly consumption.
I’ve watched the spotless woods fill up with freaks,
Lion-headed, scarlet-plumed, in snake skins,
Spurning the commerce of the spirit’s shrouds
To rip out beacons from our local sky.
If we now, starless, stumble into gloom,
Then by the heaven that you’ve lost, dead lords,
Afford these fearsome priests no longer life
Than yours, but see that they too shriek your plunge,
And leave this world, as I will, in despair.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

Eli Marley gazed out his bedroom window. The sunrise was just beginning to light up his room, his boots lying on the floor bathed in the warm, golden haze. If only that beautiful orange glow would come to life in his room, causing his house to burn straight to the ground in that moment, trapping Eli in its flaming embrace. It would be better than what was to come now that he was of age.

The Ritual…

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Eli swung his legs off his bed and stood. No good trying to wish away the inevitable. The settlement Eli lived in was small: several dozen wooden houses, surrounding the Chapel, an ancient structure built of black wood. It was the only building like it in the settlement; taller than all the rest and darker, the wiry cross at the top of the steeple seemed to gaze down on all with a look which could either be a gentle gaze or a stern authority. Beyond the houses were the fields, pastures, and gardens. Sheep, goats, and chickens roamed throughout the houses and fields, chased occasionally by children. The adults tended to the crops and livestock, wove baskets, made wares of iron and cloth. All was overseen by the elders, five of the oldest members of the settlement who were its only form of government. Occasionally, travelers from the other side of the forest happened upon the settlement and were welcomed kindly enough, but they never stayed long. The settlement was small, little more than a place to rest for a night and replenish supplies to those passing through. No newcomers joined the settlement, and no one in the settlement ever left. It was as if the settlement and the rest of the whole world were held to a silent agreement that no one from one side would disturb the other.

Eli rubbed his eyes, wishing to be anywhere else in the whole wide world. If only Silas Marley had never found this place. It wasn’t often that Eli thought of his ancestor, but when he did, it was rarely out of kindness. Silas Marley had come to the New World on a ship, bringing with him a wife and five children. Together, they had ventured through the dense forests until they came across a clearing, perfectly round, several hundred yards across. There, Silas had built their cabin and planted his crops. He and his family lived well for a time until their eldest son, Jethro, could fell a tree and steer an ox. Silas had sent his son out into the forest on the first day of May to chop trees for a new cabin Silas had planned to build. Early in the morning, Jethro, eager to impress his father, travelled far past the stumps which Silas had left in search of the tallest possible pines.

He walked until the sun had reached its zenith, but suddenly found his path blocked by a bog, shrouded in putrid mist. Jethro had been about to turn around when he suddenly spotted a figure seemingly floating above the water in the rank mist. He called out to the figure, unable to see them clearly but received no reply. He called to them again and was again given no response. He called out a third time, anticipating more silence but suddenly the figure vanished, and a long, low whistle sounded across the putrid water. Then the sound of something large thrashing and writhing through the water came to Jethro’s ears, closing in towards him through the mist.

It came from the bog, killed the ox, and Jethro barely made it back to the clearing in time to warn his family. Silas had fired his musket to no avail, Jethro had swung his axe, but they were beaten slowly back toward the cabin where the rest of the family hid in terror. All but one. Brisa, Jethro’s younger sister, armed with a pitchfork, charged from the house to help her father and brother. The surprise of her sudden presence provided Silas and Jethro with a momentary advantage, but it came at a dear price. Silas had resorted to a method his family had long kept secret; a spell which would not hold forever but would last one year before a ritual must be performed to keep it in effect. He knew the consequences, the punishment for rejecting God was to be ever tied to the ritual which Silas had performed, he and his descendants would bear this burden until the end of time. The Marley’s buried Brisa’s body in the center of the clearing and over her grave, Silas constructed the Chapel of black wood.

Many more had come and settled, the soil was good, and the clearing was large. Cabins were built and fields were plowed until the settlement had grown to boast a few hundred people dwelling there. Silas had grown old and gray. Before he died, he directed the people of the settlement to live under the elders, to distribute their goods, and above all, to continue the yearly ritual which he and then Jethro had carried on. And so, generations came and went and at Eli’s birth, he received the weight and duty of the entire settlement on his shoulders. For he was a Marley, and it was they who must keep the settlement safe, having been the ones to first put it in harm’s way.

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The Marleys still lived in the same house which Silas Marley had originally built, only a few hundred feet away from the Chapel, with one horse grazing beside the porch whose name was Tundra. The house was small, like all the rest of the houses in the settlement, worn, wooden walls and thatched roofs. Eli’s room was little more than a corner of the attic, the other end occupied with barrels full of beans and dried corn and squash. The harvest had been plentiful and kept them fed well through the winter.

As Eli pulled his boots on, he tried to stop his hands from shaking. It would do no good for the rest of the settlement to see him so full of fear. He slipped his coat around his shoulders and descended the ladder from the attic. His mother was cooking something which smelled good, his two younger sisters were oiling their boots on the floor, and his father was out in the fields.

“Morning, Ma.” Eli said, trying to control the nervousness in his voice.

“Good morning, Eli,” his mother said. “Fetch yourself a plate and have something to eat.”

Eli filled a plate with the apples and onions his mother had cooked and sat down at the old wooden table. He ate without tasting, simply trying to fill up the hollow, empty felling inside of him.

“Ma?”

“Yes, Eli?”

“Why don’t we leave the settlement? If we all left, we wouldn’t have to worry about the ritual, we could live like the people on the other side of the forest.”

His mother sighed softly, stoking the woodstove and then turning to face him “Eli, we have what we need here. But more importantly, it is our and only our duty to complete the ritual and keep the settlement safe.” Eli felt a shiver run down his spine.

The morning had turned into afternoon and Eli worked with Hazard to sprinkle seeds over the plowed fields, the new earth sending up a deep, warm smell. Eli looked over at his friend, wondering how he kept up with everyone else in the fields. Hazard had broken his leg badly as a child and walked with a crutch and yet, the burden of his bad leg did not seem to slow him down.

“You will be fine,” said Hazard, scattering a handful of seeds onto the soft, upturned earth, “Your Pa managed to complete the ritual every year with no problems.”

“Pa is brave,” said Eli, scattering his own handful of seeds, “I’m not like him.”

The afternoon sweltered away until the sun began to sink towards the treetops. It was nearly time. Eli stood in front of the Chapel with his family and all the settlement gathered around. The elders stood before him, dressed in their faded brown robes, three men, two women. They stood still with their eyes towards the west, waiting. The silence seemed to close in around Eli’s ears, somehow deafening in its emptiness. He wished someone would make a sound. When the sun dipped below the trees, the elders stirred.

“Let the women and children gather themselves into the Chapel!” called one of the elders, and the crowd slowly began to file into the Chapel. The men stayed outside, an assortment of weapons ranging from rifles to kitchen knives held in their hands. When the last of the women and children had passed beneath the black doorway, Hazard turned to Eli.

“I can’t come with you, but I will wait here until you return.” He shook Eli’s hand and was the last to enter the Chapel before Eli’s family. His mother and sisters hugged him tightly and gave him words of consolation and encouragement before they too entered the Chapel. The elders closed the heavy wooden doors before turning to Eli.

“Elias Marley,” said one of the elders, “you have now seen twelve summers and winters and are now old enough to begin your obligations as the eldest son of the Marley family. We wish you all the luck and speed in your task, and we look forward to your safe return. Emett Marley, if you wish to bestow any further instruction upon your son, now is the time to do so.” With this, the elders bowed their heads to Eli, and he bowed back as his father had instructed him to do. They stepped back until they stood in a line before the Chapel’s doors. Eli knew that they would stand there until the sun rose.

His father put a hand on his shoulder. “Elias, I know that you are afraid, I was afraid too when I came age. Your first time will be the hardest, but you must persist, we are depending on you.”

Eli pursed his lips. “Pa…”

“Yes, Elias?”

Eli felt he could have said a thousand things but, in the end, he settled for, “Thanks, Pa.” he hugged his father tightly, taking comfort in the feeling of Emett Marley’s large hands ruffling his hair. Then Eli turned toward the forest. The sun only poked through the trees in a few places now. One of the men handed him a lantern, and then all the men retreated to surround the Chapel, leaving Eli to fulfill his task alone.

Eli took a deep breath, he turned and looked up at the small cross at the top of the Chapel. It seemed as thin and frail as Hazard, and yet there was no one Eli would rather have by his side at that moment. He felt as though there was nobody in the world but him to face the cruel darkness of the night. Eli opened his eyes again. It was time.

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The forest was quiet as he walked, the only sound coming from his soft footsteps on the soft forest floor. His lantern cast a small pool of yellow light around him, but it could not fully pierce through the dusk which had fully settled over and throughout the tall trees. As Eli walked, he felt as though a thousand silent eyes were peering at him from behind the trees whenever he wasn’t looking. He knew what waited for him, he knew it could sense him coming. He walked on and on, it would be nearly midnight before he reached the bog, and the sun had only just gone down. He had a long way to go.

The moon was full and once Eli reached the bog, there was enough light that he could see somewhat through the thick fog. He stood on the edge where the water reached its fingers in between the long grass and moss, facing the center of the bog like his father had instructed him to. He set his lantern on the ground, making a small circle of warm light about his feet. He closed his eyes and recalled the ancient words his father had taught him since he was old enough to speak. They were in a language that Eli could not understand and when he had asked his father what they meant his father had only replied that they did not need to know the meaning, only how to say them loudly and clearly. Eli had practiced again and again, in his room late at night, in the fields under the noonday sun. These were the words which Silas Marley had uttered all those years ago, watching as his daughter sacrificed herself for her family.

Three calls, then you will see it above the water, then it will vanish, wait for the whistle, then say the words, loudly, clearly, quickly, before it reaches the shore.

Eli hesitated for a moment and then called out into the fog. His voice made little echo, swallowed almost instantly by the rank, moist air. Silence once more held its sway over the dark water. He called again, feeling his voice break pitifully and wincing at the sound. He gathered himself, breathed in, and called out again, louder but suddenly choked on his own voice. It was there.

Faintly, through the fog, a dark shadow floated. Eli couldn’t fully make out the shape, but it looked like a person. But how a person could come to stand atop the water of the bog was something which Eli could not wrap his head around. He stared at the figure, transfixed, every hair on his body standing up. They seemed to stay like that for an eternity before the figure suddenly vanished, folding into the mist. Eli’s blood seemed to run cold as he heard a long, low whistle sounded across the water’s surface, fading away after a few seconds. He could hear it. He could hear it coming toward him. A ravenous splashing and surging noise with no dreaded sight yet to accompany it. Eli knew the words; they were there at his lips, moments away from being spoken. He knew his duty; he knew his duty like the back of his hand. He heard his mother’s voice, his father’s voice, everyone who had ever taught, told, or reminded him of the weight he would hold from the moment he first left the elders and travelled alone to the bog. But in that moment, at the water’s edge with no one by his side save the timid glow of the lantern, he thought twice. What if the ritual didn’t work, what if you had to truly believe in your ability to perform the ritual in order for it to actually work? Mumbled words laced with fear could never hold back the threat which now approached. He thought of the settlement, there were people, dogs, fire, his chances of survival were much higher there then here. Through the fog, Eli glimpsed a large shadow moving toward him through the water. That was the last moment he could bear.

His feet pounded the forest floor, running faster than he had ever run in his life. His lantern lay abandoned by the edge of the bog, the moon shone just enough light through the trees for him to see his way back. Back to the settlement, back to the torches and lanterns, back to men with guns and swords. His chest burned with fire; his lungs seemed to be filled with pure pain, he wanted to scream but he had no breath to spare. He ran and ran, hearing behind him, the sound of something large crashing through the forest after him, slowly getting closer. Past that tree, now that rock, over this creek, one more rock and there! Light! The settlement was right there.

Eli burst through the last of the trees, wanting to sob with relief at the sight of the settlement’s roofs and walls. He charged through the fields, not caring about the crops he may have trampled, past the first few houses and then he could see the Chapel. All the men were staring at him, tensed up as if they knew something was wrong.

“Elias,” his father called, “My son, did you-“

“It’s coming!” Eli yelled, reaching the line of men and pointing behind him. “It’s coming!” he nearly crashed into his father, skidding to a halt in front of the men gathered. “I’m so sorry Pa, I couldn’t do it, and now it’s coming here!”

“The beast is coming here?” yelled one man and the others began to shout similar questions, but all fell silent and turned towards the forest as a deafening roar echoed off of every house. A flock of birds roosting in the nearby trees took flight in a panic. The treetops shook, the harbinger of the settlement’s fate.

“Form ranks!” Emett yelled, raising his musket and grabbing Eli, “Close in to the Chapel! Fire when you see it!” The men backed up around the Chapel, weapons raised, eyes searching wildly for any movement among the houses. Out in the shadowed fields, the sound of terrified bleating came from the sheep and goats, followed by a ripping sound which made Eli want to vomit. Then suddenly…silence. The breathing from the men was loud in the sudden stillness, all frantically gazing, forcing their eyes to see farther into the dark. Eli swiveled his head from one side to the other, desperate to see where it was. He felt Emett stiffen beside him and he looked up at his father who was staring at a house close by.

“Pa?” Eli whispered, “What is it?”

“Those aren’t stars.” Emett said, pointing his musket at two small beads of light near the house’s roof. The shot rang out like a tree splitting down the middle followed by a noise like death itself. Eli’s eyes widened as a huge shadow leapt from the rooftop and charged the men. More shots rang out, the blasts lighting up the night enough for Eli to catch a glimpse of pale fur and long claws in front of two furiously glowing eyes.

The creature was enormous, bigger than a cow. It slashed furiously at the men, wounding several and causing blood to spray over the rest. The night air was rent with battle cries and screams and the deafening roar. The men fought with all their might, Eli watching in terror behind them, but they were slowly driven back against the Chapel walls.

“Fight on!” cried Emmet, using his musket as a club with no time to reload it, “Fight on!” but it was no use, more men fell, and the dirt became red. Suddenly, Eli heard a shrill voice cutting through the night air and realized with shock that it was Hazard. The small boy had slipped out of the door and was wielding a pitchfork. Eli ran to him and grabbed his shirt, “Hazard!” he yelled, “You can’t be here, you’ll die!” he was about to pull the boy back closer to the wall when a force slammed him on to the ground. His nostrils were filled with the stench of rot and mold, and he felt a searing pain in his left leg. He screamed, striking out with both fists, connecting with thick, wet matted fur. Suddenly the smell was gone. He sat up, staring as he saw that it was only a few feet in front of him but was preoccupied.

“Hazard!” Eli screamed, watching in horror as the beast struck the small boy to the ground with its claws, his small voice screaming in unison with the beast’s roar. Eli knew he had to do something, but what could he possibly do against something so huge and ferocious? He racked his brain furiously, what would his father do, what would Silas do? His eyes opened, he knew exactly what Silas would do. Pulling himself to his feet, ignoring the agony in his leg, he faced the creature and began to chant. The beast turned to him and charged. He closed his eyes, focusing on the words, chaos all around him. He uttered the last words and opened his eyes to see the creature suddenly rear upright and roar even more furiously than before. It thrashed as the men watched in horror, convulsing until it fell to the ground and steam began to emit from its rank fur. All stared as the steam grew thicker, enveloping the monster until it dissipated, leaving nothing behind. Eli felt darkness closing in around his eyes, and the last thing he remembered was seeing his father trying to speak, saying words that Eli couldn’t hear.

Eli stared out into the forest, the sun was dipping below the treetops, and he was outside the Chapel with all the settlement behind him. He curled his fingers around Hazard’s walking stick, which Eli now used, and thought of his friend again. With his other hand he rubbed his beard, watching as the sun sank lower. Some members of the settlement still wouldn’t speak to him on account of what happened that night. Too many graves, too many widows. His father had been one of those killed, Hazard too; things still didn’t quite feel normal again. He wondered about Hazard: how could a child like that possess so much courage? That night had changed everything for Eli, it was his leg that had been torn and broken, but he felt as though it was his heart which had grown the callous scars, trapping the boy he was before inside forever. No more fear. Eli had been to the water’s edge and chanted the words eleven times now and every time, he had stood firm, watched the foggy shadow draw closer and closer until it gave way to his chanting. Duty. Duty in the settlement was not something you could choose to or not to perform. Duty was what kept the settlement safe, what kept tragedies like the night Eli had run back to the settlement from happening. He picked up his lantern, Hazard had understood duty than anyone else, and now the most Eli could do in his memory was perform the duty he should have always been prepared to. He looked back, nodded to the elders, and set off into the woods.

Tynan Roth is currently a senior at The Thomas More College of Liberal Arts in New Hampshire. Ty is from Lewiston, Maine, and his interests in music, literature, and folklore have led him on all kinds of adventures, from pilgrimages throughout Europe to salmon fishing in Alaska. After his studies, he hopes to carve out a humble, contemplative life off the land.

On July 10^th, his mother-in-law had died. That was five days ago. He was surprised at how her death had effected him. It had made him think about his own mother, how he hadn’t visited her in months, how he had tried not to think about her at all but couldn’t stop thinking about her since Becky died.

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So this morning, on the way to work, he had pulled off the Interstate at Exit 4B and driven the extra ten miles out of his way to The Gables Assisted Living Center. He had pulled into a parking space and turned the car off. Sitting there behind the steering wheel, with the hot sun pounding on his chest, he had ached with a deep, sad guilt.

Now he stood looking down at his own mother, slumped in her wheelchair, her thin hands resting on her thighs. She was small, smaller than she had ever been in ‘real life’, back when she had been his mother, not this shrunken stranger, this head-hunter’s ornament.

“How you doing.”

“Same as always.”

“You feeling all right?”

“I’m 85. What do you think?”

The man stepped to the bed and sat stiffly on the edge like the visitor he was, the better to see her face.

“You look good.”

“Better than most of them in here.”

“That’s true.” He crossed his legs. “That’s true.”

The room was sparsely furnished, but the pieces were mostly her own, except for the bed which was a hospital bed, and the visitor’s chair which looked like a visitor’s chair from a hospital. He remembered the night stand beside the bed and the green and brown rug from when he was a child. The lamp, too, had been admitted with her. He uncrossed his legs and crossed his arms.

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“I’ve got some bad news.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Becky died last week.”

“Becky who?”

“Carol’s Mom.”

“Oh.”

“Thought you’d want to know.”

“Why? People die around here everyday. Nobody thinks I should know.”

“She was somebody you knew, that’s all. I thought you’d want to know.”

“How’d she die?”

“Heart attack.”

“She was a baby.”

“She was 78.”

“A baby.”

“Anyway it was all kind of sudden. Carol went into her room to wake her up and she wouldn’t wake up. Passed in her sleep, apparently.”

“That room you put her in, I’m surprised she lasted this long.”

“She didn’t want to go into a home. Besides, she could get around fine.”

“Lucky for me I got out of there.”

The man took a deep breath. The room was silent except for the low hum of the air conditioner which contested with the low hum of the TV coming from the Rec Room down the hall.

The old woman rolled her wheelchair over to the big window and pulled back the drape. With deadly accuracy, the morning sun hit her square in the face. The old woman pushed herself forward into its hot breath.

“Come away from the window. You’ll get overheated.”

“I’m cold. I’m always cold. It feels good.”

“Close your eyes at least. Don’t look directly into the sun. You’ll hurt your eyes.”

“I’m half blind anyways. What difference does it make? Besides, it feels good.”

The man stood up, shoved his hands in his pockets. There was a TV in the corner of the room, opposite the bed.

“Want me to turn the TV on for you?”

“Channel 3.”

The man found the remote on the night stand, clicked the set on, and punched in the channel. Static.

The old woman, magnetized by the hot white light, didn’t move.

“When’s the funeral?”

“What?”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Yesterday.”

“Where’d you put her?”

“Mt. Hope Cemetery. Nice place. Next to Carol’s Dad.”

“Never knew him.”

“How could you? He died before we even met.”

“Heart attack?”

“Yeah, I think.”

“You? Think? Hah!”

There was a dark patch in the brilliantly lit room behind the closet door. The man swiveled into it, drilled his chin into his collarbone and crossed his arms tight over his chest. After a while, he turned into the light again and squinted at the old woman’s back.

“There’s nothing on Channel 3.”

“What’s today?”

“Wednesday. The 15^th.”

“So it must have been Friday.”

“What must have been Friday?”

“The day she died. Friday night. Late.”

“They aren’t sure. Sometime Friday night. Yes. Why?”

“Where were you?”

“Asleep.”

“Hmpf.”

“What’s ‘hmpf’?”

“You’ve been asleep since the minute you two got together.”

“Shit. Do we have to?”

“I don’t sleep anymore. That’s why I see and you don’t.”

“That’s funny. I thought you were half blind.”

“Half’s better than whole. I can still watch Channel 3.”

“There’s nothing on Channel 3. It’s nothing but static.”

“Hmph!”

The man swept the remote off the bed where he’d dropped it and pressed the power button. The screen clinked to black. He tossed the remote back onto the bed.

“Stop hmph-ing me and come away from that window before you burn your retinas out.”

He took the handles of her wheelchair and spun her around. Roughly, he propped her up in the seat from which she had nearly slipped off.

“Don’t let’s do this again, OK? Let’s just have a nice visit.”

The old woman patted her hair down and struggled to adjust her shawl. The man moved instinctively to help her, then caught himself.

“How did you know she died on Friday night? I didn’t tell you that.”

“You sleep. I watch.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I watch Channel 3.”

“Channel 3?”

“Channel 3.”

“There’s nothing on Channel 3. It’s all static. No wonder you’re half blind. What’s the matter with the people in this place? Doesn’t anybody ever check on you? How can they let you sit here watching static?”

“They’re sleepers, just like you. Sleepers see static.”

“Look, asleep or awake, it’s a channel with nothing on it. There’s nothing on it, do you understand? There’s nothing to see on Channel 3!”

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the old woman’s head swivel on her rickety neck and fix him with a mischievous smile.

“How’d I know then?”

“You guessed.”

“I watched the whole thing. I saw the room, that room you stuffed her into up there in the attic. I saw her asleep on that Army cot you call a bed. I saw that ratty old rocking chair you used to force me to sit in. I saw the wallpaper peeling off the walls. I even saw the mouse you said didn’t exist, it was only me hearing things. But I saw it. I saw it all.”

In the middle of the bed there was a depression like a sunken cheek where her body had slept all these months. The sun’s rays collected there in a hot white puddle of light that made the man squint. He sat back down on the edge of the bed, disturbing the puddle and spilling the light.

“It’s just static, don’t you understand? You’re not seeing anything on that stupid tube. It’s all in your head. Why do you think we decided to put you in this place? We had to! Because of just this kind of thing. You’ll do anything to come between us, me and Carol. Anything.”

“I saw something else, too.”

The man rubbed his eyes. When he took his hands away, his fingers were wet with tears.

“You didn’t see anything. You just imagined it.”

“I saw her come into the room.”

The man closed his eyes and buried his face in his palms.

“She tiptoed up to the bed and stood there, just looking, for a long, long time.”

The man began to rock back and forth slowly.

“Then she bent down and took the pillow from under the head.”

The man pushed himself upright with an effort. His face was wet.

“Stop!”

“Lucky I got out of there while I still had the chance.”

Unable to hold himself erect any longer, the man slumped down on the bed, exhausted. The sun had risen above the frame of the window, slicing him in two across the middle of his chest.

“Come home with me, Mom.”

The old woman rolled her wheelchair up to the bed and stretched out her ancient hand. For a moment, the man thought she was reaching for his left hand, collapsed palm upward on the bedspread beside him, soaked in tears and light. Instead, she hooked the remote in her claw-like fingers and scraped it off the bed into her lap.

“I like it here. I feel safe here.”

She pressed the power button. The set clinked on. Channel 3. Static.

I have been writing off and on for decades, but only broke through with a story called “Perfume and Cigarettes” published in The Berkeley Fiction Review #39. They thought I had a unique voice; I’m hoping you will, too. I have since published it on Amazon as the title story in a collection along with two novels: Catatonia and Ordinatus.

Once Pud’s father took him to the Walmart on Tchoupitoulas. If you don’t know how to say that word, which names the road that runs along the river from Canal Street to Audubon Park, most people just call it “Chop.” It’s a street that’s got about all the things that make New Orleans what it is, from the park and Children’s Hospital to Hansen’s snowballs and Tipitina’s and microbreweries interspersed with rundown shotgun houses where blind old ladies sit on the stoop and smile and say hello as you walk by.

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Not that the boy understood much of all that at the time. What he knew was that, feeling the truck shift into park, he looked up from the little screen where two monsters were invisibly wearing away at each other’s life to find himself in a strange lot dotted with pomegranate trees and crape myrtles.

“Where are we?” he said.

“Walmart. Don’t you see the sign?”

“What are we getting?”

“Just looking for a thing or two while we wait for Mom.”

Mom was at the Shrine of Blessed Henry Delong, where she’d been a volunteer tour guide since she’d woken up, nine months ago, from a coma. She’d lain in bed for three months with a half-smile on her face. And then one morning she’d drawn a deep breath that made the boy, who was sitting there as he did most mornings, reading a book, think about a flower he’d watched unfurl one day at dawn on the beach in Bay St. Louis. And his mother had sat up with her eyes still closed and a smile spreading across her face until he thought this might be death come to reckon. Then she had turned to the boy and opened her eyes and said that a man had appeared to hear and told her to awaken. The man was black, and he came walking out of a field of snow in a cassock that whitened in spot after spot as the snow fell on him, his eyes and his teeth growing brighter, brighter, as though reflecting a flame just behind her. “Awaken,” he had said to her. And the snow had fallen more thickly and filled and filled with light until she, too, felt this must be death come round to greet her. Then all was darkness, and she found it was the darkness of her own closed eyes, and she awakened to the sight of her son.

For a while she’d not known who to thank. The man in the vision was unfamiliar, but she was certain she would learn who he was. She knew a good many priests, having worked as a secretary in the seminary, and she asked and asked and told and told what she’d seen until one day Fr. Smith, who was old to the point that he didn’t know how old he was, said for Mom to come to the little chapel he kept at the nursing home for retired priests in Algiers. And there, on a little cork board on the back wall stuck with notices, flyers, and holy cards, she found a picture of a man named Henry Delong. He wore a cassock in a field of snow. And he was black, and he was the man she had seen, who had called her back to life.

She was a busy woman, and for all the malign incidents that had inflected her life, it seemed that whenever she addressed herself to something it came out as she wished. Within a year the Fr. Henry Delong Shrine was welcoming guests to Central City, and soon he was not just Father but then Servant of God and then Venerable, and it seemed that soon he would be the first canonized saint of the Catholic Church who had been born a slave in the United States of America. Anyway, that was where Pud’s mom spent most of her free time, which was most of her time, since her duties at the law school had been reassigned in view of her long incapacity.

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So Pud got out of his father’s truck and sidled past the faded red Miata in the next space. A faded black magnet on the trunk read Science Is Love in faded white letters, and Pud touched it and felt the crumbling warmth of it in the sun and trudged into step across the white pavement.

As they came through the shade of a pomegranate they passed a middle-aged woman laboring toward the store. Her hair was the color of pomegranate or no, Pud thought, the color of fish blood as it wells over the brightness of the filleted flesh. Her right hand crushed a green silk handkerchief to her mouth, and her left waved as though she were driving away a mist. Pud’s father slowed and said, “Ya need a hand, lady?” But she stared ahead through dark glasses and continued to wave and so the father and the son went on through the sliding doors into the cool air.

As usual, there seemed to be no aim to his father’s shopping. He would stop at a pile of shirts and pick one up and turn his head a little to the side as if peering through to some alternate reality where he’d wear a shirt like that. Then he’d set it down and finger a belt on its silver rack. He might take a pair of slacks into a fitting room, leaving Pud standing there avoiding the eyes of any women who slipped past to try on dresses and skirts, and he willed himself not to look at the tried-on bras hanging there, discarded and breastless. They somehow reminded him of his own mortality.

His father chose a pack of black socks and a pair of sixty watt light bulbs and a watermelon, which Pud carried, and a can of WD-40. And after a long musing over a set of crescent wrenches and a pair of garden gloves, he gave his desultory “Alright” and ambled toward the registers.

Resting the melon against his belly, Pud stared at the ceiling, descending into a reveresque blankness which approached perfection before his father’s voice swam through to him: “Pud. Pud! Come on.” He stepped closer, and as he made to heft the melon onto the conveyor belt, he felt a sneeze come on. He tucked his face toward his left shoulder, and as he opened his eyes again he saw, staring over the edge of her handkerchief, the woman from the parking lot. She seemed to say something to him, and he said, “Thank you.”

Now the hand that held the silk shook, and the voice came, still muffled but insistent, “No. I said you need to cover your mouth when you sneeze.”

Pud’s father, taking the melon and setting it on the belt, said, “You need to mind your own business, lady.”

Now she lowered the handkerchief slightly. “Well you know I think it is my business. I have a respiratory condition and if people like you don’t mind your business I can die. You hear me. I can die.”

“Yeah, alright,” Pud’s father said. He smiled at the woman at the register, who smiled back and shook her head a little. And Pud, astonished, with an incipient rage that wanted to scream at the woman about every germ and bacterium and virus floating through the air of such a place as this, here down in the crotch of the city beside the muddy water, just stared at her. This seemed to madden her, and he dropped his gaze and saw that in her hand she held just one item, a birthday card. On its cover was a pink peacock with the caption, Love is what happens when no one is looking.

“What?” she screamed through the silk. “What?”

“Come on, Pud,” said his father. “Some people just don’t have anything better to do.”

And they walked back out into the wild sunlight shattering all over the lot. The ghost of a calliope came upriver on the wind, and Pud pictured his mother on her knees in the little wooden church, praying Blessed Henry’s intercession, holding hands with strangers stricken with illness and sadness and the blank cold bitterness of it all, as calliope and organ faded into one with their prayers and their brief biting ecstasies.

Pud was carrying the melon again, and when they got to the truck his father said, “Stick it up in here” and lowered the tailgate with a creak and a gush of dust into the sun. Pud rolled the melon into the bed, wedging it between a pair of dumbbells. There was a screw near the weights and he picked it up to keep it away from the melon, thinking to throw it away at home. As he turned he saw the little car with the bumper sticker about love, and before he could think about it he had taken the screw and scored a little heart into the paint, two inches tall and two across.

His father had the truck running, and when Pud climbed in he said, “What were you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“What’s in your hand?”

“Screw. Didn’t want it to mess up the melon.”

His father stared at him for a moment, and Pud stared across the cars toward the river where the minuscule shapes of gulls sliced the light.

“Here, give me that,” his father said. “No sense hanging onto it.” He got out and walked over toward a trash can. By the time he got back, lady love was on his heels, free hand waving hard.

“Jesus, let’s hit the road,” his father said as he climbed in. He backed out and pulled away towards Tchoup. And looking back across the pavement, blinding white, almost, in the noontide, Pud saw the woman standing at the back of her car. She stared at the place where he’d carved the heart, and then she looked at him. The handkerchief rested at her side, and each watched the other vanish over the blinding pavement.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

All bundled up in coats and scarves, Amanda and Braum stepped onto the subway. They were met with a quite full compartment, but were able to find seats on one of the less-than-spotless benches. It was certainly warmer on the inside than it was outside, much to the passengers’ content. Amanda and Braum huddled together, excited to be out on a Thursday evening; they were going downtown to see La Traviata. They had saved up for these tickets, so they were going to try their very best to make it on time. The night was young; they had eaten a quick dinner beforehand and made their way to the station in order to catch the earlier train— better safe than sorry.

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After all her plans had fallen into place, Amanda settled down, comfortably in her seat. She turned to look at Braum, who was sitting next to her. He had shaved! What a nice thing to have done for himself, she thought. Although, she would admit to her friends that she liked his stubble, when he had it. When she saw his clean face, she noticed a certain freshness and clarity that radiated from his sweet smile and kind, brown eyes. Looking at him all dressed up in such a fine coat and scarf set her at ease. She thought she looked pretty nice, herself. She was wearing a dress she knew Braum would like, as he had complimented her on it before. Wearing black velvet in December was the perfect thing to do, especially when going to see an opera. Moreover, it was also perfect that it was only the two of them that night, and no one else. Well, not really. Something was tugging at her heart, deep down.

She looked at her surroundings. It really was full— and stuffy, too. She breathed in not-so-faint wafts of pot mixed with Braum’s cologne and her own perfume. Braum took out his tumbler and opened the lid, the sweet scent of bergamot and black tea lightening the stuffiness of the air. He looked at her.

“Do you want some?”

She politely refused. Earl gray was her favorite tea to drink, especially with it being so cold outside. However, she was feeling warmer and warmer, and, as delicious and wonderful as it would be, a swig of hot tea with milk and sugar would do little more than exacerbate her discomfort. Ideally, she would’ve said yes.

Braum frowned at her refusal. “But you always say yes when I offer you stuff,” he said.

She laughed softly. “No, I’m too hot right now. Honestly, cold water would be nice.”

“You’re hot?”

“Yeah, aren’t you?”

“I dunno. Not really.”

“I’m too sensitive to temperature, I guess.”

Braum laughed. “Well you’re a woman, so it makes sense.”

“Yeah, it’s gotta be biological or something.”

“Take off your scarf, then.”

“Yeah, I will,” she said, taking off the cherry red scarf. “Can I smell it, though?”

“Sure,” he said, chuckling.

He held up the tumbler to her face. She took a long, sweet breath of the incredible beverage in front of her. Everything about the scent was exactly what she wanted.

“Enjoy your tea,” she said.

Then, she leaned her head against the wall behind her, growing inevitably sick of the metro air, and closed her eyes. The thing tugged at her heart again, triggering a certain memory. She stared at the strangers in front of her, sometimes catching their eyes. She turned her eyes down to avoid any more awkwardness, and her mind began to wander to another time. She thought about this thing somewhat regularly, and yet, every little moment of that evening was just as real to her now as it was when it happened, back in October. The touch of his arm and the scent of the flower centerpiece she took home that night wouldn’t go away. She remembered the color of his tie— red and orange diamonds in a little symmetrical pattern. It was such a nice tie… it brought out the color in his eyes. What a gem of a night it was, even though in retrospect, it made her heart ache tremendously to recall those same feelings she felt.

On that evening, Amanda and Braum had gone out to a gala. Upon remembering it, Amanda was so fond of that night, despite everything else that happened. It all took place one evening in October, about two months from the present day.

It so happened that Amanda was curling the last lock of hair when her phone screen lit up. She looked down at it and saw that Braum texted, saying he was here and ready to pick her up. Letting the newly set curl droop from the iron, she finished it off with hairspray all over. Then, in a hurry to leave, she quickly grabbed her bottle of perfume off the shelf and spritzed it on her neck and wrists, then grabbed her clutch and walked out the door. When she stepped outside of her dorm building, Braum and Cecilia were standing around his red Dodge minivan, parked right in front. Amanda ran down the stairs, meeting Cecilia with an affectionate hug.

“Aww, you look so pretty!” Cecilia said.

“Stop it, so do you!” she said to the young lady dressed in dark green.

“I really hope this is okay, I’ve never dressed ‘black tie’ before.”
“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine. I didn’t really know what it meant either.”

“Well, doesn’t he look nice?” Cecilia said, gesturing towards Braum.

“Yeah, he does! He always wears such nice suits,” Amanda said, smiling at him.

“Well, thank you,” he said.

“Can you walk in those?” Cecilia said, pointing at Amanda’s shoes.

“Of course I can!” she said, and walked down to the car.

Braum opened the door for Amanda and helped her in the shotgun seat. When she stepped inside the car, she saw two other faces behind her.

“Oh, hi, guys!” Amanda said. It was John and Claire. “I thought you weren’t coming.”

“We changed our minds last-minute,” said John.

Amanda exchanged glances with Claire. “The more, the merrier!” she said.

Later on, Amanda would be glad that they decided to come along, for that night she was unsure of who was going with them. She had had some anxiety about potentially being alone with Braum for a whole evening— with Elle still in the picture, that would’ve been unacceptable.

“C’mon, put some music on, Braum,” said Cecilia.

“All right, all right. But you might not like it.”

“Uh, why?”

“Because I have weird taste.”

“Just play something,” Amanda said to him.

“Do you wanna pick?” he said to her, handing her his phone.

“Sure,” she said, their eyes meeting. She scrolled through his playlists, laughing occasionally.

“What?” he said.

“You do have weird taste. I can’t find anything normal.”

Braum smiled. “Well maybe you’re all just boring!”

“Oh! I found something.” Amanda clicked on one called “Frank Sinatra Megamix”. “Luck be a Lady” started playing. “Is this fine?” she said.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Braum said.

“Ok, let’s get going. How far away is it again?” Cecilia asked.

“Like, 40 minutes.”

“Wow, that’s kinda far.”

“Well, do you want me to speed?”

“Yes, actually, that’s not a bad idea,” Cecilia said.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Braum said. “Buckle up, kids.” He started the car and they went on their way.

When they arrived, they were all thoroughly impressed with the venue. It was an exquisite country club.

“My goodness, these people must be wealthy,” Braum said.

“Oh, look!” Amanda said. She ran up to the fountain by the front entrance, and stopped in front of it, asking Claire to take a few photos. The sun was beginning to set, and the evening hues were gradually growing richer and more full.

Braum watched her. His heart stirred, but he looked away.

That was the first time they had dressed up and gone out since the semester started, and, as any young woman would, Amanda felt her spirits characteristically light and bright. To be there, at an exclusive event with her friends, all put together in black-tie attire on a Friday night, made her heart squeeze with excitement. Braum looked so nice in his dark gray suit. He always did.

They were standing by a table as servers with trays passed by, offering hors d’oeuvres. She looked at him with fond eyes.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing, I’m just happy.”
“Oh, well, me too.”

There was a server carrying a tray with glasses of red and white wine. When he passed by again, Cecilia took a glass of white, and Amanda red. The red was rich and sweet, with sourness and depth to its flavor.

“I think it’s too spicy,” Amanda said after drinking much of her glass.

“I would call that sour.”

“Yeah.”

“Here, I’ll get you some water,” Cecilia said.

“Thank you,” she said, laughing.

“Oh, look. Your lips are stained.”

“Oh really?” she said, smiling.

“Goodness— your teeth are too!” Cecilia said, laughing.

Amanda blushed, a little embarrassed. “How did that happen?”

“Well, your teeth aren’t stained, I’d say; just a little tinted. The wine must be really potent. No wonder you thought it was so spicy.”

Amanda took out a pocket mirror and examined her mouth. “Oh, you’re right! It looks like I have lipstick on. Do you think it’ll come off?”
“Oh for sure, especially if you eat something.”

Eventually, the gala began, and, after dinner, dancing filled the ballroom. Amanda and Braum stood on the sides, watching. Amanda, however, had been standing for some time, practically begging him to ask her a certain question.

There was a live band playing the big band sounds of Bublé and Sinatra. “The Way You Look Tonight” filled the room, all the couples swaying in rhythm.

“His voice is incredible!” she said.

“Yeah it is… I almost thought it was a recording.”

“I love this song so much; it’s great to dance to.”

“Well, any jazz is.”

“I agree.”

Amanda pondered for a moment, fumbling her hands. She looked back at him, still waiting.

Lovely, never, never change

Keep that breathless charm

Won't you please arrange it?

'Cause I love you

A-just the way you look tonight

The song was almost over. What was he thinking? It was very out of the ordinary that he didn’t feel like dancing. She envied the couples on the floor, with their long, glamorous gowns and impeccable East Coast skills. The song then reached its final chorus. Amanda took one look at him, wishing for everything to go back to the way it used to be, so long ago, as the singer’s booming voice flourished, the words completely in sync with the beating of her heart.

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Their eyes met, but only for a moment as his gaze went on past her, leaving her partnerless.

“Did he never feel that way about me, ever?” she thought in that fleeting moment. “Did he never second guess his own heart, never feel the urge to put it all on the line for God-knows-why?”

He left her side to go talk to John and Claire, and Amanda watched him with a lonely heart. “I shouldn’t feel so mopey right now,” she thought. “How pathetic I am.”

Perhaps it was, in fact, all in vain. All that time she spent putting her pieces back together didn’t do her any good in the end, as they kept falling apart. She kept giving herself false hope, and she couldn’t help but blame herself for it.

For some reason, that memory stayed with her for some time after the fact, and she recalled it yet again on the metro to La Traviata. Even now, she was afraid of meeting his eyes sometimes. It revealed too much for her to be comfortable with, yet too little to be satisfied with.

Amanda reflected on this memory during the rest of the train ride. “I guess I’m just back to my usual habits,” she thought.

“Did you finish your tea?” she asked as they got off the train.

“Almost.”

“I don’t think they’ll let you bring that in there.”

“Yeah,” he said, and took another sip to try and finish it off.

When they finally reached their destination, perfectly on time, Amanda and Braum walked up to the opera house and went in.

Their seats were on the second tier— high enough to see everything on the stage, but not too high so as to have the singers’ faces be completely blurry and incomprehensible. The opera was long and wonderful— one more thing that was perfect that evening. At times, Amanda’s attention was fully captivated by the story, but certain motifs called her back to her own thoughts. She wanted to be able to pay full attention to the performance, but Braum was making it difficult for her. Oh, Braum!

And, just like that, it was over. Verdi’s melodies kept ringing in her ears, and as they were walking back to the metro station, she kept humming a section from the overture.

“I like your humming,” Braum said to her.

She hadn’t realized that she’d been humming since they left the performance hall. “Oh! Thank you. I just love it so much. I think it’s going to be stuck in my head the rest of the evening.”

“Yeah, Verdi is amazing at writing earworms.”

“Please tell me to stop if it gets annoying.”

“All right, but I doubt it will.”

When they got back on the metro, it was significantly less full this time around. They chose cleaner seats than were available to them on the way there.

“Do you still have tea left?” Amanda asked.

“No, I drank it all.”

“Bummer. I would’ve liked some.”

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I don’t want to go to class tomorrow,” he said.

“Why? Was this too much for you?” Amanda asked playfully.

“Eh, I think I’m just bored. Do you wanna go somewhere tomorrow?”

“What? No, I’m going to class. You should go too; we have finals soon.”

“Lame.”

“Oh, come on. You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“Not really, actually. I just feel like leaving campus before we go home for Christmas.”

“Then wait till Saturday.”

“But I want to go tomorrow.”

Amanda laughed.

“We could leave tonight, if you wanted,” Braum said.

“What, and come back at three in the morning? The metro closes at midnight.”

“I’m just throwing ideas out.”

“What’s with you?” she asked. “This is really random of you to want to leave in the middle of the night and go somewhere. We already had our fun today,” she said, and rested her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes.

“Are you sleepy?”

“Yes,” she sighed. “If we went to Georgetown or something I don’t think I could wake up tomorrow.”

“I’ll wake you up when we get back to Brookland-CUA,” he said.

“Okay,” she said softly. Her eyes were still closed, but she felt his hand near hers.

Braum stared at the advertisements on the ceiling, and drifted off in his own thoughts within minutes.

They woke up with a jolt, to the sound of the speakers again: Next stop, Shady Grove. End of course. Next stop, Shady Grove. End of course. They were clutching each other’s hands. Braum looked up at the sign and realized they had missed their stop.

“Shady Grove? How long were we asleep for?” Amanda said, letting go of his hand and standing up abruptly.

“It must’ve been a long time! We’re all the way in Maryland now.”

“What are we gonna do?” she asked. “Ubers are crazy expensive in DC; and besides, it’d be like a forty minute drive anyway. Can we call someone?”

“Yeah, but we’d have to wait a while before we’re picked up.”

“Well, we can start walking to try to meet them halfway.”

“Yeah, that’s true. It’ll cut down on the drive back.”

“Ahh, this is so annoying!” Amanda said.

“It was my fault. You fell asleep first, and I should’ve paid more attention.”

Amanda covered her face in frustration. “Why did this have to happen?”

“Well, isn’t it not too big of a deal? Here, I’ll call John and see if he’d be willing to pick us up.”

“He’s probably asleep.”

Braum laughed. “He’s certainly not. He never goes to bed before one o’clock.”

“Well, he’ll probably be really annoyed.”

“Eh, it’s fine. We’ll make it up to him.”

“All right,” Amanda said, sighing. “Hey, the last stop is soon. We need to get off.”

They got off the train when it was time, and walked over to a bench and sat down. They called John— he was bringing Claire too.

“See? Easy fix,” Braum said. Then, they figured out where to meet them and started walking.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Like I said, it’s my fault,” Braum said hastily. “Let’s not worry about this anymore. They’re coming to get us, so we’ll be fine.”

“I guess.”

The night was illuminated by the street lamps and the skyline. Although they were far from downtown, all the distant lights glittered and sparkled in the dark. And yet, due to the ice, snow and freezing air, Amanda and Braum were far from comfortable. They walked quickly for around ten minutes, partly out of guilt for making John and Claire have to drive so far to pick them up, being so deep into the city at this hour of night. And besides, it was well past midnight, so anyone out on the streets at that time was bound to be suspicious. Amanda and Braum were young, good looking, and well dressed— but poor. If someone were to approach them aggressively with malicious intent, he would likely be disappointed by what he found on them.

Braum, however, felt pretty good about things. He and Amanda were side by side, brought together by an odd sense of intimacy. They had another mile and a half to go before they arrived at their destination. Compelled by a newfound resolve, Braum’s fatigue disappeared.

They approached a stoplight. The big orange hand flashed, but Amanda kept walking. Braum grabbed her arm to keep her from crossing.

Startled, she turned her head, meeting his eyes. “It’s fine, there aren’t a lot of cars out,” she objected.

A loud blaring came from the distance. Braum said nothing, maintaining his gaze. Amanda thought she saw him look down a little— what was he looking at? Her nose and cheeks burned with cold, and she had no gloves on, either. Her hands were quite cold. She gestured to keep walking, so he let go of her arm and followed.

“Are your hands cold?” he said.

“Oh. Yeah, they are. But I have pockets.”

With that cue, Braum slipped his right hand into her left.

“Wait, what?” she thought. Her heart began to race.

“There, is that better?”

“Stop,” she said.

He stopped in his tracks and looked at her. “What?”

“What are you doing?”

Braum continued looking at her, foggy air spewed out of his mouth and nostrils from being out of breath. “Amanda…”

“Explain this to me, please.”

Braum’s gaze was transfixed. “I’m just holding your hand to keep it warm.”

“That’s weird.”

“I thought you would like it.”

“What does that mean?”

He looked away for a moment, and rubbed his red nose.

“Tell me!—”

“—I can’t say it, okay!” he blurted out. “It’s too embarrassing.”

Amanda thought she heard his voice echo in the dark streets.

“Can’t things just be… different between us?” he said, desperately.

She pressed him further. “But what do you mean?”

“Why are you making me say it outright? Do you really not get it?”

“I’m just tired of you stringing me along and never telling me the truth!”

“What do you mean? I’m not stringing you along. I think my intentions are clear enough.”

Amanda was so surprised by this she wanted to cry. “No, they’re not.”

“Well, what are you confused about?”

“What do you want to be different between us? I just don’t get it.”

“Well, I think we should start going out.”

“Oh wow,” she muttered.

“So, what do you say?”

“This is crazy!”

“What’s wrong?”

“You cannot be serious about wanting to date now. The timing’s all messed up.”

“Amanda, what?—”

“We’ve been everything but in an actual relationship at this point; It’s absolutely ridiculous.”

“Well, if this is what you’ve always wanted, then let’s be that too.”

Amanda’s cheeks burned with shame. She had to look away, and so she covered her face with her cold hands to warm them up.

“I don’t know if I’m mad or happy,” she said, looking at him again.

Braum walked towards her, closing the distance between them.

“But do you want to?” he said, looking into her eyes.

“I don’t know! Ahhh, I’m cold! What do you know about ‘what I’ve always wanted’? Did you ever ask me?”

“C’mere,” he said, drawing her close to him.

She found comfort and warmth in leaning on his chest, but this was not where she wanted the conversation to end.

“Braum, listen to me,” she said, pulling away. “How do you expect me to think that you wanting to go out now isn’t weird? I’m upset because I feel like you should’ve wanted to date me a long time ago. It doesn’t make sense to suddenly want to, out of the blue.”

“Out of the blue?”

“Yeah. Changing your mind like this is random.”

“Woah, what was tonight then? You and me going out, just the two of us?”

Amanda paused. She knew he was right, that she had been hoping for something to happen, probably. She couldn’t think of a response.

“Why are you changing your mind now?” she said.

“Because it seems like a good time to start something.”

“Ugh, that’s so backwards! See, this is why I don’t like that you’re telling me this now. Both of us have been making stupid decisions for a long time— I’m tired of not knowing what we are, and not knowing how you really feel about me.”

Braum looked utterly bewildered. “But I’m telling you—”

“—Don’t,” she interrupted. “God, I’m so cold! We need to keep walking, come on,” Amanda said. She walked briskly past him, quickening her pace.

Braum watched her speed ahead, her long hair blown about by a sudden, icy breeze.

“Wait up! It’s not safe out here, and you’re drawing attention to yourself.”

Amanda said nothing, feeling her well of sorrow and frustration begin to overflow.

Braum trailed behind her. “We’re supposed to turn here!” he shouted.

“I know!” she yelled back.

Braum wanted to call out to her again, but couldn’t. He dragged his hands across his face and groaned. “Amanda, wait up!” he finally said.

She clenched her jaw and stopped, turned around, and waited for him to catch up. She looked down, refusing to meet his eyes. When they were together again, she maintained her brisk pace, but allowed Braum to remain at her side.

“How much farther do we have to go?” she asked.

“About a mile.”

“Okay. We can make it in fifteen minutes if we hurry.”

“But aren’t you tired?”

“Yeah, but moving keeps me warm. I don’t wanna rest until John and Claire get here.”

“If that’s what you want.”

“Yes, it is.”

“We’re gonna have to talk this out, aren’t we?” he said, slowing down.

“I think you’re the one who needs to do some explaining.”

“About what?”

“What this is all about.”

“What do you want to know, exactly?”

“Well, I can’t help but feel like you never treated me like a real friend. When you were still dating Elle I was so incredibly uncomfortable with how close you were with me, and that shouldn’t be shocking to you. I liked you, and you knew that.”

“You’re thinking about that? But that’s been over for two months now.”

“Well, I didn’t know how to tell you what I was thinking until now. It was difficult for me. I wanted to keep my distance out of courtesy, but that was difficult too, because of how I felt about you.”

Braum was thoroughly taken aback. At this point, their pace had become a slow trudge. There were too many thoughts and feelings, both expressed and unexpressed, to be able to focus on getting to where they needed to go.

Amanda’s stomach was turning over on itself, and her heart was nearly in her mouth. There was so much to say.

“I… suspected as much,” Braum said.

“What? You did?”

“Yeah. I wanted to ignore it.”

“I was right!” Amanda said, raising her voice. “I can’t believe I was right. I knew it. I knew it! But why did you do that? Since you knew I wanted to keep my distance, and you knew I was doing it for Elle, you should have taken the hint.”

“But when we broke up I wanted to make you feel better by repairing our friendship. I was sorry that Elle caused it to suffer.”

Amanda let out a nervous laugh. “Of course she did! She was your girlfriend, not me.”

“But we were friends—”

“How much did she know, Braum?” Amanda interjected, looking at him with daggers in her eyes.

“What do you mean?”

“What did she know about us?”

Braum started to explain, but Amanda quickly stopped listening. It was too much for her to bear. She started shaking her head.

“Can you imagine the guilt I must have felt as your friend? I was essentially the other woman. I could never do that to her. You can’t have both things, Braum. It was always either me or her.”

“And I’m saying, I want to choose you.”

“No, you can’t!”

“But why?”

Amanda was so upset. She was losing her ability to reason properly, as her feelings grew so strong and overwhelming.

“What?” he said.

“I need to think.”

“Ah! There they are!” Braum suddenly said, tugging on her arm.

Amanda looked up. Lo and behold, John’s sedan could be seen driving up one of the streets up ahead. The headlights shone brightly in the fog. To Braum, it was like a glittering jewel; a golden treasure; a lifeboat; the Bifröst that had come to rescue them. Although, to Amanda, she felt much too vulnerable to want to interact with anyone else. She was afraid she wouldn’t be able to contain her feelings.

Braum looked back at her with feverish eyes. Amanda acknowledged him, but couldn’t sustain her gaze. She wanted to escape, rather than be rescued at a time like this.

“Let’s go!” he said, and started running.

Reluctantly, Amanda followed. Upon seeing them, John and Claire both got out of the car.

“My goodness, are you guys okay?” Claire asked.

“Yes, we’re fine,” Amanda said.

“But very cold,” Braum added.

“All right, let’s get you into the warm back seat. Get comfy, you two.”

Amanda and Braum stepped into the back seat of John’s car. It was very cozy, indeed. However, the air between them was anything but.

John and Claire had been listening to their House and Disco mix. For the sake of their guests, Claire turned the volume down a little.

“So, how was the show?” she asked.

“Wonderful,” Amanda said.

Claire looked back at her. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing. Just tired.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Did you guys walk pretty far?”

“I think so. We did a lot of speed walking.”

“Ah. Well, we’re here now! Let’s take you guys back and get to bed.”

With that comment, fatigue set in once more on Amanda and Braum. She leaned her head against the window and stared at the city sights zipping by.

Braum tapped her hand. She turned and looked at him. “What?”

He stared at her for a moment. “Nevermind.”

“Okay.”

Both of them tried, but neither Amanda nor Braum could fall asleep. The fatigue rested in their limbs, but their minds and hearts were swarming. They continued in this state until they made it back to campus.

Amanda looked out the window from time to time. Listening to John and Claire’s light conversation, occasionally bringing the two of them into it, kept her from closing her eyes for too long. It was nice and warm inside the car, and for that she was thankful. But uneasiness and an unresolved conversation kept her mulling it over the whole time.

She was envious of Braum’s simple heartedness. If he had told her he wanted her and not his girlfriend even a month ago, she would have said yes. Now, for some reason, she said no, or at least tried to. To her own surprise, Braum’s offer ignited a very old flame in her heart, burning off everything that she’d built up inside.

“What a hypocrite I am,” she thought. “No wonder he’s confused.”

Every happy moment replayed once more in her head as she watched the cityscape pass by. Everything she loved about him came to her all at once, making the pain worse.

When they arrived, John and Claire dropped them off in front of the dorms.

“Goodnight, guys!” John called out to them and drove off.

And so, there they stood. The street lights flickered in the dark, and faint music could be heard coming from someone’s room. Amanda looked at Braum standing before her, and her heart was calm at last. They maintained eye contact for a few moments until Braum appeared overcome with embarrassment.

“Amanda—”

“What, Braum?”

“I do want things to be different between us. I really do.”

“Don’t plead.”

Braum fell silent.

“I think it’s too late, Braum. I’m sorry. If you had told me this months ago I might have given you a different answer.”

“But why?”

“Because I made too many mistakes, and to start something now would not feel satisfying to me. There was a time when I really did have feelings for you, and I think I still do, but I think I want to move on and find something different. I don’t think it would be good for either of us to start going out now.”

“Really?”

“The fact is, we’re both still kids.”

“Ouch.”

“No, it’s true. Maybe you just don’t understand…. Don’t look at me like that, please,” she said with feeling. “I think I need to think about this a little more, though. I’ve had enough for tonight.”

“Yeah…”

“Well, thanks for going to the opera with me.”

“Maybe we can go again next season?”

“Maybe with other people,” she said softly. “Goodnight.”

Braum watched her turn her back for the last time. Her black shoes showed their red outsoles as she ascended the stairs somewhat slowly. As she turned he thought he saw her smile faintly, but she turned away completely before he could really see the look on her face. Bored and agitated, he kicked the ice and dirt on the sidewalk and mixed it around, trying to scuff his own shoes. The sound of a door closing came from the stairway, indicating she was gone for good. He stared upwards, trying to find her window. A light came on.

“Ah, there she is,” he said aloud. He stared at the light for a few minutes in silence. “Are we even still friends?” he thought. “Well, she’s not here to answer that, I suppose.” He looked around, lost in thought. He glanced at his watch. It was late, and he was very tired. Then, the overture of La Traviata found its way into his head again, and he turned away, walking back to his dorm, humming it quietly.

Beatrice Ellison is a college student studying English, and loves writing in her free time. She is inspired by classic literature and poets like T.S. Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Foreword

The play that follows should not be taken as a history of St. Jean de Brebeuf’s life. Characters, places, indeed events themselves have been modified to suit the author’s needs as well as his foibles. Yet it is perhaps to be hoped that the play, modeled in many respects on the movement of Dante’s Comedy and the verse of Shakespeare’s tragedies, themselves written not terribly long before the events of the play, might offer some solace to a world with little sense of its own sorrow.

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Thanks are due to the Jesuit Fathers, under whose tutelage I first came to know the North American Martyrs (for whom the chapel at Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where I was educated and now serve as teacher, is named). Likewise, I am grateful to my mother, who took me when I was a young man to visit the sites where the Blackrobes were martyred. I give thanks to St. John Paul II, whose prayers I continue to ask. I extend my most heartfelt gratitude to Professor James Matthew Wilson, whose patience with me and my verse is itself a testament to the mercy of God. Last, thanks to St. Jean de Brebeuf, his companions, and Christ, Our Lord, who makes all things new.

Prologue

Huronia. 1649. A party of Huron advances slowly through the midnight wood.

Pierre (a Huron man): Have you yet marked an owl this frigid night?

Araste (another Huron): No. All silence and sleepless dark to mock
The way that ought to lead us home in peace.

Pierre: This night is no mean mock.

Araste:                                             Then what? 
 
Pierre:                                                                     A dirge.

A shadow moves among the trees and begins to take shape in the starlight.

Pierre: Who’s there?

Joseph:                       Not he. Ah, not the one we sought,
Not one who walked in light however dark
The biding gloom.

The Huron women form throughout the rest of the scene a kind of chorus. One now speaks.

Huron woman:       I feared. I feared. I knew.

Araste: No heart of ours beat strong since horror came 
To haunt the pleasant meadows of our birth. 

Pierre: No. No. Were those fields sweet? I fear our fate 
In what this night has shaken down. Now falls
That whelming dark our fathers whispered once
Or twice to dull our eyes and make us sleep.

Araste: But note his gaze, all gathered in himself. 
There’s devil’s work, doubt not.

Chorus of women:                       We knew. We prayed. 

Pierre: And what? Did prayers appease your god, all couched 
In the reek, in cold smoke where the nightmare 
At last curled up around us and came true? 
Has he unbound you any more than this 
His servant now gone down in fire to dust?

Araste: Enough. He looks to speak. Tell us. Echon—
Is it as our blood forebodes? Is it death?

He looks back the way he has come, as if awaiting a sight which will not now grant itself to him. Then he turns, looks in agony at each of them, and speaks.

Joseph: If any word of mine could conjure up 
This horror, I’d utter nothing more.
Too well you know our ancient foemen’s rage
To need the shrouded impress of my tongue.
Already my soul has cast a silence 
Like this night’s, it seems, between the evil
And itself to keep from plunging down, down
To fresher hells remembered and rehearsed.
Yes, I was there, concealed amid the trees,
Drawn taut between twin fears: of what I saw
And what my seeing showed me I could be.
Could I have called upon the God I caught 
At work upon that gleaming charnel maw,
I would have flown and left this tale to tell
Itself according to the wind’s effect.
And yet to share with you the hope I found,
I’ll still attend this dreadful memory.
Just how I came upon that sacred grove 
I cannot say, so bitter was the grief
That whipped me on. I heard the hollow cries,
Felt the tread of drum beats in the earth’s breast.
Too soon—and yet it seemed eternity—
There yawned the gap between the birch and pine 
Where hatred pitched its tent and struck its flame.
The wind itself seemed shaking in the leaves,
And still I feared my blood beat would unveil 
Me where I hid among the frightened boughs.
But nothing of my weakness could distract 
Their darkest anger from his strength, who stood,
And fell, and knelt beneath their avid blows
As one who knew himself to stand alone
Before the weaver of all wheres and whens.
He seemed as though the torture were a mass
And he the celebrant of solemn rites. 
To ape the saving flood, three times they poured
A boiling bath across his gentle brow.
And as he knelt they draped him in a chain 
Of axe heads heated to a hellish glow.
Whichever way he bent the bare skin smoked 
And blistered and blackened, and still he bowed
In prayer, as heedless to their ministry 
As stones to flames that ravage arid groves.
He smoked and preached the Gospel as to friends,
Still urging them to hear and turn and live
Until they seized his tongue and tore it free
And let him, bleeding, sink to silent prayer
Wherein he seemed to hear, beyond the shrieks,
Beneath the pounding of their animus,
The music of the supper of the Lamb.
And still they raged, firing fresh hatchet heads
To work a cutting cautery between
His thighs, beneath his arms, along his spine.
At every agony the dark gore welled 
More meager from the ruin of his mouth.
They scourged themselves to fresher fury, shrieked
Their doubled rage at every silent stroke
Till in their wonder’s hideous resort,
Craving the secret springs of Echon’s strength,
They cut out the burning lake of his heart
And cupped it to his tender gaze and ate.
This done, and finding only signs of love,
They moved to bring their labors to an end.
They burnt his body and abandoned it.
I could tell more, the trial of that night 
That seemed to guarantee an end of suns
To warm the feeble world that breeds such hate. 
Good Lejeune endured his death till dawn,
And when the light impossibly resurged 
To spread itself upon the locust shells
Still smoking in the tortured glade, I wept.
But strange—my weeping welled less from the terror
Than thanks that God had willed to set such good 
On earth as that which flowed in Echon’s veins.
But when the tears had come and gone I felt
Fresh fright to think those killers stalked by day
As much as through the night. And so I crept
By shadow and by shade and came behind,
Praying the dark and grace had covered up 
Your flight and blessed the habit of your faith.

Woman (sotto voce): I prayed. I wept. I knew.

Araste:                                                            These griefs are black.
I little know what faith can hope when struck 
With such abiding bitterness as this.
And now our people fly from grief to grief. 
And what can wait beyond this night? I fear 
Our doom has come, and all because our choice 
Of friends has left us here athwart cold fate.

Pierre: What can we hope?

Araste:                                   What? What?

Women:                                                           We prayed. We prayed.

Joseph: Do not divide this night from grace, my friends.
Nor waste your hearts in aches for other worlds.

Araste: If only there were such. We might then tell 
The tales of tribes too strong to fade amidst 
This dust that curls about us and is gone.

A light snow has begun to fall. All pause, glance up into the ghostly flakes.

Joseph: Ten days have faded into desert time.
The mystery of Christ is new announced,
As keen and uncompelled as when the Virgin,
Praying the angel’s dread advance, felt life 
Aflame in the ark of her virginity. 
He comes, my friends, he comes, and we will not
Go down into the dust without this word,
Without the witness of his servant, Echon.

The Huron Carol starts in low, ghostly, filtered through the wood, as all exit through the trees.

Act 1 Scene 1

July of 1626. The same wood, though now the lights are tuned to the mellow riot of deep summer. Brebeuf appears at right. This is a man of great stature and noble bearing, descended from the ancient kings of Normandy, accustomed to the rigors of his native farm as much as to those of the schoolroom, where his masters are Aristotle and Aquinas. He casts a long look around this heart of all verdure, his features calm, reposed above what cannot seem other than an ocean of joy. He speaks this prayer.

Brebeuf: Father, I give you thanks. I feel it here,
Amid this unadapted wilderness,
The mercy that you laid upon your Son.
This is a land of water and of blood,
Here where your own illimitable will
Is shadowed forth in river, vale, and wood.
There is a justice in these many shadows,
The summons of a million trees to one
That tells the hungry soul at last to look
And see the source of all wisdom, to ponder
All the pleasing sight can yield, to stretch hands
Modeled on the making of love and pluck
That fruit whose savor is the life of God.
Do not, dear Father, let me lose the sight
Of that bark against the forest’s broad fastness.
Do not permit a petty strength to tamp
The urgent soul’s insistence on your love.
Let neither cold nor cruel encounter quell
The ardor of a heart that seeks to cross
The ocean of itself to see your face
In every face that lifts itself to light.
To you, Lord, I commend our present task.
Draw from it what fruit you would, and give me
Only your love and your grace. That is enough.
St. Lucy, share with me your holy sight.
Good Rachel, guide me to the children lost.
And bear me now, O Queen, within your mantle.

From left, voices, and the babble of water. A canoe emerges, drawn along the riverbank by two Huron men. Beside them, Lejeune, a Jesuit brother.

Lejeune: There, Father, all has happened as we hoped.

Brebeuf: And hold to hope, brother. For hope has bid
That we begin to hope, here where the miles 
Of hoping run before us by the hundred.

Lejeune: Even as you say, Father. Still I feel,
Seeing how surely these men walk the world,
That the way has opened up before us 
And the road of our passage scrolls away 
As surely as the turning of the earth.

Brebeuf: Your cheer is cheer to me, Lejeune, and graces
The Huron with visions of a heart
Worth bearing to their unappareled land.

Lejeune: Some element in me seems dear to them.

Brebeuf: Your capers used to set the very stones
Of old Rouen to mirth, and ever since 
You’ve made your life a momentary lightness. 
Why should they not glory in your comedy,
However grown more mellow and mature?

Lejeune: Ah, gentle, Father, for I fear their mirth. 

Brebeuf: No, think nothing of the laughter you give
To any man. So lean’s the store of joy
That any soul who prompts it should rejoice
To give such witness to the heart of God.

Lejeune: A simple truth enough for one whose brows 
Will brook no idle mocks. But what is this?
I little like this newest attitude.

The Huron have stopped their preparations and consult each other, glancing at the black robes. Presently they approach.

Pierre: Now is not the time.

Araste: 			No.

Brebeuf:                                          What's this, my friends?

Pierre: New friendship can’t commend a voyage doomed.
Some evil whispers us its stench above 
The lonely river’s flow. We will not start.

Brebeuf (aside to Lejeune): Go now, fetch the rest. Bring gifts and choice food. 
We’ll not leave any means at hand untried.

Brebeuf: If you’ll refuse to bear us as you said,
My friends, linger still a moment. Allow
My feeble tongue a minute’s exercise.

Araste: Faulty, but not feeble, Father. Your wish,
At least a moment, is our own. Speak on.

Brebeuf: A moment then. But what is this before me,
There beyond the water? Do you see them, too,
This lion and this leopard? Ah, the wolf
I knew to be among your mysteries
As still it clings to ours in coldest snows,
But there, there now—I did not know that such
Majestic terrors could accrue to us
In this your broad and ancient wilderness.

He continues gazing beyond the water. The Huron glance at each other.

Pierre: We see nothing.

Brebeuf:		    Nothing?

Araste:                                           Nothing but trees
And a slinking coy-dog, the black half-breed 
Of gentle hounds borne over your ocean
And the reeking scourge of our horrid pines,
The coyote. He cries his innocence 
To moons who’ve witnessed ample blood. That’s all. 
Take care you draw no evil from the world
Further than what’s forever furnished it.

He has sunk to his knees, continues gazing across the water. The two approach, stand one on either side, peer again as Brebeuf’s head bows in prayer. Even in this posture, he is nearly as tall as they are.

Brebeuf (half in prayer now): A terror needn’t be an evil, friends.
The greatness of a God who plumbs his world
And plummets to the limit of what is
Can ramify in countless signs too strong
For man’s mild eyes to mediate and coin.
All’s well, noble souls. Fear nothing from me.

Brother returns at right, followed by others bearing gifts. Huron turn to observe their coming.

Pierre: Think not to sway our course. The time to bear 
You on’s not swelled and ripened yet. Farewell.

Lejeune: But friends, you ought to fortify your arms
Against the reckless journey. For it’s said
You take no noontide respite for yourselves
Along the lonely passage but, like Christ,
Our Lord, sip nourishment from following
The unabating will of God. But stay.
The master has sent gifts and food enough
To make a memorized dessert for days.

A table has been spread. The Huron approach. Lejeune moves toward Brebeuf, who remains kneeling. He kneels a few paces distant.

Brebeuf: You, too, should take the meal, brother Lejeune.

Lejeune: And leave you to this office on your own?

Brebeuf (after a pause): And has your hope, so soon beset, remained?

Lejeune pauses in turn and then begins to intone “Tantum Ergo.” Brebeuf joins him. The Huron and their hosts set down their morsels, listen. Then the river alone is heard.

Lejeune: May God preserve what hope he’s seeded here.

He rises, leaves Brebeuf in prayer, returns to the Huron, who have resumed their feast.

Lejeune: Well, when do we begin? The way is long.

Pierre: When we have made an end. And only if 
We then can feel ourselves assured of you.
For whereas this one kneels as one well used
To earth’s discomforts to the point that pain
Can turn to paradise, you, honored friend, 
Have journeyed half as far in this hour past
As the weeks to come will see us. Hear, then.
If you’re to cross this waste with any hope 
Of life within such liveliness, be still.

Araste: Tuck up those robes. The less you bear the stream
Aboard, the less you’ll soak our needful stores.

Pierre: No boots. A single grit of sand sucked up
And let to etch its way against the skin 
Could send us down to greet the stream of streams.

Lejeune: If that’s the worst…

Araste:                                 The worst? You see that cloud
Curdling the air midstream? There sings a horde
Of war gods to collect and mix our blood,
Yours and mine and theirs, with savor to match
The Iroquois who drink it in their dreams.

Pierre: Now when this keening host commits itself
To you with all its floating zest, you’ll long 
For nothing but to flail them all about
And send them in their millions to their deaths. 
You must implore that Christ whose blood you preach
For patience. Then your stillness is your life.

Lejeune: Well, enough. I’ll sit or ply a paddle
As you wish, and know that I will serve you
As the Christ you mention serves us all,
The one more zealous than your Iroquois 
To make us all rich sharers in one blood.

Pierre: Well, then. Call the father. The time has come.

Lejeune: Father Brebeuf, aboard. The water calls.

Brebeuf rises, looks long across the river once again, and stepping gently into the canoe for all his bulk, kneels in much the same position and seems to resume the prayer where his being most deeply resides. The Huron take up paddles and away. 

Act 1 Scene 2

Huronia. The Jesuits and their guides disembark. The Huron, lithe, uncramped from weeks of travel, gather gear and make swiftly for the village. Lejeune walks a few paces stiffly, stops, stretches, as Brebeuf kneels, touches the deep grass.

Brebeuf: There comes a caution from this girdled earth. 
A coming home occurs of each green touch.
It seems I sense a tearing of some veil
Within the wind that splays this ancient bosk.
What rage is this? I feel a fury roused 
Against that bark more ancient still than these.
Is this, then, Lord, the setting of that strife
I savored first in your baptismal salt,
The sequence of the suffering you bore
Up Golgotha and down to dismal Hell?
Well—what is is etched of love—nothing more
Nor less. And what’s to be is bound in him
Who is to come. Therefore I’ll fear no fate
Outside that bruited by the will alone
When left to its dear unreasoning schemes.

Lejeune: If nothing else, these hunched and plodding weeks
Have yoked us into readiness to plow.
Were proofs of heaven’s ease in sealing off
Our sight from what’s to come in short supply,
Then this we’ve undergone would duly serve.
I’d sooner bid the fervent sight of old
Rouen farewell than stoop to such a jaunt
For years ahead. I feel a will to work.
And here again is Providence at hand.

Brebeuf (rising as one of the Huron guides, accompanied now by a woman and child, appears again): A providence, and in familiar form.

Lejeune: Familiar, yes, and piteous indeed.
To think what centuries the Gospel went
Unheard across this gasping wilderness.

Brebeuf: Let us, then, go rejoicing in God’s ways.

The three approach, the man leading slightly, the woman at his left shoulder, the child peering from his hip.

Brebeuf: This must be she whose love you sang these weeks,
My friend.

Joseph:        Yes, Echon. In these eyes I’ve glanced 
The gathering of soul that shows the self
Itself as Adam was unveiled in Eve,
To borrow from that page you turned
To season the long journey to our land.

Brebeuf: And, ah—there, lurking at your side I see,
Or seem to see, so silently he shrinks,
A third whose glances gather up your own
And hers and harbor both in harmony.
And so you give us back our Triune God
Who, loving, is loved, and ever breathes love.

He kneels, smiling at the child and reaching into a bag at his feet. He withdraws a rosary and crucifix. The child grips the crucifix around the corpus, closing his fingers on it momentarily and then stepping back, looking down at his hand and then at his father.

Joseph: But can it be that wounded man is such,
There, hanging from a molten silver tree,
As could inspire that strength you’ve shown these weeks?

Brebeuf: If any strength has lived in me since then
When you and I embarked upon this quest,
Account it none of mine but his alone.
He it is whose hanging turns the wide world,
Whose flesh, all bellied in the wind of sin,
Bears stricken souls from gracelessness to grace 
And gathers us afflicted to his breast.
Trust him as this little one trusts in you.
If only that should come to pass, these miles
Were reckoned nought. This is the living God,
The one in whom we live, in whom we move,
In whom we have our being. But lead us on
Into the midst of this your endless place.

They proceed, the Hurons before, the Jesuits close behind.

Act 1 Scene 3

A clearing. Brebeuf looks on as a team of Huron run past playing lacrosse. Lejeune puffs along behind and pauses panting before Brebeuf.

Lejeune: Spell me, Father, my meager strength is spent.

Brebeuf: The game’s begun. There’s nothing I can do
But offer up a prayer and speed you on.

Lejeune: Invoke the speedy prophet who on foot
Outstripped the cruel chariot of Ahab!

He charges again into the game as it passes back the other way.

Brebeuf: If we could see ourselves at play, we’d surely
Come to find ourselves more loveable. Strange
To think how children need never be told
To love and let themselves rush on to what 
Excites their love and quickens in their souls
The rising that ascends to God as gently
As sparks will leap from furnaces to stars.

Lejeune (racing by again): But what was it you said this sport is called?

Brebeuf: Lacrosse!

Lejeune:	        Lacrosse!

Brebeuf: 			 These sticks are bishops’ staves,
And every man reminds me of the cross
Beneath whose banner we have spanned the sea
As mariners beneath their pregnant sails.
But here in the course of their sport there sings
A prelude to the apostolic line
Which must, as time gives way to time, present
Itself in all the world God made his own.

Lejeune (pausing again): No more. No more. My lungs have split. I’m done.

Brebeuf: You’ll give our brothers cause to doubt your faith
If having come a party to their game
You leave them now lopsided and dismayed.

Lejeune: And why not take the stick yourself, good John?

Brebeuf: These limbs were formed for slower works than this.

Lejeune: And yet it’s said that none in fair Rouen
Could plow a field as fast as Jean Brebeuf.

Brebeuf: This was but pride, the gasp of Norman kings
Whose blood had run its ancient course and come
To whisper unbecoming thoughts to youth.
But go! The game’s afoot. Let no one name
Ignatius’ sons unequal to the game.

Lejeune: Alright. I’ll run to split my lungs once more.

Brebeuf: The pain of play foretells the grace in store.

Exit.

Act 1 Scene 4

Brebeuf sits at the door of a long house, composing a letter. Lejeune stands above him.

Brebeuf: What else ought I report, my friend?

Lejeune:                                                              The fleas.
Expatiate upon the fleas.

Brebeuf (flicking at his ankle):                           I have,
Brother, and be sure I have spared no ounce
Of flea- or fly-sucked blood in this account.

Lejeune: That said, there’s no worse tale to tell. But start
From when we first set out. You mention, yes,
The bowed and burnt confinement of the boats?

Brebeuf: Mais oui, mon frere. And portages of pain
And baggage lost and drowning faced ten times
A mile.

Lejeune: You’ve forgotten the fear of raids
Concealed in every creek and reedy bend,
The sudden blow of bullets parceled out
From those shrewd commercial gallants, the Dutch.

Brebeuf: How could I forget what every guide’s glance
Commended to memory and confirmed?

Lejeune: I confess, of course, I often forgot
The Iroquois for hungry maringouins
Whose feasting on our stranger blood restored
My faith in present pain to drive away
The specters of the torments still in store.

Brebeuf: And trials yet were saved for us indeed!
The sun.

Lejeune: The fleas!

Brebeuf:                  The ticks.

Lejeune:                                     The fleas!

Brebeuf:                                                       The tongue.

Lejeune: Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, the tongue! If anything 
Were pain enough to put the fleas to flight,
It were this tongue that, uninscribed, eludes 
All quirks of thought in striving after shape.

Brebeuf: The language is a Summa in itself,
An Ethics and a Categories, yes. 
But every tongue is token of the Word
Who speaks and makes and makes his speech to be.
Each effort of the human tongue to trace 
In trackless air the passage of his thought 
Is fodder for commencement, howe’er hard.
Then, too, the tune of their attention turns 
Around relation, fashioning the one
In tension with the other for and from whom
He comes. And so their speaking strikes the heart
Of tongues and strums the Trinity we preach.
Let us, then, rejoice in saying so strange 
It sets us back against our fabric thought.

Lejeune: Even so, the peonage of new speech
Has rendered us God’s dolts often enough.
These mocks have made me yearn for priestly rites 
If only for the shielding of a beard.

Brebeuf: And as our Father Ignatius endured
The schoolboys’ jibes to take the Roman tongue,
Counting the scoffs as profit for the soul,
Let us endure, and praise, and offer up
Discomfiture to God’s enduring glory.

Lejeune: It is, as always, as you say, my friend.

Brebeuf: No, friend, one Word alone is certain good,
And many are the faults we introduce
By our impassioned stuttering. But let’s 
Amend what faults we can and trust in Him
To make our meaning good where we cannot.
No, no. (He pauses in his writing, shakes his head, frowns slightly as he lifts his head and gazes sunward.) In these our everyday constraints
We must discern instead the hand of God,
Granting Ignatius’ sons the grace of pains
He had to seek beside the run of life,
Set out for us as courses in the feast.

Lejeune: What is it, then, that so disquiets you?

Brebeuf: The art of God is long. Our time is brief,
And every passing sunshaft darts the day 
When you and I will glut th’ emperor worm
And wait the summoning thunder of Christ
Come back to mortify by mercy’s might.
Thus every hour rushing past without 
Our task’s accomplishment accuses us,
Cants the enthusiastic cup to spill
Our spirited beginning out for nought.

Lejeune: Often have kindred thoughts assailed my soul.
And more, the soul avails itself of none
Of the balms and props of faith which we drank
As if with mothers’ milk in distant France.

Brebeuf: Things as simple as houses of good stone,
Trellised in roses, cleanly curling smoke
Against a Norman sun rung sweet with bells.

Lejeune: And stained in infinite variety 
To score the story of salvation. No
Windows in this wilderness. Any man
Who wills to see the Gospel must attend
To his imaginings. Nor ever will
The stench of incense swell his Templar mind
With memories of that sole mystic Dawn
That brought grey-hooded death beneath the yoke.

Brebeuf: No, no churches, however heavily
Described. No sculptured saint to captivate 
An errant gaze. No congregated creed
To bolster us in momentary doubt.

Lejeune: Alone.

Brebeuf:             Alone. Yes, yes, alone.

Lejeune:                                                   Though not,
As long as He who reigns on high is one
In body with his Church below. As long
As you and I draw breath to sing his praise,
Then loneliness lies down in bond to hope.
The harvest plumps and gathers to the height,
If only fleas will leave us peace to take
This speech to heart and tune it to God’s use.

Brebeuf: Amen, Lejeune. Amen. But who is there?

Huron: Echon, Echon, come. The demon stalks us.

Brebeuf rises, follows, with Lejeune behind. Exeunt.

Act 1 Scene 5

A scattered circle of Huron. In their midst, a man lies wounded. They give him water, dab half-heartedly at his hurts, but death is near. A hint of smoke drifts across the stage.

Wounded: They came upon us in their sport, for spite,
Ranging like wolves along defenseless flanks
As on we rushed like geese before the blast
Struck silent by the hector of their flight.
Their laughter slunk and cracked from sedge and glade,
While now and then the gifted guns barked out
Their bitter iron screams to intimate
Our death’s invisibly advancing course.

He falters, coughs, is wracked with spasms.

Pierre: I sense this tale intones our common doom.

Araste: Unless a fiercer force arise to stay
The dreadful weapons of our fearsome foe.
Before this their worship of the war god
Wound their might too taut for us to face it.
And now, provisioned as they are by those
Whose utmost care is confidence in furs,
What hope is there to brook their instinct lust?

Wounded: But once did winded hope begin to breathe,
There where at the broad plain’s edge the cleft rock
Harbors night enough to shroud silent men.
Their howling lit the hollow as with hell.
The thunder of blood in my breast died off
As if with the fading rage of their shrieks.
A wren attended on our darkness then
And seemed to speak miraculous reprieve.

Pierre (aside, bitterly): Why will he waste his dying in such speech,
As if rehearsing what was not could shake
Sure-coursing death from his determined touch?

Wounded: The sky drew down to night, and silent stars
Appeared in coruscant assembly, wise
In turning sympathy with all that is.
Beneath their comfort we again crept out.
Hardly had we stirred an inch when harsh arms
Seized us and a fever of shrieks sprang up.
At once they lashed us each to birches, stripped
Our sweat-dark rags and lashed us to a froth
Of blood. Then heaping limbs at my friend’s feet,
They struck a flame and stood as if to warm 
Their hearts against the impotence he screamed.
At length the burning licked apart his bonds.
He crumbled at the legs like banked-up oak,
And when his sighs subsided, I was cut
From my confinement and fell and lay sick
At the crush of steam as they soiled him.
They set me on my feet and laid the corpse
All charred and smoking on my back and sent
Me oozing blood and tears into the night.
Only the fear of their redoubled rage
And the hope of a grave among my tribe
Have driven me beneath this grisly yoke.
And here my spirit hisses into one
With all my fathers gone before. I fear
This fate creeps up to swallow all our tribe.

He dies.

Brebeuf (crossing himself): Lord, as once you healed the paralytic man
For faith you saw reflected in his friends,
Grant this soul  repose in the precious blood
That sprang in manner not unlike to this
To urge your mercy on the sin-lashed word.

A messenger arrives, recoils at the sight before him, silently advances to Lejeune and offers him a letter. Lejeune reads, shadows blended of sorrow and relief playing over his countenance. He moves to Brebeuf, who has fallen to his knees, touches his shoulder.

Lejeune: Father? (Brebeuf does not reply) Father, I would not distract you
But that this page demands your notice now.

Brebeuf reads, glancing now and then at the seething corpse.

Brebeuf: So soon to turn away from this our task?

Lejeune: I know you’d not have chosen this. Nor I. 
And yet the will of Rome has often turned
What seemed a bitter drought to richest yield.

Brebeuf: Go back and make what readiness you can.

Lejeune: Father? It may be weeks before we go.

Brebeuf: I would stay here and pray among the dead
As these prepare their bodies for the tomb.

Lejeune: Then let me stay as well and second you.

Brebeuf: Yours is a heart for brotherhood in Christ,
But leave me, please, to this lament alone.

Lejeune exits.

Brebeuf (as snow begins to fall): Here burns within this frigid paradise
A signal to my soul. It prophesies—
So thrums the rush in the lake of my heart—
Concerning what account my life can claim
When weighed against the gentle shepherd’s gaze.
And if this charred and crumbling image speaks
A word of what’s in store for me, then hope
Cannot alight from out my breast. I will,
God willing, descend again to the dead
And spark the smoldering embers of rage
To fresh infernal heights. It is enough.
Still the dread of dereliction haunts me,
Hounds hope’s once-folding pinions into flight.
Enough, enough. What weakness creeps in me
Marks out the path for serpent grace to score,
Curb, smooth, carve out and animate and mend.
Let Christ be Lord and call. I will attend.

Exeunt, the Huron bearing the shrouded bodies of the dead, the latter smoking in the falling snow. Brebeuf comes close behind.

Daniel Fitzpatrick is the author of two novels, two poetry collections, and Restoring the Lord’s Day: How Reclaiming Sunday Can Revive Our Human Nature. He is the editor of Joie de Vivre: A Journal of Art, Culture, and Letters for South Louisiana. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and four children.

I.

It was spring when Henry Eddington came to Strawberry Hill. The first few warm days had begun to melt the thick layer of snow which lay across the woods and fields and the roads, where little rivulets of running water were making inroads around the piles of ice and snow. The sea breeze carried a scent of fresh, warming earth. It was the last day of February, and the Swanns were giving their final ball of the season.

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Henry was walking alone to the dance. The sun had just set and on the west a peacock blue sky was slowly swallowing the tired grey, while on the east, towards the sea, it was already a deep indigo, revealing one, then another, tiny star. Henry tramped through the slushy road, trying not to let the mud splatter his trousers. He was dressed in a long grey overcoat and carried a bundle over his back. He was a fair lad of three-and-twenty, with curly brown hair and lively green eyes. Just now his eyes were concentrated on the lights which had just begun to arise before them around the hill. They were the lights of Swann House, already alive with laughter and music. Henry felt a stab of loneliness prick his heart.

The house loomed in dark shadow around him as he mounted the steps and knocked. It was a broad house, about twice as long as it was high, with great square corniced windows. As Henry stood by the door, its walls seemed to rise interminably on either side. Then the door opened, and he was let in by a nervous little maid, who rushed off without explanation as soon as he was inside. There were many coats hanging by the wall, and through the closed doors Henry could hear a waltz playing and the excited chatter of many voices. He wished for a moment that he, too, could rush off like the maid, or turn into one of the coats and hang there until the house was quiet again.

He shook himself and opened his bag. In it were two pale blue calf leather boots. He was rather proud of these boots; his father had bought them at a pawn-shop in France on one of his early voyages. Henry thought they fit rather nicely with his grandfather’s old military jacket, though it was patched under one arm and its white was beginning to yellow. It was a fancy-dress ball; Henry had never been to one before.

Just then the door opened, and in a flood of light a slight girlish form appeared. She was clad in dark greenish blue, set with golden thread which shimmered in the candlelight. The form’s head was in shadow, but Henry could see a cloud of golden hair framing it like a halo. When she turned towards him he saw that she was wearing a mask, rimmed with gold around the eyes and crowned with peacock feathers. He got up awkwardly, blushing, and stammered a good evening.

The girl gave a little jump. “Good evening,” she replied, in a gay and friendly tone. “I didn’t see you—forgive me. I was just looking for Millie. But it seems she’s run off to the kitchen again—silly girl! —when she’s to be serving the grog.” She looked at him again. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced before.” The little mouth beneath the mask broke into a pleased smile. “That means you must be Henry Eddington! I’m so glad you’ve come. Mother was beginning to worry you would be too serious to come to a leap-day masquerade.”

“No,” began Henry uncertainly. “That is, yes. I am Henry Eddington. I’m sorry to be late; I should have ridden but my farmer’s hand took Silver—my horse, I mean—to town today to buy seed.”

“You walked?” she exclaimed. “My, but that’s a long way. Did you walk in those?” looking at the pale blue boots.

“No,” he replied, reddening again. “They’re part of my costume.”

“They look just right with the coat.” Henry could not tell if the little mouth was forming another friendly smile or if she were laughing at his shabby dress. He rather feared it was the latter.

“But I haven’t introduced myself!” exclaimed the girl. “I’m Cecilia Swann. I suppose we should have been formally introduced by the Marshall (That’s my uncle), but no harm done.” She slipped out of the room, leaving Henry to find his way to the ballroom alone.

He stood for a moment quite still. He was thinking of the little mouth. What did her eyes look like? He wished he could know what they said.

The ladies of Strawberry Hill were very pleased when Henry Eddington at last opened the door and walked into the ballroom. The Marshall (whose name was, in fact, James Marshall) had his hands full introducing all the Miss Annes and Miss Rubies and Miss Priscillas of the town, and Henry his with one dainty crocheted glove after another. At last, after she reappeared with a grog-laden Millie, came Miss Cecilia, who gave him a slight smile under the peacock feathers as she put her hand, shimmering in blue satin, in his. Then he was confronted with Mrs. Swann herself, who descended upon him like a good-natured bird of prey. About seven girls followed her like a flock of crows.

Mrs. Swann was a large lady, of ruddy and sturdy New England constitution. She had a rather nervous disposition which translated into extreme solicitude for her guests. Soon Henry was regaled with cakes and wine and set upon a couch with Mrs. Swann on one side and many eager interlocutors on the other.

“Do you like Willow Farm, Mr. Eddington?” asked Miss Anne Stacey. “I hear you haven’t lived there since you were a boy.”

“Why, yes,” said Henry, “Though I’m afraid I’m little used to farm life.”

“It’s a small little place, though, isn’t it?” said Miss Priscilla Burns, a fine lady whose elaborate Lady of the Lake costume reminded Henry of a flamingo. “I hear they haven’t cultivated above half of it in years, and that was after your father sold the south pastures.”

“So Mr. Gresham tells me. But I’m home now, and I won’t be going off to sea again, so I’ll be learning a great deal from him.”

“Ooh,” sighed young Miss Letty Daley. “You must have had such adventures at sea. Do tell us. I adore a good story.”

Henry flushed—he could hardly think of the sea without his father’s death coming back to him: the fire and the cries and his own crushing realization that he could do nothing.

Unexpectedly, Mrs. Swann came to his rescue. “Oh, my dear Letty, pray don’t ask such a thing!” she exclaimed. “I can’t abide grisly stories—I declare they send shivers right up and down my spine. And I’m sure our dear Mr. Eddington would rather think of other things. Besides, here is dear Cecilia about to play us a song—and with Mr. Dudley, too! Can you see well, Mr. Eddington?”

Henry could see only too well. Next to Cecilia, who was seated at the open piano, was a lanky young man, tall and pale, with a thick mustache that would have been forbidding if his expression had not been so thoroughly mild. He seemed to have thought a black cloak thrown over his evening clothes sufficed as a brigand’s costume. Cecilia looked up at this Mr. Dudley with a smile, and they began a duet. Mr. Dudley had a quavering tenor and Cecilia, a rich, deep soprano that sounded well together as they sang The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington.

“How sweet they are!” cried Mrs. Swann when the song ended. “Come, everyone, we must congratulate them.” She swept her whole entourage, Henry included, across the room. Henry found himself standing directly before Cecilia, looking down at her masked face. He could see a hint of sparkling blue through the holes in the mask. He stood quite still, wishing to say something complimentary or provoking, but unable to find any words at all.

“Did you enjoy the song, Mr. Eddington?” asked Cecilia with the same ironical little smile.

“Why, yes,” stammered Henry. “I thought it was an angel singing.”

Cecilia seemed not to hear his reply, but turned to the man behind her. “This is the famous Mr. Eddington, John,” she said. “Mr. Eddington, this is Mr. Dudley. His family are great friends of ours.”

Henry looked at the man, standing painfully erect behind the piano stool. He felt suddenly even more hopelessly out of place than before. Whatever had possessed him to come to this party? Why had he come to Strawberry Hill at all? Henry wished suddenly that he was far away on the Atlantic Ocean, on a steamer loaded only with molasses and sailors who never greeted him with the smile of welcome which Mr. Dudley was now presenting him with.

“Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” said Mr. Dudley, bowing affably. “We are delighted to welcome an Eddington back to Strawberry Hill at last. If I’m not mistaken, my parents were old friends with you mother.”

“Were they?” Henry replied absently. His eye was fixed on Mr. Dudley’s buttonhole, where a wilted rose hung, its stem half-broken.

“Indeed!” continued Mr. Dudley, apparently unperturbed. “And they speak very fondly of your farm. I trust it is doing well?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know much about farming, but I am learning from Mr. Gresham.”

“Ah! Well, I trust you will be all right soon. I would be delighted to be of any assistance to you, should you need it; Mr. Pelham, my foreman, has a great deal of experience. And so does the Daleys’ man. Have you met Mr. Daley? His daughter Miss Letitia was just here. Charming lady—have you met her?”

At this junction, to Henry’s great relief, Miss Cecilia stood up, and taking Mr. Dudley’s arm with a smile, said, “I really think it’s time we started dancing again, John. Everyone is growing so dull. Anne, won’t you play us something jolly?”

Miss Stacey complied readily, and soon Henry found himself handed a partner—he had hardly time to see who—and whirled in among the throng of dancers.

He looked down and saw that he had little Miss Letty on his arm, who was kicking up her heels bravely to the music despite Henry dancing several seconds behind the beat. He blinked at her, and she laughed back, thinking he had winked.

“You are a funny fellow, Mr. Eddington!” he heard her exclaim. “You don’t seem to care about anything anyone wants to know from you.”

“I beg your pardon?” Henry blinked again.

“I was asking if you had met Mr. Dudley,” Letty explained. “That’s Miss Cecilia’s Intended. Isn’t he awfully charming?”

“Why–why yes, I suppose he is,” Henry faltered. “I beg your pardon, but what do you mean by Intended?”

“Why, he’s to marry her.” Letty glanced over her shoulder, to where Mr. Dudley and Miss Cecilia were dancing with slow, elegant seriousness. “They say that’s how it always goes; the Dudleys and the Swanns are such great friends—have been ever since they have been neighbors. Not that they’re engaged exactly; they wouldn’t hear of his proposing until Mr. Swann returns from Washington. But it’s sure all the same. I believe,” she added in a confidential whisper, “That it’s been quite arranged from the moment they were born. I don’t believe they ever had a say in the matter!”

They danced on in silence. Henry felt very tired, and very silly; he felt that his coat smelled of mothballs and that his boots were becoming thin in the soles. When he looked across the room at Cecilia, swaying and gliding in her peacock brocade, he felt as though he were a worn-down statue ornamenting an old fountain while a king’s pageant, brilliant in blazing sunshine, passed him by.

He said good night to Mrs. Swann as the sun was coming up on a new March morning. She shook his hand heartily, and exclaimed, “You must come often, Mr. Eddington! We are so delighted with your addition to the neighborhood. And you know” —she leant close to his ear— “Cecilia and John can’t be alone all the time, and young company is better than my old self sitting with them, much as I may enjoy it.”

Henry turned to the door in a daze. He was about to step out when Cecilia herself appeared, in a hurry, to wish him a good night. She had taken off her mask and was holding it by its two long ribbons. Her blue eyes shone clearly now in the grey morning, and Henry saw an unquenchable merriment dancing in them.

“Good night, Mr. Eddington! I do hope you had a good evening.”

“The best of my life,” rasped Henry.

“Dear me,” said Cecilia. “With as long a face as that? You can’t have had a good time at all.”

As Henry walked home along the frozen road in the cold, overcast morning, he thought of blue eyes and a wilted rose in a button-hole, and he shivered, and pulled his grey overcoat close about him.

II.

The ladies of Strawberry Hill thought Mr. Eddington was rather a disappointment. They admitted that he was charmingly handsome and had an excellent voice, and a smile quite bewitching if he chose to show it. But he was absent-minded, they said. He seemed hardly to see them as he passed them in town, and at dances he was usually found sitting by himself and quite forgetting to dance.

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Henry went to many Strawberry Hill gatherings at first, for he could not tear himself away from the thought of those dancing eyes and that little smile. But he always returned home a crushed man.

One day in late May, Henry had come to Swann House again, after having excused himself for several weeks on the grounds that he and Mr. Gresham had more business than usual. In fact Mr. Gresham had a great deal of business for Mr. Eddington to attend to, but his progress was rather impeded, for often, after explaining a great deal of dairy bills and plans for the potatoes, would discover that Mr. Eddington had not been listening at all, but was staring over Mr. Gresham’s head towards the hills and the willow trees.

Today at Swann House, the immediate family were together, with Mr. Dudley there with them as usual. In the course of the evening, they again gathered around the piano, and Cecilia and Dudley sang again as Henry looked on. When they finished, Cecilia turned to Henry. “Will you not sing with us? You are always so silent. But I am sure there is a singing voice in you!”

“Please do,” Dudley agreed. “Much as Cecilia and I delight to join our voices in song, I must acknowledge that we may at last begin to bore our audience.”

“And perhaps ourselves!” laughed Cecilia. “Though they do say you and I sound well together. But come, we really must hear you, Mr. Eddington.”

Henry could not say no to the entreaty in those blue eyes, now fixed on him with a teasing look. His strong baritone did him credit, and he sang Cecilia’s choice, Dear Evelina, Sweet Evelina, with great feeling. His voice quavered a little, especially when he came to the lines,

“Although I am fated to marry her never,

I've sworn that I'll love her for ever and ever,”

but when he finished,

“Dear Evelina, sweet Evelina,

My love for thee shall never, never die,”

the room was quiet for a moment. Then Mr. Dudley said,

“I must judge your performance quite laudable, my good Mr. Eddington. I believe your voice quite exactly suited to the piece. It is quite a favorite of mine; in fact, it is one that Cecilia and I used to sing together when we were still very young. We are in the way of childhood friends, as you may have heard, Mr. Eddington.”

“I have. Your families seem to have an old friendship.” Henry’s moment of happiness was effectively quenched.

“They do indeed,” Mr. Dudley gave a satisfied smile. “What else was to be expected, after my father and Cecilia’s both made their fortunes in brass in Chicago? They are like twins; in fortune, in estate, and I may even venture, esteem among their neighbors. What more natural, then, but that their children should grow together as good friends as we have done?”

“What more natural, indeed,” Cecilia interrupted. “I don’t suppose anyone ever thought any other end to be expected. So we have lived as neighbors and friends our entire lives, and seemed to belong together as families, not just to ourselves, but to everyone who knew us. How could it ever be different?”

“That is exactly what I think, my dear Cecilia!” cried Mr. Dudley. “It as if the whole universe, nay fate itself, commanded it. Our fathers have indeed been the hands of fate!”

“But your father was a victim of it, was he not?” said Cecilia suddenly, looking at Henry. “It was a strange thing to see a young man return to his home where no family was waiting to greet him.”

“I was on the same ship with him,” said Henry quietly. “He was in the pilot house when the explosion happened. I was at the wheel and saw it all. But only the fore part of the ship went down; everyone to aft survived. I have often wondered why I should have been the one to live when it was my father who knew so much, and who guided me in all things, and from whom I have received everything which has any value to me.”

“Perhaps he is guiding you still,” replied Cecilia, her eyes peculiarly soft. “And his prayers may be guiding your fate even as we think of him now. And what wisdom he has given you is yours to treasure forever.”

“Thank you,” said Henry, “Though it is hard to see any good in the fates that have led me since then.”

“It may take time,” she said thoughtfully, “before any of us can see where we are being led.”

“Whatever do you mean, my dear Cecilia?” said Mr. Dudley with a smile. “You are speaking in riddles today.”

“I mean that it can take us a long time before we arrive at our happiness.”

“Ah, now I understand you! I have been beginning to think the same. But be patient only a moment longer! Will you walk in the garden, Miss Cecilia?”

“Gladly. The air in this room oppresses me today. Will you come, Mr. Eddington?”

But Henry said he must return home. He stumbled out the door blindly, all but falling down the steps. As soon as he was out of the courtyard he began to run. He did not know where he was running, but he did not care, as long as he ran anywhere but back to Swann House, anywhere that was far from those blue eyes and that detestable Mr. Dudley whose placid face smiled with such assurance of security! Oh, what had come over him ever since he had come to Strawberry Hill? Why had he let himself be bewitched by what he could not have? It was easier after all, he thought, to meet a storm at sea, though it might threaten to take his life with it, than to face the dark clouds gathering in his own heart. He could not go on like this any longer—he felt as though he had been trapped all these months in a hot stifling room with the windows shut. He had to get out.

Threatening clouds gathered as Henry hastened southward down the sea road. The air had become oppressive and prophesied rain. The waves began to rise angrily, and rumbled as if muttering imprecations to the sky. Henry followed the road until he came to the port, where the ships were hastening in against the oncoming storm. He entered the steamship company office.

III.

Henry walked back home through the rain that night, the wind howling wildly around his ears. It tore at his coat, and, though it was early summer, sent a chill into his bones. He walked firmly now, like a man determined, and sure of what he was to do.

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He came to where the sea road would lead him around the lip of land on which Swann House stood. Once he had passed it, he would be well on his way home. But, as he rounded the swell where the pine trees forest rose up next to the house, he stepped suddenly into water up to his ankles. The road curved very close to the sea here, and it was completely flooded. Ahead, Henry could see waves swirling where he knew the road must be. He looked up at the pine woods. There was no help for it; he must climb the hill and skirt the house, so as to come up onto the high road above it. It was bitter to have to walk so close to it again. But he began his climb, forcing a path through the wet and sticky pine boughs which seemed to be trying to stab him every time he moved, and the light was fading fast. His feet slipped in mud, and as he pushed branches from him the water drenched his face.

Henry stumbled on until at last he was level with the house. The trees lightened a little here and he could see the house looming like a dark shadow to his right, the lights in its windows shining like beacons.

Below Henry, the ground dipped before it leveled out. At the bottom of the ridge a small streamed flowed, though it was now swollen with the rain. Mossy stones lined it, and beyond it the pine trees gave way to a birch forest. The trunks stood up white and stark in the low light. As Henry broke through the last thicket of trees, he saw that what he had taken for the closest birch tree was no tree at all, but a tall slim girl clad all in white, who was standing by the stream and now, hearing his coming, turned toward him. It was Cecilia.

Henry stopped in his tracks, completely startled. She had given a little jump when he came out between the trees, but did not seem entirely surprised. She simply stood and looked at him.

“Cecilia” he cried then. “Miss Swann! What are you doing out in this storm? You will catch your death of cold out here. Come out of these woods—a branch may fall any moment.”

“I like to go out in storms,” she replied in a clear voice. “I feel that it appeases the storm in my own heart. I heard the wind blowing and I knew I must go and stand beneath the pine trees and hear them weeping in the wind. And I could not be inside anymore.” She looked up at him with a questioning look. “I might ask you the same question: what are you doing here? But somehow, when I heard the noise in the trees, I knew it was you and nobody else.”

“I did not mean to come,” he said. “That is, I had no other way to go. I was walking home from the harbor, and the sea road is flooded.”

“The harbor? What were you doing there?”

Henry hesitated, looking up at Cecilia’s face, on which the golden hair was lying flattened from the rain. In her eyes there was a searching look. He felt that she would discover anything he tried to conceal from her just then.

“I was at the steamship company office,” he said. “I have signed with my father’s old company. I go to New York at the end of this week.”

“Why?” Cecilia cried in surprise. “Why would you go—when I thought you were just beginning your life here? Do you hate us all so much, that you cannot abide a few months in our company before we drive you off to sea again—the sea from which all your sorrows came?”

“No, I do not hate you. No, but I cannot abide to be here—among all the prying and chattering people who want to know so much and yet care so little what you say, who would have you entertain them but not be bothered whether you live or die! Forgive me, you are not like that—and your family has been good to me. I will try to say my goodbyes to them if I can before I go. But no, I cannot stay, so near and yet so far…the sea is the only place for me.”

As he spoke, he had walked impetuously past her and leapt over the stream. He stood now leaning with one hand against a birch tree, his face turned away from her and up the hill towards the road. He was panting a little and he turned his face up into the rain to catch his breath. The rain streamed down his face like tears.

“Henry.”

“Henry,” Cecilia repeated, but still he did not turn round, but looked up into the sky. The clouds broke as he looked up, and a tiny patch of deep indigo appeared, and in it a single star. “Henry, today Mr. John Dudley asked to marry me.”

“I wish you every happiness,” he replied dully.

“I told him no,” said Cecilia.

Henry stood for a moment as if turned to stone. Then, very slowly, he turned.

“You refused him?”

“Yes, Henry, I refused him.”

“But why? How? I thought the two of you had been intended for each other all your lives.”

“And so we had. We had always been friends, and I knew how happy our parents would be, and really there was nobody else—that is, there have never been many young men my age in Strawberry Hill. But I realized this spring, as the time drew nearer, that I had never really thought of what it would mean to marry him. And when he asked me I knew: that I could never love him and that we would both be miserable all our lives as man and wife.”

Henry was looking at her now across the stream, gazing straight into her eyes which she lifted up to his as she finished. His hand was still on the birch.

“Cecilia,” he said slowly, “Do you know that I love you? Do you know that since the first moment you walked into the hall on that February evening you have held my heart as secure a prisoner as if I were chained in the bottom of a dungeon? Do you know that all these months, I have not lived but when I have thought of you? And yet when I thought of you I died, for you were promised to another man, and there was no hope for a sailor lad like me. I have wandered on my father’s farm a ghost, not able to attend to any business, for I felt as though I were living on borrowed time, and that I would never be able to live here if you married another. And when I saw that you were on the point of doing so, I could not stand it anymore. I ran straight to the harbor. Cecilia, I would never have told you this but for what you have said just now. But now you know.”

“I knew already, Henry,” said Cecilia softly, breaking into a smile.

“You did?” cried Henry. “Then—have I your permission to try to win you? I know that you hardly know me, and that I am much poorer than you, and that you have only just refused another man, and—”

“You dear sweet ninny!” now Cecilia was laughing in earnest. “Do you not see? How can you not know why I am telling you all this, why I refused my family friend and why I am standing here with the wind blowing and the rain pouring down? Do you not know that it is because I am so lovesick at the thought of you that I could not sit indoors but had to rush out into the storm to cool my spirit? You dear silly goose; you won me the very moment you looked at me when you were sitting there all shy and lost in the coat room with your funny blue boots!”

Henry leaped over the stream and landed scrambling in the mud and rocks at Cecilia’s feet. Still laughing she pulled him up and tried to wipe some of the dirt off his coat. But he took her in his arms and kissed her face, heedless of the mud on his arms around her white dress. But now he was laughing too, and they smiled up to the sky as though they were drinking up their happiness.

“Do you know that all this time I thought you despised me?” said Henry. “I was convinced you were always laughing at me.”

“Of course I was,” and Cecilia showed that little smile again, and Henry understood it at last. “You are such a dear, silly, funny man.”

They laughed heartily once more. Henry felt that he had never known joy before, and felt how good it was to have been wrong and to find that all his misery had only been a dam to the river of his happiness.

“What did Mr. Dudley say?” asked Henry.

“Oh, he was very surprised, but rather relieved, I think,” said Cecilia. “I think he was a little offended at being refused, but he cheered up a great deal when I mentioned all his other friends, especially the Daleys. Do you know that all this time he thought marrying me was his solemn duty, but that in his heart he wished he could be free? I never guessed it. You were not the only one who has been mistaken.”

“And your parents?”

“They were more upset. But I vowed to them that we would stay friends with the Dudleys, and that indeed we would continue to see them nearly every week. I think my father rather suspects what the case is. He said, ‘I wouldn’t hear of this under ordinary circumstances, but I know when a heart is set; and yours is just about fixed, if I’m reading the signs right.’”

“How easily you make every difficulty disappear, my dear!” laughed Henry. Then he grew serious. “But, my dear, I did sign for the steamship. I’ll have to go—and be gone for three months at least before I can get out of it. If only I had known! I fear there’s no helping it now.”

“I can make that difficulty disappear too,” smiled Cecilia. “It takes more than three months to prepare for a wedding, you know.”

“Then when I return,” and Henry smiled back, “I will have a bride waiting for me in Strawberry Hill?”

“Yes,” she said, “And every day I’ll beg the fate that brought you here to us, to bring you in safety back to me again.”

The rain had stopped. Above the two, the moon broke out from the shrouding clouds and illuminated the forest and the fields as they walked out. The wet grass shimmered in the moonlight as if in answer to the stars above. The two figures stood out clearly as they walked together, one dark, the other glimmering white, up the steps of the garden and towards the house.

Marie Beecher is a recent graduate from Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, with a love of books, dogs, and good conversation. Originally from Kentucky, she now resides in New Hampshire with her husband.

The men talked about the heat. They swore, wiped sweat away, swore some more, and worked harder. They hollered orders, laughed like hell at things I tried to understand, and took great drinks of water out of the bags I carried to them. They were giants, those guys. What a feeling it was to be out there with them. What a great battle we met every day out in those fields. They ran wild over those fields, making decisions, swearing at trouble, but always managing to make their machines work for them. Always, in the end, they stacked that alfalfa up in great piles. No matter how hot it was, how many times the machinery broke down, or how hungry or tired they were, they always got that alfalfa cut and gathered and stacked.

I sat up on one of those stacks and looked out at them across the field. A feeling of triumph sat me up straight and proud. What a difference between the sixth-grade games I’d been playing just a few weeks ago. I could barely understand how I got along in such a silly world. Duncan Bena! How silly he seemed to me now, running around Eleventh Street, playing baseball, or going out to Alexander’s Park for a swim.

The thought of a swim turned my head around. I got up and walked over the top of the stack toward the other side, looking out toward the river.

Young Leonard was sitting there in the middle of the stack, fresh back home from combat in South Korea, now hiding from the sun under his new straw hat. “Where you going, Sweet Pea?” he asked.

I watched fat Marion place an inch of cigarette ash in his cuff and then answered him. “Nowhere. Just thought I’d take a look at the river.” I didn’t want to tell him why. “When will the salmon be coming up?”

“I don’t know—sometime,” He answered.

Marion looked up in half excitement. “I think I saw one going up this morning, at the ford. I couldn’t tell for sure, though. Thought I ran the truck right over it. Your grandpa didn’t see anything come out.”

“No kidding!”

“No kidding,” and he grinned big and yellow, looking straight out at me.

I looked again at the river and continued my walk over the top of the stack. When I got to the edge I stopped, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to keep on going, right out through the barbed-wire fence below me, and across the fifty yards of sage and rock to the river. It suddenly got very hot standing there. I knew I couldn’t go play on the river. Well, I could—they’d let me—they wouldn’t say anything. But I really couldn’t. Boy, that river was magic. It seemed that it should just disappear into the ground, or into the air. It was so hot and so dry down in the bottom of the canyon. I looked up into the blue white of the sky, up to the ridge of the steep hills that seemed to surround me. So here I was, on the John Day River, at McDonald’s Ford, exactly where settlers on the Oregon Trail once crossed. A tough land, I thought. But the river made it bearable. Without it this place would be miserable. There wouldn’t be any alfalfa, or any farm house, or any men, or even me, that’s for sure.

I started to the sound of Al revving the tractor motor at the other end of the stack. Back already. Like Marion said, they were makin' her pay today. Leonard and Marion had already Jumped up, forks in hand, and were signaling to Al where they wanted the load dumped. Al obliged. Big as a barn, sitting on that padded tractor seat, he gunned the motor and threw the hydraulic lever to raise the fork. Up she came, clear up this time because the stack was almost finished. Then he moved the load in, set it down, tilted the tongs, and backed out. Perfect.

We all started laying the alfalfa out, building a strong corner, packing it hard and sure against the months ahead. I felt like a million bucks: fork for fork, right along with them.

Al shouted up to us, "Finish her off and let's break, it's that time." And then he laughed like he did so often. Laugh really isn't the word for it, I guess. But he chuckled big. Really big. His whole body chuckled and he grinned all over his fleshy face. Nobody knew what he was laughing at, maybe just anticipation. Nobody really wondered, I guess, because he was always doing it.

When we finished putting down the corner Al put the fork up to us and we hopped on. I liked going down on the fork. The danger, I suppose. I hung on tight, though, and didn't jump off till we were all the way down and the motor was off. Then Al let himself down off the tractor and reached for a cigarette.

"You got that water in a place where it's keeping cold?" he asked, with what was left of a Missouri accent.

I was already running around to the other side of the stack just to make sure.

"Yea." I grabbed it and came back around. "Marion said the salmon might be coming up the river already."

"They are. I forgot to tell you. I saw two wakes last night, before it got dark. Up above the fishing hole."

Great! I'd fished for big ones before. And it was true that I'd caught the biggest squaw fish that they had ever caught on the ranch. But that had been six years ago when I was down visiting, and my folks had been here then. And I couldn't even remember catching it, though I never let on when someone brought the subject up. But I'd never gone after salmon with a rifle. And that's what was coming up. It was a promise, as sure as anything.

Al looked down the river toward the ford. "Harry's just now going over to get our lunch. He must have had to gas up the pickup.” Then he yelled, “Hurry up, Harry, God damn it, we’re hungry,” and he laughed again.

I figured grandpa would be a good ten more minutes getting the lunch and recrossing the river, so I decided to run down to the river while the men smoked and waited. I slipped through the fence and started picking my way through the sagebrush toward it.

It wasn't at all like the rivers on the coast, that I knew so well. Different climate; different rivers. Through the heat it looked more like a picture than a river, just a piece of shine in front of me. It could have been ten miles away still. The closer I got, though, the more I could see of it. I saw it lying there deep and slow and quiet, as if trying to ignore the sun. Still, I could only just see it. I only started to feel it when I came real close, close enough to hear some of the noise it was making.

And that was slight, just a bit where it slid over some shallows down stream and where it ran around a rock or two close to shore. Even when I stood right there by its edge it still wasn't like what I knew of rivers. It really didn't come alive for me until I leaned over and put my face down to its surface; not until I felt that couple of inches of cool air hanging there, not until I shut out the sun and looked down through my shadow into the cool heavy water, down into the mud and sand, not till then did I really feel the river. That's how I saw the river that day, anyway. But that was the last time I knew so little of it.

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The John Day River country in north central Oregon is beautiful country, beautiful if you don't like trees and get along with dust and wind; it's beautiful if you can stand the heat. But if you can't stand it, then the dust will crush you and the wind will dry you out and whip you to death. Short of that sun, though, almost everyone agrees it's beautiful. It's hard country, but fertile, and up top, up out of the gorge, it's full of rolling hills. Mostly little ones, gentle ones, worn round by the weather, sometimes no more than oversized bumps or rises. Wheat land. And the land seems to stretch forever in a great patchwork of browns and golds, spreading out to the horizon in every direction. And each inch of those hills is used by the people who live there. Most of the land is farmed, half wheat and half summafolla, but some of the land is in its natural state: thick, pale yellow cheat grass, interrupted by an occasional patch of volcanic scabrock and frequent clumps of sagebrush. It's here that the cattle, Insensitive for the most part to the dust and heat, spend their days, swatting flies, chewing, looking dully at each other, and once a day, after blowing the dust and algae off the surface of a water hole, sucking up a belly of water.

Holding the whole country together is a skeleton of dirt and gravel roads. Crossing the great fields, winding along the gullies and dry stream beds, and skirting the gentle slopes of the thousand small knobs and hills, these narrow, bumpy, and insufferably dusty roads manage to tie the country together because they bring together the men who make the country what it is. For along the roads, and even more commonly at their junctions, the farm houses are found. They aren't pretty. The house is usually large, a refuge from the days when it took a large family and crew to work the land. They are seldom anything but square, stark, sitting in the middle of a cluster of buildings which have grown up around them. A tool shed or work shop, depending on the size of the farm, a bunk house, a barn, and maybe a feed shed are the familiar buildings. And all of these are held together by a complex of dusty paths and areas of dirt and cheat grass. And the sun; the sun is always there too.

Running right up through the middle of all this is the John Day River. It has shaped for itself, over its thousands of years, a great bed to run in. The river cuts straight out of the heart of the Oregon desert and runs north till it dumps into the Columbia River. And the closer it comes to the Columbia the deeper it has cut into the earth itself. In the last forty or fifty miles the river can best be described as a canyon. Up top, the hot semi-desert farm land begins to break away into rock gullies starting a mile or so from the canyon and its river. Initially the land slopes ever so slightly toward the deep gouge in the earth that the river has shaped. But in the end there is always a crest where the gentle slope becomes an accelerated drop, sometimes nearly straight down, almost like the lip of cliff. From that place, through the shimmering heat, a man can look down and see the river, a tiny blue ribbon lying in the bottom of its great trough. It doesn't look real, though. It's more like a mirage: so inviting, so blue against the burned flats at the bottom of the brown, plunging hillsides that lead down to it, so unlike the hard, dark rock that it left bare by its passing. At the most, from the top of the canyon, the John Day River is a promise.

Down close the John Day lies in its bed and makes noise like it's going Somewhere. It doesn't though, not anywhere that means much, in any case. And it doesn’t escape the mid day sun or the hills or the silence that hovers about it, nor the brightness that makes it almost disappear before one's eyes. The brightness and the heat press down on that water until its every bend seems a trial. The river is swallowed up by the day, caught up in all that is around it, a prisoner of the sun and the dry, brown hills that encompass it. Like a dead man walking, some might say.

I hustled back up through the sage brush toward the lunch and talk that I knew would be waiting. When I reached the fence the horn blew on the pickup, so I knew Grandpa had made it back and the lunch was ready. As I approached the truck I could hear Marion swearing. He didn't like having to eat a packed lunch; he wanted to go back over to the ranch house and sit down at a good table of hot food. But that was impossible today and everyone knew it. So no one listened.

"I don't have no faith in that damned Doctor Dormire anyway. Ethyl and Virginia would be better off staying home."

Marion’s 45 years and as many extra pounds were weighing on him. He was already more than a bit on edge. The men understood, but none wanted to share in his misery so they tried not to hear him. They knew things were going to be tough enough later in the day when the sun really started burning down. Al had guessed earlier in the morning that it would probably reach about 110. It was already 90.

Grandpa came around the back of the truck carrying a big picnic jug. He walked lightly for a man of sixty years. Somehow he seemed to be the freshest of the bunch. Of course he had been raking up alfalfa all morning; and it was about the easiest job of all if things went right. You could keep up pretty good speed, so the air kept you a little fresh. So the job didn't demand the stamina that pitchforking did. But Grandpa didn't have the job because he couldn't do the others. His job was his out of respect. He had a good twenty years on even Al, and he'd been born and raised within a few miles of McDonald's Ford. He knew his way around, and he was respected for it.

I hadn't seen him all morning.

"Hey, buckaroo, how'd you make it?"

"Oh, fine," I said, acting like it had been nothing. "Did Grandma go in with the women?"

"Hell, yes," he said with a smile. “You didn't think the old gal would let the women go to town without her, did you?"

The idea delighted me. "I guess not," I smiled back at him.

Lunchtime was always a good time for me. First of all there was the food, but second there was the talk. The men sat around and talked of the old days on the river, about shooting the ducks that fly in every winter, about Old Man Baker's broken leg, and about Doctor Dormire too. But finally the talk would drift around to business, to the work that always had to be done on the ranch. It was impossible to escape the fact that it was a work day and that it was hot and that there were jobs to do. The men would have liked to forget for a few minutes, but they knew they were in the middle of the daily battle again, they couldn't escape it. Marion was sitting on the ground, leaning back against the front wheel of the pickup, trying not to think of anything but his own private battle with a sandwich.

"We're going to have to walk all the irrigation ditches as soon as we get this crop in," Al said. "I was up to Rock Creek dam last night and the water is still up pretty good. We must be losing water to the beavers because we're not getting much down here. They must have built in some of the ditches between the dam and here. I don't know why they can't stay down on the river where they belong. All that water over there and they have to dam up our ditches and spill the water out into sagebrush that doesn't want it."

"God damned beavers," Marion growled. He was getting wet in his own sweat, and starting to look like he was sick.

I sat there and listened, not offering much. What a life these men led! Then I thought back to my sixth-grade teacher. It made me a little ill to think of school again. Reading a bunch of books and taking orders from guys that never wear anything but suits, guys that don't meet a challenge all day long, guys that would probably faint at the sight of a rattlesnake or be afraid to stick a shovel into a beaver dam. I began to feel a little of the power of the men I was eating with. I'll bet these guys could teach school better than Mr. Bennett or Mr. Scroup ever could, I thought. What could those teachers know until they went out like these guys do? What kind of man could a guy ever be until he's outlasted the sun or the wind, until he's built something with his own hands, or until he's fought with some animals? What kind of a man could a guy ever hope to be until he's learned to live with nature? These guys sure knew how. I'll bet they'd tear those dams to pieces--maybe kill a few beavers if they saw them.

The thought of killing made me remember the salmon.

"Hey, grandpa, the salmon are coming up the river. Do you think we could shoot a few after work?"

"Yea, I suppose we ought to. The best eating is always early before the water gets low and the fish get bruised. Maybe we can get a few to can—Grandma wants some.”

"How many can we shoot?" I asked.

"Just what’s fair, Buckaroo. You know, pay back for the bit of maintenance we do for the state on the river banks at the ford, plus the reporting we do for them on water-levels. That stuff.” Then he grinned and added, “Ok, ok. Maybe we can add a fish or two for widow Baker. One of us should look in on her soon. Lately she’s looking her age, not so spry as usual.”

Al looked up from his cup of water. "Harry, let's build us a smoke house this time. Damn, I really like that smoked salmon. Damn!" And he jumped up. That was the signal to go back to work. Back to work. Well, it had to be done.

The afternoon dragged on. The sun came down hot and heavy, and the sweat came out the same. The men kept working, kept pushing, and started swearing more. In time Marion went quiet. He started to sag; he slowed down and he started to breathe heavy. But I welcomed his slower pace—it gave me a chance to do more than my share. Even Al looked a little beat. He didn't say much when he brought the loads over, just dumped them and went back for more.

I looked out at Grandpa on the tractor. He looked like he was getting a lot done. I wondered how he was feeling. Even I was getting tired, and I was young. By mid-afternoon the heat was murderous, so bad that we began to work deliberately, like machines, with no thought of time or of the next load. Finally the end. This time we didn't jump on the fork--we climbed on heavily.

In the Pickup I sat between Al and Grandpa. They didn't say anything, welcoming the chance to just relax and rest. As we bumped down the rocky approach to the ford, I looked out to the river in anticipation. I'd already checked in back of the seat and found what I was looking for: Al's 30-30.

"Are we going to stop?" I looked at Al. He didn't answer, because Grandpa did.

"I don't think so, maybe after dinner. They probably won't be running good until the sun goes down some anyway. They don't like to cross shallow rapids in the bright light of day."

I knew he was tired and wanted to get home to relax and clean up, so I didn't say anything. But I was really disappointed. I took another look over my shoulder at the barrel of the 30-30, and wished like anything that I could get it out and show those guys what I could do with it. My mind slipped back to the time we had taken the shots at the ducks sitting out in the middle of the Lewis River reservoir up in Washington. It had been just Al and Grandpa then, and all we had was the .22 automatic that I'd brought along on the walk. The ducks were way out there, too far to hope to hit, but we tried anyway. Al had the first shots. He talked about the allowance that would have to be made for the distance and the fact that we were shooting down. Then he took his shots, hitting the water 10 or 15 yards short. Then Grandpa tried, coming a little closer on a few of his shots.

I’d waited my chance with a forced patience, doing my best not to show my eagerness. Finally my turn came. I was confident with that rifle because I’d been shooting it all summer. I knew every inch of it. As I aimed I tried to remember everything that my Grandpa had told me about shooting and all that Al had just said. The bullet hit the water just a few inches in front of the lead duck, and both of them went under the water. I felt like hollering. Instead I looked back at them with a smile trying to look more surprised than I was. Both Al and Grandpa were happy with my shot. It was a long shot for such a close miss, and from just a kid too.

Then the ducks came up again, not so close to each other this time. I picked out the closest one and shot again. Just over his back! And they both went down again! That was it for the day, but I didn’t forget for a week, and not even then. Now if I could just show these guys what I could do with a big gun at a moving target...

I thought back to the night when Grandpa explained how you have to shoot to kill the salmon. How you have to shoot not to hit him but to kill him with the concussion. According to Grandpa the best shot is just a few inches short of the head. So the shot is aimed under the head; that way the bullet might even hit the fish too because the water makes the bullet curve and travel parallel to the surface. I went back over the explanation in my head. If I could just show these guys!

The truck bumped onto the other bank and up out of the water. No chance.

Right after dinner I ran down to the river. This time the trip was different because of the cooling evening. When I got there I was satisfied that everything was still in order. There was enough light, plenty for that matter; so the fish could be seen easily if they came over the shallow part of the ford. I wondered if there were any waiting to come over right then. I was sure there were. The thought set me into motion, almost panic. I wondered what Grandpa was doing. Maybe he was talking to Al about some extra shells for the gun.

I scampered up the bank, looked up to the farm house, and started running toward it. The next thing I saw was the inside of the kitchen and Al standing there, rolling a cigarette, with a sack of Bull Durham tobacco dangling from his little finger.

“Where’s Grandpa?” I asked as I slipped past him toward the door to the dining room. He didn’t answer me because Grandpa was coming through the door toward me. “Can we go kill some salmon? There’s still plenty of light—I was just down there.”

Grandpa was about to say yes—I knew he was—I could tell just by the look on his face. But Al interrupted from behind, “Dammit, Sweet Pea,” he said, looking pained and sorry, “Marion took the pickup up the hill to check the gate at the top of the canyon. The gun is in it, and hi’s going to go on over to the Baker place to check on the widow. God damnit, he won’t be back in time.” Then he looked past me to Grandpa. “If I’d thought, I could have taken the gun out, Harry. we could have used the big truck.”

The news hardly seemed possible. I sank inside and thought of a good swear word or two and then of the fish that were making it over the ford. What could I say? Nothing. I walked out of the kitchen, through the milk room and into the yard. Tomorrow maybe, maybe tomorrow morning before work.

Half an hour later I came back up to the farm house from the river. It had only made things worse, so I had to get away from it. The first bat had come out already, teasing me, maybe even laughing, I thought.

The men were sitting on the porch as I knew they would be. They were resting, were leaning back in their chairs or lying back against the steps. And they were talking again, this time in easy tones that hardly broke the quiet. Grandpa watched me as I walked across the dry lawn toward the group. I stopped just short of the steps and looked at him.

He was still looking at me. “Why don’t you take the .22 and go out in the sage flat by the old rock fence. Maybe you could get a few cotton-tails. We could have a good dinner on them some night.”

Al broke in, grinning and looking at Grandpa. “Don’t bring back a bunch of Jack rabbits though—I think Harry’s teeth are getting too old to fight those tough devils.” Then he laughed again, just like he did out in the field that morning. He was rested again; he was enjoying the evening.

“Ok. Yea, I will.” It was a substitute at least. I began to feel better already, just thinking about it. I ran up the steps past the men, then upstairs to my bedroom where the gun was waiting. A couple of minutes later I was closing a wire gate behind me on my way out across the sage flat toward the rock fence. I could see the evening settling down on the river off to my right.

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About seven o’clock the sun falls behind the canyon ridge and the shadows begin to move over the John Day.

They start on the west side, on the farm house side, and move out across the river, finally climbing the canyon wall until everything is covered. There’s still the heat of course, but its diminishing slightly, and not so pressing. And, as is so often the case, a gentle and merciful breeze comes up.

That breeze not the setting of the drilling sun, nor the lack of brilliance, but that first cooling breeze—that’s what tells you the day is gone. Then, for the first time you know that the evening is coming, that the trial is over. Then, for the first time, you can relax and just walk where you’re going instead of having to push through the heat. The day’s work is finally done, even in mind, and you know that you have a few hours to yourself.

When evening comes, the men like to move off the porch and out into the yard under the great tree where the breeze is better. They sit and they talk, smoke, and think. But rarely do they think of the day that has passed. If they do it’s about something that they counted as a small victory. More typically they think of something they will do the next day to help them through. When it comes down to it, they reminisce, exaggerating and entertaining each other, about almost anything. And they love it. Usually it’s the same old stories, the same stuff they have been listening to for years, but they enjoy them, and seem to like them better each time around.

Meanwhile, A hundred yards from the farm house the river begins to wake up. Somehow it starts to gurgle where it didn’t seem to during the day. It starts to move again, it starts to smell like a river again. It takes on depth, it becomes a patient but irresistible force again. It’s then that the cool evening settles on it, surrounds it. And it gets quiet again, but in a different way. It’s no longer the muffled stillness generated by overriding heat. It’s a bigger stillness, a stillness that stretches clear across the river, out over the alfalfa fields, way over to the hillside. At the same time it’s a quiet that lets you hear every sound that’s to be heard.

And the men, sitting out under the tree or on the steps of the machine shop or on the bank of the river, the same men that tried to ignore everything but their work during the day, sit and listen for the sounds that float to them. Often it’s the sound of a lonesome old hoot owl. But sometimes it’s the gentle splash of the deer that come down to drink at the river, or maybe the sudden splash of a fish that has rolled up to grab a fallen meal. And the men peer out through the half-light hoping to get a glimpse of whatever they hear. Sometimes they even peer out, hoping to see something they haven’t heard, like a jackrabbit or a cottontail, and maybe, just on a hope, out of some dark spot, the eye of the bobcat that made off with two of their pet sage hens. They never see them, but they keep looking, just in case.

It’s at this time, after the sun has gone, only after the light has thinned and the heat has finally dissipated, does the river come alive. Now it no longer seems just like a picture or a promise. Finally it becomes a river, a force, a promise c ome true. First the bats come out. They swoop and dart frantically, cutting swaths through the thousand insects that infest the air. Then the fish begin to jump and roll and the coons come down to the bank, performing their clown acts, grab bing what they can from the shallows of the river. And maybe one of the horses will wade out belly–deep to play, standing tight–legged, tossing their heads, and snorting into the water. All life seems to go to the river or, like the beaver, to come out of it. The animals, for sure. And most of the men. Some of the men fish. Some sit and smoke. Someone might shoot at the bats with a shotgun, never hitting one. But all of them get there one way or another, even if they’re sitting in the warm kitchen remembering an ice jam back when they were kids. Or wondering why they don’t take a swim.

The river takes over. It brings sounds, it cools the air that moves up onto the porch and into the milk room. It feeds, and it tells you it will be back tomorrow evening.

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I don't know what all the rabbits were doing that evening. I didn’t have any luck anyway. At first I lay behind a big sage brush watching a good section of the fence, sure that some of the rabbits from the burrows underneath would be poking their heads out to check the air for sounds and smells. And owls. But after a half hour I grew tired of lying flat, so I got up and walked up to the rocks. It was so quiet I could hear every sound I made. When I reached the fence I picked a place that hadn't crumbled, a high place, crawled up on it, and sat down. Looking back across the field, I could see the house, brown and bleak, resting under the few gnarled trees that blessed it. The disappointment of the salmon shooting began to disappear; the peace of the dusk and the cool, soothing air was beginning to do its work. For the first time that day I was beginning to relax.

I suddenly realized that I was content, satisfied with myself and the day's work, and that shooting rabbits was not what I wanted to do at all. Without thinking about it or even knowing why, I found myself standing on top of the fence looking down across the dry sage flat toward the river. I could just see a little of it, dark now, heavy and solid. But even from that distance the river seemed to touch me. It seemed to rise up out of its bed and slide over the yards of sage and up through the blue dusk, to finally come to rest against my face, leaning against me, and beckoning. How different it was from the day. It fed the whole evening— it was bringing everything back to life.

By the time I reached the river it was getting dark, not really dark, because the sky was still pale blue and the three-quarter moon was hanging above the canyon wall, but it was dark enough that the river didn't have a bottom, only a surface. Standing there by its edge, I finally realized what the river meant to my Grandpa and the other men. I thought maybe I could see why they liked to relax on the porch or on the bank, and why they fished the river in the evening without caring whether they caught anything. It was like food on an empty stomach. The river seemed to fill me up with everything good and drain away all that was unpleasant. It was like a promise come true, like something a guy waits for and then gets. You forget all about the waiting when that final time comes. Even school didn't seem so bad when I thought of it. The river was too much with me to think of anything unpleasant. The sun and the day and the struggle didn't exist.

But that sanctity was broken in one split second. I’d been standing motionless looking out over the water, but just as I moved there was a big splash just a few feet from shore. It was a salmon; I'd startled it from its resting place. It was all over before I ever knew what was happening. In what looked like one motion it swept back the current and was gone.

In the few seconds that followed I relived the whole experience twenty times in one, it seemed. I just stood there looking dumbly at the water where it had been. And I was swept up suddenly by waves of emotion. The splash had startled me to be sure, but it was the salmon itself that hit me hardest. It was so powerful, so quick, and so free. It had defied me; it had run right away from me in one mighty move. It had beat me! It had been right in front of me and I'd stood there like a girl looking at something pretty. I could have had it. If I'd just been paying attention I knew, I could have had it.

Anger came over me. It was the closing darkness that did it, the dammed darkness was what did it. I'd been robbed! The first salmon, I could have had the first salmon! I imagined myself walking up to the house with that salmon. How I'd have shown it to the men, how they would have inspected it— male or female, and for eggs. And I imagined myself cleaning it in the milk room and then storing it in the cooler, wrapping it neatly first in wax paper. It would have been the first one, the best meat!

But I had missed my chance. It was getting even darker now, the water was almost black, so I knew there was no chance to see another salmon. The hunt was over. I started walking up the river toward the house, sticking close to the bank to avoid the sagebrush.

Then I thought of the men again. I'd be coming back with no rabbits. The thought was not pleasant. I couldn't go back up there empty, so I decided to wait them out by staying down on the river for a while. Maybe then they wouldn't be waiting when I finally came in. That was it: I'd spend some time sitting on the log that hung out over the fish hole.

On the end of the log, my feet hanging down toward the water, and the gun across my lap, I sat and thought back on the day in the field. I could hardly imagine it. The fields lay directly across the river so that I could see them dimly through the night air. They weren't the same fields anymore, though; now they were bearable, they were solid, and somehow they were soothing. Underneath me the water slid by deep and slow. Again, like earlier in the evening, the river lulled me; it eased me slowly out of my worry and let me forget.

Then I saw it. Just a few feet in front of me, coming straight toward the end of the log. I jumped aside. It was right there on top of the water. But it wasn't a fish. It was small— no, it was big, only part of it was sticking out of the water! I grabbed at the gun, which seemed all too slow and strange in my hands. It was almost under me now, I didn't dare move. But it wasn't a fish, what was it? As it swam under me, I turned, brought the gun up, and aimed where it would come out. When it did, I shot once, and then a second time. I'd hit it, I could tell because it started to thrash and weave through the water— it was swimming toward the shore. I fired again and the motion stopped altogether.

I ran off the log, jumped onto the bank, and crashed through the broken limbs and brush down the bank to the edge of the water. It was still there, floating in the water just a few feet from shore. With a stick from the bank behind, me I dragged the carcass in close enough to reach down and grab it by the fur of its back. Then I picked it out of the water and set it down on the bank at my feet to examine it. At first, I thought it looked like a beaver, but it didn't have the big flat tail, so I knew it couldn't be one. It had fur, though, and a long tail. And it was dead, and it was mine.

As I carried it back up the path to the house, a rich, full feeling came over me, a feeling of triumph. My only wish was that the men would still be sitting out on the porch. I was in luck. When I came through the yard gate, I could see that they were still there.

"Hey, Grandpa, I shot something!, I've got it! It was down in the fishing hole. I was on the log sitting over the hole and I shot it!"

Grandpa got to his feet and walked out to meet me. "What is it?" He asked.

"I don't know. When I pulled it out I thought it was a beaver, but it isn't, I don't think."

He walked up to me and stopped, looking at it. "It's a muskrat," he said in a strained but quiet voice. "Damn…Lanny, it’s a muskrat."

Al came off the steps and moved toward us. “Is it Harry? Is it our muskrat, Harry?"

"You say you were down at the fishing hole, Lanny?" Grandpa asked.

I hesitated, starting to feel that something was wrong, but not knowing what. "Yea."

Al came up and took the muskrat out of my hands and laid it gently down on the ground. He looked at it for a few seconds. "Yea, this is the one, I'm sure of it."

Marion was standing there looking down at it too. Then he looked at Al. "Is it the female?"

"Yep."

Marion looked back to the carcass. Then he said real slowly, "I hope she hasn't had her young ones yet."

The moments between words and actions were starting to seem like hours to me. I Just stood there waiting for something. I watched as he rolled the carcass over and ran his hand over the wet belly.

"Hell…, she's already had them," he said.

Nobody was looking at me. I didn't know what to think or what to feel or do. I knew I didn't like it there, but I didn't feel like leaving either. Finally, the tension built up in me and I blurted out, "What happened?"

I knew it would be Marion, "How come you shot it?" he asked.

"I don't know, I was hunting, I didn't get any rabbits."

"Well, you don't eat muskrat," he said. He said it in kind of an easy way but with a sad note to his voice.

I looked up at Al. "Don't worry about it, Lanny–it's done, and I know you didn't know." Then both he and Marion walked back to the porch and into the back door. Just Grandpa and I were left.

"There's been a family of muskrats living in that hole every summer for some years now. This female comes back every summer and raises a family; sometimes she has the same mate, sometimes a different one, but she always comes back," He talked slowly, pausing between sentences. “We all watch her. She and her young come out at night and swim around and play when they get old enough. So sometimes you can catch them, just before it gets dark. I should have told you. You haven't seen them before because they don't come out in the day when it's bright and hot. They're just like us, they don't get out there unless they have to. They like the cool, they like the evenings just like us." Then he looked out onto the hill behind the house. "They are real peaceful animals. You didn't know. You'd better take it up there and bury it." He turned and looked at me again, then he put his hand flat on the top of my head and shook it gently. "Don't worry, everybody understands."

That night, a couple of hours after everyone had gone to sleep, I slipped quietly down the stairs and out the back door. I ran up the slope to where the shovel remained stuck in the dry ground. The moon was out bright, so there was just enough light to make digging possible. I dug up the grave and pulled the muskrat out and walked back down the hill to the fishing hole. Lying on the end of the log, I lowered the muskrat down almost to the black surface of the water and let it go. It slid in, and then, just a foot or two down stream, gently rose to the surface. I closed my eyes and felt my whole body go limp. After a while I got up and left.

The next morning when we bumped into the ford the men were just as usual, full of energy, grins, and breakfast. But I didn't look for salmon or even look at the water much. The sun came back out, hot and murderous that day. The John Day River shrank underneath it. And so did Marion and I. And somewhere down the river, a muskrat lay on a shallow bank, half in and half out of the water, bobbing ever so slightly. A fly screamed through the thick silence to land on its drying fur. And it was the hottest day of the year.

L.E. Wilber resides in southwest Washington State with his family. This is his first published work of fiction.

I recently came across a Stalin doll and of course I had to have it. (I say ‘of course’ as if it had been quite normal and natural that I should want such a funny thing--men aren't supposed to like dolls--as if anybody seeing it would behave exactly as I did; but really, at the time, as I think about it now, there was no ‘of course’ about it. I remember the sight of it thrilled me a little, as if I were doing something vaguely illegal simply by looking at it. The more I looked at it, though, the more intoxicated I became with the thrill of looking at it.) Shall I describe it to you? I will describe it to you (can you tell I love to talk about my funny Stalin doll?) It was about sixteen or eighteen inches long, made of cloth stuffed with something foamy. It had button eyes, hard and black, and there was a green jacket, more like a military jacket, painted on it but the colors had faded (it was an old doll). There was a funny little mustache above its painted lips made of string sewn into the material so that the ends of the strings stuck out like a brush. There was funny stuck-up hair on its top, made from the same strings, that looked just like Stalin’s thick brush of hair in old historical pictures.

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I picked it up from a clearance bin piled with motley junk that hadn’t sold for whatever reason. There was no price tag on it. Maybe the tag had gotten stuck in the wire sides of the bin and torn off. The man behind the counter watched me closely as I picked it up and turned it over, lovingly, in my hands. He was an older gentleman, thin and grizzled, with long kinky hair. When I took the Stalin doll to the cash register, still turning it over and over and inspecting it closely…what was I looking for? I don’t even know…he asked if I was Russian. When I hesitated to answer (my attention was focused on the doll and I suppose I was a bit taken aback by the question) his face took on a dark, threatening stare. There was no one else in the store, and I was not in any hurry, and besides, I was suddenly in a surprisingly playful mood, happier than I’d felt for weeks. His odd demeanor did not frighten me as I might have expected it to. Instead, I decided to have some fun and play out a role I invented on the spur of the moment. Why not? I felt free of all the usual restraints that keep people from trusting serendipity. I could do as I pleased, make up any story I liked, and see where it took me. Just like a child. It was as if the Stalin doll had magical properties that could turn any wild idea I might come up with into a very good simulacrum of the truth. Maybe that was its power. It made me feel as free as a child making up imaginary adventures. So I answered him:

“Ukrainian, actually. My grandfather was an official in the old Soviet Union. He actually knew Stalin and used to tell me stories about Uncle Joe when I was a kid. You know,” I said, leaning on the counter, trying out a new story tangent, “you look like you might be Ukrainian, too. My name’s Mayakovsky. What’s yours?”

At this the man snapped up straight as if he’d been stung and pressed himself against the back wall. You’d think I’d pulled a gun on the guy! I was shocked, frankly, and a little ashamed of myself for startling him so badly, though I could not guess why he should have reacted the way he did. At another time, I might have dropped the doll and left the store in a fog of embarrassment. But I was in such a buoyant, fun-loving mood! And as I said, I was in no hurry to be anywhere. But even more, I believe the thrill of finding the Stalin doll was strongly affecting me. The old man’s reaction, far from embarrassing me, seemed rather to magnify the moment—and my authorial pleasure—adding thrill to thrill, as I imagine a lion-tamer must feel when he proves himself the master not merely of the docile animal he’s raised from a cub but the great wild beast he comes upon accidentally in the jungle.

In an excess of playfulness, tinged with that aggressive disregard that all happy people have for the sad somber faces around them, I did something that, even now, makes me laugh. Holding the Stalin doll in my left hand, I reached across the counter and slapped the man’s face as hard as I could! A complete stranger! What had he done to me? Nothing. The slap resounded throughout the little store. It was so loud, I was afraid it could be heard by passersby out in the street. Holding his face in both hands, the man fell roughly into the bay window, knocking over a display of some cheap Halloween toys. For just the briefest of intervals, no more than a second or two, the shock of what I’d done overwhelmed my merry mood. But very quickly my exhilaration returned.

Slowly, the man righted himself. Through his fingers he regarded me with trembling suspicion. “That’s one of the stories my grandfather used to tell,” I explained cheerily, keeping up my story line. “Out of nowhere and for no reason, Stalin would often just walk up to Khrushchev or Molotov and slap them silly. And then smile at them. Grandfather said he loved to terrorize his cronies during late night drinking binges. The funny part is—and you’ll appreciate this—they also loved to be terrorized by him! It’s true. Not at first, of course, but gradually, they came to feel that it was a mark of some distinction. Khrushchev and Molotov used to argue, even, about who’d been slapped most recently, and how often, and how hard.” At that, the man jerked back again, pinning himself once more against the wall. I was enjoying myself immensely. I hadn’t had so much fun since I don’t remember when. The man put his arm out, not to touch me but to keep me from leaning over and slapping him again. Cautiously he pushed himself away from the wall and approached the cash register. Naturally I assumed he was about to ring up the sale.

“Get out,” he said in a trembling, frightened voice, and with his still outstretched arm waved me to the door.

Feeling charitable (though I had slapped him, it was almost as if it had never happened. The slap meant nothing to me and at the time—weird though it is to think of it now—I assumed it meant nothing to him!), I removed my wallet. “How much?”

“How much?” he repeated, as if I’d asked him if his wife was a whore.

“Yes. How much? I want to buy this Stalin doll.”

“Mayakovsky,” the man said as if to himself. I could not see much of his face. It was partially hidden behind his outstretched hand. But his voice was low and harsh and full of hatred.

“Yes,” I responded brightly, “Mayakovsky.”

“You bring that…that…thing in here because why?” He nodded at my Stalin doll.

“What do you mean? I just picked it up from that bin over there.” This was getting interesting!

The old man continued as if he hadn’t heard my answer. “Your grandfather was Illych Petrovich Mayakovsky, the First Secretary of the Ukrainian People’s Commissariat for the Interior.”

How wonderful! My story had found its way into a story of his—by sheer chance we two complete strangers had found a connection, never mind that my story was a total invention of the spur of the moment and his, evidently, was not.

“Why, yes, that’s right. Illych Petrovich was my grandfather.”

“Why have you come to me? What do you want? Did my family not suffer enough when the old man was alive? Now his descendants must terrorize those of his victims? And we should like it, too! Do you expect me to thank you for slapping me?” He was drooling now with anger. His face, where I’d slapped him, glowed like a lantern. “Your grandfather, then,” the old man said, peering at me with angry, unblinking eyes, “he told you another story, no? About holding a little boy’s hand? Forcing him to watch as his father was shot—by those men!—right in front of the little boy’s eyes?”

Oh, I ask you, whatever kind of an exciting life you think you lead, don’t you envy me?

“Yes, as a matter of fact, he did,” I readily agreed.

“How did you discover that I was that little boy,” the old man asked.

You can’t imagine the sense of joy and wonder that swept over me! Who could have predicted that by the simple act of turning into an ordinary doorway, I could have invented this new and unexpected reality? What a marvelous turn of events! What a wonderful day this had become!

I was smiling stupidly with the wonder of it all, which the old man took as some kind of answer to his question. He lowered his outstretched arm toward mine and more quickly than I would have imagined he could move, he grabbed my wrist and yanked the Stain Doll in my hand up into my face.

“And you dare bring…this.. into my store!” He was pushing the Stalin doll up, hard, in front of my eyes. Then he let go of my wrist with a look of disgust, as if he’d touched something vile. “Do you think I’ve forgotten how my father believed in Stalin, right up until that day? Just before they shot him—as if it wasn’t bad enough they’d brought his son to watch—your grandfather took that thing away from me! It had been a gift from Stalin himself, all the apparatchiks were given them for their children. Taking it from me was a sign that my father’s little son no longer had a protector. To my father, it meant that I too was to be considered a traitor. And then they shot him. And the last thing my father saw in this life was your grandfather holding me by one hand and that by the other.”

What is the most we can hope for when we awake each morning? A day much like all the others. And because over the course of our life, each day proves to be so very like every other day, it isn’t long before we awake each morning with no hope. In fact, it seems to me that hope is the first casualty of life. We lose it early, along with our baby teeth. But here I was, suffused with new hope! I was living an invented life, and Life itself was playing along, encouraging me to whirl faster and faster in this wild, splendid, ever-new dance of serendipity!

“Now get out,” the old man hissed. “This is America, you rabid Mayakovsky dog. Not Kiev, nineteen twenty-seven. And take your little god away with you.”

Elated, I did as he asked and left the store. I was excited to experience the next turn in the dance. I was free! My old life had never really been my own, merely an accretion of uninteresting contingencies, piled upon me over time the way a coral reef is built up, with no sense or shape or meaning. But thanks to my Stalin doll (it must have been the Stalin doll, what else could explain it?) I was the free author of any life I chose to invent. My whim made a law; my imagination made a history. Such freedom, such sudden and radical release from all the common bonds of behavior, is, trust me, the most profound intoxicant. In a stupor, nearly drunk with my new freedom, I found myself back out on the pavement. And in an instant I realized that something had changed.

I saw a chaos of freedoms contending with each other. And all in concert and each one individually a threat to my own newfound freedom. My Stalin doll had conferred on me the title of Center of the Universe. A moment ago, there had been no freedom but mine and all these people were promised to me as my puppets. Then the adventurous, happy child I had been became frightened, lost, powerless, alone. And like a frightened child I seized on the only hope left to me, my Stalin doll. But it was not in my hand! Where! Where! IN THE STORE! I must have left it in the store!

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I flew back in the through the door, nearly knocking it off its hinges in my anxiety. The old man was once again leaning on the counter near the cash register, the outline of my hand still visible like a birthmark on his cheek.

“Where is it? Where’s the Stalin doll?” I yelled.

He did not answer me but rose up cautiously. His dark, suspicious, hate-filled eyes never left me. Frantic, I dove into the clearance bin, upsetting everything and scattering junk everywhere. The doll was not there.

“Where is it, goddam you! What kind of a cruel bastard are you, to deprive me of my hope, my only hope!” The old man smiled poisonously. “Just let me have it back and I’ll tell you the truth. My name’s not Mayakovsky. My grandfather didn’t murder your father back in Kiev. It was all a story. I made it up! Truly! And, and I apologize for slapping you. Now, you see? I’m just a harmless guy who came in here by chance and found the Stalin doll. That’s all.”

The old man snickered wickedly. It was an awful sound, like a dozen rats scratching in unison behind a wall.

“I’ve called the police. I’m going to press charges.” He crossed his arms and smiled at me. “I could almost wish this was Kiev, nineteen twenty-seven.”

“The police? But why? It was just a story I made up. Please, give me the Stalin doll and I’ll leave and never bother you again. I promise. I promise.”

“Ah. See?” he said, pointing out the window. “Here they are already.”

In the end, I wasn’t arrested. The police escorted me out of the store and eventually (the details are too dreary to relate) I ended up back in my own apartment and my life resumed its hopeless progression. I went to bed that night as I do every night, and woke up the next morning as I do every morning. One day, I found a large picture book about the Second World War in a used book store. There were lots of pictures of Stalin. I cut them out, fitted them together to make a figure of Stalin, and pasted the figure on an old sheet. Then I cut out the figure, sewed it to a matching form, and filled it with feathers from an old pillow. I had made my own Stalin doll. Oh, it’s just a raggedy old thing, a sad reminder of the original, but I feel better when it’s with me, all the same.

I have been writing off and on for decades, but only broke through with a story called “Perfume and Cigarettes” published in The Berkeley Fiction Review #39. They thought I had a unique voice; I’m hoping you will, too. I have since published it on Amazon as the title story in a collection along with two novels: Catatonia and Ordinatus.

1

John Blakely tied his skates together by the brown (blood) stained and frayed laces, slung them over his shoulder, and bicycled to the bottom of Hill Street, past the train depot, and downtown to Olympia Arena. He concealed his bicycle in the scrubby hemlocks by the emergency exit on the side, and hustled up the concrete steps into the refrigerated building, holding the right skate to his chest, left skate bouncing against his back. He was dressed like a boxer doing roadwork and wore his Bruins cap backwards, milky gray sweatstains in the sunbleached black cloth. He paid the man in the skate shop and walked down the hall to the rink reserved for public skating, pausing at the swinging double doors to peer through submarine windows at the high school girls in white skates with toe picks, performing spins and jumps. The girls wore colorful short, pleated skirts and leggings, hair tied back in pony tails—young tsarinas of polar realms, elegant carnival clowns, cold whirling rainbows. A girl looked back through the glass: glacial eyes unblinking in a blank face.

At the wooden bench behind the penalty box, he sat and took off his sneakers, stuck his feet into the skates, banged his heels against the bench and pulled the laces tight into big loops. Standing, he stalked across the rubber floor to the threshold as if wearing stilts, and pushed off onto the ice.

There was a spindly woman with silver hair and earmuffs, practicing graceful, decelerated figures, and a high school couple on a date, tripping along close to the boards, arms stuck out for balance. John skated his laps furiously, cutting in and out, switching backwards, stopping on a dime, reversing. The others were invisible to him. The yellow rectangle of sun from the plate-glass window progressed across the ice. Now John skated alone. The man who drove the ice-resurfacer came out—mean face, bald, greaseshiny head on scruffy, puffed-out neck—and yelled, “Scram kid, it’s noon! Come on, move it!” John skated to the threshold and stalked back to the wooden bench, the ice-man staring, eyes like dead fish bloating in skinny red squiggle nets.

John watched the ice-man drive in a tightening gyre, erasing all the grooves and gouges, while he changed into his sneakers and tied the skates back together. The ice-man finished and drove off.

Through the window John could see the parking lot—buckled asphalt, weeds bursting through the cracks, two green dumpsters, rusty chain-link fence, telephone poles and the redbrick towers of silent mills. A young man in shorts and a dirty t-shirt wandered through the parking lot, drinking from a green bottle. His boots were untied and flapped as he walked. He hopped the fence. On the other side, he finished the drink and threw the bottle into the air. It shattered in the street and the young man clomped on.

A school bus pulled in and parked. The door opened and teenage boys clambered out, shouldering huge duffel bags, carrying hockey sticks. They were boys who played in the summer league. Soon they burst onto the ice in red and white practice jerseys, shiny red helmets with black cages, soaring like birds, chasing each other backwards and forwards. Two boys pushed the nets into place. The coach, who had a whistle around his neck and a black baseball cap low over narrowed eyes—his bottom lip bulging with tobacco, spitting muddy juice into a water bottle—Cohanet Sachems in red cursive across the crown, emptied a 3-gallon bucket of pucks onto the ice. The players scooped and cradled the pucks with stickblades and slung them at the goaltenders who squatted in the red-barred nets, jigging from side to side like athletic crabs, catching and deflecting shots. The coach blew the whistle and practice began. John took up his skates and left.

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2

Next door at Kosta’s, he bought a chocolate milk and ran into Zoe Cauthen and her friends having lunch. “John! Hey!” She waved him over. The girls broke into giggles.

“Is Eva here?”

“No, she’s at home.”

“Can you tell her I say hi?”

“Tell her yourself. Give her a call. Do you have our number?”

“No.”

The girls giggled. John scratched his arm.

“Well, it’s in the phone book,” said Zoe. “And Juliet knows it—ask her. Give her a call, seriously. Or drop by sometime. She’d like that. Hey,” she said, “sit down.”

“I have to get home.”

“Why? It’s the summer.”

“Tryouts are at the end of August. I have to practice.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I have to go. Tell Eva I say hi.”

 Zoe laughed and said, “No way, John—you have to call her. I won’t even say I saw you.”

3

At home he changed into shorts and a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut short, and strapped on rollerblades. He skated in the driveway, back and forth, stick-handling a tennis ball, shooting at a homemade net set in front of the garage. Skating up the driveway a ragged, black-haired, bloody-kneed blur, he deked, evaded an imaginary defenseman, and slapped the ball into the back of the net. He practiced his shot for an hour with his only puck, a mutilated rubber disc. Dripping sweat, he went inside. Peter was in the family room kneeling in front of the TV, eyes glued to the screen; he did not turn his head when the door slammed shut. John pushed off of the rug in the front hall and glided on the wood floor to the kitchen. Juliet, thirteen with freckles and acne, brown hair cut raggedly short and helmet-like (she had done it herself with pinking shears in the bathroom), was sitting at the table, writing in a spiral ring notebook. She wrote very quickly as if she must get the words down before they disappeared forever.

She paused when John came in.

“Mom told you not to wear those in the house.”

John said nothing. He turned on the faucet and filled a cup.

“She’s told you a million times not to.”

John drank and refilled the cup.

“Like a million times.”

“Well, she’s not here.”

“Doesn’t matter, you aren’t supposed to do that. It leaves marks all over the floor—look. She’s gonna be really pissed when she gets home.”

“I don’t give a shit.” John drank and stared at his sister. “Your haircut looks ridiculous.”

Face going crimson, Juliet threw down her pencil. “You’re such a jerk, John.” She took up her notebook and stamped from the kitchen. “Grow up.”

John finished the water, placed the cup on the counter, and turned off the faucet. He rolled over to the telephone mounted on the wall. The curly cord hung almost to the baseboard. On the chair next to the phone was the directory. Opening the book, he flipped through torn and dogeared pages to C and scanned down the columns to CAUTHEN, GEORGE. He put the book on the chair, lifted the phone, and listened to the dial tone. Abruptly, he replaced the phone and flipped the book shut.

Outside he skated for another hour. A piece of gravel shaped like a fossilized tooth tripped him up and he spilled out on his back onto the lawn. Pale green weeds, speckled with brownish spots, sharp to touch, like thin, curling blades of bendsome steel, sprouted in sunburnt patches of brittle brown grass that crunched underfoot. It had been a hot summer. No one had mowed since June. On his back he looked up at the sky webbed with electrical lines sagging between tilting telephone poles, upon which bedraggled pigeons perched, from which a pair of sneakers dangled, and the clouds beyond—full ship sails sailing across the blue—and silver airplanes and the white lines they left behind that slowly unraveled and disappeared, as if they had never been there. Just looking at the sky you could be anywhere. There were clouds like those all over the world. Watching clouds, he could be anyone—in any place, in any time.

The airplanes—he guessed how many passengers were on board, where they were coming from, where they were going, who they were, what they had done, what they were going to do. They could be coming from Finland; they could be going to Japan. Visions of white clad soldiers wearing mittens and bug-eyed goggles frosted over with blue crystals, black rifles strapped to backs, zooming down mountainsides on skis, dodging pine trees and granite crags, and samurais in horned helmets and sneering wooden masks, and wooden armor, lacquered bright stickyred like blood, all rolled before his mind’s eye. They could be anybody, going anywhere: the possibilities were infinite and unknowable.

And what about himself? He turned over on his side and, propped up on an elbow, surveyed the house with the broken shutters and the wheelless Galaxie balanced on cracked, oil-stained cinderblocks next to the garage. Mice lived in the engine and there were no seats—as a kid he painfully sat where there was no driver’s seat and steered and worked the pedals, going nowhere.

At the end of the driveway, a girl went by on a bicycle. John watched her until she was out of view. Suddenly, he scrambled to his feet, twisting his knee. He heard it crunch. He stumbled but skated down the driveway. “Hey!” He winced—his knee felt spongy. Pain shot up his leg. He turned into the street and skated hard. The girl was not so far away. He skated harder.

“Hey! Eva!”

She heard him and pedaled backwards to brake.

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Nicholas Hannon is a novelist and connoisseur of the masterful prose of Hemingway, Joyce and Kerouac. He resides in the contemplative expanse that is Southern Arizona.