To Us May Grace Be Given

by L. S. Johnson

  “Maybe we should explain more,” I finally said when I could talk again. “Maybe we could pay her with some land. Maybe then she would want to help us.”

  “Addy, she’s a devil.” Mam sighed. “The moment we take that knife out she’ll kill whatever’s to hand. We just gotta make sure that’s Bill Boyland and not us.”

  3.

  The next day I started the planting. It felt strange to be working, but as Mam said, it would be something to find ourselves rid of Bill Boyland only to starve next winter. I carefully tossed the seed onto the ground, whispering the prayers Da had taught me. Mam had mixed the seed sack the night before, adding the special powder Da had brought with us. He had said that the powder and praying made the ground more willing. We were nearly out of the powder now, but I wasn’t sure it mattered; each year the crops were mean, enough to keep us alive but not enough to sell.

  I thought Mam was going to follow me with the harrow, but instead she went into the goat pen with a rope. I stopped and watched her. The goats had been upset that morning; the horse was starting to smell and it was scaring them. Had they done something? I tried to see Mam but she was bent over. There was a lot of bleating and then she stood up again, leading one of the goats out and kicking the pen shut. I could just make out his uneven horns. She didn’t lead Isaac to the road, towards Tom’s place; instead she led him over to the water pump and the half-log where Da had done his cleaning. I didn’t understand; why did she need to give him water? I had filled all the troughs fresh this morning.

  I didn’t understand, and then I saw the knife and the bowl, and then Mam seized Isaac by the larger horn. An awful sound filled the air, a kind of bleating but worse, as if he was screaming. I opened my mouth but there was only the screaming. I was running and halfway to the log Mam dragged the knife across his neck and his skin peeled open and the screaming became blood.

  When I reached the log the thing on it was Isaac and not, he was some other kind of animal, something that had a throat gaping loose and bloody and a tongue hanging out. Isaac, I said, but nothing came out, like she had cut my throat too.

  Mam steadied the bowl under him, catching every drop of his bright, bright blood. It was so cold. Behind us the other goats bucked against the wall of their pen and bleated and I tried to say Isaac again but I was shivering too much. It was so very cold.

  “Idiot,” Mam yelled, “you’re dropping seed everywhere!”

  I looked down and in my hand was the sack of seed and what was left was spilling onto the ground. I got down and picked up the seeds one by one until they were just a blur. Mam hated tears. I scraped at the dirt, feeling for the little shapes. Isaac. Everything went dark and I looked up to see Mam standing over me, the bowl on her hip stinking of blood.

  “I don’t dare take it to Tom,” she said. “Skin it and quarter it; we’ll figure out what to do with the meat later.”

  I couldn’t speak for the pain in my throat, like there was a fist pressing everything down into my belly.

  “What’s wrong?” She frowned at me and I shrank back, swallowing and swallowing.

  “Tom?” I finally croaked.

  “Of course Tom.” Her frown deepened. “Why, who else would we sell the carcass to?”

  “I—I thought,” I said, but I couldn’t say any more. I hadn’t thought. I had never thought.

  “Are you thinking of that herd he sold to the railroads? There hasn’t been anything like that for years now. More’s the pity, he charged them a fortune for the lot, said they were getting the brush cleared and a winter’s worth of meat besides.” She laughed. “Shrewd old bastard. That was a good Christmas, do you remember? You ate yourself sick on the candy your Da bought.” Steadying the bowl, she leaned over and touched my cheek. “Now be a help and skin it. I’ll clean it and make a nice stew, we still have plenty of onions.”

  She went into the barn, bracing the bowl as she worked the door open and closed. As soon as the door shut I pressed my hand over my mouth so she wouldn’t hear the noises pushing up. From the pen the goats bleated softly, as if they heard me, as if they understood.

  When I stood up the smell of the horse blew over me, now mixed with the smell of Isaac. The first vultures were circling. I hated the devil then, I hated her for coming and I hated Mam for calling her, I hated the land and the house and even the goats for making me like them. I took up the knife. Isaac looked small on the half-log, not much bigger than the bowl Mam had bled him into. I touched him and he was warm and his hair felt just like it had that morning. I remembered when he was born, how I had dried him and nursed him. I started crying hard, because I hated him too but I also loved him, and I wished I was the one on the wood instead of him.

  The barn window was open. Mam suddenly said in her cold voice, the voice before she got angry, “you’ll drink it and you’ll like it.”

  The devil started laughing. “I can’t drink that,” she said. “It’s worse than water.”

  “It’s all I got.”

  “Then you should have fucking thought of that beforehand!” the devil screamed. Her voice was so loud the chickens took up squawking.

  There was a thump and the crack of the whip, over and over. I flinched and started to reach for Isaac, but there wasn’t any reason to protect him now.

  “I don’t need you!” Mam roared, the worst I’d heard in ages. “I only need what’s in your veins, damn you!”

  “Then come and take it,” the devil yelled, and there was no fear in her voice.

  The barn door flew open and Mam came out. Blood was splashed all down her front; the empty bowl hung from her hands. Without looking at me she stomped back to the house, throwing the bowl against the side before she went in. It left a red stain on the wall.

  I looked down at Isaac’s little body. Killed for nothing. Killed for nothing. What harm had he ever done anyone?

  I pressed hard on my mouth, but the sound of crying didn’t stop. Only then did I realize that it was coming from the barn, that the devil was crying too.

  It took me all afternoon to skin Isaac. I’d never done such a bad job of anything. I kept saying I’m sorry I’m sorry until I wasn’t sure if it was for letting Mam kill him, or for making such a mess of him after he was gone.

  At supper I couldn’t eat. The stew was the color of dried blood and had pieces of meat and onion floating in it and just looking at it made my stomach hurt. Even worse was looking up at the cutting block, where I could still see his little feet. I tried to spoon up just the broth but pieces of meat kept coming in. The stew tasted like sick and sorrow; even in tiny amounts it all kept coming back up.

  We sat in silence until suddenly Mam spoke. “Adelaide Norton, I’m only going to say this once.” She spoke quiet, like someone was sleeping nearby. “You have got to stop this. You’re not a child anymore. If you’re this soft over an animal, what will you do when Bill Boyland’s men start blubbering for their lives? You show them an ounce of mercy and they will cut you dead. That is the world, Adelaide. There is nothing out there—” she pointed her spoon at the window— “that will spare you at their own expense, not Bill Boyland and not that thing in the barn and not even your god-damned goats. This world isn’t founded on mercy. It is founded on survival, and God helps those who help themselves. Now you eat that god-damn stew or so help me I’ll make you.”

  Slowly I spooned up a piece of meat, watching it shudder in its little puddle of broth, and put it in my mouth. Sick and sorrow. I swallowed it whole; when my stomach twisted I imagined the fist inside me pressing it down so it couldn’t come back up.

  “Better,” Mam said. “Someday you’ll see that I’m doing this for you. Someday you’ll see just how close we came to dying out here.”

  That night I couldn’t sleep for thinking. My hands felt sticky with blood though I had washed them clean. There were flies in the house and Mam was snoring and finally I got out of bed and went out into the yard.

  Everything was quiet and still. There were so many stars abo
ve the black hills; their light made the grass look like silver. The air tasted like the smell of the horse, rotting where it had fallen. Something was chewing on it, a lean shadow that smacked its lips as it ate. I felt small. I went to the goat pen and watched them sleeping, and I thought of Isaac and hoped he was happy up in the stars, running and playing and eating whatever he wanted. I thought of his dark eyes and his little horns and how he knew me, he would always come to me instead of Mam. He knew me.

  In the barn it was silent, but in a different way. The way it’s silent when you hold your breath.

  “Are you all right?” I asked, for something to say.

  She seemed to be asleep but then I saw her eyes were open. She didn’t say anything, so I crouched down like Mam had done and picked at the straw. The ropes creaked and when I looked at the devil she was looking at me. Her face was even thinner and bruised now too, and there were stains on her torn shirt and coat.

  “I’ve had better days.” Her voice was rough. “Is it your turn, then? Like mother, like daughter? Or perhaps you’re like your father, you want to cut me up and see what makes me tick?”

  “Da never hurt anyone,” I said. “He came out here so he wouldn’t have to hurt people anymore. He said people were supposed to make the world balanced. Like morning and night, or wild and tame things. That way God would give us His grace again.”

  “Does this look like fucking balance to you?” She looked at me so hard I flinched. “Why were you crying before?”

  I knew I shouldn’t tell her anything, but I felt desperate to speak. “The goat, the one Mam . . . ” I couldn’t say killed. “His name was Isaac,” I finally got out.

  “I’m sorry, Addy.” And she did sound sorry, truly sorry.

  I sat down completely then. “If you promised to help us,” I said, “I could try to get Mam to take the knife out.”

  “I think your mother and I are past the point of bargains.” She lunged forward, so suddenly I yelped. “But we could bargain.”

  Her fingertips curled towards my face and I jerked back, crawling until I hit one of the barn posts. Her eyes weren’t brown anymore; they were black and flat and huge. “Your mother needs me alive, Addy. That means she’ll keep killing your livestock, because she is desperate and there is nothing else she will give me.” Her lip curled up in the corner. “But you could give me something.”

  I opened my mouth, but all that came out was “what?”

  “You’re starting to bleed.” She said the word with a sigh, like it was a fellow she was sweet on. “Bring me your blood, and I’ll tell her I can drink something else—rats, or maybe chickens. Your goats, at least, will be safe.”

  I gaped at her. “Why would you want that?”

  She leaned back, smiling. Her teeth were bright with moonlight and it was terrible.

  “It’s . . . it’s disgusting.” Just the thought made me shudder. I couldn’t even look at the rags; Mam always washed them for me.

  At that her smile broadened. “But it’s part of being a woo-man.”

  “Doesn’t make it nice,” I said. “Besides, nothing else does that. Only people.”

  “Sadly we must live in the bodies we are given.”

  “But you dress like a boy,” I pointed out.

  At that the devil laughed, soft and bitter. “You meet all kinds out here.” Before I could say something she added, “but I don’t think you dress this way out of fear, do you? You like boy’s clothes.”

  “Don’t you?” I’d seen the women in town, stuck on porches to stay out of the sun, talking about dresses and husbands. They couldn’t even ride horses. “I wouldn’t even know how to wear a dress now. I haven’t been a girl since I was little.”

  “Did your mother decide that?”

  “She cut my hair and took away my dresses when we came out here. Told Da to call me his son. He didn’t like it, though. He always said–” I took a breath; it felt funny to be talking about something so long ago. “He always said by the time I grew up there would be more folks out here, good folks, and I could go back to being a girl again.”

  “Well,” the devil said, “I can see your mother once had some sense.” Her smile became sly. “Though it would be a pity to put you back in a dress. You wear those pants quite well.”

  Her words made me go hot all over. For a moment I felt all sorts of strange things, things I didn’t want to think about. What had Mam said? She has a mouth on her. I got to my feet; I needed air.

  “Strong as a mule and a rare kind of lovely,” the devil said, watching me. “Now we’ll see if you have any sense, eh? Bring me your blood, Addy. Bring me your rags. Because without them, you, your Mam, your goats . . .” She dragged her finger across her throat.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Mam might find out, she’d whip us both.”

  “Oh, you’re a clever girl—” I started walking away as she talked; she broke off and called “Addy!”

  Like a fool I looked back. She was leaning forward again, just visible past the edge of the stall. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “What did your mother do with your Isaac, hmm?”

  Out of nowhere the fist filled my throat, so fast my eyes stung, pressing so hard I thought I would burst.

  “Is your belly full of your little friend? Your friend who trusted you, who thought of you like you were his Mam, until your Mam cut his throat?”

  And I could hear Isaac screaming again; I could see his head as the skin had come away and how when I brought him in the house Mam had slapped his body on the table and brought the cleaver up and down, up and down—

  I ran out of the barn sobbing. I ran until I was at the beech tree and there I sat, crying and crying, thinking of nursing him in my lap, how quickly he had grown. Isaac, Isaac! I mouthed his name until it was nonsense and then I wept more.

  It was dawn before I finally went back to bed. I felt nothing inside, nothing. I was as dead as he was.

  4.

  The next day I woke up aching with my monthlies, just as the devil had said. Mam bled out a chicken and went to the barn. I felt sick inside, thinking of what the devil might say to Mam, but there were no fights or hollering. When Mam came back out the bowl was empty but she wasn’t smiling. “Sicked up most of it,” she said when I followed her into the kitchen. She was plucking the chicken so hard she ripped a wing half off. “We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”

  I nodded. I had decided to say as little as I could, in case I gave away about going to the barn, but I knew that Mam was totting up the days and the animals just as I was. Put that in your fucking plan. I was, and it wasn’t adding up.

  That night I watched the moon rise. Just a thin curve of white in the sky, nearly all blotted out. But soon it would grow fat and full, and then they would come, and even if we kept the devil alive that long what if she chose to help Bill Boyland instead of us? For the first time in a long time I wished, really wished, that Da was still alive, so he could tell Mam if she was doing right or not.

  After supper Mam sat down at the table with the carpetbag again. She read one of the papers carefully, then opened up some of the other vials and mashed their contents in the mortar until they made a black paste. When she saw me watching she said, “poison.”

  “For who?” I asked.

  “For the devil, who d’you think?” She laughed then, low and bitter. “If I could get away with poisoning Bill Boyland I’d have done it years ago. Would’ve saved this whole territory a lot of grief.”

  I sat down across from her. “How will you get her to take it?”

  “I won’t. We shoot it into her.” She heated the tip of an awl and made a little hollow in one of the bullets. With a spoon she pushed in the paste and scraped it smooth, then put it on the table. “Let it dry. It only takes a little. Turns their blood to powder.” She squinted again at the paper as she picked up a second cartridge. “No, sand, I think it says sand. That’ll be something, eh? Cut her and watch her pour out like a sack of flour.”

 
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked.

  At that her face grew dark. “I got her here, didn’t I? I’ve got a god-damned devil tied up in our barn, how many times have you seen that before? When your great-grandda would hunt them he would take six men with him, and still they would get killed often as not.” She shook her head. “You need to ask less and do more. Now go to bed.”

  I got under the covers, listening to Mam singing under her breath:

  The Son of God goes forth to war,

  a kingly crown to gain;

  his blood red banner streams afar:

  who follows in his train?

  Who best can drink his cup of woe,

  triumphant over pain,

  who patient bears his cross below,

  he follows in his train.

  I gave myself over to thinking, about what little we had and what might happen when Bill Boyland came. Mam seemed to be fixing to break her word to the devil, and that didn’t seem like it could lead to anything good. And even if she killed the devil, even if we got rid of her and Bill Boyland and all his men, we still wouldn’t have a proper deed to the land.

  When Mam finally came to bed I listened carefully to her breathing, and then I went out to the barn with my stained rags wadded in my hand. There wasn’t much blood yet, but I didn’t want to wait; it felt important not to wait. In the distance I could hear things crawling in the horse’s bones, could hear the goats nervous in their pen, but I didn’t dare try to comfort them in case the noise woke up Mam.

  It wasn’t silent in the barn this time; there was a wheezing sound, long and low. In the stall the devil was slumped in the yoke. She looked all bone in the moonlight; she looked like she was dead, until I heard again the slow wheeze of her breath.

  I held out the rags and her head lifted. Her eyes were slits. She opened her hand but didn’t move so I had to step close to give it to her. The moment her fingers closed around them I hurried back to the edge of the stall.

  She sniffed them, and then pressed the stains to her lips and began sucking on them. It made me feel queer, frightened and kind of excited all at once. I wanted to run but I made myself stay put. After all, we had a bargain.