“Go away,” I said in the same dark voice. “Go away and don’t ever come back, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”
And I meant it. I meant every word. She looked so small from behind the revolver, how was it that we had feared her? It would be nothing to shoot her, or cut her with the sickles. Nothing to watch her bleed out like a spilled jug.
My insides ached so bad I wished I was dead.
Slowly the devil took a step backwards, and then another, keeping her hands up. She looked so small. It would be nothing to squeeze the trigger, nothing to watch her flinch and cry out and fall; nothing and everything. I dropped to my knees, the revolver huge and heavy in my hands, breaking my fingers from its awful weight. All around me was the smoke and the dead and I was as good as. It was nothing to kill a person and it was everything. All of it cruel, the gun and the knife and the whip; all of it a flat blackness like the devil’s eyes and Mam’s too, when she had stepped on Bill Boyland’s face. All of it as flat as Isaac’s eyes when the life went from him.
I looked at Mam and I knew she was dead. I crawled to her and laid my good hand on her, the untainted one, and turned her on her side so she would be comfortable. I wanted to cry but the fist was solid inside me. Instead I smoothed back her hair and closed her eyes and mouth; I put her hands together so she could pray, wherever she had gone to. I thought to sing then, like she would sing to me when I was little, but no words would come. Instead I sat by her in silence while the world burned to the ground.
7.
It was the sun that made me move. That first gleam of light made everything visible; I saw every body stark against the ground, saw the house and the barn like they were more real now for being ruined. Smoke rose up into the sky, high enough that it could be easily seen from town.
I hurried then. I wanted more than anything to bury Mam but I couldn’t. I kissed her forehead one last time. She would have been proud of me: I hadn’t cried, not once, I had just sat there swallowing it all back and pushing it down until I didn’t even feel the fist anymore, until I didn’t feel anything at all. How many nights had Mam done the same after Da died? Pressing it down until she was empty, waking up to the same hard dirt in the fields.
In the cold blue dawn it seemed a terrible thing that Da had done, bringing us here.
I took the pants and shirt off one of the least dirty bodies, and the coat off another. I dressed as quick as I could, then ripped my nightshirt and threw it in the brush. Maybe they would think I got carried off.
The goat pen and chicken coop were ashes. I started trembling at the sight but I pushed it away until I was empty again. Instead I set about digging through the men’s pockets, taking whatever was worth something: money, watches, even their spare cartridges. What I couldn’t fit in my pockets I bundled in kerchiefs and tied to my belt.
The only horse left was the mare tied to the cart—not even a wagon, just a small cart with its wheel stuck against a tree. I came up on the cart slow, I didn’t want to spook her; she still looked wild-eyed. Only as I held out my hand I heard not a whinny but a bleating, and something moved in the shadows under the cart, and then all of a sudden little Addy stood there, sooty but bleating and bleating and I was hugging her close, smelling her good smell and her licking both my hands clean. And there was Rachel and a little one I hadn’t named, he had been born just fine and never needed naming, but now his fur was matted with blood and he hung back until I called “Joseph, Joseph” and he came to me and it was everything. I understood, then, that this was what was meant by grace, how in the midst of so much wrong there could be something that was beautiful and right.
I cleaned out the unlit torches and the corked jugs of beer from the cart and got the goats up inside. They seemed happy to be leaving. I searched the brush but I couldn’t find any of the others, and then it was time. It took the horse a little while to trust me, but I coaxed her back and forward again and she understood and that was a kind of grace too. There was a whip in its socket and I threw that away with the rest. When I saw little Addy watching me I told her “no more” and I meant it. No more of such things, ever. Together the horse and I steered the cart onto the road, and with every step I said “thank you” and I meant that too, I had never felt so grateful.
Once I was up in the seat, though, I found myself trembling again. From there the ruin of our land seemed a sorry thing, small and empty. Even Mam’s body seemed little more than a spot against the dirt. I stopped the horse so I could really look at it all, one last time. There was something white and crumpled beside her: my nightshirt had blown up against her, so it looked there was an Addy curled up next to her. So I was up on the road, alone, and down there was an Addy who had stayed by Mam to the end.
I touched my face and my cheeks were all wet, though it didn’t feel like I was crying, I wasn’t crying at all. Perhaps the other Addy got to cry at the end, perhaps Mam had let her, just the once.
The horse began walking without me telling her to and I let her have her head. I felt a little better for moving. The hills were warming into their browns and greens, and all the clouds were white against the blue sky. It was almost right, save for the aching inside me, save for how sore my throat was from holding everything in. It had all been wrong from the start, it had started wrong and ended worse. Behind me little Addy came up and nudged my elbow and I began laughing even though I was still crying, and I understood better how Mam must have felt all tumbled up inside. Maybe she had known it was wrong, only there was nothing for it but to see it through. A woman has to take a stand, but it was worthless if you weren’t standing for something right.
Behind me Joseph butted Rachel and she gave him a nip and little Addy wiggled onto the seat beside me, standing tall and proud. It reminded me of when we first came out here: we had passed by some folks camped by a river and they had been singing. The sun had lit up the water and the grass had been green as far as the eye could see and Da had said we’re gonna make this God’s garden, Addy,and the people had sung so prettily, nothing like my trembling voice now:
There let my way appear
Steps unto heaven
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee
Nearer to Thee
I sang and little Addy bleated and I was sad but I was alive, I was alive, the fist loosening and my heart aching. I was alive and I had to stay alive, for now I had promises to keep, and a grace I dared not squander.
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Copyright 2017 L.S. Johnson
L.S. Johnson was born in New York and now lives in Northern California, where she feeds her cats by writing book indexes. Her stories have appeared in such venues as Strange Horizons, Interzone, Long Hidden, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Vacui Magia: Stories, her first collection, won the 2nd Annual North Street Book Prize and is a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Her gothic novella, Harkworth Hall, was published in August. To find out more, visit her website.
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Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by Rashida J. Smith.
http://giganotosaurus.org
[email protected]
Table of Contents
October 1, 2017 Volume 7 No 12
To Us May Grace Be Given Page 5
