The Ancient Hours

by Michael Bible

  Members of the church said she was the first one in the sanctuary on Sunday and the last to leave. She always brought fresh flowers from her garden. During the Great Depression her grandmother started a flower shop downtown that sold only gladiolus because she could get cheap bulbs from a catalogue. When someone was sick in the congregation she was the first to visit and bring food. Same when one of the church members passed away. She never said the word died, she always said passed away.

  There’s an upper room waiting for us, she’d say. Those willing to take Christ’s love into their hearts.

  Trudy almost didn’t go to church the Sunday of the incident. She’d been fighting off a bad cold but the day before she’d seen Christy McCloud at the supermarket with her four-year-old son, Joe. Out of the clear blue Joe asked if Trudy would sit with him in church. She went to bed early the night before so she would be healthy enough to go. She sat with the McCloud family on the second row and listened as Pastor Green went through the service. The crowd was small that morning. First Baptist was losing members, which was part of the reason Johnny was trying a new musical program. More upbeat songs and contemporary music. Acoustic praise songs replaced boring old organ tunes. Some said Johnny had been talking to Iggy about playing drums. Trudy thought the whole thing was ridiculous. She felt God must be praised with the chords and melodies of the old days or it just wouldn’t take. Nonetheless she was proud of Johnny for the work he did and she thought Iggy’s presence in church each week was a sign that young people weren’t as bad as everyone made them out to be.

  The events of that morning have been told and retold in the media, in trial transcripts, and through our own investigations. The detail that’s always most striking is how quickly it happened. The whole service went as it did each week. A song from the choir and the reading of scripture, the prayers of the people, the offering, another song, the sermon and the benediction.

  Iggy was in the back row and walked calmly to the middle of the sanctuary as everyone stood and closed their eyes in prayer. No one noticed he was carrying gasoline.

  Slowed down, the terror of that day is difficult to understand. We imagine the congregation deep in prayer. Perhaps praying to an invisible maker to render their future better than their past. More money, less illness, more time. We know what Trudy prayed for that day. She told the court.

  I prayed for little Joe McCloud who was sitting next to me, she testified. I prayed he would grow up and walk with Christ.

  Iggy was shaking, trying to pour the gasoline, getting it everywhere. He put the gas can down. A small stream ran down the floorboards to the altar. Then he brought out the matches. He fumbled with the matchbook. Dropping it to the floor. He picked it up and tried again. One lit on fire. He touched it to his shirt, but it went out. Johnny was sitting with the choir. He realized what was happening and ran toward Iggy. Everyone was screaming. Iggy tried another match and this time it lit. But when he saw Johnny running, he panicked and dropped the lit match to the floor. It didn’t take long for the two-hundred-year-old pine floors to ignite.

  Thick black smoke was everywhere in less than a minute, Trudy testified. Couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

  She began to weep on the stand.

  I hear those screams at night when I try to sleep, she said. I keep replaying that morning in my mind trying to figure out how to save Johnny and the others. I hate myself for not trying harder.

  The lawyer handed her a tissue.

  I remembered from fire safety class to stay low, she said. I crawled under the pews until I reached a window and I broke it with a hymnal. I could feel the fresh air on my face and went toward it. I jumped, fell maybe two or three feet. Then I was outside on the grass, on my back. That’s when I realized I was holding little Joe McCloud. I don’t even remember grabbing him.

  They ran across the street and watched the flames get higher. She noticed someone watching the fire. It was Iggy. He was standing there as if nothing had happened, as if he was in a dream.

  When the fire trucks arrived, the roof of the church collapsed. The EMTs came but there was no one left to save. All twenty-five worshipers were killed. The police came next. Without being asked, Iggy told them what he had done. Almost in disbelief, they arrested him.

  As you sit here today, the lawyer asked Trudy. What do you see when you look at Iggy?

  I see a boy that had a lot of potential, she said. That same lost boy I met the first day Johnny brought him home. I’ve known many young people in my life as an educator. I knew Iggy’s type. He had no community. Some young people will seek sex or drugs to soothe them. Iggy sought violence because he couldn’t understand a world that he was not the center of. I begged him before, and I’ll use my time here to say it to him again: Repent. Give your life to Jesus. Help others do the same. Don’t let your life be wasted.

  Trudy didn’t know where to go after the fire. They took her to the police station. When Joe McCloud’s grandparents arrived many hours later, Joe was too afraid to let go of Trudy. When they finally took him from her arms, she broke down. The weight of what happened hit her all at once. The detective in the room kept her from falling. He had been one of her students.

  Hold on to me, he said. I won’t let you fall.

  They took her to the hospital and sedated her. The whole time she kept asking about Joe. The next day every ten minutes a new student from the old days would come by and see her. Former colleagues and friends brought food. So many that the doctors had to restrict the number of visitors. Everyone said she saved Joe’s life. The paper called her “the heroic grandma.”

  After the fire some of Trudy’s kin, a cousin and cousin-in-law, had arrived from Alabama, and were caring for her. They’d been reading online about Iggy. They told Trudy that he was at the county courthouse that afternoon for a bond hearing.

  I want to go, she said. I want to see him.

  I’m not sure that’s a good idea, the cousin said. You need your rest.

  Trudy drove herself downtown, the cousin insisting on coming along. After much waiting, they brought Iggy into the tiny courtroom in shackles. The judge read some remarks and the lawyers answered some questions. Then the judge asked if anyone from the public wanted to make a statement. Trudy walked to the front of the room. She was wearing a flower-print dress. Her usual teacher demeanor had dropped. People parted as she walked up. Iggy sat with his head forward, looking at the wall. Trudy reached a tiny microphone near where the judge sat.

  She looked at Iggy.

  I want to say that I loved you, she said. I fought in my heart for you and prayed each day that the Lord would find a path for you. But it seems that Christ didn’t win.

  She took a deep breath.

  You killed the best people, she said. My whole world was in that sanctuary and you took them from me. And for what? What possible reason?

  IGGY

  2006

  1

  I’M NOT LONG for the world. I still dream about the future even though I don’t have one. In six days, I’ll be weightless. Murdered by the state. Like a dog chases rabbits in his sleep, I pine for Cleo and Paul. I dream of getting high and shooting roman candles with them from the top of a speeding freight train, racing through the night. I dream of starting revolutions in the streets, dying happy and lonesome in a tiny village faraway. I dream of gladiolus tall as swords in shop windows. Mostly though I dream of walking in the sun. In the bright clear air. On a quiet street. I turn the corner. Someone is calling my name.

  Pain becomes meaningless with time. All that’s left for me to do is die and I hope they smile when they inject me.

  I see my life in reverse. I remember afternoons in North Carolina that felt almost prehistoric. Wandering the woods imagining I could one day build a secret little city for myself. Riding my bike down to the abandoned hospital and breaking stained-glass windows with half bricks. Or the first time I got
wine-cooler wasted when I was twelve and held a yellow python at the sketchy pet store. I remember seventh grade. My teacher said she once met Ronald Reagan and no one cared. They moved our class into a trailer where everything smelled like ranch dressing. I remember the sound of the toy guns in the moonlight and listening to my first best friend masturbate in the darkness when he thought I was asleep. I can’t even recall his name. His dad was a surgeon. They had a pool table and a wet bar and a movie screen that came down from the ceiling with a remote control. I remember Cleo’s orange hair. Her smooth legs the first night we fucked in my Jeep behind the water tower. She fell asleep on my chest. And Paul’s dark eyes and thick drawl. We would skip school and drive out to the wild endless countryside and have long conversations about the apocalypse and how maybe every person on earth was actually God.

  The one thing that’s kept me going all these years is watching the leaves fall. I can see one tree from the tiny window in my cell. I think it’s a maple, but could be a cherry or a mulberry or possibly a poplar. Regardless, I think of it as a dogwood. I tell time by the light passing across the room. At night I study the stars in my little sliver of sky and create my own constellations. There’s The Sleeping Mockingbird beside The Prize Fighter, which is just beyond The Maestro and The Hitchhiker. My favorite is The Backstroke Swimmer that I can see only in summer. I’ve been here for almost six years. Isolation becomes so deep that your mind betrays you. Voices crowd you. There’s no way to know one season from another except the raging cold or terrible heat. And the tree. It’s on a little hill beyond the barbed wire and the highway and the subdivisions.

  I remember the day they brought me here. The guards joked about the female agent that dropped me off.

  She’s a little hottie, one said to the other.

  Looked like Winona Ryder, I said. Or that girl from The Addams Family.

  Christina Ricci, the captain said. Hell yeah she did.

  The captain’s name is Tom. He’s the boss guard. The CO. He’s always been good to me cause I’m a skinny dumb kid. Tom hates the tough guys and the Nazis. He knows I’m not in a gang and don’t fuck around like that. The Cleveland Bombers are here and the Saudi who tried to light his underwear on fire. Couple of dead-to-rights serial killers, too. Cops treat me kindly, mostly cause I keep to myself. When I got arrested, one officer brought me a Whopper combo from Burger King and a chocolate shake to eat while they did the interview. They asked me about the fire. Guess they’re interested in the nature of things. The FBI agent was a sizable man. Wore a comical mustache. Reminded me of my little-league coach who got caught peeping in the showers after practice.

  Suppose you think I’m a psychopath or something. You want to know about my family, my early years. Must be something with my upbringing that caused me to go astray. Abusive father, negligent mother. Or perhaps I’m a spurned lover seeking revenge. Or maybe you’ll say it was society’s fault. Or all that codeine I used to drink and violent movies. Or my political beliefs. But it’s none of those things. Or all of those things. You want to know why I did what I did? Might as well take a handful of water and ask if it’s river or rain.

  I loved two people at the same time. I was rich and poor and sane and insane. I hated and feared people and places and things. My mother was a high-handed drunk and my father was full of gruesome moods. My life was a hurricane and a clear bright bitch of a day. I am the hero and the villain. I am the man who tried to save you.

  In a past life I was a guerrilla fighter named Nebuchadnezzar. Fought against my countrymen but not necessarily for the Union. I was on the side of the dispossessed. I charged through generals with my stolen horse and broke their sabers over my knee.

  I watch the lone dogwood from my window. Swaying sideways in the wind. Short shadows fill my cell and soon it will be time to sleep. The first day of my last week is coming to an end. I am prepared. I knew it would come to this. I mourn the future I will never know. I dream of one day glimpsing the world from on top. I dream of shouting my name into the valley.

  2

  WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING, the right side of my body was numb. Thought it might be permanent, but I soon came back to life. Headaches keep me in bed most days and there’s been a persistent ringing in my ears for the last six months. The doctor came and checked me over last week. I’m not sure why. Guess to see if I was healthy enough to die.

  They put an extra apple with my breakfast. A big green one. Granny Smith, I think. They must be starting to feel sorry for me cause Captain Tom even brought me fresh coffee, too.

  How ya feeling, Tom asked.

  Good, sir, I said. Better now.

  The coffee was warm in my hands and reminded me of drinking decaf early mornings at Sunday school with powdered donuts. Captain Tom was looking at the floor, not like usual. It’s strange how people act around a condemned man so close to the end. Like they have some kind of reverence for death.

  We’re gonna have to talk at some point about some things, he said.

  OK, I said.

  Your meal, he said. I’ll need to know soon so we’ll have enough time.

  I nodded.

  If you haven’t thought of any final things to say maybe start now, he said. You don’t want to have to think of something last minute.

  I’ve been writing, I said. I should have something ready when the time comes.

  All right then, he said.

  He acted as though he was going to say something else but he didn’t. Then he walked out. The room was quiet again. I looked out the window and could see the dogwood’s blossom was almost done falling. The warm summer days were nearly gone and each morning was colder than the last. I wanted to see that last blossom fall. Felt a strange relationship to it. Like it was the final good thing on earth.

  I dreamed about Cleo last night and Harmony. The stores downtown and the old blue water tower and the worthless high school. It was a terribly normal place to grow up. I used to go every afternoon to the public library and pick a random book off the shelf and start reading it. That’s how I found William Faulkner and Gertrude Stein and Emily Dickinson. I read everything. Books about old sleeper trains from Venice to London and crazy ants in Texas that eat people’s TVs. I read about Che Guevara and St. Francis of Assisi and the films of Pasolini. I read about windmills and Catahoula dogs and the Opium Wars.

  I was thinking about the library this morning as I ate my apple, finished the last of the coffee. I went over my dream from the night before. It was one I’ve had many times about Cleo. We’re riding Vespas through a city park and we stop to feed giraffes. It’s stupid, I know, but it’s all I have. A surrealist painting come to life.

  We met my sophomore year, 1997. Her biological parents died when she was young (black ice, country road) so she lived down on Mulberry Street with her godparents. Her new dad was sick with a spinal disease, in a wheelchair ever since I knew him, and her new mom worked at the brick factory as an accountant. I used to ride my bike over there and me and Cleo would watch the airplanes pass on their way south. Harmony must be on some flight path for NASCAR driver’s private planes flying into Charlotte. Cleo’s house had one of those flat roofs. Kind of a modern place with glass walls. Her dad built it when he was still able to move. We’d watch the planes fly over and guess where they were coming from and talk about all the places we wanted to go.

  Those years are so wistful and bizarre. The wind made the azaleas seem as if they hovered six inches off the ground. The neighbor’s dogs Salt and Pepper barked like quarreling lovers. Blink my eyes and I’m back in Harmony and the night is clear and the cicadas are electric. I can float above the mountains and fly the path of a dark river to the sea. Cleo is a kind, serious angel that watches over me. I’ve spent whole months wondering what she’s doing out there. Who she’s with, where she goes. I can see so clearly the tiny blond hairs that cover the small of her back. Hear her whistle like a butcherbird.

&
nbsp; She was a year younger than I was but seemed ancient. Built small, sad eyes. She reminded me of the circus girl from La Strada. Her hair was green the day we first met. In the lunchroom, she was sitting alone. Wearing a pink leather choker and a shirt with a picture of a bloody girl. I walked up to her with idiot confidence.

  Who’s that girl on your shirt, I asked.

  She looked me over. I guess deciding something in her mind. Lord knows what she thought of me. I was kind of going through a psychedelic cowboy phase.

  Sit down if you want, she said.

  I sat across from her.

  Are you a freshman, I asked.

  She didn’t look up from her food.

  It’s Carrie, she said.

  Who, I asked.

  Girl on my shirt, she said. From the movie Carrie.

  Oh, I said. Never seen it.

  She rolled her eyes.

  Well, you should, she said and went back to eating.

  For the rest of the lunch I didn’t know what else to say and so we sat there in silence. It wasn’t awkward, actually kind of refreshing. We’d found each other and that was the important thing. A few days later I saw her out behind the gym smoking a cigarette and I asked her for one.

  You’re doing it wrong, she said. Like this.

  She exhaled out of her mouth and inhaled through her nostrils.

  French inhale, I asked.

  French inhale, she said.

  She smiled.

  I’m not a total asshole, I said. I just dress like one.

  She laughed at that. There’s not many things in this world better than a deep pure laugh like hers. Like hearing someone singing gospel or screaming for help. Every day after that I tried to get a laugh out of her. No one else was like her at our school. Sure there were goths and punks, hipsters and goons, but Cleo was different. She never got picked on for the way she dressed. She had a way of dispensing with people she found expendable. I saw huge football players walk on the opposite side of the hallway to avoid her.