Shiner

by Amy Jo Burns

  By the time July came and went, Ivy had gotten clammy and congested, and her boys stayed as needy as ever. The sickness had set in quicker than her hair had caught fire. A red rash spread like fireworks across her skin, and she vomited once an hour. The whites of her eyes went pink, and her lips turned blue. All day she quivered, coughed, and spit. Every hour she coated herself in a salve of tallow and beeswax, an old mountain remedy. Even Dr. Ed from Trap’s free clinic couldn’t help her, but not because he didn’t try. My mother, who could always get anyone to do anything, convinced him to pay her three visits. But she couldn’t convince Ivy to heed his counsel.

  “It’s likely bronchitis,” he’d estimated from the door to Ivy’s trailer. She wouldn’t let him in, because she believed her sickness was spiritual, even though her veins had gone gray. “Or pneumonia. I won’t know for sure until I examine you.”

  When my mother found a flyer for Dr. Ed’s new clinic eight years ago, she’d hugged me so tight I couldn’t breathe. Dr. Ed had a Ford full of supplies he was eager to deliver up the mountain: vaccines, penicillin, vitamins. Since then anytime I’d been ill, Dr. Ed paid us a visit at Ivy’s. My father saw no use for modern medicine, not when divine healing was at his disposal. Not once had he tried to lay hands on me and pray, not even when I’d had a writhing fever from the chicken pox. My mother hadn’t let him.

  Ivy had never liked prescription drugs, because Ricky was so smitten with them. She thought they made the sick on our mountain sicker, dependent on a lie.

  “You think coal killed this mountain?” she asked me once. “Try pharmaceuticals.”

  She didn’t believe in cures, she said. She only believed in trading one kind of hurt for another. But since the burning, she had come around to a providential kind of healing, and the only advice she would take was my father’s. He claimed she needed prayer and fasting. My father joined her and held her up when she was too weak to stand. He fed her chicken broth as he prayed, and it was the only thing she would stomach. He visited her every day, and he fought with my mother about it every evening.

  “Send her to the hospital, Briar,” my mother insisted over a dinner of lentils and tomatoes, night after night. I’d never heard her plead so much in her life. “She’ll listen to you.”

  “It ain’t me she’s listening to, Ruby.” My father offered up his hands to her. “It’s God.”

  He put on an act of frustration, but I knew him better than that. He never loved my mother more than when she fought with him. They got so whipped up in their fights that I made good use of their preoccupations. I took to walking the deserted creek road, hoping to find Caleb and finding myself alone.

  I saw Caleb every Sunday morning. I watched him just as he’d watched me on that first Sunday, but he didn’t look back. He must have felt hurt that I’d invited him onto our land only to hide him in a shed from my father—and I didn’t blame him. I’d shared just a single midnight swim and a handful of glances with Caleb, and I still felt the tiniest part of myself unravel. I wanted to see his Ferris wheel, listen to his music, touch the fingers of his right hand as he drew the rock spires that lanced the clouds. It hurt because I knew he wouldn’t stay. I didn’t want this heart I had, fragile and unstitched and nothing like my mother’s, which beat true on its own.

  Ivy didn’t have the strength to scale our hill, so my mother and I visited her instead. We left early in the morning when even an earthquake couldn’t rouse my father. Every day it was the same. Ivy sat bundled in bed, shivering like mad in the heat. Ricky was pale. The boys were paler. The licorice smell in their trailer mixed with the stench of sweat and filth. It didn’t matter what we brought, though my mother tried onions and mintweed and gingerroot. No poultice could cure what was brewing. The whole family had come down with Ivy’s illness, but she was the sickest of them all.

  My mother remained faithful to her only friend. And because she and Ivy couldn’t agree on the present, they talked about old times instead.

  “Everybody in the churchyard wanted to marry your mama,” Ivy told me on one of her better days. She pulled her friendship quilt up to her neck, her body dwarfed by the interlocking diamonds she and my mother had sewn together as girls, her head still slick.

  “Stop,” my mother said.

  “You should tell Wren about the whiskey we drank.”

  My mother laughed with relief—there was the real Ivy, her old friend. She hadn’t retreated yet. “That was a long time ago.”

  “You should have seen us on our wedding days.” Ivy turned to me. Her lips had gone dry, and her mouth released a sour smell. “Almost wet ourselves, we were so scared.”

  “Scared of what?” I asked.

  “The rest of our lives.” Ivy’s eyes went blank.

  My mother folded back the edges of the quilt and smoothed the sheet. “It ain’t as bad as all that,” she said. “We’ll still grow old together.”

  “Will we?” Ivy asked.

  * * *

  The sicker Ivy got, the less I slept. Even the foxes felt the air’s grisly turn. I heard them screaming as I walked to the creek. I’d given up on finding Caleb there. I knew he’d heard the stories by now. Someone had surely told him how young women grew strange in these hills. The August air had eased, and the creek water slid around me like a nightgown. Some nights I hiked against the current just to see how far I could go. I walked long after my feet had gone numb.

  One night I stayed out later than I should have. The catbirds had already started their chatting. The sun had yet to show, but I could see my father waiting for me when I slipped through the back door. He ruled over the kitchen table in the dark.

  “Where you been?” he asked, and his spirit eye needled me.

  I had no reason to lie. “I walked to the creek.”

  He looked wily from all the fasting he’d done. If Ivy’s miracle had stripped her down, it had charged my father up. He hadn’t eaten or slept, and his entire body throbbed.

  “You visit my shed again?” he asked.

  I trod carefully. I’d seen this tactic in his Sunday sermons, his way of asking a question he knew the answer to.

  “No,” I said.

  “Good.” He rose from the table, and we stood as near to eye to eye as we ever would. “You ain’t ready.”

  My father had never spoken to me like an outsider before. He’d also never seen me angry. I had always been hurtling toward him and his serpents—I’d just never had the eyes to see it until now. Until Caleb, until Ivy.

  He took a thick piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it. The slow ease of his movements made my chest clench. In his hand he held Caleb’s drawing of me. My father must have found it in my dresser drawer while my mother and I were visiting Ivy. It wouldn’t have been hard to find. My drawers were mostly empty. He glanced at me, then tossed the drawing into the smoldering fire we had lit for dinner. I didn’t dare breathe until he shifted to his bedroom and closed the door.

  BREATHING UNDERWATER

  On the morning of Baptism Day in early August, I left the house at dawn and hid myself beneath the Royal Empress trees. Today my father would baptize anyone who wanted to profess their faith in God, and he planned to start with Ivy. He still didn’t understand that our mountain had so few people left—and even fewer who wanted to get born again. No one had gotten baptized in the creek since I was a girl. Not even I had wanted to, until now. If my father thought I wasn’t fit for his miracles, I would prove to him that he didn’t get to decide.

  In the shade I skated my fingers across the tips of the tall grass. Summer had reached its peak, and so had Ivy’s illness. She’d been sick for two months. Even so, she planned to hike to the creek. It didn’t matter how often my mother insisted that the cold water was lethal for her lungs. Ivy still wanted to be cleansed.

  “I’ll be the first in line to be washed clean,” she’d said while my mother wiped vomit from he
r mouth. “And rid myself of this regret.”

  Her eyes bored into my mother’s until she looked away. I decided to wait until we were alone to ask my mother what Ivy had meant.

  Ivy’s miracle had turned her weak. Even though my father felt strong, her miracle had weakened him, too. In the weeks after Ivy burned, he coddled his serpents and nursed his strychnine as his clothes hung from his body. He’d gotten so thin that my mother had to fashion a fresh hole for his belt. I watched his body dwindle.

  My father had burned Caleb’s drawing of me because he was afraid. I vowed to find what it would take to make him break.

  I heard my mother calling my name, her voice like the rose-breasted birds feeding at her sunflowers. I ran to her. In the kitchen she was fixing an onion-and-lavender poultice for Ivy’s chest once the cold set in at the creek. If she couldn’t prevent my father from working his magic on Ivy, then she’d combat it with her own.

  “Stir this till it cools,” she said.

  I nodded and took the spoon.

  “Where’s Daddy?” I asked.

  She jutted her chin toward the back path. “Where do you think?”

  My father spent most of his time in the shed since he and Ivy had started fasting as a way to arm-wrestle God into showing himself. If he’d healed Ivy once, he reckoned he could heal her again. He’d had no appetite for anything but the daily argument with his wife.

  “You think he talks to those snakes when no one’s around?” she asked me.

  She grinned, but she was sad. This summer of miracles had emptied her out. I wound the spoon through the poultice and watched the ellipse of her back. My mother’s vigilance over me had waned as Ivy grew sicker. I missed the way she used to draw me close to the things she loved—swimming, sewing, soaping. She didn’t know I was wandering at night.

  “Mama,” I said. “What makes Ivy feel so much regret?”

  Her eyebrows flinched. “She just misses the baby she lost a long time ago.”

  “Henry asked me about it,” I said. “What happened?”

  “It wasn’t Ivy’s fault.”

  “Then why does she want to be forgiven?”

  She looked at me, her eyes rimmed in red from the onion.

  “What does Daddy think?” I asked.

  She didn’t respond, and she didn’t need to. The answer was plain. My father didn’t know.

  “I need some thistle from the garden,” she said. “You’ll find it along the fence.”

  I stepped outside, toeing the cliff of my mother’s confession. There was a storm coming. I could tell by the way the birds pecked at their own tails in the white ash trees. It was a ways off, still. I turned my face toward the porch, a chill at my back. The wind chimes on the eaves clattered, and the cabin looked empty, like no one had lived there in a long time.

  * * *

  The creek-side water glinted in the noonday sun, and Ivy looked ready to wilt. My mother brought her marriage quilt to wrap Ivy in once the baptism ended, and she tried to coax Ivy toward it to take a rest, but Ivy would not be moved. The quilt had a patch from everyone who’d attended my mother’s wedding, including a square of black corduroy from Ivy herself. She’d sliced it from the pants her dead father once wore. I used to drape that quilt around my shoulders like a cape until Ivy pulled it off me.

  “Weddings are funerals,” Ivy would say as she pushed the quilt beneath my mother’s bed. “Don’t you dare dream of them.”

  The air clotted as the storm drew near, and Ivy’s boys hung so heavy from my father’s arms that he’d already sweated through his white collared shirt. Like my father, his sheep wore white on Baptism Day. This was how we knew who had decided to give their lives over to the Lord—the folks getting baptized were the only folks dressed in dark colors.

  Twenty people from the congregation waited by the water to watch the ceremony. All of them had known Briar Bird since he was a boy. Ivy looked like a puckered rose, standing in the creek in a scarlet dress. My mother lay in the shade. My father stood beside Ivy, the two of them closer than I’d ever seen.

  An engine growled at the top of the hill. Aunt Bette’s van heaved up the mountain and squawked to a stop, then five of her wards skulked down the hillside. The girl with the glittered nails led the way, the strap of her guitar tamping down her blond hair. Caleb followed her.

  I couldn’t hide how fiercely I was drawn to everything about him: his smile, his stare. He turned his face away from where I stood at the water. It stung, but not enough for me to wish I could forget the way it felt when our bodies met.

  “Hi,” I said, and that was the beginning of the end.

  My father’s eyes ricocheted between Caleb and me until he grabbed my elbow and forced me toward the soft ground by the overhang.

  “You’re hurting me,” I whispered.

  “All you’ve done is bring danger here,” he said.

  I felt twenty pairs of eyes fixed to my back as my father’s breath started to pitch.

  “You’re the one who brings danger here,” I said. “You bring it every time you pick up a snake.”

  I’d never spoken to my father that way. His white eye narrowed, and he looked ready to strike me when my mother called to him.

  “Briar.” Her voice from the shade was calm, full of purpose. “You best let go of my girl.”

  The crowd gagged, and my father released my arm. I turned my back to him and found my place in line behind Ivy. My father splashed cold water on his face, then stepped into the current. The girl with the shimmery nails stood on the overhang and started to strum her guitar. My father snarled his lip at the music.

  “Arledge,” he summoned the oldest in the crowd. “Lead us in ‘Washed by the Blood.’”

  The strings on the girl’s guitar shrieked as her playing came to a stop. She looked at me and raised her hand in a half salute, as if she were trying to tell me it was safer to take a step toward her and move away from the water.

  I lifted my hand in return as Brother Arledge stood and started a slow clap. The sound felt orphaned until he started to sing. The congregation joined him, and the chorus swelled.

  The clapping quickened as my father beckoned Ivy to join him. I shivered in the heat. Ivy floated toward him, transfixed by the crescendo of the creek. His face had that euphoric gaze I’d seen too many times. Ivy covered her nose and mouth with one hand as my father wrapped an arm around her waist. He tipped her backward and doused her in creek water. Ivy bobbed up, a waterfall spilling off her gossamer skin. My father relished Ivy’s luster. She lifted her hands as he clamped a palm on her shoulder. She fell to her knees, crawled toward the bank, and spread herself wide to dry out in the sun. The smile on my father’s face stretched immortal.

  It was my turn.

  The clapping sped to a dizzying pace. Arledge’s voice fizzed into static. I stepped into the water and rode the wave toward my father. His blue eye sparkled like a jewel. I wanted my father to reckon with me, and I waited for the flare of his touch. He paused for a moment and shut his eyes. I closed mine and felt the weight of his hand beneath my chin.

  I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy . . .

  The final word vanished as he dipped me backward. All sound shushed as I sank. I’d gone under these waters a hundred times, but never by my father’s hand. He’d rarely touched me, and I’d never wanted him to. The heady glug of bubbles vibrated against my lips, and I opened my eyes. Sediment floated by like specks of gold. The sun blurred above me, and I felt my gravity shift. Once my head reached the creek bed and my feet left the earth, I realized my father wasn’t letting me up.

  My first thought: Wait him out. He’s testing you.

  He wanted to know if I had the kind of faith that would move mountains. I went limp and let myself dangle in his grasp.

  My second thought: He knows. He knows you let an outsider
into his shed of serpents.

  He knew about Caleb, about the flask. The picture had betrayed us. I’d committed my sin in private, and he wanted to sentence me in public.

  My third thought: He’s drowning you.

  All air left my body as my face slammed against the earth. My mouth gasped and filled with water. I clawed at his pant leg. My feet flailed and clocked him in the side of the face. He overpowered me, even as I fought him.

  Then my father fell backward. He abandoned his hold on me, and I broke through the surface. I coughed as my nose bled down the length of my dress. The small crowd lining the creek had gone mute.

  They all stared at their preacher, no more than five feet from me and slung by the collar in Caleb’s grasp. He’d pried my father’s fingers off my neck and held him at arm’s length like he was a sock puppet. My father sputtered and kicked, but Caleb’s grip stayed firm.

  He didn’t stay above water for long. My mother charged into the creek, thrashing the waves with her fists. When she reached her husband, she yanked the front of his shirt and forced him under. My mother wasn’t strong enough to keep him down, but he let her. She held him there, and no one in the crowd rose to stop her.

  “Mama,” I said. “Don’t.”

  She paid me no mind. One of my father’s hands pawed at her skirt. Still she held him.

  “Mama,” I said again. My voice had gone hoarse. “Please.”

  She didn’t look at me, but she heard me all the same. She relented, and my father surfaced, his limbs flagging. My mother had never looked more savage.

  “The next time you want to drown someone in the name of God,” she spit, “drown yourself.”

  The congregation stayed stunned. It reminded me of the only time I’d ever seen someone die from a snake bite. It was an old-timer, whose favorite copperhead had bitten him on his thigh. The worshippers’ mouths had gone dry then, too, as my father dragged the corpse down the center aisle.