by Ben Marcus
Mama glared at him. She opened the Holy Word of God as revealed to Daddy Norton, Beloved and read aloud from the revelations of the suffering of the wicked. As she read, Daddy Norton’s voice grew softer, then seemed to stop altogether, though the lips never stopped moving. The light made its way toward them until they could see, through the glass at the end of the hall, the sun flatten onto the sill and collapse.
Mama clutched the Holy Word to her chest and rocked back and forth, her eyes shut. Theron nudged Aurel, then arose and edged past Daddy Norton. He skirted Mama, his boots creaking, without her eyes opening. He strode down the hall and into the kitchen, the door banging shut behind him.
Mama started, opening her eyes.
“Where’s Theron?” she asked.
Aurel shook his head.
“That boy is godless,” she said. “And you, Aurel, hardly better. A pair of sorry sinners, the goddamn both of you.”
She closed her eyes and rocked. In the dim, Aurel examined Daddy Norton. The man’s face had gone pale and floated in the coming darkness like a buoy.
Theron returned, carrying half a loaf of bread and a bell jar of whiskey. He edged past Mama and straddle-stepped over Daddy Norton, sitting down against the door.
He ripped the loaf apart, gave a morsel to Aurel. Aurel took it, tore off a mouthful. Mama watched them dully. They did not stop chewing. She closed her eyes, clung tighter to the Holy Word.
“Holy Word won’t save you now, Mama,” said Theron. “You need bread.”
“Shut up,” said Aurel. “Leave her alone.”
“Won’t save Daddy either,” said Theron. “Nor angels neither.”
“Shut up!” shouted Aurel, hiding his ears in his hands.
Theron unscrewed the lid of the whiskey, took a swallow.
“Drink, Mama?” he asked, holding the jar out.
She would not so much as look at him. He offered the jar to Aurel, who removed his hands from his ears long enough to take it and drink.
“Aurel knows, Mama,” said Theron. “He don’t like it, but he knows.”
Turning away from them, she lay down on the floor. Aurel swallowed his bread and lay down as well. Theron swallowed the last of the whiskey. He leaned back against the door, whispering softly to himself, and watched the others sleep.
* * *
Aurel awoke in the early light. Daddy Norton, he saw, had risen to standing and was leaning against the wall on one leg. He held a butcher knife awkwardly, trying to hack off the other leg just above the joint, crying out with each blow.
He stopped to regard Aurel with burning, red-rimmed eyes, the knife poised, his gaze drifting slowly upward. He shook his head, continued to gash the leg, the dull knife making poor progress, at last turning skew against the bone and clattering from his fingers.
Bending his good leg, he tried to take the blood-smeared knife off the floor. He could not reach it. He cast his gaze about until it stuck on Aurel.
“Aurel,” he said, his voice greding high. “Be a good boy and hand Daddy the knife.”
Aurel did not move. They looked at one another, Aurel unable to break Daddy Norton’s gaze. He began to move slowly across the floor, pulling himself backward until he struck against the door.
“Aurel,” Daddy Norton said. “God wants you to pick up the knife.”
Aurel swallowed, stayed pressed to the door.
“Shall I damn you, Aurel?” said Daddy Norton.
Daddy Norton extended an arm, pointing a finger at Aurel, his other hand raised open-palmed to support the heavens. He stepped onto the injured leg, listing toward the boy, and fell. His leg folded, turning under him so that he looked like he was attempting to couple with it. He lay on the floor slick-faced with sweat, his eyes misfocused.
“Give me the knife, Aurel,” he said.
He began to pull himself around by his fingers, turning his body around until it became wedged between the hall walls. Grunting, he rolled over, twisting the broken leg, and fainted.
Aurel shook Theron. Theron blinked his eyes and mumbled, his voice still thick with liquor. Aurel motioned to Daddy Norton, who came conscious again and stared them through with God’s awful hate.
“Stop staring at me,” said Theron.
Daddy Norton neither stopped nor moved. There was a smell coming up from him, from his leg too. Theron stood, plugging his nose, and stepped over him, taking up the knife, Daddy Norton’s eyes following him almost in reflex. “Stop staring,” Theron said again, and pushed the knife in.
Aurel closed his eyes and turned his face to the door. He could hear a dozen times the damp sound of Theron pushing the knife in and pulling it out, then the noise of it stopped.
He opened his eyes to see Theron leaning over Daddy Norton, holding what remained of the eyelids fixed with his fingertips, though when he released them the eyelids crept up to reveal the emptied sockets. Theron twisted the man’s neck and rolled the head, directing the face toward the floor. He wiped the knife on Daddy Norton’s shirt. Putting the knife into the man’s hand, he stood back. The fingers straightened and the knife slipped out. He folded the fingers around the haft, watched them straighten again.
“Theron?” said Aurel.
“Not now, Aurel,” said Theron.
“What about Mama?” asked Aurel.
Theron seemed to consider it, then stood and took the knife in his own hands and approached Mama.
“Don’t kill her, Theron,” said Aurel. “Not Mama.”
“Be quiet about it,” said Theron. He prodded her head with his boot. “Wake up, Mama,” he said.
She did not move. Theron pushed her head again.
“Daddy needs you, Mama,” he said.
“I can’t bear to have you do it,” said Aurel.
“You don’t know at all what you can bear,” said Theron.
He knelt down beside her. He took the Holy Word out of her hands and dropped it aside. He placed the knife into her hand, carefully, so as not to awaken her. The knife fit, held.
“You can have only one of us, Aurel,” said Theron. “Me or Mama?”
“Mama,” said Aurel.
“It’s me you want,” said Theron. “You aren’t thinking straight. Let me think for you.”
He picked up Mama under the shoulders and dragged her closer to Daddy Norton. He took her wrists and pushed her hands into Daddy Norton’s body until they came away stained, the knife gory too.
“Besides,” said Theron. “You don’t have a choice. Mama gone and died while we were jawing. You got only me.”
II. THE FUNERAL
For the funeral, Preacher Thrane collected from his congregation enough for a shirt and a pair of presentable trousers for each boy—though, he said, they would have to secure collar and cravat of their own initiative, did they care for them. This he suggested they find the means to do by taking up the cup and pleading door for door to members of Daddy Norton’s former congregation.
“But,” said Thrane, “I want you to give by any plans you have of being after the manner of Daddy Norton. You aren’t Daddy Nortons. You come worship with me from now on.”
“We should carry on Daddy Norton’s work,” said Aurel.
“Don’t listen to Aurel,” said Theron. “We’ve had enough Daddy to last a lifetime.”
Thrane patted them both on the shoulders, passed to Theron a brown paper package wrapped in twine.
“There are good hidden boys in you somewhere,” Thrane said, touching their hair. “All you got to do is let them out.”
They took a tin cup from beneath the sink and left it before the house beneath a hand-lettered placard reading “Comfort for the Bereav’d” with a crude arrow pointing down. They wore their new clothes to loosen them a little before the funeral. They wore the clothes in the hall, sitting on the floor, admiring what they could see. Each time the clock chimed they stood on their toes and looked out the panes along the top of the door, but never saw that anyone approached the cup to give into it.
“Thrane should dam
n well have the decency to buy us some collars and cravats too,” said Theron. “I have a mind not to attend their funeral at all.”
Aurel said nothing to this. Theron strode up and down the entry hall. He snatched his hat and coat from their pegs and went out.
Aurel stood tiptoed at the door and watched his brother take up the tin cup, stare into it, set it back down. Theron put the hat on, then the coat, then stood on the porch looking out into the fields. He stood like that for a long while, then came back inside.
“Hell if I’ll beg,” said Theron. “You?”
“I don’t want to go to any funeral,” said Aurel.
“What?” asked Theron.
“I don’t want to go,” Aurel said.
Theron stripped off his hat, his coat, hanging them from their pegs. He sat down on the floor, began to work off his boots.
“I am not going,” said Aurel. “Theron, you heard me?”
“I heard you, Aurel,” said Theron.
“We could stay here,” said Aurel. “Nobody would know the difference.”
“Preacher Thrane would,” said his brother.
“What do we care about Preacher Thrane?” asked Aurel.
“He gave us these clothes, didn’t he?”
“He only wants us coming to his church,” said Aurel. “He wants us to be his boys.”
“We aren’t nobody’s boys,” said Theron.
“We are Daddy Norton’s boys,” said Aurel.
“No,” said Theron. “Don’t say that, Aurel.”
He looked briefly into his boots, then set them to one side. He slid back and leaned against the door.
“I am not going,” said Aurel, “I mean it.”
“Nobody said you were,” said Theron. “We’ll stay,” he said. He stretched his hands toward his brother. “Come sit with me,” he said.
Aurel looked at him as if pained, but came and sat down next to him.
Theron made a point of looking up and down his brother’s body.
“Fine clothing,” said Theron. “But if we aren’t going to the funeral, take them off. They reek of Thrane’s God.”
Aurel began to unbutton the shirt, stopped.
“You aren’t taking yours off,” he said.
“All in time, brother,” said Theron. “You first.”
Aurel stood and turned into the corner. He unbuttoned the shirt, stripped it off his shoulders, let it fall. He unbuttoned the trousers and stepped out of them.
“Briefs, too,” said Theron.
“The briefs are mine,” said Aurel. “No preacher gave them to me.”
“You got them from Daddy Norton, didn’t you?” said Theron. “You better do all I say.”
“I don’t want it,” said Aurel.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Theron. He stood and shook loose his own belt. “This is my church now. I take what I want.”
They sat against the door, touching each other, staring down the hall. Preacher Thrane came and pounded on the door and cursed them, but they did not open for him, and once they dropped the clothes he had given them out the window he took his leave. Others came by, and knocked, and called out, but the two brothers remained silent and holding each other and did not respond.
Near evening someone knocked, and, when they did not answer, tried to turn the knob, then began to throw a shoulder against the door, weakly.
Theron stood and looked out to see a woman there, rubbing her shoulder. She stood rubbing it for some time then turned the other shoulder to the door and started again.
“By God,” whispered Theron, crouching. “She thinks she can break down the door.”
“Can she?” said Aurel.
Theron snorted. “Not her,” he said.
“I heard that!” the woman yelled from the outside. “Open the door!”
“She knows we’re here,” whispered Aurel.
“Let’s see her do anything about it,” Theron said.
“You got to let her in,” said Aurel.
“Let her in?” said Theron. “And then what are we to do with her?”
Aurel looked. Theron, he saw, was bare of body, his sides scarred where Daddy Norton had beat the devil out of him to make way for the penetration of God. He looked down at himself, saw his red hands fidget and swim on his pale thighs, his belly slack, the dull tip of his sex prodding the floorboards between his legs.
“I am naked,” said Aurel.
“I want to know what you think you are going to do to her after we let her in.”
“Don’t let her in,” pleaded Aurel, covering his crotch with his hands.
Theron stood and turned to the door. “Just a minute,” called Theron. “A moment please.”
“No,” said Aurel. “Please, Theron.”
“Who do you love, Aurel?”
“What?” said Aurel.
“Do you love her?”
“I don’t love her,” said Aurel.
“Nobody said you did, Aurel,” said Theron. “But who?”
Aurel brought his head down against his knees, tipped over onto his side. “Don’t ask me that, Theron,” he said.
“Think about it,” said Theron. “Think it through.”
The thumping at the door resumed.
“Who do you love? Who is all you have in this world, Aurel?” asked Theron. “With Mama and Daddy Norton dead and gone?”
“God?” said Aurel.
“In this world,” said Theron, kicking Aurel in the face. “God isn’t in this world. Think, goddamn it.”
Aurel remained silent a long time, his face darkening where Theron had kicked him. He kept touching his cheek and pulling his fingers away and staring at them. Theron took his hands, held them away from his face, stilled them.
“You?” asked Aurel. “Is it you?”
Theron let go of the hands, cupped his own hands around Aurel’s face. He drew the face forward, kissed it on the mouth.
“Yes,” said Theron. “Me.”
He let Aurel’s head go and watched Aurel collapse, his eyes rolling back into his head. He went and unlocked the door. He opened it.
“God almighty,” said the woman outside.
Aurel came conscious and tried to crawl out of line of the woman’s voice, but Theron kept opening the door wider until the door was pressed against the wall and there was nowhere left to crawl. Aurel got up and stumbled down to the far end of the hall, covering his sex, then came stumbling back, moaning.
“Won’t you please come in?” asked Theron.
The woman seemed to be trying to keep her eyes on his face. “Will you put on some clothing?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “I will not.”
“We are clothed in God’s spirit,” said Aurel.
“Shut up, Aurel,” said Theron. He rendered his best smile. “What can we do for you?” he asked the woman.
She looked at Aurel, then back to Theron, then at Aurel again, her eyes drawing down. “I am here about the property,” she said.
“Won’t you come in?” Theron said.
He stretched his hand toward her, his palm opening and closing. Aurel came up behind Theron and hid behind his body, his sex beginning to exsert itself more severely. He peered over Theron’s shoulder at her. He tried to push the door shut, but Theron kept it blocked open with his foot.
“No,” she said, stepping backward, “I don’t think I can.”
“What’s thinking got to do with it?” asked Theron.
She took a few more steps backward until she stepped off the edge of the porch and fell hard.
“The property,” said Theron. “We’ll pay you whatever you want. We have it inside.”
“We don’t have any money, Theron,” said Aurel.
“Shut up, Aurel,” said Theron. “Soon,” he said to the woman. “We’ll pay you soon. Is it money you want?”
She sat in the weeds holding her ankle, rocking back and forth, her face grimaced.
“I think she likes you, Aurel,” said Theron.
&n
bsp; Aurel just watched until Theron nudged him. “What’s her name?” Aurel said.
“What’s your name?” Theron asked the woman.
She had taken the shoe off and was rotating the foot manually and with care, wincing. She did not choose to answer.
“My name is Theron,” said Theron. “This is my brother Aurel. Our daddy and mama are dead.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Aurel said, trying to shut the door.
“Maybe you have a name too?” said Theron. He stared at her, watched her stand and put her weight tenuously on the foot. “Looks like she’s hurt, Aurel,” he said. “She won’t get far.”
“I bet her name is Arabella,” said Aurel. “That’s a pretty name.”
“Is that your name?” asked Theron.
She looked at them. Slowly, as if to avoid startling them, she began to limp away, flimmering her hands for balance.
“Go fetch her, Aurel,” said Theron. “Bring her back here.”
Aurel did not move.
“I mean it, Aurel,” said Theron.
Aurel went back into the house. He went to the far end of the hall and crouched there, shaking, and hugged himself around the knees. Theron watched the woman stumble away for a while and then came back into the hall, closing and locking the door.
He came down the hall toward his brother.
“You’ll have to do,” said Theron.
He sat on the floor beside him, leaning in, putting his hand inside his brother’s thigh. He kissed Aurel on the shoulder, the cheek, the neck.
“See now,” he said throatily, “we only got each other. Nobody in the world but you and me.”
III. THE DOG
Aurel would hardly leave the hall, at most taking two steps out onto the front porch or going through the extreme door into the bathroom. He would not enter the kitchen. Theron had to bring food out to him, though he swore each time that he would not bring it the next.
Theron left him to rummage through the rest of the rooms—except for Daddy Norton’s private room, the door to that room being locked and he (though he dared not admit so before Aurel) not having quite the nerve to kick it down. Had it been open, he told himself, he would have entered. But he could not bring himself to break in.
The sprawling house was even larger than he had imagined, running into a half-dozen levels and half-levels, and strung into labyrinths of makeshift rooms, especially on the upper floors, that could not be made sense of or later recovered. He at first made some effort to remain on the two lower floors, as he had done when Daddy Norton was alive, but as the days passed he went farther up. To make sense of the upper levels, he tried to trace his way in and then out of a floor along the same path, but this proved impossible. Often he found himself in trying to leave passing through chambers that seemed not to have existed before.
