by Hank Early
I was a true coward. I knew it in my bones. I could not look away, but neither could I muster the fortitude to do what I should have done, and that was to climb out of the tree and go help her.
* * *
A few days after that, Lester came by my room. He sat down on my bed. I’d taken to spending most of my time when I was home in my room, the covers pulled up tight, in a futile attempt to keep the deranged world of my family away.
I expected him to slap me, to scream at me, maybe even to try to kill me. But he did none of that. Instead, he just asked me how I was.
I nodded, still wary.
“I think me and Maggie might make it after all,” he said.
I wished I could have seen my own face then. I was sure I must have looked shocked. It was the very last thing I expected him to say.
“She’s got a demon in her, Daddy says.”
“A demon?”
He nodded. “Daddy said God told him about it. She needs something to get it out.”
I shook my head, nearly speechless. Was he talking about the baby? Our baby?
“He said she’s going away for a little bit.”
“Where?”
“Daddy said he’ll tell me when the time is right.” He slapped my knee. “You got to get out of bed, Earl. Can I pray with you?”
I was too stunned to tell him no, so I closed my eyes as he said his prayer. I’ll never forget one part of it.
“And, Lord, please show Maggie the error of her ways, as you’ve showed so many of the women in our community. Help her to come back whole and repurified.”
I didn’t ask him what he meant by that, but I wished I had.
* * *
The problem was she never came back. Not really. Her body came back, but her spirit—her soul—never truly did.
I followed her home from the bus stop one day just to speak to her. She saw me coming after her and started to run. I sped up, sprinting hard until I was able to grab her arm and slow her down.
“Please,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you, Earl.”
“What did they do to you, Maggie?”
“They fixed me, Earl. I see that now.” She spoke in a different voice—lighter, more airy, with none of the sexual gravitas she’d exuded before.
I grabbed her arm again. She didn’t resist. Instead, she was simply limp.
“You didn’t need fixing.”
“Oh, but I did. I’d shut out the Lord’s light.”
“Let’s leave,” I said.
“Leave?” Was there a glimmer of something in her eye, just the barest hint of possibility?
“Tonight. You and me.”
She opened her mouth to speak but then closed it.
I touched her face gently. “Maggie, we can get out of here. Tonight. This life . . . it’s not worth living. Not like this.”
Before she could respond, a voice called my name sharply.
“Earl?”
I turned. Lester was standing in the clearing, looking at me strangely.
“I gotta go,” I said. “Ten o’clock. Meet me in the cedar grove west of Ghost Creek.”
She didn’t respond, but her eyes grew wide. I wanted to believe it was an expression of hope, but the years have showed me it was probably something else.
I trotted off into the trees. I turned around once when I thought I was in the cover of darkness and saw Lester talking to Maggie. He seemed to be upset.
I disappeared into the woods and didn’t go back home again.
I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening walking the length of Ghost Creek, thinking about where we’d go. I just knew she’d show up. There had been something in her eyes. It had been hope. I convinced myself that was exactly what it was.
When my watch showed 9:50 by the glow of the half-moon, I followed the creek back toward the church. About a half a mile before the church, I crossed over and walked along a ridgeline until I could see the cedar grove up ahead.
Under the moon, the cedar trees looked like wrist bones, their roots knuckling into long, slim fingers. The moon’s glow seemed unnatural for a moment, but then the clouds shifted, and the night went nearly dark.
Something moved. Maybe just the breeze, but it sounded like a person creeping through the grove.
“Maggie?”
There was no answer. I braced myself for disappointment as I slipped past the first couple of trees into the lush canopy of leaves and early dew.
The breeze filtered through the trees, rustling leaves and agitating a branch here and there. Something creaked as the wind picked up.
I wished the moon would come out again. Without it, I was flying blind, moving on feeling and scraping against the rough bark of the cedars, grasping for something solid.
“Maggie?” I said again, this time more desperate. I didn’t believe I could go on watching her act like she’d been the last few days. It had been like watching a once free wild animal become confined to a dirty cage.
The wind picked up again, and the creaking grew louder, followed by a muffled thump. I waited.
Creak.
Thump.
Creak—the sound of a rope stretched to the breaking point, weighed down by something heavy—
Thump.
Something brushed my waist. I flailed out with both hands and felt naked skin, human flesh. It was wet and cold and slick.
I fell backward, gasping, wiping my hands against my blue jeans.
I peered up through the impossible dark. There was someone looming above me.
I didn’t have to wait for the clouds to clear to know it was Maggie.
* * *
The clouds did eventually break, and I saw her in the moonlight—naked, hanging from the double-braided rope, her eyes stuck in an upward glance, perhaps to find the moon, to find something in the moment of her last breath.
It was another moment before I came to my senses enough to see what she’d carved on her belly.
When I did see the incomplete message, I threw up right where I sat. I rubbed my eyes, praying it would go away when I looked again, but it was still there.
Earl, it read. There was something else underneath, but there was too much smeared blood across her abdomen to make it out.
Later, I’d see it clearly by the light of day, the blood all wiped away. It was simple and damning, and it was the worst sentence I’d ever heard in my life.
Earl, you were right.
Perhaps I would have joined her in death then. It did cross my mind. I was so beside myself, so absolutely disgusted with everything I’d come to know as my life that I considered taking her down, removing the rope, and wrapping it around my own neck.
But I never got the chance.
“Earl?”
I turned around and saw Lester. The moonlight lit him up like pale fire. He moved slowly past me and touched the blood on Maggie’s bare stomach.
I had no idea what to say, so I stood quietly while he began to cry. He wrapped his arms around her legs and tried to lift her, but it was far too late for that.
When he finally let go, he turned around and faced me with the heat of hate written across his face.
“It was you,” he said.
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re the only one that’s my brother. You’re the only one whose name is . . . is . . .” He broke down again. Without thinking, I reached for him, hoping to embrace him and apologize.
He flailed out at me, connecting a solid blow to my mouth and splitting my lip.
I wiped away the blood, spat on the ground, and looked at him. He was half sick with grief, half mad with fury.
I made a decision—I would not fight back.
He screamed something as he lunged into me, driving us both into one of the cedar trees.
I didn’t try to get up. I didn’t try to talk. I lay there—for the first time in my life—and did not fight back as he pummeled me over and over again. He beat me senseless. I woke sometim
e later, and her body was gone. I was alone. In many ways—both significant and otherwise—I’ve remained that way ever since.
* * *
Several men came for me at dawn the next morning. I had not moved from the spot where Maggie had hung herself. They lifted me to my feet and pushed me along Ghost Creek back to the church.
I saw the throng of people before we were even across the creek. They stood on either side of the path leading to the church, leaving me a single lane to walk through on my way to the doors.
Daddy stood near the front of the church, flanked by Hank Shaw and Billy Thrash.
“No,” I said and tried to turn around. I wanted to bolt. I did not want to do this. But they carried me toward the church.
When they held me before Daddy, he nodded for them to put me down. Then he looked at Shaw, who reached for the handcuffs he kept on his belt loop. He latched one over my right wrist and the other one to the church door.
“Brothers and sisters,” Daddy began, “I present to you my son.”
Not a soul said a word. The only sound was the wind coming through the trees near Ghost Creek.
“You’re probably wondering why I called you all here to see him. Why I’ve had Hank here secure him to the church door. He’s not under arrest. He has committed no crime, at least not in the eyes of man.”
Daddy clasped his hands together under his chin, a prayerful gesture. I wanted to spit at him, and I might have if he’d been a little closer. It was as if instinctively he knew to keep his distance from me.
“But as you all know, we don’t serve a man. And we don’t serve man’s law. It’s one of the reasons Hank and I get along so well. He does his job, sure, but he never forgets the supreme law, and that’s the Lord’s.”
Daddy cleared his throat, shuffled his feet, and looked up at the sky and the newly risen sun. He nodded to himself, completing the practiced dramatic pause.
“My son has broken the laws of God. He’s not only broken them repeatedly, he’s flaunted them; he’s reveled in his lawlessness, his sin. Fornication is one thing.” He smiled slightly. “The Lord is not pleased by sexual promiscuity, but at least he can understand how a boy might fall into that hole. After all, God designed us. He made the male full of desire for the female, and even though the righteousness of that desire can only be found in the fulfillment of marriage, there are young boys who are tempted by harlots.”
“Amen,” Billy Thrash said.
Daddy nodded.
“And while the dead girl was certainly a harlot, a slut, a bag of flesh set upon this earth seemingly by Satan himself as a temptation to the Godly man . . . while all of this cannot be denied, a miracle had taken place. God had touched her with his own finger. He’d touched her and said she was good again. She was pure.”
“She was always good,” I said.
All eyes turned to me. Except Daddy’s. His stayed focused on the creek, where several more men were coming across. They carried a makeshift stretcher with Maggie’s naked body on it.
One by one, the crowd turned and saw the men coming. As the group walked between the two masses of people, I heard gasping and muttering. They’d cleaned the blood off her stomach and were carrying the stretcher low enough to read what was written there.
Earl, you were right.
Jesus, it sounded like I’d encouraged her to kill herself.
“I didn’t want her to do it,” I said. “I just wanted her to leave with me.” Eyes swung back to me. They were full of the most contemptuous judgment I’d ever seen.
“She hanged herself,” Daddy said. “At the request of my son.”
“No,” I said. “That’s a lie.”
Daddy stepped swiftly across to where I stood and slapped me hard enough to knock my head back into the church door.
“Silence your lying tongue.”
I used my free hand to wipe away the blood from my cheek. Daddy turned around to address the crowd again, but I was done. Done with his pious attitude. Done with his church. Done with his God. Done listening to his shit. Done with every part of my father. I spat at his face. The glob of saliva landed on his cheek.
He paused, not moving for a moment as it dripped down to his neck and fell off onto his shirt collar.
Then he grinned. “See, this is what life looks like when God has turned his back on a man.” He nodded, still smiling, as if he were discussing something pleasant instead of the subjugation and ultimate rejection of his own son. “This is what a man controlled by Satan looks like.”
“You are Satan!” I shouted.
He still did not look at me.
“I believe in a God more powerful than the devil. I speak to him daily, and he tells me of his plans. I saw Earl’s unwinding coming from when he was a young boy. I saw the demons take up residence inside him, one after another, until dozens fought within his soul for dominion, until one defeated the rest. The Lord hath told me the name of the demon that resides in him now, and it is Andromalius; he entered a few months ago when my son held the serpent and God turned his protection away. Legions followed, but it is Andromalius, the demon thief, that controls him now. He has stolen my son’s soul, and now he has stolen Maggie Shaw’s life.”
Everyone was silent. I closed my eyes, unable to bear the gazes any longer.
“Yet,” my father said, his frown loosening, his eyes filling up with tears as he actually smiled at the congregation, “God’s mercy and love know no limits. He has spoken to me and said that even the demons of hell are under his control. Lo, even Satan himself will bow down to the Lord God Almighty one day. ‘For it is written, As I live,’ saith the Lord, ‘every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.’ Amen?”
The people said amen. I just glared at my father, trying to understand what was happening.
“And if God can make the devil himself bow down before him, why not this boy, this poor, poor boy, led astray by the sin of this world, the rebellion inside him, the heart of sin that we are all born with.”
He turned to me.
“God said he won’t turn his back on you, Earl. All you need do is kneel before him and accept this gift and all will be forgiven.”
Daddy nodded at me. The congregation was so silent I could hear the creek moving over the rocks. I realized they were waiting on my response.
To this day, I believe my father was sure I’d kneel, that I’d give in, come back into the fold, and there was certainly a strong urge to do just that. And I might have if not for remembering Maggie. I turned and looked at her dead body again, slung carelessly onto the ground.
“That’s great,” I said, “but what about Maggie?”
“What about her?” Daddy said. “She had her choice, and she chose hell.”
There was something in the way he said those words, something so nonchalant, so full of arrogance. I couldn’t take it.
I turned back around. “I’ll never kneel to your God.”
Daddy’s smile disappeared. He had not intended for it to go like this. No one ever got away from him. He controlled everything, every person, every decision, even the ones made in the dark hollows of these mountains. And now, he couldn’t even control his own son in front of his own congregation.
His face turned red, and he began to shake with anger.
“You need to reconsider,” he said.
“Never.”
“You’ll burn in hell. The demon will eat you alive.”
“Probably not as quick as you will.”
There was a murmuring in the crowd. They were unsettled, not sure how to take my blatant rebellion in the face of redemption. Daddy must have sensed it too because his face shifted smoothly from troubled to relaxed. The congregation quieted. He held up his hands.
“God can do everything but make the decision for us. We have free will, and my son has exercised his. It is a sad, sad occasion.”
“Heathen!” someone shouted.
“Backslider!”
“Possessed!”
“What I need from you,” Daddy said to the congregation, “is simple. I need you to respect his decision the way God will respect it. If you turn your back on God and live a life of sin, you suffer the consequences. Therefore, I admonish you to shun Earl. Do not speak to him, do not acknowledge him, do not offer him food if he is starving to death. In this way, and in this way only, the demon will die as it will be unable to feed on your kindness, your mercy. Shun him completely as you would shun any evil thing. Only then will the demon weaken enough for Earl to defeat it. It remains to be seen, of course, if Earl will let go of his own pride enough to ask for the Lord’s help in defeating the demon, but that is something I cannot help him with. But let it not be said I am giving up on my son. I will never give up on him, but neither will I tolerate his rebellious spirit in this community. The decision is his.”
All heads nodded in agreement.
“Now unlock him, Hank.”
Hank Shaw walked over to me, and without meeting my eyes, he removed the handcuffs from my wrist.
“Now look to what is good, to the sky, to your savior,” Daddy said. “Do not grieve for Earl Marcus. He may one day be my son again, but until that day comes, he is truly lost.”
Everyone turned around to look at the rising sun, leaving me unwatched. I stood there for a moment, wondering where Mama was. Surely she wouldn’t abandon me. Surely, she’d say something. I searched the crowd of people for her but didn’t recognize her among all the turned heads. Later, I’d learn Daddy had made her stay home because he didn’t want to risk undermining his little ceremony with her support for me. Just one more small manipulation.
I stood there for a while, just watching everyone’s backs. They were so stupid, so easily led, like dogs following a person with a treat. But there was no treat at the end. I saw it clearly now. There was only a master who wanted to control each and every one of them completely.
He couldn’t control me, so I had to leave. It was that simple.
So I did.
But not before I had my say.
When a man like Ronnie Thrash says we have a lot in common, it’s most likely because of what I said to my father on that day.
