Boy on the Edge

by Fridrik Erlings

It was easy to understand why the devil was lonely and wanted to make friends. Jesus was, of course, very good and all that, and that’s why he had so many friends. That wasn’t a problem when your dad happened to be God Almighty, who lived in heaven where everybody wants to be. The devil has nothing except himself and his loneliness. Why shouldn’t he try to win people over by every conceivable means? The devil’s children were his children, so why couldn’t he have them in peace?

  The eye of the moon moved slowly above the moss-covered lava and the music boomed out over the silver ocean. The surf rumbled in a deep voice, churning sleepily down below, in the bewitching lap of the waves.

  Henry wasn’t sure if he fell asleep.

  When he opened his eyes the music had stopped, the moon had disappeared, and the sky was gray. White wisps of fog glided over the lava like ghosts. He stumbled to his feet and looked around him. The bottle from John lay on the ground. Now he wished he’d had the nerve to tell Emily everything the day before, for he suspected that if she learned of this later, John and Mark would say that he had been involved. Perhaps she wouldn’t believe them, but the reverend would. Oh, yes, the reverend would punish Henry too, just in case, as a warning.

  He owed nothing to the two friends who now slept peacefully in the cave, but he owed it to himself to speak up, before it was too late.

  For hadn’t the Lord said: The truth will set you free?

  Reverend Oswald climbed the cairn in his shiny shoes, took the top stone with the white cross, and climbed down again.

  “The first shall be last,” he said in a somber tone of voice.

  He drew a big circle beside the cairn with the heel of his shiny shoe. Then he turned to Henry.

  “You will not be going to sleep tonight,” he said, “for tonight you will rebuild this cairn inside this circle here, stone by stone, before the sun rises tomorrow morning.”

  Henry bowed his head.

  “You might not see the point,” Reverend Oswald continued, “but therein lies your lesson. Since you broke the rules, by not telling us what you knew, but instead deciding to assist John and Mark in their wicked ways, you will work one night for no purpose, in the name of Jesus Christ. Remember this, Henry: this is not a punishment; this is a project from which I hope you will learn a hard lesson. May God be with you.” Then he walked across the yard and disappeared into the house.

  Henry stood for a while, looking up at the cairn, wondering what would have happened if he’d kept silent. He had taken the bottle to Emily and told her everything. But she already knew, for the police in the village had contacted her: three girls from the village had come home in the early hours. When their parents asked what happened, they started to cry and said that two boys from the home had forced them to drink, and they had made other, darker, accusations.

  Henry was certain he would never forget the look on Emily’s face when she realized that he was an accomplice to the crime.

  “You knew? And you only tell me now?” she’d asked, hoping she had misunderstood. But she hadn’t. And Henry knew he had broken her heart.

  He hadn’t said a word until he’d realized that there was a possibility that he could have been blamed also. If only he had kept his mouth shut he wouldn’t be here now.

  He climbed the cairn and grabbed the first stone, took it in his arms, crawled backward, and placed it in the middle of the circle that the reverend had made on the ground.

  The stones were equal in size, each one almost the breadth of his chest, and they stacked nicely. But they were cut from lava rock and had a rough surface, which tore at Henry’s skin. And the stones were heavy.

  When he had moved five stones he felt it would take him days to finish. Twenty stones later the palms of his hands were scratched and bleeding. Forty stones, and the lack of purpose was screaming in his face. He just wanted to go to bed and fall asleep.

  Besides, he had no idea if he was doing this right or if the whole thing was going to collapse over his head.

  Mark had been locked in the Boiler Room, John in a room in the attic. That was their punishment, praying on their knees with Reverend Oswald. It could have been worse, for the village police had come to interrogate them, but the reverend said he would punish them sufficiently here. Then a government official arrived and questioned the two boys. Then he’d talked to the little ones. He heard about them slaving away on the foundations of the church, and further investigations were called for. Then a decision was quickly made: this was no home for little children; they would be taken away. It was a shock to the reverend. Henry had been in the kitchen and heard him argue with the official.

  “A breach of faith,” the official called it. “We trust you to give these children a good education and a healthy life on your farm; not to use them for manual labor.” The official looked stern. “We’ll send for them when we’ve found them a new place to stay. Consider yourself lucky that we aren’t closing this place down permanently. The older boys can stay, but it is clear to us that you are not equipped to care for young children.”

  It was getting dark.

  The faint sound of the distant waves by the cliffs grew louder in the stillness, like the surf was coming closer in the darkness, threatening to engulf him. A chilly shudder went through Henry. He climbed the cairn and worked like mad, carrying rocks from one pile to the other. As night fell, the wind picked up and a cool breeze whispered in his ears. As soon as he stopped to catch his breath the sweat cooled on his body and he shivered, so he kept on going. The cairn didn’t seem to grow any smaller where it stood and didn’t seem to get any larger where it was supposed to stand. His back and arms ached, his fingers were swollen and bleeding, he was tired and sleepy, all alone in the pale night.

  He clearly heard the sounds of the night from the lava field. Maybe they were birds or some other animals, foxes or minks. Didn’t animals sleep at night? He thought he heard a faint sound from invisible wings above his head. He stopped moving and listened, pressed the rock to his chest and felt his heart pounding against it.

  A cold shudder shot through him as he peered into the dusk. He thought he saw something pale moving over the lava field. Then he heard someone sigh, or were they sobbing? Perhaps it was a ghost, one of the small children who had been carried out here to die in past ages.

  He remembered when he’d walked past the Gallows once and had almost fallen into the deepest crevasse he’d ever come across in the whole lava field. It seemed like a bottomless pit, full of darkness. He’d lain on the edge, looking down for a long time, until he’d noticed bones near the bottom; white bones, delicate and tiny. And he remembered a bird chirping in the distance and pearl drops of water on the green moss, the fragile bones moist with dew in the black crevasse.

  The sun was already up when he put the last stone in place, the top stone with the white cross. There was a gray hue on the mountains and a cool breeze. Autumn was drawing near, he could feel it. Very soon he would be fetching the cows from pasture for the last time this summer. The ocean was darker than usual and the noise of the surf deeper.

  His fingers were bleeding, but he didn’t feel the pain. He didn’t feel sleepy either, or hungry. It was still too early for breakfast, he knew; still too early to fetch the cows. So he limped down Spine Break Path toward Shipwreck Bay, climbed down the chain, and crawled into the cave. There were empty bottles there, plastic bags, and the floor was littered with cigarette butts. He threw everything over the edge until the cave was clean.

  Then he sat for a long time surrounded by the droning of the surf.

  If the fallen archangel could hope for forgiveness, couldn’t he allow himself to hope as well? They were both equally despised and outcast. The hurt in Emily’s eyes pierced through him like a knife; losing her trust was the worst thing that could have happened. He had no one but himself to blame for that. And now he had no one else to turn to but God.

  He pulled his clubfoot under himself, knelt, and clasped his hands.

  “Dear God,” he whi
spered.

  Then he didn’t know what more to say. Maybe he should ask God to make Emily understand that he wasn’t really guilty of anything, that whatever she blamed him for, he hadn’t done it on purpose. But God would easily see through such a selfish wish, for God knew his thoughts exactly.

  He remembered that Reverend Oswald had once said that the devil was selfish and proud, miserable, scared, and lonely because the world hated him. Perhaps if he prayed as well for the fallen archangel, then God would understand that his intentions weren’t selfish but honest; he had only wanted a friend, just as the archangel did, who suffered alone in the shadow of the world.

  He wasn’t sure he was choosing the right words but hoped that God, who understood everything, would also understand his mumbling and take his intentions into account. He rested his head on his clasped hands and drew a deep breath.

  “Dear God,” he said. “Forgive us. We are very sorry for everything. We didn’t mean to be bad. We just want a friend. Amen.”

  He muttered these words in a low voice with long silent intervals while the surf frothed and foamed down below and the rumbling shook the cliff wall. He said them out loud into the noise and released the birds that had been flying around in his mind for so long.

  On a bright morning the two carpenters appeared and began to raise the beams for the walls of the church. Some days they came in the afternoon, sat on the foundation, had their coffee, looked over the lava field, and went away without doing anything. On other days they came right after lunch and worked like crazy till evening.

  And little by little the skeleton began to take form. Beams were bolted to the foundations, corner poles rose, then vertical beams between those and more beams until the shape of windows could be seen, three on each side. Once that phase had been completed, the carpenters didn’t show up for days, because a gale from the southwest brought heavy rain. When it had blown over, they appeared again with another two men and began to raise the roof beams.

  The little ones stood in a group in the yard, looking west across the lava, where the symbol of victory was taking shape. Some of them walked over to watch the carpenters at work, but were told to get lost and go home. So the boys had to content themselves with watching from a distance as the church rose steadily from the ground. They could picture the layers of rocks below, far into the ground, right down to the flat rock underneath. The hole had been deep and they had filled it up, stone by stone, layer after layer, until the foundation stood well above the ground. But what did it matter? They would be gone in a week, anyway. And Henry doubted any of them would ever take that Sunday ride with their own children, as Reverend Oswald had once proudly predicted, to show them where they had slaved away in their youth for God and the reverend.

  Henry watched the small group of boys out of the corner of his eye, wondering if this would indeed be a summer that they’d never forget, as the reverend had promised, or a summer they’d try hard never to remember.

  On a quiet morning, with neither wind nor rain, shots from the nail gun rang out over the lava field. The carpenters fastened plywood to the skeleton, nailed boards on the roof, fitted arched frames for the windows, put tar paper on the roof, and made a rough, makeshift door. Then for another three days the iron-saw wailed as they cut the corrugated iron, and the hammers rang on the metal as they nailed it to the walls and roof. Then they were gone, and so too was the money in the church fund.

  John and Mark were free from their imprisonment and were put to work, painting the panels inside the church. At breakfast, John’s eyes were dull, his face worn, like that of an old man. Mark’s mocking grin had disappeared, but his eyes were on fire and shot sparks in Henry’s direction. The reverend looked tired as well, his beard no longer neatly groomed, his hands looking thinner when he clasped them in prayer. And the prayers weren’t said out loud, but in silence.

  Emily didn’t join them at meals, but ate alone in the kitchen. Henry knew she and the reverend had been arguing; he’d heard their angry voices when he’d brought the milk to the house. He felt sorry for her. She was going to miss the little ones, and he knew she blamed the reverend, that much Henry had heard and understood. But Henry blamed himself too. After all, he’d disappointed her as well.

  “You ask me to be a mother to all these boys,” Henry had heard her say. “Yet you deny me a child of my own.”

  “Jesus Christ himself is our child,” the reverend had replied in an angry tone. “Every boy who God sends us is in fact Jesus himself. How can there be a mightier and more worthy mission?”

  Emily had begun to cry, her voice fading into a whisper. “And now they’re being taken away from us. And it’s all your fault.”

  Then the day came when Henry fetched the cows for the last time that autumn. One everlasting summer behind him and an everlasting winter approaching. He wondered if the cows realized they wouldn’t be herded to the field the next morning. There was a touch of regret in their heavy breathing and moaning as they waddled across the swamp. They hung their heads while he opened the gate, and Old Red, who always walked through the gate first, stood still and let the others go in first and was the last to follow. She knew. They walked in silence down the driveway with regretful movements. Henry shared their feelings; his best moments were on the slow walk with the cows, whether the sun was shining or the rain was pouring. It wasn’t until they came to the cowshed that they began to tussle and scream. And when each and every one was in her stall they lay down heaving heavy sighs, in total surrender to the injustice and indifference of this cruel world.

  Noah was sure to be happier though, now that his wives were back for good. Henry thought guiltily that he had neglected his friend since John’s arrival. But Noah curled his upper lip eagerly, pushed against the fence around his stall, scratched the floor, and rolled his eyes. These were certain signs of joy.

  As Henry hung his whip on the nail above the door he noticed the red pickup truck drive into the yard. It was the Brute with a team of four strong men.

  Reverend Oswald came out of the house and spoke to them for a minute. One of the men started the tractor and drove it toward the sheep dens. Then he lowered the tractor gallows until they touched the ground. Another one took a thick hank of rope from the pickup and carried it on his shoulder, while the third man was holding something wrapped in brown cloth. They waited by the pickup until Reverend Oswald went back inside. Then they followed the Brute toward the cowshed.

  Emily stood by the garage and herded the little ones inside. Mark paced around the yard, following the men with his eyes. John sat outside the smithy.

  The men crowded into the doorway of the cowshed and walked straight toward Noah’s stall, muzzled him, and opened the stall. Two men held the muzzle tightly, each on one side, but the Brute shoved his fingers into the bull’s nostrils and squeezed so hard Noah bellowed from pain. When the Brute pulled, Noah was forced to follow. That’s how they got him out into the yard. The men then fastened ropes to the muzzle on each side. They tied one rope securely to the tractor’s gallows while the four of them held the other rope firmly.

  Noah stood in the yard in front of the sheep den, out in the fresh air for the first time in ages, muzzled to a tractor and tugged by four men.

  He snorted and blinked his eyes toward the setting sun. Then he began to fight the ropes, kick the gravel, and roll his long tongue around the tight muzzle. His mouth foamed as he tried to gnaw the rope that dug into the corners of his mouth.

  The men were quick and able with their sleeves rolled up their muscular arms, tugging at the rope with their strong hands and holding him at bay. The bull jerked his head and swung his tail angrily so it hit his flank with a loud crack. Saliva dripped from his gaping mouth and thick muscles moved under the black hide.

  It was fine weather, the sky partly clouded and not really cold. But the clouds were moving fast so that now and again a beam of golden sunlight ran across the yard, gleaming in the bull’s eyes.

  From the garage, a dro
ning organ could be heard.

  The bull lowered his head and tried to run. The men were dragged with him but dug their heels in the gravel and managed to pull him back. The Brute unwrapped the cloth from around a rifle and a long knife, which he placed on the ground. He pulled a bullet from his pocket and loaded the weapon. Then he walked in front of the bull, talking in a soothing voice, as if to calm him down, holding the rifle down by his leg so the beast wouldn’t notice it. Noah turned his ears and eyes to the man, his nostrils flared with heavy breathing. The Brute slowly raised the rifle, pressing the barrel of the gun against Noah’s curly black forehead, right between his eyes. They looked each other in the eye for just a second.

  The stretched rope creaked a little when the shot rang out. The blast echoed between the buildings, the smoke coiling around the black head as the beast raised itself with a sudden jerk up on its hind legs.

  Then everything went still.

  But Noah didn’t fall. He stood, immovable as a rock, staring at his executioner, spreading his nostrils and bellowing. The Brute lowered the weapon, unable to believe his own eyes. The devil just stood there with a bullet in his head, scratching the gravel, pulling at the ropes. The bullet must have got stuck in his thick skull. To add insult to injury, Noah rolled his upper lip and sprayed slime out of his nostrils as he laughed out loud at the wimp holding his rifle with trembling hands. The men shouted and told the Brute to hurry up. He fumbled in his pockets for another bullet, but the beast fought the ropes so they creaked and cracked, and the men had to use all their strength to hold him back.

  The Brute loaded the second bullet into the rifle, raised it quickly up to his cheek, and fired a second time. The smoke curled around the outstretched ears and Noah’s head jerked backward. His neck bones creaked as his head swung to one side and his front legs rose in the air.

  Then he collapsed with all his weight onto the gravel, and the ground trembled.