A Choir of Ill Children

by Tom Piccirilli

  “It’ll be all right.”

  “But—”

  “Hold on.”

  “Thomas . . .”

  There is a sound of crackling, and soon I see two distinct orange glows approaching in the brush. They come nearer and nearer, then stop and hover in the distance.

  I can’t help myself, I burst out laughing.

  These fuckers are actually carrying torches.

  It’s got my curiosity up, that’s for certain. My chuckling catches in my throat and sticks there. If they’ve got guns they haven’t used them yet. No smell of gunpowder beneath the burning tallow. No straight-taper twenty-two-inch barrels pointing out from between the dogwood leaves. Embers float and rise in the breeze. I take a step toward the brush and the glow recedes. Skittish pricks. I shake my head and toss the cigarette butt.

  I talk into the darkness.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” I say. “Somebody want to come out and play?”

  The flames dip closer together, converge, then separate again.

  “Don’t be shy now.” My voice is full of anger even though I’m not. “You want her, you just need to get past me. You want me, well, there’s no obstruction at all then. Let’s confer and have a nice colloquy. I’m open to any and all discussion.”

  They hesitate for another moment, wavering, then begin to back off. I watch the fires recede into blackness.

  I get back into the truck and start down the road. Betty Lynn says, “Oh God, no, please don’t take me to yer house.”

  “I won’t. I’ll drive you back home to your place.”

  “Mama’s gonna kill me, she’s ’lergic to tobacco.”

  “When you spend all night in Leadbetter’s you stink of smoke anyway.”

  “She don’t mind cigarettes, but she worked in the fields most’a her life and she hates the reek of it.”

  We drive on. She takes my hand and holds on to it tightly, then draws it into her lap. The one time we’ve made love started out with a similar display before we crept into the backseat. After a minute or so she begins to weep softly, but that passes by pretty fast. I keep clean rags from torn up T-shirts in the glove box. She knows it because it’s also where I keep the condoms. She grabs a couple of the scraps and wipes her face, arms and neck down.

  “Thomas, the baby . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “It wasn’t yers. It was Jasper Kroll’s, from down at the mill, but I—”

  “Don’t worry about that.”

  “I’m sorry I lied.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  I drop her off and swing around past the railroad tracks. I park on them looking forward into the hills and back into the swamp, as the moon boils down over Kingdom Come.

  I wonder if those torch-bearers have captured and lynched Drabs.

  Worse, I can’t help wondering if he was one of them.

  IN MY MOTHER’S DREAMS SHE STANDS IN FRONT OF the school staring up at her own murdered mother hanging across the peak of the roof. My mother—the girl—is eleven years old. Blond curls drape across the shoulders of her gingham dress. She’s a tomboy and her elbows are scraped. Dust devils whirl past her knees and the dull roar of wind plays in the top branches of the cottonwood trees.

  The girl gapes but is not frightened. She feels only a wrenching, unformed sadness that collects in her chest. She knows her mother is dead, butchered, laid out on view although there’s no one else to see this. The reap hook catches a glint of light that winks back at her. She steps closer to the school, which has a thin but drying stream of blood oozing down across the west wall.

  The air smells foul and fishy. Potts County has been suffering under a drought for the entire summer and the river has dropped almost two feet. Fish, beaver, and possum lie putrefied on sandbars, and the bottoms reek with dankness. The wind is blowing in the fetor, which coats the area like a funnel of smoke.

  Someone has been here recently, not just to kill her mother in such a bizarre, vicious fashion, but also to write with her blood across the white clapboard. For some reason both sights are distinct and separate in her mind. These are independent, detached, possibly unconnected displays of outrage.

  The dead mother up there on the roof, the writing here on the wall.

  The words are in a precise and deliberate block lettering, but appear strangely stylish. The girl presses closer and realizes they’ve been written with a piece of chalk, which lies red-tipped in the dust. It has been run through the blood so that the letters are white at the center and crimson at the edge, where the blood has thinned around the dense chalk marks and then run off. They are, in fact, rather pretty.

  DO NOT CONSIDER THIS ANOTHER DEFEAT. FORGIVE THE SHORTCOMINGS. GRAVITY. LOVE IS ONLY LUST DRESSED UP FOR CHURCH. PENETRATION. GRAVY. MEANING. SIGNIFICANCE. THE HAM IS ON THE TABLE.

  These words are only a little higher than her own eye level, perhaps proving that the killer—or at least the writer—is only slightly taller than she is herself. She doesn’t understand or care for these declarations and washes them off, standing on a stool used by her classmates when being graded on oral reports. She is responsible for washing the blackboard at the end of class every day and she does a good job. However, when the wall dries the words seep through again. Her father and the sheriff are angry with her for disturbing evidence.

  The reap hook can’t be traced. It could belong to anyone in Potts County, including the sheriff, including her father. The summer heat and drought make matters much worse. A white woman’s murder can’t go by without some retribution being served up. Over the next month four colored folks are lynched and six houses burned down into the dust.

  The killer and the writer are never found. No one is ever found in Kingdom Come even though some are lost day after day.

  In my mother’s dreams the ham is on the table.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I SPEND A FEW DAYS WITH THE HOLY ORDER OF Flying Walendas, riding the donkey, baking bread at dawn. Abbot Earl is eager to speak with me, but it’s not yet sixth hour and we’re committed to our vow of silence.

  Seekers of every variety wander the grounds, searching out God, themselves, their pipe dreams, and their sins. They seem to enjoy the bread though, and a certain amount of pride fills me. The trick is to knead the dough for at least twenty minutes, until your wrists begin to ache, before placing it in the oven. And raisins, use lots of raisins.

  More pilgrims, acolytes, alcoholics, and the insane arrive every day. Some are irritated and bitter, some driven by their fears and nameless needs. They wear the cowls hoping to lose their desires within the depth of shapeless robes, but that almost never happens. They walk the wire across the chasms of their own souls, looking down into the great depths as, step by step, they cross to the distant side. On occasion they’ve learned something by the time they get there, but not always, and usually not what they expect.

  Each to his own method. They run naked in the woods or recite the same prayer two thousand times while tapping little gongs before them. Or they howl from the abbey rooftop or cut the heads off of chickens and paint the ground with bloody symbols that appear more childish than Satanic. The penitents strip the skin off their backs with cat-o’-nine-tails that have jagged pottery shards tied to the leather. They flay themselves so they might one day be covered in fleece. Meditation can be like murder for some of them.

  At sixth hour Abbot Earl finds me. He’s still got the hard muscles from when he drove a bulldozer and worked to drain the swamp. I keep the dollar he paid me for the old hospital in my wallet, and I take it out every now and again and think about how that single pack of bandages in the abandoned building saved his life. I glance around wondering what might save my life if I ever needed it—the raisins I use in the bread, these thistles in my robes, or over there, that pile of donkey shit. Perhaps they all have their place in God’s plan.

  He says, “I need to speak with you, Thomas.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not sure how importa
nt this may be but I felt that I should broach the subject with you. It concerns Sister Lucretia.”

  “Lucretia Murteen.”

  That’s the one-eyed woman he was bedding down with a few years back while drowning in tequila, after he’d grown as lost as my father over the failed project to clear the jungle and bring in strip malls. When he found his faith she did as well and became a nun in the order, a bride of the Flying Walendas. I’ve seen her in the monastery tending the gardens mostly, keeping to herself.

  “What about her?”

  “You know that she and I were once intimate. Before we started the order. Back when—”

  “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about.”

  “And I’m not, to be sure. But it’s also true that she’s been acting . . . reticent lately. Perhaps a bit taciturn. She refuses to tell me what’s bothering her. I’m afraid that these troubles are actually making her consider leaving us.”

  “That’s her right.”

  He waves a hand in the air. “Of course, and normally I’d simply wish her well if that were her decision. We’ve all got our own courses to follow, wherever they may lead us. I wouldn’t dare to interfere so long as she chooses to go willingly and not because she feels she’s being forced to do so.”

  “Forced?”

  “Either by this burden or because of someone else here.”

  “You think one of the monks or travelers has been bothering her? Threatening her?”

  “Not as such,” he says. “But perhaps she does feel threatened nonetheless. She is a complex woman who’s had a lot to bear in her life.”

  “Why tell me?”

  The vertical scars at his wrist are bright in the late-afternoon sun as he steeples his fingers under his chin. He nods, thinking things through first before relating anything on to me. “She has . . . a secret.”

  I want to say Not anymore but manage to restrain myself. “I see.”

  He taps his incisors together in a nervous tic, eyes beginning to roam. A trickle of blood trails down his neck from where a barb had plucked his skin. “I overheard her praying. She mentioned a name.”

  “Mine?”

  “No. Your brother’s. Sebastian.”

  At the sound of it my side begins to hurt. His teeth marks are still on me where the face had once been. The bite scars are no longer red. They’ve cooled to a dull gray. A dentist could take an impression and make a good set of dentures.

  “Anything specific?”

  “No, but I admit that it bothers me greatly.”

  “Me too.”

  We stand beneath the darkening sky looking at one another and not getting anywhere fast. I’m not sure what he expects me to do but I’m glad that he came to me. I turn it over for a while trying not to brood, wondering why Lucretia Murteen might mention my brother’s name. I head off.

  “Where are you going?” Abbot Earl asks.

  “To ride the jackass.”

  SISTER LUCRETIA MURTEEN WEARS A WHITE EYE patch that catches the moonlight and spills it at her feet.

  She isn’t quite dancing but she’s more than swaying as she moves across the floor of the empty nursery. She mimes being an RN checking on the preemie babies in their incubators. These are precise, fixed actions: turning on the monitors, scrutinizing the tubes, and examining the oxygen flow. The controls are delicate.

  She reaches into nonexistent cribs, coos and picks up newborns that aren’t there—phantoms, perhaps memories. She sits in a rocking chair and rocks the infants as they sleep, carefully inspecting their tiny mittens and woolen beanie hats. There is no rocking chair and I’m shocked at how well she can perform the movement, in that hideous position, tottering to and fro in a seat that’s not even under her. Her legs and back must be ready to collapse.

  This isn’t a selfish endeavor or dream. She walks down the hall and hands the newborns to their spectral mothers in the maternity ward. She sits talking with them for a time, discussing the beautiful infants, their bright and open futures. I can almost hear the mothers sobbing with joy, kissing the tiny foreheads of children whose eyes haven’t yet opened.

  Sister Lucretia thanks the holy name of Flying Walenda and walks her own wire of conscience. We all do. She stares out the window up at the stars and moves her patch over her good eye.

  Moonlight fills her empty socket until it runs into her mouth.

  Her teeth glow in the night as she turns blindly to face me, arms wide.

  SWEAT DRIBBLES TO THE KITCHEN FLOOR. DODI AND Sarah, the two women of the house, face off like ancient enemies watching each other across desert wastes. They’re in the kitchen, equidistant from the knife drawer. This has been a battleground for much longer than they’ve been in the house, and the ghosts in the walls and closets are proof that all it takes to go to war is a matter of time.

  Sarah’s parents have been mailing long letters to her, begging her to come back home and resume her life as a film student. They offer to pay for graduate school, a new apartment overlooking Central Park, a therapist in midtown, whatever it is she might need. I can see by the phone bill that she calls them often, but their conversations usually last for less than five minutes. They no more understand her than she understands herself lately.

  Fred has been sending letters too, written on yellow stationery, college-ruled. His penmanship is excessively large and he only writes on every other line. He’s in rehab, doing well, clean for nineteen days, and preparing to film a documentary on addiction.

  He’s in with two famous rappers, a mediocre actress from a prime-time courtroom drama, the grandson of the guy who invented Tater Tots, and a NASCAR driver who hit the fence and took out three bleachers of fans in his last race. After the guy gets clean he’ll be formally brought up on manslaughter charges and he’s eager to talk about his troubles.

  Fred already has six tapes of the driver’s confessions on video. Fred’s arm is healing okay though it annoys him on rainy afternoons. He hopes she’s doing well with the retards. He still wants to be friends and have coffee someday, maybe discuss a few of the older projects that they shelved.

  So far as I know, Sarah hasn’t written him back yet.

  Dodi glares and clicks her fingernails together like castanets. There’s a nice salsa rhythm there that almost gets my foot tapping. She and Sarah eye one another with death on the plate. They’ve shared their beds, but when it comes to my brothers there’s no longer enough room for everybody. The tension has been building for weeks now and it’s about to snap.

  This isn’t mere possessiveness. This is desperation. This is a hunger for what the future may bring—love, acceptance, wealth, poetry, maybe even the fate of Potts County. Dodi is still under orders from her mother to keep an eye on me. I’ve been expecting her to move out, but she remains, night after night, a helpmeet for my brothers.

  Jonah defies Dodi’s advances. He won’t let her give him a sponge bath or feed him or help to brush his teeth anymore. Sarah aids him when she can get by Dodi’s defenses. He keeps the three mouths of my brothers going at all hours with the wooing of Sarah. His sonnets have poorly stressed syllables but the meaning is worthy. He has talents that would have meant something a century ago.

  His hands, which are the softest of any of ours, can touch her in the right way, delicately brushing her flesh like the advent of a fall leaf. It takes a real passion. Sarah still doesn’t join them in bed. She hovers and lingers and abides.

  Theirs is a classic structure of tragedy in the making. Dodi floats back and forth between sleeping with me, my brothers, or alone in one of the other bedrooms. There are invisible lines drawn all over the halls, places that cannot be crossed, entered, or left. Sarah is often seated on the floor, her head settled against the base of the footboard. A midtown shrink would be expensive as hell but maybe he could help.

  She purrs while Dodi growls. Jonah whispers while Sebastian spits his malice. Cole seeks only to love, his voice is only love, and Sarah and Dodi should both love him, but of course they hate his
guts.

  Dodi’s breath still smells of bourbon and chocolate, although I haven’t bought bourbon for weeks. She says, “It’s time that Yankee up and left.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “You already know why. Only one woman can rule any roost and that woman’s me. She’s gettin’ in the way. I got my duty and I don’t shirk none’a my responsibilities no matter what.”

  Sarah is losing the high lilt of a Jewish American Princess and says, “You don’t know anything about this place, you little backwater swamp tramp.”

  “You shut yer mouth!”

  “You’re only here because your mother gave you up and you’ve nowhere left to go. Now there’s the truth, and that’s not enough of a reason for you to still be here. I belong here because I’m willing to stay.”

  “Are you?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Sarah doesn’t answer.

  This is my house, my home, my space, and my family, but none of what’s going on concerns me really, and they all know it. Sebastian is eager for a bloodletting. From the bed upstairs he urges the girls to fight so that a hierarchy can once again be established. The bitterness in his voice is so powerful that it spooks a murder of crows out of a tree in the backyard.

  Cole tries to calm everyone with reassuring words, but Dodi is gaining a few steps on the knife drawer. Jonah speaks his poetry, also attempting to elicit calm. “At the egress of your repentance, there, with yet a different sentiment swirling about in your hair, I hear the separate winnows of your beating in time to my heated afterthought, You cry, I weep, and at the heights of our sacred crusades, we drift, we slumber, and at last we sleep.”

  Sarah enjoys listening to his words and is spurred on by his sensibilities. I see now that the faded tattoo on her hip is of the masks of Comedy and Tragedy. She wears her blouse tied at the midriff exactly like Dodi, but Sarah wears jewelry, a touch of makeup, Christian Dior undergarments. The slight scar around her pierced belly button is hauntingly pale set against her deepening tan.