Judas Payne: A Weird Western

by Michael Hemmingson

  “You don’t love me,” she said.

  “How can you say that?”

  “You ran from my gesture of love.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of father? He’s far away.”

  “I’m afraid of...” he started, and realized he didn’t know the words to express what was inside his hell-bound heart.

  So he said, “I just am.”

  “Of me?” she asked in a small voice.

  He was horrified by her accusation.

  “No! No,” he said.

  They stood there, staring at one another.

  “Last time,” she said, “you told me you liked to see me naked.”

  “I saw you that one time,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Why,” he inquired with pain, “are you tormenting me?”

  Evangeline burst into tears and ran back into the house. Judas started for her, but that unseen hand stopped him. He could hear her in the house, sobbing and saying his name with disgust.

  In the barn, he pounded his head against the wood. He did this so many times, and so strongly, that he bled.

  * * *

  The next night, Evangeline brought him food and acted like nothing had happened. He ate, she watched.

  She touched his hair.

  She said, “My angel.”

  She asked him to read to her.

  She handed him a book.

  Judas read to her. They lay on his cot, as they always did, her head near his chest.

  “It is a warm night,” Evangeline said, softly, “a very warm night.”

  They were both sweating, but the weather wasn’t the only reason. There was something unsaid between these two young people. Evangeline got up, and began to remove her dress. “What are you doing?” he said, feeling the familiar fear. The girl held her brother’s gaze. She didn’t take her eyes off him. “You like to see me naked, and I want you to see me naked,” she told him. “So you shall. And if you run from me, I will scream.”

  He was too aghast to even think about running, or moving, observing his sister disrobe. Her dress dropped at her feet, and she was as nude as the day she was born.

  “This is me, Judas,” she said.

  He opened his mouth.

  Tears were at her eyes.

  “Do you know what is in my heart?” she asked.

  He said, honestly, “No.”

  “But you should.”

  “Do you know,” he said, straining each word, “what is in my heart?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “No, you don’t,” he said.

  “I want to,” she said.

  “No,” he said.

  “Can I lay with you?” Evangeline Payne said. “Will you still read to me?”

  He nodded. She went to him. He thought he might explode.

  They were on the cot, her naked body against his. Judas tried to read, but he couldn’t. He told her this. He said, “I can’t. How can I?”

  “Take your clothes off,” she said. There was something strange in her eyes; for a moment, she didn’t look or act like the girl he’d known all his life. “Let’s be naked next to each other, just like Adam and Eve,” he said.

  He gave into her will. There was much in him that wanted to comply, that wanted to do this. He knew nothing of sex, or men and women, of procreation, other than the part in the beginning of the Bible when Adam and Eve discovered they had shame by each other’s nakedness after eating The Fruit. He’d never understood that part (and, in fact, didn’t understand much of the Bible); now, however, he did. Evangeline helped him out of his clothes. Standing nude before her nakedness, he did feel shame, and he didn’t know where these strong emotions came from. He didn’t like this at all. He moved his hands to cover himself. Evangeline had the same sense of opprobrium, and also hid parts of her body with her arms and hands. She quickly moved to the oil lamp, and diminished the light. They were in darkness.

  She moved toward Judas. He felt the heat of her body close to his.

  She said, “Let’s lie down next to each other. I want to feel your skin against my skin.”

  She pushed him back on the cot, on his back. She lay next to him, her head on his chest. This time was so much different than before. Judas felt the stirring in his groin. His sex organ was hard, like when he awoke from those dreams which he was having more frequently.

  “You’re shaking,” she said.

  “No.”

  “Yes you are. Are you cold?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Are you scared?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She said, “Don’t be.”

  “Aren’t you scared?” he asked.

  “I was,” she said. “But I’m not anymore. This feels so right, so perfect. I can smell you like I never have before.” “You have read about this in books,” Judas said after a while.

  “You have read about men and women doing this.”

  She said, “Yes.”

  “Where did you get such a book?”

  “I found it hidden in the house, with others.”

  “Father has such books?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Does he read them?”

  “They had the names of people from town written in the front pages, in his writing,” she told him. “I think he took them from these people.”

  “Bad books,” Judas said.

  “They aren’t so bad.”

  “Why does he have them?”

  “When it comes to father,” she said, “why ever ask a question?”

  They both laughed at that, and it seemed to make things better.

  * * *

  For several weeks, almost every night, when Evangeline felt it safe to come to him, they lay naked together in the barn. Their hands began to explore each other’s bodies, cautiously, gently, with much fear.

  It was inevitable that the Reverend Jedediah Payne would discover this, and such a discovery would have a negative, rippling effects in Biblical proportions. It was his discovery of the siblings’ affection for one another that set each young person on the painful course of their lives for many years to come. Indeed, both Judas and Evangeline Payne would, later in the future, look back on this night and wonder how their lives would be different had not the following events took place.

  Neither brother nor sister ever had the notion that the Reverend would come into the barn at night, for he never had in the past, all these years. He often avoided the barn as much as he could, certainly when Judas was there; and when the Reverend retired for the night, he slept deeply, and hardly ever came out of his bedroom.

  It was the dream Reverend Payne was having that took him to the barn. In his dream, he was older, and so was Judas. Payne was in a dark room, praying to the Lord, when Judas appeared, a gun—or was it a knife?—in his hand. “How dare you step foot in this place of the Lord, devil boy,” the Reverend said, and Judas replied: “I am here to kill you, Father,” and the devil boy did just that: he killed Payne, in front of God he murdered the Reverend, and there were many screams, like the dead from Hell in chorus. The Reverend was shot—or stabbed—in the heart, and the pain and surprise was tremendous.

  He woke up clutching at his chest, like a terri fied woman (he thought). He was disoriented. It took him close to a minute to understand that he had been dreaming, and he was alive and well. The Reverend was relieved, and angry. Why would such a dream come to him? Was God trying to tell him something? Was that devil boy sending evil thoughts his way, invading his sleep and peace? The boy was almost a man now, and if he were harboring thoughts of ill will, if ideas of murder were in his heart—

  An image came to the Reverend: Judas in the barn, in a pentagram, in candlelight, performing some sort of ritual to his true maker, Satan—

  He was going to find out what that boy was doing, maybe have a talk with him—

  Reverend Payne put on a coat, lit an oil lamp, and went out to the barn.

  What he saw—the two ch
ildren naked in each other’s arms— was the last thing on God’s world he expected...

  * * *

  “DEVIL!”

  Evangeline Payne squealed when she heard her father’s voice, and saw him standing at the entrance of the barn. She quickly moved away from her brother, to the floor, finding her nightclothes and covering the shame of her young body, which the Reverend had never seen.

  In fact, it was the brief glimpse of his daughter’s bareness that caused Payne to stop, to consider her. Good Lord, he thought, she is a beautiful creature, full of lust and sin—

  Judas Payne was struggling to put his pants on. “What,” the Reverend said, “have you done to my daughter, you devil child?”

  Evangeline was crying. “Father—”

  “SHUT UP HARLOT!”

  Judas was looking for his shirt.

  “First you kill my wife, and now ruin my daughter,” the Reverend said, stepping forward, “and you desire to murder me.”

  “Nothing bad has happened, Father,” Evangeline said.

  The Reverend was slowly becoming furious. “You have carnal knowledge with this creature, and you say nothing bad has happened? Has he also poisoned your mind, girl?!?”

  “I have had no knowledge with him,” she said.

  “He is Satan!” the Reverend cried. “He has ruined you and will murder me! The vow I made to my departed Katherine is lifted! This is a battle between good and evil and God is on my side and I shall prevail!”

  With that, the Reverend lunged at the boy. Judas looked up. His father was swinging the oil lamp in the air. Before Judas could move away, he was struck in the face by the lamp. The light went out, and it was dark again in the barn. Judas heard Evangeline scream when the lamp hit on his face. The glass shattered. His face was wet and hot. He had oil on him, and something else. He tasted it in his mouth, dripping down: blood. Judas stumbled back. He touched his face, and felt the shard of glass that was embedded in his right eye.

  “Where are you, devil boy?” the Reverend said in the dark.

  Moonlight came into the barn from the opened entrance. The Reverend was lurching his way, large hands out. He’ll strangle me to death, Judas thought. Evangeline was still screaming, crying, on the barn floor, clutching her nightclothes to herself.

  Judas saw, from his left eye, the ax leaning against the wall. He quickly grabbed it, turned around and brought it up with both hands, blood seeping out of his right eye, the pain finally reaching him, the pain vast and indescribable. The Reverend charged. Judas brought the ax down, hard as he could, and jumped out of the way.

  The caterwaul that came from the Reverend’s mouth was like nothing neither Judas nor Evangeline—or even the Reverend himself—had ever heard. It did not sound human. The ax blade had deeply embedded itself into the Reverend’s upper left arm.

  Jedediah Payne fell to the ground, trying to pull the ax free from his flesh.

  Everyone was breathing hard, each of the three with their individual sounds of pain and fear.

  “You shall pay dearly!” the Reverend was saying.

  “Judas,” Evangeline said, “run.”

  Judas didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t move his legs. He reached for his face and pulled the shard of glass from his eye. It didn’t hurt as much as he expected. He was bleeding a lot.

  “Run, Judas, run away,” his sister was saying. “He’ll kill you.” It was too dark for her to see the injury her brother had suffered.

  “He’ll kill us both,” Judas said.

  “She is right,” the Reverend said. “I shall kill you, and God will help me.” He’d managed to remove the ax, but he was too weak to stand, losing so much blood.

  Judas knew he had to run. He found his shirt and shoes and picked them up. He moved toward the entrance.

  Evangeline was putting her night clothes on. “Hurry,” she said, “go now.”

  He nodded.

  “I love you, angel,” she said.

  He ran into the night.

  * * *

  Reverend Payne was drifting in and out of consciousness, lying on the barn floor and bleeding. His soiled daughter was looking down at him.

  “Don’t try to move, Father,” she said. “You’re badly hurt. I’ll try to tie something on your arm and stop the bleeding. Then I’ll go into town and fetch Doc Kelly.”

  “No,” he said. “I will bleed to death by the time you return. Listen to me, girl, listen to me: I’ll tell you what you must do.” “Tell me, Father.”

  “Build a fire in here, quickly. Take a piece of wood, and let it burn at the end. When it is hot, you must put the burning end to where I’m bleeding. This will cauterize the artery.” He wasn’t speaking from experience. He knew enough basic anatomy to know that a major vein was bleeding, and cutting off the circulation would not help. He knew about cauterization from what he’d heard about injuries in the War.

  “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said, softly. She was scared.

  “Then I will die,” her father said, “and my death will be on your conscience, and surely you will go to Hell.”

  Evangeline made afire out of wood and hay in the barn, using matches from the house. If the barn burns down, she thought, so be it. She put a long piece of wood in the flame.

  “Do it now,” her father said weakly.

  She stuck the end of the burning wood to his wound, and again the Reverend made that same inhuman shriek as he had before—it curdled her blood and froze her skin. The Reverend passed out. She thought, for a moment, that he was dead. She inspected him against the light of the fire. The flesh at his wound was dark, smoldering, and stank, but the bleeding seemed to have stopped. She touched his chest and felt his heartbeat. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved or disappointed. The fire she’d made was getting bigger, spreading around the hay. She grabbed the blanket from her brother’s cot and threw it over the fire, stamping it out. The barn went dark again, like her heart. She was worried about Judas.

  * * *

  Judas was worried too—for himself, for his sister, for the future in general. He ran and ran in the night, through the empty fields and hills, going northwest, away from town. He occasionally stopped and caught his breath. The bleeding at his eye had stopped, but it was swollen shut, and he knew his eye was badly damaged. If he had the energy, he would stop and cry. But he had to keep running. If he’d killed the Reverend, the law would come after him. The law would come after him anyway, because he had injured his father, and despite his own wound, he knew the law would take the side of a man of God instead of a boy like him.

  After a few hours, he could run no more. His legs hurt, his body hurt, and his head was throbbing. He lay on the ground and looked up at the stars with his one good eye.

  Take me, God, he thought. I don’t want to live this way...

  * * *

  Evangeline Payne returned to her home late in the morning with Doc Kelly. She’d explained to the doctor what happened, he nodded, and gathered what he needed in his bag and took to the Reverend’s house with the girl by horse and buggy. The Doctor was a robust man in his fifties, handsome in a rugged way, Evangeline thought. She considered him as she sat next to him on the ride home. She knew the Doctor was a widow, and she considered the idea of having him as her husband. She knew very well that she would have to find a man to marry her and take her in soon, for surely she could not live with her father anymore. If not the Doctor, someone—she had to entertain alternatives for her future, a future without her brother.

  She half-hoped they would discover the Reverend dead. But he wasn’t. He was where she had left him in the barn; his eyes were open.

  “Reverend Payne,” Doc Kelly said, kneeling down to inspect the wound.

  “Doctor,” Payne said.

  “This looks bad.”

  “I imagine.”

  “I can help you,” Doc Kelly said, “but you’re going to have to lose the arm.”

  “Reckoned such.”

  Kelly turned to get
his bag. He saw the girl standing by the barn.

  “Perhaps you should wait in the house,” Kelly said.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Judas Payne was aware of motion. He was lying down on blankets. He was rattling back and forth. He’d been having a dream that he was on a boat, a schooner perhaps, the kind he’d read about in one of the books his sister had brought to him years ago. He was on a grand adventure in this dream, that was for sure; he was scared too, and riding the waves, trying to get away from red serpents—giant creatures—emerging out of the water. His father was riding one of the serpents, clinging to its scaly neck with one hand, holding up an oil lamp with the other. “Devil boy!” his father kept yelling, “we’ll get you yet! We’ll rid the world of you yet!”

  But he wasn’t on a boat in the seas, or on an adventure. He realized he was lying in the back of a covered wagon, and there were bandages on his face—well, around his injured eye. It all came back to him now, the night, the violence. He was terrified—where was he? Was the sheriff carting him back to jail, and undoubtedly a certain public hanging?

  A young woman was peering down at him. She wasn’t much older than Evangeline, with a plain but pleasant round face, dirty blonde hair pulled back in a bun. “You’re awake, finally,” she said. “You’ve been unconscious for two days. I was beginning to worry about you.”

  He tried to sit up. She put a hand on his chest and shook her head. Her nice face made him feel a little at ease—just a little. “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  “I’m not.”

  “And don’t lie. Lying is a sin.”

  “So my father tells me. I am afraid,” he confessed. “Where am I?”

  “On the road to a great adventure!” she said gleefully. Judas thought he might have been talking in his sleep, about seas and serpents and quests.

  “My name is Mary Jo Scroggins,” she told him.

  “Judas,” he said. “Payne.”

  “Judas Payne?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”