Mercy (29 page)

After the service your followers lingered to mingle and swarm, each of them vying for your hand, your constantly shifting gaze. Still captive at your side, I slipped beneath the canopy of their talk to the jungle of sense—squawks and snapping jaws, a chorus of possessive growls.

After a show like that you had your pick. The women said long goodbyes, pressing your hands, so grateful for a man who could move them to tears. It was more than your way with words. You were tall and clear-eyed, with the chest of a warrior and a lover’s loping gait. Just the man to do battle with their demons, take them on like so many Trojans or hairy, fur-clad Celts.

You chose the organist. She’d waited so long, hammering out hymns in the corner of your eye. That morning she’d pounded so hard it had seemed she would crack the keys. She was a little old but still pinkly attractive from afar, and so pent up she was almost panting. You’d had them like that before. They’d do anything.

She fussed with her sheet music while you pawned me off on the teacher, promising to return within the hour.

“Can I offer you a ride, Mrs. Winters?” You helped her on with her coat, escorting her out the back door.

She was too thrilled to speak, in danger of choking on her own good luck. She said nothing when you drove past her street and across the old bridge to an abandoned lot. Nothing still when you coasted to its willowed corner and buried the car’s nose in the weeds.

“Oh!” was all she could manage when, without further ado, you unzipped your pants. “Oh,” she said sadly when your broad hand closed on the back of her neck and you began steadily to lever her down. She resisted a little, never having taken a man in her mouth.

“Hearken to the Word of the Lord,” you whispered, removing her rose-coloured beret. “ ‘As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me shall draw life from me.’ “You laughed softy. “What do you think of that, sugar?”

Her reply was muffled, too muffled for you to understand.

Inside Lavinia’s oven the blobs sweat butter and begin to spread. As chunks forfeit their shapes, she switches on the oven light and draws up a chair to watch. Already the smell is enchanting—Carl will start slavering the moment he walks in that door. And he
will
walk in. He came back last time, didn’t he? It may have taken him the better part of a year, but in the end he couldn’t stay away.

He caught her off guard, showing up like that after she’d made herself stop believing he would. She had the home advantage, though, and she played it, staying put behind her desk instead of rising to shake his hand.

“Reverend Mann,” she said coolly.

“Mayor Wylie,” he replied, “I come in the name of God.”

He wasn’t two minutes into his proposal when she thought of the bog. By the time he was on to dormitories
and tennis courts, there were chainsaws roaring to life in her mind. She let him finish, though, thrilling inwardly to the timbre of his scriptural warning, something about children and obstacles, a millstone around some poor sap’s neck.

“Sold.” She flashed him a winning smile. “I’ve got the perfect site.”

They brainstormed beautifully together. It was all settled in under an hour—she would convene a special meeting of the town council later that week, and in the meantime they could hire a consultant to work up some figures on the bog.

“Don’t worry about the council.” She walked up behind him where he stood at her office window. “It’s as good as passed.”

“God willing.” He turned to face her.

“Oh, He’s willing, all right.” She walked a hand down the front of his Dockers. “I can feel it.”

The timer shrills eleven minutes. Lavinia takes down her oven mitts—two quilted rainbow trout—and pushes her hands in at their finny tails. She yanks open the door, releasing a blast of redolent heat. The first batch is flawless.

She knows perfectly well they’re not for her, just as she knows the molten chocolate will stick to the roof of her mouth and burn. Still, the padded fish snatches up a cookie and holds it to her lips. She stares into its painted eye. “All right,” she tells it evenly. “But just the one.”

Would you leave me then, Preacher? Pluck me from your side and drop me, lock me away while you remade the rotting world?

The three of us were gathered in the teacher’s kitchen. It was the first time you’d brought me with you to her stark little home.

“You’re the only one I trust her with, Cathy,” you murmured, caressing her inner arm. “She likes you.”

“But why do you have to go now?” she said miserably.

“Cathy, look at me. When Jesus calls, you pack your bags and go. You know that, now, don’t you?”

Her face crumpled around the edges.

“It won’t be for long. I’ll be sending for you before you know it.” You reached around behind her, applying pressure to the small of her spine. “I’ll need you beside me down there.”

“You will?”

“Uh-huh.” You pulled her close. “Beside me, beneath me, on top of me—”

“Uhnnn,” she said low.

You trapped her small pearl earring between your teeth. “You’ll take her then?”

“Mmm.”

“Just until I’ve got things settled.” You stroked her behind, lifting it in your hands. “Then we’ll see about—things.”

The teacher opened her eyes. “What things?”

“Well, help. Getting her the help she needs.”

“What kind of help?”

“I don’t know. There are places.”

“Places?” She took a step back, a step closer to me. “You mean—putting her away?”

“Not for good, Cathy.” You looked hurt, and maybe you were, coming face to face with what had been swimming around in your brain. “What do you think I am, a monster?”

She bit her lip.

“Just until we’re set up,” you said soothingly. “We’ll have a lot on our plates, you know. As soon as the camp is up and running, we’ll see what we can work out.”

She was still a little rigid when you reached for her again, so you laid the trump card, the one you’d been guarding in your hand. “Maybe we’ll have a child of our own one day, Cathy. Ever think of that?”

She caved. It was no wonder, a woman like her—not yet forty, in no way pretty, nearly striking but falling somehow short of the mark. A nurse turned Sunday schoolmarm. Always a caregiver, never to one of her own.

“Yes, Carl,” she sighed, nuzzling your chest. “I do.”

“Good.” You smiled. “That’s settled. Now, you remember what I told you?”

“Hmm?”

“No more drawing. No crayons, no pencils, nothing.”

“But Carl—”

“No buts, now, I told you, it upsets her.”

She looked doubtful.

“Doctor’s orders, Cathy. She mustn’t get agitated, understand?”

“Which doctor?” she said quickly. “Maybe I could get a second opinion, maybe some tests—”

You stopped her mouth with your hand. “No. No doctors. I don’t want you worrying yourself. I’ll take care of all that when I get back.”

Her mouth worked silently against your palm.

“Cathy,” you murmured, “we’ve been over this. I’m leaving first thing in the morning. You don’t really want to spend the night arguing, do you?”

You peeled your hand away to find her mute. Knowing full well what she wanted, you punished her a little, made her wait. Her eyes filled up with tears. You smiled indulgently, lifted a finger and pushed it softly between her lips.

In the morning you left a trail, a long tail dragging, growing a mile for every mile you drove. The teacher stood waving on her front stoop, watching the space where you’d been. After a time she remembered me.

“Hi, Clare.” She held out a hand and I flapped my giant mitts in reply. She nodded sadly and withdrew, leaving me to walk in on my own.

I
’m hungry.” The teacher sets down her scissors and stands. “You hungry, Clare?” She jumps to a bare spot on the rug. “I’ll get us some crackers and cheese.” I carry on without her, dividing two drawings into ten but holding off on a third until she returns. The time-bird greets her with a brief announcement. “You-knew,” it tells her, “you-knew.” She looks down at the page I’ve kept waiting. Nods mournfully as I execute the first cut.

You’d been gone a full week, Preacher, when you finally bothered to call. The teacher pounced on the phone, holding it pressed to her ear even after you’d hung up. How I longed to draw her, lay her down in glossy wax. The sad, sea-green ellipses of her eyes.

Come nighttime I was glowing, overflowing with the charge. While the teacher slept lonely and fretful in the next room, I gnawed doggedly at my wrist, worrying until the tape began to fray. I took the end in my teeth and tugged, unwound the white snake, whipped the fat mitt across the floor. The hand came out spindly, like a plant growing blanched in the dark.

There wasn’t a pen, wasn’t the stub of a pencil left loose—she’d seen to it, feeling your eyes on her from afar. Undaunted, the hand offered itself, index finger volunteering separate and straight. I let it hang, felt ink well at the ready tip. Then bit. Delicately, persistently, I nibbled until the print whirled open and colour began to flow.

But how to evoke sea green with nothing but red? And where?

The wall loomed up beside me, blank but for a Cross of woven reeds. With no black for borders, I had to make do. The lines weren’t as thick as I would’ve liked, but the nib kept running dry, forcing me to pause and chew it open afresh.

“Clare!” The teacher scooped me up, wriggling, then rigid in her arms. She ran madly down the hall. Brightness and tiles, cold comfort to my small bare feet. “Oh God,” she wailed, “oh God, oh God.” Then my hand under the tap, falling water, flashing chrome.

“Why, Clare?” She fumbled for a roll of gauze. “Why did you do this?” I allowed my finger to be wrapped, but grabbed it back when she reached for the sticky white tape. “No tape?” Her voice shook. “Okay. It’s all right. I’ll just tie it. There, like that.”

She followed me back to the spare room, watched me slump to where she’d found me on the floor. Then lifted her gaze, staring straight into my empty frame. Her lips moved silently for a time, then hung open as though she were listening for a reply. When she looked down again, her face was white. She lunged at me, grabbed my still-bound hand and tore at the tape, ripping the mitt off and hurling it away.

I was blinking, the whole too great—her knowing me, enough at least to set me free. She rose and disappeared,
returning with a blue bucket and a fluttering sheaf. She papered the floor. Dumped the bucket end up, crayons scattering like rainbow hail.

Having traversed it twice now, Carl finds himself charting the bottle house in his mind. From what he can tell, there’s only the one room. The bed beneath him backs onto a wall and juts into open space. To its right sits the side table he knocked over, the one where she later set the lamp and warmed the spruce. Beyond the small table, the drying hide and Mary’s chair. Then perhaps a dozen feet further to the door.

Her kitchen, such as it is, lies directly across the room. There’s a stove—he imagines it like the one he grew up with, pot-bellied with a glowing grate—probably a table or counter of some kind, and row upon row of jars. He can hear Mary fiddling with them, a concert of glassy clinks.

“Mary,” he asks, “what else have you got?”

“Hmm?”

“In your—pantry. What else is there?”

“All kinds of things. I told you, there’s a whole wall.”

“Well, tell me some of it. Tell me a shelf.”

“Okay. Let’s see. Horsehair lichen, old man’s beard—Don’t worry, the guy was dead when I found him, all I did was cut it off.”

“What?”

She snorts. “Easy, Reverend, it’s that woolly stuff you see hanging on trees. Jesus, you really are ignorant.”

“About some things.”

“About this forest you want to knock down.”

“Okay.” He holds up his hands. “What else?”

“Coltsfoot, thrush feathers, crowberry jelly—too bad you can’t see the colour.” Something rattles. “Teeth. Looks like least weasel, but I can’t be sure.”

He shakes his head. “I don’t get it. Why do you keep all these—things in your house?”

“Same reason you keep things in your house. Either they’ve got some use, or else you like them. Take this cloudberry leaf—great tobacco stretcher. Tamarack fat—draws out poison and closes up wounds. Or this—a shrew’s skull, so tiny, so perfect. Used to be home to a hungry little brain. What’s the line, Reverend—all creatures great and small?”

“Yes, all right.”

“I got all these jars when the jam factory shut down. There was already enough empty glass around this place, so I figured I might as well fill a few up. The thing is, once you start looking, there’s no end to what you can find. Oh, hey.” Her voice softens. “This one’s a little different—special, you might say. Been a while since you felt the air, eh?” She addresses the jar’s contents tenderly, the floorboards creaking as she draws near. “Here.”

He holds out his hands. It’s two objects, really, or two halves of one, tied together with greasy string. Each is coarse on top and smooth below. His thumbs locate identical openings, a pair of woven mouths.

“My baby booties,” she says proudly.

“Yes.” He smiles. “Of course.”

“They used to be yellow, but you wouldn’t know that now. I guess I came across them one day when I was two or
so. It took me a few hundred tries at shoving my feet in before I gave up and started carrying them around. I kept them with me while I ate, played with them, took them to bed.” She lifts the booties away, leaving him coddling a handful of air. “Castor even had to let me hold them while he washed me in the basin.”

Carl swallows hard. The baby bath was one of a hundred pastel items Jenny brought home in the months before she died. He put off the first bath longer than he should have, waiting until the newborn stranger began to smell distinctly sour. Then poured the shallowest of tepid puddles and lowered her into it, grasping her stiff, slippery body, making her scream.