Children of Paradise: A Novel (32 page)

Joyce and Trina march the warbling pig back to the sty and leave Kevin standing some distance from them. Trina asks her mother why she was so hostile with this guard, who seems so much more polite than the others. Joyce looks at Trina quizzically and says she did no such thing. Trina said she heard anger and there is no denying it. Joyce shakes her head emphatically. Trina wants to know if a view of the river empty of a boat that shall remain unnamed might be Joyce’s reason for being mad. Joyce casts her daughter a sad expression and says she misses the captain every day, but Trina must never mention his name to anyone or within earshot of anyone. Trina says she misses him, too, and his whistling first mate. She suggests that they come up with a code word for the captain in case they are overheard talking about him. But what? They launch into a list of captains from fiction and history. Trina kicks off:

—Hook. Ahab. Kirk. Scarlett. Drake. Blackbeard. Raleigh. Morgan. Cook. Silver. Bligh. Columbus. Cabral. Vasco da Gama.

—How do you know so many?

—We studied them in school.

Joyce tells Trina she is too smart for her boots. Trina says she does not have any boots. She holds up a foot to show her lace-up canvas shoes, a size too big, then hops on one foot to keep her balance and puts that foot down to keep herself from toppling to the ground and raises the other foot. She keeps switching feet in this dance until her mother laughs and doubles over, holding her midriff and wiping her eyes, and begs Trina to stop before she makes her poor mother split her sides open. Kevin watches them from behind a tree.

The pigs seem to know what happens if men in overalls separate one pig from the rest and pull it into a hut. That pig launches high-pitched screams, hollering, and near-articulate cries for help, that someone who hears must set aside as coincidence based on a belief that a pig does not really understand its fate. How could it? Pigs root in the ground for grubs, roll in mud and eat anything poured into a trough, including their young. Joyce and Trina follow the practice of sticking tissue in the ears to reduce the volume of pigs screaming at the slaughterhouse, nothing like the compliant moos of cows, nothing like the bleat of sheep; pigs cry and beg for mercy. The man who wields the knife must be efficient with a sharp knife and a brisk stroke of the throat for that scream to stop. The pig’s scream ceases in midflow. The legs paddle the air and freeze midstride. The open throat bleeds. The long knives sever the head from the body, slit the stomach, and strip the vitals from the corpse, and the carcass, hung with a hook through it, surrenders its meat to an inquisitive blade. Blood runs down gutters to the river along with the waste of hosed pigpens. Blockage of the drains causes the water to gush back into the sinks and holes in the ground, and the whole operation comes to a standstill as someone traces each drain to find the choke.

Joyce and Trina follow the drain from a sty and find the plug in the drain and move it along until they come to the river and look at each other and know how many steps it will take them from the pig farm to reach the water in the dark. A guard stationed at the dock challenges them, aiming his rifle. He wants to know who gave them permission to come to the river. Joyce begins to explain about unblocking the drain by tracing the blockage from one drain to the next, and she looks for Kevin just as he steps from the trees and calls to the guard, Eric, at the river.

Kevin tells Joyce and Trina to continue their task of unblocking the drain and give him a minute with his friend. Eric apologizes for his stern manner and says he hopes they understand that he has a job to do, and if he appears soft, it will land him in big trouble. Joyce nods. The two men debate whether they should take a dip in the river before the sluices from the pig farm open and mess up the water, as happens twice daily. They look around and appear to assess the risk of such a venture in front of Joyce and Trina. Kevin says he needs a swim to clear his nostrils and hair of the smell of pigs. Eric adds he will swim to keep his friend company. The two men decide to invite Joyce and Trina to join them. Joyce says she does not have a costume, and Trina says the same, but seeing how the guards strip down to their underpants and dive in, they decide to tuck their dresses into the legs of their underwear and wade in up to their thighs and scoop the cool water onto their arms and necks and faces. The guards ask Joyce if with all her influence high up, she might be able to pull a few strings to get them on the same work rotation. Joyce promises to try. They dress and wish each other a good day and swear mother and daughter to secrecy. Joyce and Trina follow the drain up the slope to the pig farm with Kevin a few paces behind. Trina asks: Cook? And her mother says Cook it is.

A
t the preacher’s white house, in the spacious meeting room with little furniture, Ryan’s parents and the young guard sit strapped to chairs, blood on their clothes. Dee injects the three captives with a sedative. They look asleep, heads bowed. The guards tell them they have signed their death warrants by their actions. They slap the captives and nudge them hard with rifles. The prisoners cease making the usual sounds of bodies under duress. The guards talk with the assistants about the outrage of someone in their ranks pointing a gun at their leader. As if there were not enough guns aimed at the commune from the many enemies in the surrounding bush, in the capital, in the country they left to get some peace.

The preacher appears and the assistants throw glasses of water over Ryan’s parents and the young guard to wake them. The preacher walks over to the young guard and unties his hands and feet.

—You’re free to go.

The guards and assistants look at one another and at their leader, and a couple of them say no involuntarily. The preacher repeats his announcement. The young guard raises his head, surprised. Ryan’s parents muster a look of vague interest. All three try their best to feign alertness. The young guard tries to stand but cannot. His arms grab at the air and his legs splay from under him. He falls back into the chair and almost topples it backward. He slurs his speech:

—Father, I’m sorry. I love her, wanted to save her. Love you, Father.

The preacher asks the young man if he needs help to walk. He nods. The preacher helps him to his feet and he clutches the preacher and sobs.

—Father, please forgive me. I love her. Didn’t want her to get hurt.

The preacher says he understands. He, too, loved someone a long time ago, before he found Christ and his love became the service of saving souls for the kingdom of heaven. He chastises the youth for putting the life of the nurse in danger by distracting him from his careful orchestration of her punishment.

—She understood the situation better than you. She walked into that cage all by herself. Didn’t she?

The young guard nods and cannot stop his tears.

The preacher asks him what should happen next to maintain order in the community. He wants the youth to put himself in the shoes of a leader and imagine that leader’s responsibility for the lives of so many and make a determination what should be the best course of action to maintain order. The young guard asks for water. The preacher flicks his fingers and an assistant produces a full glass, which the young man empties in one uninterrupted tilt of his head. His mind seems to clear for a moment. He asks the preacher’s permission to prescribe his own punishment to show everyone in the community the error of his ways. The leader says that will not be necessary, he is free to go. The young guard says the preacher saved his life and his mother’s by taking them in from the streets, and therefore his life is nothing without the preacher’s blessing. He says he lost his mind. The nurse helped him while he lay in a cast. She washed him, took away his bedpans, read the Gospel to him. He loves her and he acted out of fear for her safety and his actions came from that wrong impulse, wrong because it went against his greater love for the preacher and the commune and the chance of everlasting life.

The preacher nods his approval. He kisses the young man on the top of the head. The young guard sobs and collapses, and the preacher holds him and eases him back into the chair.

—Father, tell me what to do to make things better.

The reverend looks at Ryan’s parents and tells the youth that the situation is grave. To have any guard aim a rifle at him in front of everyone, with the help of two adults who should know better despite having a wayward child, puts the preacher in a predicament. If he does nothing about it, even if he forgives the three of them as he did in his heart the moment the incident occurred, despite his forgiveness, if the three of them try to walk out of the commune and the people do not feel the same generous disposition, the people will pounce upon them and tear them from limb to limb. Even he, as their leader, enjoys limited control over the members of the commune.

—Witness your own behavior toward me. I could not win your total trust and loyalty after all your years of seeing for yourself the proof of my devotion as your leader. Well, just so the wider community, who feel differently about me than you do, may find it too difficult to accept three of their own pointing a gun at their leader and may not find it in their hearts to forgive your transgressions.

The young guard says he knows what he has to do to fix the mess. Ryan’s parents look at him with eyes full of appeal. But the young man avoids looking at them. Ryan’s father speaks up:

—Boy, don’t throw away your life.

The preacher instructs his guards to gag Ryan’s parents. The young man watches as the guards tie cloth around the mouths of Ryan’s parents, both of whom move their heads about and make it difficult for the guards to knot the cloth at the back. The young man does not react; he just looks at them with his wet face and red eyes, turns away slowly, and heaves himself out the front door.

A guard helps him to navigate the three steps off the front porch into the yard. People stop and rush over to meet him as he staggers in a wavering line toward the dried well. The people, guards among them, carry sticks and stones and guns. They set their faces against him in angry expressions, from gritted teeth to scowls. Not a single face shows pity for him. Not yet. He reaches the well and realizes it is not fitting for the damage he did to the commune. The well will not satisfy them. He looks back at the house just in time to see the front door close and the preacher no longer on the front porch to oversee things. Those nearest to him hold their sticks and stones and guns above their shoulders, ready to bring down those weapons on his head. He hears some of them say that he tried to shoot their leader. Part of him wants to argue with that assertion and say no, not shoot, just protect his sweetheart from the cage that she walked into of her own accord to stop him from intervening on her behalf. He blames himself. He wanted to serve, and his idea of service took a wrong turn, a dead end. He walks past the well, and more people hem him in. He feels tired. There is nowhere else to go, no room left for him to take another step, and no other place where he wants to be. He stops and sits on the ground and falls back on the grass and clasps his hands in prayer and shuts his eyes against the harsh light and waits for their sticks, their rifles and stones. His mother stands at a distance, turns her back, and buries her head in her arms.

The sound of an ax splitting logs, the sound of a paddle beating clothes on the stone bank of a river, many axes, many paddles, of firewood ablaze, of two stones crashed together, of doors slammed repeatedly, of a hammer driving a nail home, of a carpet brought outdoors and beaten, of plates dropped on the kitchen floor, of glasses toppled off a tray, of a wheelbarrow full of stones tipped over, of a tin can stamped underfoot, many cans, many feet, of newspaper tearing, of a slap and another slap, of a firecracker, one and one hundred, of an exhaust’s backfire, and no pig squeal, no bleat, no moan, no cry, except for Adam in his cage, except for a mother with her head in her arms, unable to shed another tear.

They disperse, breathless and still angry with the young man for what he made them do to him, and with themselves for killing him, and they pray for forgiveness and beg for his lost soul to gain entry into paradise. The guards drag the young man’s lifeless body on an old sheet to the mill and from the mill in pieces to the incinerator, where he is reduced and picked up by the wind and lifted into cloud and sails mountain ranges before his precipitous fall miles from the commune and far from his limited body, and free.

The preacher tells his guards that he wants Ryan’s parents out of his house. The guards look a little unsure about the inexact nature of the preacher’s wish. But he has a headache and he must lie down immediately. Nora, Dee, and Pat take over the job of issuing orders. They confer, and Nora leaves to assist the preacher. Pat and Dee talk to the guards. Pat and Dee apply blindfolds to Ryan’s parents. Four guards take them by the arms and lead them out the back door and to the mill.

At the infirmary, the nurse wakes from her sedation and asks for the young guard. She expects him to be in a bed not far from hers, recovering from some punishment or other meted out for his public defense of her. She worries that she cannot see him. A nurse on duty reminds her how badly the young man has acted and advises her to forget about him and save herself a lot of trouble. She asks for something for her pain, which the nurse gives to her and hurries away. She lies in a cast, her body aches, but she knows the young guard will turn up and read to her whatever she asks him to read, just as she did for him. A baby cries and someone soothes the child with a song. Both sound far away. Perhaps the young man sings to the baby. And in that restored world, she counts the child as their own, soothed to sleep by the young guard’s song and placed in a bassinet by her bed and soon the young guard’s voice reading to her and reading her asleep. The verses in his voice set loose in her head and in the baby’s head. She closes her eyes for him to come to her bedside and read what she wants to hear, just the way she wants to hear it. She has only to wish for this to be the case and it will be so. She swallows her hoard of tablets and waits for sleep to claim her and to wake with the young guard by her side, restored, healed, unblemished, with the book open at random and his eyes picking up the words and his voice seeping into her ears.