Mercy (24 page)

H
igh up on the bookshelf, the time-bird rockets out the chalet’s front door. “Cuckoo!” it reports, the first of eleven identical cries. The teacher smiles wistfully at the sound, forcing me to look away.

There’s nothing so treacherous as a human face. I keep my own a determined blank, decline to meet others’ head-on. Newborns know—they refuse to focus no matter how people long for their gaze. Parents and perfect strangers holding them close or at arm’s length, even shaking them a little.
Look at me, baby, look!

I sneak another glance, watch the teacher’s smile sag over the drawing in her hand.

“Hello, Cathy.” You flooded the schoolroom, climbing the walls until they swelled and cracked. The teacher was ready for you. You’d left her ripening in that room full of parables and toys, let her watch you from too far back to spot a single flaw.

She was ready when you cupped your knuckled hand beneath her breast. She was willing, even eager, when you eased one foot and then the other out of your tasselled shoes. Bending, she pulled pins from her hair until it
sprang down like a leopard from a tree. Tresses on your ankle as she pressed her fine lips to your toes.

For as long as he can remember, Carl has woken as though shocked, sitting bolt upright seconds before the alarm. Now he mooches along the underside of sleep, becoming gradually aware of a sound—the bubble and sigh of something on the boil.

“Mary?” he asks the dark.

“Good,” she says, “you’re awake. I’ve made you more tea.”

He props himself up against the head of the bed. “That’s kind of you, but—”

“I’m not being kind. It’s what you need.”

“Tea?”

“This tea.” She crosses the room, guides his hand to the steaming cup. “Try not to knock it over this time. I’ve only got so many cups.”

He lowers his nose into the fragrant steam before taking a hesitant sip. The taste is wholly unfamiliar. “Exactly what kind of tea is this?”

The pot hisses on the stove.

“I told you, Reverend, it’s what you need.”

His head lolls to one side, rousing him to a light, rhythmic scraping, the floorboards squeaking under Mary’s weight.

“What did you put in that tea?” he says. “I can barely hold up my head.”

“That’s because you hit it on a tree. Besides, it’s night. You’re tired.”

To and fro, to and fro, as though she’s swaying a solo waltz.

“What are you doing?”

“Sweeping.” The scraping stops. “Feel that.” She lays something brushy in his lap. His hands respond instinctively, discerning a bundle of slender, warty twigs. “Bog birch. Nothing makes a better broom.” She lifts it away and the scratching begins again. “Shin-tangle’s another name for it. Probably what tripped you up.”

“Shin-tangle,” he repeats like a student.

Her footfalls move away. “Over here’s what I call the pantry, shelves all down the wall, a bit of everything put away.” She lets out a small, reaching grunt. Glass meets glass. The grind of a lid as she returns.

“Hold out your hand,” she says, and without thinking, he does. She places an object on his palm—hard and fibrous, a large hairy bullet with bumps. He holds it gingerly to his nose, smells things rustling and normally unseen.

“What is it?” he says finally.

“Owl pellet.”

“Ugh!” He drops it on the blanket.

She laughs. “It’s not shit, Reverend. A great grey swallows a vole in one gulp. Inside him, he takes what he can use, then rolls up whatever’s left into one of these. Spits it up just like that. Fur, teeth, claws—what you’ve got there is a vole minus the meat.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

She plucks the pellet up just as he’s thinking he might feel for it, hold it again. Another twist of metal on glass,
and he finds himself extending his hand.

“Careful,” she warns. “It’s fragile.”

This time she gives him something like a dried flower or leaf—only hairy, slightly sticky, emitting the faintest waft of acrid dust.

“Sundew,” she murmurs.

He hesitates. “A plant?”

“Mostly.”

“Mostly? Mostly what?”

“It’s a meat-eater. Bugs get trapped in the sticky little hairs.”

“Charming.”

“That too. Sundew’s a love charm. Makes women crazy for it, so they say.”

“Oh?”

“Not just women, either. Cows and sheep, makes them bellow for it, even the littlest taste.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do say. Not that you’d ever need it.”

He smiles. “No?”

“A big golden-haired bastard like yourself.” Her tone darkens. “Fire and brimstone, and all those God-fearing church ladies with coals in their pants.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I bet you’ve had half of them. Am I right?”

His stomach pinches. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your followers, Reverend. Your flock.”

The sundew clings to his palm. “I don’t have to listen to this.” He rubs his hands together, crushing it to a powder. “Just who the hell—” He catches himself.

“Uh-oh.” She chuckles. “Reverend said a bad word.”

He clenches his fists. “Take me to town.”

“Nope.”

“Take me to town, dammit!”

“Take it easy, killer,” she says mildly. “I’ll take you.”

“You will?”

“In the morning. You’ll be better by then anyway. You won’t need help.”

“Yeah,
right.”

“Well, maybe not with that attitude.”

He clamps his mouth shut. Laces his fingers together and bows his head.
Dear Lord
, he thinks forcefully,
look down upon your humble servant—

“Sundew’s not the only meat-eater we’ve got around here, in case you’re wondering.” She crosses back to her jars. “There’s the pitcher plant too. I’ve got some fresh here. Want to feel?”

He sighs angrily through his nose.
Look down upon your servant and—

“Okay, I’ll tell you. The leaves are kind of rubbery, green with purple veins. They’re hollow—that’s the pitcher part—with a big, flared-out lip.”

—give me strength in the face of—

“Inside, it’s all slippery, with these stiff little hairs leading down. Some fly spots that pretty purple lip and lands, starts exploring, and before you know it, he’s in the throat of it, losing his grip.”

He drops the thread of the prayer.

“He’s scrambling now, sliding sideways or backwards or headfirst, only there’s nowhere to go but down, into the pitcher’s little pool.” She claps her hands. “Splash. He
drowns in there. Rots. And that pitcher soaks up everything he’s got.”

It’s Carl’s turn to speak. And he would, if only he could force his tongue to move.

“Special plant, this,” Mary tells him. “Cree used it for the very, very sick. You’ll see. I put a little in your tea.”

Yellow in my glass, like the yellow in the window-Jesus. The juice leapt when I tilted it, tasted pretty. Away down the long shine of wood, you clucked your tongue.

“Put it down, chicken. Not until we thank the Lord.”

Behind you a framed Christ, darkly unctuous, back to the wall. You bent your head to release a glittering stream of grace.

I stopped my ears to you. Then, as children will, I made swinging shutters of my hands, chopping passages into words, words into syllables of sound. It helped, but there was still the sight of you, the sermonizing hole in your face.

Just as the ears could grow flaps, so the eyes came equipped with blinds. I blinked you, cut you up so you were easy to carry, easier still to leave behind. Better yet—hearing the tree made it fall, so maybe looking at you made you lie. Instead of holding you in my beams, I inclined them to the table’s design.

It worked.
Amen
.

The swollen backs of the cook’s hands, her metal ring
cutting deep. Suddenly I wasn’t hungry. There was green on my plate, the same green that grows in plush over a grave.

It’s hard to tell whether he’s sleeping again or just lying there in a sulk. “Reverend?” Mary says softly.

He lets out a long, exasperated sigh. “What?”

“Want me to read to you?”

“What I want is for you to take me back to town.”

She crouches down before a silvered wooden crate. “I’ve got some great books here, the Bible even—or maybe you’re sick of that one.”

He says nothing. Turns his face away.

“Suit yourself.” Delving in with both hands, she releases a cloud of mildew, old leather and ink.

Who’d’a believed it? A whole crate full of books
.

It was one of Castor’s most precious finds—he told of it as though he were recounting a miracle. “The bears were like flies on the dead that night, but I waded in there and snagged it all the same. The stuff people chuck away. So what if some of the titles were rubbed so thin you couldn’t read ’em. Doesn’t matter what book you pick up, every one of ‘em’s got a story inside.”

He read aloud to her when he was sober enough to manage it. Mostly the same few books over and over, but she never got sick of them, not a one—probably because she didn’t know any real-life people besides him, just Mowgli and Anne Shirley and Heathcliff, little baby Moses in his basket, floating around in the reeds.

Anne of Green Gables
made her chest hurt when she was small. The first time Castor read it to her, she stopped him partway into the second chapter, just after Matthew loaded Anne into his buggy to take her home.

“Castor,” she asked, peering over his hairy forearm at the incomprehensible page, “are you my daddy?”

He looked at her strangely for a moment. “Mary, you know I am.”

“And a mother?” she blurted. “Do I have a mother too?”

“Well now.” He let the book fall shut on his hand. “Most of us do. Even ol’ Castor did for a time. But every so often there comes a special one. See, Mary, you weren’t born of a woman.”

“I wasn’t?”

“Nope. You were grown.” He laid the book down then, losing the page. “Like an apple, see. You were grown on a tree.”

It was a game we played, Preacher. You called me with the tip of your finger to the lip of the glass, and I came out from wherever I was crouching, drawn to your circling sound. I couldn’t help myself. It was sweeter than any church song, every lap of your finger a rosy ring.

Until you ruined it by opening your mouth.

“You like that?”

The hand dismantled itself, fingers falling away. Beside it, the tail of a loosened tie. I followed its paisley trail to
where your face loomed, lips parting to swallow me whole.

“You like that, chicken?”

The pet name was my escape, a red-crested bird scattering white feathers in my mind.

“You like when Daddy plays the glass?”

You were so human, sunk in your recliner, nursing your nightly Scotch. The house was dark, the cook gone home. We were alone, Preacher. I’d have come closer, but you were lit up like a fuse. If I’d set foot in your field, you’d have blown my little body sky-high.

Carl half dozes, Mary motionless, somewhere to his right. He imagines her in a filthy armchair, the stuff spilling out from its sides.

“I’ve been trying to figure you, Reverend,” she says suddenly.

“Oh?”

“Maybe you think nothing lives here, just some underfed trees and a loony in a shack made of glass. Like this is some kind of wasteland. Some place you and that sad bitch of a mayor can just raze to the ground.”

He clears his throat. “I certainly wouldn’t put it like that.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But that’s how it is.” She stirs. Footsteps and the creak of a door.

“Hey—” His voice comes out higher than planned. “Where are you going?”

“To smoke. Sit out awhile.”

“To smoke?”

“Yep, dead baby hair.” She laughs. “Christ, tobacco. Ever heard of it?”

“Mary, you need to get me some help.”

“You’ve got help.”

“I mean
medical
help.”

“You’ve got that.”

“I need proper—” He pauses to sweeten his tone. “Look, I’m asking you, please take me back to town.”

“Nope.”

“You’re keeping me here against my will?”

“The door’s right here.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What I know is you probably would’ve croaked out there if I hadn’t found you. People have, you know.” She shuts the door firmly, leaving him alone in his dark.

Let her go, he thinks, I’m fine here on my own.

Less than a minute passes before he’s drawing the rough blanket around his bare shoulders and rolling off the bed onto his knees. He crawls toward the memory of the slamming door, feels slat boards on his smarting forehead, gropes for the handle overhead. Before he can find it, the door swings out into her strange-smelling smoke.

“What’s this, Reverend? You coming to propose?”

He feels for the door jamb and hauls himself up.

“There’s a chair there for you,” she tells him. “One step forward and two to the right.”

He edges forward.

“I meant man-steps. If you’re going to walk like a weasel, I’ll have to figure it again. That’s it. Reach out to your right now. Bingo.”

He lowers himself into the seat.

“Want me to roll you one?” she asks.

“I don’t smoke. And that doesn’t smell like tobacco, either.”

“That’s the sweet gale. It grows in the bog here. A pinch in the paper keeps the biters at bay.”

The hum of insects intensifies in his ears. They begin to land on his ankles, his neck, and he slaps himself, making her chuckle. The blanket’s scratchy, but he doesn’t dare expose more skin. They’re dive-bombing now, the air around his head is alive.

“Sure you don’t want one?”

He shakes his head. But maybe he does. After all, he smoked a little in college. For a while he even bought the odd pack of Sportsman’s, wore them in his chest pocket like a badge.