He walked down the hall, coming to a halt upon the threshold of the old living quarters, once so bright and so fair, of the mad and barren Mrs Swift.
Midst the debris of his undoing, rotten and morbific – the sordid amassment of the sorrow-worn – sat a terrible Sardus Swift, unwashed, jaundiced, gaunt, his face besieged by a black matted beard and obscured by long greasy hair. His hands were folded in his lap. He sat in an armchair cluttered with newspaper. Balls of screwed-up paper, grimy clothing and rotten food surrounded him, and he looked upward, toward the door, where Doc Morrow stood speechless, bundle in arms.
Barely allowing his blistered lips to part, Sardus spoke in a hoarse whisper, his voice drifting off at times to become little more than a hiss. He did not move his hands from his lap, but sat, neck craned toward the door, eyes fixed upon the doctor. Doc Morrow rocked the baby nervously, unable to call to mind a single word of his proposal, and the seconds crawled by as the wretched recluse whispered word upon bitter word.
‘The noise of the rain… has stopped. Are we entering the days of reprieve, Doctor? I gather the Almighty has… granted us clemency. Praise the Lord.’
He broke off, looked at the palms of his hands loosely clasped in his lap, and then continued, returning his attention to the doctor, with a look of anguish in his face.
‘O Doctor, I despair… so grave our misdeeds… countless… Wicked! And my wife mad, bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh, riddled with debauchery! Wicked woman! And vice! O terrible, O wicked Rebecca. So horribly wrong was she to think that just because God… the Preserver… the Comforter… deemed it fitting and just to strike her dry of womb, to take from her… the one damnable desire she felt! Her sole reason to endure! “Thou shalt not want.” And my wife wanted, and Doctor Morrow, so did I… O so did I!!’
Sardus fell silent and the doctor moved a little further inside, hesitated, and then with the babe in arms crossed the dark and fusty room. Holding the infant in one arm, he pulled the cord on the bleached and tattered blind, letting it flap and roll upwards. A refulgent block of sunshine, quartered by a thin cruciform of shadow, spilt into the fetid interior of the room. Doc Morrow banged with his one free fist the rusted catch atop the dazzling window and, freeing it, wrenched the swollen frame upward and open. Immediately a fresh breeze filled the room.
‘Air,’ spoke the doctor for the first time, ‘and sunshine, pure as God himself. For these are God’s gifts that on this day He has seen proper to reward us with… to give of His own self… just as He, in His supreme judgement, can taketh these same gifts from us. We must be content with the wonders before us, not live in the dark in the hope that we stumble upon some wonders unforeseen! Breathe, Sardus, breathe! And see what is before you!’
Sardus shielded his eyes with one grimy paw.
‘I thank thee kindly to leave my home the way it is… draw back the blind as you found it, sir… This is not Open Day at the bug house, Doctor!’
But the doctor crossed the room again, leaving the window open, the blind rolled.
‘So grave our misdeeds, good Doctor, yet see,’ Sardus gestured with a flourish to the azure sky beyond the window, ‘the world is resplendent with His infinite Mercy! O Lord! Shower me! Shower me with your tender mercies!’
His whisper was nothing but a croak now and Doc Morrow was already shuffling down the hall. Sardus sat and did not rise, waiting for the slam of the kitchen door, and upon hearing it he remained seated, just so, there midst the sea of garbage.
Doc Morrow visited the next day and the next day and for many days after that, each time bringing with him the tiny foundling.
The third and mostly silent party in their daily colloquy lay cradled in the doctor’s arms throughout, and the doctor made no move to mention it. It was not until late into the fourth week that Sardus asked about the child.
In the days that followed, the doctor unfolded the story of the miraculous infant, and gave the foundling at last to the shabby recluse to hold.
The moment that Sardus peered into the bundle and beheld the beauty of the child’s face, felt her tiny body, warm and coddled in his own thin limbs, both he and the doctor could see, it seemed, the light of Truth begin to shine, stretching its hand a little further into the bramble of their mystification.
The man who had once been the proud leader of the Ukulites handed the girl-child back to the doctor, and, leading him through the kitchen to the front door, said with solemn intonation: ‘Doctor Morrow, I must ask you to bring neither the child nor yourself to my household for one full week. Promise me that. Come Tuesday next, at the usual time, and bring the little girl with you. I will be ready, then, to receive you both.’
In the week that followed, Sardus slaved within his house. With the aid of some of the womenfolk he swept the floors clean of trash, scrubbed the kitchen tiles and skirting boards, and all the ledges and mantles. Assisted by the brothers Holfe, he scraped and painted the walls, inside and out, while his new neighbour Jude Bracken repaired the porch and replaced the broken stove-pipe. He polished up the brass on the beds. He washed the windows and hung new blinds.
As news travelled through the valley that Sardus Swift was to take the blessed infant as his own, donations from his brethren came flooding in. New sheets and blankets; tables and chairs; light-shades, toys and books; foodstuffs; ornaments and vases; an old pianola that had belonged to the late Elisa Snow; clothing by the boxful, including three handmade cotton smocks.
The smocks had been made by Edith Lamb, whose hooded vision was so impaired that she could not leave her house across Maine to deliver her labour of faith, but was forced to send another with the gifts.
By Tuesday, the house was again a home. And just as it shone glorious from its reparation, so too it was a new and grinning Sardus who met his two guests at the door.
And so the little girl found a bright new home.
THE LAMENTATIONS OF EUCHRID THE MUTE, No. I
These bottoms, this humid heart, this unearthly sod that claims me now is the same grim ground into which the kernel of mah youth did split and shoot, and out of which black tillage the twisted stalk of mah manhood groped – all blind and white and hairless.
It was here, in this dark part, that ah built mah refuge, far from the shadow of the hand of man, here on this wheel of umbrage, at whose boundary the righteous hammers of all of them did hesitate. All of them who lived to hurt me.
The measure of mah youth – mah springtime – ah would divide between this murky inner sanctum and its cruel merciless exterior, where the snares of mah enemy lay everyplace. The grinning jaws of ignorance and prejudice were parted and ah was their unhappy prey. For they lay in wait at home and in the town, in the infields and the outfields. Be it at night or in the daytime, the one consistent thing through mah green and growing years was the snap of the trap and the snare.
Ah was deemed unworthy of the organ of lament. Ah am not one to bemoan mah lot. But even Christ himself was moved to loosen the tongues of His wounds. But hear this, now at mah deathtime, hear this, in the course of mah own crucifixion, ah challenge you all – mah cynics, sceptics and downright disbelievers – to roll up your sleeves and thrust your hands into this sack of injury.
When ah was about fourteen and the first crop of cane after the rain was about head-height, three boys – cane-workers, themselves only a handful of years mah senior – forced me at machete point to strip naked, whereupon they knocked me to the ground and set about kicking me to the brink of death. Ah was spun on to mah belly, mah hands were bound, and, to the rousing count of his cretinous brothers, the lean pimply one who wielded the machete dropped to his knees and buggered me. Ah went unner, blacked out, and when ah awoke ah could smell the piss all over me. Another thrashing weight crushed me now – the big one ah guessed – and ah could hear him hot at mah ear going, ‘God ain’t listening to ya, punk. Ain’t no sense in calling on God.’ It took me a second or two to realize that at some point they had stuffed a sock in mah mouth and gagged me. Even then that struck me as strange.