So entranced were they by the fires sweeping the fields, none of the townsfolk noticed Euchrid, dressed in a filthy over-sized naval jacket, sickle slung through his belt, as he hobbled down Maine. His eyes shivered and his sick, cachectic complexion was smeared in muck and blood. Hanks of greasy hair stuck to his face. Both hands were swathed in dirty gauze wraps. As he walked he hunched over nervously, peering through his hair, suspicious of everything – of every sound, every shadow, as he scrambled along the roadside ditch behind the clusters of children watching the burning fields.
God put blinkers on them. He did. He blinded them to mah progress – or rather we blinded them, such was the pure force of mah determination, the sheer power of my intention. Yes, and ah strode down that road.
He passed under the city limits sign, crawling along the roadside ditch as it grew shallower, arriving at last at the gas station. The streets were nearly completely empty. The womenfolk who usually filled them around this time were busily preparing for the banquet, either cooking in their kitchens or helping set up the Town Hall, where everyone would eat before spilling into Memorial Square for the singing and dancing and fireworks.
Euchrid slipped up the bank and squatted between two petrol pumps. He surveyed the street before him, and finding it empty he crossed and disappeared into a wedge of shadow, coffin-shaped, thrown by the hedgerow. Every six or so feet a picket broke up the hedgerow making a small gap in the shadow so that the blocks of shade gave the impression of many coffins, lids open, arranged end to end, all down one side of Maine. And Euchrid hopped from one to the other, casket to casket, like an illusionist involved in a macabre folly of deception.
The wind was forcing all the smoke from Hell down over the town and the visibility was a touch on the caliginous side as you might well imagine – yes? – well, anyway, the more ah ventured into town the more caliginous it became. Ah mean it was nothing compared to the great all-engulfing fogs that would come rolling over the sides of the valley in the winter months, but even so, the very nature of the air now had the power to transform the ordinary, the commonplace, into something else altogether – something queer, unearthly, eerie, ah found. Everything was a little dim, a little obscure, and this was at once a bain and a blessing, for whereas they couldn’t see me, ah couldn’t see them all that clearly either.
Still, ah crept along, doing mah best to maintain mah confidence – to ignore the tricks’ of the air, of the light, of the shade, of the smoke, of mah eyes, of mah ears, of mah nose, of mah mind, of mah mind and of mah mind.
Clutched shadows made suggestive humping motions behind things, but faded from sight before ah could disentangle their thrusting forms. Ah saw a glistening arm gripping a machete covered in blood and flies appear from a belch of smoke. Ah ducked, but it was gone. Ah heard the whistle of a blade slashing dim air, and ah thought ah felt the same air fanning mah cheek. Ah heard the hum of flies, coming, converging, growing. Ah crept on, keeping low. Ah passed an ancient cast-iron horse trough full of scummy water. Ah parted the skin of slime with the tips of mah fingers and peered in. At the reflection. Mah head appeared like it was being ambushed by tiny black flies. Mah face, mah hair, mah head, mah eyes, mah mouth, mah mind, all infested by tiny black flies, and then the water was disturbed by a very fast silver fish on the rise. For some reason, ah recalled the time ah found the corpse of a skinned puppy on our junk-pile – its four little paws had been tied together with copper wire – ah was six years old. Ah scrambled over the steps of the Town Hall undetected. Ah could hear the women nattering as they worked. ‘They sound like flies,’ ah thought, ‘and ah guess that’s what they are.’ Ah crawled unner the hedgerow that formed a fence around Memorial Square.
Ah peered through to the other side, surveying the grounds, the monument, the playground, but there was no one there, no one there at all. And ah guess ah drifted off for a bit, as ah waited there, unner the hedgerow.
Beth entered the Memorial Gardens by the wrought-iron gate, opening and closing it behind her like she was entering a fast marble hall, and she gazed up at the smoke-filled sky with a kind of awestruck intensity, as though it were a fabulous ceiling that stretched above her. As she made her way across the Square birds twittered nervously, but to Beth’s ears the sounds came rather as songs of confirmation, fortifying her belief that this day, above all others, would hold the key of understanding, and that the thousand baffling questions that HE alone could resolve would be answered. For Beth, everything about her – the sun, the flowers, the trees, the wind, the birds – all seemed to augment this belief, that on this day HE WOULD COME – to make her see, yes, and make her know.
For how long had Beth been subjected to endless, convoluted explanations of her ‘divine pendency’, of her ‘preparation’, of her ‘numinous destiny’? How often had she heard the women speak in low voices of ‘the tokens of virginity’ or ‘the odour of sanctity'? – words that loomed monstrously in her mind, that took bestial forms and haunted her sleep.
Now, sitting on the monument steps, dressed in a gleaming white cotton smock, a chaplet of pale violets woven through her curls, with the great marble angel, girded and male, hovering over her like a thought, Beth appeared dwarfed by her own grandiose imaginings. She clutched to her breast a crude cross made from two broken wood slats and she murmured a song beneath her breath.
It was late afternoon and the townsfolk had already begun to break bread in the Town Hall, and Beth knew that her time alone in the Square was limited, and that soon the people, having eaten their fill, would be spilling from the Hall into the Square to continue the night’s festivities.
But Beth waited patiently, there upon the steps, content in the belief that He would come.
And on the other side of the gardens, down by the Town Hall, under the hedgerow, Euchrid lay upon his back with his eyes rolled back in his head. The collar of his naval jacket was meshed in spittle strings and his tongue hung from his mouth coated in red dust.
Ah woke to a child singing and scrambled to mah feet. Ah felt weird standing there. Ah felt – ah felt strong. Yes. Ah felt full of – of motive. Motive. Yes! Ah felt strong and very fucking full of motive. Ready to go. Ready to move. Ready to rip. Yes. Ready to rip.
And ah removed mah boots and slid them unner the hedgerow.
‘There is a sleepy river I know
Down that sleep river we go.’
Beth grew silent. She squeezed the wooden cross to her breast and closed her eyes and she sat, just so, on the monument steps, head inclined slightly as if listening for something.
A full minute passed.
And then she drew a short breath and, trembling, smiled.
Shoeless, ah crossed the Square to the monument. Beth had fallen asleep it seemed and ah congratulated mahself on such a stroke of luck as ah mounted the four stone steps on the other side of the great marble angel and unslung mah sickle. Ah sidled around the statue until ah stood behind her, towering over her.
Ah raised mah sickle high into the air, tightening mah fist around the handle.
At last Beth opened her eyes and the smile was in them too, but there was something else in those green eyes, something akin to wonderment, expectant and reverential. And with her thin fingers clasped around the rough little cross, the child turned, arching backwards, and as she did so a billow of purple smoke rolled down from the fields and engulfed the tableau of flesh and stone.