“You know what I bet?” Walker said. “I bet it’s a sign from God.” He went to the shelter where they had lain and sorted through their clothes. There was not a garment unsoiled with Lu Anne’s blood. “God’s telling us we’re really fucked up.”
Lu Anne watched the rainbow fade and wept.
“What now?” Walker demanded. “More signs and wonders?” He held up his bloody trousers for examination. “I might as well put them on,” he said. “They must be better than nothing.”
“Gordon,” Lu Anne said.
Walker paused in the act of putting on his trousers and straightened up. “Yes, my love?”
She came over and put her arms around him and leaned her face against his shoulder.
“I know it must all mean something, Gordon, because it hurts so much.”
Walker smoothed her matted hair.
“That’s not true,” he told her. “It’s illogical.”
“Gordon, I think there’s a mercy. I think there must be.”
“Well,” Walker said, “maybe you’re right.” He let her go and began pulling on his trousers. “Who knows?”
“Don’t humor me,” Lu Anne insisted. “Do you believe or not?”
“I suppose if you don’t like my answer I’ll get hit with a rock.”
She balanced on tiptoe, jigging impatiently. “Please say, Gordon.”
Walker buckled his belt.
“Mercy? In a pig’s asshole.”
“Oh dear,” Lu Anne said. She walked away from him toward a rock against which he had left the whiskey and helped herself to a drink. When she had finished drinking, she froze with the bottle upraised, staring into the distance.
“Did you mention a pig’s asshole?” she asked him. “Because I think I see one at this very moment. In fact, I see several.”
Walker went and stood beside her. On a lower slope, great evil-tusked half-wild pigs were clustered under a live oak, rooting for oak balls. A barrel-size hog looked up at them briefly, then returned to its foraging.
“Isn’t that strange, Gordon? I mean, you had just mentioned a pig’s asshole and at that very moment I happened to look in that direction and there were all those old razorbacks. Isn’t that remarkable?”
Walker had been following her with her faded bloodstained army shirt. “It’s a miracle,” he said. He hung the shirt around her shoulders and took hold of one of her arms. “The Gadarene Swine.”
Dull-eyed, she began walking down the hill. Walker started after her. She tripped and got to her feet again. He followed faster, waving the shirt.
“Lu Anne,” he shouted, “those animals are dangerous.”
She stopped and let him come abreast of her. When he moved to cover her with her shirt, she turned on him, fists clenched.
“Who do you think it was,” she screamed, “that breathed in the graveyard? Who was bound in the tomb?”
Walker stayed where he was, watching her, ready to jump.
“You don’t think that filthy tomb person with the shit for eyes, you don’t think he saw who I was? Answer me,” she screamed. “Answer me! Answer me, Walker, goddamn it!”
Walker only stared at her.
She threw her head back and howled, waving her fists in the air.
“For God’s sake, Lu Anne.”
“Talk to me about Gadarene Swine? Who do you think it was, bound in fetters and chains? Where do you think I came by these?” She pointed around her, at things invisible to him. “Don’t you torment me! Torment me not, Walker!”
“C’mon,” he said. “I was joking.”
Her lip rolled back in a snarl. He looked away. She turned her back on him and went to a place beside the house where the mud was deep and there was a pile of seed husks, head high.
“Jesus,” she cried, “Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.”
“Amen,” Walker said.
She clasped her hands and looked at the last wisps of rainbow. “I adjure thee, Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee. Torment me not.” She buried her face and hands in the pile of chaff. After a moment, she got up and went up to Walker. She seemed restored in some measure and he was not afraid of her.
“You’re a child of God, Walker,” she said. “Same as me.”
“Of course,” Walker said.
“That’s right,” Lu Anne said. “Isn’t it right?”
“Yes,” Walker said. “Right.”
“But you can’t take the unclean spirit out of a woman, can you, brother?”
She touched his lips with her fingertips, then brought her hand down, put it on his shoulder and looked at the sky. “Ah, Christ,” she said, “it’s dreadful. It’s dreadful we have spirits and can’t keep them clean.”
“Well,” Walker said. “You’re right there.”
“No one can take it out. Man, I have watched and I have prayed. And I’ve had help, Walker.”
“Yes,” Walker said. “I know.”
“If you don’t believe me,” Lu Anne said. “Just ask me my name.”
“What’s your name, Lu Anne?”
“My name is Legion,” she said. “For we are many.”
For a minute or so she let him hold her.
“Is it all right now?” he asked.
“It’s not all right,” she said. “But the worst is over.”
He was delighted with the reasonableness of her answer. He went to get himself a drink. When he returned Lu Anne was lying in the stack of seed husks.
“Well,” he said, “that looks comfortable.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “very comfortable.”
He lay down beside her in the warm sun and buried his arms in the seeds.
“Downright primal.”
“Primal is right,” Lu Anne said. She laughed at him and shook her head. “You don’t know what this pile is, do you? Because you’re a city boy.”
She sat in the pile, sweeping aside the seed husks with a rowing motion until the manure it covered was exposed and she sat naked in a mix of mud and droppings, swarming with tiny pale creatures that fled the light.
“There it is,” she told Walker. “The pigshit at the end of the rainbow. Didn’t you always know it was there?”
“You’ll get an infection,” Walker said. He was astonished at what Lu Anne had revealed to him. “You’re cut.”
“Out here waiting to be claimed, Gordon. Ain’t it mystical? How about a drink, man?”
When he bent to offer her the bottle she pulled him down into the pile beside her.
“I had a feeling you’d do that,” he said. “I thought …”
“Stop explaining,” Lu Anne told him. “Just shut up and groove on your pigshit. You earned it.”
“I guess it must work something like an orgone box,” Walker suggested.
“Walker,” Lu Anne said, “when will it cease, the incessant din of your goddamn speculation? Will only death suffice to shut your cottonpicking mouth?”
“Sorry,” Walker said.
“Merciful heavens! Show the man a pile of shit and he’ll tell you how it works.” She made a wad of mud and pig manure and threw it in his face. “There, baby. There’s your orgone. Have an orgoneism.”
She watched Walker attempt to brush the manure from his eyes.
“Wasn’t that therapeutic?” she asked. “Now you get the blessing.” She reached out and rubbed the stuff on his forehead in the form of a cross. “In the name of pigshit and pigshit and pigshit. Amen. Let us reflect in this holy season on the transience of being and all the stuff we done wrong. Let’s have Brother Walker here give us only a tiny sampling of the countless words at his command to tell us how we’re doing.”
“Not well,” Walker said.
“Yeah, we are,” Lu Anne told him. “We’re going with the flow. This is where the flow goes.”
“I wondered.”
“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, “well, now you know.”
“I suppose anything would be better than this,” Walker said, but he was not so sure. He had come chasing enchantments. After all, he supposed, he would as soon be blessed in pigshit by Lu Anne as in holy water by some sane woman’s hand.