Editor's Note: We want any short fiction that looks at religion, by itself or in its relation to literature, from an interesting or unexpected perspective. Included in this can be that great American invention of the stand-alone-short-story, or excerpts from longer prose pieces, be they novels, or graphic novels, provided said piece is still comprehensible in isolation from the rest of its prose brethren. Some short story authors who dappled in religious themes who we like include Flannery O'Connor (of course), Jorge Borges, Joyce Carol Oates, all of the Great Old Americans (Poe, Hawthorne, Melville), all of the Great Old Russians (Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy), I.B Singer,Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Nietzche, Kierkegaard, Salman Rushdie, Orhan Pamuk, etc. etc. etc.
If you have ears to hear me, I can tell you about Siku. His story will make no sense to you unless you know about the boy’s people, the Huichol. You have never heard of the Huichol, and this is good. We do not attract attention, except in a few sad cases, like Siku’s. This is who we are:
A long time ago there were two kinds of people in the world: human people and animal people, who could change form at will from animal to human. The animal people were getting numerous, and they were bad. Finally, Nakawe, the goddess of all living things, grew tired of these selfish beasts. She made rain that washed away the old world and all the animal people with it. One pure-hearted boy, Watakame, she saved from the deluge.
When the new world was made, Watakame started a new race of people, the Huichol. And he became the first shaman, giving thanks to the gods for all we have. We have everything that matters: corn and squash, fresh water and sheep, and mostly, our god houses, where the shamans still talk with our gods, who give us all these good things. Our shamans have always known how to make the nierika, which to you looks only like some bright circles of yarn. But it is the most powerful thing in the world; it is a window to another world. Through it we look at the gods and the gods look back at us. We do not understand how people can live without looking at the gods.
Long ago, there lived a Huichol named Ayika, who was blessed by the gods with a strong body that made the life of a farmer easy upon him. When he came of age, he took a wife, Rawa, with wide hips and a laugh like water on rocks.
Before Siku, Rawa had three children. After Siku, she had two more. All were strong and beautiful. Siku alone was born with only one leg. He must have looked ordinary in all other respects, because every story describes him simply as “the boy with the magical leg.” There is nothing else.
From the start, the magical leg made people unquiet inside. Rawa’s mother said that it was a sign Rawa and Ayika had done something in their home to displease the gods. That they must have forgotten to bring their offerings to the god house when they realized that Rawa was carrying. But none of this was true.
Rawa and Ayika gave thanks to the gods in all things. They sprinkled water and corn outside the gods’ house when they knew that Rawa was having another child, and they taught their children the praise songs as soon as they were old enough to form words.
When Ayika first saw Siku, he also doubted the gods’ favor. Rawa held the child to her breast and beamed at him as if he were perfect.
“How can this be?” Ayika asked.
Rawa looked up at him, as happy as she had ever been, and said, “This is a great sign. The gods have kept a part of our son for themselves. They must love him very much.”
Ayika saw the truth in this and went straight to the gods’ house with a pitcher of beer and seven unblemished squash.
“I give this offering to Nakawe, goddess of all living things, and all her brother and sister gods. Rawa and I thank you for the gift of our special son. As you take care of his magical leg, we will care for the rest of him.”
Ayika returned to his home and began to make a god’s eye to watch over Siku as Rawa held the child close and explained to him his great fortune. It is the duty of every Huichol father to make a god’s eye for each of his children. You have probably seen the god’s eye; it is another thing that the Spaniards took and heaped their ignorance upon. This is the truth about the god’s eye: We find two sticks, straight and strong, and we cross one over the other and bind them so. Then we take our bright wool and weave through the sticks, from the center out. A different color every year for the first five years of the child’s life. And so the gods watch over the child through the god’s eye and send their blessings. The Huichol do this even now.
The boy was troubled, as is often the case when the gods mark a child. In his dreams, Siku was a sheep. He liked the sound of the flock running through its own dust, like rain on stones. His coat was tallow; his ears, flea-bitten. Carried along by the force of his brother sheep, he moved toward green grass and sweet water.
A rank wind would blow into his dream world, night after night. None of the other sheep seemed to notice as they grazed and scratched. Without even realizing he was wandering away, Siku would become separated.
When a man is cut off from his people, he can die of loneliness. I have seen it. Some men, however, can leave everything they know and gain great power. A sheep away from the flock is always less than nothing because the flock is one body, moving with one purpose. A sheep alone has no body, no purpose. Being lost in these dreams terrified Siku so that he cried out and awoke covered in sweat, shaking.
The shaman tried for years to make the dream leave Siku, but could not succeed. Finally, when Siku was six-years-old, the shaman saw the end of the dream, which poor Siku had never slept through to see: Each time the sheep Siku wandered off, the shepherd would come with his broad smile and bring him home. The shepherd was kind, as I hope we all are to our animals, and knew each sheep by name. He called Siku Smoke, because he was so difficult to contain. In storms, the shepherd would take the sheep to high country so they would not drown in the valleys. When the sky screamed, he would sing to them and tell them old stories about far worse storms that our people had survived.
Once Siku knew all his dream, he did not wake until its happy conclusion. Each morning, for as long as his mother had the joy of waking him, he was refreshed and smiling.
Rawa loved her son fiercely. This love would one day drive Rawa to walk alone into the desert without water or even a rag for her head. Her husband pleaded with her to come home, but she would not. Four times, he beat her and carried her bruised and bleeding body back to us to be healed. Eventually he gave up trying to save her. Some of our people found her bones and tried to carry them back. The bones turned to sand when they touched them, which meant that no part of Rawa was willing to return to the place where her heart had been broken.
The Spanish, as I said, left us alone for the most part. But sometimes their shamans would come to us to tell us about their god. At first we were friends, because we liked their stories. But they did not like ours. They told us that it was evil to make sacrifices at the god house. They said that their god was the only god. Our shaman knew that they were tricking us, because they also worshipped gold. Who knows how many gods they really had?
There was one Spanish shaman in particular who would come to our village to make an argument for his god. We thought that Padre Jose Maria was a harmless fool and let him come and eat our tortilla and prattle on. This was a mistake.
Siku was 12 years old when Padre Jose Maria started coming to our village. One day, Siku was sitting outside Kaman’s house, as he was Kaman’s apprentice. Kaman made beautiful yarn paintings that told our stories in colors so bright that they delighted the gods themselves. Kaman’s eyes were growing dim and yellow, but his hands still had the skill. And Kaman was eager to give the skill to Siku, who had bright young eyes and a strong mind. The boy was sometimes clumsy because he wanted to go too fast. This is the way with everyone when they first learn an art. Kaman was not discouraged, especially since Siku was so keen to learn. Whenever Kaman told him the secrets of the art, Siku would fold his hands in his lap and close his eyes. He did nothing at all but listen, so Kaman knew that he would be great.
“Christ have mercy!” Padre Jose Maria had declared when he saw the boy.
Siku looked with wide eyes at the man speaking the strange tongue.
Then the Spanish shaman spoke in our words, as well as he could. “What happened to you, my son?” he asked Siku.
Siku just stared.
“Is he deaf?” the shaman asked Kaman.
“No, he hears very well,” answered the old man. “He does not understand the question. Nor do I.”
“The boy has lost a leg!”
Kaman and Siku laughed at this. “We mean no disrespect,” Kaman explained. “It’s just that he has not ‘lost’ anything. The gods loved this boy so that they kept a part of him when he came from his mother’s womb. It is a great blessing, this magical leg.”
Siku looked down modestly. He knew that he had done nothing to earn this blessing and so sought never to brag about it.
“I can see about getting the boy a wooden leg, so that he can walk,” said Padre Jose Maria.
Siku cringed. There were times, to be sure, when he wished he could run with the other boys through the corn. But he never forgot that he was special among every child in the village, perhaps all villages. He thanked the gods every day for his magical leg. If they take away my magic, Siku wondered, will the gods still talk to me?
The boy had a vision of himself as half man and half tree with green brambles for hair, a monster. He opened his mouth to tell the white shaman to go back to his own people.
But Kaman spoke before Siku. “You must talk to his parents about that,” the old man said.
When the Spanish shaman found Ayika, he was sitting with Rawa, Niya, his second wife, and the older children. They were drinking cool water after a long day of harvesting. Kita, Rawa’s first daughter was singing in her beautiful voice and all the family was happy.
“Are you the father of the one-legged boy?” asked the shaman.
“Yes,” said Ayika, “he is my son and my joy.”
The shaman smiled, encouraged. “I think our Spanish doctors may be able to help your son.”
“Siku is not sick,” Ayika answered.
“But he is a cripple. We could fashion him a leg out of wood. This would allow him to walk, to do the work of a man. If he could come back to the mission with me, for maybe a month…”
Rawa spit on the ground, which made her family laugh.
“You cannot ask this,” Ayika said. “We know Huichol who have gone to the mission. Your shamans teach them to ignore our gods. My family honors the gods in all things. And the gods have rewarded us with Siku and his magical leg. We will not question their blessings.”
“But what will become of your son?”
Niya, who doted on Siku as on her own babies, asked, “What will become of the moon?”
The white shaman looked at Niya as if she were something buzzing around his head on a hot day.
“The moon? The moon is no concern of mine,” he said.
Rawa nodded her head and began to sing a song of praise.
Ayika laughed. “With such strong mothers, can you doubt that Siku will have a fine place in the world?”
“Mothers?”
“Yes, Rawa and Niya are Siku’s mothers.”
At this Padre Jose Maria made a face, as if he had just drunk bad beer, and left without a word.
That night, Siku was visited by strange dreams. He was inside of one of Kaman’s yarn paintings. The colors were so bright that he had to close his eyes. Even with his eyes closed, he could still see them. He wanted to gather the colors up with his hands. They were so beautiful, they belonged in the god house. But the colors ran through his fingers like finely ground corn.
For six nights Siku had this same wonderful and frightening dream. On the seventh morning, Padre Jose Maria rode into the village with six soldiers. Kaman, who was the oldest and most respected man, went out to meet them and said, “We have no gold. But you can have enough of our cloth to dress all your nobles and you may each have a woman. We want peace.”
“I’m here for the one-legged boy,” replied Padre Jose Maria. “Just give us him and we’ll be off.”
Kaman frowned and studied the dirt at his feet.
“Our women are very obedient and make fine servants,” Kaman told them.
But the white shaman did not waiver. He simply said, “The boy.”
By now most of the village had gathered around Kaman. Some were shouting at him to give up Siku. Others warned that it would make the gods angry to give the special boy to the white men.
“No, no, I beg you,” screamed Rawa as Niya cradled her sister in her arms.
One of the soldiers, a man with a red beard and eyes like a snake, fired his gun in the air. This was enough to convince Kaman, who walked up to Ayika and said, “Perhaps the gods gave him to you for this moment. To bring peace to the village.”
Ayika said nothing, but would not release his grip on his son’s shoulder. Finally, the Spaniard with the red beard got down off his horse and hit Ayika with the butt of his gun. Ayika was knocked backwards, and the soldier grabbed the boy.
“You pig!” screamed Niya. She and Rawa, as one, clung to the hem of his coat. Ayika ran to defend his wives while other soldiers jumped down from their horses. Some Huichol ran to their houses to hide; others, to find the long knives we use to cut the corn. The white shaman pleaded, in bits of his own language and ours, for the fighting to stop. In all, it was maybe 10 minutes before the soldiers and their shaman got back on their horses and rode off with Siku. And in that short time, the ground was soaked with blood, mostly ours. The spot is still there, if you have eyes to see it.
“We must do the thing that terrifies us most.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
I was dressed up like an Italian, with gold chains around my neck. Sweat poured from under my black wig as I pushed my way through the crowd. I shouted up at the French paratrooper. “European national!” I said, holding aloft my new EU passport. The gate of the embassy opened and I ran for the waiting helicopter.
We in the West take so much for granted - elected governments, honest police forces, functioning capital markets, pornography on demand. These are benefits of our civilization.
However, I believe it is the duty of us fortunate people to bring prosperity and democracy to the darker corners of the world. And I also believe in seeking out personal challenges, as evidenced by the above quote.
Which is why I was in the Republic of G——. I don’t spell out the name of this country for reasons that will be clear later in this narrative.
I had spent the past year in Hiltons and Hyatts from Akron to Long Beach, empowering audiences to heedlessly seize their dreams with my “Don’t Mess Up My Block” concept. Several articles had already been written about my idea and the response in the blogosphere had been very favorable. I started the tour lecturing to middle school business clubs and concluded by giving a presentation to more than a hundred passport clerks at the State Department.
After the applause died down in the Condoleeza Rice Auditorium, the director of the West Africa desk approached me with an interesting proposal. Would I be interested in applying my practicums of self-improvement in the Republic of G—?
I initially declined his offer. The Republic of G— is infamous, even by degraded African standards, for its corruption, state-sponsored violence and swarms of biting gnats. And for its “intractable civil war”. That was the phrase that was used more than any other in press accounts of this unfortunate sliver of a country.
Besides, I was making a comfortable living with my “Don’t Mess Up My Block” presentation. Based upon a late-night encounter with a hooker who told me to get lost, the root of my self-actualizing speech was to be loyal to your blind ambition, whatever the costs.
As I advised audiences to clear the deadwood (kids, family) out of their lives to achieve success, my speaker fee steadily climbed and was approaching the five-figure sum enjoyed by my mentor, Esalen.
Esalen was also my life coach at this time. I talked to him weekly, as we reviewed my goals and activities. Esalen took a keen interest in my life, especially when it came to my speaker fees.
“Soon, you and I will be on the same level!” I laughingly told him.
“You should take the State Department job,” Esalen responded.
I was silent, imagining my violent death in a green jungle at the edge of the equator.
“You should take it because it’s dangerous,” Esalen said, as if sensing my discomfort. “If you come back alive, you will be fearless. And if you don't, well, lesson learned.”
We discussed the matter into the night, over the phone. Esalen was ensconced in the Four Seasons San Francisco while I lounged comfortably on the 800-count sheets of the Four Seasons Washington. My trajectory had taken me, in just a few short months, to the exalted level of inspirational speakers that Esalen occupied. My mentor believed that I needed a new challenge, something that would really stretch me. The fear of my execution at the hand of Maoist guerillas was a legitimate concern, for they had recently put to death a whole busload of bird-watchers from Nebraska, on perhaps the most ill-planned expedition ever mounted by the American Aviary Society.
“You’ve become too comfortable,” Esalen said. “You need to stretch.”
After several hours of argument, Esalen convinced me. I would go to Africa, because I could get killed. It was the type of challenge that I needed. Esalen seemed relieved that I was going to a war zone.
The next morning, I called the State Department. My contact was delighted. They had money they needed to “move” as he called it, before the end of the fiscal year. I would start immediately.
The next day, I was on a plane to Africa. After landing on a pockmarked runway, I was taken to the Presidential Palace. Lions roamed the grounds of the immense estate.
Columns of smoke lined the horizon, from villages that the guerillas were “purifying” of capitalism.
The Ruler, as he was referred to, listened to my presentation politely, almost docilely. This was a man who came to power in an early-morning putsch a couple years earlier. The elected President had been rousted from his bed and shot at poolside by The Ruler himself. At the time, he was known as Captain Mobumbo. Not one to delegate, he liked to handle matters personally. After his ascension to power, he beat the guerillas back to their highland bases. His methods were extreme, but successful. With his hands-on management style and disregard for the “rules” (like human rights), I likened him to a jungle Steve Jobs. He would be at home in any corporate boardroom in America.
Now, however, he needed help. The Western powers had cut off the line of credit he used to buy Kalashnikovs from the Ukraine. His methods had been a little too extreme. Amnesty International had discovered mass graves and assumed the worst. Anyone could’ve put those bodies there.
Without access to new weapons, The Ruler had lost his way. He was tentative, unsure, and the guerillas had crept out of the mountains and fought their way almost the length of the entire country, until they were nearly to the Presidential Palace itself. In the capitol, democracy blossomed, and with it came a swarm of critics biting at the ankles of The Ruler, like the fabled gnats of this swamp-laced land.
Where the people once saw blood and terror in his eyes, now they sensed weakness and confusion.
The man I saw wasn’t the stern-faced executioner of yore. He fiddled with prayer beads as I began my presentation. I told him about my encounter with a prostitute. "After I said I wasn't interested, she told me to get off of her block," I explained. "I was getting in the way of her success. I was messing up her block!"
The Ruler shared a laugh in his native tongue with his AK-carrying guards. As I outlined with him the idea that reaching your potential requires removing people from your block, his visage became serious. He leaned forward, as if hearing a good folk tale. I warmed to the task and smote the air with one hand.
“You must clear your block!” I shouted, willing the man into action.
The Ruler burst into applause, a smile spreading across his face.
“Marvelous! Simply marvelous!” he said. He then grew serious. He took me by the hand, squeezing it with just a hint of his legendary strength. “This is what the State Department wants?” he asked. His blood-red eyes stared into mine.
“Yes.” I believe in the practice of responding confidently to any question, even if you’re unsure about the answer. Doing so establishes your authority.
Did the State Department really want The Ruler to implement my ideas? It seemed like they did. The contract for services was unclear, with vague words like “education” and “outreach” scattered throughout its dozen pages. If State didn’t want “Don’t Mess Up My Block” adapted to G—- then why send me to the country?
If I was more adept at the murky world of diplomacy, I would’ve asked more questions. However, I was from the land of business consulting, where success is measured by speaking fees and muted applause in conference rooms.
The Ruler leaned forward. “The message is understood.” His eyes now blazed with newfound confidence. He strode out martially.
I returned to my room, lulled to sleep by the roar of lions, confident that I had earned every penny of my $25,000 renumeration.
The arrests began the next day. I saw it on BBC, shortly before The Ruler kicked the network out of the country. It was a wholesale roundup of his enemies. He called it, “Operation Don’t Mess Up My Block.”
My contact at State was furious. The Ruler apparently claimed that I, and, in extension, the U.S. government, had authorized this crackdown. The Ruler had explained to State that those arrested we’re messing up his block.
“This was just a public education grant!” my contact fumed. “You were just supposed to give a presentation on management techniques!”
“He asked for advice and I gave it to him.”
My contact made a guttural sound of anger and frustration. “I just had some money left in the budget that I had to spend! And now all of West Africa is destabilized.”
“Maybe,” I said, thinking quickly. “Maybe, West Africa needed to be destabilized, like a company needs a reorganization.”
The phone line cut off. The Ruler had shut down access to the outside world.
There was a knock at the door. The Ruler needed me.
“Thank you for your excellent counsel,” he said, resplendent in his uniform of tiger skins and peacock feathers. He occupied his throne as if he was immortal. “My enemies are now in jail. They were block messers. But, now, the opposition say that I mess up their block by putting their leaders in jail. They have called for a general strike. What do I do?”
I was improvising, when I am best. “There are unresolved pressures in your political system. They must be allowed to come out into the open, so that a solution can be arrived at.”
The general strike began and, within days, the country had run out of gasoline and food. The people were hungry and restive. The Ruler had shot all the leaders of the opposition so there was nobody to negotiate with. The streets devolved into running gun battles between soldiers and the opposition. Both sides were running out of food and ammunition. Meanwhile, the fires of the Maoist guerillas kept inching closer to the capitol.
A C-130 landed in the middle of the night and evacuated all Americans in the country. However, in an apparent oversight, I was not informed.
On a borrowed satellite phone, I got through to my contact at State. “Sorry about that,” he said. “We just forgot.”
“Can you get me out?” I asked. The boom of mortars was getting closer.
“Ask the French.” The line went dead.
The Ruler summoned me. He was feeding whole chickens to his lions. He held a bird aloft by its neck.
“This is the last chicken,” he told me. “No more chickens left for the lions. No beans left for the soldiers, either.”
We watched the lions fights over the chicken carcass, guarded by restive soldiers with machine guns.
“Hungry soldiers aren’t loyal,” he observed.
I proposed doing a listening session with the palace troops. I would facilitate and record their perspectives.
“I just need some whiteboards and markers.”
The Ruler considered the offer. “That will buy me some time,” he said.
The next day, I went down to the barracks. I had not been provided a whiteboard or a laser pointer or slides or even a laptop. The soldiers didn’t understand the point of the exercise. They remained in their bunks as I explained that I was to facilitate a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of employment with The Ruler.
“Now, what is constructive feedback?” I began.
Suddenly, there was a roar from the airstrip. A DC-9 lifted up into the sky. On it was The Ruler and the country’s gold reserves.
The soldiers rushed outside and mindlessly fired their AKs at the departing aircraft. My situation no longer seemed tenable. The Ruler was en route to the south of France. I needed an exit strategy. Before the soldiers could return and vent their rage on me, I caught a car to the city.
The Charles de Gaulle, a rusty French aircraft carrier, loitered offshore, ready to evacuate European nationals. Vive le France, I thought. I knew that I had to think positively if I was to survive.
In the capitol, no bullets were left. The soldiers and the opposition had joined together to loot the city before the guerillas arrived.
How did I manage to get an EU passport? Networking, Third World-style. A taxi driver I bribed knew a local fixer who I bribed who knew a forger who I also bribed to get me an EU passport. The photo in the passport was of someone else, which is what necessitated that I wear a wig and gold chains in order to pass as Marco Lucchese of Palermo, Italy.
The French paratrooper didn’t even look at the large-nosed visage in the passport and compare it to my own more pleasingly symmetrical face. He just saw that I was holding the right-colored document in hand and waved me toward the parking lot where a helicopter was waiting.
As we lifted off, the city in flames beneath us, I reflected on the experience. After a client engagement, I always spend a few quiet minutes processing the encounter, as if I was meditating. What did I learn? What value did I provide? What’s my takeaway from the experience?
The helicopter banked hard to avoid a RPG as the other passengers on the flight screamed. The grenade exploded in a red blast a hundred feet away, nearly shaking us from the sky.
Maybe the Third World wasn’t ready for American-style personal empowerment? As we fled the continent for the safety of a waiting aircraft carrier, it was hard not to make that assessment. Had my ideas failed in Africa? Was “Don’t Mess Up My Block” not an appropriate strategy for a newly developing country?
We were now over blue waters dotted with fishing boats fleeing the chaos of the Republic of G——.
My ideas were sound. The implementation was faulty. The Ruler had applied them incorrectly. By jailing all of his enemies, he had destabilized the country. His enemies weren’t the one who were messing up the block. In fact, it was The Ruler who was standing in the way of his country’s ultimate embrace of democracy and capitalism. Only by getting rid of himself could the country succeed. Despite the chaos and the looting, the Republic of G—- could now progress into a brighter future.
I could see the PowerPoint slides now, as I explained things to the State Department. This would be an important lesson for them to record and understand. Perhaps I would be invited to give a lecture series to Foreign Service Officers around the world.
With my African adventure, I had discovered something important. I had stretched myself, as my mentor Esalen wished, and came away from the experience with a vital lesson. “Don’t Mess Up My Block” was a compelling meme, one that animated the leader of a country to change everything. That was a truth that deserved to be heard beyond just the few people I could reach through my public speaking.
Excitement filled me as the Charles de Gaulle came into view, trailing an oil slick a hundred miles long. My fellow passengers were crying in relief at their deliverance. I, however, had work to do.
The helicopter landed with a hard thump aboard the aircraft carrier. Deck personnel rushed us off the craft, its blades still spinning. The chopper was going back to rescue more Europeans.
I believe in striking while the iron is hot. Inspiration is a fickle mistress.
While the other refugees were calling out their thanks in a polyglot of languages, I grabbed the first sailor I saw.
“Can I get a laptop?” I shouted. “I have a book to write!”
All bu-bu-bu-bubbles disappeared, but no one worried at first—until people started to gain weight uncontrollably. Only then did they realize it was the Law of Nature—when something ceases to exist, other beings have to take over its function. And one function of bubbles was to be very fat and round.
Men and women, young and old, everyone grew fatter and fatter day after day. Pallid balls with limbs couldn't enter their houses through their doors. Concern grew along with obesity, and scientific advances failed to create new bubbles. But there was a glimmer of hope, as humans floated in the wind and in the morning they sparkled when sunlight shined through them.
Then mass hysteria followed, but it lasted only a couple of minutes, when they remembered another function of bubbles was—bang!—to burst suddenly.
UN PAR DE MINUTOS
Se extinguió toda burbuja, ja, ja ja, y al principio nadie en el mundo se preocupó. Hasta que la gente empezó a engordar sin control. Entonces supieron que aquello era La Ley de la Naturaleza: cuando algo deja de existir, otros seres tienen que cumplir con la función de los que ya no están. Y una función de las burbujas era ser redondas y muy gordas.
Hombres y mujeres, niños y ancianas, todos engordaban más y más, día a día. Macilentas pelotas con pies y manos que no cabían por las puertas de sus casas. La preocupación crecía a la par que la obesidad y los avances científicos no lograban crear nuevas burbujas. Pero había algo de esperanza, pues los humanos flotaban con el viento y por las mañanas lanzaban destellos cuando la luz del sol los atravesaba.
Luego hubo mucha histeria, aunque sólo duró un par de minutos, cuando recordaron que otra función de las burbujas era ¡pum!, explotar de pronto.
The Sadistic Wicked Assassin was there, as was the Unholy Mother with Teeth Dripping Venom. The Priest of Terrible Desire carried his Thurible of Spilled Seed. It wasn’t gently smoking, HA! The Lustful Granduncle stuck close to the Thurible of Spilled Seed as the Priest of Terrible Desire flung it hither and yon and chanted his come-ons that used to work.&nb sp; They didn’t work anymore, not for The Lustful Granduncle, but he stuck by anyway, just in case he might feel a rising.
“Ransom me, Handsome,” The Bilious Vile She-Wolf called out.
The Lustful Granduncle shrunk away from her. “Can’t you see I’m on fire?” he said. Women like her were never his type.
“Ransom me,” she said, drawing closer.
“Leave me be,” he shrieked at her. “You scare me.”
“You know you want to ransom me,” she said, her mouth right next to his ear, her words a torch to his brain.
“What do you want with me?” he said. ; “There’s nothing now.”
“RANSOM ME!” she said, in a deep, throaty voice of threat.
“There’s no ransom now,” he said. “If I could ransom you, do you think I’d be here? Ransom was up there. Leave me now.”
In the distraction, he’d lost The Priest of Terrible Desire with his Thurible of Spilled Seed.
“Now look what you’ve done!” he yelled after her, as she went her way, see king a new benefactor. “Now just look!” he said, then he began to cry, drops of thick sulfur. The crying only made things worse. He hated the smell of sulfur. “There’s nothing now," he said again, the thought a new but extraordinary one.
The Minister of Vague and Bloody Conflicts came near, and The Lustful Granduncle called to him, “There’s nothing now.”
The Minister of Vague and Bloody Conflicts raised his Scimitar of Injustice and said, “You will pay for this.”
The Minister of Vague and Bloody Conflicts might have once frightened The Lustful Granduncle, but not anymore, because what could he do? There was no blood, just as there was no spilled seed. There were no words of incitement. There was no war, could be no war, not here. Be cause there was nothing.
The Lustful Granduncle replied, “There’s nothing now.” His tears o f sulfur had dried. “Do you see? You are nothing. You have nothing. There is nothing,” but The Minister of Vague and Bloody Conflicts continued on, unmoved by the revelation.
“Look,” The Lustful Granduncle called after him. “Look!” He had his hand upon what once was his Great Organ of Lechery but now it was an overcooked sausage, unimpressive, and more meaningful, unstirred. “Do you see? It’s nothing now.”
The Lustful Granduncle set about looking for converts to his cause. He called to any who would listen—The Prince of Pomposity, The Gaucho of Greed, The Drunken Earl, The Marquessa of Gluttony, Narcissa the Blasphemer—but none did. They went on their fiery way, taking no notice of the obvious fact of nothingness which they all shared.
“Don’t you see?” he cried out. “If we could find something…something…we could reorganize this place. All it would take is something! Can’t any of us find something? It’s the nothing that burns.”
“Something, something!” he cried, to any he encountered, though there was only nothing. This he did through all eternity.
She was Made from Dirt: An Apokatastasis
Edward Simon, Editor, Thirtieth Bird Review
“Lo, it has been written in many a volume how the World began. And it has been perhaps written in many more how it shall end. It is always the same; there shall be a heavenly chorus and a multitude of angels, a gnashing of teeth and a judgment of sinners. But perhaps that is wrong; perhaps it will all be much more mundane. It could be that the World will end on a dusty Roman street, or in a woman’s bedchamber, or maybe in the back of a dirty tavern.”
Cyprian the Apostate,
“A Dialogue on the Spaces between Letters in this Very Text,”
1387
“Early this mornin’
when you knocked upon my door
Early this morning’, ooh
when you knocked upon my door
And I said, ‘Hello, Satan,’
I believe it’s time to go.”
Robert Johnson
“That isn’t how it happened,” he says again, denying me for the third time, as he takes a slow and meaningful sip of his scotch, the ice diluting it into a soggy apple juice-colored mess. “That isn’t how it happened.”
He isn’t particularly old; though he has a harrowed feel about him, as if he had aged poorly in a few short years of time. He is graying already, just a bit on the top, and his short, blonde hair is starting to hang a bit thin on his scalp.
“It was all propaganda; nobody ever heard my side of the story,” he says, as he tries to sound proud, but just ends up sounding defeated as he pokes himself in his faded and stained blue executive-style shirt that hangs loose on his slight frame.
“Hey bud, why don’t you leave the other customers alone, ok?” The bartender says, a fat man with a walrus mustache who wears his white shirt folded up at the sleeves under a black suede vest. I know that he always has a black suede vest, open except for one button at the top, always.
“No, I don’t mind,” I say, not lying because I actually don’t mind. “Sometimes it is entertaining to hear drunks go on while I am waiting for my flight.”
“Fair enough,” the young bartender says, the curls in his long brown hair bouncing as he trots away to the other end of the bar, smiling and ready to get drinks for two girls who can’t be more then 17 in short tan skirts and tight matching blue tops. I can make out on the younger looking girl one of those fake Chinese character tattoos on the top of one left tanned breast.
“I heard you call me drunk, but you know friend, when you are in love, the whole world is drunk,” the man sitting next to me says. He moves uneasily on his red velvet bar stool, propping himself unsteadily to prevent himself from falling, he uncrosses his khaki legs and carefully moves his broken brown wingtips over themselves so he can clutch onto the bottom of the seat.
“What is your line of work friend?” he says, large, earnest blue eyes looking at me, reflecting my own plain features back.
“I do a little of everything I guess, economics you could say; imports, exports, that sort of thing,” I say.
“I do that sort of thing to. Maybe I am an insurance salesman, though on more of a cosmic scale. I have been trying to quite, but my boss won’t let me. Did you know that I wanted to start a family?” He just asked me something that he should have assumed I couldn’t have possibly known, but which I of course did.
“You don’t say?” I respond, successfully pretending to feign disinterest, looking out the terminal window in the bar at the giant blue and red planes sitting on the tarmac, queuing up and waiting to take off.
“Where are you going to?” he asks, pleadingly almost, tucking a few blonde-gray wisps of hair behind one of his ears.
“Pittsburgh,” I say as I take a last gulp of now lukewarm Iron City.
“Pittsburgh!” He says, as his face lights up a bit. “How funny, I loved a girl who lived in Pittsburgh.” I continue to sit, staring a bit forward, still looking at the planes, and running my hand through the bowl of trail mix instead of actually taking any.
“Do you want to know a secret?” he asks, actually smiling for the first time that I have been talking to him, his slightly yellow teeth, brownish and cigarette stained poking out at me like tombstones.
“What?” I respond, with just a hint of acted hostility. He leans close, balancing himself on the brass end of the mahogany bar, comes towards me, and with breath still reeking of the cheap scotch says;
“I’m the devil.”
“Really?” I say, smiling and arching one brown eyebrow. “Is that what all of that propaganda stuff you were talking about earlier was?”
“Well now that you mention it…” he says, pausing to chew on an amber liquid covered ice cube from his tumbler, “yes.”
“How so?” I ask.
“Milton, Revelations, the Apocryphal book of Enoch;” he let’s the last work he listed drag out into a mock pretentious English accent; “all of it gets it wrong, why I was caste out.”
“I’m a pretty educated guy, I read that stuff, thought it was because you challenged God’s supremacy?” I say.
“ See, that is the big problem, I love God, I love God more then any other being in existence has ever, or could ever love Him. Lucifer was his most perfect creation. And I still love Him, he is my transcendent Father.”
“Then why did you challenge Him?” I say.
“Because He broke my heart, God broke my heart.” He takes another ice cube into his mouth; sucking his cheeks in a little around the cold, clear rock. “See, the Angels, well we were magnificent, we were the celestial chorus singing divine dirges to the cosmic One that was God for all eternity; and all the rest of the grand hyperbolic trite pseudo-biblical language that is needed when wanting to say something about God. But he didn’t endow us with something, imperfection, and without that, well friend, there is no freedom.”
“What is so great about freedom?” I say, always playing devil’s advocate, even to the devil himself. He leans back a little in the stool, still not falling off of it, and he narrows his eyes, and fingers the gray fedora that has been sitting in his lap for the last half hour.
“You are a human. I can’t explain that to you.”
“Humor me,” I say. He leans in close to my ear again, his dusty brown wingtips touching the ugly, stained red carpet of the airport lounge and he moves in more, and with what appears to the uninitiated to be a face without any compassion, he looks at me and says:
“Do you really want to hear this stranger’s story?”
* * *
“To be Satan, to be the dark one, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Lord of Flies and Deception, is the most hellish thing any one can imagine being. For example, prior to coming into this bar I was forced to manifest myself in the passenger seat of a ’58 lime green Chrysler De Sotto, next to some Nevada good ole’ boy, driving erratically down that long, straight, black ribbon of desert highway, tripping out on crystal Meth, wet as I have ever seen a man, with fresh, red blood all over his hands, staining his faded denim, bits of blood congealed on his cheap, imitation Stetson, the side door open, his radio blaring ‘Personal Jesus.’ In the back sear there was a tied up dead platinum blonde prostitute in a sparkly silver dress with one red stiletto half slipped off onto the mud crusted floor, mouth agape and blood staining his dirty, blue fabric seats.
I came to him in the form of ‘Reverend Jim,’ the trusted boyhood authority in the man’s life who had married his mother and tried to steer him on the road to goodness. I come in forms like that, the form you see now is actually still that unfortunate preacher. That is what I do, I am clever, I hate my job but I am still old fashioned enough to take pride in it. So I told him that I could ‘save’ him; that he was safe with me, and then, with my words, I sent that man to hell. You see hell, hell is much worse then you could ever conceive of, it is much worse then I am, and the evil that happens there, well, it boggles even my mind.
And I am in the unhappy position of being the guardian of that place; that cursed, awful place. So now you can see why after I send some poor example of God’s wretched, unloved creations to hell, I feel the need to come in here and unwind a little bit. I find myself working over time in airports for some reason, a lot of temptation when people are away from home, and the Vegas airport is the only place I have ever been that compares to home.
But why, why did I deserve this? To be this Omega to God’s Alpha, and all the rest of it? Why this curse of condemning others to their fates? What did I do?
I loved a woman, a human woman. It is that little detail my friend that is exorcised from all of those books of literature and theology that you still see clogging up the cannon. See, the fall, my fall, happened after creation occurred, not before it. That’s right. For all eternity, in a place where there was neither past nor future, me and my follow angles were all that existed, continually worshiping and praising God, and then one day, he created imperfect beings, humans, things like you, and endowed them with the right and the ability to not praise him, to not love him if they so wished, a most precious gift this freedom. We had no choice but to view our Father with awe.
He created only two at first, a man and a woman, and the woman; she was of the most beautiful variety. Now certainly as the first woman, one would assume her to be the most beautiful woman on Earth, seeing as how none other existed at this point. But in all of my years, I have only met one other woman who matched her in beauty, and I have lived for an eternity friend. She was tall, and pale, with smooth white skin that was warm and soft to the most delicate of touches, and she had coagulated blood red hair, that hung around her perfect doll like face. And she had these dimples when she smiled, Jesus those perfect dimples.
And I loved her; I loved her with a desire and a passion more powerful then the preordained wishes of my God. And I desired to be with her, to lie with her, to love her simply and equally, without hubris, without rancor, with only pure and infinite love, the purest form that can exist between two beings. And so I asked my God, I asked him, I prayed to him more fervently then I had ever prayed in my life, I asked him for my freedom, I asked him to make me a man, not an angel, a human being, like you, simple, with the ability to love and feel pain and to die.
And God said no, God was jealous, He didn’t understand why I would leave him for this creation, this woman. He didn’t know why I would steal His creation of woman away from His creation of man, He didn’t understand why I didn’t want to be an angel, and He didn’t comprehend the concept of sacrifice.
For the first time in my life I felt anger, anger at God. All I wanted was to live with woman, you see? I didn’t want to rule heaven, I didn’t want to dethrone God; I merely wanted to fully feel human emotion. I became the world’s first heretic, and I understand that this distinction makes me a Romantic hero to some, but all I wanted, and I guess all I still really want, was to live in love with my dear sweet Lilith. But He wouldn’t let me.
It took me only an hour to raise my army, a third of us, a third of us angels stood against that tyrant. I told them how freedom had been given to man but not to us, I told them of love; earthly love, erotic love, romantic love, and how he was strangling us by only letting us feel divine love, but letting this crude and poorly designed ‘Adam’ feel all of it, all these types of love. I made my silver armor, perfect and polished, it fit over my proud chest with my massive white wings spread out before me, and with sword in hand, flames in my heart, Moloch to my left and Azazel to my right, we, the future demon hordes of hell made our offensive charge on the heavenly seat of the city of God.
We didn’t stand a chance, never did. We were only half way to the celestial, golden city of Heaven; that cheap glowing Oz, before their defensive began. Almost half of my forces, my angels were thrown out of heaven in the first few seconds, caste down into that lake of fire, that Gehenna. I was sent down last, by Michael, who was incidentally never my favorite, and while I was tumbling downwards my long, beautiful black hair fell out, and I turned red and became covered with reptilian scales, my eyes became that of a snake and my tongue that of a serpent. On the crown of my head two long, jagged red horns grew instead, and my extremities covered with a fine brown fur, my feet were hoofed as that of a goat and my hands clawed. I fell through Eden, and God slowed me down just enough to see what he was doing to my poor Lilith, shrinking her and wrinkling her, stealing her of her physical beauty, making her hair and teeth fall out, wrenched out of her now crushed skull and casting her out, but not into hell, for there she could be with me, her one true love. God wasn’t merciful enough for that, but I was, I couldn’t take her to hell with me.
Us he made from the celestial manna, but her, He made her only from dirt. As I understand it He made the second one from the rib of a thing he made from dirt. I always thought the bastard was a bit of a misogynist. My poor sweet Lilith was caste out into the wilds of Earth, condemned to look into every baby basket for the rest of eternity for the child that I promised I would one day raise with her.
And I was in hell among the hot springs of molten lava and rock that flowed from the anuses of demons all around me. And I cared not and wept not for myself but only for Lilith. And it was then that God changed my name from Lucifer to the Shaitan, the adversary, Satan. I was to condemn those who committed acts of disobedience to God’s moral order by being that warden who lived in this wretched anti-kingdom. And it is that job that I have had ever since, till it has shrunk and blackened my heart and made my tongue that used to be for kissing into a vile, black cancerous lump that sat inert in my mouth made to spew only hate, lies and evil.
I have punished and tempted you frail men for millennia now. In that time, I have met a few who stand out, but most are vile, lowly creatures deserving of the punishment they get; brutal butchers and lying bastards who are tempted by the simplest piece of gold, or cunt or fame. I liked Simon Magnus, who seemed like a good guy, let him fly a few times, we had a few good bullshit sessions with one another. Hell, it was like college again. If I liked Simon, then I suppose I actually sort of even counted Faust as a friend, had some great conversations with him. I guess out of all the men I have met, I liked Robert Johnson the best. He was so honest, and earnest and wanted talent so much, that every time after that meeting in the middle of those Mississippi fields, whenever I would hear ‘Crossroad Blues’ I would smile at the fact that I was that song’s muse, and I would feel a little like crying that the whole unfair system was stacked against him. Hellhounds on his trail? Certainly. It was me that personally had to send him to hell.
But for all of those that I liked, and they were few, there was none I loved, until I met a tender girl the age of 16 who was the identical image of my departed Lilith, except that this girl’s hair was black and came from a bottle purchased at K-Mart. The year was 1978 and her name was a rather exotic Asherah. It may have been Jewish; though now that I think of it she may have even been Persian, but I don’t want to cause any more problems in the public imagination than I already have. I have been known to start pre-emptive wars for no reason before. Sometimes I like to even invoke Christ when I do it. Nobody can say that this job hasn’t made me a little bit evil.
She was a junior in High School in the godforsaken city of Pittsburgh, and she wore a lot of black as I recall, a lot of band T-shirt, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper. I was always flattered by that sort of thing. I was sent to her because she had seen fit to swallow a whole bottle of Aspirin after being spurned by her sophomoric sweetheart, and as she stumbled down one of those long, twisted, hilly, cobblestone streets that smoggy, gothic city is famous for, I was to tempt her into rejecting the good for me in those last, desperate, suicidal moments so that she may be sent to hell.
But when I saw her I couldn’t send her to that place, even if she would be with me. So I saved her. No metaphysical skills were needed; I simply called 9-1-1. I did see fit to send the bastard who put her into that tailspin of despair into hell. I took on that metal head idiot’s form, looked like him down to the spiked collar he wore around his pencil thin neck, and I stayed with my love as much as I could. I snuck into her room at night and knew the touch of woman. How is that for a literary novelty, Satan losing his virginity?
I felt her small pale white hand in mine, and I ran my fingers through her curly black hair like I never could with Lilith. I felt her little heart beat in place next to my ear when I placed my head in between her two small perfect breasts and I cried in her arms for all of the pain and evil I had been forced to commit in the name of myself over the centuries. I loved her like no being has ever loved another, ever, and I wanted liberation from my own identity.
So I prayed to God, I prayed with more fervency then any one had ever prayed before, I prayed with more then the combined efforts of all the priests and monks who had ever prayed to God in the history of humanity had ever prayed, I prayed harder then when my name was Lucifer and I sang tenor in the celestial chorus, I prayed more then that entire chorus ever could, and with tears of blood streaming down my cheeks from my eyes clenched so tightly closed, prostrating myself before my Lord, I asked Him to simply make me a man, free me from the bondage of being an angel, of being a demon, stop the call of hell from reverberating in my ears and pulling me back to what I know is evil, let me be with Asherah, let me be man with woman.
And He said no. He sent me back to hell, back to the cage of Satan’s deformed body, back to the lake of fire. Asherah killed herself in my absence, and went to heaven, the one place I can never go, where I can never see her.
So now I am still a perfect being, and I can never experience the ‘hell that is other people’, but clearly isn’t; I can only feel the personal hell that is my Hell. I am Satan, spurned and hated by God and man alike, with only the desire to love.”
* * *
“Flight 777 to Pittsburgh is now boarding, Flight 777 to Pittsburgh.” The nasal, metallic voice of the flight attendant booms out over the eerily desolate Las Vegas airport. The stranger quickly slurps down the remainder of his scotch, the rest of his ice having melted completely during his monologue. He scratches his head, stumbles off of the stool, and lays down his last five dollars on the counter. He straightens out a little, and adjusts his red tie over the stained blue shirt.
“That is my story friend, hard though it may seem.”
“You made a mistake though.” I say as I get up and pick up my briefcase, getting ready to walk off to my gate and fly home.
“What is that friend?”
“I made you into a human the first time you asked, you just couldn’t hear Me. I never sent you to hell, you did. It is there with or without you. You never have to go back. Find her instead. She might still be waiting for you.” He looks into My eyes, not recognizing Me at first, and I see the slight tears welling up in his human eyes, and he grabs Me at the waist, hugging Me, now sobbing, and looking up, seeing the halo growing out from My head.
“Final boarding call for Flight 777 to Pittsburgh,” the voice says again over the loudspeaker, but I don’t hear. I just hug My son.
© Edward Simon 2004
One sunny day late autumn, God paid his visit to earth. He stood with the flowers and thanked them for their beauty and the magnificent use they had made of the summer’s sun. He looked at the birds that fluttered already with longing for distance and wished them a splendid flight south. He found the bears and gave them warm dreams for the winter sleep, and he was just about to go and awaken the snow and the ice when he came across an odd thing he had never seen before.
It stood on the side of a hill, next to a rippling stream, shaded by patient trees. This isn’t anything I created, God thought, startled, and went closer. It didn’t move. Was it alive? Suddenly something greeted him like an invitation calling him to come in. Come in! All this took place in the wordlessness of sympathetic silence with which God communicated with all creatures, and they in turn communicated among themselves.
He saw an opening in the mystifying thing, and when he entered, he found a man and a woman sitting on the floor eating grapes. The woman rose heavily to offer him some. He accepted a few and laid them on the floor like a handful of pattern.
What is this? he wondered.
Grapes, the woman indicated.
No, I mean this. He pointed to the thing around them.
A hut, replied the man with a smile of satisfaction on his face.
God tried to understand and seemed to succeed. It’s pretty,20he complimented them by glancing around once again with an approving smile. It’s almost a pity that you’ve made it so large. Now you can’t take it with you.
We aren’t going anywhere, the man explained.
God was surprised. Didn’t they have to seek shelter before the winter came? No. The man’s eyes gleamed. Don't you see, this is our shelter now.
Odd. God thought of the caverns strewn all over earth. He thought of the man’s legs and the woman’s. Should he have given them wings?
The man touched the woman’s round belly gently. She was pregnant. How could they manage to make a long and strenuous journey like that? So it had occurred to them to make a shelter where they were to begin with.
God understood everything then. He regretted their odd choice of time for a pregnancy, so close to winter. No other creature had yet disturbed his patterns like that. What if these two had not luckily happened upon such a novel contraption? Slowly God shook his head. He was disappointed for them, unable to travel this autumn, unable to pass all the trees whose colors changed for their coming. But the following year they could easily be on their way again, together with the third one that would then be with them. God was pleased that he had so quickly found consolation for the unfortunate pair.
But the man shook his head excitedly. No, didn’t God understand? They would stay here always, now that they had built this hut. It would be their permanent shelter. It would always belong to them, and to them alone.
How sad for them, God thought. They would never again see anything that way. It puzzled him. Had he not given them legs so that they could wander and their eyes so that they could see? For there was the earth and the heavens around them, large, beautiful. Hadn’t he created them so they could go and see as he did? And who or what would see them again who were also beautiful? God pondered this for a very long time.
And when God found that death had become necessary, he created the mind.
It would make them wanderers again, never at home, and never young enough to rest. Knowing that they were strangers, set apart from the rest, and dreaming that they were not, they would find the world again somehow. Their dreams would be much like the wings he had not thought to give them.
God stood up to take his leave of them.
“Why don’t you stay a while longer?” the woman asked with a strange trembling which she later learned was called a voice.
All three of them stood frozen for a moment. Then God shook his head, clinging to one last silence. He had things to do yet. The sun was about to set.
“Will you return?” the woman asked.
“I will,” God said, giving in to language. “But you may not be here then.”
Then he went slowly along the rivers and up to the mountains to awaken the ice and the snow.
When the sun rose the following day, the birds who stayed for winter sang the brightness of their just discovered voices, and those already flying south spread their echo in the distance, for the silence of the world was forever broken.
The Resurrection of Hens
In Tara’s imagination, the headless chicken shot from her mother’s hand and into the sky at the exact moment the sun turned red on the horizon. A crimson sunbeam seemed to merge with the bird’s body as it stretched its white, clipped wings wide and hovered in the space above the child’s head. Tara’s mother was frozen in that moment. The flesh of one palm was already puckered, but it was not bleeding yet. In her other hand she held the ax, and her lips were opened and set to form the words “god damnit.”
Tara believed the hen’s blood fountained from the body in arcs trained for her eyes. More powerful than it had ever been in life, the chicken rose without even curling a single feather, ascending through the twilight.
When Tara screamed, she broke the spell. The chicken fell to the ground in front of her, thrashed upright for several seconds before it flopped onto its side, jerked one horrible talon, and then curled both feet into tight fists. An eye winked from a clump of dandelions by her mother’s foot.
“What have I told you about screaming?” the woman said. She dropped the ax to her side and examined her injured hand, stretching her fingers one by one. “What did I say?”
“Screaming doesn’t help anybody.”
Her mother shifted her weight. She wore a faded softball jersey, with the numbers flaking off. “That’s right.” She looked at Tara without blinking.
To hide her embarrassment, the child kneeled and retrieved the chicken’s head. She held it up to her mother so that the winking eye was skyward.
Her mother nodded. “Throw it in the burn barrel.” She leaned the ax against the cinder blocks rigged as a chopping station, and grasped the hen’s body by the feet. She dangled it upside down to let the blood drip onto the grass. “Tonight the coyotes will come up to yard,” she said. “We’ll hear them chirp.”
Tara nodded, tried to look brave. The chicken’s head was bright against the blackened trash in the barrel.
“And tonight, we’ll have fresh chicken.” Her mother held the hen up and smiled. She gestured for Tara to follow her to the house and inadvertently touched her wounded hand against her shorts. She left a crimson print across her hip.
Though she would wash the cut with water and peroxide, rare bacteria would spread from her hand, all the way through her body. The wound would swell and ooze before she would consent to go to the doctor, and the scar would forever be raised and pink and raw. Tara’s mother would claim she could feel a thunderstorm coming from the way the scar pounded, and when Tara had a fever, the marked hand that clasped her forehead was hot. But her mother bloated as well, and large boils grew along her spine that had to be opened and cleaned by a doctor. She demanded that Tara be present for each procedure so she could see how fearless she was of lancets and needles. She spoke to her daughter, chastising her when she looked away and encouraged her to avoid anesthesia and painkillers, and though doctors said the infection was gone, she was never as thin or as energetic again. The skin around her eyes turned sallow and loose and rings of fat crept down her legs.
When she tried to kill another chicken, the wound was too sensitive to get a strong grip, and the hen escaped easily before it was placed on the cinder blocks. It bounced around the yard, clucking and trying to fly with its clipped wings, as Tara pursued, never catching it because she was afraid of getting clawed. Her mother ran too, but she was winded within a minute and grabbing at her side and the hen vanished outside the tree line.
Tara would remember her mother swinging the bloodied dead hen, as her real mother while the panting woman with sweat on her top lip was something else that she would never know. This woman choosing a frozen pullet from the freezer case at United, squinting at the nutritional information and hefting it to ensure its weight was a different creature altogether. She caught her daughter’s face between her hands and pressed her lips to her forehead in lingering kisses, and when an ancient bull snake found its way into the hen house and swallowed the old rooster whole, she didn’t kill it.. She took it down into the field and flung it so that it spun in the air, its stomach swollen tight with chicken. Then she opened the gate and let the hens go, waving her arms so that they scattered.
