The next few weeks were torturous. The swelling eventually subsided, but in its wake the shaft of his penis turned an odd mottled color and bent to the left as if it were permanently broken. He was not allowed to play with Ginny or even to talk to her. He sat at the opposite end of the breakfast table and if he so much as glanced her way his grandmother made a motion toward her sewing kit. He learned to stare at his cereal bowl. At night he would lie awake in his bed, sleepless, thinking of nothing but her.
“Ernie?”
He sat bolt upright, on that memorable night so long into their forced separation.
It was her.
“Come outside.”
It was dark as a cave in his room. What time was it, midnight? Later?
“Hurry!” He heard her tiny footsteps scampering down the stairs.
He followed, feeling his still broken member as he climbed out of bed, knowing all too well what he risked. But Ginny was calling, and he could not resist following her.
The floorboards creaked as he entered the hallway. He could hear his grandmother snoring; she was sound asleep. But he also knew how quickly she could rouse herself, given sufficient motivation.
Down the stairs and out the door. He found Ginny by the clearing at the edge of the forest, waiting for him.
“I’m not sure we should be in the forest at night,” he said, even though he desperately wanted to go. “It could be dangerous. The ticks and boars and stuff. We might not see them.”
“We’re not going to the forest,” she said, her eyes sparkling like a gift. “We’re going through it. To the beach.”
The beach! He felt a clutching at his heart. Their grandmother had expressly forbidden it. “Nana won’t like this. If she finds out-”
“Nana won’t find out.” She took his hand. “If she does, we’ll run away together.”
She led the way through the edge of the forest on a worn path that seemed safe even when they were traveling with only the moon for a flashlight. Perhaps fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the beach.
Ernie was stunned. He had seen it from the road, of course, but never like this, never this close. Even from the edge of the forest, he could feel the spray on his cheeks. He could hear the thunderous roar. It was so loud-how could they not hear it back at the house? The waves crashed against the surf with a shuddering violence. The ocean seemed to go on forever and forever, receding into the horizon.
“Better build a fort fast,” Ginny said, racing barefoot across the sand. “You’re about to be under attack.”
They played together like they had never played before. In retrospect, they were probably not there more than an hour or two, but it seemed a glorious eternity, a Golden Age. They built forts and lobbed sandballs at one another. They fashioned castles and dug tunnels between them. They played chase and ran like the sea breeze, squeezing the sand between their toes. Ernie caught her and they both tripped; he fell down on top of her.
“Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked as he lay against her, sand skimming her hair.
“Of course you are.”
“I think my nose is too big.”
“Is not. You’re pretty.”
“Then how come you never kiss me?”
“I-I didn’t know if-if I-”
“It’s okay.”
If she said it was okay, then so it must be. He pressed his lips against hers, hard, like he’d seen his father do it to that woman in the drugstore. It didn’t feel very warm, but it made him go all tingly and stiff just the same.
“That wasn’t very good, was it?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, laughing. She pushed him away and ran free. “You’ll get better.”
And she was right. They came out to the beach every night that week, running and playing, hugging and kissing, happier than they had ever been before, in their kingdom by the sea.
They were always quiet when they left, always careful to brush the sand off themselves before they returned home. They gave their grandmother no cause for suspicion or alarm. Ernie was deliriously happy, and each night seemed more intense, more momentous than the one before. But he could never entirely shake his sense of foreboding. He knew that what they were doing was wrong, or at least that their grandmother would think so. Didn’t that mean they would be punished? Would she return to her sewing basket? Would she hurt him again?
What he did not realize was that his punishment, when it came, would be ever so much worse.
“Ginny, look out! It’s a big one!”
The wave crashed down on them, huge and impenetrable as a wall, knocking Ernie off his feet. “Ginny!”
He scrambled up, fighting the pounding of the water, but his feet sank into the sand. “Ginny!”
She had been digging a tunnel when last he’d seen her, burrowing through the sand, connecting his castle to hers. He called and called for her, but she did not answer him.
“Ginny!” Another wave crashed down on him. Ernie choked on the stale salt water, coughing and spewing up something gray and bitter. He had been daydreaming, not paying attention, still tasting his sister’s salty kisses on his lips. Now he was soaked, mired down in the sand. And she wasn’t answering.
“Ginny!”
He struggled to make his way to the two castles and found a half-dug tunnel between them. Ginny’s feet were sticking out of the sand. Her head was buried somewhere beneath.
The tide had come in while she was burrowing. The tunnel had collapsed and she’d been buried, unable to escape.
He began digging as fast as he could, pulling out great clumps of wet sand, trying to find her head, but it was slow work for little hands. He knew every second counted. He called out her name again and again, crying into the night wind, but there was never any response.
He didn’t know how long it took, a minute, twenty, he couldn’t tell. He excavated her head and finally managed to roll her out of the muck. He brushed sand from her mouth, her nose, her eyes, all the while screaming out her name.
Her eyes remained closed.
He opened her mouth and blew air into it like he’d seen people do on television, but she did not respond. He was scared and alone and he didn’t know what to do. He raced back and forth on the beach, the death clock ticking away in his brain.
He had to get help. Grown-up help. He started running toward the house, racing recklessly through the forest. His legs and feet were cut in a dozen places but he never stopped, never for a second. What would he do when he got there? If he told Nana what he had done, what they had been doing-he knew what would happen. But Ginny wasn’t moving. He had to do something. He had to do something.
As soon as he arrived at the house, he called the police. They were the ones best able to help Ginny-and perhaps to protect him. Nana heard him talking and came downstairs, but the police arrived before she could do anything to him.
Ernie found it difficult to function, to perform even the simplest tasks. He was weary and heartsore and scared and confused. He answered the policemen’s questions as best he could and took them out to the beach.
“Dear God,” the cop said when they finally arrived. “Why didn’t you call us sooner, son? We might’ve saved her.”
The rest of the night was a hideous blur. There were questions and questions and questions. He was still wet and cold and miserable. And all the while, his grandmother stared at him, her eyes dark as coals and cold as night. He knew what she was thinking.
Around three A.M., they took Ginny’s body away. They would not let him kiss her goodbye. He would never see her again.
Ernie didn’t know who all these people were. He’d never known Nana had any friends; only her nighttime lady friends came to the house. But at the reception after the funeral, the place was packed with strangers.
No one would talk to him, not at the funeral and not now. He knew why. Some of them thought maybe he’d done it on purpose. They thought he was a bad seed, a chip off his father’s block. They blamed him not only for Ginny’s death but for his grandmother’s sudden decline. Everything.
Someone had brought food, a couple of casseroles and some bean salad, but he didn’t eat much, even though he’d taken nothing all day. The first bite died in his throat; it seemed tasteless.
The minister was the only person there who didn’t have wrinkles. He was new, maybe thirty. Ernie knew his grandmother didn’t like him. Ernie didn’t like him much, either. But he was the only one in the house who would talk to him.
“You mustn’t blame yourself,” Reverend Barton said. “God called her home, that’s all. She’s in heaven now, with the angels. We should be so fortunate.”
“It doesn’t seem right,” Ernie mumbled.
“It never does. We think, why did it have to be her? But remember-she went to be with Jesus. That’s a good thing, not bad. The Lord God moves in strange and mysterious ways. There is a plan, even if we have not yet discovered it. Evidently, God needed her more than we did.”
Ernie looked up at the minister, his eyes pleading. “What I don’t understand is, why didn’t God take me, too? We belong together.”
“You will be together again one day, God willing.”
“But why not now? I feel so-awful. I never should’ve gone out there with her.”
Reverend Barton knelt down and took the boy by the shoulders. “It’s not your fault, son. You were God’s instrument. You helped Him fulfill His plan.”
That night, she came for him.
“Ernie,” she said, standing in the dark at his bedroom door. The cat was curled between her ankles. “Wake up.”
“Can’t…,” he moaned, pretending he had been asleep.
She grabbed his head by the hair and jerked him upright. Ernie sputtered, wild-eyed, drool spilling from his lips.
He looked down at her other hand. She was holding the needle.
“Thought those damn fools would never leave.”
“Please don’t hurt me, Nana. It was so bad last time. Please don’t do it again.”
“You’re all alike,” she said, her eyes glistening like the silver dagger she held in her hand. “Your father took my first little girl away from me. And you took my next one.” She grabbed him by the collar of his pajamas, shaking him. “Did you do anything to her before you killed her?”
“No!”
“You disgusting men with your disgusting little things.” She shook him even harder. “Tell me the truth. What did you do to her? So help me, I’ll-”
“No!” He broke away, scrambling across the bed. He dove through the doorway but miscalculated in the darkness, banging his head on the wall. He leaped to his feet, stubbing his toe in the process. She reached out just in time to grab his leg.
“Gotcha!” She jabbed the needle into the soft underside of his foot.
Ernie shrieked, then tore himself away from her. He pushed ahead, but the cat raced in front of him and made him stumble. He collided with the banister, headfirst. She came after him, her teeth bared, her needle shining in the reflected moonlight.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he whimpered. “Please don’t.”
“You’ll take your punishment, Ernie. If I have to chase you to the ends of the earth. God punishes sinners. God and me.”
She reared up before him, her needle poised like a dagger.
Ernie kicked her in the stomach.
For a long moment, she seemed suspended in air. He could have grabbed her hand and pulled her back onto the landing. But the needle was in that hand.
He let her fall.
When at last her body stopped, the tumbled heap at the foot of the stairs did not stir.
Ernie moved quickly. He gathered together everything he wanted to save, threw it in a bag, and hid it in the forest. Then he killed the cat. He took his time about that, releasing much that had been pent up for so long, in a slow, protracted, highly gratifying dissection. Then he burned the house down.
The books he’d read had given him a good idea how to do it in such a way that it would not be obvious that he had done it, at least not to the rural cops he’d met a few days before. He left the gas burners on for a long time. He tossed a match. Then he went outside and watched it burn.
There was nothing they could do to him that wasn’t going to happen already. This way, no one would ever know for certain what happened. No one but him. And Virginia.
He was the Instrument, he murmured to himself as he watched the shutters and shingles turn to ash. Now he needed to find his God.
In and out of foster homes and reform schools all his teen years, Ernie never stayed in one place for long. Soon after he left his grandmother’s house he developed a stutter that plagued him until high school. The permanent deformity to his private member made gym class a nightmare and sports an impossibility. But he continued to search for some explanation, some meaning in his life, in the tragedy that had visited him. Which was what led him, during his sophomore year of college, to journey out into the desert to attempt a vision quest.
He had never seen such a desolate environment-flat, barren, bleak. Heat rose from the pavement creating miniature mirages, smoothing the road ahead. A man named Ralph Studi acted as his spiritual guide and instructor. The first three days, he learned, would be spent in preparation. The last four days he would spend in the desert, alone. “All this training will be geared toward one central objective-your spiritual growth. At all times, the emphasis will be on grounding you in the Spirit. Not just absorbing but owning the lessons learned. Because the true work of the vision quest begins when we return to our people.”
The first day on his own, out in the wilderness, he was bored to tears. The second day, he was starving-and bored to tears.
The third day, he saw the Raven.
He had fallen asleep, or thought he had. His legs were aching from the stiff sedentary drain of remaining in the sacred circle for so long. He kept the fire burning, even though the air was hot and oppressive, even at night. He longed to stretch his legs, to partake of the tiny ration of water he had been permitted. Sweat dripped down the sides of his face. His eyelids closed and he drank in the heady smell of smoke and whatever was in that wood they gave him to burn. He thought he was asleep. But when the Raven spoke to him, he was wide awake.