High as the Horses' Bridles: A Novel (35 page)

The preacher, too, lifts his head. His eyes go wide, bearing witness to yet another miracle.

Orr turns away from his father, and looks to the crowd. Slow and strange, the world presses in on his skin. His forehead broils in the cold rain, wet and cold, never been hot and so cold. Torches spatter as an unlikely wave of flesh and human spirit falls away from the stage; there is a slow heave and falling of people. They turn sluggish, deathlike, and tired, a hundred souls or more. Muscles relaxing, and down they go like husks falling from spent spirits; they exhaust themselves in exercise and enthusiasm for the returning Lord. They fall. They all fall to the ground like one vast body of so many parts, and fall into what looks like a slumber. Mounds of mud and sleep; is this death? He’s frightened by the hundred fallen, the freshly threshed. They lie in the field like war dead.

“But why, son? Will you not fall?” the preacher says to the boy, at the far edge of the stage. “Spend yourself and be reborn, awake in the Lord!”

“You’re not my daddy,” says Orr.

“You looking for your daddy, son?” The preacher extends his hand, a fine fur on its back. “Come up here with me, and I will show you.”

Orr looks to his father, who is trudging in the mud for his son, pushing others aside, saying to him “Get you away from that stage!” Orr looks to the fallen covering the field, at the hundred bodies prostrate on wet grass and rock.

His father coming closer: “You let go my son!”

Orr takes the preacher’s hand. Lift me up.

Orr is lifted.

“You’re all burning hot, boy.” The preacher touches his forehead. “Now you look out there, and witness. These faithful will never have to go to the grave. Will never take a taste of death! Look at them asleep, and deep in dream. Heaven is the white sheet we sleep under. Where’s your mamma? Is your mamma here?”

The raining sky and surrounding hills make for a febrile vision. Orr is scared and he looks at his father, who now holds out a hand to his son: Come down from there. And Orr feels shamed by his fear—I don’t want it, and I don’t want my daddy to see—but, look, there, out in the field is a stirring. See it? A handful of persons by the stage, they open their eyes. They awaken! Watch them kneel, and watch them rise. And there—in the field, waking up, is a beautiful woman. Reborn and refreshed, she looks just like her.

Shout for her? Run to her?

But he’s too afraid of the dead, so he waves, the woman’s face alight with resurrection.

“Is that your mamma, son?” Dowse asks. “She is a vision of Heaven.”

His father says, “You come on down from that stage.”

“Is that your daddy, son?”

He says, “I think that’s my mamma,”

“Then go to your mamma, son. Go on.”

Rising from the dirt and tangle of sleeping wet limbs this beautiful woman stands up. Is it her? She stands and stretches toward the stage.

“Mamma, I’m here! I’m right here!”

Deep within his heart, the vessel of his soul, he thanks the preacher and wants to say a prayer, his first prayer. Where does it come from? Not sure how, but the wish passes through him, up out the throat, and to his lips, these lips, where I say a wish out loud. Oh, take away the quiet creeping fear. With every passing syllable, the fear is further abated: Dear Lord, let it be her. And with enough luck, this woman waking up from the outside place, where there is no need for God, O God, please let it be her. Think on the black sow, how you won’t have to kill her after all because Death, I swear, is beaten today. Death be now and forever undone. Amen.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Books are only partly products of solitude, and so I must thank the following persons, places, and things:

Tom Cheshire, Jim Hanks, Joseph Salvatore, Matt DeBenedictis, Lauren Culley, Jason Tougaw, Duncan Faherty, John Weir, Carmiel Banasky, Bill Cheng, Alex Gilvarry, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Noa Jones, Tennessee Jones, Brianne Kennedy, Phil Klay, Liz Moore, Jessica Soffer, John Trotta, Sunil Yapa.

Jon Butler, Christine Heyrman, Paul Conkin.

True believers: O.G. Carrie Howland, plus all of Donadio and Olson (interns, too); and the deeply insightful Sarah Bowlin, along with the lovely people at Henry Holt.

Thanks to Jason Richman and the enthusiastic support of United Talent.

The Housing Works Bookstore Café; the dark and low-ceilinged stacks of the New York Society Library; the City University of New York; the Queens College English Department; and Hunter College, especially the Hunter MFA faculty.

Jon Butler’s
Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People
; Christine Leigh Heyrman’s
Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt
; Paul Conkin’s
Cane Ridge: America’s Pentecost
; Sonic Youth,
Silver Session for Jason Knuth
; Nels Cline and Devin Sarno,
Edible Flowers
; Dirty Three,
Cinder.

Mike Watt, at The Point, Atlanta, Georgia, 1997.

My family.

And best for last: my long-suffering lady, Kate.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

S
COTT
C
HESHIRE
earned his MFA from Hunter College. He is the interview editor at the
Tottenville Review
and teaches writing at the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. His work has been published in
Slice, AGNI, Guernica, Narrative 4,
and the Picador anthology
The Book of Men
. He lives in New York City.

H
IGH
AS THE
H
ORSES’
B
RIDLES.
Copyright © 2014 by Scott Cheshire. All rights reserved. For information, address Henry Holt and Co., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.henryholt.com

Cover design: David Shoemaker

eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Cheshire, Scott, 1973–

    High as the horses’ bridles: a novel/Scott Cheshire.—First edition.

        pages  cm

    ISBN 978-0-8050-9821-1 (hardcover)—ISBN 978-0-8050-9822-8 (electronic book) 1.  Faith—Fiction.   2.  Fathers and sons—Fiction.   I.  Title.

    PS3603.H4845H55 2014

First Edition: July 2014

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.