Thomas moves in close to the heifer and pats her hot flank. “Mmmmm,” he murmurs in her flicking ear, “mmm, mmmm.”
He steps out in front of her and she lowers her head, closing her eyes for a scratch. As if through a scope, two cross-hairs appear, extending from the base of each horn to the opposite eye. Thomas hoists the sledge, strikes short and sure in the crook of the invisible cross. The cow sags, crashing to her side at his feet.
From the beginning Mathilda put him in mind of a doe. Not the way most people think of them, passive and maternal, nibbling leaves. Thomas knew their insides. His old man took a yearly trip back to the bush he came from, hunting over the limit, out of season, regardless of sex—the owner of a slaughterhouse killing on his own time. The deer he hauled home were radiant beneath their hides, scanty scented fat over muscle meat rich and red. As graceful on the cutting table as they were among the trees. The loveliest carcasses Thomas had ever seen.
He picks up his sticking knife and turns his back to the stunned cow, stretching its neck out long by bracing his boot heels against foreleg and jaw. Bending and reaching back between his legs, he starts at its breastbone, cutting a foot-long slit up the throat, deep enough so the windpipe shows. He lifts the blade out and re-enters where he began. Tip pointed to the shoulder-tops, he cuts down hard toward the head. Severed vessels spurt. Thomas spins round and stoops to grab the beast’s tail, placing one boot firmly on its side. Begins pumping, weight on the foot, then release and pull up hard on the tail. Over and over, make a heart of the body to hasten the bleed.
It’s after midnight when Father August Day passes the wooden
Welcome to Mercy
sign three hours later than planned.
It had all added up on the map, but once he turned off the trunk road, a mile was no longer simply a mile. Coyotes rose up from the fields and darted madly between his wheels. Deer looked round on the long columns of their necks, flashed their eyes and stepped delicately onto the road. North of Mercy, where the trees closed in, he passed through a cloud of bats. He was unused to driving anywhere, let alone in the wilderness dark. Many would’ve ploughed on through, flattening whatever was destined to die, but August braked and braked, eventually slowing to a crawl.
It’s a good-sized town—about double his hometown of Fairview. As the road carries him south into Mercy’s heart, he mentally contrasts the two, taking comfort in every discrepancy he finds. To either side the sleeping houses look solid, more dependable than even the finest of Fairview’s wind-beaten homes. So much more sensible to nestle a settlement among trees than to raise it exposed on the plain.
Hedged residences give way to shops—
Harlen’s Pharmacy, Conklin Grocery, Taggart and Sons Dry
Goods—August committing each new name to memory as he rolls slowly past. Idling at the centre of town, he glances up at the crossed signs
—Fourth Avenue, Train Street
—and thinks briefly of Fairview’s pitiful main drag.
To his left, Train Street recedes in a line of storefronts, including the office of the
Mercy Herald
and a skinny
barbershop complete with candy-stick pole. At the limit of his vision, a poorly lit brick station surrounded by freight cars at rest on a yard. August looks right. Some four or five blocks down, the street comes to an abrupt end, culminating in an imposing silhouette. He feels his heart kick. Takes the turn without signalling, pressing his foot to the gas.
In his waking mind he’s saddened by the unexpected death of Father Rock, the pastor he was to assist. His dreams are a different story. In the land of no volition August steps blithely into the dead man’s gleaming shoes. He’s young to be taking on a parish—newly ordained, still growth-spurt thin at twenty-six—but the bishop saw past all that. He noticed August’s scholarly stoop, his old man’s mouth and stony eyes. At the news of Father Rock’s passing, he shocked the diocese by directing August to simply “carry on as planned.” One year as an administrator and, if all went well, Mercy would be his.
August kills the engine and unfolds his lanky frame from the Plymouth’s front seat. He stares up into the blunt face of the church, its heavy peaked doors pointing to the central window—a rose motif, glimmering warmly, centred on the Madonna and Child. The Church of St. Mary Immaculate. Within these very stone walls he will give voice to the Gospel, administer the seven sacraments, celebrate the grace of God. He lets out a long, satisfied sigh.
Alter Christus
. Finally, another Christ.
Beside the church, set back as though in modesty, the rectory’s cut from more of the same speckled stone. Its door opens slowly to reveal a small woman, shapeless in a dark housedress, her hair raked up high into a grizzled bun.
“Father Day, I suppose?” Her voice carries sharply over the darkened yard, its tone belying his title, pronouncing him too green, too insubstantial to bear its weight. She has him at a disadvantage—he can’t make out her face, knows his own to be flooded with coloured light.
“Correct,” he answers, returning his eyes to the church.
“You’re late.”
He steels himself. Stoops down for his cases, takes the flagstone path in loping strides. Up close he meets a face perhaps once oddly fetching, now thoroughly pinched and drained. She’s a good foot shorter than him, and she won’t look up.
“I’m Vera Nickels,” she tells his chest, “housekeeper these forty years.”
He nods.
“There’s a wedding tomorrow, in case you didn’t know.”
“I have been informed.”
“It’s my own niece getting married.”
“Yes.”
“The poor girl’s tossing and turning upstairs.”
He says nothing. Several seconds of stalemate elapse before she reaches inside to snap on the light. “Well, Father. Come in if you’re coming.”
Mathilda’s mind moves sluggishly, her thoughts stumbling as though drugged.
Wedding day
. She can’t think how it happened, except that the butcher had asked.
It certainly wasn’t the lure of family. In all her years at
St. Joseph’s, Mathilda never once joined the others in their favourite game.
My perfect home
, they called it, spinning candy houses and lovesick parents out of air. She pitied them. What good were parents? Of her father she knew nothing at the time, of her mother only what little the Sister Superior had seen fit to divulge. She had been a dancer. She had given birth south of the city, at a house for unwed mothers run by the St. Norbert Sisters of Misericorde. Shortly thereafter she had died.
Many would have imagined a delicate woman on tiptoe, swathed in chiffon, lifted heavenward in a series of mournful pirouettes. Mathilda allowed herself no such luxury. To her the word
dancer
conjured up a painted face, a series of grotesque gyrations and vulgar, revealing kicks. While dancers gestured obscenely, she adopted the nun’s trick of keeping her hands hidden and clasped. While they hammered the floor with their heels, she cultivated the soundless convent glide.
Let the other children dream of relations. When Mathilda projected a picture of herself into the future, it was inevitably a formal portrait of sorts, wherein she sat utterly composed and alone.
The change, such as it was, came in the form of a single crab-handed page, its folds so sharp they looked to have been ironed. She was wedged between two baskets of mending, darning a worn elbow, when Sister L’Espérance dropped the letter in her lap. “Aunt?” Mathilda turned the word over cautiously in her mouth. “I have an aunt?”
It’s nearly time. She knows this by the increased intensity with which her Aunt Vera yanks stray threads from the veil. Mathilda glances at herself in the mirror. With her rusty
hair drawn back in a knot, she’s even more pie-faced and speckled than usual. She has no illusions, thinks herself neither pretty nor plain. Never having watched herself walk, she has no notion of her potential power over men.
Vera’s tugging harder now, muttering in her ear, “—half of them lost in the war, and this one with his own business, and clean and well-mannered into the bargain.” She pauses for air. “Not a Catholic, true, but he can scarcely help the heathen he was born to.”
“No, Aunt.”
“For pity’s sake, Mathilda,
smile
. Were you waiting for wine and roses? Butterflies in your belly at the sight of him?” Vera heaves out a sigh. “He converted for you, girl. That shows consideration, and in the end a little consideration is worth more than all the blessed butterflies in the world.”
Mathilda stares mutely into the glass. A vein dances in Vera’s temple. “Now you listen to me.” Her fingertips fasten into Mathilda’s arms. “You’re the bastard niece of the church skivvy, you haven’t a penny to your name and you’re no great beauty besides, but this one,
this one
came begging for your hand.” She continues through clenched teeth. “You ought to be laughing. You ought to be rolling in the aisles at your luck, so the least you could manage is a smile!” Suddenly aware of her grasp, she flinches and lets go, covering her face with her hands.
Mathilda turns in her chair. “It’s all right, Aunt Vera. Really. I’m all right.”
She lays a careful hand on the older woman’s hip. Her aunt is rail thin beneath her one good dress. It’s a sombre shade of blue, otherwise indistinguishable from its rack-mates, every one of them spinster black.
Vera wipes her cheeks viciously. “Look at me, stupid old trout—”
“No,” Mathilda murmurs. “It’s just all the fuss on top of everything that’s happened. Father Rock and all—”
Vera’s face splits like a wound.
“Oh, Aunt.” Mathilda stands and folds the hard little woman in her arms. Vera shudders against her, bawling a wet streak down the satiny shoulder of Mathilda’s dress. That’s when the organ sounds, so that’s how the bride approaches the aisle, soggy-shouldered, following her sobbing aunt.
The church is roughly one-quarter full—not bad for a Tuesday wedding, especially one where the groom has no family and the bride has no friends. Peter Jablonsky shuffles forward to meet them, decrepit in his ill-fitting Knights of Columbus blazer. He grabs Mathilda’s arm and steers her, patting her hand and muttering, preparing to give her away. She takes in Thomas’s thick, twisting neck and trusting grin, then drops her eyes. Her shoes are two white, pointy-nosed rats, peeking out singly and retreating beneath her dress.
She looks up when she reaches the altar. Not to the new priest, not even to the groom, whose eyes seek hers, but beyond, to the crucifix, Christ’s enormous wooden form. He’s painted beautifully, his skin the exact colour of cloud.
The priest’s voice draws her down. It’s throaty, a little hoarse even, as though he’s addressing her alone. She shifts her gaze to its source, the Adam’s apple sharp in his throat, scoring his long neck from the inside.
Under a dark overhang of hair, his eyes are black. No, Mathilda corrects herself, grey. She peers at him. They’re
both, charcoal with black ripples, a series of concentric bands. The butcher dissolves at her side. For the moment she forgets everything about him—the stubborn blood beneath his nails, his helpless smile, his name.
When it comes time for Mathilda to speak, her jaw moves woodenly in the monotone of the entranced. The new Father may be young, but his eyes are ancient. Ringed with time like a fossilized tree.
During the reception Vera ricochets about the church basement like a thing possessed, piling plates high, filling coffee cups and wineglasses before they can empty by half.
Two weeks earlier, Mathilda was the one who ran around. Every ambulatory Catholic in the parish was there—the faithful and the fallen. They all ate sandwiches and little cakes, a few even tied one on in memory of Father Rock. Father Beaubien had done a passable job of the service. He stayed long enough to lift a few glasses before doddering back to St. Antoine.
There was no comforting Vera. She sat rigid as a corpse all afternoon, staring clean through any kind soul who tried. As soon as she could get away with it, Mathilda escorted her aunt back to the rectory, where Father Rock’s dogs were locked up in the kitchen, howling.
“Shut up, all of you!” Vera rushed at them. “Shut up! SHUT UP!!” She hauled open the back screen door. “He’s gone, do you hear me?! He’s gone! NOW GET!” The dogs got the message in the form of a broom at their backsides. They squeezed through the door, yelping across the yard to disperse among the trees.
The moment Vera came back to herself, she wept and ground her teeth. “How could I?” she wailed. “How could I do it?”
“They’ll come home,” Mathilda told her. “Soon as they’re hungry, you’ll see.”
But they didn’t. Not a single, solitary dog.
Thomas’s body gives off an inordinate amount of heat. Stifling beneath the sheets, Mathilda can’t help but roll away from his reaching hands.
“What—?” He falters. “Mathilda, honey, don’t be scared.”
“I’m not,” she mumbles. “It’s—it’s a bad time.”
“A bad time?” He smothers her shoulder with his hand. “Honey, it’s our wedding night.”
“I know that,” she snaps. “It’s just not a good time.” She sighs heavily.
“You know.”
“Know what?”
“It’s my time, Thomas. My monthlies.”
“Oh!” His hand springs back guiltily. “I’m sorry, I never even thought—”
“It’s all right,” she cuts him off. “Goodnight.”
“Oh. Yes. Goodnight, sweetie.” He drops a careful peck on her cheek.
Mathilda hugs herself. It’s the first full-blown lie between them. Her period ended two days ago, Aunt Vera having quizzed her mercilessly before setting the date.
She inches further away from him, aligning herself with the edge of the bed. Her
husband
. For the first time ever she contemplates the stark reality, the physical implication of the word. She has some idea of the mechanics involved. At St. Joseph’s the older boys stuck rigid fingers into
loosely formed fists, rubbing hard and rolling their eyes, laughing when she turned and ran.