Southern Gods (20 page)

You can’t kill the dead!

Something broke in him then. The pain and suffering of the war, his violent past, his work and the life he lived with his fists all calcified in him. He looked upon the rising Marines, each one gory and grotesque and filled with hate toward him but each one still wearing a mask—the mask of a friend. In every revenant Ingram saw the familiar: Sid’s tattoo, Vic’s pockmarked face, Jerry’s slight gut, now blood-smeared and gory. Ingram’s hard, brittle core shattered, and he lowered his head in the clearing, tears streaming down his face.

The fire neared him now, roaring into the clearing, pushing forward a thin layer of superheated air. He raised his massive head, his horns snapping the low-hanging fronds of a palm. His nostrils flared, and he washed a rough tongue over his nose, wetting it. Clawed hands fell on his side, gripping the hair there, ripping gashes in his hide. He twisted again, whipping his massive body around, the splayed hooves of his forelegs tearing great gouges in the loamy earth, his hindquarters trampling the dead that surrounded him, and he lowed and bellowed for the horrible damage he caused them.

Fire overtook him, and he knew darkness and the sensation of countless teeth ripping into his flesh.

Chapter 12

S
tuttgart was indistinguishable from any other town in Arkansas; like an island in a green sea, its outlying shores were washed in rice, beans, cotton. In the fields, harvest progressed. Lumbering combines walked down the green aisles and a flurry of tractors followed, waiting at the field edges, waiting for the harvesters to dump their heavy loads into the tractor bins. As Sarah drove, smoking and drinking the coffee that Alice had provided her in a thermos, she remembered the exchange between them earlier.

“You know what the best invention in the world is?” Alice asked.

Sarah smiled. “Nope. What is it?”

“Thermos.”

She laughed at the incongruity of it all. “Why’s that?”

Alice looked at her very seriously and said, “It keeps the hot hot, and the cold cold. But how do it know?”

Sarah looked at her quizzically, then laughed again.
Circles in words, so many circles in words.

The car smelled of fried chicken. Alice had left the Big House in the gray of morning, carrying a hatchet, ignoring the drizzle that fogged the air. She walked behind the peafowl pens, and, a few minutes later, came back with a headless chicken swinging from her fist.

Of course, Sarah always knew that the Big House was just one cog in the larger machinery of a working farm, but until the still warm carcass of a hen was plopped down in front of her, it hadn’t really occurred to her that one of her whims might influence the farm so that something had to die.

“Go pluck that, girl. You remember how to clean a chicken.”

And, honestly, Sarah didn’t. She recalled, as a child, wanting to be with her friend Alice whatever that entailed, but she had no recollection of plucking chickens.

Sarah said, “No, I don’t remember. I’m going to go up and check on Momma and look over my translation before I go. Can you please take care of it?”

Alice looked at her, brow furrowing.

“Alice.” Sarah tilted her head to the side and smiled. “Please?”

Alice sighed, then smiled, flashing white teeth in a brown face.

Sarah found she was less willing to submit to Alice’s will than when she was younger. Life for her had been one submission after another, and now she wasn’t going to do it anymore.

Alice had fried the chicken, and now it rode happily next to Sarah in a small basket, swathed in cloth napkins like some fragrant deep-fried infant.

The Chrysler rolled past the green shores of England, past the silos and grain bins and hoppers, into town. She stopped and asked directions from a gas station attendant who cheerfully filled her tank. She drove on to the church.

St. Thomas of Aquinas’ church was small, wooden, and empty. A humble building, with scaling paint and small steeple, it reminded her of the Big House, though the Big House dwarfed this small building.

She parked the car in the gravel lot adjacent to the church and approached the double front doors. The church was in a nice little neighborhood of Stuttgart; tiny gingerbread houses lined the street, along with hoary, old oaks, while new cars sat in driveways and children played in yards, or rode bikes down the pavement. People were happy here, and in a different life, Sarah could see herself here, spending her days in an apron, watching Fran grow up—tame and beautiful and desperate, not wild haired and tawny and dirty like she was now.

Sarah shook her head, smiling sadly.
No, I like the wild Franny better. At least she’s happy. The Franny who lives on this street might be happy, but the wild Franny is happy now.

The church doors were unlocked, and Sarah entered, the basket of fried chicken in the crook of her arm.

The church consisted of narthex and nave and almost nothing else. A forlorn confessional sat at the rear of the church.

“Hello?” Sarah called. “Hello? Father Andrez?”

Sarah looked at her watch. It was a little past four. Right on time.

At the far end of the nave, past the altar, was a small door. It opened to the outside, a small concrete walkway leading to a very small house.

She knocked on the door of the house, and after a moment, a man dressed in black came to the door.

“Father Andrez?” she asked as he cracked the door. “I’m Sarah Williams.”

“Sarah! Please, come in, come in.”
Sorrah. Plis, kammin kammin.
The sound of his voice and the lilt of his accent put her at ease.

Inside, she could see Andrez a little better. If the church could be considered small, this house would be tiny, and the man minuscule. White haired and wrinkled, he was no larger than a boy. But lean as a tightrope.

Andrez grinned at her, looking up slightly.

“Eh… most people are surprised when they first meet me. Growing up in Montenegro, I learned at an early age to defend myself. Of course, mostly from my brothers.” Andrez winked at her, and raised his arm to make a muscle.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “I was only—”

“Sarah, it is no matter. I might be small in body. Not in spirit, not in heart, and that is all that matters.”

“Father, I—”

His eyes fastened on the basket. “Is that—”

It was Sarah’s turn to smile. “Yes. Fried chicken.”

The man clapped his hands together, looked to the ceiling, and said, “Bless you, child. You would be better named Providence than Sarah.” He winked again and looked at her more closely. “But Sarah suits you well. Yes, I see the Sarah in you.”

Andrez took the basket of chicken from her like he was lifting a chalice. Sarah sat her purse down on a small linoleum table near a window and brought out the copy of
Opusculus Noctis
and the pages of her translation.

“Would you like some ice tea? I dearly love the tea in this country. A neighbor taught me to make it the correct way, and I cannot get enough.”

“Yes, please. Is it sweet?”

“Yes, Sarah. Very sweet. Very good. Yes?”

The house resembled the church itself, small and composed of just two rooms: a living room with a kitchenette and, through the door in the back wall, a bedroom. Sarah peeked through the door into the bedroom.

Andrez bustled in the kitchenette, pulling chipped floral glasses from the cabinets.

“Father Andrez? Um… is there a… um, restroom I might be able to use? I’ve been in the car for a while.”

“Oh! My apologies, Sarah. The sight and smell of the chicken has made me lose all my wits. Go out the front door, to the right, and you will find the outhouse right by the tall hedge. A privy by the privet, so to speak.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows. She remembered the days before plumbing in the Big House. Chamber pots and outhouses were the course of her early years. It seemed that in this age of technology some people still lived like their parents and grandparents, stretching back into antiquity.

Andrez smiled and raised his shoulders. “I am sorry, Sarah. We are a small parish, and I did take a vow of poverty.”

Sarah laughed and said, “I used an outhouse until I was near eighteen and went to college. I can handle it.”

“I’m sure it was a… eh… how do they say? A two-holer. I will wait until you get back.”

The outhouse had a moon on the door, and true to form, a Sears-Roebuck catalogue as well. Luckily, it also had toilet paper.

When Sarah returned to the little house, she found Andrez sitting at the linoleum table, looking at the
Opusculus Noctis
pamphlet and frowning. He looked up when she came in through the door.

“Ah, Sarah.” He was smoking now, and sipping tea. “I am puzzled. How did you come by this piece?”
How deed you cam by thees peeze?

“It came from my family library.”

“Family?”

“Yes. Is there something wrong?”

“I know this work, the
Opusculus Noctis
. From first glance it seems quite ordinary, but just glancing over it you’ll notice it is not printed, though it looks like it, the hand that wrought this was so sure. Also, the paper is thick and handmade, not milled, which means… well… it’s more than likely three, maybe four, hundred years old.” Andrez smiled.

He put down the pamphlet gingerly, as if it was spun glass. Or a gun.

“You have been translating this?”

“Well… yes. To the best of my ability, which isn’t much. And I’ve only gone through a little bit. I have trouble with the lack of separation between the words.”

Andrez smiled again and took a sip of his tea. “Let’s have some of this wonderful-smelling chicken and we will talk all about it. Afterward. It has been a tradition of my family dating back, eh, at least a century to reserve meals for talk of good things, happiness and art and current events.”

Andrez brought a head of lettuce out from a cold box under the counter and quickly mixed a cold salad of greens, olive oil, and vinegar. With deft, delicate fingers, Andrez prepared Sarah’s plate, giving her a small wing, poured her a glass of tea, and then, as an afterthought, set the table with place settings.

On his plate, he placed the two thighs, a leg, a breast, and the bony back piece, followed by the greasy giblets that Alice had included. When Andrez saw them, he clucked in his throat strangely, obviously happy, but Sarah had never heard nor seen any man act as oddly before.

He noticed her watching him, and flushed.

“Sarah, I am a poor priest. This is a German town, but founded by Northern German immigrants who favored the Luther’s Church over the church in Rome. I have been here, hmm… let me see now… ten years now, and my congregation has gone from fifty families to thirty people. This country is not suitable to Rome and the Church. I often find myself hungry. My parishioners provide me what they can, however, it can be paltry for,” he smiled again, winking at her, “a man of my stature.”

Indeed, he was a strange man. His features were delicate and childlike, possessed of some innocence that even Sarah did not have. But his skin was heavily wrinkled and his hands had liver spots, making Sarah think he had to be in his sixties at least.

“It’s all right. I brought the chicken for you. I’m not really hungry.”

“Oh? Well, then. I shall start.”

As he ate, between bites, they spoke.

“So what made you interested in translating this pamphlet?”

“I found it in my family library, and it seemed the most inviting, really. The text was clear, compared to some of the other volumes in the library, and it was smaller than many of the other books. And it sort of drew me in, so to speak. Once I had figured out the title.” Sarah laughed. “Even though I’m still not sure I got the title right. Is it
The Little Night Book
? Or the
Little Book of Night
?”

Andrez put down the breast he was devouring, wiping his chin with a napkin. “Either. Both. Neither. Hard to say. We can’t know really. The author of
Opusculus
did not tell us, did he? But the
Little Book of Night
sounds right to me. Misleading though.”

Sarah nodded. “I’d taken Latin in college and recently…”

Andrez looked at her with clear eyes, nodding and watching her closely.

“I’ve gone through some problems with my… the man I used to be married to.”

“This is a strange way of saying husband.”

Sarah scoffed. “Marriages are a contract. He broke his side of the bargain.” She resisted raising her hand to her cheek. It had stopped hurting weeks ago, but the memory of pain remained.

Andrez eyes grew wide. “You are right. Many forms of interaction and communication become contractual, though most people do not believe that.”

They were quiet for a while. Andrez ate steadily, with small exclamations of joy and delight of the meal. Sarah sat contemplating the man.

“So you’re from Montenegro? I’m afraid I don’t know very much about that country.”

“I am Montenegran, but my father was English. I had many brothers, though quite a few of them are dead. My youngest brother has made quite a name for himself in New York. The Lupa family has many ambitious men, Nero not being the least.”