Читать книгу The Blessing - Gregory Orr - Страница 17

7

The Field

In my dream, I heard God’s voice demanding, “What have you done with your brother?” His question was like a fiery finger poking a hole through my chest, through my life. I saw the Bible they’d given me years ago in my first Sunday school, with its black leatherette cover stamped at the top in large gold letters “Holy Bible” and at the bottom “Gregory Orr” in a tiny font. A slow-motion bullet approached the book from behind and struck the back cover dead center, entering it in a ragged hole but not emerging on the other side. Now the book was a black wall I was facing and the bullet hole had become the entrance to a cave. I walked through the tunnel, listening to whispers from the tissue-thin pages that had been torn to incoherence. I could feel that the book’s later meanings had been destroyed by the bullet, especially those that offered hope and redemption. It had penetrated all the way to the earliest pages and now I had to follow its path. I walked for hours through darkness. The whispering disappeared. I saw nothing and heard only the sound of my own breathing. Then far ahead there was a dim red glow that grew brighter as I approached, and suddenly, I was standing in a hollow space stained with ancient blood. I heard again our horrified screams as my gun fired, and I saw Cain standing above his brother, Abel, bleeding to death in a field.