Читать книгу Wigford Rememberies - Kyp Harness - Страница 9

Happy Henry

And what of Happy Henry, spindly fingers now blindly clawing Harley’s mucous off his face by the highway on this cool April morning? He murmurs and simpers little mmf sounds to himself and now a wrinkled tissue is drawn from his overcoat pocket to dispatch the mess. He shakes his head in puzzlement and bends for the suitcases, his Salvation Army shoes encased in plastic bread bags for protection skiffling in the gravel as he resumes his pilgrimage, this rabbit-faced disciple of the Lord, his little grey teeth overhanging his thin lower lip.

He trudges and his undersized head glistening with grease slicking back his short black hair—as if his whole head’s been dipped in a vat of oil—resumes its loping pendulum swing. His beady eyes aglow, he stumbles down the lonely morning highway, cars and transport trucks roaring past and whipping him around in their wake and slipstreams of exhaust and dust and ricocheting stones. The tails of his overcoat ruffle, ol’ Happy Henry known for miles around, you might see him on the highway, you might see him crossing a distant field, sailing through a sea of weeds, or ambling down a quiet side street in the town, in the night, his shadow passing beneath the beam of a streetlight, darkness and silence all around.

He may accost you in the drugstore or in the barbershop, his shy hesitant smiling face, his stuttering lisping voice asking, “Hello? How are you today?”—for everything he says is said like a question. He blinks and before you know it a pamphlet is being passed into your hand.

ETERNITY IS FOREVER—a picture of the sky: fluffy, white clouds and behind one of them a little piece of the sun peeking around—long lines stretching out from it, reaching to the edge of the paper. HAVE YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE? Inside, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? IN HEAVEN OR IN HELL?

“Some reading material—for free,” says Happy Henry, smiling and bowing slightly, nodding his head towards the pamphlet as you stand there, and as you stuff it into your pocket and thank him, planning to discreetly dispose of it later.

As you turn and depart from him, he stands still behind you, nodding his head and regarding you with glowing eyes—joyful, envying the happiness you will know when you later privately read the pamphlet and its true meaning washes over you, when the glory of the Lord’s love rains down over your heart and the truth of your redemption paid for with the price of God’s only begotten son detonates across your consciousness and you are truly cleansed in the blood of the lamb.

Yes, Henry knows and anticipates the bounteous future awakening, which will take place, and most of all your incredible surprise at discovering that you are the personal receiver of the greatest gift that has ever been given—Henry’s benevolent head nodding, ushering you into that most beautiful and incomprehensible sanctuary, the universe a compassionate womb in love with you forever—If only you don’t drink or smoke or use curse words, Henry thinks with a stern frown, his brow furrowing.

He strides down the highway up to Barker’s Corner, to the gas station with the all-night coffee shop attached, loping up across the parking lot with an energetic spring quickening in his long bony legs. In the front window of the coffee shop three men sit huddled around a table, their coffee cups half-filled before them, their elbows resting on the table and their large boots on the floor resting in gloppy puddles of mud. They wear thick, grey, mud-spattered jackets and hats emblazoned with the logos of various tractor and farm implement manufacturers.

One of the men sits sucking on a pipe that periodically goes out, necessitating that he continually relight it—the ashtray before him filled with blackened matches. The man sitting across from him looks out the window and sees Henry limping his way across the lot.

“Well here comes ol’ Henry,” he chuckles, his eyes darting across to the other two men.

“That’s right. There he is, Roy,” drawls the pipe-smoker, “on his way to make another new convert, I suspect.”

“Heh, heh,” chuckles Roy. “Don’t suspect there’s any likelihood on ’im makin’ a fresh one outta you, eh Gus?”

“Oh, Henry knows me all right,” says the other fellow laconically. “I ’magine by this time he knows he’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree tryin’ to get somewhere with me.”

Roy laughs, and the other fellow, an older man with weary, watery eyes chuckles as well as Henry throws open the door of the coffee shop and stumbles in, having a bit of trouble with his sizable suitcases. The middle-aged woman behind the cash register looks up with a bemused smile and the men sitting at the table all turn to him, nod, “How y’doin’, Henry?” winking at each other, then return to their conversation.

A newspaper lies on the table in the midst of them, The Wigford Gazette, with its tale on the front page of how a discarded refrigerator had been found in a ditch by a sideroad twenty miles out of town the night before, and in the refrigerator was discovered a partially decomposed human body.

“Jesus Christ!” cries Roy. “How d’ya like that? Jesus, somethin’ like that ain’t happened round here since… well Christ, since ol’ Ferguson on the first line did ’is wife in. I ’member that from when I was a kid—musta been forty years ago.”

“Yeah, yep, that’s right, Roy, I ’member that, sure. Ol’ Ferguson he’d been married, what, twenty years to the same woman, came home one night and put an axe right through her head,” nods the fellow with wet, weary eyes, his voice soft and untroubled. “Didn’t seem to be no rhyme nor reason to it, never a hint there was anything wrong. Just got off work at the gravel pit, came home and put an ax right through ’er head.”

“Jesus, yeah!” says Roy, “and I remember my old man sayin’ he never could understand it, ol’ Ferguson. Christ the guy was one of the funniest devils around, always had a kind word and a prank, never even hardly saw him when he wasn’t smilin’ or laughin’, and one of the main guys at the Presbyterian Church there in town, always at the picnics and such, playin’ with the kids, arrangin’ the games, y’ know, the egg and spoon races.”

“Yep,” says the other fellow. “Just got off work one night, got in the car, drove home, and put an axe right through his wife’s head.”

“Christ!” cries Roy, shaking his head.

“Well, they put HIM away for life,” says the man dispassionately. “Likely he’s still in there if he ain’t dead by now. When they came he was still standin’ there, holdin’ the axe—he jes’ went away with them quietly. Yep, they didn’t waste no time puttin’ him away.”

“Good goddamn thing, too,” says Roy. “Jesus, imagine somethin’ like that…”

“Well, seems to me you guys are fergettin’ the case of the Dobbins out Starkway way,” says Frank suddenly, leaning into the conversation.

“The Dobbins? Hey, that rings a bell somewhere—the Dobbins…” Roy muses.

“Yeah, well that was likely before yous guys’s time,” says Frank. “Mighta been forty-five years ago now, they had the farm the Trombleys are at now.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Yeah, well young Lou Dobbins out there, he’s the guy that blew the heads off his grandparents.”

“Jesus Christ, yeah! I do recall hearin’ tell of somethin’ like that, Frank, yeah!” Roy exclaims, snapping his fingers.

“That’s right, that’s right,” agrees Frank. “Yeah, well, it was like this: this Lou Dobbins guy, both his parents were gone. Didn’t know what happened to ’em—mighta been dead, killed in a car accident or just took off, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell ya. So he’d been mostly raised by his grandparents on his father’s side. In fact, you ’member that old scrap-metal yard out on Highway Six?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yep,” says Gus.

“Well they useta own that. Anyways, this young Lou Dobbins fella, he grew up and the old folks looked after ’im and he was a queer bird, worked in the garage in town from the time he was fifteen, you never seen him or heard a peep out of ’im otherwise, and he lived out on the farm with the old folks up till he was about thirty years old. Never broke away, if ya know what I mean, kinda strange—seemed timid, wouldn’t say boo to a ghost, and you never saw ’im in town at the dances or what have you at all, or with anybody. So no one never thought nothin’ of it, people just generally felt that was his way, I guess.

“So he was still livin’ with the old folks when he was thirty years old and then of course naturally by that time he couldn’t move out ’cause the old folks by this time were OLD, I mean they couldn’t’ve looked after themselves at all—so young Lou was kinda tied to them if ya know what I mean. They’d looked after him so now I guess he was kinda duty-bound and obligated to look after them.

“’Parently for the last couple a years the old folks were so goddamned old and sick they couldn’t even get outta bed—they’d just lay there day and night in their pyjamas, and I guess he had to feed ’em and change ’em and turn them over and I don’t know what all. People said they were so old and had laid there for so long that the two of ’em even came to look like each other, couldn’t tell ’em apart almost—jes’ these two wrinkled-up white shrunk-up little things layin’ in bed there, never sayin’ a word.

“So one day Lou comes in,” says Frank, throwing up his hands, “pulls out a twenty-two-gauge shotgun, and blows their heads off.”

“Je—sus CHRIST!” cries Roy, wincing. Gus sits looking at Frank out of the corner of his eye, puffing at his pipe, his head cocked.

“Yep, well you know the power of them twenty-two-gauge shotguns,” says Frank.

“Jesus, yes,” says Roy. “I got one I take up north for the deers—the POWER of them things.”

“Yeah, well you can imagine at point-blank range—blew their heads clean off—and then, the weirdest thing, the guy didn’t just stop there. ’Parently he reloaded and cocked the thing again and again—and you know how long it takes to reload one a them things—blastin’ away at ’em over and over, I mean, after he must’ve known they MUST’ve been dead already. I mean, I say he blew their heads off but there weren’t hardly enough to bury, really.”

“Good Christ!” cries Roy. “You wonder what in hell would possess a man.”

“Well, after that he went down into the cellar where he knew they had a bunch of cash stashed in an old fruit jar, I mean somethin’ like twenty thousand dollars,” says Frank.

“Ah, so that’s it,” muses Roy, nodding his head grimly.

“Sure. Lou goes down, takes out the loot and nobody sees him no more. Police had a devil of a time trackin’ him down—till finally musta been a week later, up in Birkston, they hear the guy’s a regular at some tavern and he’s the life of the party, dressed in a brand new, sharp suit with a brand spankin’ new car outside stayin’ at some fancy hotel up there. Been up there all week I guess, buyin’ everybody drinks and bein’ everybody’s pal. I mean, after all a those years walkin’ ’round here like a ghost, ya wouldn’t hardly believe it.

“Well, they surrounded the place, tryin’ to get him to give himself up peaceful-like. Everybody else came runnin’ outta that place as if all the devils in hell was chasin’ ’em. All the Birkston cops was standin’ outside armed to the teeth—I mean, for all they knew he was armed and dangerous.”

“Sure, sure,” says Roy, blinking with deep interest, his mouth slightly open.

“Yep,” agrees the other man. “So like I say, he’s in the bar all alone, everybody, even the waiters and what all hauled their asses outta there pronto—if he was everybody’s best buddy just a few minutes ago, he sure as hell wasn’t now. And the place is surrounded by cops with their guns out and aimed at the doors and they’re callin’ out askin’ him to come out and surrender peacefully when all of a sudden he comes runnin’ outta there crazy.

“He ain’t armed, no gun, he jes’ comes runnin’ out as if he actually believes he’s got a chance to get past all those cops standin’ in a circle round the entire building. Well of course they don’t know he wasn’t armed, what the hell, so they shot ’im. Funny thing though, after they shoot ’im he falls down, and while he’s dyin’ his legs are still movin’ around on the ground like he’s still runnin’.”

“Hmph,” says Roy.

For a moment the three men sit in silence, considering the table.

“Jesus! Hell of a thing!” remarks Roy with a sigh, shaking his head.

“Well, you can bet one thing,” says Gus, stabbing his finger at the newspaper. “When they catch THIS guy it ain’t gonna be no pretty sight either.”

“Damn right,” says Roy. “Some no-good lowdown sonofabitch that’d do somethin’ like that.”

“Well I was talkin’ to Hank down at the station, and he says they don’t have much of a lead yet,” says Frank. “Best they can say now is they think it musta been someone outta the area—least they’re hopin’ that—who just came round here to stash the body.”

“Jesus, let’s hope so. Some rotten bastard like that who’d cut up someone’s body like that—hangin’ ain’t fit for ’im,” remonstrates Roy.

“I don’t suspect it would be,” drawls Gus. “Not unless ye hung him up by one ball and waited for the rest of ’im to come fallin’ down.”

“Huh! Some asshole like that oughta be shot with a ball of his own shit!” says Roy scornfully, baring his teeth in anger.

“Well, what I’d do with some no-good sonofabitch like that…” volunteers Gus, taking time to relight his pipe afresh and drawing on it, “…is take ’im out into the bush behind my property, sit ’im down on a log, nail ’is balls to it, then push ’im over backwards and leave ’im there.”

“Fuckin’ right, fuckin’ right, Gus!” Roy exclaims as Frank, with his watery, weary eyes, nods his agreement.

Happy Henry at this time has settled himself on a stool at the counter with a cup of tea. From the pocket of his overcoat he has taken a bible and laid it before him on the counter, resting his hands on either side of it, and his head at the end of his long thin neck dances back and forth towards and away from the bible as he studies it, every so often pausing in his concentration to gaze hurriedly about the coffee shop then returning again to the bible, the fingers of his hands clenching and unclenching, the upper area of his body swaying from side to side on the stool.

At this point a massive transport truck pulls off the highway and comes to a slow lumbering whissshhing steaming stop in the parking lot outside the window—the cab opens and a compact little man clambers out, the bottom of his boots slapping the pavement as he slams the door and trudges up to the coffee shop, his arms at each side held at a considerable distance from his torso with elbows bent as he walks briskly in through the door, an angry frown fixed on his granite face as he steps up to the counter.

“Coffee! Regular!” he commands, and stands shaking his leg impatiently as he waits for it. He’s wearing grease-stained blue jeans and a T-shirt with a jacket over it, the zipper half down. He strides with his coffee past the group of men who glance up at him as he passes. He rewards them with an angry glare and drops with a thud into a nearby chair, his hands clasped around the coffee cup, staring stoically before him with a sort of abstract, floating, all-encompassing hostility—the lower half of his face covered with a rash of black prickly whiskers. He perspires heavily from beneath the cap clamped tightly down on his head, the visor of it shadowing his eyes and the bridge of his nose.

Happy Henry swivels on his stool and looks shyly over at the man. Feeling his gaze, the man turns to Henry and stares balefully at him, like a bear through the bars of a cage. His eyes widen as Henry smiles, lifts himself from the stool and comes hobbling over to his table. The man’s mouth falls half-open in outraged surprise as he looks up at Henry and Henry says, “Some reading material? For free…” while placing a pamphlet gently on the table before the man, bowing slightly and smiling.

The man’s eyes slowly tear themselves from Henry and take in the pamphlet—ETERNITY IS FOREVER. He stares sullenly down at the words—HAVE YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE?—and then cranes his head slowly up to Henry again. His mouth hardens into a compressed, furious sneer and his dark eyes beam at Henry, smouldering with hatred.

Henry smiles and nods, licking his lips. “You’ve accepted Lord Jesus as your own personal saviour?” he asks pleasantly.

The man parts his lips slightly, revealing the tiny tightly clenched white teeth. His eyebrows arch and his eyes widen and his glistening, sweating face shudders with rage—the coffee in his cup quivering and splashing up over the side.

Henry looks down at the man and a faint doubt causes his smile to falter. “You… you’ve been cleansed in the blood of the…” he begins, but the man leans forward and a deep guttural sound, something like a growl, burbles up from his throat behind his clenched teeth, causing Happy Henry to step away hurriedly, blank faced, feeling the tiny hairs on the back of his neck prickle up in a quick, cool wave as he shuffles back from the man, something in the man’s dark eyes causing his heart to skip a beat as his hands jerk in little aftershocks.

Happy Henry stands in the centre of the coffee shop floor, his eyes troubled and unfocused, until he turns and spies at a table in the far corner, a gentleman sitting peacefully paging through a newspaper, a middle-aged man of average height in a sky-blue shirt neatly tucked into his pants, wearing a brown corduroy sport coat, his calm eyes perusing the paper from behind silver-framed spectacles, his placid mouth a thin gentle curve within the strands of his trim, conservative beard. Henry approaches the man meekly, shyly observing his absorbed and down-tilted profile as he reads the paper; he makes ready with a pamphlet.

“Good morning…” Henry lisps timidly.

The man’s head lifts from the paper, his distracted eyes focusing in upon Henry quickly. He smiles pleasantly. “Well, hello, good morning,” he says softly, his smile widening, causing friendly wrinkles to form around the edges of his eyes, the irises green and glittering with unguarded warmth from behind his spectacles.

Henry, uncertain, falters a moment in the sincerity of his attention. “H-how are you?” he asks, fingering the pamphlet restively.

“Quite well,” replies the man generously, nodding. “And you?”

“I’m… very fine!” exclaims Henry, his head suddenly pumping up and down on the end of his long skinny neck like a piston.

The man stares at Henry, smiling, blinking with bemused forbearance. His eyes take in the sight of the strange, trembling, black-coated individual before him with a sort of cheerful, genial curiosity. He folds the newspaper and places it on the table. “Would you like to sit down?” he asks quietly.

Henry nods and seats himself quickly on the edge of the chair, licking his lips and beaming at the man excitedly and all of a sudden it comes out of him in a tumbling, exuberant rush, the pamphlet sliding swiftly across the table: “Some reading material,” he offers, his upraised eyes glistening hopefully.

“Mm-hm,” the man says, glancing cursorily down at the pamphlet. He looks up at Henry and with a sigh he reclines back in his chair. “My name’s Sam,” he says, extending his hand across the table.

“Henry,” says Henry, grasping the man’s hand hungrily and shaking it. “Have you accepted the Lord Jesus as your personal saviour?”

The man smiles wistfully, glancing down at the pamphlet. “Well,” he says.

“The Lord Jesus loves you,” murmurs Henry, “and He wants you to know that whatever sins and bad things you’ve done are forgiven… an’… and’ve been paid for up on the cross… for as God’s only begotten son, He has died so that we may… may live and know His love and mercy of God’s grace.” He whispers breathlessly, his body bending towards the man, his neck craning and the features of his pale face gyrating with a terrible urgency.

“Mm-hm,” says the man.

“An’… an’ to be lifted up into heaven to sit upon the right side of the Lord. Not to fall into the eternal fire and weeping and gnashing of teeth of… of…”

“Hell,” says the man.

“An’… an’ to trust in the mysterious ways of the Lord, for the wages of sin is death,” recites Henry, his eyes closing as if his speech is written on their inner lids. He sways a bit in the chair.

“Mm-hm, well, yes,” says the man, nodding thoughtfully. He considers Henry for a moment, smiling faintly, his eyes peering hospitably through his glasses yet at the same time detached, removed, as if observing the situation from an incalculable distance through a telescope. “You attend a church in the area, do you?” he asks.

“Oh, yes. Yes… I attend many churches,” replies Henry enthusiastically. “I go to the Harveston Presbyterian, the St. Luke Lutheran, the Baysfield United, the St. Paul Anglican, the Mandaumin United, the Lawford Pentecostal, the…”

“Mm-hm, yes, I see,” says the man.

“…the Wigford Baptist, the Point George Anglican, the Wigford Presbyterian…”

“Mm-hm,” says the man, looking down for a moment. “Actually,” he notes, checking his wristwatch, “I’m heading into Wigford myself. Perhaps I could give you a lift if you’re heading in that direction.”

“Oh—yes, yes, I’d be very grateful for that, sir,” Henry enthuses. “If you’ll just… Yes…” he murmurs, jumping up from his chair and moving to the counter where he left his suitcases, gathering them up hurriedly.

The man smiles and chuckles inwardly at Henry’s frenetic bustling as he rises leisurely with his rolled-up newspaper and walks towards the door, Henry following at his heels, stumbling with the cases and whispering fervently to himself as he shuffles past Roy and Gus and Frank at their table.

“Well—looks like ol’ Henry’s got himself a new convert,” observes Frank archly.

“Yep, yep, sure does, Frank,” says the other man, tamping down his pipe.

“Heh, heh,” laughs Roy, shaking his head. “Shee—it!”

And the sun like a gleaming, white, shining nickel now one quarter of the way creeping up the sky through the torn, ragged clouds, beams down upon the man named Sam rustling his keys from his pocket and Happy Henry tramping behind him as they make their way across the parking lot to the car. Sam assists Henry with his cases, packing them away in the back seat.

Now pulling out of the lot onto the highway, Sam a man who enjoys driving, the wheel firm beneath his gently guiding hands as he’s leaned back far in his bucket seat, his profile serene, his eyes placidly and without resistance drinking in the road which runs straining and feeds itself disappearing beneath the hood of his car. Happy Henry at his side staring straight ahead, off and up to where the road wedges to its fine point on the horizon, the clouds shifting slowly overhead, the fence posts rushing swiftly forth and multiplying themselves endlessly.

Henry sees them and beyond them and in a most profound manner, sees them not at all, blanketed and overthrown as they are by the thick veil hanging always before his eyes: the veil ruffling and shimmering and composed of all his most fervent convictions and apprehensions, his highest-hoping anticipations and the passion of his highly excitable knowing, which in fact compose and funnel the perceptions of these eyes and is thus more real than all that stands or passes before them—real because true and knowingly grasped as such, the world at large fluidly streaming around to either side and washing over them yet never gaining foothold—merely rippling, trickling, subsiding, dripping, transparent, tasteless, fading, evaporating, waning, gone. Nothing is real but what is true.

Nothing is true except what is necessary, nothing is necessary except that each human soul must be saved from its own sins (whose wages are death) by the love of Jesus Christ, to know that love and trust it and live it and feel it gathering and solid in the entrails, hard, coiled, firm, in the chest and lungs, stretching out along the furthermost limits of the limbs, and deep within the narrow confines and crevices of the brain.

And so Henry turns to Sam, blinking meekly. “Jesus loves you,” he whispers tentatively, almost like a question, bending over from his seat, his eyes searching and hopeful.

“Mm-hm,” says Sam, guiding his car from the highway onto the road into Wigford, shifting gears. He turns and smiles at Henry. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

He turns back to the road. “Do you live around these parts? I’m from out of town myself, just here on a little business,” Sam muses reflectively, the sun gleaming on the rims of his spectacles and on his beard.

“A lot of nice country around here,” Sam remarks after a moment, his eyes taking in the broad flowing fields passing by the window, the fences and the little farms sailing past. “Quite a difference from the big city,” he smiles, turning to Henry, his expression warm and inviting, his words flowing out easily with a breezy goodwill.

“I… I live with Father,” Henry volunteers, looking straight ahead, his eyes darting sideways to the stranger.

“Hm,” says Sam. “And he’s a big one for attending church too, I suppose, is he?”

“Oh, no, no,” Henry replies. “He cannot walk. He stays inside of the house. He… he takes care of the house… he… but he reads the Bible,” Henry pronounces, nodding his head assertively.

“Mm-hm. Handicapped, is he?” Sam notes. “And your mother, she’s not around?”

“Oh no, no,” says Henry emphatically, shaking his head from side to side, closing his eyes. “She… went away after… She was sick for a long time and she went away… an’… then we buried her away in the ground… because she was sick and then she went away…” he stutters quickly, his voice like a recording played at double speed, high and nasal.

“Hm,” says the stranger. “Died, did she?”

“But… but… she was a sinner,” murmurs Henry, his eyes glazing over as his mouth moves awkwardly, straining, little drops of spit jumping from the furiously working lips. “She said no to the Lord Jesus, and she used many curse words, even though she was sick for a long time in the bed. She… closed her heart against Jesus and cursed Him and cursed Father and Father was very angry, an’… said she was damned to go to hell… an’… even though Father told her many times, she cursed Jesus and cursed Father, an’… even when her legs turned black… an’… she was very sick…”

“Mm-hm,” says the stranger, nodding slightly, his features taking on a serious cast, his eyebrows narrowing as if deeply involved in the problem being discussed.

“An’… an’… me and Father prayed for her even though Father told me and told her she was damned to go to hell and she shouted curse words back at him still. Father said we should pray for her soul, but not after she went away… for Father said we shouldn’t pray for her then, not then when she was gone,” Henry says hurriedly.

As Henry says this, the veil in his mind splits and parts like a curtain and opens onto the scene of an aged man sitting in a wooden kitchen chair, naked, a dusty blanket over his lap and resting upon the blanket an open bible. He sits before an old-fashioned wood stove glowing red with the crackling fire within it, his deep-set furious eyes staring at the stove, gold and yellow shards of reflected light from the flames dancing over his clenched, wizened features, his creased forehead, his hollow cheeks, his grimly compressed mouth.

The old man’s long, white, snowy hair sweeps from his temples and tumbles back from behind his ears onto his thin bony shoulders and his wrinkled, sinewy hands grasp at the arms of the wooden chair with such force that the veins along the backs of them stand up in thin, bluish ridges and his chest heaves as he breathes long, quavering, determined draughts of air in and out through his nostrils, his chest red and weathered beneath coils of wiry white hairs.

He stares into the fire of the stove angrily, his jaw working back and forth with an outraged, livid fury not entirely of this world. A wooden cross is nailed to the wall above the stove and on the wall behind him his saviour stares skyward with large, long-suffering, soulful eyes from an oval-shaped framed print, His right hand uplifted in a gesture of peace and also of supplication. Pieces of broken glass lie on the floor at the old man’s feet, and at the side of his chair is an overturned dish caked with the congealed remains of a long ago, half-eaten dinner.

The old man sits and stares, and around and above and piercing through the rumble of his sonorous breathing are ravening, cascading sheets of sound, the brash, pure, high, metallic shattering sounds of a woman’s screams, breaking over his head and ears, the white, blasting, frozen, howling, consciousness-shredding sounds of hysteria and gut-wrenching, horror-filled pain, the broken anguished words rawly torn from the lungs and bloodily hurling the vilest and most graphically wounding curses invented since the dawn of the spoken word, the ringing gale of vengeance and hatred and disgust wrenched from the marrow of the bone and sent screaming in delirious, scalding waves of white noise crashing through the room, the voice breaking and splintering into rough, moaning gasps from time to time as if in disbelief at the extremity of its own suffering.

The old man sits like a stone carving in the midst of it, his large, clear, pain-filled eyes unblinking. His thin, parched lips can be seen to be moving slightly, mechanically, as if repeating a vow or an oath or a ritualistic chant. “The mother of harlots and the abominations of the earth…” his low rumbling voice repeats, trembling with emotion, “…drunken with the blood of the saints, and the martyrs of Jesus.”

“And then Father said that it was well that she died,” Henry says. “For she had so offended the Lord that surely misfortune and enmity would be visited upon her the rest of her days, for she was BAD,” Henry says, nodding solemnly to himself. “She… was a BAD woman.”

“Mm-hm,” Sam says, gazing out the window abstractedly.

“An’… an’ so we buried her in the ground and Father took her picture down,” Happy Henry concludes.