KIN (25 page)

He looked down at his fingers, at the faint maroon stains on his skin. It seemed he always had blood on his hands no matter how hard or how often he washed them. He wanted to believe it was a sign from God—stigmata of a sort—that he was doing His work, and doing it well. This would have encouraged Papa, though he secretly wished for more than some ambiguous rusty stains on his skin as acknowledgment of his commitment, reassurance perhaps, however slight, that a life spent worshipping and serving God hadn't been in vain, and that in the end, the Men of the World would not be victorious.

"Gimme strength," he whispered to the room.

As a child, he had questioned the existence of God, reasoning that the beauty of the world was not proof enough, that there had to be something else, something more. Something a child could look to for solace, and hope, for in his world there was little beauty, even less when his mother took the old belt to him for daring to doubt their Lord. She would punish him, and then order him to pray for forgiveness. Over time, he learned to view his fervent whisperings in the dark as penance he should not have to give for simply expressing his curiosity, and learned to resent the god for whom they were intended.

Then, one night, everything changed.

He was not yet eleven years old, but he had learned to stop questioning, his doubt a secret rebellion against the mother who had forced him to associate faith with pain. But not believing did not reduce the agony. His mother's big city boyfriend saw to that, and between them they rendered for the boy an adequate picture of Hell.

That night, early in the summer, as he lay in bed eyes screwed shut, tears streaming down his cheeks, the wounds from the belt raw and sore and burning but not nearly as much as the sharp thrusting of the grunting, drunken man atop him, something happened. A particularly vicious tearing sent red pain shooting through him. He gasped, convulsed in the bed and opened his eyes.

There was light, and within it he glimpsed angels, redolent in shimmering muslin robes that did not bind their wings, allowing them to beat at the air, cooling him. Their hair seemed made of frost, eyes a liquid blue, and in them he saw the answer to the questions his mother had refused to answer. Abruptly, adrift on a sea of pain that had carried him to the shores of epiphany, he knew why she had not sated his curiosity. She had been afraid of the power that might be bestowed upon him if God deemed him worthy.

She feared wrath.

The pain ebbed away, became a dull throbbing that kept time with his rapidly beating heart, and he felt a longing for the light as it faded, retreated into the walls.

But what he had seen had been enough.

In that room, bathed in sweat not his own, the stench of alcohol suffocating him, his mother's boyfriend hissing curses down upon his prone form, he had found God, or rather, God had found him, and bestowed upon him a great gift, a gift he quickly used.

To the man's surprise, the boy had risen up from the bed of his torment, a crude homemade hunting knife gripped tightly in his hand, fire in his soul. He remembered the days spent making that knife, but could not recall secreting it beneath his mattress. Not that it mattered, for though they had appeared to leave him, the angels still sang in his ear, advising him to do what needed to be done before it was too late.

"You git yer ass back down in that bed," the man had commanded, and slapped him hard across the face.

Kill him
, cried the angels, and the boy obeyed, earning his freedom with just a few short slashes aimed at the man's face, neck and crotch. And when it was done, he had wept, but not for the depraved big city man, and not for his mother, who had rushed into the room—lured by sounds very different from those she'd grown accustomed to ignoring—and straight into his waiting blade. No. They were headed for Hades where they belonged.

He was weeping with joy.

God had answered.

God had saved him, and as he packed up his things and headed out into the night, the stars became His eyes, the wind His whisper, and he finally saw in the world the beauty he had refused to believe was there. He had been reborn, as all wayward souls must, or die screaming.

But as he sat at the rickety table staring at stains that might only be rust, or dirt ingrained in his skin, he realized that ever since the girl had escaped them, the same doubt that had corrupted his youth had begun to creep back in again, dulling the light that burned in his heart. In the years since his rebirth, he had lived off the land as God intended, and taught his kin to do the same. Theirs had been a humble life, modest and meek.

And every step of the way, they were challenged, if not by those corrupted souls seeking to destroy them, then by God himself, who made the crops go bad, tainted the water, and sent ferocious winds to tear down their home. Papa had chosen to interpret these things as punishment for something they had done of which they were not yet aware, the slight missteps that made a man deviate from the chosen path without him being aware he was doing so. Perhaps it was the cussing, his fondness for a tipple, or the things he liked to do with Momma-In-Bed on those fine summer evenings when the children were playing in the woods. Maybe they were getting lazy and not being vigilant or efficient enough in their hunting. He didn't know, but stepped up his efforts accordingly. He was harder on the kids, and though he was affectionate with Momma, he stopped laying with her. Instead he sat with her and talked, or read from the Bible. Every morning at sunup, the family congregated in her room and they prayed until noon, then again before bed. He told the children they would no longer wait for strangers to come wandering onto their property. They would expand the hunt, culling sinners from the roads and the land beyond.

For a time, it seemed his efforts were appreciated.

Then his daughter, his own flesh and blood had turned against him, and he had been forced against his will to offer her as a sacrifice to placate a God he worshipped but feared greatly. He had wept for her passing, but greater was his terror at the power the Men of the World had to project their disease into one of his own. Afterward, they did not eat her, for her flesh was corrupt.

From then on, the children were made to bathe in scalding hot holy water, then scrubbed mercilessly with steel wool before bed. The diseases that ran rampant in the outside world could be sent to them on the air, he told them, for when sick people breathe, the corruption travels. If one of their own died, they would eat them to preserve and absorb their strengths, as Papa had been taught by the old man he had met and befriended on a logging trail during his adolescent travels. The man had taken him to a cabin in the Appalachians, where he died, but not before imparting his wisdom to the impressionable boy.
Eat the flesh and drink the marrow
, he'd said,
If'n you want to know all I know
.

The children learned, as he had learned, to look upon the Men of the World, the coyotes, as emissaries from Hell who poisoned everything they touched. He had taught them that the very earth such creatures walked upon could turn black underfoot. He supervised their prayers, and often their slumber, periodically checking to see if they were touching themselves or each other. If they did so, even in their sleep, he would haul them from bed and beat them severely, punctuating the blows with quotations from the bible, so they would understand what they had done, and why the punishment was necessary.

For a year, he withdrew his focus from the outside world and all its dangers to his own house and the potential for evil that hung like a cloud around his kin. Punishment became pain. Transgressions were paid for in flesh. It was the only way. The children grew to fear him as much as he feared God.

And though he had never admitted it aloud, not even to Momma, he feared Luke, who he had caught in congress with his sister. How much of the poison had she transferred to her brother?

At night, in the quiet, he sought Momma's counsel. She was his sole source of comfort in a world that seemed determined to destroy them all. She listened to his concerns, her manner eternally light despite the ever-increasing weight of her flesh, and the first obvious signs that her docility had not made her immune from God's wrath. She was stricken with aches in her joints, stabbing pains in her chest (which Papa feared might be God's way of reminding him of the night he had found his faith), and lethargy. Then came the sores, the rashes, and the angry welts across her back, so much like the wounds from a belt.

"This is what becomes of us if we lie still for too long," she told him. "I guess God's tryin' to make us see that we better not get too content with things. We gotta keep pushin' 'till we're as close to His grace as we can get short of bein' by his side."

He'd considered that for a moment, then leaned forward until his lips were pressed against her ear, and "What if I can't?" he'd whispered, as softly as he could, even though he knew there could be no secrets from the Almighty.

Momma closed her eyes and shook her head. "Givin' up's a sin in itself when you've been blessed with His light," she said. "Now pray with me and forget your weaknesses before you're made to pay for 'em."

But pay for them he had. His daughter was dead, a sinner had escaped them, and Luke had been poisoned. The rest of them had been forced to move, to seek out a man Papa despised in the hope that he would offer them sanctuary.

*

An hour passed before the front door swung wide and Jeremiah Krall stomped into the cabin. His enormous gut strained against his tattered plaid logging shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, revealing meaty forearms dark with coarse hair. Dirt and blood stained his faded jeans. His large boots were untied and left muddy prints on the floor.

Papa rose from his seat and nodded in greeting.

In the dim light from the room's bare bulb, Krall appraised him as he might a snake, and spat tobacco juice on the floor. His eyes were the color of old bark, and glared from a small clearing in the frenzy of wild dark brown hair that smothered his skull and face.

When they'd pulled up earlier, Krall had been leaving. He'd scarcely acknowledged them, but nodded at the cabin, which Papa took as an indication that he should wait. Now he hoped he hadn't misinterpreted the signal.

"What's in your truck?" Krall asked, and unslung a burlap sack from his shoulder. The sack was cinched at the neck with dirty cord. It made a dull thump, suggesting weight, as it hit the floor. Blood pooled around the bottom.

Papa started to speak, but Krall interrupted him.

"Got your goddamn kids sittin' out there lookin' like sledge-hammered sows. Big tarp in the back looks like you got somethin' wrapped up. You bring me a present?"

Again, Papa started to speak, but this time he forced himself to wait. Blurting out that Krall's only remaining connection to the world was dead might not be the best introduction. Not when he considered where he was. The cabin stood in the shadow of Hood Mountain, at least a half a day's ride to the nearest town. It was remote, and that suited Krall, especially after killing with his bare hands three men who had jokingly called him a fibber when he claimed to have killed a buck that was roughly the same size as himself. As bold as Krall was known to be, the murders alone might not have inspired him to self-imposed exile, but finding out one of the men he'd killed was the brother of a Sheriff did.

"We need a place to hole up for a while," Papa said, and regained his seat, figuring that if he appeared relaxed, Krall might do the same.

He didn't.

"This is my place," he said coldly. "You got your own damn house. Go stay there."

Papa knew Krall was not a stupid man, and that he was only being obtuse simply to make what Papa had to say all the more difficult.

"We can't," Papa told him. "There's been some trouble."

"Kinda trouble?"

"We caught some kids in our woods. Wanted to teach 'em a lesson. They kilt my boy Matt."

It was hard to see if the news affected Krall any, given that only his eyes and the bridge of his nose were visible beneath his unkempt hair and above the undergrowth of his beard, but Papa doubted it.

"Which one's he?" Krall asked, sounding disinterested.

It was not a question that required an answer, rather Krall's way of ensuring Papa knew he was not welcome, no matter who he had lost.

"You still goin' on with all that God work?" he asked then. "Preachin' and huntin' up people you think's sinners?"

"I still believe, yes," Papa answered, but felt the color rise slightly as he recalled what he had been thinking only a few moments before. "Our work is needed now more than ev—"

Krall raised a massive hand. "Don't you go preachin' to me now. God ain't here or anywheres around me, and I ain't one for any of that bible-thumpin' bullshit."

"It's not—"

"Why'd you come here?"

Papa felt flustered. He had rehearsed what he was going to say and how he intended to deliver it, but realized he should have known from the few conversations he'd had with Krall in the past, that the exchange would go entirely Krall's way. He would hear what he wanted to hear, and that was all there was to it, and if he decided Papa and the boys needed to go, then they'd go. No one ever argued with Krall and came out the better of it.

"I told you," he said. "We had some trouble."