The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly (19 page)

I
ncinerated. This is what it feels like to think about Jude. The feeling of my own cells burning out one by one. I imagine the cave where he's sequestered himself, farther in the backwoods than even the Community, practically a lifetime away from another person. The way his nose had knit back together, the haggard way he walked, like he'd been broken and would never heal. So different to how he used to be, but then so is everything. Even the tree house is gone, the tree house that weathered winters of knee-high snow and summers so hot the smell of bodies in the Community was almost too much to bear. Everything Jude and I went through happened in that tree house.

Jude found me there the night I ran away. He stood beside the larch, chopping wood, an ax clutched in his hand. His face was smiling, but it contorted when he saw me, saw what was missing. I didn't realize till Jude caught me that I was falling.

We crumpled to the ground, and I only remember flashes after that—Jude's ax lying discarded in a drift of yellowed pine needles, the sleeves of my dress choked with blood, the blood already on Jude's shirt.

He carried me the rest of the way to his house. In the doorway, his father stood frozen. His skin was pale and flushed heavily at the cheeks, the way I'd learn that his face always looked, as though a lifetime of hard winters and hard alcohol had burst every blood vessel. He looked like a shadow of Jude, like a less alive version with a mess of wiry white beard and a look in his eyes like he couldn't believe what had just crashed into his life.

Jude brushed past him through the open door and laid me down on the couch. I got a good look at my stumps and started shivering. My heart still jerked angrily and my toes had turned a pale yellow, a color the exact opposite of blood.

“What in Sam Hill?” Waylon shouted. His speech was slurred, but I don't think he was drunk. It was just how he talked, like the hinge of his mouth wouldn't close properly. “Who's that?”

“Her name's Minnow.”

“She one of them cult people?”

“Yeah, and she's hurt real bad. Oh God, she's hurt real bad.”

“Why's she bleedin' so—” He stopped when he saw my stumps, darting a hand to his face. “They did this to her?”

“Shut up, Daddy, and do somethin' useful!” Jude shouted. His hands were squeezing my wrists to try and stop the bleeding.

Waylon scanned the room helplessly and ran out the back door. Jude whimpered a little, his fingers slipping over the blood. “It's gonna be just fine,” he whispered, but his throat was shaking so hard, his voice was all but lost.

Waylon barged back inside with a boxy bottle full of clear liquid in his fist. I knew it had to be the moonshine he made, the stuff that had turned his legs to jelly and his mouth to mush.

“No, Daddy! She ain't drinkin' that.”

“It's her choice, son,” Waylon said. “The drink'll make the pain better.”

I shook my head.

“We gotta get those things cleaned,” Waylon said. “It'll hurt like a bitch without somethin' to take the edge off.”

“I don wannit,” I slurred.

“Fine, fine, I hear ya,” he said.

Waylon ordered Jude to get a pail and heat some water.

“She gon' be feverin' soon, if she's not already. Thas what'll kill her, if anythin'. Gotta be ready to fight it.”

Jude carried in a pot of water from out back and placed it over the fire. After he stoked the embers nice and hot, he kneeled and leaned over me so his face was all I could see. Waylon sunk each wrist into a shallow bucket of moonshine. I tried to hold the scream in because surely they could hear me in the Community, but it tore through my chest on its own.

“I know, I know, I know, I know,” Jude chanted. He held my face in his hands, bloodying my cheeks. He was blinking and crying, glancing around frantically as though searching for something to take the pain away.

“Minnow,” he said. “You see that light?”

My eyes roved jerkily. The cabin had one glassed window and through it I could see the torsos of pines ringing the house, lit with moonlight.

“That's the forest folk's lanterns,” he said. “They're knee-high and they bite, but if you catch one, it has to grant you three wishes.”

A fresh wave of pain rolled hotly over me, and I let loose another scream, stifled by my clamped teeth. I knew the pain was unbearable and yet, somehow, I kept continuing to bear it.

Jude spoke again, his voice high and fragile. “I'll go out later and catch a forest folk, Minn. Okay?”

“Okay,” I parroted.

“I'll wish your hands back first. Then, I'll wish us away from this place, to our own little home somewhere no one has ever been. You hear my words?”

I nodded and nodded, but that could've been the tremble that had hijacked my muscles.

“And lastly . . . lastly I'll wish the death of the man who did this to you. I'll do it. I'll make sure he never breathes one more breath in this world, or the next.”

• • •

I woke up the next day throwing a mass of acid up from my stomach onto the packed dirt floor. I let it drip from my mouth, because I couldn't lift my leaden arms to wipe my lips. I turned my head slowly back onto the couch cushion. The skin on my arms was white until it reached the stumps where it became swollen with purpleness. A thick ridge of stitches ran across each one.

“You look like death,” a voice said.

I turned my head slowly. Waylon was sitting in a chair at the kitchen table. I saw for the first time the inside of the cabin, roughly furnished, every item made by hand. Made by Waylon, I guessed.

“I feel like it,” I said.

“He never told me about you,” he said. “Not even once.”

“I never told my family about him, either.”

“Why not? Children shouldn't keep things secret from their parents.”

I remembered all the times Jude had come to me with bruises and gashes marking his skin, scarring it. All the times he'd seemed scarred worse on the inside.
Maybe you should ask yourself why Jude felt like he couldn't tell you,
I thought.

Jude walked in the back door with an armful of wood. He walked to the fireplace and stuffed the wood in, stoking it so none of the winter air beyond the walls penetrated the cabin.

Waylon stood and walked out the back door.

Jude sat beside me on the couch. His eyes were dry now and there was something different about them. His jaw had taken on a harder set. Angrier.

“What's wrong, Jude?”

“Nothin'.”

“No, really. What?”

He sighed, touched his forefinger to the dark half circle under his eye. “I jus cain't . . . cain't figure it out.”

“What?”

“How someone could do this.”

“My father's the Prophet's man. I've known that mosta my life.”

“Your father did this to you?”

“He was on orders, Jude.” I said this with trepidation because in the air between us was the knowledge of what he'd done on someone's orders, what he'd done for faith.

“But, all those people, they musta known you was in there. Bein' . . . bein' hurt.”

“Yeah.”

“None of 'em did anything. They let it happen. How?
How
?”

Something strong was pouring from his eyes now, scarier than tears.

“They're crazy, Jude. That's all. Crazy people do crazy things.”

He opened his mouth then, and his words were so quiet and low I could barely make them out. “I'm gonna kill him.”

“The Prophet?”

Jude nodded. “He'll be dead someday anyway, so it cain't be a sin. I want it. I want it on my hands.” He held his hands before him, fingers curved. “I want him to look in my eyes and realize all he's done.”

This was the second time he'd said this, and I knew now that he meant it. To Jude, violence still held meaning. He truly believed enough of it could make the Prophet realize his errors and repent.

In those moments, I wish I could've articulated how unremarkable brutality is. How common. Till the moment he saw me without hands, Jude hadn't known how capable we all are of violence. But I was so comfortable with it, I didn't hesitate for a second to commit some when I had the chance, when Philip lay prone on the snow-packed earth.

Brutality was done to me. Why not spill a little into the world, too? Just to touch it. Just to know I could.

A
fter lights-out, Angel and I sit hip-to-hip on my bed near the weak desk lamp soldered to the frame of the bunk, me shouldering my way through a fantasy novel, Angel reading about neuroscience. Every other minute, I let the book fall closed and sigh, casting my eyes out to the darkened hull of the jail. Similar pockets of light shine where other girls are up late reading or writing letters home.

Angel grunts when I sigh again. “You're thinking about Jude.”

“Sorry.”

“I never had anyone who could do that to me.”

“Do what?”

“Interrupt my thoughts when he wasn't even in the room,” she says. “Except Carl Sagan, but that doesn't really count.”

“I don't know what to do.”

“You're stuck in jail. What can you do?”

“When I get out, find him. Walk into the woods and never look back.”

She's silent beside me, running her fingers along the edge of the thick tome. “They don't have books in the wilderness,” she says.

I nod. Would it mean anything, losing the things that I've gained here, as long as I had Jude? I know a year ago, it wouldn't have even been a question. But now?

“You wanna hear something cool?” she asks.

I shrug.

“I just read that the brain is the fattiest organ. Contains up to sixty percent fat.”

“Your brain must be really fat,” I say.

“Yo brain's so fat, the last time you got a brain fart, it caused a tsunami in China,” she says, guffawing loudly at her own joke.

“Oh yeah,” I say. “Well your brain's so fat, it . . . it probably eats extra servings of chicken nuggets.”

She squints at me. “You didn't do that right.”

The buzz of an unlocking cell door rings out loudly in the sleeping jail. I look up just as Dr. Wilson walks through the opening door of our cell.

“What the hell?” Angel asks.

“Evening, Angel,” Dr. Wilson says.

“How do you know my name?” she asks. “Never mind. I bet this one's told you everything about me,” she nods her head toward me, “right down to my pissing schedule.”

He smiles. “Angel, I'd appreciate it if you could go with this kind guard here. I need to speak with Minnow.”

“I'm just sitting here, minding my own business, and a strange man comes in and kicks me out? Of my own
home
?” she shouts. “That's violating my rights. I'm calling my lawyer.”

“Get your ass up, Angel,” Benny says from outside the cell, “and I'll give you a doughnut from the staff lounge.”

Angel considers this. “Fine,” she says. “But I'm still consulting my lawyer.”

When Angel and Benny depart, Dr. Wilson sets down his stool. I swing my legs off the side of my bunk, waiting for him to reveal what was so urgent.

He presses his lips together. “What motivates someone to kill?” he asks.

“You've asked me this already.”

“Consider it review.”

“This is why you came here in the middle of the night?”

“We'll get there. Answer the question.”

“Insanity.”

“And?”

“Anger.”

“And?”

“Revenge.”

He raises his chin. “Elaborate.”

I pause. “Thinking it's the right thing to do. Believing the person deserves it.”

He nods. “Many would say the Prophet deserved what he got.”

“I'd agree with them,” I say.

“Who else would agree with you?”

“No idea. They all seemed pretty in love with him.”

“What about your father?”

I hitch up my shoulders. “What about him?”

“We have a new theory. That he may have been involved in the Prophet's death. He may have had motive.”

“What motive?” I ask, incredulous.

“Read this for me, will you?”

He passes over a piece of paper lying flat inside an evidence bag. I immediately recognize the slanted handwriting. It's my father's. The paper is stained and creased, each crease a dark line, as though it's been rubbed repeatedly between dirty fingers.

The True and Faithful Narrative of Samuel Ezekiel Hiram Bly

I look up. “My father's prophecy.”

“You know of it?” he asks.

“Of course.”

He nods. “I need you to confirm its authenticity.”

I read it.

And lo, upon the factory floor came the strange and woeful noise of the slamming of machines. The quietest things in that place were the souls, clad in blue jumpsuits and yellowing plastic goggles. Suddenly the place, the noise, began to slow, and stopped completely. Everything froze. Never had I heard the factory in such a state of quietude. A sound like pure light filled the room. The archangel descended from the uncovered ceiling where the clotted mustard-colored insulation clung, the angel being righteous and holy and made of a million pinpricks of light, with a face beautiful like a baby's. The archangel sung me his instructions in a language no human had ever spoken. “You are to follow the Prophet into the woods and never return.”

“It's his handwriting,” I say. “And it's the same story he told us. This was sort of what ultimately made everyone decide to come to the Community.”

“Very good. That's all I needed.” He puts the paper back in his bag and rises from the stool.

“Wait!” I say. “How is this motive?”

He sits down again. “It's evidence that your father thought himself a prophet, too.”

“You think my father wanted to kill the Prophet to . . . to become the new Prophet?”

“Perhaps.”

“But that's ridiculous! My father was loyal. Look at everything he did.” I close my eyes, suddenly breathless, picturing the hatchet in my father's loose hand, the Prophet screaming, “DO IT! DO IT NOW!”

“It's a possibility I have to entertain,” the doctor says.

“No one would've followed my father. No one.”

“Imagine for me that there were some in the Community who were starting to see through the Prophet. Let's say his lies were starting to show. Let's say people were becoming less and less satisfied with his answers.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The women who escaped are now raising their own children. Some of them still live as sisters beside their husbands' wives, but they claim their birth children. That's a direct violation of the Prophet's orders, is it not?”

“Yes,” I say. “We weren't supposed to know who our real mothers were.”

“Those who got out are defying the Prophet's rules in all kinds of ways. Some have even left altogether. Remember Donna Jo, your father's second wife? She took her children to Los Angeles to live with friends she knew in college. It seems you're not the only lapsed Kevinian anymore, Minnow.”

“But if the Prophet were alive,” I say, “I don't believe for a second that they wouldn't all go running back to him.”

“Some might. But things have changed. For so long he was like a magnet, keeping it all together. But now that he's gone, the cracks are a lot more obvious.” He shifts in his seat. “With every religion, there exist certain rules. Every God has to abide these rules, otherwise the entire thing stops working. What was the Kevinian God capable of?”

I shrug. “Anything.”

“Anything? He could punish? And reward?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Could he intervene in the lives of humans?”

“Yes.”

“Did he create the universe?”

“Yes,” I say, then pause. “Or, wait. No, he couldn't have. He wasn't born until the seventeen hundreds.”

“So, who created the universe, if not God?”

“I don't know,” I say. “I never asked.”

“You never asked? Nobody ever asked?”

“It didn't occur to me. Don't look at me like that.”

“Sorry. It's just interesting.”

“What is?”

“He invented a religion. I'm just not sure he did a very good job.”