The Night Watchman(90)
His voice still squeaked when he was under duress.
Now, as if to torment him, he heard the scrabble of mice and a whirl, squeaking, more scrabbling. The sounds felt like a manifestation of the thoughts trapped in his brain. They rushed from side to side behind the walls of his skull. He was struggling. On the one hand he was pretty sure that if the situation were reversed, which would never happen, Vernon would turn him in. He wouldn’t think twice. He hated Elnath even worse than Elnath hated him. Though not hate—a word he was taught should not exist—not hate. It was just that he didn’t have love. An insufficiency of love. But that was the very reason he could not make up his mind. Was he, Elnath, really worried about Vernon’s soul? Or did he just want to get rid of Vernon, to receive a new companion? And would telling on Vernon benefit Vernon? His companion would be disgraced. The money Vernon’s parents had saved, and the money Vernon had saved, all to go on this mission, would be wasted. You couldn’t get over a failed mission just like that. Being sent home could seriously damage Vernon’s standing in the community, maybe for life. But if Vernon’s soul was really at risk, his standing could be damaged for eternity. Elnath’s thoughts swayed, circled, then stuck between his options. A thought, in the form of a feeling, came creeping toward him.
Elnath wanted to turn away from the crawly sensation of this thought. He didn’t want to be touched by the notion, but the touch kept coming back. This thing seemed beyond words. But finally, as he drifted toward unconsciousness, words did form. Sentences, written on a blackboard, were constantly erased. One sentence lingered.
Talk to Vernon about it.
Elnath started awake. Going to your bishop was a clear rule. No rule said “Talk to your companion.” On the other hand no rule forbade it. Yet the possibilities of what Vernon was doing were so private, so impossible to clearly address. What words would Elnath even use to approach him? To speak so directly? Nobody had ever taught him that speaking to another person about private matters was a sin, but it felt like a sin. These sensations he was having felt like symptoms of a disease called emotion. He and Vernon would have to acknowledge this humiliating condition. Elnath had given testimony but this was different. Not done, in his family life or his church life, with his few friends. You talked to the Lord in a locked room inside your soul, a deep buried light surrounded by the moat of your heart. It was a place you didn’t go with other human beings, especially one in the shape of Vernon.
Night Bird
She had been to school with Bucky since first grade, and the way he had invited her to take a ride was so nice. Summer. The backseat window rolled down. Please get in. Come on. The smile. He was always nice, nicer to her than usual, sometimes, which might have rung alarm bells. But she hadn’t been a suspicious person up until that day. Three boys were sitting on the front bench seat and only Bucky in the back. She got into the back and one of the boys, Myron Pelt, slipped into the backseat beside her. That didn’t feel good and later, she wished that she’d kicked up a ruckus right then. As soon as they pulled out, speeding up too fast, Bucky made his move. Patrice pushed him off and Bucky threw himself back on her. Myron held her arms. She twisted, tried to kick. Bucky’s hands went under her shirt and his fingernails dug into her. Then he tried to press her knees apart with his knees and fumbled with his pants. His stale breath on her. The slime from his lips. “This isn’t much fun,” she said.
All the boys in the car laughed. She froze to ice. Then she said, louder this time, “This isn’t much fun for you boys.” She felt the edge of their attention. “Let’s go to the lake. We’ll go out in the bush. I know where. Then I’ll show you all a good time.” Where that came from, she never knew. But it was all they would remember. Myron let her sit back up. Someday, when she got around to it, she would kill him, too. They drove down the bumpy road to the lake. She showed them where to stop, right in front of the lake. Bucky took her shoes. “She can’t run now.” Fool. For she could run. Hell for leather she could run. And she did.
And she dived in the lake. And they ran after her but maybe they had to take their shoes off or maybe they couldn’t swim but she knew how to swim because that was how they got clean in the summer. She’d loved swimming with Vera. And she thrashed her arms forward and swam hard until she was really out there. Her dress was lightweight. She didn’t take it off. Nothing could weigh her down. They were tiny on the shore and still she kept swimming. When she saw her uncle’s boat she swerved toward him.
That night she took a lamp behind the blanket and looked at the scratches, the bruises. There was even a bite mark on her shoulder. She’d felt none of it. But she could still feel where his hands went. She was shaking, squeezed her eyes shut, crawled under the blanket. The next day, more bruises had surfaced from under her skin. There was that phrase “they got under my skin.”
She’d showed these marks to her mother and told Zhaanat everything that the boys had done. And they had her only pair of shoes.
Her mother had let her breath out, sharply, two times. Then she put her hand on her daughter’s hand. Neither one of them said a word; it was the same thing with both of them and they knew it. Later, when Patrice heard about Bucky’s twisted mouth and how it was spreading down his side, she looked at her mother’s face, serene and severe, for a clue. But Patrice knew that she herself had done it. Her hatred was so malignant it had lifted out of her like a night bird. It had flown straight to Bucky and sank its beak into the side of his face.