October 1, 2017 Volume 7 No 12

To Us May Grace Be Given

by L.S. Johnson   

1.

They came near the end of the day. We thought it was thunder at first, though there weren’t any clouds. Eight of them on horseback with Bill Boyland at their head. “Eight men for a woman and her kid,” Mam muttered as she loaded the revolver.

Once they came through our gate they stayed in their saddles. I couldn’t see their faces for their hats pulled low; I only recognized Bill Boyland by his voice and the shiny gold watch hanging from his waistcoat. He told us Mam’s letter and papers didn’t matter none. Mam started arguing with him; I couldn’t speak because my voice would give me away as a girl.

“Your Pa was a squatter,” Bill Boyland said to me. He spoke slow, like I was thickheaded. “Now your Ma is right: ten years ago it didn’t matter none, because ten years ago it was every man for himself. But that was then.”

“And this is now, and you’re nothing but a god-damned thief, William Boyland,” Mam said.

“Constance, I warned you and Matthew both. This land deceives. It looks good but the dirt’s cruel. Doesn’t matter how much you pray over it, it’s never gonna be good for anything but making meat.” His hat nodded at me. “You’re working your boy like a god-damned animal, and for what? You both deserve better than this.”

“Better than our God-given home?” Mam asked. “Better than what’s rightfully ours? I have blood in this land, William Boyland, blood and ten years’ honest work—not that you would know anything about that.”

A few of the men muttered when she spoke, but Bill Boyland raised his hand and they silenced quick. “Only the Land Office can give the homes out here, Constance. You should have filed claim—as you say, you had ten years to do it in.” He hadn’t raised his voice once. “Now I bought this land fair and square, Missus Norton, and I mean to have it. I want you gone before the next full moon.”

When they had ridden away I let the knife slide out from my sleeve and Mam untucked the revolver from beneath her apron. She went in the house, leaving me to put away the loys. I made out like I was tired from plowing, but in truth I worked slow because I thought my heart might burst from beating so hard. Eight men. We had the revolver and the shotgun, but we were close to being out of cartridges for both. Mam hadn’t wanted to go to town for weeks now; she was afraid Bill would have a man watching, who would come after she was gone and rob us blind and do worse to me. But I knew now that was a mistake. Eight men and he could probably come back with double as quick as you please, and it was less than a month to the full moon.

When I finally went in she had cleared the table and pulled the carpetbag out from under the bed. It was grey with dust; even before Da died Mam and I weren’t supposed to touch it, though I used to open it when no one was looking. It’s the past, Da would say when I asked him about it. From when we thought we knew better than God. We came here to get away from that.

The way Mam was laying things out, I knew I wasn’t the only one who had peeked inside. She didn’t even have to look, just put out the candles and the fancy drawings, and even the vials that I liked best. In your hand the stuff inside looked black, but when you held them up to the light you saw that it was really a dark, sweet red.

Beside these Mam put a knife I had never seen before, with a thick handle and two round blades folded up like a flower.

“I’ll show him,” she said. “I’ll show him my god-damned claim.”

“What d’you mean?” I asked. My voice sounded funny; sometimes I went so long without speaking I forgot what I sounded like.

Mam didn’t answer. She was peering at the drawings, holding them up to the light and talking to herself.

I started cutting up the potatoes for supper, but I kept looking at that knife. Not round, the blades; more like petals, tight as a spring bud. I reached out and touched the handle only to jump when the blades snapped apart. Now it looked like jaws ready to bite.

“Leave it be,” Mam said. She bundled everything up again and went back out into the yard. Under the beech tree she began dragging her heel in the dirt, making a circle.

I followed her outside. “Mam, what’re you doing?”

She grinned at me then, not her nice smile but the way she smiled when we killed rats in the barn.

“Calling down the god-damned devil on that sonofabitch Boyland,” she said, and got down on her hands and knees in the circle.

We had nearly three weeks before Bill Boyland was to come back, but as Mam explained it, sometimes the devil takes a while. We took turns watching the circle and keeping up with the plowing. Mam said it wasn’t a circle but a kind of snare. She had put the last of our salt pork in the middle and kept adding drops from one of the vials to it, her face getting grimmer by the day. I didn’t know why we didn’t just send the devil to Bill Boyland direct, rather than bring him to us, what if the devil decided to take us all? But Mam didn’t look like she was for questioning, so instead I said that the goats might get at the bait.

“Nah, Addy. It’s devil’s blood.” She touched my shoulder, which made me feel better. “The goats are smart, they know better than to touch it.”

“The devil will come for his own blood.” My voice nearly twisted up, making it a question, but I caught myself in time. Mam was fierce with the whip when she got the rage in her.

“They’ll come to rescue one of their kind,” she said. “They won’t come for food, they can get that anywhere. But they’ll come for one of their own. Any of them within a hundred miles, they’ll smell it.”

And then I really wanted to ask questions, because I had always thought there was just one devil, the one in the Bible. Now I pictured devils like rabbits, with horns for ears and long sharp tails. I wanted to ask Mam how many devils there were, and did they come in different kinds, and what if we got the wrong one? But she was smiling the rat-killing grin again, and all those questions weren’t really what I wanted to ask: If a devil came, what was to stop him killing us as well?

That night I took a while feeding the goats. They crowded around all warm and nibbled my fingers. We had to sell most of the animals when Da died, but Mam had made sure we kept the goats and the chickens. I watched the goats being born every year, and the ones I had to nurse I named in my head, though I never told Mam. When they grew too old for milking or making babies she would walk them down the road a ways to a fellow named Tom. He had a big herd that he rented out for clearing brush, sometimes even for the railroad. In the post office there was a print of the railroad coming through, and I would pretend our goats were just past the edge of the paper, eating up the dead grass and keeping the men safe from fire.

I whispered their names now as I fed them. Isaac, after one of my favorite stories. Leah and Rachel, because their story always made me feel sad, and I thought they would have been happier without Jacob. There had been one I named Matthew, after my Da, but he was with Tom now. Cain and Abel, for twins that kept butting each other. Even a little Addy, because she came so late like I had done.

If Bill Boyland got the land, we’d have to sell them all, maybe to someone for their meat.

Isaac butted my hand and I scratched his head. I knew him by his uneven horns. I knew them all and they all knew me, they would come when I called them. Mam wanted to keep the land because it was ours, because Da had cleared it and worked it until it killed him. But I wanted to keep the land for Mam and the goats, so we could all stay together.

I looked at Mam, sitting on the edge of the circle, waiting for the devil to come. Anything, to keep us here, together. Anything.

It was six days and nights before the devil finally came.

2.

The devil came up over the hill at sunset, hunched over and leading a lame horse. It wore a hat and coat like anyone. I thought it was one of Bill Boyland’s men, but Mam hissed at last and went behind the house. I didn’t know what to do so I just stood there on the far side of the beech and waited.

It approached slow, like it sensed something was wrong. I couldn’t see its face for the kerchief over its mouth. At the fence it stopped and waved at me. I waved back before I thought better of it, but there was nothing for it then.

Halfway across the yard it stopped again and looked around. I could see its eyes squinting, could see its nose wrinkle as it smelled the bait. It turned completely, looking back at the fence, and that was when Mam ran out of nowhere with the jaw-blades and drove them into the devil’s back, right between the shoulders, and snapped them shut.

It screamed then, its voice as high as my own, and fell like it’d been shot. The horse reared and ran to the far side of the yard.

“Get the little yoke,” Mam said.

The devil’s hat had fallen off. Its long brown hair fell everywhere, thick and snaking. There was a big stain on its back where the handle stuck out, and blood was dripping on the ground. With a moan it started to drag itself back towards the fence, hand over hand, its legs twisting up.

“Addy get the god-damn yoke!” Mam yelled.

I ran to the barn. The devil was cursing now, calling Mam terrible names, and I clapped my hands over my ears. It took me a while to find the little yoke, the one Da had made for our last, runty ox. When I came back out Mam had her knee on the devil’s backside and was holding its head down with one hand, pushing aside its hair with the other.

Her head, her hair. I didn’t know much about devils, but now that I was close I could see this one looked an awful lot like a woman.

“Look,” Mam said. She dug her nails into the devil’s neck, making her shriek into the dirt, and scraped something free. When she held out her hand to me there were shiny circles on her fingers. “Child of the serpent. You would never know it to look at her. For generations your Da’s people fought ‘em, to the death more often than not. Now she can start paying us back.”

My mouth was hanging open and I closed it tight.

The devil said something then. Mam lifted her hand away and the devil twisted her head to look at me. She looked like a woman, but her face was all hollow and a sickly gray, like she was ill. Her eyes were the same dark brown as mine.

“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” she said.

“That may be,” Mam said, “but it’s done now.” She took the yoke from me and latched it round the devil’s neck.

We tied the devil up in a stall in the barn, tying the yoke to the walls and her wrists to the yoke and hobbling her feet just to be sure. When I reached for the blade Mam slapped my hand and shook her head. The devil’s legs were still limp. She hadn’t fought when we dragged her across the yard, just looked from me to Mam and back again. Even knowing about the snakeskin she still didn’t look like a devil to me. She looked like a woman, sick and scared.

“Please,” she said now. “Please, I can’t feel anything. Just get me a doctor and I won’t tell anyone, I promise.” Her eyes looked wet. “I have family waiting for me, they’ll pay whatever you want.”

Mam just snorted and checked the knots.

“My name is Elisabeth,” she said, turning to me. She was crying; my own throat got tight. “Please, I have no money, why are you doing this? Please send for a doctor. I can’t feel my legs, oh God, why are you doing this?”

“Mam,” I whispered.

“You can save your breath.” Mam said. “We’ll let you go after the next full moon.” She jerked her head at the doors. “Men are going to come here, they’ve threatened me and my boy. You take care of them for us and we’ll let you go.”

The devil just looked at her, her eyes huge and weeping.

“If you don’t, I’ll take your blood and do the job myself.”

Still the devil just looked at her. I could see her trembling.

“Well,” Mam said. “We best get supper on.”

“Wait!” She leaned forward. “You can’t just leave me here! I may never walk again!”

Mam laughed. “If I took that blade out you’d have my throat before I could take a breath.”

“Mam,” I whispered again. She looked like she was hurting bad. What if we had made a mistake, what if we were killing her?

But Mam patted my arm. “It’s all right, Addy. Think about it. If she were what she claims to be she’d have bled out by now. She sure as hell wouldn’t have the strength to holler like that.” She turned towards the barn doors. “Come on. We’ve done a good day’s work.”

“No, you mustn’t leave me! Please!” The devil was looking at me, all wild and sobbing. “I just want a doctor. For God’s sake! I’ll do whatever you want, just send for a doctor!”

I bit my lip; I felt like I might cry too, but Mam hated tears. Only how could a devil even say God without getting struck down? “What if we’re wrong?” I whispered. “What if she’s just a person?”

Mam sighed then and crouched down in front of the stall, plucking at the old straw. “I know what you are,” she said to the devil. “Matthew’s da was an alchemist and a preacher, as was his da, all the way back to Thomas Norton himself. Matthew told me the real story of Eden, how the serpent tricked Eve so he could eat from the tree of life, and how all his offspring carry that in their blood. Mankind’s birthright gobbled right up. But it wasn’t all good, was it?” She smiled at the devil. “No, it came with all sorts of problems. Like your hunger, like how a little knife can leave you helpless. Like how even a foolish old woman can make a poison that will turn you to dust.”

At Mam’s words the devil’s eyes went hard, and her mouth became a line. She met Mam’s gaze square, and then she spat in the straw.

“That’s what I think of your fucking das,” she said. “Cruel madmen to a one. Rather like you, I suspect.” All the trembling and fear were gone. “So your plan—” she made the word sound dirty— “is to keep me tied up until the next full moon, and then what? I can’t walk, you idiot.”

“Not now you can’t,” Mam said. “But we both know it’s only the blade—”

“No, you know that,” the devil interrupted, and Mam’s face went dark. “I will tell you what I know, shall I? I know that if I don’t feed soon, I’ll be dead by the time your men come. I know that if you don’t give me time to heal after you remove the blade I will be nothing more than another bitch for them to fuck and kill. And I know you are in no way strong enough to drink my blood, not with that sickness in you.”

I stepped back, expecting Mam to go in a rage, but she didn’t. She didn’t even speak. She only stayed crouched, with her face dark and her hands twisting in her skirts, and then I was proper afraid. No one had ever spoken to her like that without her raging at them.

“Now your daughter here, she might be able to drink,” the devil continued, looking at me. The line of her mouth curled up and it was awful. “You’re as strong as a little horse, aren’t you? A god-damned mule of a girl. So your mother’s the mouth and you’re the muscle, is that how it is?”

“That’s my son,” Mam said then, but her voice was something I’d never heard before, all strained and cracked.

“I have given you the courtesy of my honesty,” the devil said. “I recommend you do the same.” She leaned forward again. “I’ve met your kind before, missus. You listen in on your menfolk, you sneak into their studies and read their books, and you think you know better than they did, and you always die worse.” She kept talking when Mam started to speak. “If you took the blade out now it would be days before I could walk again, and my belly was empty long before now; even if you hadn’t crippled me I’d barely be able to stand. I need at least three nights to heal and I need to eat. So put that in your fucking plan.”

Mam bared her teeth, then reached over and smacked my leg. “Go start supper,” she said. “Go on, now. I got business here to take care of.”

Just before the barn doors I looked back. Mam was saying something to the devil, something I couldn’t make out. What if it was true, what the devil said? What if Mam had read the book wrong, what if there was some kind of sickness in her? She was always tired, but we were both always tired, there was only the two of us to do everything.

Mam kept talking; her face was whipping mean. If the devil replied at all I couldn’t hear it, and I didn’t want to.

From the kitchen window I watched as Mam stormed out of the barn, cursing and kicking at the dirt, the shotgun in her hand. I thought to hide then but she went to the horse instead, seizing its reins and dragging it limping past the fence where she shot it in the head. I could have sworn I heard a cry from the barn but it could have been me. Just to shoot it like that, when it might have only needed shoeing. Just to shoot it. Mam stripped off the saddle and harness and as she was passing the barn she threw them in a heap by the door and then I did hear something, not a cry but the devil cursing like when Mam first stabbed her. She kept on long after Mam started the evening chores and I was making supper; she kept on until at last she just stopped, like someone had cut her throat.

“I don’t think she can stop all Bill Boyland’s men,” I said to Mam when she came in for supper.

“She will if she wants to live,” Mam said. “You just stay away from her. She’s got a mouth on her, that one.”

I stirred the soup, trying to think how to ask without asking.

“I get pains in my stomach, Addy,” Mam said then. “They come and go. Sometimes I sick up and there’s blood. That’s why it has to be this way. This land is all you’ll have after I’m gone. A woman can’t get by without money or a man. This land is as good as dollars.”

I heard her, but at the same time it seemed like she was speaking from a long way away. Tears kept coming out and I watched as they fell into the pot, making little circles in the soup. I didn’t dare sniffle or let on how I felt. It would only get me slapped.

“Maybe we should explain more,” I finally said when I could talk again. “Maybe we could pay her with some land. Maybe then she would want to help us.”

“Addy, she’s a devil.” Mam sighed. “The moment we take that knife out she’ll kill whatever’s to hand. We just gotta make sure that’s Bill Boyland and not us.”

3.

The next day I started the planting. It felt strange to be working, but as Mam said, it would be something to find ourselves rid of Bill Boyland only to starve next winter. I carefully tossed the seed onto the ground, whispering the prayers Da had taught me. Mam had mixed the seed sack the night before, adding the special powder Da had brought with us. He had said that the powder and praying made the ground more willing. We were nearly out of the powder now, but I wasn’t sure it mattered; each year the crops were mean, enough to keep us alive but not enough to sell.

I thought Mam was going to follow me with the harrow, but instead she went into the goat pen with a rope. I stopped and watched her. The goats had been upset that morning; the horse was starting to smell and it was scaring them. Had they done something? I tried to see Mam but she was bent over. There was a lot of bleating and then she stood up again, leading one of the goats out and kicking the pen shut. I could just make out his uneven horns. She didn’t lead Isaac to the road, towards Tom’s place; instead she led him over to the water pump and the half-log where Da had done his cleaning. I didn’t understand; why did she need to give him water? I had filled all the troughs fresh this morning.

I didn’t understand, and then I saw the knife and the bowl, and then Mam seized Isaac by the larger horn. An awful sound filled the air, a kind of bleating but worse, as if he was screaming. I opened my mouth but there was only the screaming. I was running and halfway to the log Mam dragged the knife across his neck and his skin peeled open and the screaming became blood.

When I reached the log the thing on it was Isaac and not, he was some other kind of animal, something that had a throat gaping loose and bloody and a tongue hanging out. Isaac, I said, but nothing came out, like she had cut my throat too.

Mam steadied the bowl under him, catching every drop of his bright, bright blood. It was so cold. Behind us the other goats bucked against the wall of their pen and bleated and I tried to say Isaac again but I was shivering too much. It was so very cold.

“Idiot,” Mam yelled, “you’re dropping seed everywhere!”

I looked down and in my hand was the sack of seed and what was left was spilling onto the ground. I got down and picked up the seeds one by one until they were just a blur. Mam hated tears. I scraped at the dirt, feeling for the little shapes. Isaac. Everything went dark and I looked up to see Mam standing over me, the bowl on her hip stinking of blood.

“I don’t dare take it to Tom,” she said. “Skin it and quarter it; we’ll figure out what to do with the meat later.”

I couldn’t speak for the pain in my throat, like there was a fist pressing everything down into my belly.

“What’s wrong?” She frowned at me and I shrank back, swallowing and swallowing.

“Tom?” I finally croaked.

“Of course Tom.” Her frown deepened. “Why, who else would we sell the carcass to?”

“I—I thought,” I said, but I couldn’t say any more. I hadn’t thought. I had never thought.

“Are you thinking of that herd he sold to the railroads? There hasn’t been anything like that for years now. More’s the pity, he charged them a fortune for the lot, said they were getting the brush cleared and a winter’s worth of meat besides.” She laughed. “Shrewd old bastard. That was a good Christmas, do you remember? You ate yourself sick on the candy your Da bought.” Steadying the bowl, she leaned over and touched my cheek. “Now be a help and skin it. I’ll clean it and make a nice stew, we still have plenty of onions.”

She went into the barn, bracing the bowl as she worked the door open and closed. As soon as the door shut I pressed my hand over my mouth so she wouldn’t hear the noises pushing up. From the pen the goats bleated softly, as if they heard me, as if they understood.

When I stood up the smell of the horse blew over me, now mixed with the smell of Isaac. The first vultures were circling. I hated the devil then, I hated her for coming and I hated Mam for calling her, I hated the land and the house and even the goats for making me like them. I took up the knife. Isaac looked small on the half-log, not much bigger than the bowl Mam had bled him into. I touched him and he was warm and his hair felt just like it had that morning. I remembered when he was born, how I had dried him and nursed him. I started crying hard, because I hated him too but I also loved him, and I wished I was the one on the wood instead of him.

The barn window was open. Mam suddenly said in her cold voice, the voice before she got angry, “you’ll drink it and you’ll like it.”

The devil started laughing. “I can’t drink that,” she said. “It’s worse than water.”

“It’s all I got.”

“Then you should have fucking thought of that beforehand!” the devil screamed. Her voice was so loud the chickens took up squawking.

There was a thump and the crack of the whip, over and over. I flinched and started to reach for Isaac, but there wasn’t any reason to protect him now.

“I don’t need you!” Mam roared, the worst I’d heard in ages. “I only need what’s in your veins, damn you!”

“Then come and take it,” the devil yelled, and there was no fear in her voice.

The barn door flew open and Mam came out. Blood was splashed all down her front; the empty bowl hung from her hands. Without looking at me she stomped back to the house, throwing the bowl against the side before she went in. It left a red stain on the wall.

I looked down at Isaac’s little body. Killed for nothing. Killed for nothing. What harm had he ever done anyone?

I pressed hard on my mouth, but the sound of crying didn’t stop. Only then did I realize that it was coming from the barn, that the devil was crying too.

It took me all afternoon to skin Isaac. I’d never done such a bad job of anything. I kept saying I’m sorry I’m sorry until I wasn’t sure if it was for letting Mam kill him, or for making such a mess of him after he was gone.

At supper I couldn’t eat. The stew was the color of dried blood and had pieces of meat and onion floating in it and just looking at it made my stomach hurt. Even worse was looking up at the cutting block, where I could still see his little feet. I tried to spoon up just the broth but pieces of meat kept coming in. The stew tasted like sick and sorrow; even in tiny amounts it all kept coming back up.

We sat in silence until suddenly Mam spoke. “Adelaide Norton, I’m only going to say this once.” She spoke quiet, like someone was sleeping nearby. “You have got to stop this. You’re not a child anymore. If you’re this soft over an animal, what will you do when Bill Boyland’s men start blubbering for their lives? You show them an ounce of mercy and they will cut you dead. That is the world, Adelaide. There is nothing out there—” she pointed her spoon at the window— “that will spare you at their own expense, not Bill Boyland and not that thing in the barn and not even your god-damned goats. This world isn’t founded on mercy. It is founded on survival, and God helps those who help themselves. Now you eat that god-damn stew or so help me I’ll make you.”

Slowly I spooned up a piece of meat, watching it shudder in its little puddle of broth, and put it in my mouth. Sick and sorrow. I swallowed it whole; when my stomach twisted I imagined the fist inside me pressing it down so it couldn’t come back up.

“Better,” Mam said. “Someday you’ll see that I’m doing this for you. Someday you’ll see just how close we came to dying out here.”

That night I couldn’t sleep for thinking. My hands felt sticky with blood though I had washed them clean. There were flies in the house and Mam was snoring and finally I got out of bed and went out into the yard.

Everything was quiet and still. There were so many stars above the black hills; their light made the grass look like silver. The air tasted like the smell of the horse, rotting where it had fallen. Something was chewing on it, a lean shadow that smacked its lips as it ate. I felt small. I went to the goat pen and watched them sleeping, and I thought of Isaac and hoped he was happy up in the stars, running and playing and eating whatever he wanted. I thought of his dark eyes and his little horns and how he knew me, he would always come to me instead of Mam. He knew me.

In the barn it was silent, but in a different way. The way it’s silent when you hold your breath.

“Are you all right?” I asked, for something to say.

She seemed to be asleep but then I saw her eyes were open. She didn’t say anything, so I crouched down like Mam had done and picked at the straw. The ropes creaked and when I looked at the devil she was looking at me. Her face was even thinner and bruised now too, and there were stains on her torn shirt and coat.

“I’ve had better days.” Her voice was rough. “Is it your turn, then? Like mother, like daughter? Or perhaps you’re like your father, you want to cut me up and see what makes me tick?”

“Da never hurt anyone,” I said. “He came out here so he wouldn’t have to hurt people anymore. He said people were supposed to make the world balanced. Like morning and night, or wild and tame things. That way God would give us His grace again.”

“Does this look like fucking balance to you?” She looked at me so hard I flinched. “Why were you crying before?”

I knew I shouldn’t tell her anything, but I felt desperate to speak. “The goat, the one Mam . . . ” I couldn’t say killed. “His name was Isaac,” I finally got out.

“I’m sorry, Addy.” And she did sound sorry, truly sorry.

I sat down completely then. “If you promised to help us,” I said, “I could try to get Mam to take the knife out.”

“I think your mother and I are past the point of bargains.” She lunged forward, so suddenly I yelped. “But we could bargain.”

Her fingertips curled towards my face and I jerked back, crawling until I hit one of the barn posts. Her eyes weren’t brown anymore; they were black and flat and huge. “Your mother needs me alive, Addy. That means she’ll keep killing your livestock, because she is desperate and there is nothing else she will give me.” Her lip curled up in the corner. “But you could give me something.”

I opened my mouth, but all that came out was “what?”

“You’re starting to bleed.” She said the word with a sigh, like it was a fellow she was sweet on. “Bring me your blood, and I’ll tell her I can drink something else—rats, or maybe chickens. Your goats, at least, will be safe.”

I gaped at her. “Why would you want that?”

She leaned back, smiling. Her teeth were bright with moonlight and it was terrible.

“It’s . . . it’s disgusting.” Just the thought made me shudder. I couldn’t even look at the rags; Mam always washed them for me.

At that her smile broadened. “But it’s part of being a woo-man.”

“Doesn’t make it nice,” I said. “Besides, nothing else does that. Only people.”

“Sadly we must live in the bodies we are given.”

“But you dress like a boy,” I pointed out.

At that the devil laughed, soft and bitter. “You meet all kinds out here.” Before I could say something she added, “but I don’t think you dress this way out of fear, do you? You like boy’s clothes.”

“Don’t you?” I’d seen the women in town, stuck on porches to stay out of the sun, talking about dresses and husbands. They couldn’t even ride horses. “I wouldn’t even know how to wear a dress now. I haven’t been a girl since I was little.”

“Did your mother decide that?”

“She cut my hair and took away my dresses when we came out here. Told Da to call me his son. He didn’t like it, though. He always said–” I took a breath; it felt funny to be talking about something so long ago. “He always said by the time I grew up there would be more folks out here, good folks, and I could go back to being a girl again.”

“Well,” the devil said, “I can see your mother once had some sense.” Her smile became sly. “Though it would be a pity to put you back in a dress. You wear those pants quite well.”

Her words made me go hot all over. For a moment I felt all sorts of strange things, things I didn’t want to think about. What had Mam said? She has a mouth on her. I got to my feet; I needed air.

“Strong as a mule and a rare kind of lovely,” the devil said, watching me. “Now we’ll see if you have any sense, eh? Bring me your blood, Addy. Bring me your rags. Because without them, you, your Mam, your goats . . .” She dragged her finger across her throat.

“I can’t,” I said. “Mam might find out, she’d whip us both.”

“Oh, you’re a clever girl—” I started walking away as she talked; she broke off and called “Addy!”

Like a fool I looked back. She was leaning forward again, just visible past the edge of the stall. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

“What did your mother do with your Isaac, hmm?”

Out of nowhere the fist filled my throat, so fast my eyes stung, pressing so hard I thought I would burst.

“Is your belly full of your little friend? Your friend who trusted you, who thought of you like you were his Mam, until your Mam cut his throat?”

And I could hear Isaac screaming again; I could see his head as the skin had come away and how when I brought him in the house Mam had slapped his body on the table and brought the cleaver up and down, up and down—

I ran out of the barn sobbing. I ran until I was at the beech tree and there I sat, crying and crying, thinking of nursing him in my lap, how quickly he had grown. Isaac, Isaac! I mouthed his name until it was nonsense and then I wept more.

It was dawn before I finally went back to bed. I felt nothing inside, nothing. I was as dead as he was.

4.

The next day I woke up aching with my monthlies, just as the devil had said. Mam bled out a chicken and went to the barn. I felt sick inside, thinking of what the devil might say to Mam, but there were no fights or hollering. When Mam came back out the bowl was empty but she wasn’t smiling. “Sicked up most of it,” she said when I followed her into the kitchen. She was plucking the chicken so hard she ripped a wing half off. “We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”

I nodded. I had decided to say as little as I could, in case I gave away about going to the barn, but I knew that Mam was totting up the days and the animals just as I was. Put that in your fucking plan. I was, and it wasn’t adding up.

That night I watched the moon rise. Just a thin curve of white in the sky, nearly all blotted out. But soon it would grow fat and full, and then they would come, and even if we kept the devil alive that long what if she chose to help Bill Boyland instead of us? For the first time in a long time I wished, really wished, that Da was still alive, so he could tell Mam if she was doing right or not.

After supper Mam sat down at the table with the carpetbag again. She read one of the papers carefully, then opened up some of the other vials and mashed their contents in the mortar until they made a black paste. When she saw me watching she said, “poison.”

“For who?” I asked.

“For the devil, who d’you think?” She laughed then, low and bitter. “If I could get away with poisoning Bill Boyland I’d have done it years ago. Would’ve saved this whole territory a lot of grief.”

I sat down across from her. “How will you get her to take it?”

“I won’t. We shoot it into her.” She heated the tip of an awl and made a little hollow in one of the bullets. With a spoon she pushed in the paste and scraped it smooth, then put it on the table. “Let it dry. It only takes a little. Turns their blood to powder.” She squinted again at the paper as she picked up a second cartridge. “No, sand, I think it says sand. That’ll be something, eh? Cut her and watch her pour out like a sack of flour.”

“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked.

At that her face grew dark. “I got her here, didn’t I? I’ve got a god-damned devil tied up in our barn, how many times have you seen that before? When your great-grandda would hunt them he would take six men with him, and still they would get killed often as not.” She shook her head. “You need to ask less and do more. Now go to bed.”

I got under the covers, listening to Mam singing under her breath:

The Son of God goes forth to war,
a kingly crown to gain;
his blood red banner streams afar:
who follows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
triumphant over pain,
who patient bears his cross below,
he follows in his train.

I gave myself over to thinking, about what little we had and what might happen when Bill Boyland came. Mam seemed to be fixing to break her word to the devil, and that didn’t seem like it could lead to anything good. And even if she killed the devil, even if we got rid of her and Bill Boyland and all his men, we still wouldn’t have a proper deed to the land.

When Mam finally came to bed I listened carefully to her breathing, and then I went out to the barn with my stained rags wadded in my hand. There wasn’t much blood yet, but I didn’t want to wait; it felt important not to wait. In the distance I could hear things crawling in the horse’s bones, could hear the goats nervous in their pen, but I didn’t dare try to comfort them in case the noise woke up Mam.

It wasn’t silent in the barn this time; there was a wheezing sound, long and low. In the stall the devil was slumped in the yoke. She looked all bone in the moonlight; she looked like she was dead, until I heard again the slow wheeze of her breath.

I held out the rags and her head lifted. Her eyes were slits. She opened her hand but didn’t move so I had to step close to give it to her. The moment her fingers closed around them I hurried back to the edge of the stall.

She sniffed them, and then pressed the stains to her lips and began sucking on them. It made me feel queer, frightened and kind of excited all at once. I wanted to run but I made myself stay put. After all, we had a bargain.

After a while she stopped sucking and licked the cloths instead, turning them one way and another and wetting every spot.

“Ahhh.” She licked a last spot and looked at me. Her face was less gray, though she still looked sickly. “Thank you, Addy.”

I nearly said you’re welcome. But she was a devil after all. “Will you help us when Bill Boyland comes?” I asked instead.

She leaned back in the yoke, closing her eyes. “Tell me about your Boyland.”

“He’s a big cattle rancher. He owns most of the land around here. What he doesn’t use for his cattle he rents out to farmers. He even owns the land under the inn and the bank. The lawyer says he exhorts everyone.”

“Ex-torts,” the devil said. “Him and half the men in this territory.”

“Bill Boyland says Mam didn’t file claim so he bought the land fair and square, but Mam went to the lawyer and he said she has papers showing she was here first. Only she’s afraid to go to the city for a judge because she thinks Bill Boyland will just take the land while we’re gone. She got a letter from the lawyer instead but Bill Boyland says that’s not good enough.”

“Then send the lawyer for the judge,” the devil said.

I frowned. “I don’t think we can.”

“You didn’t go to this lawyer?”

“I had to take care of things here.”

The devil pursed her lips at this, but said nothing.

“Maybe the lawyer’s frightened Bill Boyland will have him shot,” I said. “That’s what happened with the last farmer who tried to keep his land. Bill Boyland went out there with his men and they shot them all, and they shot the lawyer so he wouldn’t tell anyone what they’d done. Then they burned all the buildings so there would be no papers, so when the judge finally came there was nothing.”

“Thorough,” the devil said.

“Mam says you can kill them for us.”

At that she laughed. “Your Mam talks a lot of shit.”

“She called you here,” I said.

“She didn’t call me here. I was on my way to the city and my horse went lame. I was partial to that horse,” she added, and there was a tremor in her voice now. “You’re not the only one who lost a friend in this.”

I didn’t want to think about that. “But she baited the circle—”

“Oh, I smelled your rotten meat. When I was inside your fence, not a hundred miles away.” She smiled at me, a nice smile. “The way I hear it, I’m supposed to be descended from a snake, not a god-damned dog.”

Before I could catch myself I smiled back at her.

“Look, Addy.” The smile went quick. “Your blood will keep me alive but little more. Even if you took out the blade right now? It would be days before I could walk, much less help you fight anyone.” She met my eyes square. “If your Boyland is honest, he’ll be here at the full moon. But if he’s not? He’ll be here a hell of a lot sooner, or he’ll send men out here instead.”

“Why?” I asked, startled.

“Because that way he can kill you both, and then come back at the full moon with plenty of witnesses and oh dear, it must have been thieves, that’s what happens when women homestead without a man, what a pity.”

She was right. He could do it; I could see him doing it. She was right.

“If you truly want me to help you? I need more blood, a lot of it, and I need that damn knife out. Now, preferably.”

I hesitated then, trying to think. “Mam says she can drink yours and take care of Bill—”

“If your Mam drank my blood she would keel over dead,” the devil said, as reasonably as if we were discussing planting. “And if you drank my blood you might keel over dead, but if not? You would become a devil like me, and to be honest I don’t think you’re cut out for it.”

I hesitated again. Now I wished I hadn’t come. Mam was right, she did have a mouth on her, one that said confusing things.

“The blood you need,” I said slowly, “it’s people’s blood, isn’t it? Not chickens or goats or anything else.”

She just looked at me.

“But there’s no one for miles except me and Mam.”

“I don’t make the rules, Addy,” she said. “That’s just how it is.”

I swallowed. Horrible, confusing things, but I understood that well enough. No one made the rules about land either, or about folks like Bill Boyland trying to do you out of it.

“How long do you think we have?” I asked.

“He said by the full moon?” At my nod she smiled again. “Then I’d say it could be any time now. Right now it’s nice and dark outside, and all sorts of things can happen in the dark. It’s long enough before that he could make up a good story about where he was, but not so far ahead that they won’t recognize you. Right about now would be a perfect time.”

I nodded again, my head jerking up and down like I was one of the chickens. Right about now. I thought I could hear hoofbeats.

“I’ll try to do something,” I said, though I couldn’t think what. “I’ll try,” I said again.

The devil waved the sodden rags at me and I took them quick, swiping them out of her hand. Her skin looked gray again. Silently I backed out of the barn and into the silvery yard. I looked around before cutting across, as if Bill Boyland might already be there, ready to shoot me dead.

Back in bed I thought it through again. There had been another family, far to the east, right where they were setting the county line. Thieves had cut them up and burnt their house and barn both. At the time everyone had just said what a shame it was, but I wondered now, because Bill Boyland had bought that land at auction right after. He had divided it up and rented the lots to eight different families, where before there had only been one.

Extort. I saw now that Mam and I were nothing compared to that, nothing compared to rectangles of land where people paid just to be allowed to live.

I held my arm up to the moonlight, looking at the lines of blood under my skin. We were nothing to Bill Boyland, but we could be something to the devil, maybe enough of a something to help when the time came. I just had to figure how I could bleed myself without dying.

That night I dreamed I was crouched by the beech tree, keeping watch over the circle, waiting for the devil to come. I picked at the bark and the sap ran, only it wasn’t sap but blood; I picked more bark off and underneath was goat hair. I heard bleating then. I pulled and pulled at the bark and underneath were the goats, all of them cut up and bleeding and stuffed inside the tree like sausage meat. They were all dying and when I tried to pull them out my hands kept slipping in their blood and their screaming filled my ears until I woke up sobbing. I was lucky that Mam had already gone out to start the chores.

5.

The next day I made my own count of the cartridges, and whatever else we could use to protect ourselves: knives, cast-iron pots, shovels and loys and Da’s two big sickles. Mam killed another chicken and bled it out. It was a waste, but if she knew what I had done with the devil it would be the whip for me. She had it out now, coiled on the ground by her feet as she wrung out the chicken.

Beside it lay the revolver. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but I didn’t like it.

“Addy,” she called.

I went over and reached for the chicken but she handed me the revolver, then the bowl of blood.

“I need your help,” she said. “We don’t have time for her games and I can’t have her sicking up again.” She took up the whip and gave it a good crack. When it struck the ground it made places on my body hurt. “Keep the gun behind your back so she can’t see it. That’s it. Now when we go in there, you just get that blood down her throat. I’ll do the rest. If she breaks loose, shoot her dead.”

She waited until I nodded, then led the way to the barn, her skirts tossing the dust one way and another. As we swung the door open a buzzard rose off the horse at the noise and Mam threw a rock at it with a cry. I hated when she was like this, raging and stamping her feet and with her shoulders pulled up. Before Da died she never got angry, she had been kind and gentle, always laughing and singing. She was still kind sometimes, but more and more she was this Mam, almost like she wanted to be angry. I’m doing this for you, she always told me. I’m doing this so you won’t be afraid of anything. Fear is death out here, Addy. Never forget that.

We went to the stall and I was afraid the devil would give us away, but she only looked from Mam to me and back again. Mam held up the whip and she flinched.

“You need to eat,” Mam said in a loud voice. “Now you’re going to drink this and you’re going to like it, understand?”

“I’m doing my best,” the devil said. “There are other kinds of blood that suit me better, as well you know.”

“Don’t give me that. Blood is blood.” Mam nodded at me. “Addy, help her drink.”

“Like meat is meat?” The devil’s eyebrows raised. “I don’t see you two dining on rats, or that horseflesh rotting out there. No, it’s all chickens and sweet little goats for you.”

I stopped halfway towards her, swallowing. Mam uncoiled the whip. “Addy, give her the bowl.”

As I got close the devil looked up at me and mouthed bargain, and then she took a sip from the bowl. She gagged at once, pushing me away as she strained to work it down, just as I had struggled to swallow the stew Mam made out of Isaac. Her face became damp and she made a choking noise.

“More,” Mam said. “She needs to drink it all.”

I started to angle the bowl and the devil shook her head. “Wait,” she gasped. “Wait, I—” She broke off, gagging.

“For God’s sake,” Mam yelled. She cracked the whip and I cried out as it whistled past me and struck the devil in the face. “Addy, get it down her throat!”

But I couldn’t move for looking. The whip had opened a cut on the devil’s face, a big ugly gash that was running dark blood. Only as I watched the blood became sticky and the edges puffed up, then moved together. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks, I blinked and blinked, but every time I blinked the cut looked better. As if it was healing right in front of me.

“Mam, what’s she doing?” I whispered.

“I told you, Addy,” she said, and there was something heavy in her voice. “She’s a child of the serpent, a devil made flesh. You can’t kill ‘em like you would a man. Right now the only things keeping her from killing us are the blade in her backside and her hunger.” She pointed with the whip. “Now get that god-damned chicken blood down her throat.”

“A devil made flesh,” the devil repeated. “You should try looking in the mirror. Singing hymns while you whip me? Plotting murders? I think you want this. I think you’re enjoying yourself. I think you like the whip and you like blood and you even like killing. I think you even like it when your girl misbehaves, you like getting her scared and making her bleed, I bet you tell her it’s for her own good—”

The whip came crashing down, over and over, lashing one way and another. I stepped out of the stall, hugging the bowl to myself and my eyes shut tight, trying not to hear the devil screaming and Mam humming under her breath.

Then all of a sudden there was silence, just the sounds of panting, and Mam said, “Addy, give her the bowl again.”

I opened my eyes and the devil looked like she was in pieces, her clothes hanging in ribbons and her face all red gashes. She had one eye swelling and her mouth hung open. I could see her heaving.

“Addy,” Mam said in a soft voice, “give our guest something to drink, or I’ll turn her blood to dust.”

Slowly I walked towards the devil. I saw now she was crying, her tears mixing with her blood, and I felt like crying too. “She means it,” I said, forcing the words out. “She knows how.”

“All she knows,” the devil muttered, “is cruelty.”

“Please,” I whispered.

She looked up at me, her good eye black and red and swimming in tears, but she opened her mouth and drank the chicken blood down, throatful after throatful.

And then she jerked away, wrenching in the yoke as she began choking. Mam ran behind her and seized her jaw, holding her mouth closed. “Get the revolver out,” she said to me. I pulled it out of my pants and held it with both hands, keeping it pointed steady at the devil’s face. Her cheeks puffed out and her swollen eye cracked open; she was gagging and mewling as Mam kept her mouth shut tight.

And I remembered, suddenly: when Da had died I was sick soon after, and Mam had given me some medicine, something foul. It was a medicine I’d had before, only it tasted like it had gone sour, but when I tried to tell her how bad it tasted she had flown into a rage. She had poured it into my mouth, more than I’d ever taken, and then held my mouth shut, and I had sicked up inside so much I nearly choked. Later she had said how sorry she was, that grief was making her act strange.

“She’ll shoot you,” Mam was saying. “She’ll shoot you dead unless you keep that god-damned blood down.” The devil was going still at last, though she looked worse than I’d ever seen her. She looked like she might even die.

“Good girl,” Mam said. Slowly she released her hands. “Good girl.” She stepped back and the devil sagged limp. “See?” She pushed the devil’s hair out of her face, then gave her a pat on the head. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? No more games, now. You just drink, and you kill Bill Boyland, and everything will be just fine.” She wiped her hands on her skirts. “Come on, Addy. We got work to do.”

Grief, Mam had said. But that had all been years ago. What was she grieving now? Or did she still miss Da that much?

“You’ll pay for this.” The devil’s voice was raspy. “You just wait. You think you know things? Everything you know is nothing more than the fancies of sick old men. And we took care of them a long time ago.”

Mam picked up the bowl and handed it to me, then settled about coiling the whip up neat; she’d started humming.

“But I know something.” The devil’s voice rose until it filled the barn. “I know you’re a fucking liar. I know this has nothing to do with the land because it was never yours. You’re using me to mete out some kind of vengeance. You pretend you’re just a poor old woman done wrong by, but at the end of the day you’re nothing but a pisspoor squatter and when they come they’ll hang you and good riddance!”

I reached for Mam who had turned back, but she only looked at the devil, then at me with a broad smile, and I realized she was trying not to laugh.

“Seems like chicken blood agrees with her after all.” And with a chuckle she strode out of the barn, singing

A noble army, men and boys,
the matron and the maid,
around the Savior’s throne rejoice,
in robes of light arrayed.
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven,
through peril, toil and pain;
O God, to us may grace be given,
to follow in their train.

When we were getting ready for bed Mam suddenly said, “You want to ask me a question, Addy, ask me. You know you can ask me anything.”

I slowly buttoned up my nightshirt. I could just glimpse my reflection in Mam’s little mirror, that she had brought with her when we came out. It was the only fancy thing we had, with a frame made up of tiny flowers and ribbons all tangling together. From my old life, she would say when I asked her about it. It reminds me that we’re all a mix of good and bad, like your Da says. And that God wants us to live with our decisions.

I looked at myself, at my short hair and my peaky face. I was a mix of things, all right. I’d never even seen a girl like me, and I sure didn’t know what was good or bad right now. But there were things being decided that I was going to have to live with.

“What if we asked Bill Boyland to buy us out,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “We could go somewhere else and start over, maybe somewhere closer to the railroad.”

I tensed then, waiting for her to start yelling, maybe even to hit me. But she only sighed. “Addy, you can’t get caught up in wanting to change things. Change is never as good as it looks in your head. There’re always problems, there’re always men looking to take whatever you have—your money, your land, your pride. At some point even a woman has to take a stand, or you’ll always be running.”

She laid down and closed her eyes, but I blurted out, “is that why you and Da came here, because you were running?”

Mam opened her eyes and looked at me for a long moment. But all she said was, “running means different things to men and women.” She rolled over, turning her back to me.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

But she didn’t say anything; she only lay there. I knew she was awake and holding herself tight and still, like she had after Da died. All day crying and laughing over him in the field while I had walked the long, long road to Tom’s place, and then when they took Da away she had laid down just like this. Only Da was seven years gone now, and I was still alive.

Later that night I left the house again. I had my dirty rags but I also took a clean one. Outside I found the bowl and the skinning knife and brought everything into the shadow of the barn. There I hesitated, looking at the big cruel knife, but there was nothing for it, and it felt right that it should be this way. I had done Isaac wrong; I had done them all wrong, all these years, telling them they were going off to Tom’s to eat grass. Now I thought maybe I had known otherwise but I had wanted to believe it. The stew Mam made had tasted horrible, but it had also tasted familiar.

I cut my left hand at the base of my thumb. I didn’t use that hand so much, and I made the cut low so it wouldn’t rub against the plow. At first it didn’t hurt but then it did, oh God did it hurt, and it was hard not to bandage it at once but let the blood run into the bowl. So much pain. How long had Isaac suffered for, before God took him? What about all the others, the chickens and the little ox and the devil’s horse and even Da, what had they felt?

As if I was speaking out loud, something moved out by the horse, something that was picking at whatever scraps were left on the bones made blue by the starlight. There was no moon, I realized, not even the sliver anymore.

All sorts of things can happen in the dark.

When I started to feel faint, I pressed the cut closed and tied it with the clean rag, and then I took everything into the barn.

The devil was hunched over in the yoke. The whole stall smelled of sick; she was surrounded by puddles of the stuff, all sticky and shiny. When I stepped inside she flinched and tried to move away.

“Bargain,” I whispered. I held out the rags and the bowl.

She angled her head at me, as if trying to read something on my face. Her eye was open again but only just, and though her cuts had closed up I could see them still, pale lines that ran all over her.

“Bowl first,” she finally said.

I brought it close to her open mouth and tilted it, just letting the blood dribble in. She drank like she was thirsty. Her cold hand touched mine, bringing the bowl closer, and she drank it all, making me turn it until she got every drop out. I started to take the bowl away but her hand grabbed mine hard and kept the bowl close while she licked it clean with long strokes of her tongue, like a cat. When at last she let me go there were smears of blood on her face; she tried to rub them off with her bound hands and then lick them.

The lines on her face and body were gone.

I gave her the rags and she began sucking. She looked almost healthy, like she had fattened up just from that little bit of blood.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

She was silent, sucking on the cloth.

“It’s just—things have been hard since Da died.”

Still she sucked on the cloth. I was trying to think of what to say next when she abruptly spat it out and said, “I have not been beaten like that since I was a child.” Her voice sounded different, low and full. “I swore I would never be beaten like that again.”

“The serpent beat you?” I frowned, trying to imagine it.

At that she laughed, so loud I hushed her. “I have parents, Addy, just like you. A mother. A father who passed. It was my aunt who did the beating in my family, for as long as we let her.” Slowly her tongue ran over her lips. “I don’t let her anymore.”

“You have a family?”

“Of course I have a family. I also have friends, a lover, and a name. I even owned a horse once.” At the last her voice went soft.

I didn’t know what to say. She went back to suckling and I crouched down, rocking on my heels. All of a sudden I could see her people, a whole lot of people who looked like her, who might be missing her. Maybe they just healed fast because they were lucky; maybe the scales on her neck were just a rash, or a birthmark, like the boy in town who had a big red patch on his face.

“This all feels bad.” Her voice was so quiet I wasn’t sure if she was speaking to me. “It feels like more than just a land dispute; it feels like an old grudge, maybe even from before your Da.” She gave the rag a lick. “Times are changing, Addy. You can’t just go about killing a man, not anymore. The Bill Boylands can still bend the law because they have money and men, but even that’s coming to an end. There are laws now, laws and officers to enforce them. More’s the pity,” she added, smiling a little.

“Mam says a woman has to take a stand,” I said.

“A stand for what? For a scrap of land? For something that happened years ago?” She shook her head. “The past is gone, Addy. The only thing worth taking a stand for is the future, the best possible future for those you love. Take it from someone who has an awful lot of past behind her.”

I frowned. “Maybe it shouldn’t be one or the other, though. Maybe it should be about balancing them, like everything is supposed to be balanced.”

“Oh yes, I forgot, your father and his bloody balance.” She laughed softly. “God save us from—”

But she stopped short. Her head turned in the yoke, straining the ropes. “They’re coming,” she whispered.

“Who’s coming?”

“At least eight horses—? And some kind of cart, or a wagon.” She looked at me, her eyes black again. “Take the blade out.”

I stood up, uneasy. “I don’t think . . .” But then I heard it too. Faint, like the first hint of a storm coming. It made everything go cold, even the pain in my hand. My mind seemed to empty all at once, I couldn’t think on what to do.

There was a cracking noise, and suddenly a hand seized mine, icy and so strong. She had pulled free of the stall and her hand was free. And then the rag was gone and she was sucking at the cut, biting it and sucking, and I screamed then because nothing had hurt like this before, she was chewing me up and I couldn’t get free, she seemed made of stone. I flailed and pulled and my free hand set upon a fork and I swung it at her. She fell to her side but it didn’t seem to even hurt her; she just began working the yoke off.

“Take it out,” she gasped. “Addy, take the fucking blade out!”

I barely heard her. I was pressing my hand tight, too scared to even look at it, it felt so raw. Her lips were shiny with my blood. You’ll take our throats, Mam had said.

“Addy!” She was hanging off the ropes, trying to stay upright. “Addy, listen to me. I promise you I won’t let anything happen to you. I give you my word. I can stop them, I can stop them all, but you have to take the blade out. For the love of your Mam and your goats and everything you hold dear, take the blade out.”

I didn’t know what to do. Everything seemed to be happening at once. I could hear the horses and a few shouts now and Mam calling my name and the animals were bleating and squawking and I could still smell the dead horse and what was I supposed to do?

“Addy, please.”

I tried, then. I tried to see her as Mam saw her, like a rabid dog to sic on people. But all I could see was how her hands were trembling, and Isaac’s little feet, and the way the horse had to be dragged like it knew what was coming. Whatever this all was, it wasn’t balance, much less anything good or right.

I got behind her and seized the handle and pulled as hard as I could, but she shrieked and waved her hand.

“No,” she gasped. “Open it, you have to open it.”

I felt the handle until I found the bump and pressed it. She wailed behind gritted teeth and then I pulled while she gasped “harder, harder” and I put my foot on her back and rocked it back and forth like a stuck spade until it suddenly came free in a spray of blood.

With a cry I flung the knife aside and started to run for the door but she seized my ankle and I fell. She pulled me back as I screamed and hollered for Mam, then grabbed my chin and pulled my head against her chest.

“Forgive me,” she whispered.

And then she bit my neck, and the pain flared sharp and stabbing and then everything went soft, soft, like a blanket had been dropped over me. All soft. It seemed only a minute or maybe it was hours when she finally let me go and I dropped onto the ground. I watched as her boot stepped over me, only to twist and stumble; she fell on top of me and I felt her weight but no pain, no pain. She got to her knees and began crawling towards the barn door. Just before the doorway she pulled herself up using the post and carefully unhooked one of the sickles. She stood for a moment, wobbling like a newborn kid; and then she kicked the door open and fell forward into the night.

6.

Everything was foggy, though it wasn’t the time for fog. My hand was throbbing sore and my neck ached. I got to my feet but I couldn’t see the barn doors, and then I saw them, only they kept swaying. I managed to walk to them by looking through them, at the space between them, which was glowing with a bright orange light.

I stepped out into a world on fire. Everywhere was shimmering with heat and flame; the smoke covered the stars. There was screaming, close and far off all at once, from everywhere and nowhere. I looked behind me and the barn was licked with flame, the hills sparking red.

It was hell. We had called the devil down and I had let her loose and she had brought us all to hell.

I made my heavy legs walk. The smoke caught in my throat, setting me to coughing. The goat pen stood open and empty. There were shapes in the far corner, small and still. I looked at them and I knew they were gone, yet I kept hearing them bleating like Isaac had bleated, all mixed up with the shouts and screams of the men and the echoing gunshots and a woman crying or laughing or both—

Mam.

There was no more house; there was only fire, curling around the beams and the chimney Da had laid stone by stone. I opened my mouth to call to Mam but started coughing. A hand caught me by the arm and spun me around. Before me stood a man, sooty and wild-eyed. He shook me hard over and over.

“I got the kid!” he hollered.

My head was snapping against my neck; my teeth flew up and bit my tongue hard. Blood filled my mouth. He swung me one way and another, peering into the smoke and flame.

“Bill!” he hollered again. “Bill, I got the kid! Bill—”

Something bright shot across his throat and it opened up and it was full of blood. My mouth was full of blood. He tried to speak and instead he fell over, his hand still gripping my arm, his tongue sticking out like Isaac’s. I started screaming then, I screamed as I never had before. The devil swung the sickle up and down into his chest. She was covered in blood. Blood sprayed out of the man as she wrenched the sickle up and brought it down again. Cold air ran over my belly and I looked down at the red cut in my nightshirt. Someone was screaming and screaming and it was me, I was turning inside out with screaming. I tore more at my shirt but I wasn’t cut, the sickle had only caught the fabric.

“Addy.” The devil’s voice was huge and echoing in the night. She bent and reached into the blood, her hand disappeared in the blood, and when she pulled it out with a grunt there was something round and wet in her palm. She held it out to me. “See? That’s all a man is inside. No evil, no divinity, not even your god-damn balance. Just flesh. That’s why your Da and his people failed: because they could never bring themselves to believe this. This is all there is.”

Seizing my cut hand, she pressed the organ into it, still warm, and my voice broke then from screaming. I dropped it and covered my eyes, waiting to feel her hands on me. But there was nothing. I peeked through my fingers, then lowered my hands.

The devil was gone.

The man at my feet looked different. With his kerchief twisted I could see how frightened he was and how young, as young as me. Everywhere now I saw the bodies of men: men in pieces, men with heads staved in and throats cut, men sprawled and men lying so peaceful they might have been asleep.

There was no more howling now, but I heard the crying laughter again and walked towards it.

The yard was another world. Everything was gusting smoke and ash. I wiped my face and my hand came away smeared with blood and ash. The cut on my hand throbbed and my neck too. Somewhere far away a man screamed and began pleading, and I turned one way and another but the wind carried him away. Only the crying laughter seemed fixed.

Soon I came upon a trail in the dirt and followed it to the beech tree. It seemed like I had walked for miles, but when I looked around there were the ruins of the house and barn, as close as they had always been.

Under the beech tree was a body and Mam was standing over him, her skirts hiked up and her foot on his face. I saw Bill Boyland’s fancy gold watch hanging from his clothes. Her face screwed up and her leg flexed as she pressed down. She was giggling and weeping all at once.

As I drew close, something cracked, and her foot sank lower.

She looked at me and then back at the man. Her face was wet. “I never knew,” she said. “Look at how soft a man is. I never knew.”

Beneath her foot all was red and black. She took her foot away and laughed again, that strange, weeping laugh, and it was that morning with Da all over again.

“Look, Addy.” She nudged at his face with the toe of her shoe and Bill Boyland’s eyeball pushed forward. I shrieked and she laughed. “An eye for an eye, how do you like that? An eye for an eye. Sometimes God does answer our prayers.”

“Mam,” I said. I could barely speak for trembling. “Mam, we have to do something.”

“You let her out, Adelaide Norton,” she said. “You disobeyed me and you went to her and you let her out.”

“Mam,” I said again. “Mam, we need to . . .” But I couldn’t think of what we needed to do. I kept looking at where Bill Boyland’s face had been, at that one shiny eyeball.

“I had a plan,” Mam said. “I was going to tell them I had a woman in my barn, I was going to offer her to Bill Boyland as a payoff, to spare you and I. He would go in to have her and she would kill him.” She pointed at my neck. “Now you got her taint on you, and there ain’t no fixing that.”

“She couldn’t drink that other blood!” My heart was pounding. “She couldn’t drink it and you knew it! She would have died if I hadn’t—” I broke off then, because suddenly the thought filled my head and it was awful. “Or did you know I was going out there to her?”

Mam just looked at me. The fist filled my throat, pressing down so much I felt sick; I opened my mouth but nothing would come out, not words or tears. Slow and careful, Mam reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out the revolver and aimed it at me. The barrel was so large. It was as large as a scream, as large as the hole we had buried Da in.

She stepped over Bill Boyland’s legs and I closed my eyes but nothing happened. When I opened them again the barrel was pointing just past my ear, and I turned and looked over my shoulder.

The devil stood there, Mam’s whip in her hand. Her eyes were black. Two long pointed teeth filled her mouth, stained dark against the white bone.

“You’re not tainted, Addy,” she said in her strange huge voice. “But you need to walk away now. Your Mam and I have unfinished business.”

“No!” I looked from one to the other. “Please. You can go now, we said you could go when you stopped them. Can’t she, Mam?”

Mam said nothing, only cocked the trigger.

“I made a promise to myself a long time ago.” The devil was staring at Mam. “And a woman is nothing without her word.”

“Amen,” Mam said. “And now we see you for what you really are.”

The devil pointed at Bill Boyland. “Amen.”

It happened all at once, then. Mam shoved me and fired and the whip snaked out, catching Mam’s wrist and sending the revolver flying into the air. We all three cried out and fell to the ground; the shot echoed against the hills.

Mam’s wrist was bleeding. She began crawling in the dirt, looking for the revolver. “Find the gun,” she whispered. “Hurry, Addy.”

The devil was on her hands and knees, hunched over, her sides heaving; and then she staggered to her feet.

“Please,” I said.

“Addy, find the god-damned gun!” Mam cried.

“Please just go,” I said.

The devil looked at me with those black, flat eyes. She pressed her fingers into her chest, all the way inside. With a grimace she twisted and dug and when she held up her hand again it was glistening black. Blood dripped off her fingers that held up Mam’s bullet like it was something precious.

She flicked it at Mam; it sailed through the air and struck Mam in the face.

“Shitty poison by shitty alchemists,” she said, but her voice was thick like she was sick again.

“It’ll burn you up,” Mam said. She was shaking; I had never seen Mam shake before. “You’re done for, serpent! You’re going back to hell where you came from!”

“My name is Elisabeth,” the devil said, “and the only hells are the ones we make.”

The whip rose up, catching smoke as it shot curling into the sky. When it came down Mam hunched over, covering her head with her hands.

“Stop it!” I got to my feet; it was then that I saw the revolver at the base of the beech tree.

Again the whip cracked. I ran as fast I could and seized the revolver. My hands were shaking as I swung it around. She was almost on top of Mam, swinging the whip up and down.

Not once did Mam cry out.

“Stop it or I’ll shoot!” I yelled.

The devil went still, looking at me, the whip dangling from her hand.

“Shoot her,” Mam hissed. “Shoot her dead.”

I steadied the revolver, sighting the devil square in the face. “Go away,” I said loudly. “Just go. You did what we asked, now we’re keeping our promise.”

“For the love of God, Addy, shoot the bitch!”

I glanced at Mam. Her mouth was hanging funny; the whip had caught her in the face. I turned back to the devil who hadn’t moved, who just looked at me with the same steady gaze. I curled my finger around the trigger.

“Elisabeth,” I said. “Please, please just go.”

“God-damn it!” Mam yelled. “What’s wrong with you? She’s just an animal, put her down!”

There was a shot, and a second and a third, though I hadn’t done anything. I looked at the revolver and suddenly the devil was spinning me around and holding my hands and together we squeezed. The man behind us bucked and fell. The devil pointed again, squeezing my finger a second time, so hard I thought it would break. His body jumped and went still.

I looked over at Mam and she was facedown in the dirt and I knew she was dead. I knew she was dead. All the air left the world. I reached for her only my hand was all cut up still, I would taint her with my touch. Everything seemed wrong. I looked at Mam’s wet hair and I looked at the cuts on my hand. I knew. I knew.

Liquid splashed on the ground. It took all my strength to turn away from Mam and look at her. The devil had a flask and she was pouring water on where Mam had shot her. My arm rose up and I aimed the revolver at her head.

The devil went still. “Addy,” she said, “your mother was a cruel, frightened woman—”

“I told you to leave.” My voice sounded different, deeper than I had ever heard it before, almost like I was the devil now.

Slowly she raised her hands. “There will be more coming, by daybreak if not sooner. We need to strip the bodies, make it look like a robbery—”

“Go away,” I said in the same dark voice. “Go away and don’t ever come back, or I swear to God I’ll kill you.”

And I meant it. I meant every word. She looked so small from behind the revolver, how was it that we had feared her? It would be nothing to shoot her, or cut her with the sickles. Nothing to watch her bleed out like a spilled jug.

My insides ached so bad I wished I was dead.

Slowly the devil took a step backwards, and then another, keeping her hands up. She looked so small. It would be nothing to squeeze the trigger, nothing to watch her flinch and cry out and fall; nothing and everything. I dropped to my knees, the revolver huge and heavy in my hands, breaking my fingers from its awful weight. All around me was the smoke and the dead and I was as good as. It was nothing to kill a person and it was everything. All of it cruel, the gun and the knife and the whip; all of it a flat blackness like the devil’s eyes and Mam’s too, when she had stepped on Bill Boyland’s face. All of it as flat as Isaac’s eyes when the life went from him.

I looked at Mam and I knew she was dead. I crawled to her and laid my good hand on her, the untainted one, and turned her on her side so she would be comfortable. I wanted to cry but the fist was solid inside me. Instead I smoothed back her hair and closed her eyes and mouth; I put her hands together so she could pray, wherever she had gone to. I thought to sing then, like she would sing to me when I was little, but no words would come. Instead I sat by her in silence while the world burned to the ground.

7.

It was the sun that made me move. That first gleam of light made everything visible; I saw every body stark against the ground, saw the house and the barn like they were more real now for being ruined. Smoke rose up into the sky, high enough that it could be easily seen from town.

I hurried then. I wanted more than anything to bury Mam but I couldn’t. I kissed her forehead one last time. She would have been proud of me: I hadn’t cried, not once, I had just sat there swallowing it all back and pushing it down until I didn’t even feel the fist anymore, until I didn’t feel anything at all. How many nights had Mam done the same after Da died? Pressing it down until she was empty, waking up to the same hard dirt in the fields.

In the cold blue dawn it seemed a terrible thing that Da had done, bringing us here.

I took the pants and shirt off one of the least dirty bodies, and the coat off another. I dressed as quick as I could, then ripped my nightshirt and threw it in the brush. Maybe they would think I got carried off.

The goat pen and chicken coop were ashes. I started trembling at the sight but I pushed it away until I was empty again. Instead I set about digging through the men’s pockets, taking whatever was worth something: money, watches, even their spare cartridges. What I couldn’t fit in my pockets I bundled in kerchiefs and tied to my belt.

The only horse left was the mare tied to the cart—not even a wagon, just a small cart with its wheel stuck against a tree. I came up on the cart slow, I didn’t want to spook her; she still looked wild-eyed. Only as I held out my hand I heard not a whinny but a bleating, and something moved in the shadows under the cart, and then all of a sudden little Addy stood there, sooty but bleating and bleating and I was hugging her close, smelling her good smell and her licking both my hands clean. And there was Rachel and a little one I hadn’t named, he had been born just fine and never needed naming, but now his fur was matted with blood and he hung back until I called “Joseph, Joseph” and he came to me and it was everything. I understood, then, that this was what was meant by grace, how in the midst of so much wrong there could be something that was beautiful and right.

I cleaned out the unlit torches and the corked jugs of beer from the cart and got the goats up inside. They seemed happy to be leaving. I searched the brush but I couldn’t find any of the others, and then it was time. It took the horse a little while to trust me, but I coaxed her back and forward again and she understood and that was a kind of grace too. There was a whip in its socket and I threw that away with the rest. When I saw little Addy watching me I told her “no more” and I meant it. No more of such things, ever. Together the horse and I steered the cart onto the road, and with every step I said “thank you” and I meant that too, I had never felt so grateful.

Once I was up in the seat, though, I found myself trembling again. From there the ruin of our land seemed a sorry thing, small and empty. Even Mam’s body seemed little more than a spot against the dirt. I stopped the horse so I could really look at it all, one last time. There was something white and crumpled beside her: my nightshirt had blown up against her, so it looked there was an Addy curled up next to her. So I was up on the road, alone, and down there was an Addy who had stayed by Mam to the end.

I touched my face and my cheeks were all wet, though it didn’t feel like I was crying, I wasn’t crying at all. Perhaps the other Addy got to cry at the end, perhaps Mam had let her, just the once.

The horse began walking without me telling her to and I let her have her head. I felt a little better for moving. The hills were warming into their browns and greens, and all the clouds were white against the blue sky. It was almost right, save for the aching inside me, save for how sore my throat was from holding everything in. It had all been wrong from the start, it had started wrong and ended worse. Behind me little Addy came up and nudged my elbow and I began laughing even though I was still crying, and I understood better how Mam must have felt all tumbled up inside. Maybe she had known it was wrong, only there was nothing for it but to see it through. A woman has to take a stand, but it was worthless if you weren’t standing for something right.

Behind me Joseph butted Rachel and she gave him a nip and little Addy wiggled onto the seat beside me, standing tall and proud. It reminded me of when we first came out here: we had passed by some folks camped by a river and they had been singing. The sun had lit up the water and the grass had been green as far as the eye could see and Da had said we’re gonna make this God’s garden, Addy,and the people had sung so prettily, nothing like my trembling voice now:

There let my way appear
Steps unto heaven
All that Thou sendest me
In mercy given
Angels to beckon me
Nearer, my God, to Thee
Nearer to Thee

I sang and little Addy bleated and I was sad but I was alive, I was alive, the fist loosening and my heart aching. I was alive and I had to stay alive, for now I had promises to keep, and a grace I dared not squander.

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Copyright 2017  L.S. Johnson

L.S. Johnson was born in New York and now lives in Northern California, where she feeds her cats by writing book indexes. Her stories have appeared in such venues as Strange Horizons, Interzone, Long Hidden, and Year’s Best Weird Fiction. Vacui Magia: Stories, her first collection, won the 2nd Annual North Street Book Prize and is a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Her gothic novella, Harkworth Hall, was published in August. To find out more, visit her website.

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Giganotosaurus is published monthly by Late Cretaceous and edited by Rashida J. Smith.

http://giganotosaurus.org

editor@giganotosaurus.org 