"A gripping tale of the extent to which the power of fear can influence a young mind, this riveting novelette by Steven Ostrowski follows in the footsteps of O'Conner and Faulkner to its shocking conclusion" Tyler Scott, Editor, Helix Magazine?
The Beginning of Wisdom
A Neo-Noir Novelette by Steven Ostrowski
A Neo-Noir Novelette by Steven Ostrowski
Old Reverend Fuller had been preaching the same thing all morning and into the afternoon: Fear the Lord! Fear the Lord or else! The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom! The problem was, Percy hadn’t forgotten that a week earlier the reverend had lectured, Do not be afraid. Come to Jesus and leave your fears behind. Seemed to the boy that he always came home from church more mixed up than when he got there. He spent a considerable amount of time contemplating God, not to mention the devil (who was the main topic of most of the reverend’s sermons), but he wasn’t getting very far in figuring either of them out. He wished God would come down to Milledgeville and speak for Himself so he and Reverend Fuller and everybody else would know once and for all what was what.
While his mama tended to the runny nose of one of the little ones, Percy took the opportunity to turn and see who else was in church. The usual folks, sitting where they usually sat, dressed the way they usually dressed. Directly behind him were the Walker twins, who were in Percy’s class at the junior high and who claimed Satan lived in their woodshed. They claimed that at night the dirty devil caught snakes and sliced open their bellies and ate the insides. Three rows behind the Walkers, Emily Time sat stiffly beside her mother. Emily was considered by boys who noticed such things to be the prettiest girl in Milledgeville. On Sundays her nose never once came out of her Bible, but it sure went other places the rest of the week. Directly behind Emily, sitting with his sleeping grandfather, was the boy who had a stump for a right hand. He sat stabbing the middle finger of his left hand through a small hole near the breast pocket of his Sunday shirt.
In the very last row, in the corner where the light bulb was permanently out, sat a man Percy had never seen before. He wore a misfitting black suit and a shirt that was the pale, yellow-gray of the sun when clouds start covering it up. His brown hair was uncut and combed back behind his bullet-shaped head and his eyelids were half-shut in a way that could be taken as him being sleepy or him being mean. The man wasn’t doing any nodding or mumbling “Praise the Lord!” like some of the other grown-ups. He just sat there like a corpse. Except that when Percy’s eyes met his, the man smiled a small smile that only turned upward on one side of his mouth. Even so, the boy couldn’t help but give a small, half-mouthed smile back. The man nodded and presently returned to his dead-eye staring.
“Do y’all git it?” Reverend Fuller shouted. “If you don’t fear the Lord, you’re flat out ignorant. Why, we should tremble at the very mention of the Lord’s name. Do y’all hear me? Tremble! Who’s the only protection ‘ginst the Evil One we got? Why, Almighty God, of course. Trouble nowadays is everybody’s trembling about the Russians taking over the world, or presidents who had no right being president in the first place getting shot dead, or trembling with worry about whether or not they can afford a new washing machine, or trembling about trying to get a rocket ship to go to the moon, but nobody’s trembling at the name of the Lord who’s king and judge of this world and the next and our only hope ‘ginst the Evil One.”
“How c-come we d-didn’t have to t-tremble l-last week,” Percy muttered.
His mama heard him. She reached over, gathered some of his forearm skin between her thumb and pointer finger and squeezed. It was all the boy could do not to yelp. For the rest of the service he did his mumbling and questioning and arguing in the safety of his own head.
When the service finally ended, Percy stood in the shade of the old magnolia out near the cemetery while his mother talked with Reverend Fuller on the front steps and the little ones played in the dirt pile near the parking lot. Percy’s older sister Bertha had gone off to the backside of the church to make out with Tommy Suggs. The boy was watching a blue jay pester away a robin when he felt a hard tap like a hammer pound him on his shoulder bone. He turned to find himself five inches from the unshaven face of the man in the black suit and stained yellow shirt. Immediately he took a step backward, as he’d always felt anxious in the close proximity of other human beings. The man, who was only an inch or two taller than Percy, stepped right back into the space and offered his hand. He gave his name, in a high-pitched voice, as Father J.C. Cutter. He asked Percy for his.
“How’s that agin?” he said when Percy muttered too softly to be heard.
“P-Percy.”
The man looked at Percy’s mouth and smiled. He asked if he liked today’s service. Percy said he guessed it was alright. The man glanced around, took another step closer—Percy could smell his sour odor—lowered his voice and said, “Look here, son. I got me a church of my own, a secret church that’s only for boys who don’t like boring services and loudmouth, misguided preachers. I’m what you call a high priest. That’s why I call myself Father Cutter not Reverend Cutter. Look here though. I’m not like them pope-worshipping priests from Rome. Those are the devil’s priests, masquerading as men of God. I’m a priest straight out of the old testament, a priest in the line of Melchizidek, and one that don’t worship nobody but God Himself and His one and only son Jesus Christ. My church is only for boys, because God has a special plan for boys just like he had a special plan for Jesus. Most important of all, my church is only for boys who ain’t afraid of nothing. And listen here: for the lucky ones who get specially chosen to be members, there’s real salvation, not just a lot of hooey about it.”
Real salvation—that’s what Percy wanted. Salvation you could count on, that didn’t tangle up your brain with one thing one week and the opposite the next. Whatever salvation was, if it wasn’t real what good was it?
“And as if that ain’t enough,” the priest kept on, “at every meeting I give out free candy and free money. Just as God intended for his special ones.”
“Free c-candy? Percy stammered. “Free m-m-m-money?”
This time the man took a long gander into the boy’s green-brown eyes. “I got good news for you. I can see plain as the sun in the sky that you are one of the special ones. You are one of the lucky chosen few.”
Percy looked upward but the sun was covered by a bland sheet of gray like a billboard sign that had once been bright with an ad for something swanky but got painted over and replaced with nothing.
“You are special, Percy,” the man said again. “I can see that the fingerprint of God Almighty is on pressed onto your forehead. Tell me,”—the man tipped his head— “somewheres deep down in your heart, didn’t you know today was going to be a special day? Didn’t you feel it coming?”
Because the service was always too long and almost always confounded him, Percy didn’t like Sundays, and so far this one had felt no different from any other. “N-no,” he replied, though he sure liked what the man said about him being special. He liked it even if he knew deep down it wasn’t true.
From the church steps, his mother called. “Let’s go, boy.”
Father Cutter lay his long, thin arm over Percy’s shoulder. “Lookit here. There’s a meeting Friday, right after sunset. Way out back in the woods behind O’Connor’s dairy, up off the highway five miles out of town.” His eyes widened. “Free candy, free money, and salvation for your soul. Come and see for yourself, Percy, my boy. If you’re brave enough to come, I promise you I’ll change your life forever.”
II
His mama knelt in the bathroom wiping the behind of one of the little ones. She didn’t turn to look at the boy when he spoke from the doorway, offering the same lie he’d told her the last three Fridays about going to shoot baskets behind the high school near the streetlight. He left before she could make him do any more chores.
Thumb out, Percy began to amble up Highway 441. In a few minutes he was sitting in a car with a fat man who said he’d been trying to sell cutlery in the local towns for three weeks but nobody was buying so he was going home to Atlanta to take up working in his old daddy’s laundromat.
“You ain’t running away,” the man said to Percy, “are you?”
“N-No,” Percy answered.
“Look here now, you don’t have to be nervous around me,” the fat man said. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“I-I ain’t n-nervous,” Percy said.
“Sure as hell sound like it,” the fat man said. “Man wants to git anywheres in life can’t git there by bein’ nervous around ever-body he meets. That’s one lesson I learned a long time ago.”
“I ain’t a-afraid of n-n-nothin’,” Percy asserted.
“Ever bin to Atlanta, son?”
“N-No.”
“How ‘bout Augusta? Been there?”
“N-no.”
“Want to go?”
“N-not now,” Percy said. He watched the man steer the car with one fat finger. What he would give to have his own car, go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted to.
“Not now? Not now, not ever,” the man said. He frowned and wiped his thick lips with his shirt sleeve.
Percy pointed ahead at a tree-lined dirt driveway between two big pastures. “H-Here’s where I’m g-going.”
“Where to? Ain’t nothing here.”
“There’s a dairy.”
“You tellin’ me you’d rather go to some dumpy dairy farm than go to the big city and have some real fun? You got a girl?”
“S-stop the c-car,” Percy said.
The fat man slammed on the brakes directly across the highway from the entrance to the dairy farm. “Aw, you ain’t going nowhere in life anyways,” he said. “I can hear it in your voice plain as day. Git out.”
Percy banged the door closed and didn’t give the man the satisfaction of a thank you. Almost every day at school he heard the same thing from his teachers, how he wasn’t going anywhere in life, how he was too distracted or too quiet or too this or too that. By God, even if it was true, they didn’t have to say it all the time.
He entered the woods near Miss O’Connor’s front pasture. Even before he’d started coming out for the meetings, Percy had been to the O’Connor farm four or five times. His mama, who worked afternoons at the bakery, knew Mrs. O’Connor and her grown-up daughter with the crutches, and sometimes she asked him to deliver bread and pies and such to them, especially when the daughter was sick, which Percy reckoned was most of the time. Both ladies were nice enough; they gave him lemonade and sometimes even a slice of pie. Sometimes the daughter with the crutches tried to talk to him about school and such, but Percy wasn’t much for talking, and besides, she was all twisted up and her face looked like it was caving in, and he didn’t like to have to look at her.
Neither Mrs. O’Connor nor her daughter with the crutches nor any of their farm help knew anything about the meetings in the woods. At the very first meeting Father Cutter made the boys promise that if caught and questioned they would not reveal where they were going or had been, nor why. They were, after all, The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ. Secrecy was what God demanded of them. Secrecy and fearlessness. The priest had smiled kindly then and given each boy a whole box of Good ‘n Plenty to have for his own. Because of their special chosen purpose, he said to them as they happily chewed the sweet capsules, the consequences of having their secret exposed were too terrible to consider.
Dappled evening sunlight played on the leaves, and Percy wandered along, enjoying the changing designs that swayed above him, until his foot came down on something thick and squishy and he leapt backward at the sensation. Lying in a last patch of sunlight, unmoving, was a plump, black, racer snake. The boy lurched back from it, but quickly reminded himself, I ain’t afraid of no snake. I ain’t afraid of nothin’. His daddy had told him a long time ago that the minute a man shows fear in this world he’s a goner. Percy didn’t remember too much of what his daddy said because he didn’t talk much except when he was drunk and then he was too drunk to make sense. But the boy never did forget those words. They struck him as exactly true and nothing anybody could argue about. The snake, all five feet of it, didn’t move, so Percy picked up a stick and poked at it. Pure dead.
Alive or dead don’t matter, the boy thought. Ain’t afraid of it anyhow.
At the pond he stopped to watch five ducklings follow their mama around in the black water. He didn’t see any sign of the swans that usually swam there. He cast his gaze up the long grassy slope toward the big white house where Miss O’Connor and her daughter lived, hoping to see one the peacocks showing off his feathers. Besides the swimming birds, the daughter kept all kinds of chickens and hens and geese and whatnot, most of them contained in wire runs behind the house. But the peacocks wandered wherever they pleased. Percy liked them best, being so wild and pretty, especially when the males sent up their tails, though the racket they made was ugly. Sure enough, almost as if he knew Percy was watching, a big old peacock stopped near the fence that separated the dirt driveway from the pasture and raised up his tail. The boy raised himself up on his tippy toes to get a better look. Dang, but that was a sight!
Keeping to the edge of the darkening woods, Percy passed the water tower, the small brown house where the colored help lived, the sheds and dairy barns and outbuildings. When he was finally out in the deep woods, he listened for Father Cutter’s high-pitched voice howling “The Old Wooden Cross,” which the priest did so the boys could find their way to the secret spot and the meeting could commence.
Daylight was all but gone when Percy arrived at the small clearing where an old still and a tumbledown, moss-covered lean-to lay rotting in a thicket. Ten yards beyond, standing before a small fire that burned inside a circle of stones, stood Father Cutter, strumming his guitar and singing. Maybe 30 years of age and no more than five feet and a few inches tall, the priest wore the same dusty black suit, yellow shirt, and old black fedora that he’d worn the day Percy met him. From what the boy could tell, he didn’t actually know how to play the guitar but simply strummed the strings with one hand and pressed his fingers of the other on the frets willy-nilly.
The three other boys were already there, standing a little ways off from the priest. Their eyes were like dark stones and their mouths hung open as they stared at the crooning man. None of them were Percy’s friends, though he saw them at the junior high or in church. They were thirteen or fourteen years of age.
Father Cutter howled out the chorus one final time, then slapped his hand over the strings and stopped singing so suddenly that for a while the song and the quiet were the same thing. He leaned his guitar against the spindly trunk of a white pine. “Good evenin’ disciples,” he said.
Percy watched in fascination as the priest’s bony adam’s apple bobbed up and down inside his tube-like throat. “I said, good evenin’ disciples.”
The boys responded bashfully, “Good evenin’ Father Cutter.”
The priest picked up the bottle that lay on the ground at his feet. “Let us commence to drink of the wine of Christ’s love.” He lifted the bottle to eye level and held it there for a moment, then took a long gulp and passed it to the blonde-haired boy standing closest to him, a boy who had one blue eye that looked regular and one that glanced off to the side like he was expecting something to come at him by surprise. The blonde boy drank and gave the bottle to the boy from church who had a stump instead of a right hand, and that boy drank and gave it to the one who came from another country and didn’t speak English too good. The boy from another country took an extra long drink and handed the bottle to Percy. Percy thought the wine of Christ’s love should taste cool and sweet like refrigerated soda pop, but it tasted more like what his momma used for clearing out the crud in the drains, which he had tasted only once. As soon as he’d swallowed Father Cutter’s wine, his eyes misted over and he felt a spell of dizziness. When he recovered, Percy handed the bottle back to Father Cutter.
“We gather tonight,” the priest said, “we, The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ, to share fella’ship, to study on the Word of the Lord, and to pray that we’ll come to know the Lord’s will for us, terrible though it may be. We come here tonight to show the Lord that we’re willin’ to do anything He asks us to do for Him in His holy name. We come knowing we may be tested, like Abraham and Job, but like them great men of old, we will pass the test, because our trust in Him is complete. Ain’t nothing He could ask of any one of us that we wouldn’t do in His name to prove that our commitment is true. Say Amen.”
“Amen,” the boys muttered.
“Louder!”
“Amen.”
“If you’re willing to walk through fire for Him, say Amen.”
“Amen,” they said, questions in their voices.
“If you ain’t ashamed to fall on your knees and worship Him, say Amen.”
“Amen.”
“If you’re willing to leave all that you have and all them that you known all your life to follow Him into the promised land, say Amen.”
They looked sideways at each other and mumbled, “Amen.”
Louder, y’all.”
“Amen.”
“If you trust that He is using a humble man like me to guide you, to lead you, to teach you, fearlessly and in all truth, say Amen.”
“Amen.”
“Say it louder.”
They complied
“That’s good,” the priest said, and allowed himself a one-sided smile. “That’s real good. Now y’all have a seat. I’m gonna preach.”
The boys seated themselves in the dirt and Father Cutter remained standing. He removed his black fedora, ran his fingers through his stringy hair behind his ears, then put the hat back on and cleared his throat. “Disciples, three weeks ago I told you that the reason I was able to find each and every one of you is because God put a finger on you and told me: take him! The world might think of you fellas as good-for-nothings and lost souls, the scum of the earth and the bottom of the barrel, misfits and freaks of nature, but God don’t. And I don’t neither. Two weeks ago I gave each of you a dime for you to keep and do with as you pleased. Last week I gave you each a quarter of a dollar, another token of my affection. I told you that whatsoever in this world is mine is yourn. Why am I giving you my own money out of my own pocket? Because this is the way God Almighty wants it to be among us. I told you that there would be more where that come from as long as you promised to keep the source of your riches a secret from ever’body, because the world outside of this specially-chosen secret society is a demon-haunted hell where nobody can be trusted, not even them you thought you could trust the most. Woe to him who gives away our secret aginst the Lord’s will. Woe to him who harbors fear or rebellion in his heart when the Lord calls upon him to fulfill his special mission.”
Percy cast his eyes, briefly, on the gaunt, stubbly face of the priest. He let his gaze drift upward over the priest’s face to the tops of the motionless trees, and then over them to where a sliver of moon hung in the air like a tipped-over, drowsy eye. He wondered, money or candy.
“In this day and age of treachery and deceit,” the priest went on, “which is ruled by the Father of Lies himself, not even your very own mother can be trusted. Especially her. Just about the only thing you have to keep you safe as you travel through this world of sin and shame is me. But fret not, little ones, for I am all you need.”
Percy blinked in confusion. “But F-F-Father Cutter,” he said—he could hardly believe it was himself speaking. “My m-ma, my m-mama l-loves J-Jesus. She loves Jesus m-more than a-anybody. M-my daddy d-didn’t always do s-s-so good b-b-by Jesus, but m-mama…”
Father Cutter leapt into a crouch and flung his arm at Percy, his pointer finger aimed like a pistol at the boy’s heart. “Get behind me, Satan!”
Percy glanced behind him.
The fierce expression on Father Cutter’s face only slowly changed. It changed into a face as blank as a fencepost and then, at last, into a smile. As he resumed a more relaxed position, Father Cutter’s smile became a grin. “Percy, Percy, Percy,” he said. “You don’t understand how that menace Satan wants to use your innocence to destroy you. That’s why Jesus Christ has put me into your life, son, don’t you see? He has sent me to help you in the hour of your great need, which is coming and coming fast. Praise God. Praise God Almighty.”
Percy pressed his lips tight shut.
“Listen to me and listen good, disciples. This here is the crutch of my preaching for tonight: God has revealed to me that woman is the minion of Satan. Mothers and sisters and grannies alike, all workin’ for Satan. Some of ‘em know it and some of ‘em don’t, but they’s all doin’ the devil’s bidding. That’s right. Ever bit as bad as the Jew, the nigger and the pope-worshipper is the woman.”
The boys watched the flames of the fire dance. When they dared, they peeked at the shadow of the flames that licked at the priest’s face.
“Why, if you’re doubtin’ what I’m tellin’ ya, here’s a test,” Father Cutter said, and his eyes popped open wide. “How many of y’all has ever heard a word of love spoken to you direckly from your mother? A single word of love—how many of y’all? How many of your mamas have told you how much they love you? Raise up your hands.”
The boys contemplated, then lowered their eyes.
“That’s right. That’s right. Now think on this: how many of y’all have ever heard a grown man, any grown man a’tall, speak kindly of the woman he’s a-married to?”
Though in their hearts they might have wanted to, the boys seemed unable to think of a single case. Percy’s old man was gone a good three years already, and before that all he ever did was say nothing or else get drunk and holler at Percy’s mama, warrant it or not.
“I thought so,” Father Cutter said, satisfied.
The boy with a stump for a hand said, “Does your mama work for the devil, too?”
For an instant, the priest’s face went blank, but it quickly turned hard as pavement. “Don’t you never mention my momma’s name in vain again, Disciple Arlo. There’s one exception to every rule on earth. My momma was one of God’s own angels. She was like the mother of Jesus himself, a good and saintly woman who was strong. Stronger than my daddy. Stronger than any daddy. The one exception. So that she could bring me into the world. So, look here, don’t never mention my mamma’s name in vain again, any of you, you hear me?”
He resettled his fedora on the back of his head and said, “You see, you boys are Christ’s special disciples. But woman is the devil’s disciple. Why, she can be as….” Suddenly an ember from the fire flew up and lit on the eyelashes above the priest’s left eye, though he was so fixed on his preaching he didn’t notice it right away. “…deceptive and wily as Satan himself. Why, she can be so…” He stopped, seeming to sense something was awry someplace on his face. He wrinkled his stub of a nose and sniffed, then jerked his head up and down like a stallion and swiped ferociously at his eye with the palm of his hand. He bent himself at the waist and rubbed and rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand.
The boys watched, mesmerized. They could smell the singed eyelashes.
Finally the priest lifted himself up. “A sign!” he shouted, his eyes still blinking like he’d just been woken from a dead sleep. “This here’s a sign from God Almighty no less than the sign of the burning bush of Moses. Recognize it you people! He’s surely saying to you, listen to him who speaks to you tonight, for the holy fire of the spirit of God is upon him. Only a fool would miss this sign. My brother disciples, God has spoken in our mist. He has confirmed for you that I bring the fire of truth.”
Goosebumps rose across Percy’s arms. If it really was the fire of truth, then the truth was even more confusing than he thought. All his life he’d believed his momma was a downright holy woman, what with her prayers going on and on, and all them holy songs she sung while she was scrubbing the little ones, all the Bible-reading and the long Sundays in church, hot or cold, rain or shine. And she hardly ever laughed or even smiled, which made her seem even holier, like she knew God had no time for funny business.
Come to find out she belonged to the devil.
“Now, hear me and hear me good,” Father Cutter shouted. “The Lord has chosen you because of your fearlessness and because He knows He can trust you to secrecy. Whatever He asks of us in the days to come, you best know that you are called to it through me by the Lord. Let me hear you say amen.”
The entranced boys seemed to have lost their voices.
“I said, say amen!”
“Amen,” they weakly obliged.
“Louder, like you mean it.”
“Amen,” they said, not much louder.
“Alright then. Get ready.” Father Cutter turned away from them, spit into the darkness, and turned back. “Let us drink once again of the wine of Christ’s love.” He took up the bottle, drank from it, and passed it along. When all the boys had drank and the bottle was empty, the priest said, “Come here, each of you, and take a coin from my hand. For whatsoever is mine is yourn.”
The boys’ eyes brightened in anticipation, though no one wanted to go first, lest the priest make that one go last, like he’ done last week with Arlo, to teach him a lesson.
“Come. I give it to you freely. Take it, whoever is without fear.”
Arlo quickly stepped forward and took a coin with his one hand. Then the other two boys took theirs from the priest’s open palm. Finally, Percy took his.
“All right, fearless men of God, come and lay yourselves down beside me, and we’ll pray a prayer of our unity and loyalty to each other and to God Almighty until we meet agin.”
Father Cutter lowered himself down and lay on his back in the dirt.
This was the hardest part for Percy, the part where they had to lay beside the man, and one of them having to lay right on top of him. Father Cutter had explained at the first meeting how doing this meant that they were all one in God’s secret discipleship, bound together body and soul, and that their bond could never be broken, which was all right as a reason, but Percy still didn’t like the way it felt.
He didn’t like it even more when the priest said, “Disciple Percy, I feel God is calling you to lay atop me this night. I feel He may have a special mission for you.”
“F-For m-me?”
“What are you, deaf too?” the boy named Arlo said meanly.
“God calls you, Percy!” Father Cutter shouted.
Slowly, awkwardly, Percy lay himself atop the priest, turning his head to the side so as not to have to breathe the man’s breath, which, though he was a holy man, was foul. The other boys lay themselves down at the priest’s sides.
Father Cutter began to pray in mumbles and moans. Shortly, his thighs began to wiggle this way and that as if a wild spirit had entered the private part of his body. Percy did not like what he felt beneath him and he shut his eyes and tried to keep his mind on the coin in his pocket until the long prayer would be over with. He couldn’t help thinking that if God worked this way then God was even stranger than he thought.
In a wheezy moan, Father Cutter finished his prayer, and Percy felt a shudder of violent jerks underneath him. For a while, the priest’s hard breathing was the only sound, until finally he said to Percy in an angry voice, “Git on up off of me, will ya? Git up. All of you, git up.” The priest himself stood up and hastily buttoned his coat. He said in a voice that Percy could swear was on the verge of tears, “Go. Go on. We’re all done. Git.”
The boys scattered into the woods.
Percy wasn’t going to think about what Father Cutter said about women and mamas until tomorrow. He was hoping that by then he’d forget to think about it at all. He had never been very good at not thinking about the things he didn’t want to think about, but he believed he detected, since he’d become a member of The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ, that he was getting better at it.
He’d hoped to could catch a ride back to town, but only two cars had passed as he walked down the highway, and neither of them so much as slowed down. The walk took a long time, even longer with the work of trying not to think.
Their house was in the middle of the block, on the last street before the colored section. It was a small and shabby. It had been painted gray a long time ago but now it was gray-black. Percy’s mother worked from six in the morning until noon at the laundry folding clothes and giving change, and then from one until six at the bakery shop. She grew turnips and string beans and cauliflower out in the yard, and one of Percy’s chores was to tend to the garden. Bertha had quit school right after their daddy left and she looked after the little ones during the day, though half the time she let them run wild or cry themselves to sleep while she made out with Tommy Suggs, who himself was supposed to be in school but hardly ever went.
Sure enough, Percy found Tommy and Bertha sitting on the front porch, necking. They didn’t stop or even look at him.
Opening the screen door slowly so as to keep the squeak of it as quiet as possible, Percy entered the small, cluttered front room that served as living and dining room. His little brothers Johnny and Denny were asleep on the couch in their underpants, each one’s feet in the other’s face. Everybody else, including his mama, was in one bedroom or the other one.
Percy took off his clothes, pulled his mattress out from under the couch, and lay down on it. The minute he closed his eyes he saw a crystal clear picture of the racer snake he’d stepped on back in Miss O’Connor’s woods. Except now it was alive and showing its fangs. I ain’t scared of nothing, Percy reminded himself. To distract himself, he reached for his pants and pulled the coin Father Cutter had given him out his pocket and held it tightly in his moist hand.
III
Percy didn’t know whether or not there’d be a meeting since Father Cutter hadn’t said anything about what to do if it rained. He did say that if a disciple ever missed a meeting, he’d be kicked out of The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ. He said God had told him that any boy who joined the society joined for good, and anyone who got kicked out would surely be riding the express train to hell. For one disturbing but riveting minute, Percy pictured himself sitting on a hard wicker seat of that train, staring out the window as it rode down, down, down into the rock-melting heat. He never did care for the sizzling Georgia summers, and Reverend Fuller had said a thousand times that hell was at least twice as hot. That he might someday have to go to hell forever was one of the things Percy had always tried very hard not to think about but did anyways. He’d go to the woods and see if there would be a meeting.
His mama was in the bathroom giving Lucinda and Laura Lee their baths. As she scrubbed their armpits and between their legs, her eyes were raw as the weather and her mouth was a thin, tight line.
“You need something?”
“I’m g-going out.”
“It’s raining enough to flood the earth. Where you goin’ in this?”
“I made a new fr-friend. He asked me to c-come over to his h-house.”
“From the church? Do we know him?”
“Y-Yeah. H-He’s the boy who only got o-one, one hand. I’m g-going over to his h-house. O-kay?”
Lucinda slapped her hands down in the water and splashed soap into Laura Lee’s eyes, and when Laura Lee began to wail, Percy stole away. He left so quickly he forgot to put on his jacket.
If he were the type to feel fear he might feel it now, the boy reasoned as he walked backward up the rain-blown highway. The sky overhead was the color of a punched eye, and the wind was like the voice of some terrible beast that roared in a language humans couldn’t speak.
A few cars traveled up the highway. Percy, thumb out and eyes wide with pleading, could see the shadowy outline of a face staring at him like he must be an escapee from the mental house.
When he finally got to the foot of the path beside Mrs. O’Connor’s front pasture, he hesitated just enough to register that the wind seemed stronger here. The trees turned its voice huger and made its strange words more terrible. He inhaled a deep, wet breath and headed in. His flannel shirt and jeans and sneakers were soaked through to his skin, so it didn’t matter that the drenched, hanging leaves and underbrush made him wetter still. He couldn’t find the ducks anywhere in the pond and he didn’t see, up the hill where the lights in the O’Connor house looked warm and dry, any sign of a peabird out of doors. Too smart. Further up the path, even the lights in the negro help’s house looked inviting, and Percy pictured a family of them sitting beside a fire, laughing or drinking or singing or whatever negroes do in their houses at night.
By the time he got out into the deep woods, Percy felt certain there would be nobody at the meeting spot and that it was a stupid idea to come in the first place. Even Father Cutter would stay home tonight, wherever home was for him, which nobody knew.
Percy’s sopping hair pressed against his skull like a tight hat and his teeth clacked like a typewriter. But he’d come all this way and might as well go to the spot. At least he could tell Father Cutter when he saw him next week that he’d showed up. Maybe the priest would reward him with an extra dime or a Hershey Bar.
If Father Cutter was singing tonight, the hullabaloo of the wind and the drumming rain drowned out his voice. And no fire could stay lit in this drenching. For some time, Percy wandered down wrong paths in the woods and came to dead ends. He told himself to just quit and go on back home but he didn’t listen to himself and kept on looking until, finally, by sheer luck, he found the spot. The circle of stones was a soup of mud and ash and half-burned twigs. Nobody was there. The boy stared and heaved a sigh. He had begun to turn, intending to run all the way home, when a high-pitched voice called out, “Somebody out there? Is one of my disciples out there?”
It was the priest’s voice all right and it came from inside the old lean-to beside the still. Percy walked over to it and knelt down and looked in. “It’s m-me,” he said. “P-Percy G-Godbout.”
“Percy, Percy, Percy,” Father Cutter said when he gazed up at the soaked, shivering figure. The tight, tent-like space the priest occupied was made of two sheets of scummy plywood nailed together with foot-long pieces of equally scummy two-by-fours. A dark rag of a damp blanket covered the ground on which he lay, and an oily old Navajo blanket covered his body. Beads of water dripped through the gaps in the wood here and there, and the air smelled of must and body odor and bad breath. There was a half-open suitcase stuffed in the corner and in it were a few shirts and a pair of pinstriped drawers and some tins of tuna fish. Beside it lay Father Cutter’s guitar.
“Come on in out of that gully-washer, disciple Percy.”
Reluctantly, the boy crawled in. The priest threw half the Navajo blanket over the boy. His mouth formed a slow grin as if Percy wasn’t just a boy but a God-sent angel.
“Disciple, I sure am glad to see you. Yes, I surely am. Why, just before you arrived God was telling me in no uncertain terms that only one—one alone!—of the disciples of the Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ would be fearless enough to come here tonight. He said that that one, because of his fearlessness, is to be the special chosen one of our society. That one, He said to me, is to bond with you in a special, secret, and holy way. And in the days to come, that one is to be given the awesome mission of enriching the discipleship in untold ways. And for fulfilling that sacred mission, he in turn shall be personally enriched.”
Though Percy didn’t understand what the priest was talking about, he was glad for the blanket, which was gradually helping his shivering to subside. Even so, he was distracted by being squeezed so tightly into the lean-to with another human being, even a holy one. He intended to get out and go back home as soon as he could, though he would stay long enough to find out if Father Cutter planned to give him a reward.
Resting his head in his hand, the priest lay on his side, grinning and staring at the boy. Percy half-sat and half-lay beside him, his breath shallow and his back pressed up against the wet wood. The way the priest gazed at him, like he was special, mixed up Percy’s mind. He liked it, but he wanted to run away from it too. Except for his mama once in a while when she needed him to do something for her, Percy was accustomed to people not looking at him nor even knowing he was there. That’s the way it was in school with the teachers and in church with the preachers and everywhere else besides. But at Father Cutter’s meetings, Percy always knew he was noticed, and he knew it now more than ever. It made the boy feel like he was growing bigger and smaller at the same time.
“This here is a heart-hollowing moment, disciple Percy. Why? Because a young man is about to be called by the Lord Himself to take part in a revelation. By sending you and you alone out here in the Godforsaken wind and rain, the Lord has revealed to me that you been chosen for a special role in His Almighty plan. It is not for you nor me to question that plan, but simply to do His will as He sees fit. Can you say amen to that, disciple Percy?”
A drop of rainwater fell from the wood and plopped into Percy’s left eye, stinging it. He blinked and rubbed the eye and said, “A-amen.”
“Tell me. Did you feel as you come here tonight a pounding deep in the pit of your heart? Did you feel the power of God carrying you along? You don’t even have to answer. I already know. I see it in the fearlessness in your eyes.”
Percy’s left eye stayed blurry, and he blinked again and again to try to clear it.
The priest touched his own bony throat and spoke solemnly. “Disciple Percy, the Lord has asked me to put you to a test. If you pass it you can move on to the even higher calling He has in store for you. He may be inviting you into his royal priesthood, my good disciple. Just as he did me a long time ago, when he put me to the test.”
The boy didn’t like the sound of it. He knew from school that a test meant trouble.
The priest lifted himself up to a sitting position. “I done me some lookin’ into the work the devil’s been up to in this town. Do you know that there is evil living and thriving not far from the very ground on which you and me lay right now? I speak of the farmhouse you passed on your way out here. It’s the house of two females, two pope-worshipping, Satan-serving females. Do you know the house I speak of?”
“Y-Yes, F-Father. W-where the p-peacocks are.”
“Do you know what one of them females that lives in there is? A author. A author of pure blasphemy. Why, that woman writes books with the devil’s pencil. She writes ‘em for the purpose of leading God’s children astray. She is corruption incarnate.”
Right away Percy recalled that his mother had once told him that though the lady with the crutches was nice enough to say how-do-you-do to, her books were strange and alarming and upset a lot of good people. But she never said they were written with the devil’s pencil. Was that because his mother was a disciple of the devil herself?
“You like them birds they keep up there, Disciple Percy? Them peachickens?”
“I l-like the p-pea-c-cocks. I like the t-tails.”
The priest fell quiet and lay his hand on Percy’s shoulder. When the boy instinctively pulled back, he thought he saw a flash of anger in Father Cutter’s eyes. Father Cutter took a breath and placed his other hand firmly on Percy’s knee. The boy didn’t dare move it away. “My brave disciple,” he said, deadly serious, “as your first test the Lord demands you take one of them birds and bring it back here for sacrificing. God Almighty demands a sacrifice and woe to him who ignores the command of the Lord.”
Percy blinked and jerked his knee so that the priest’s hand slid off. “S-sacrifice?”
Father Cutter spoke slowly. “The Lord demands a sacrifice. Go and take a peabird and bring it here. You must not git caught. You must prove to Him you can do this without getting caught. If you can, a higher calling will be revealed to you.” The priest brought his face to within a few inches of Percy’s, so that the boy could see the many small scars in the skin of his cheeks that looked like signs. “Work in secret and be fearless, my disciple, and the Lord will reward you with riches beyond anything you ever thought you could have. But remember, if somebody snags you, don’t reveal who sent you. Do not betray me and suffer the fate of Judas Iscariot. You understand?”
Percy did not, but nodded.
“Imagine it, Disciple Percy. The Lord wants to fill your heart with his love and your pockets with his riches. Don’t you see, this is why the Lord’s word is called the good news. Because it is good news.”
“B-but taking the bird,” Percy dared to say, “a-ain’t that st-stealin’?”
The long, thin, fingers of the priest shot out from the fist he’d formed and burst open like fireworks. “That is Satan speaking, not Percy Godbout. All things belong to the Lord, my disciple. If the Lord demands we sacrifice one of his own handmade peachickens, by God we’ll do it and won’t question it.” He seemed angry again. He pointed and said, “Take that there sack to put the bird in. Don’t tarry. Be fearless.”
Although he knew it wasn’t fear he felt as he walked in the torrents that drove down from the wild sky like tiny spears, something like a baloon inside Percy made it hard to breathe. It made his legs wobble and his chest feel tight and it kept him from thinking straight. He tried to remember what Father Cutter had just told him, the reason for what he was doing. It was what God wanted, and God was hard to figure.
When he came up behind the negroes’ house he could smell meat cooking. He swallowed; his throat felt dry as sand. He walked a little further down the path and came out of the woods. Crouching, he trotted to the trunk of the big red oak tree in the front yard, then from it to a holly bush beside the side of Mrs. O’Connor’s house. From there he darted to the base of the house. A light shone inside the window above his head, and he felt a shiver when he remembered what Father Cutter had said about Mrs. O’Connor and her daughter being Satan’s disciples.
He stole around toward the back of the house where a long, low tin awning extended down off the roof. Sure enough, the whole gaggle of peabirds were there, having the good sense to keep dry. They were squeezed in tight to each other and they pecked and squawked up a hell of a racket.
Percy’s chest drummed against his thin ribs so hard it hurt. He pushed his dripping hair out of his eyes and opened up the mouth of the sack and scanned the birds closest to him. He was pretty sure Father Cutter wanted a cock and not a hen, though Percy hated the idea of killing a cock. What kind of God wants you to sacrifice something so pretty and different from everything else? But Percy had been told all his life that you didn’t question God, you done did His will. He chose a bird that stood close by, and before he could talk himself out of it, he leapt toward it, flung the sack over it, and with the flat of his palm shoved it into the sack. As soon as he’d pulled the bag shut, he was on the run. The bird squawked worse than an irate pig, and it squirmed and pecked through the burlap right and cut right into Percy’s back.
The boy slipped and slid his way back to the path. He ran along it, chest banging like a steelhead hammer. “Quiet down,” he said to the bird, but it kept right on squawking and flopping and pecking at his back.
He didn’t catch his breath until he was standing before the lean-to. He lowered the sack to the ground. When he peered into the lean-to what he saw froze his brain: sitting in a tight crouch beside Father Cutter was the boy with a stump for a hand, Arlo. Except that his teeth were chattering, there was no expression on his face.
Father Cutter glanced up at Percy and said, “Did you git it?”
Percy nodded and showed him the bobbing, squealing sack. “B-but I-I thought G-God only s-sent m-me tonight. I thought He only p-picked m-me.”
“He did, Percy, He did. Like I told you, the one who come first tonight is the specially chosen one. The one who come next is specially chosen to help the one who was specially chosen first.”
“You s-said n-no one else w-would come t-tonight.”
“Now, now, I never did say that, boy.” The priest gestured toward the one-handed boy. “I knew Arlo here was going to come. God told me so. He come to be your assistant in the mission that is soon to be revealed to you. Only the most fearless two of you can do it, and you should stand in awe that God has chosen y’all.”
Arlo said, “How much God gonna give us for doin’ it?”
Father Cutter smiled. “Plenty, I promise you. ‘Nuff said for now.”
“W-what about this p-peacock here?” Percy asked. “C-Can I t-turn him a-loose?”
“How’s that?” Father Cutter said. “Oh, the bird. Why, no, Percy, you can’t. See, Arlo’s gonna sacrifice it, that’s what. Just like God demands.” He looked solemnly at Arlo. “Disciple Percy has been tested and he done showed God that he’s not afraid of anything. Now you too must be tested, disciple Arlo.”
“Do you kill it just like you kill a reg’lar chicken?” Arlo asked. “I done chopped plenty of chickens’ heads off. Weren’t nothin’ to it.”
“We got no axe,” the priest replied. “Gotta use a knife.” The priest reached under the blanket and pulled out a six inch, curved bowie knife with a silver blade and mustard-colored handle. “Disciple Percy and me will hold the bird down on either end and you’ll slit its throat. Come on. We’ll do it over at the fire pit.”
The rain had slowed down some but the wind was still whipping and howling out its unknowable words. Percy held the sack tightly in his hands. He didn’t want the bird to die but if it had to be killed, he felt insulted that it wasn’t him doing the killing. “No need to take it out of there, Disciple Percy,” Father Cutter said. “Lay the sack down in the muck and open it just a little ways. When the bird pokes its head out, grab it by the head and hold it down. I’ll hold down the sack.”
“W-what if it b-bites me?”
“Then that must be God’s will, ain’t it? Maybe it’s God’s correction of you for some sin that still stains your soul.”
Percy knelt in the mud and lay the sack in the mucky puddle. Above him, Father Cutter stretched out his arms. “Almighty Lord,” he prayed, “we offer this sacrifice of this here peacock to You in the hope that it pleases You and that it aids us in serving You and doing whatever it is You want us to do for You. In the hours to come, we will be asked to fulfill a most important mission and for doing so we will be given a rich reward out of Your bounty. Amen.” He lowered his arms and knelt down. “Okay, kill it.”
Reluctantly, Percy opened the sack a little bit. When the peacock poked its head out, he grabbed it with both of his hands and slammed it down into the mud and held it there. The squealing and gurgling were awful, but the bird was so busy trying not to drown that didn’t think to bite him.
In a motion so quick and fluid that Percy didn’t even see it, Arlo sliced the head clear off the bird’s thin neck. Blood spurted into the rain. There in Percy’s hands the tiny, baffled head shivered and gurgled a little more and went quiet.
Father Cutter stood up and emptied the sack of the body, letting it splat into the mucky center of the circle of stones, where its blood mixed with mud and rainwater. Chilled and dazed, Percy left the head where it lay staring at nothing.
Father Cutter wiped his hands on his pants. “Disciples, you both done proven yourself worthy of your next mission. God is surely pleased. Arlo, you done used that knife like a regular butcher.”
“Aw, it was easy,” Arlo replied.
Percy said, “I-I could of d-done it, too.”
“I believe you, Disciple Percy,” Father Cutter assured him. “And who knows, maybe before long you’ll get your chance to cut with that knife, too. Now, listen to me, both of you. Tomorrow night is a special night. Tomorrow night your great mission will be revealed to you. Come to me as soon as the sun is down. And don’t tell nobody where you’re going. Nobody. Tomorrow night you’ll be enriched in ways you couldn’t even of dreamed of. Do you disciples understand what I’m saying to you?”
Both boys nodded.
“Disciple Percy, you go on your way now. Disciple Arlo, you stay here with me a while. There’s some things God wants me to talk to you about.”
Percy’s jaw fell. He stood still in the rain, blinking his eyes.
“Well,” Arlo said in a mean voice. “He done toll you to git.”
“Shut up,” Percy said. He looked at Father Cutter. “C-can’t I stay, too?”
“I must preach to Disciple Arlo alone tonight, Disciple Percy. It’s God’s will.”
Percy felt like he might cry. He turned to run, then turned back. “F-Father C-Cutter. D-did you m-mean to g-give me s-something t-tonight?”
The priest grinned. “Tomorrow, Disciple Percy. Tomorrow you’ll have more riches than you ever did have in your whole life. I promise. Go on now and git home. First, wash that blood off your hands. You don’t want to cause nobody no suspicion.”
Percy stared down at the oily dark liquid that covered his fingers. He rubbed his hands viciously against his dungarees. But there was still blood on them, so he held his hands open to the rain, then rubbed them again.
“Git going now,” Father Cutter commanded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He waved the boy away and slung his arm over Arlo’s shoulder and turned him toward the lean-to.
Something bitter and pasty coated Percy’s throat. He waited until Father Cutter and that son of a bitch Arlo knelt down together and disappeared into the lean-to. Then he waited a little longer.
IV
Saturday dragged like a wore-out mule. In the morning Percy tended to the garden, which was a muddy tangle from yesterday’s rain. He had to dig—and dig deep—for drier dirt to sop up the mud. Usually he liked the work of digging. He liked the sound of a spade stabbing the clay, and the smell, especially the deep, dark stuff. But he was too distracted to enjoy himself. Even as he considered the large-sized bag of peanut M&Ms he’d buy with his new riches, he felt uneasy, as if a shadow had slipped into his brain.
In the late afternoon he mended some of the rotted slats on the porch railing, but there were so many kids running around pestering him, taking his hammer and hiding it, asking if they could help, kicking out the slat after he’d nailed it in, that the job took an hour more than it should have.
He could hardly stop his leg from moving as he sat at the supper table and tried to eat his boiled chicken, mashed potatoes and greens. He hadn’t thought much about what his mission was likely to be but he hoped it didn’t have anything to do with slaughtering any more peabirds. Percy had had a bad dream last night. He dreamed he was commanded by God to nail a peacock to a cross, only the peacock in Percy’s dream had human hands, human feet and human eyes. Just as he got set to drive the first nail into its hands, them eyes gave him a look so deep and sad that he dropped like a dead man, face first, into the muck. When he woke up in the morning he swore he tasted mud in his mouth.
Finally, at around seven, he told his mother as she washed the supper dishes that he was going down to the high school to shoot baskets.
“Don’t stay late,” she said without turning. “Church in the morning.”
* * *
The banana moon hung in the sky but daylight was stubborn about fading for good. Percy didn’t want to get to the spot too early—that made Father Cutter angry because of the risk of somebody seeing you—so he stopped near the pond to wait until it got dark. From the shadow of the woods, he stood and observed. The ducks were gathered in a bunch near the far side of the pond, and a pair of swans glided slowly across the glassy water in his direction. Up at the farmhouse a negro man in overalls sauntered over and stood at the bottom of the front steps. “Miss Mary Flannery,” he called, and in a minute the lady on crutches swung herself to the screen door and opened it. Percy could hear their voices and some of their words, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He wondered if they’d figured out yet that one of the peacocks was missing. They might be planning on what to do about it. Might even be that the negro was going to stand guard with a shotgun.
Don’t even matter, Percy told himself. He wasn’t scared of nothing.
A shiny fat crow swooped across the pond toward the woods. When it was just above the boy’s head it cawed so loud that the negro man and Miss Mary Flannery stopped talking and looked down the hill. Percy froze. The man and the lady shaded their eyes with their hands and looked. The boy stood unmoving and unbreathing until they started talking again. He slipped away down the path.
Dark came on and the moon grew brighter and lit the woods like a lamp. Percy found the spot quickly. Arlo hadn’t gotten there yet. Even though Father Cutter had said that he was the more specially chosen one, Percy worried that that could change. Many times the priest had said they were all brothers working for the same things, but Percy couldn’t help feeling he was competing with Arlo for who was most special.
Approaching the spot, he heard splashing. Father Cutter was finishing up relieving himself near the trunk of a fat oak. The priest turned toward Percy before he even zipped up his fly and Percy couldn’t help it that he saw his thing. He blushed and looked away, but the priest only laughed and took his time about zipping up.
“Tonight’s the night, disciple Percy,” Father Cutter said, suddenly serious. “Tonight y’all are gonna carry out your special mission. Tell me, are you frightened?”
Percy nodded, then shook his head.
“That’s good. Fear is what Satan wants us to feel. Fear is Satan’s weapon.”
Suddenly they heard a loud crack and both of them jumped and jerked toward the sound. In the moon-shadowed clearing stood Arlo, a burlap sack slung over his shoulder.
“Disciple Arlo,” Father Cutter said. “I’m right pleased to see you.”
“I got some extra clothes in here like you told me,” Arlo said.
The priest stole a glance at Percy. “Leave ‘em here with me.”
Percy said, “W-What d-did he br-bring e-extra clothes f-for?”
The priest brushed at something on the sleeve of his black suit jacket. “I’ll explain that later,” he said.
Arlo said, “Ain’t it cause we’re gonna hightail it outta he…”
“Shut it up, disciple Arlo,” Father Cutter shouted. Then in a softer voice he said, “Everything will be made clear in good time.” A smile broke across his face.
The priest reached down and lifted a bottle from the dirt. “Drink of the holy wine with me,” he said, and took a long drink and handed the bottle to Percy. Percy drank, but not much, though it was enough to make his shoulders shiver and his face scrunch up. He handed the bottle to Arlo, who threw his head back and guzzled it down like it was Coke-a-Cola.
“Now come close to me, little ones.”
The boys obeyed, and the priest lifted his arms and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Percy concentrated hard on not squirming away.
“Evil dwells but a little ways from here,” Father Cutter said in a harsh whisper, “in that there white farmhouse surrounded by birds. There’s a woman in there done made a lot of money writing evil-minded books, books that mock the Lord and his people, books writ with the purpose of leading astray the children of God. Ask anybody in Milledgeville and they’ll tell you.”
“You want us to kill her?” Arlo said in an eager voice.
Percy observed the priest’s eyes as he considered Arlo’s question. They reminded him of the way Mary looked at Jesus in the picture book Percy’s mamma liked to read to the little ones at bedtime and that she used to read to him too, way back. The boy felt a sudden deep, sad pang for his mamma.
“This ain’t got nothing to do what I want, disciple Arlo,” Reverend Cutter said. “The Lord’s will is the only thing matters.”
“My m-mama k-knows both of them ladies,” Percy said. “Sh-sh never said they w-were e-evil, just a little crazy.”
Father Cutter chewed on the skin of his thin lip, then spoke through his teeth. “I done told you, Percy, that all women do Satan’s bidding. You know what? I’m beginning to wonder if I misheard the word of God when He told me He appointed you for this mission. Am I deceived, Percy? Are you with me and with the Lord or are you aginst us? I need to know.”
“W-With you,” Percy said.
The priest licked his lips with his tongue. “Listen to me. Tonight, after the lights in that house go out and we’re sure them women are asleep, you boys will go in through the living room window. They always keep it opened a couple three inches, and that’s all you need to git yer hands under it and hoist it up. Once you’re inside the house, you’re gonna search around and find wherever they hide their money. You’re gonna take ever last penny. If you see any jewels or whatnot, take it too. Then you’re gonna come on back here and receive your reward.”
“What if they hide their m-money in the b-bedroom,” Percy said, “like m-my momma does?”
“We might need to kill ‘em if they wake up, right?” Arlo said.
Father Cutter moved closer to the boys, keeping his hands tight on their shoulders. “First look in the dining room, then the kitchen. Look inside jars and vases and drawers and everywhere, but do it quiet. If you hear one of them wake up, you got to quiet them ‘for they wake up the niggers. A pillow over their head is best. If you don’t find any money in them rooms, y’all go into the bedrooms together. They sleep in side-by-side rooms on the first floor. The old lady’s in the back. Take care of her first. The other one can hardly walk anyways, so you ain’t got to worry much about her.”
“I-I b-been in there b-before,” Percy said. “I-I k-know what it l-looks like.”
“That’s real good,” Father Cutter said. “You know just where to go. If either one of ‘em stirs in their bed, one of y’all got to hold her down and keep her quiet. The other one keeps looking until you done found the money. Use a pillow, you understand? Hold it over ‘em ‘til they ain’t moving no more.”
Percy drew a deep breath. “B-But, a-ain’t that wr-wrong, F-Father C-Cutter? A-Ain’t it a s-sin to do that?”
“God damn you, Percy,” the priest spat, “we’re in a battle against pure evil. The voice of God has spoken to me clear as the water in a mountain stream: through the fearless efforts of disciple Percy and disciple Arlo, what was gotten by evil shall be given over to the good. Riches, Percy. More than you ever dreamed. That is God’s will for you. Now go wait over there while I speak in private with disciple Arlo.”
Percy frowned. He shuffled away, but only a few feet.
Father Cutter whispered to Arlo too softly for Percy to hear. A few times he pointed in this direction or that. He emptied the burlap sack of the clothing that Arlo had brought and handed the empty sack back to him.
When he was finished with Arlo, the priest told Percy to come over. “Wait over yonder, disciple Arlo.”
Percy shot Arlo a satisfied look as he passed him.
“Look here,” the priest said. He took the knife they’d used to kill the peacock out of his pocket. “I’m entrusting this here to you, seeing as that you have both hands to use it with. Have no fear about using it, you understand? It’s the Lord’s will.” He handed the knife to Percy and looked into his eyes. “It ain’t only me, it’s the Lord who’s countin’ on you.” He smiled tenderly at Percy. As best he could, Percy smiled back. Father Cutter lowered his head further still, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Now, there’s one more thing I ain’t said until this very minute.” He was practically kissing Percy’s ear now. “God has commanded me to tell you that when you done got the money and you’re clear of the house, you are to kill disciple Arlo. The truth is, he ain’t a brother. He’s workin’ for Satan and God wants him destroyed.”
Percy wobbled and blinked his eyes until he got his balance back. He stole a peek at Arlo, who was whistling and kicking at tree trunk.
“As soon as you done put the knife into his back five or six times,” the priest whispered, “drag him down the driveway. But make sure you got that sack loaded up with riches. I told him I was gonna be waitin’ here, but it ain’t true. Meet me down a ways on the driveway. I’ll be in a brown Pontiac. You and me are goin’ to California. The promised land. God’s finally gonna give you what you deserve, disciple Percy, after a lifetime of people mockin’ you and thinkin’ you ain’t nothin’ but a worthless, stuttering freak. Are you ready for your reward?”
Percy nodded.
Father Cutter called to Arlo to come on back. “Okay, I done told disciple Percy the plan,” he said. “Everything’s ready. The time has come to fulfill your mission. Don’t fear a thing: the power and might of the Lord God Almighty is surely with you.”
V
It was necessary for Percy to remind himself of how scared he wasn’t. And that Arlo belonged to Satan so killing him was no sin.
When they got to within a few hundred yards of the house, Arlo stopped and whispered harshly to Percy, “We ain’t waitin’ to see if they wake up. We’re gonna kill ‘em right away. Then we don’t got to worry about nothin’.”
“B-but m-maybe w-we’ll f-find the m-money r-right away and, and, and they w-won’t w-wake up anyways.”
“I said we’re killin’ ‘em. So shut up.”
“F-Father C-Cutter didn’t say we had to k-kill ‘em.”
“He ain’t no Father. He’s a damn homo. We git back, I’m gonna kill him, too. He tried to suck on my pecker. Anyways, more money for us.”
“Y-your j-jokin’, a-ain’t ya?”
Arlo ran the stump of his hand across his brow. “How come you can’t talk right? You sound stupid when you talk.”
“I-I ain’t s-stupid.”
“I didn’t say you was stupid. I said you sound stupid. You’re scared of killing them ladies, ain’t ya? Cutter toll me you was pro’lly gonna be scared.”
“I ain’t s-scared of n-nothin’.”
“Are too. You’re scared outta your trousers. I bet you’d be scared to a kill a chicken. You’re prolly scared to kill a mosquiter.”
“N-No I a-ain’t. I-I ain’t scared to kill n-nothing.”
“Good. Then let’s kill them ladies and git their money.”
The boys crept around to the side of the house where the dining room was, avoiding rousing the birds by staying out near the far end of the yard and passing behind the water tower. Percy searched the gaggle of fowl to see if a peacock might be raising its tale, but none was. Crouching like soldiers, the boys trotted to the wall of the house right below the dining room window. The window was six feet above the ground, and open a few inches just like Father Cutter said it would be.
“Hoist me up,” Arlo whispered. “I’ll git in and then I’ll pull you up. Soon as we’re in I’ll go put a pilla over the old lady’s head. You take care of the other one. Make sure she don’t scream and wake up the niggers.”
Bad things had to happen now, Percy knew that. What he had to decide was which bad things would happen and which wouldn’t.
“Hoist me up, retard.”
Percy laced the fingers of his hands together and Arlo lifted his leg into the rung of the boy’s intertwined fingers. Arlo grunted and grabbed the ledge with his good hand first and then with his stump. As he worked to position his body so as to push open the window, Percy unclasped his hands, leaving Arlo to dangle.
“Not yet, stupid. I ain’t ready.”
Percy straightened and yanked the knife out of his pocket. He squeezed his eyes shut and plunged it into the dangling boy’s back just below his left shoulder. Blood sprinkled into his eyes and across his chest.
“Hey,” Arlo whispered. He was still hanging onto the window ledge. “What the hell you doin’? That ain’t the plan.”
Percy stabbed him again, and then again. Finally Arlo collapsed to the ground. A mud of dirt and blood formed where he writhed on his back. Then, all at once, he stopped moving and his face froze in confusion.
“Y-You were w-workin’ for S-Satan,” Percy muttered. “Ain’t n-no s-sin to kill s-somebody w-working for S-Satan.”
He tried hard to remember the instructions. He picked up the empty sack, then leaned down and hoisted Arlo over his shoulder. His body felt light, but already stiff. Percy half-ran down the long dirt driveway and, just like Father Cutter promised, saw a brown Pontiac waiting there close to the highway, headlights off and engine running.
Percy stumbled to driver’s window. “He’s d-dead.”
“Thow him in the back seat,” Father Cutter barked. “And hand over the sack.”
Percy threw Arlo into the back seat and climbed into the passenger seat. He handed Father Cutter the sack, ready to explain.
The priest clawed at its insides. “You dumb bastard, where’s the money?”
“W-We n-never d-did g-git into the h-house,” Percy said. “I-I… B-But at least A-Arlo can’t w-work for Satan no more. Ain’t the r-right?”
“What do you mean, you didn’t git in? Why the hell didn’t you git in?”
Father Cutter’s face seemed to transform from human to animal to something lower still. “All this time,” he shouted and slammed his fists into the dashboard. “All this time I spent in this dump with a bunch of idiots and this is what I git for my trouble?”
Percy’s back pressed into the handle of the passenger door.
“God damn you, you chicken-shit idiot. God damn you. I can’t believe this. You lousy goddamn chicken-shit stuttering chicken shit.”
The boy’s brain screamed I ain’t no chicken-shit and without him telling it to, his hand rushed into his pocket and grasped the slimy knife handle and pulled it out. Without even wanting to or thinking about it, he thrust it into the side of the priest’s bulging snake of a neck. A spray of blood spurted into Percy’s face and onto the windshield. Cutter arched forward like a fish trying to flip off a deck back into the water. He wheezed, “God damn you, you chicken shit,” and Percy reared his arm back and pierced him in the shoulder, and then, because the priest’s hands were grabbing at him, he stabbed him again in the side of the head. A feeble whistle gurgled out of Cutter’s throat and his head swiveled this way and that. Finally he tipped over and flopped on to Percy’s lap.
Drenched in blood and shivering, Percy sat in the passenger seat, the dead man sprawled over him, the dead, one-handed boy sprawled across the back seat. There was no sense denying it anymore, and he said it out loud, as if he were confessing it to the dead fake priest: “Okay, okay. I’m a-sc-scared. I can’t lie. I’m a-re-really scared.”
So scared that he knew it was only a matter of minutes before his terrified heart would pound itself to death. Once he was dead, he didn’t know how long it would take that train to get him to the gates of hell, and he didn’t know if God or Satan would meet him there to remind him of all the things he should have done in his life instead of all the things he did do. Reverend Fuller, who knew all about the devil, always preached that it would be Satan waiting. But Percy hoped he was wrong; Percy hoped it would be God standing at that gate. That way the boy could finally meet Him and ask Him to explain things once and for all so he could finally understand it. After everything he’d been through lately, that would at least be something.
While his mama tended to the runny nose of one of the little ones, Percy took the opportunity to turn and see who else was in church. The usual folks, sitting where they usually sat, dressed the way they usually dressed. Directly behind him were the Walker twins, who were in Percy’s class at the junior high and who claimed Satan lived in their woodshed. They claimed that at night the dirty devil caught snakes and sliced open their bellies and ate the insides. Three rows behind the Walkers, Emily Time sat stiffly beside her mother. Emily was considered by boys who noticed such things to be the prettiest girl in Milledgeville. On Sundays her nose never once came out of her Bible, but it sure went other places the rest of the week. Directly behind Emily, sitting with his sleeping grandfather, was the boy who had a stump for a right hand. He sat stabbing the middle finger of his left hand through a small hole near the breast pocket of his Sunday shirt.
In the very last row, in the corner where the light bulb was permanently out, sat a man Percy had never seen before. He wore a misfitting black suit and a shirt that was the pale, yellow-gray of the sun when clouds start covering it up. His brown hair was uncut and combed back behind his bullet-shaped head and his eyelids were half-shut in a way that could be taken as him being sleepy or him being mean. The man wasn’t doing any nodding or mumbling “Praise the Lord!” like some of the other grown-ups. He just sat there like a corpse. Except that when Percy’s eyes met his, the man smiled a small smile that only turned upward on one side of his mouth. Even so, the boy couldn’t help but give a small, half-mouthed smile back. The man nodded and presently returned to his dead-eye staring.
“Do y’all git it?” Reverend Fuller shouted. “If you don’t fear the Lord, you’re flat out ignorant. Why, we should tremble at the very mention of the Lord’s name. Do y’all hear me? Tremble! Who’s the only protection ‘ginst the Evil One we got? Why, Almighty God, of course. Trouble nowadays is everybody’s trembling about the Russians taking over the world, or presidents who had no right being president in the first place getting shot dead, or trembling with worry about whether or not they can afford a new washing machine, or trembling about trying to get a rocket ship to go to the moon, but nobody’s trembling at the name of the Lord who’s king and judge of this world and the next and our only hope ‘ginst the Evil One.”
“How c-come we d-didn’t have to t-tremble l-last week,” Percy muttered.
His mama heard him. She reached over, gathered some of his forearm skin between her thumb and pointer finger and squeezed. It was all the boy could do not to yelp. For the rest of the service he did his mumbling and questioning and arguing in the safety of his own head.
When the service finally ended, Percy stood in the shade of the old magnolia out near the cemetery while his mother talked with Reverend Fuller on the front steps and the little ones played in the dirt pile near the parking lot. Percy’s older sister Bertha had gone off to the backside of the church to make out with Tommy Suggs. The boy was watching a blue jay pester away a robin when he felt a hard tap like a hammer pound him on his shoulder bone. He turned to find himself five inches from the unshaven face of the man in the black suit and stained yellow shirt. Immediately he took a step backward, as he’d always felt anxious in the close proximity of other human beings. The man, who was only an inch or two taller than Percy, stepped right back into the space and offered his hand. He gave his name, in a high-pitched voice, as Father J.C. Cutter. He asked Percy for his.
“How’s that agin?” he said when Percy muttered too softly to be heard.
“P-Percy.”
The man looked at Percy’s mouth and smiled. He asked if he liked today’s service. Percy said he guessed it was alright. The man glanced around, took another step closer—Percy could smell his sour odor—lowered his voice and said, “Look here, son. I got me a church of my own, a secret church that’s only for boys who don’t like boring services and loudmouth, misguided preachers. I’m what you call a high priest. That’s why I call myself Father Cutter not Reverend Cutter. Look here though. I’m not like them pope-worshipping priests from Rome. Those are the devil’s priests, masquerading as men of God. I’m a priest straight out of the old testament, a priest in the line of Melchizidek, and one that don’t worship nobody but God Himself and His one and only son Jesus Christ. My church is only for boys, because God has a special plan for boys just like he had a special plan for Jesus. Most important of all, my church is only for boys who ain’t afraid of nothing. And listen here: for the lucky ones who get specially chosen to be members, there’s real salvation, not just a lot of hooey about it.”
Real salvation—that’s what Percy wanted. Salvation you could count on, that didn’t tangle up your brain with one thing one week and the opposite the next. Whatever salvation was, if it wasn’t real what good was it?
“And as if that ain’t enough,” the priest kept on, “at every meeting I give out free candy and free money. Just as God intended for his special ones.”
“Free c-candy? Percy stammered. “Free m-m-m-money?”
This time the man took a long gander into the boy’s green-brown eyes. “I got good news for you. I can see plain as the sun in the sky that you are one of the special ones. You are one of the lucky chosen few.”
Percy looked upward but the sun was covered by a bland sheet of gray like a billboard sign that had once been bright with an ad for something swanky but got painted over and replaced with nothing.
“You are special, Percy,” the man said again. “I can see that the fingerprint of God Almighty is on pressed onto your forehead. Tell me,”—the man tipped his head— “somewheres deep down in your heart, didn’t you know today was going to be a special day? Didn’t you feel it coming?”
Because the service was always too long and almost always confounded him, Percy didn’t like Sundays, and so far this one had felt no different from any other. “N-no,” he replied, though he sure liked what the man said about him being special. He liked it even if he knew deep down it wasn’t true.
From the church steps, his mother called. “Let’s go, boy.”
Father Cutter lay his long, thin arm over Percy’s shoulder. “Lookit here. There’s a meeting Friday, right after sunset. Way out back in the woods behind O’Connor’s dairy, up off the highway five miles out of town.” His eyes widened. “Free candy, free money, and salvation for your soul. Come and see for yourself, Percy, my boy. If you’re brave enough to come, I promise you I’ll change your life forever.”
II
His mama knelt in the bathroom wiping the behind of one of the little ones. She didn’t turn to look at the boy when he spoke from the doorway, offering the same lie he’d told her the last three Fridays about going to shoot baskets behind the high school near the streetlight. He left before she could make him do any more chores.
Thumb out, Percy began to amble up Highway 441. In a few minutes he was sitting in a car with a fat man who said he’d been trying to sell cutlery in the local towns for three weeks but nobody was buying so he was going home to Atlanta to take up working in his old daddy’s laundromat.
“You ain’t running away,” the man said to Percy, “are you?”
“N-No,” Percy answered.
“Look here now, you don’t have to be nervous around me,” the fat man said. “I ain’t gonna hurt you.”
“I-I ain’t n-nervous,” Percy said.
“Sure as hell sound like it,” the fat man said. “Man wants to git anywheres in life can’t git there by bein’ nervous around ever-body he meets. That’s one lesson I learned a long time ago.”
“I ain’t a-afraid of n-n-nothin’,” Percy asserted.
“Ever bin to Atlanta, son?”
“N-No.”
“How ‘bout Augusta? Been there?”
“N-no.”
“Want to go?”
“N-not now,” Percy said. He watched the man steer the car with one fat finger. What he would give to have his own car, go wherever he wanted whenever he wanted to.
“Not now? Not now, not ever,” the man said. He frowned and wiped his thick lips with his shirt sleeve.
Percy pointed ahead at a tree-lined dirt driveway between two big pastures. “H-Here’s where I’m g-going.”
“Where to? Ain’t nothing here.”
“There’s a dairy.”
“You tellin’ me you’d rather go to some dumpy dairy farm than go to the big city and have some real fun? You got a girl?”
“S-stop the c-car,” Percy said.
The fat man slammed on the brakes directly across the highway from the entrance to the dairy farm. “Aw, you ain’t going nowhere in life anyways,” he said. “I can hear it in your voice plain as day. Git out.”
Percy banged the door closed and didn’t give the man the satisfaction of a thank you. Almost every day at school he heard the same thing from his teachers, how he wasn’t going anywhere in life, how he was too distracted or too quiet or too this or too that. By God, even if it was true, they didn’t have to say it all the time.
He entered the woods near Miss O’Connor’s front pasture. Even before he’d started coming out for the meetings, Percy had been to the O’Connor farm four or five times. His mama, who worked afternoons at the bakery, knew Mrs. O’Connor and her grown-up daughter with the crutches, and sometimes she asked him to deliver bread and pies and such to them, especially when the daughter was sick, which Percy reckoned was most of the time. Both ladies were nice enough; they gave him lemonade and sometimes even a slice of pie. Sometimes the daughter with the crutches tried to talk to him about school and such, but Percy wasn’t much for talking, and besides, she was all twisted up and her face looked like it was caving in, and he didn’t like to have to look at her.
Neither Mrs. O’Connor nor her daughter with the crutches nor any of their farm help knew anything about the meetings in the woods. At the very first meeting Father Cutter made the boys promise that if caught and questioned they would not reveal where they were going or had been, nor why. They were, after all, The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ. Secrecy was what God demanded of them. Secrecy and fearlessness. The priest had smiled kindly then and given each boy a whole box of Good ‘n Plenty to have for his own. Because of their special chosen purpose, he said to them as they happily chewed the sweet capsules, the consequences of having their secret exposed were too terrible to consider.
Dappled evening sunlight played on the leaves, and Percy wandered along, enjoying the changing designs that swayed above him, until his foot came down on something thick and squishy and he leapt backward at the sensation. Lying in a last patch of sunlight, unmoving, was a plump, black, racer snake. The boy lurched back from it, but quickly reminded himself, I ain’t afraid of no snake. I ain’t afraid of nothin’. His daddy had told him a long time ago that the minute a man shows fear in this world he’s a goner. Percy didn’t remember too much of what his daddy said because he didn’t talk much except when he was drunk and then he was too drunk to make sense. But the boy never did forget those words. They struck him as exactly true and nothing anybody could argue about. The snake, all five feet of it, didn’t move, so Percy picked up a stick and poked at it. Pure dead.
Alive or dead don’t matter, the boy thought. Ain’t afraid of it anyhow.
At the pond he stopped to watch five ducklings follow their mama around in the black water. He didn’t see any sign of the swans that usually swam there. He cast his gaze up the long grassy slope toward the big white house where Miss O’Connor and her daughter lived, hoping to see one the peacocks showing off his feathers. Besides the swimming birds, the daughter kept all kinds of chickens and hens and geese and whatnot, most of them contained in wire runs behind the house. But the peacocks wandered wherever they pleased. Percy liked them best, being so wild and pretty, especially when the males sent up their tails, though the racket they made was ugly. Sure enough, almost as if he knew Percy was watching, a big old peacock stopped near the fence that separated the dirt driveway from the pasture and raised up his tail. The boy raised himself up on his tippy toes to get a better look. Dang, but that was a sight!
Keeping to the edge of the darkening woods, Percy passed the water tower, the small brown house where the colored help lived, the sheds and dairy barns and outbuildings. When he was finally out in the deep woods, he listened for Father Cutter’s high-pitched voice howling “The Old Wooden Cross,” which the priest did so the boys could find their way to the secret spot and the meeting could commence.
Daylight was all but gone when Percy arrived at the small clearing where an old still and a tumbledown, moss-covered lean-to lay rotting in a thicket. Ten yards beyond, standing before a small fire that burned inside a circle of stones, stood Father Cutter, strumming his guitar and singing. Maybe 30 years of age and no more than five feet and a few inches tall, the priest wore the same dusty black suit, yellow shirt, and old black fedora that he’d worn the day Percy met him. From what the boy could tell, he didn’t actually know how to play the guitar but simply strummed the strings with one hand and pressed his fingers of the other on the frets willy-nilly.
The three other boys were already there, standing a little ways off from the priest. Their eyes were like dark stones and their mouths hung open as they stared at the crooning man. None of them were Percy’s friends, though he saw them at the junior high or in church. They were thirteen or fourteen years of age.
Father Cutter howled out the chorus one final time, then slapped his hand over the strings and stopped singing so suddenly that for a while the song and the quiet were the same thing. He leaned his guitar against the spindly trunk of a white pine. “Good evenin’ disciples,” he said.
Percy watched in fascination as the priest’s bony adam’s apple bobbed up and down inside his tube-like throat. “I said, good evenin’ disciples.”
The boys responded bashfully, “Good evenin’ Father Cutter.”
The priest picked up the bottle that lay on the ground at his feet. “Let us commence to drink of the wine of Christ’s love.” He lifted the bottle to eye level and held it there for a moment, then took a long gulp and passed it to the blonde-haired boy standing closest to him, a boy who had one blue eye that looked regular and one that glanced off to the side like he was expecting something to come at him by surprise. The blonde boy drank and gave the bottle to the boy from church who had a stump instead of a right hand, and that boy drank and gave it to the one who came from another country and didn’t speak English too good. The boy from another country took an extra long drink and handed the bottle to Percy. Percy thought the wine of Christ’s love should taste cool and sweet like refrigerated soda pop, but it tasted more like what his momma used for clearing out the crud in the drains, which he had tasted only once. As soon as he’d swallowed Father Cutter’s wine, his eyes misted over and he felt a spell of dizziness. When he recovered, Percy handed the bottle back to Father Cutter.
“We gather tonight,” the priest said, “we, The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ, to share fella’ship, to study on the Word of the Lord, and to pray that we’ll come to know the Lord’s will for us, terrible though it may be. We come here tonight to show the Lord that we’re willin’ to do anything He asks us to do for Him in His holy name. We come knowing we may be tested, like Abraham and Job, but like them great men of old, we will pass the test, because our trust in Him is complete. Ain’t nothing He could ask of any one of us that we wouldn’t do in His name to prove that our commitment is true. Say Amen.”
“Amen,” the boys muttered.
“Louder!”
“Amen.”
“If you’re willing to walk through fire for Him, say Amen.”
“Amen,” they said, questions in their voices.
“If you ain’t ashamed to fall on your knees and worship Him, say Amen.”
“Amen.”
“If you’re willing to leave all that you have and all them that you known all your life to follow Him into the promised land, say Amen.”
They looked sideways at each other and mumbled, “Amen.”
Louder, y’all.”
“Amen.”
“If you trust that He is using a humble man like me to guide you, to lead you, to teach you, fearlessly and in all truth, say Amen.”
“Amen.”
“Say it louder.”
They complied
“That’s good,” the priest said, and allowed himself a one-sided smile. “That’s real good. Now y’all have a seat. I’m gonna preach.”
The boys seated themselves in the dirt and Father Cutter remained standing. He removed his black fedora, ran his fingers through his stringy hair behind his ears, then put the hat back on and cleared his throat. “Disciples, three weeks ago I told you that the reason I was able to find each and every one of you is because God put a finger on you and told me: take him! The world might think of you fellas as good-for-nothings and lost souls, the scum of the earth and the bottom of the barrel, misfits and freaks of nature, but God don’t. And I don’t neither. Two weeks ago I gave each of you a dime for you to keep and do with as you pleased. Last week I gave you each a quarter of a dollar, another token of my affection. I told you that whatsoever in this world is mine is yourn. Why am I giving you my own money out of my own pocket? Because this is the way God Almighty wants it to be among us. I told you that there would be more where that come from as long as you promised to keep the source of your riches a secret from ever’body, because the world outside of this specially-chosen secret society is a demon-haunted hell where nobody can be trusted, not even them you thought you could trust the most. Woe to him who gives away our secret aginst the Lord’s will. Woe to him who harbors fear or rebellion in his heart when the Lord calls upon him to fulfill his special mission.”
Percy cast his eyes, briefly, on the gaunt, stubbly face of the priest. He let his gaze drift upward over the priest’s face to the tops of the motionless trees, and then over them to where a sliver of moon hung in the air like a tipped-over, drowsy eye. He wondered, money or candy.
“In this day and age of treachery and deceit,” the priest went on, “which is ruled by the Father of Lies himself, not even your very own mother can be trusted. Especially her. Just about the only thing you have to keep you safe as you travel through this world of sin and shame is me. But fret not, little ones, for I am all you need.”
Percy blinked in confusion. “But F-F-Father Cutter,” he said—he could hardly believe it was himself speaking. “My m-ma, my m-mama l-loves J-Jesus. She loves Jesus m-more than a-anybody. M-my daddy d-didn’t always do s-s-so good b-b-by Jesus, but m-mama…”
Father Cutter leapt into a crouch and flung his arm at Percy, his pointer finger aimed like a pistol at the boy’s heart. “Get behind me, Satan!”
Percy glanced behind him.
The fierce expression on Father Cutter’s face only slowly changed. It changed into a face as blank as a fencepost and then, at last, into a smile. As he resumed a more relaxed position, Father Cutter’s smile became a grin. “Percy, Percy, Percy,” he said. “You don’t understand how that menace Satan wants to use your innocence to destroy you. That’s why Jesus Christ has put me into your life, son, don’t you see? He has sent me to help you in the hour of your great need, which is coming and coming fast. Praise God. Praise God Almighty.”
Percy pressed his lips tight shut.
“Listen to me and listen good, disciples. This here is the crutch of my preaching for tonight: God has revealed to me that woman is the minion of Satan. Mothers and sisters and grannies alike, all workin’ for Satan. Some of ‘em know it and some of ‘em don’t, but they’s all doin’ the devil’s bidding. That’s right. Ever bit as bad as the Jew, the nigger and the pope-worshipper is the woman.”
The boys watched the flames of the fire dance. When they dared, they peeked at the shadow of the flames that licked at the priest’s face.
“Why, if you’re doubtin’ what I’m tellin’ ya, here’s a test,” Father Cutter said, and his eyes popped open wide. “How many of y’all has ever heard a word of love spoken to you direckly from your mother? A single word of love—how many of y’all? How many of your mamas have told you how much they love you? Raise up your hands.”
The boys contemplated, then lowered their eyes.
“That’s right. That’s right. Now think on this: how many of y’all have ever heard a grown man, any grown man a’tall, speak kindly of the woman he’s a-married to?”
Though in their hearts they might have wanted to, the boys seemed unable to think of a single case. Percy’s old man was gone a good three years already, and before that all he ever did was say nothing or else get drunk and holler at Percy’s mama, warrant it or not.
“I thought so,” Father Cutter said, satisfied.
The boy with a stump for a hand said, “Does your mama work for the devil, too?”
For an instant, the priest’s face went blank, but it quickly turned hard as pavement. “Don’t you never mention my momma’s name in vain again, Disciple Arlo. There’s one exception to every rule on earth. My momma was one of God’s own angels. She was like the mother of Jesus himself, a good and saintly woman who was strong. Stronger than my daddy. Stronger than any daddy. The one exception. So that she could bring me into the world. So, look here, don’t never mention my mamma’s name in vain again, any of you, you hear me?”
He resettled his fedora on the back of his head and said, “You see, you boys are Christ’s special disciples. But woman is the devil’s disciple. Why, she can be as….” Suddenly an ember from the fire flew up and lit on the eyelashes above the priest’s left eye, though he was so fixed on his preaching he didn’t notice it right away. “…deceptive and wily as Satan himself. Why, she can be so…” He stopped, seeming to sense something was awry someplace on his face. He wrinkled his stub of a nose and sniffed, then jerked his head up and down like a stallion and swiped ferociously at his eye with the palm of his hand. He bent himself at the waist and rubbed and rubbed at his eye with the palm of his hand.
The boys watched, mesmerized. They could smell the singed eyelashes.
Finally the priest lifted himself up. “A sign!” he shouted, his eyes still blinking like he’d just been woken from a dead sleep. “This here’s a sign from God Almighty no less than the sign of the burning bush of Moses. Recognize it you people! He’s surely saying to you, listen to him who speaks to you tonight, for the holy fire of the spirit of God is upon him. Only a fool would miss this sign. My brother disciples, God has spoken in our mist. He has confirmed for you that I bring the fire of truth.”
Goosebumps rose across Percy’s arms. If it really was the fire of truth, then the truth was even more confusing than he thought. All his life he’d believed his momma was a downright holy woman, what with her prayers going on and on, and all them holy songs she sung while she was scrubbing the little ones, all the Bible-reading and the long Sundays in church, hot or cold, rain or shine. And she hardly ever laughed or even smiled, which made her seem even holier, like she knew God had no time for funny business.
Come to find out she belonged to the devil.
“Now, hear me and hear me good,” Father Cutter shouted. “The Lord has chosen you because of your fearlessness and because He knows He can trust you to secrecy. Whatever He asks of us in the days to come, you best know that you are called to it through me by the Lord. Let me hear you say amen.”
The entranced boys seemed to have lost their voices.
“I said, say amen!”
“Amen,” they weakly obliged.
“Louder, like you mean it.”
“Amen,” they said, not much louder.
“Alright then. Get ready.” Father Cutter turned away from them, spit into the darkness, and turned back. “Let us drink once again of the wine of Christ’s love.” He took up the bottle, drank from it, and passed it along. When all the boys had drank and the bottle was empty, the priest said, “Come here, each of you, and take a coin from my hand. For whatsoever is mine is yourn.”
The boys’ eyes brightened in anticipation, though no one wanted to go first, lest the priest make that one go last, like he’ done last week with Arlo, to teach him a lesson.
“Come. I give it to you freely. Take it, whoever is without fear.”
Arlo quickly stepped forward and took a coin with his one hand. Then the other two boys took theirs from the priest’s open palm. Finally, Percy took his.
“All right, fearless men of God, come and lay yourselves down beside me, and we’ll pray a prayer of our unity and loyalty to each other and to God Almighty until we meet agin.”
Father Cutter lowered himself down and lay on his back in the dirt.
This was the hardest part for Percy, the part where they had to lay beside the man, and one of them having to lay right on top of him. Father Cutter had explained at the first meeting how doing this meant that they were all one in God’s secret discipleship, bound together body and soul, and that their bond could never be broken, which was all right as a reason, but Percy still didn’t like the way it felt.
He didn’t like it even more when the priest said, “Disciple Percy, I feel God is calling you to lay atop me this night. I feel He may have a special mission for you.”
“F-For m-me?”
“What are you, deaf too?” the boy named Arlo said meanly.
“God calls you, Percy!” Father Cutter shouted.
Slowly, awkwardly, Percy lay himself atop the priest, turning his head to the side so as not to have to breathe the man’s breath, which, though he was a holy man, was foul. The other boys lay themselves down at the priest’s sides.
Father Cutter began to pray in mumbles and moans. Shortly, his thighs began to wiggle this way and that as if a wild spirit had entered the private part of his body. Percy did not like what he felt beneath him and he shut his eyes and tried to keep his mind on the coin in his pocket until the long prayer would be over with. He couldn’t help thinking that if God worked this way then God was even stranger than he thought.
In a wheezy moan, Father Cutter finished his prayer, and Percy felt a shudder of violent jerks underneath him. For a while, the priest’s hard breathing was the only sound, until finally he said to Percy in an angry voice, “Git on up off of me, will ya? Git up. All of you, git up.” The priest himself stood up and hastily buttoned his coat. He said in a voice that Percy could swear was on the verge of tears, “Go. Go on. We’re all done. Git.”
The boys scattered into the woods.
Percy wasn’t going to think about what Father Cutter said about women and mamas until tomorrow. He was hoping that by then he’d forget to think about it at all. He had never been very good at not thinking about the things he didn’t want to think about, but he believed he detected, since he’d become a member of The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ, that he was getting better at it.
He’d hoped to could catch a ride back to town, but only two cars had passed as he walked down the highway, and neither of them so much as slowed down. The walk took a long time, even longer with the work of trying not to think.
Their house was in the middle of the block, on the last street before the colored section. It was a small and shabby. It had been painted gray a long time ago but now it was gray-black. Percy’s mother worked from six in the morning until noon at the laundry folding clothes and giving change, and then from one until six at the bakery shop. She grew turnips and string beans and cauliflower out in the yard, and one of Percy’s chores was to tend to the garden. Bertha had quit school right after their daddy left and she looked after the little ones during the day, though half the time she let them run wild or cry themselves to sleep while she made out with Tommy Suggs, who himself was supposed to be in school but hardly ever went.
Sure enough, Percy found Tommy and Bertha sitting on the front porch, necking. They didn’t stop or even look at him.
Opening the screen door slowly so as to keep the squeak of it as quiet as possible, Percy entered the small, cluttered front room that served as living and dining room. His little brothers Johnny and Denny were asleep on the couch in their underpants, each one’s feet in the other’s face. Everybody else, including his mama, was in one bedroom or the other one.
Percy took off his clothes, pulled his mattress out from under the couch, and lay down on it. The minute he closed his eyes he saw a crystal clear picture of the racer snake he’d stepped on back in Miss O’Connor’s woods. Except now it was alive and showing its fangs. I ain’t scared of nothing, Percy reminded himself. To distract himself, he reached for his pants and pulled the coin Father Cutter had given him out his pocket and held it tightly in his moist hand.
III
Percy didn’t know whether or not there’d be a meeting since Father Cutter hadn’t said anything about what to do if it rained. He did say that if a disciple ever missed a meeting, he’d be kicked out of The Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ. He said God had told him that any boy who joined the society joined for good, and anyone who got kicked out would surely be riding the express train to hell. For one disturbing but riveting minute, Percy pictured himself sitting on a hard wicker seat of that train, staring out the window as it rode down, down, down into the rock-melting heat. He never did care for the sizzling Georgia summers, and Reverend Fuller had said a thousand times that hell was at least twice as hot. That he might someday have to go to hell forever was one of the things Percy had always tried very hard not to think about but did anyways. He’d go to the woods and see if there would be a meeting.
His mama was in the bathroom giving Lucinda and Laura Lee their baths. As she scrubbed their armpits and between their legs, her eyes were raw as the weather and her mouth was a thin, tight line.
“You need something?”
“I’m g-going out.”
“It’s raining enough to flood the earth. Where you goin’ in this?”
“I made a new fr-friend. He asked me to c-come over to his h-house.”
“From the church? Do we know him?”
“Y-Yeah. H-He’s the boy who only got o-one, one hand. I’m g-going over to his h-house. O-kay?”
Lucinda slapped her hands down in the water and splashed soap into Laura Lee’s eyes, and when Laura Lee began to wail, Percy stole away. He left so quickly he forgot to put on his jacket.
If he were the type to feel fear he might feel it now, the boy reasoned as he walked backward up the rain-blown highway. The sky overhead was the color of a punched eye, and the wind was like the voice of some terrible beast that roared in a language humans couldn’t speak.
A few cars traveled up the highway. Percy, thumb out and eyes wide with pleading, could see the shadowy outline of a face staring at him like he must be an escapee from the mental house.
When he finally got to the foot of the path beside Mrs. O’Connor’s front pasture, he hesitated just enough to register that the wind seemed stronger here. The trees turned its voice huger and made its strange words more terrible. He inhaled a deep, wet breath and headed in. His flannel shirt and jeans and sneakers were soaked through to his skin, so it didn’t matter that the drenched, hanging leaves and underbrush made him wetter still. He couldn’t find the ducks anywhere in the pond and he didn’t see, up the hill where the lights in the O’Connor house looked warm and dry, any sign of a peabird out of doors. Too smart. Further up the path, even the lights in the negro help’s house looked inviting, and Percy pictured a family of them sitting beside a fire, laughing or drinking or singing or whatever negroes do in their houses at night.
By the time he got out into the deep woods, Percy felt certain there would be nobody at the meeting spot and that it was a stupid idea to come in the first place. Even Father Cutter would stay home tonight, wherever home was for him, which nobody knew.
Percy’s sopping hair pressed against his skull like a tight hat and his teeth clacked like a typewriter. But he’d come all this way and might as well go to the spot. At least he could tell Father Cutter when he saw him next week that he’d showed up. Maybe the priest would reward him with an extra dime or a Hershey Bar.
If Father Cutter was singing tonight, the hullabaloo of the wind and the drumming rain drowned out his voice. And no fire could stay lit in this drenching. For some time, Percy wandered down wrong paths in the woods and came to dead ends. He told himself to just quit and go on back home but he didn’t listen to himself and kept on looking until, finally, by sheer luck, he found the spot. The circle of stones was a soup of mud and ash and half-burned twigs. Nobody was there. The boy stared and heaved a sigh. He had begun to turn, intending to run all the way home, when a high-pitched voice called out, “Somebody out there? Is one of my disciples out there?”
It was the priest’s voice all right and it came from inside the old lean-to beside the still. Percy walked over to it and knelt down and looked in. “It’s m-me,” he said. “P-Percy G-Godbout.”
“Percy, Percy, Percy,” Father Cutter said when he gazed up at the soaked, shivering figure. The tight, tent-like space the priest occupied was made of two sheets of scummy plywood nailed together with foot-long pieces of equally scummy two-by-fours. A dark rag of a damp blanket covered the ground on which he lay, and an oily old Navajo blanket covered his body. Beads of water dripped through the gaps in the wood here and there, and the air smelled of must and body odor and bad breath. There was a half-open suitcase stuffed in the corner and in it were a few shirts and a pair of pinstriped drawers and some tins of tuna fish. Beside it lay Father Cutter’s guitar.
“Come on in out of that gully-washer, disciple Percy.”
Reluctantly, the boy crawled in. The priest threw half the Navajo blanket over the boy. His mouth formed a slow grin as if Percy wasn’t just a boy but a God-sent angel.
“Disciple, I sure am glad to see you. Yes, I surely am. Why, just before you arrived God was telling me in no uncertain terms that only one—one alone!—of the disciples of the Secret Society of the Fearless Young Disciples of Jesus Christ would be fearless enough to come here tonight. He said that that one, because of his fearlessness, is to be the special chosen one of our society. That one, He said to me, is to bond with you in a special, secret, and holy way. And in the days to come, that one is to be given the awesome mission of enriching the discipleship in untold ways. And for fulfilling that sacred mission, he in turn shall be personally enriched.”
Though Percy didn’t understand what the priest was talking about, he was glad for the blanket, which was gradually helping his shivering to subside. Even so, he was distracted by being squeezed so tightly into the lean-to with another human being, even a holy one. He intended to get out and go back home as soon as he could, though he would stay long enough to find out if Father Cutter planned to give him a reward.
Resting his head in his hand, the priest lay on his side, grinning and staring at the boy. Percy half-sat and half-lay beside him, his breath shallow and his back pressed up against the wet wood. The way the priest gazed at him, like he was special, mixed up Percy’s mind. He liked it, but he wanted to run away from it too. Except for his mama once in a while when she needed him to do something for her, Percy was accustomed to people not looking at him nor even knowing he was there. That’s the way it was in school with the teachers and in church with the preachers and everywhere else besides. But at Father Cutter’s meetings, Percy always knew he was noticed, and he knew it now more than ever. It made the boy feel like he was growing bigger and smaller at the same time.
“This here is a heart-hollowing moment, disciple Percy. Why? Because a young man is about to be called by the Lord Himself to take part in a revelation. By sending you and you alone out here in the Godforsaken wind and rain, the Lord has revealed to me that you been chosen for a special role in His Almighty plan. It is not for you nor me to question that plan, but simply to do His will as He sees fit. Can you say amen to that, disciple Percy?”
A drop of rainwater fell from the wood and plopped into Percy’s left eye, stinging it. He blinked and rubbed the eye and said, “A-amen.”
“Tell me. Did you feel as you come here tonight a pounding deep in the pit of your heart? Did you feel the power of God carrying you along? You don’t even have to answer. I already know. I see it in the fearlessness in your eyes.”
Percy’s left eye stayed blurry, and he blinked again and again to try to clear it.
The priest touched his own bony throat and spoke solemnly. “Disciple Percy, the Lord has asked me to put you to a test. If you pass it you can move on to the even higher calling He has in store for you. He may be inviting you into his royal priesthood, my good disciple. Just as he did me a long time ago, when he put me to the test.”
The boy didn’t like the sound of it. He knew from school that a test meant trouble.
The priest lifted himself up to a sitting position. “I done me some lookin’ into the work the devil’s been up to in this town. Do you know that there is evil living and thriving not far from the very ground on which you and me lay right now? I speak of the farmhouse you passed on your way out here. It’s the house of two females, two pope-worshipping, Satan-serving females. Do you know the house I speak of?”
“Y-Yes, F-Father. W-where the p-peacocks are.”
“Do you know what one of them females that lives in there is? A author. A author of pure blasphemy. Why, that woman writes books with the devil’s pencil. She writes ‘em for the purpose of leading God’s children astray. She is corruption incarnate.”
Right away Percy recalled that his mother had once told him that though the lady with the crutches was nice enough to say how-do-you-do to, her books were strange and alarming and upset a lot of good people. But she never said they were written with the devil’s pencil. Was that because his mother was a disciple of the devil herself?
“You like them birds they keep up there, Disciple Percy? Them peachickens?”
“I l-like the p-pea-c-cocks. I like the t-tails.”
The priest fell quiet and lay his hand on Percy’s shoulder. When the boy instinctively pulled back, he thought he saw a flash of anger in Father Cutter’s eyes. Father Cutter took a breath and placed his other hand firmly on Percy’s knee. The boy didn’t dare move it away. “My brave disciple,” he said, deadly serious, “as your first test the Lord demands you take one of them birds and bring it back here for sacrificing. God Almighty demands a sacrifice and woe to him who ignores the command of the Lord.”
Percy blinked and jerked his knee so that the priest’s hand slid off. “S-sacrifice?”
Father Cutter spoke slowly. “The Lord demands a sacrifice. Go and take a peabird and bring it here. You must not git caught. You must prove to Him you can do this without getting caught. If you can, a higher calling will be revealed to you.” The priest brought his face to within a few inches of Percy’s, so that the boy could see the many small scars in the skin of his cheeks that looked like signs. “Work in secret and be fearless, my disciple, and the Lord will reward you with riches beyond anything you ever thought you could have. But remember, if somebody snags you, don’t reveal who sent you. Do not betray me and suffer the fate of Judas Iscariot. You understand?”
Percy did not, but nodded.
“Imagine it, Disciple Percy. The Lord wants to fill your heart with his love and your pockets with his riches. Don’t you see, this is why the Lord’s word is called the good news. Because it is good news.”
“B-but taking the bird,” Percy dared to say, “a-ain’t that st-stealin’?”
The long, thin, fingers of the priest shot out from the fist he’d formed and burst open like fireworks. “That is Satan speaking, not Percy Godbout. All things belong to the Lord, my disciple. If the Lord demands we sacrifice one of his own handmade peachickens, by God we’ll do it and won’t question it.” He seemed angry again. He pointed and said, “Take that there sack to put the bird in. Don’t tarry. Be fearless.”
Although he knew it wasn’t fear he felt as he walked in the torrents that drove down from the wild sky like tiny spears, something like a baloon inside Percy made it hard to breathe. It made his legs wobble and his chest feel tight and it kept him from thinking straight. He tried to remember what Father Cutter had just told him, the reason for what he was doing. It was what God wanted, and God was hard to figure.
When he came up behind the negroes’ house he could smell meat cooking. He swallowed; his throat felt dry as sand. He walked a little further down the path and came out of the woods. Crouching, he trotted to the trunk of the big red oak tree in the front yard, then from it to a holly bush beside the side of Mrs. O’Connor’s house. From there he darted to the base of the house. A light shone inside the window above his head, and he felt a shiver when he remembered what Father Cutter had said about Mrs. O’Connor and her daughter being Satan’s disciples.
He stole around toward the back of the house where a long, low tin awning extended down off the roof. Sure enough, the whole gaggle of peabirds were there, having the good sense to keep dry. They were squeezed in tight to each other and they pecked and squawked up a hell of a racket.
Percy’s chest drummed against his thin ribs so hard it hurt. He pushed his dripping hair out of his eyes and opened up the mouth of the sack and scanned the birds closest to him. He was pretty sure Father Cutter wanted a cock and not a hen, though Percy hated the idea of killing a cock. What kind of God wants you to sacrifice something so pretty and different from everything else? But Percy had been told all his life that you didn’t question God, you done did His will. He chose a bird that stood close by, and before he could talk himself out of it, he leapt toward it, flung the sack over it, and with the flat of his palm shoved it into the sack. As soon as he’d pulled the bag shut, he was on the run. The bird squawked worse than an irate pig, and it squirmed and pecked through the burlap right and cut right into Percy’s back.
The boy slipped and slid his way back to the path. He ran along it, chest banging like a steelhead hammer. “Quiet down,” he said to the bird, but it kept right on squawking and flopping and pecking at his back.
He didn’t catch his breath until he was standing before the lean-to. He lowered the sack to the ground. When he peered into the lean-to what he saw froze his brain: sitting in a tight crouch beside Father Cutter was the boy with a stump for a hand, Arlo. Except that his teeth were chattering, there was no expression on his face.
Father Cutter glanced up at Percy and said, “Did you git it?”
Percy nodded and showed him the bobbing, squealing sack. “B-but I-I thought G-God only s-sent m-me tonight. I thought He only p-picked m-me.”
“He did, Percy, He did. Like I told you, the one who come first tonight is the specially chosen one. The one who come next is specially chosen to help the one who was specially chosen first.”
“You s-said n-no one else w-would come t-tonight.”
“Now, now, I never did say that, boy.” The priest gestured toward the one-handed boy. “I knew Arlo here was going to come. God told me so. He come to be your assistant in the mission that is soon to be revealed to you. Only the most fearless two of you can do it, and you should stand in awe that God has chosen y’all.”
Arlo said, “How much God gonna give us for doin’ it?”
Father Cutter smiled. “Plenty, I promise you. ‘Nuff said for now.”
“W-what about this p-peacock here?” Percy asked. “C-Can I t-turn him a-loose?”
“How’s that?” Father Cutter said. “Oh, the bird. Why, no, Percy, you can’t. See, Arlo’s gonna sacrifice it, that’s what. Just like God demands.” He looked solemnly at Arlo. “Disciple Percy has been tested and he done showed God that he’s not afraid of anything. Now you too must be tested, disciple Arlo.”
“Do you kill it just like you kill a reg’lar chicken?” Arlo asked. “I done chopped plenty of chickens’ heads off. Weren’t nothin’ to it.”
“We got no axe,” the priest replied. “Gotta use a knife.” The priest reached under the blanket and pulled out a six inch, curved bowie knife with a silver blade and mustard-colored handle. “Disciple Percy and me will hold the bird down on either end and you’ll slit its throat. Come on. We’ll do it over at the fire pit.”
The rain had slowed down some but the wind was still whipping and howling out its unknowable words. Percy held the sack tightly in his hands. He didn’t want the bird to die but if it had to be killed, he felt insulted that it wasn’t him doing the killing. “No need to take it out of there, Disciple Percy,” Father Cutter said. “Lay the sack down in the muck and open it just a little ways. When the bird pokes its head out, grab it by the head and hold it down. I’ll hold down the sack.”
“W-what if it b-bites me?”
“Then that must be God’s will, ain’t it? Maybe it’s God’s correction of you for some sin that still stains your soul.”
Percy knelt in the mud and lay the sack in the mucky puddle. Above him, Father Cutter stretched out his arms. “Almighty Lord,” he prayed, “we offer this sacrifice of this here peacock to You in the hope that it pleases You and that it aids us in serving You and doing whatever it is You want us to do for You. In the hours to come, we will be asked to fulfill a most important mission and for doing so we will be given a rich reward out of Your bounty. Amen.” He lowered his arms and knelt down. “Okay, kill it.”
Reluctantly, Percy opened the sack a little bit. When the peacock poked its head out, he grabbed it with both of his hands and slammed it down into the mud and held it there. The squealing and gurgling were awful, but the bird was so busy trying not to drown that didn’t think to bite him.
In a motion so quick and fluid that Percy didn’t even see it, Arlo sliced the head clear off the bird’s thin neck. Blood spurted into the rain. There in Percy’s hands the tiny, baffled head shivered and gurgled a little more and went quiet.
Father Cutter stood up and emptied the sack of the body, letting it splat into the mucky center of the circle of stones, where its blood mixed with mud and rainwater. Chilled and dazed, Percy left the head where it lay staring at nothing.
Father Cutter wiped his hands on his pants. “Disciples, you both done proven yourself worthy of your next mission. God is surely pleased. Arlo, you done used that knife like a regular butcher.”
“Aw, it was easy,” Arlo replied.
Percy said, “I-I could of d-done it, too.”
“I believe you, Disciple Percy,” Father Cutter assured him. “And who knows, maybe before long you’ll get your chance to cut with that knife, too. Now, listen to me, both of you. Tomorrow night is a special night. Tomorrow night your great mission will be revealed to you. Come to me as soon as the sun is down. And don’t tell nobody where you’re going. Nobody. Tomorrow night you’ll be enriched in ways you couldn’t even of dreamed of. Do you disciples understand what I’m saying to you?”
Both boys nodded.
“Disciple Percy, you go on your way now. Disciple Arlo, you stay here with me a while. There’s some things God wants me to talk to you about.”
Percy’s jaw fell. He stood still in the rain, blinking his eyes.
“Well,” Arlo said in a mean voice. “He done toll you to git.”
“Shut up,” Percy said. He looked at Father Cutter. “C-can’t I stay, too?”
“I must preach to Disciple Arlo alone tonight, Disciple Percy. It’s God’s will.”
Percy felt like he might cry. He turned to run, then turned back. “F-Father C-Cutter. D-did you m-mean to g-give me s-something t-tonight?”
The priest grinned. “Tomorrow, Disciple Percy. Tomorrow you’ll have more riches than you ever did have in your whole life. I promise. Go on now and git home. First, wash that blood off your hands. You don’t want to cause nobody no suspicion.”
Percy stared down at the oily dark liquid that covered his fingers. He rubbed his hands viciously against his dungarees. But there was still blood on them, so he held his hands open to the rain, then rubbed them again.
“Git going now,” Father Cutter commanded. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He waved the boy away and slung his arm over Arlo’s shoulder and turned him toward the lean-to.
Something bitter and pasty coated Percy’s throat. He waited until Father Cutter and that son of a bitch Arlo knelt down together and disappeared into the lean-to. Then he waited a little longer.
IV
Saturday dragged like a wore-out mule. In the morning Percy tended to the garden, which was a muddy tangle from yesterday’s rain. He had to dig—and dig deep—for drier dirt to sop up the mud. Usually he liked the work of digging. He liked the sound of a spade stabbing the clay, and the smell, especially the deep, dark stuff. But he was too distracted to enjoy himself. Even as he considered the large-sized bag of peanut M&Ms he’d buy with his new riches, he felt uneasy, as if a shadow had slipped into his brain.
In the late afternoon he mended some of the rotted slats on the porch railing, but there were so many kids running around pestering him, taking his hammer and hiding it, asking if they could help, kicking out the slat after he’d nailed it in, that the job took an hour more than it should have.
He could hardly stop his leg from moving as he sat at the supper table and tried to eat his boiled chicken, mashed potatoes and greens. He hadn’t thought much about what his mission was likely to be but he hoped it didn’t have anything to do with slaughtering any more peabirds. Percy had had a bad dream last night. He dreamed he was commanded by God to nail a peacock to a cross, only the peacock in Percy’s dream had human hands, human feet and human eyes. Just as he got set to drive the first nail into its hands, them eyes gave him a look so deep and sad that he dropped like a dead man, face first, into the muck. When he woke up in the morning he swore he tasted mud in his mouth.
Finally, at around seven, he told his mother as she washed the supper dishes that he was going down to the high school to shoot baskets.
“Don’t stay late,” she said without turning. “Church in the morning.”
* * *
The banana moon hung in the sky but daylight was stubborn about fading for good. Percy didn’t want to get to the spot too early—that made Father Cutter angry because of the risk of somebody seeing you—so he stopped near the pond to wait until it got dark. From the shadow of the woods, he stood and observed. The ducks were gathered in a bunch near the far side of the pond, and a pair of swans glided slowly across the glassy water in his direction. Up at the farmhouse a negro man in overalls sauntered over and stood at the bottom of the front steps. “Miss Mary Flannery,” he called, and in a minute the lady on crutches swung herself to the screen door and opened it. Percy could hear their voices and some of their words, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He wondered if they’d figured out yet that one of the peacocks was missing. They might be planning on what to do about it. Might even be that the negro was going to stand guard with a shotgun.
Don’t even matter, Percy told himself. He wasn’t scared of nothing.
A shiny fat crow swooped across the pond toward the woods. When it was just above the boy’s head it cawed so loud that the negro man and Miss Mary Flannery stopped talking and looked down the hill. Percy froze. The man and the lady shaded their eyes with their hands and looked. The boy stood unmoving and unbreathing until they started talking again. He slipped away down the path.
Dark came on and the moon grew brighter and lit the woods like a lamp. Percy found the spot quickly. Arlo hadn’t gotten there yet. Even though Father Cutter had said that he was the more specially chosen one, Percy worried that that could change. Many times the priest had said they were all brothers working for the same things, but Percy couldn’t help feeling he was competing with Arlo for who was most special.
Approaching the spot, he heard splashing. Father Cutter was finishing up relieving himself near the trunk of a fat oak. The priest turned toward Percy before he even zipped up his fly and Percy couldn’t help it that he saw his thing. He blushed and looked away, but the priest only laughed and took his time about zipping up.
“Tonight’s the night, disciple Percy,” Father Cutter said, suddenly serious. “Tonight y’all are gonna carry out your special mission. Tell me, are you frightened?”
Percy nodded, then shook his head.
“That’s good. Fear is what Satan wants us to feel. Fear is Satan’s weapon.”
Suddenly they heard a loud crack and both of them jumped and jerked toward the sound. In the moon-shadowed clearing stood Arlo, a burlap sack slung over his shoulder.
“Disciple Arlo,” Father Cutter said. “I’m right pleased to see you.”
“I got some extra clothes in here like you told me,” Arlo said.
The priest stole a glance at Percy. “Leave ‘em here with me.”
Percy said, “W-What d-did he br-bring e-extra clothes f-for?”
The priest brushed at something on the sleeve of his black suit jacket. “I’ll explain that later,” he said.
Arlo said, “Ain’t it cause we’re gonna hightail it outta he…”
“Shut it up, disciple Arlo,” Father Cutter shouted. Then in a softer voice he said, “Everything will be made clear in good time.” A smile broke across his face.
The priest reached down and lifted a bottle from the dirt. “Drink of the holy wine with me,” he said, and took a long drink and handed the bottle to Percy. Percy drank, but not much, though it was enough to make his shoulders shiver and his face scrunch up. He handed the bottle to Arlo, who threw his head back and guzzled it down like it was Coke-a-Cola.
“Now come close to me, little ones.”
The boys obeyed, and the priest lifted his arms and put a hand on each of their shoulders. Percy concentrated hard on not squirming away.
“Evil dwells but a little ways from here,” Father Cutter said in a harsh whisper, “in that there white farmhouse surrounded by birds. There’s a woman in there done made a lot of money writing evil-minded books, books that mock the Lord and his people, books writ with the purpose of leading astray the children of God. Ask anybody in Milledgeville and they’ll tell you.”
“You want us to kill her?” Arlo said in an eager voice.
Percy observed the priest’s eyes as he considered Arlo’s question. They reminded him of the way Mary looked at Jesus in the picture book Percy’s mamma liked to read to the little ones at bedtime and that she used to read to him too, way back. The boy felt a sudden deep, sad pang for his mamma.
“This ain’t got nothing to do what I want, disciple Arlo,” Reverend Cutter said. “The Lord’s will is the only thing matters.”
“My m-mama k-knows both of them ladies,” Percy said. “Sh-sh never said they w-were e-evil, just a little crazy.”
Father Cutter chewed on the skin of his thin lip, then spoke through his teeth. “I done told you, Percy, that all women do Satan’s bidding. You know what? I’m beginning to wonder if I misheard the word of God when He told me He appointed you for this mission. Am I deceived, Percy? Are you with me and with the Lord or are you aginst us? I need to know.”
“W-With you,” Percy said.
The priest licked his lips with his tongue. “Listen to me. Tonight, after the lights in that house go out and we’re sure them women are asleep, you boys will go in through the living room window. They always keep it opened a couple three inches, and that’s all you need to git yer hands under it and hoist it up. Once you’re inside the house, you’re gonna search around and find wherever they hide their money. You’re gonna take ever last penny. If you see any jewels or whatnot, take it too. Then you’re gonna come on back here and receive your reward.”
“What if they hide their m-money in the b-bedroom,” Percy said, “like m-my momma does?”
“We might need to kill ‘em if they wake up, right?” Arlo said.
Father Cutter moved closer to the boys, keeping his hands tight on their shoulders. “First look in the dining room, then the kitchen. Look inside jars and vases and drawers and everywhere, but do it quiet. If you hear one of them wake up, you got to quiet them ‘for they wake up the niggers. A pillow over their head is best. If you don’t find any money in them rooms, y’all go into the bedrooms together. They sleep in side-by-side rooms on the first floor. The old lady’s in the back. Take care of her first. The other one can hardly walk anyways, so you ain’t got to worry much about her.”
“I-I b-been in there b-before,” Percy said. “I-I k-know what it l-looks like.”
“That’s real good,” Father Cutter said. “You know just where to go. If either one of ‘em stirs in their bed, one of y’all got to hold her down and keep her quiet. The other one keeps looking until you done found the money. Use a pillow, you understand? Hold it over ‘em ‘til they ain’t moving no more.”
Percy drew a deep breath. “B-But, a-ain’t that wr-wrong, F-Father C-Cutter? A-Ain’t it a s-sin to do that?”
“God damn you, Percy,” the priest spat, “we’re in a battle against pure evil. The voice of God has spoken to me clear as the water in a mountain stream: through the fearless efforts of disciple Percy and disciple Arlo, what was gotten by evil shall be given over to the good. Riches, Percy. More than you ever dreamed. That is God’s will for you. Now go wait over there while I speak in private with disciple Arlo.”
Percy frowned. He shuffled away, but only a few feet.
Father Cutter whispered to Arlo too softly for Percy to hear. A few times he pointed in this direction or that. He emptied the burlap sack of the clothing that Arlo had brought and handed the empty sack back to him.
When he was finished with Arlo, the priest told Percy to come over. “Wait over yonder, disciple Arlo.”
Percy shot Arlo a satisfied look as he passed him.
“Look here,” the priest said. He took the knife they’d used to kill the peacock out of his pocket. “I’m entrusting this here to you, seeing as that you have both hands to use it with. Have no fear about using it, you understand? It’s the Lord’s will.” He handed the knife to Percy and looked into his eyes. “It ain’t only me, it’s the Lord who’s countin’ on you.” He smiled tenderly at Percy. As best he could, Percy smiled back. Father Cutter lowered his head further still, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Now, there’s one more thing I ain’t said until this very minute.” He was practically kissing Percy’s ear now. “God has commanded me to tell you that when you done got the money and you’re clear of the house, you are to kill disciple Arlo. The truth is, he ain’t a brother. He’s workin’ for Satan and God wants him destroyed.”
Percy wobbled and blinked his eyes until he got his balance back. He stole a peek at Arlo, who was whistling and kicking at tree trunk.
“As soon as you done put the knife into his back five or six times,” the priest whispered, “drag him down the driveway. But make sure you got that sack loaded up with riches. I told him I was gonna be waitin’ here, but it ain’t true. Meet me down a ways on the driveway. I’ll be in a brown Pontiac. You and me are goin’ to California. The promised land. God’s finally gonna give you what you deserve, disciple Percy, after a lifetime of people mockin’ you and thinkin’ you ain’t nothin’ but a worthless, stuttering freak. Are you ready for your reward?”
Percy nodded.
Father Cutter called to Arlo to come on back. “Okay, I done told disciple Percy the plan,” he said. “Everything’s ready. The time has come to fulfill your mission. Don’t fear a thing: the power and might of the Lord God Almighty is surely with you.”
V
It was necessary for Percy to remind himself of how scared he wasn’t. And that Arlo belonged to Satan so killing him was no sin.
When they got to within a few hundred yards of the house, Arlo stopped and whispered harshly to Percy, “We ain’t waitin’ to see if they wake up. We’re gonna kill ‘em right away. Then we don’t got to worry about nothin’.”
“B-but m-maybe w-we’ll f-find the m-money r-right away and, and, and they w-won’t w-wake up anyways.”
“I said we’re killin’ ‘em. So shut up.”
“F-Father C-Cutter didn’t say we had to k-kill ‘em.”
“He ain’t no Father. He’s a damn homo. We git back, I’m gonna kill him, too. He tried to suck on my pecker. Anyways, more money for us.”
“Y-your j-jokin’, a-ain’t ya?”
Arlo ran the stump of his hand across his brow. “How come you can’t talk right? You sound stupid when you talk.”
“I-I ain’t s-stupid.”
“I didn’t say you was stupid. I said you sound stupid. You’re scared of killing them ladies, ain’t ya? Cutter toll me you was pro’lly gonna be scared.”
“I ain’t s-scared of n-nothin’.”
“Are too. You’re scared outta your trousers. I bet you’d be scared to a kill a chicken. You’re prolly scared to kill a mosquiter.”
“N-No I a-ain’t. I-I ain’t scared to kill n-nothing.”
“Good. Then let’s kill them ladies and git their money.”
The boys crept around to the side of the house where the dining room was, avoiding rousing the birds by staying out near the far end of the yard and passing behind the water tower. Percy searched the gaggle of fowl to see if a peacock might be raising its tale, but none was. Crouching like soldiers, the boys trotted to the wall of the house right below the dining room window. The window was six feet above the ground, and open a few inches just like Father Cutter said it would be.
“Hoist me up,” Arlo whispered. “I’ll git in and then I’ll pull you up. Soon as we’re in I’ll go put a pilla over the old lady’s head. You take care of the other one. Make sure she don’t scream and wake up the niggers.”
Bad things had to happen now, Percy knew that. What he had to decide was which bad things would happen and which wouldn’t.
“Hoist me up, retard.”
Percy laced the fingers of his hands together and Arlo lifted his leg into the rung of the boy’s intertwined fingers. Arlo grunted and grabbed the ledge with his good hand first and then with his stump. As he worked to position his body so as to push open the window, Percy unclasped his hands, leaving Arlo to dangle.
“Not yet, stupid. I ain’t ready.”
Percy straightened and yanked the knife out of his pocket. He squeezed his eyes shut and plunged it into the dangling boy’s back just below his left shoulder. Blood sprinkled into his eyes and across his chest.
“Hey,” Arlo whispered. He was still hanging onto the window ledge. “What the hell you doin’? That ain’t the plan.”
Percy stabbed him again, and then again. Finally Arlo collapsed to the ground. A mud of dirt and blood formed where he writhed on his back. Then, all at once, he stopped moving and his face froze in confusion.
“Y-You were w-workin’ for S-Satan,” Percy muttered. “Ain’t n-no s-sin to kill s-somebody w-working for S-Satan.”
He tried hard to remember the instructions. He picked up the empty sack, then leaned down and hoisted Arlo over his shoulder. His body felt light, but already stiff. Percy half-ran down the long dirt driveway and, just like Father Cutter promised, saw a brown Pontiac waiting there close to the highway, headlights off and engine running.
Percy stumbled to driver’s window. “He’s d-dead.”
“Thow him in the back seat,” Father Cutter barked. “And hand over the sack.”
Percy threw Arlo into the back seat and climbed into the passenger seat. He handed Father Cutter the sack, ready to explain.
The priest clawed at its insides. “You dumb bastard, where’s the money?”
“W-We n-never d-did g-git into the h-house,” Percy said. “I-I… B-But at least A-Arlo can’t w-work for Satan no more. Ain’t the r-right?”
“What do you mean, you didn’t git in? Why the hell didn’t you git in?”
Father Cutter’s face seemed to transform from human to animal to something lower still. “All this time,” he shouted and slammed his fists into the dashboard. “All this time I spent in this dump with a bunch of idiots and this is what I git for my trouble?”
Percy’s back pressed into the handle of the passenger door.
“God damn you, you chicken-shit idiot. God damn you. I can’t believe this. You lousy goddamn chicken-shit stuttering chicken shit.”
The boy’s brain screamed I ain’t no chicken-shit and without him telling it to, his hand rushed into his pocket and grasped the slimy knife handle and pulled it out. Without even wanting to or thinking about it, he thrust it into the side of the priest’s bulging snake of a neck. A spray of blood spurted into Percy’s face and onto the windshield. Cutter arched forward like a fish trying to flip off a deck back into the water. He wheezed, “God damn you, you chicken shit,” and Percy reared his arm back and pierced him in the shoulder, and then, because the priest’s hands were grabbing at him, he stabbed him again in the side of the head. A feeble whistle gurgled out of Cutter’s throat and his head swiveled this way and that. Finally he tipped over and flopped on to Percy’s lap.
Drenched in blood and shivering, Percy sat in the passenger seat, the dead man sprawled over him, the dead, one-handed boy sprawled across the back seat. There was no sense denying it anymore, and he said it out loud, as if he were confessing it to the dead fake priest: “Okay, okay. I’m a-sc-scared. I can’t lie. I’m a-re-really scared.”
So scared that he knew it was only a matter of minutes before his terrified heart would pound itself to death. Once he was dead, he didn’t know how long it would take that train to get him to the gates of hell, and he didn’t know if God or Satan would meet him there to remind him of all the things he should have done in his life instead of all the things he did do. Reverend Fuller, who knew all about the devil, always preached that it would be Satan waiting. But Percy hoped he was wrong; Percy hoped it would be God standing at that gate. That way the boy could finally meet Him and ask Him to explain things once and for all so he could finally understand it. After everything he’d been through lately, that would at least be something.
Steven Ostrowski is a fiction writer, poet and song-writer. His book of stories, A Pile of Crosses, is forthcoming from Emerge Publications and his novel, The Last Big Break, is forthcoming from LVCA. He teaches at Central Connecticut State University.