[jim]
Jim threw himself into his work with every sinew and muscle and tendon. His whole body plucked and straining, frantically pushing, bones standing near to his skin, like worms rising through the dirt in a rainstorm. He shoved himself against the plow, digging into the hot, crumbly earth and urging the tired nag on with sharp, irontipped words. There was dust on his lips and dust in his eyes and dust in his hair. Dust rose from the severe land like dying wishes, cold on the mouths of dying men. The nose of the plow couldn't push through the earth more than an inch. It was all shale and fossilized prayers. Jim's father and all of their neighbors had given up on farming their land. They sat in the dry, insubstantial shade, sipping water and conserving energy, lethargic and fat. It was useless, they said. It was utterly and completely a waste of time. There came a point where tools and ingenuity and a man's back where no match for bitter, shamed land.
But Jim was possessed. He didn't care. He had to do something. He had to do something to keep his evil, sinful thoughts from flourishing. Taking root in the soft, loamy gray matter of his brain and populating his dreams with sick spores and hazy pollen clouds of hopelessness and regret. They way he looked at it, the faster he worked, the harder it would be for the devil to catch him. And so he toiled hysterically. Scuttering like an ant. Sweat soaking through his shirt and all of his sin purging though his pores and stinking up the stagnant air and the fingertips of Satan himself caressing his neck and breathing on the small hairs of his arms with the scent of a lover. He didn't stop. He didn't water the horse. He didn't think or feel or see.
The soles of his shoes were hot to the touch.
His knees where bloody and torn where he had fallen in his haste.
The grinding music of the plow against the shale.
He had killed her. Or, at least that's how it felt. He had taken something irreplaceable. Jim had taken her purity and her virtue and her goodness and perverted them into flimsy, pale substitutes. She would never get them back. She was about as good as a whore. Another two-bit vessel of sin on the street corner, painted up by mascara and the thin, inexpensive glow of the streetlights. Muddy and ruined. Her pure, untouched flesh corroded by his fingers. He hated himself for doing it. How could he have been so thoughtless? So impulsive, for godssakes?
Her ragweed hair.
Her hips and the undersides of her wrists, broken geometries.
Her eyes empty and rimmed red.
He threw himself into his work. Until his back ached and his head pounded thickly because he hadn't had any water since daybreak. Jim plowed eight acres of dead, stingy land until he stopped sweating and his mouth became dry and papery. Purple blotches skewed in front of his eyes – fat shimmering amoebas that crawled on their bellies across his vision. The whole world reeled and ducked and tacked, like a ship in the crotch of a storm. Choking, clay-packed throat. Breathing through his mouth because his nostrils were clogged with dirt and dust.
He worked until his legs gave out from under him.
Soundless, he fell face first into the hot, burning dirt. It got in his mouth and between his teeth. He opened his eyes and sky was yellow. Yellow and patched. Closed them. He laid there for a while, feeling his heart throbbing in his head, a jiving, thumping artillery. Fervent, unaccounted for words slipped out of his mouth while he laid there. He propped himself on his elbows and cracked his eyelids open again and his vision fizzed and sparked like cheap, cardboard chinese fireworks. Drymouthed, licking his lips, tasting the salt, he crawled to his feet and stumbled towards the house. Water. He needed water. The rattling tithing box of his head. Splintered vision. Sucking mouth. Stumbling. Falling. Getting back up again.
And the whole world shifting and restless, like the feet of a tramp.
waterwaterwater.
He stumbled onto the porch, flung open the screen door, and spilled into the house. His parents were gone for the day in the next town over looking at a new car. The house was reserved and mournful, accepting him like a shameful donation, secretly, like a charity. He ran into the kitchen turned on the water in the sink, fumbled for a glass but couldn't make his fingers work right, and finally gave up, thrusting his head under the flow of water.
drink up, drink up.
Jim drank until he couldn't hold anymore. He sat at the table. He could feel the devil at the door. His head ached. It ached so bad that he could barely put together a thought. The purple blotches were turning into black spots. He closed his eyes and laid his head on the table, but he could hear whispering. Quiet, tickling words. Words that crept along his spine and curled around his ears with a milky, soothing touch.
hush, baby.
don't cry, baby.
He felt dizzier now then before. He was afraid that if he stood up, the pain would be worse, and so he stayed where he was.The words trouped into his ears, liplessly proselyting. At first, they were hazy and indecipherable. He was only concerned about the devil, waiting on the porch like a friend come to jaw on a hot day. But then they grew in volume, along with a steady drumming in his head. Opening up. Focusing themselves until they were syllables and consonants. An eerie syntax.
sin, they said.
scum.
thief.
liar, cheater, whoremonger.
Jim stiffened and clenched his jaw. He was sorry, he swore he was. Genuinely sorry. He had sinned, but there was forgiveness, just like Pastor Franklin always said. There was repentance. He could right his wrongs.
damnation.
you filthy hypocrite.
taking the poor girl's soul. bastard son of perdition.
Jim shook his head. The words turned into voices. Speaking as a collective. Like a savage chant around a blossoming, edifying fire. There was the cold scalpel of the devil's finger playing with his neck skin. He stood up, knocking his chair over. His head practically split open. Eyes half-closed, he flung himself against the wall and bit his tongue.
you are mine now. you have no right to be here. sinner. a sin so black you could never scrub it out. there you are. rotten and soulless. with your filth and sticky sex.
“Get out!” he screamed and pounded the wall with his fists. “Get out!”
His throat was so dry.
His legs were weak and felt thin, like the skinny, white roots of a pulled up weed.
Smiling, smiling stood the devil. And the senseless buzzing flies, tapping at the glass. Knocking at the glass.
pig. stinking, cursed pig. you will join us. join us and burn. a match out of your soul and yellow chalky sulfur smeared in your mouth so that you will never know satisfaction or quench or –
Jim screamed. He screamed and spun around, his eyes wide and bulbed. He knocked up against the kitchen counter, pulled open the drawers and flung them out. Knives and utensils and the handgun his dad kept there (more as compensation than protection) spilled out. His head, his head. Stomping, rhythmic splintering of his head, like the steady, sweaty hammering of an iron spike into helpless tracks of rail.
look at yourself.
look.
stained. stained beyond repair. what good? what good are you now? a soiled garment. useless unrepentance.
“No! No!”
He slid down the wall, his hands cupped around his ears, his stomach sick, knotted up and hardskinned like a prematurely picked green apple. Bile in his throat. Tapping at the glass. The devil smiling so gentlemanly. At the door. Dizzy buzzing. The rot of his hands. I swear, I swear, I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to! A bow and the swivel of jitterbug and clap. Room swaying like a dancefloor. Bleeding spots. Jim couldn't think straight. The shadows flip and ribbet. A slow contraction around him, scaly-necked and vulturous. Wide mouth. Devil has such nice, even teeth, almost filed down. He kneels. Ringing in his ears, a caterwauling siren song. And the evil words, wriggling through his thoughts like worms in a corpse.
jim.
you're a worthless, faithless monster. but i'm here. don't worry. speed it quick. i'll be here for you. too late for a broken soul. too –
“Stop!” His voice cracked, weak. His hands scrambled. He was lying on the linoleum. His fingers wrapped around the pistol butt. Tears on his face. Cold, saltless tears. Sizzling on the griddle of his cheeks.
Charlotte! Charlie! Girl, my baby! Love you like a million but not good enough. You can't know my sorriness. Can't eat your sin, but it'll sure eat me.
jim.
I can't touch you anymore! Fingers burn. And he's at my doorstep. Charlie, act like it didn't happen. It didn't happen. It was only me. It was only ever me. Oil in your purity.
jim.
The voices swarmed. The room contorted like a face after hearing a vulgar profanity. Knock, knock. The devil beside him. He could see his shoes. Nicely polished, his face reflected in them. Rolled cuffs. Mudless. Dustless. He was so scared. And the fingers were so cold. Stroking, admiring, and reverent.
Stop crying, dollface.
Squirming black dots, like colonies of bacteria growing on a petri dish.
i'm right here, jim boy.
Panting.
Thirsty.
He lifted the gun. He wasn't even thinking anymore. Something controlling his arm, a stiff guiding. A mechanical hinge and lever, creaking up to the mouth, into the mouth. Jim closed his eyes. He prayed to Charlotte. He prayed frantically, but not to God, never to God.
The gunshot made the skin on the plowhorse in the yard shiver.
The heat mourned.
