[mathis]
The sound of broken glass, blistering, sawtoothed. Rising voices. Throbbing down the street, fists in the air, faces hatching like larvae. Mathis stood waiting, Shaffer beside him, holding a shotgun. The horizon rosy and flushed, strung out with new ash and fat fans of ugly smoke. Shaffer shifting his weight from foot to foot. Mathis was smoking a cigarette. He was checking his gun, too. Unscrewing, flicking back the chamber, pressing the bullets in. It had been a long time since he'd used it. And now the whole godawful town had gone crazy. Something in the heat. His heart was beating in his throat, thin and obvious, and the sky weighed down heavy like the swollen eyes of a newborn. He pinched the cigarette between his fingers and blew out. Shaffer wiped his forehead. The ground beneath them was shivering slightly. He could see them coming.
Mouths wide and souring. Eyes black, podded, lips thin as old shoe soles. The town shrunk, skinned. Night chambered and pulsing like a heart, redskinned dirt, oil in their veins. Dizzy, dizzy. Moving forward. Mathis biting his lower lip. They could see him and Shaffer now; he could tell they didn't care. They were dragging people behind them, in front of them. Soggy doll bodies. Fat as garden slugs. Faces bruised and purple. He could smell them. The bodies smelled of rot and hot blood.
“I don't know about this, Sheriff,” Shaffer said.
Mathis didn't say anything.
He sure as hell wasn't going to let his town burn.
They marched forward, lurid mouths.
Heat listless on the air, shelled and lock-jawed.
“Sheriff.”
Mathis could see James Phillips at the head of the crowd, his cheeks sunken, jaw unsocketed, dragging forward with a gun in his hand, eyes yellow, stagnant as mustard gas. Grinning, shouting.
The night splendid and hot-breathed as a maiden.
“Outta the way, Sheriff!” screamed James.
He fired his gun in the air.
Mathis raised his own gun and shouted,
“Not another step! Godssakes, any of you take another step I'm gonna blow you to hell!”
James laughed, high-pitched, overriding the roar of the chanting and the screaming. People were throwing bricks into the store fronts. Tearful glass, hanging and rooted to their pane supports like loose teeth. Women carrying snot-nosed, wailing babies as they jammed their fists in the sky. The dry men with their deadweed faces, their lipless mouths, carrying their old guns and knives, squeaky-jointed.
“Sheriff – ”
“Leave, Shaf.” Mathis sighted James down the barrel of his gun.
“Hell, Sheriff they gonna gut you in the streets, just like the rest of them sorry bastards.”
“For god's sake, if you're gonna keep whining, leave.”
Shaffer paused. Mathis's palms were slippery, greasy. James was screaming. His cheekbones knitted, his mouth stretched down and spit from his lips. Waving the gun. Heresy on his tongue. Mathis's hand shaking, shaking. Couldn't bring himself to do it. James's eyes bulging, black, like overripe fruit. Pointing his gun at the Mathis.
“Outta the way, you bastard!”
god help me.
Mathis pulled the trigger. The gunshot jumped, bucked, scalded. James Phillips jerked back, his shoulders rising around his chest, neck cocking back, lips compressed. Legs collapsing, folding up like antennas. Falling back. Hands to receive. Crowd flinching, drawing back, coiled snake, rattle-tailed tongues. Spring-loaded, pinball lever. Men, women, looking up, focusing. Mathis screaming to stop, for the love of god, stop, stop stop! And the old guns pointed like compass needles north. Shaffer unloading shells into the crowd, calm faced. Buckshot spraying, bored. People toppling over, groans from their mouths, old soldiers with snow-eaten shoes. Lips blue and snared. Eyes gauzed, realizing. God in their mouths. God in their broken fingers.
They shot Shaffer first. In the head. Mathis felt the skull fragments and blood stick to him, slimy, stringy as gutted pumpkin seeds. He fell back heavy into the dust, fingers curling like old broom bristles. Mathis looked at the crowd and set his jaw and lifted his gun again. But they shot him, too. Two bullets, one in the thigh, the other in the belly. Cold, numb skin, a sick draining crawling up through his body. A terrible cold. The pain was secondary. He felt all of the heat bleed out of his fingertips and toetips. The bullets were like hot tick-heads burrowed into his skin, contracting, sucking. He fell to his knees. His hands on his gut. Trying to keep the blood in, which came squishing around his fingers. Red dust in the wound. Black spots in his eyes, cupped and fragile as ladybug wings. oh god in heaven, help me god help me.
The people moved around him, heedless parade. On his stomach. Drooling. Mouth rasping, squelching. Steady footfall. Spinning, spinning like pretty girls in their new dresses. Old wind-up music in his ears, discordant and jangling. Dead shivers sidling up and down his spine.
His thoughts shook, jumbled.
Breathing in the warm dust. Sweet breath. But restricted, painful. Shaffer's blood cooling on his neck and face. Soft, fluttering sound in his chest, wet and sloppy as a kiss. He rolled over. Looked up. The soft-bodied stars and their procession. Gracious flitting. He coughed blood. The night sky was warm and sagging like a mother's embrace. Muffled, cradling his body, cold, cold. such a cold. shivering, stunted, his toes and fingers dead and white as driftwood.
do you fear god, sheriff?
god?
The heat crooned.
[phoebe]
Phoebe was reaching through the bars of the jail cell, fingers stretched, trembling. Brushing the glass of the oil lamp, warm as the forehead of a sick child. Fingers leaving behind dim, whorled prints on the glass. The light tugging, shrugging, dizzily knocking at the sides of the glass, like a jar-captured insect. Yellow glow hazing the room, sulking and ill. Phoebe grunted, pushed. The cold bars pressing against her shoulder. Her face wound up, screwed up, groping for the lamp. She could feel herself letting go. There was an unfamiliar tickle in the plunge of her stomach. Mindless, dull impressions, feelings. Her hands and feet felt heavy. Her words too slow. Slow and thin, like the lifting of a dying man's hand.
i will fear no evil.
Her fingers squeaking across the glass. She was afraid. She knew. But she was confident, too. It had to be done. The town was sick and rotten. A Sodom. A Gomorrah. Gutless, poison-tongued. Rotting like a roadside carcass, caramelized with maggots and fatty with sin. The people were shucked, soulless things, wandering like lost children. Footloose, flammable. Their sunken eyes, like toeprints in the sand. Loose faces, looking up, slack-jawed at the sky, waiting. They could feel the fire. Underneath the ground. The heat in the dust. The air undisturbed and clumping, drawing around all of them. A thick falling. Demure, white-faced.
She couldn't.
She couldn't be here anymore.
and though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
Phoebe could hear the people outside. She could hear the gunshots. Her fingers nearly grasped the oil lamp enough to pull it towards her. The shadows in the jail stood very still and silent. They watched her. She pushed, pushed – almost reaching. They watch her with lidded eyes and cracked mouths, the way men watch a dancing woman. Thin whispers under the cry of the people outside. Crawling, tin-legged whispers. On the floor, scuttling, fat as roaches.
momma, momma.
Phoebe pursed her lips. She moved the lamp. It was inches away from the edge of the table.
he leadeth me beside still waters. green pastures.
momma, help my wicked soul. gimme a hug, gimme a choke, will you? will you please?
She could see the stars shaking in the sky through the open door, newly formed and clumsy, like the first words on the lips of a baby. She moved the lamp more. Something around her feet, creeping. The groping shadows, moving forward now. Clingy, crying for milk. She shook her head, cut them off, whispered scripture.
for thou art with me. my cup runneth over.
Frantic now, Charlotte's voice, ten years younger, her cold, stubby child fingers. Fat as pollen heavy flowers.
momma momma momma
The oil in the lamp sloshed. She pushed it. It was riding on the lip of the table. She could feel hands on her skin, around her neck, she could feel the tug in her throat. But no, she was on the Lord's errand. Rid yourself of this shoddy sack. Peel it off like an old skin.
I'm hungry, momma. why don't you feed me something? why don't you hold me? huh, do I smell? do I stink? carry me.
carry me.
the lord is my shepherd; i shall not want.
“I shall not want.”
The oil lamp tipped, toppled, shattered on the ground. Flame spreading along the oil, like a lifted skirt. Crackling, shuddering, spreading. Lazy, slumber-heavy flames rising, black smoked. Scattered shadows, held off, clustered and buzzing like angry, shrugging swarms. Phoebe smiled, laughed. The flame was spreading up the walls, and around her, serpent-bodied. Flicking, forked, tasting tongues. Charlotte screaming, screeching – her body writhing in every twisted flame.
momma.
yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, i will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
But Phoebe felt complete despair. And so she laughed. Humorless, tasteless laughing. Choking, pulling at her throat as the fire moved forward. Contracting around her like a pupil, her soul wavering, trembling. The sky, she could see, through the curtains of flames was vast and empty. It received her prayers and her scripture, diffused them, dissolved them.
You can feel it, right?
Right?
The heat slaved.
[mathis]
Mathis licked his lips. His chest heaved, fell. He realized that the jailhouse was burning. Ash in the air, heat on his cheeks. He could see Shaffer out of the corner of his eye, shrunken, withered, his head like a bald dandelion. The ground moved beneath him, huge and restless, churning, yawing, moving like a waking baby, face scrunched up with light and fruitless dreams. He tried to even his breathing. He laid there thinking, waiting. He knew he would die. Light-headed from the loss of blood, his fingers white as roundworms. Shivers jazzing up through his legs and arms, playing along his spine like some kind of backbone saxophone.
He waited expectantly as death proceeded with its slow ceremony. Rattle-boned as a fortune, gaunt faced, neatly dressed. Cold hands, ordered fingers. A canyon grin, slatted with affable teeth. The soft songs in his ears, high-pitched, old.
He prayed, too.
He prayed for his soul, his town, for peace. The praying just came, unstopped. It felt natural, like he'd been doing it for years. It took his mind off of the cold, the clutching at his guts, the rusting of his finer muscles.
Please. Please God, keep this place alive.
He felt a thin wind at his face, cooling, dabbing. Slowly crescendoing, goading the sighing, cantankerous earth. Puffed cloud cheeks to the north, spreading like weeds. There was dust in the air again. He could feel the fire in the jailhouse burn hotter, rising, thin flares and bands of flame bending out from it like stems. Grit in his eyes. The dust storm returning.
The wind whined, mosquito-voiced.
Mathis prayed and bled.
The heat shelled.
The flames spread quick.
From the bonfire in the Weiss's front yard, and the jailhouse, and Lill's house. Little spark-toothed fleas popping off from house to house. Croaking frames, groaning foundations. The wind pushing the ash and cinder into the air. Porches collapsing, glass bending, stairwells warping. The houses shriveling in the fires like old faces. Paint curling up like caterpillars.
The cauterized night, a sealed wound. The stars were stitchmarks.
The wind and the dust and the cinder and the ash and the heat choked out the air. People hid. They ran, stumbling in the streets. Sucking, rustling lips. Into the dead fields. Wailing, eyes burning. Bodies trapped. Confusion, fired guns. People dropping like dead flies. Kindling bones. Always crying God, God. Clasped, sweaty hands, upturned eyes. The sky drunk and scattered. Crying God, God.
The heat cradled.
The clouds were carried on the back of the wind.
Slow rolling, like fat tanks. Purple-bellied, blushing. They crept over the burning town.
Mathis felt the first droplets of rain.
They lingered on his lips as his eyes plied shut, like sleeping blossoms.
“God, God.”
The burning buildings shimmied. The rain evaporating, hissing like loose gaskets. The flames were sad, bent-backed. Rainpipes filled up. Dust turned to mud. The skinny, muddy rivers began to swell. The trees curtseyed in the soft wind. The day brushed at the stomach of the night and the clouds promised to be low and gray. People stood around. They looked at their hands. Droplets on their eyelids. Mourning settling over them like a dew.
The heat prayed.
