The charcoal turns her feet black.
She walks in the ruins of the old church, scattering the probing flies, the slinktailed coyotes with their pink tongues and their yellow, casted eyes moving away like deserters. The sky is thirsty. The land is a parched tongue. It laps up the spilled blood like a mother's milk. The scalped bodies lie in attitudes of repose, prayer, worship. The darkeyed, capless mexican women have their dresses torn open, revealing pale breasts, eyes upturned. The robed, pious men with their red headtops, their bodies curled. The place smells of tar and smoke and hair. She walks carefully; the supports and the broken lengths of wood snarl skyward, still redhearted with coals and embers from the fire.
Blackened crucifixes with the lily-wristed corpus are ripped off the walls, desecrated. Only the old belltower stands, with its churchbell swaying and mournful, like a friar pulling a cart full of dead.
She looks for him.
She looks for him among the indiscernible faces. Under the prostrate, ruined bodies. She just wants to look at him one last time. A good, last look. Feel the shape of his face. The flesh of his lower lip, the slope and rise of cheekbones. Close his eyelids. Sit with him. See him off as best she could.
**
Brother Abel closed the door to the stable, thrilled and terrified, licking his lips, massaging his rosary a single bead at a time, like the toes of a baby. Maria stood in the middle of the slumped room. The air was full of dust motes, the smell of hay, sweat, grease. The horses with their long, indignant faces. Flipswitch tails. Viewing them. She was just as nervous. Breath condensing, bloodsound in her ears, palms sweating. She could almost feel God watching. Through the knotholes, the openings in the clapboard.
Cobwebs in the corners lifted and fell like the veils of new brides.
Abel turned. Smiled. Stepped toward her and took her hands in his. Good, strong hands. Accustomed to work, a plow, a hammer. But also accustomed to prayer. He had held many. They dwelt in lines of his palms, under his fingernails. His face scrapped, scrubbed. Tired, weak eyes. He regarded her. Bent his head, kissed her ear.
The horses turned away.
**
The mission leader is stripped down and gutted, naked body white and florescent, eyelids peeled back like blisters. He rests on the alter. Blood staining the communion cloth, rorschach blots in the weave. His face is at peace, strangely. His features ordered, arranged. The bell sings breathlessly in the wind. The slightest nodding, nodding, like a mother weeping over her dead children. Their blessed, stricken bodies. Leads them away. She can feel their shivering, bodiless souls in the doorways, on the fallen beams, among the dead. They watch her.
The sky is red, watery – a placenta. The dark shuffles, beggarly. Rattling and ringing away the sickly light like an approaching leper. The coyotes circle in the mesquite and the chaparral, restless, jealous. She has covered every square inch of the burned church. She starts moving the bodies. They are heavy, groaning, moving reluctantly, like heavy sleepers. Their blood is still wet. It comes away on her hands. A robbed honey.
She does not cry. She will not cry.
She tells herself that there is no reason to.
**
The moon turned the desert white, withdrawn – a barren woman. It turned her skin white, too. They rested in the hay. Maria was very conscious of his skin on hers, her undone hair. She was very conscious of his fingertips moving down her face. They looked at each other for a long time. Concentrated, knowledgeable. Frogs croaking like patients in a hospital. Their mindless complaints. Rublegged crickets. The undressed moon. Hand behind her head. The hot, even breath.
What have you done? She asks. Not angrily. Honestly, quietly.
He looks at her. I have tasted an afterlife, he says.
Is there an afterlife for a man like you?
It does not feel wrong. It could not be wrong. God doesn't work that way.
What if they find out?
Let's talk about something else.
They laid there for a little while longer. His eyes traveling all over her face, like nomads. She closed her eyes. Listened. She opened them again. The stars scavenged the dark through the gaps in the ceiling.
He looked down.
Besides. This is worth the hell, don't you think?
Yes, she says.
**
She finds him under a priest in a bloodstained cassock. He has no scalp. His skull is revealed, white and secret, like a pregnant belly. Flies dance at his head, rubbing their legs like fastidious, handwashing doctors before a surgery. His eyelids flicker. She moves the priest and feels for Abel's pulse – an unmistakable, bloodless toll. She bends down to his face and feels his breath against her cheek. He is alive. Maria takes the news without sound. Cups her hand under his jaw. Whispers,
Abel.
Abel.
The dark folds around her, the horizon a red hourglass on the abdomen of a starless sky. The lantern-eyed coyotes. Grey, palsy dusk. The cold takes her like an arthritis. Settles over her shoulders, her blue digits. His eyelids flutter again. Tired candleflames.
Abel, Abel.
He opens his eyes. He looks at her and she holds her gaze. Smiles. They both smile. And she cries a little. He raises his hand and touches her elbow. A loveless sigh of wind sways the bell and its clapper rings against its bronze waist like a dead hand.
They look at each other for a while.
He opens his mouth. Licks parched lips.
Don't try to save me, Maria.
She tries to smile again. You have time. You're just fine, just fine. Tell yourself you'll make and you'll make it.
I'm just so...sleepy. Tired.
Stay awake.
I don't think so.
I'll stay awake with you.
I don't think so.
Abel.
Go home, Maria.
Go home. Go home? Just like that? Like I'm some kind of pesky neighbor child? Abel. You've got to. You've got to live. I can't do this alone. Do it for me. For me, Abel. Don't you love me?
He sighs. Closes his eyes. The coyotes move into the ruins, picking around the dim shrouded cadavers. The sky smells of rain. The clouds hang low and weary, like housewives. Abel opens his mouth again, but keeps his eyes closed.
Of course I love you.
Then stay with me.
Tears from the corners of his eyes. Silent and slow to form, like beads of candlewax.
He whispers, Let me go, Maria.
She looks at him. Nods. Lifts his hand, spreads the fingers, touching each one, kissing each one and then places the hand on her belly. It is cold through the fabric. He looks at her. She nods. There is great meaning in the dark. The snuffling coyotes. Pious, chaste bellnoises. Swollen-cheeked sky line, rolls of purple clouds, shaded like eyelids.
What will I name it?
Opens his mouth, coughs. Blood on his lips. Prayers on his lips. He looks up.
Name him Absalom, he says.
Maria lets go of his hand. She bends down and kisses him. His lips are already cold. The burned church weeps. The rain begins.
She sits with him through the night.
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