Young Writers Society

[charlotte]

He couldn't keep his hands off of her.

Cold and dirty. A permanent grit of hard work and manure and hay seed etched into the lines of his palms. Grasping, mechanical, but not altogether unwelcome. Jim pushed her against the slatted wall of the barn, flaking paint and red. The cold utensils of his fingers, prodding. Charlotte's quiet, breathless words in his ear. Soft, contradictory encouragement. A slow unwinding. She could feel his hands slipping up her shirt. Full of hungriness and sin. And him, excited by the milk and honey of her pale skin, warm and flat as the hood of a car in the sun. Kissing her neck, the undersides of her wrists, pink and tender as the slender necks of lilies. Animals in the stall, heedless of the taut twining arms and dusty gasps. Standing in the hay. Jim's inhibitions were long gone, smothered and dead. And he was in control. And they both knew this. But the traveling of his hands made Charlotte stiffen a little.

“Jim,” she said, withering.

His traveling hands. Traveling, shiftless, soulless hands.

In between kisses he said, “What's the matter?”

“Jim, stop.”

“Nah, hon.”

Charlotte squeezes her eyes tight and grabs his hands through her shirt. He looks up. Dilated, moonstruck eyes. His face smooth and well-worn as a family bible. “Come on, Charlie.” He whispered, and leaned in for another kiss, but Charlotte pulled back.

“We shouldn't, Jim. We can't.”

He looked at her for a little bit. And then he let go of her and stepped back, wiping the edge of his mouth and the sweat on his face with the back of his hand. He shook his head. “I knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“I knew you'd let a bunch of rules and preachy bastards get in our way.”

“It's not that, Jim.”

“Then what the hell is it?”

She looked at the ground. The horses and milkcows sweated in the heat, their mouths bristly and moist and grumpy, and their ratty tails flicking back and forth like little chinaman braids. Charlotte shrugged. “I don't know.”

“Are you going to let a couple sermons and a slap on the hand cheat you out of some fun? Huh? I know you, Charlie. Godssakes, you're one of the wildest, funnest girls in the county. And I love you because of that. Wouldn't want you any other way.”

Flies mumbled and recited dizzying, diseased nonsense. She looked at him. Hot sun nosed through the knotholes and slats in the barn. An oppressive, stifling tiredness. Charlotte closed her eyes and sighed and Jim moved closer to her. He wrapped his arms around her waist. The cool dampness of his shirt. The crazy, motown beat of his heart, elaborating voicelessly. He kissed her neck. Cold. Sugarcubed. His rough lips like brushing beetlewings.

“Come on, kid. The devil can't feel this good.”

Her hair stray and listlessly golden in the spool of the sun, like a pitchfork-full of hay.

“Okay,” she said. “Alright. Screw em.”

Jim laughed and unbuttoned his shirt. “That's the spirit.”

The heat blossomed.

[franklin]

Pastor Franklin looked over his glasses at the congregation. The women fat and dimpled at the knees and elbows. Their dresses tight and limp. Waving hymn books, hands, hats at their full, sweating faces. Mouths hanging open, hinged and squeaky. The men lean and sickled, like overused farm tools. Their cornmeal skin tanned, dried, poulticed. Humble and horny. Rug-beaten by the sun. The girls toothless and pink. Socks pulled up to their knees and smelling of dolls and lilac, fermented in the heat. The boys scoured and tarnished. Their pockets full of shrively dead frogs and marbles. Everyone drugged and sapped. All the windows in the small church open and the doors, too. But sitting anything other than the shade of a tree was as hot as momma's kitchen when she's fixing for company.

He took off his glasses, folded them neatly, and set them on the pulpit.

He looked at the sermon he had prepared before him and then back up at the congregation.

“The Lord Almighty has given us everything,” he says.

Amen, said the crowd, bored and dumb-looking, their faces muted and dirty.

“He has given us our children, our wives, our husbands, our land, our backs to work with, our hearts to feel with, the sweet water, the muck, the heartache. He has given us his son, the only begotten, our lord and savior Jesus, Jesus. He's given us the cool,” he paused and smiled a little, “and the godawful hot.”

Amen.

Louder this time. A little laughing. But laughing just wasted energy. The men had their hands folded over their scrunched up guts, folded like cootie-catchers. They smiled lazy, droopy smiles and tried to sleep a little bit.

Pastor Franklin bit his lip and looked off. In a softer voice he said, “He's given us hope and good. But right along beside it, another customer, he's given us damning sin and despair. Sin, brothers and sisters. What do we do with our sins? Whisper em to the reeds? Talk to me about them? Pray? What do we do when we see a sin standing right before us, bold as day, full of ugly hell and smiling a rotten smile and saying come here, brother? Come here, sister. Taste me. Taste this cool, sweet apple and know me. Look at him. Look at your neighbor. Look at all the hard, righteous work he does and look where that has gotten him. A limp, some rusty tools, and a bunch of bratty kids. Doesn't sound like a life to me. What do you do? What?”

He looks into the empty, murky faces.

“You rise up and you say 'Get thee hence, Satan! You ugly, bastard son of perdition!” he roared, spit frothing at the corners of his mouth. “You turn your back on the whore and the gambler and the bottle and you join your father in heaven in sweet, sweet untarnished salvation! Salvation and eternal life, brothers and sisters! Everlasting joy! Do I hear an A-men!”

Amen!

Voice scratchy and broken as a love song on a transistor radio, “And when earth and hell combines against you and says 'come here' and 'come there' you turn to your holy bible and you read until your eyes fall out! Until your fingertips is papercut and your throat's dry and you've chased that ugly sin away!”

Amen!

Bright, filemented eyes, now. Faces red and fevered, a drain of passion. The heartburn of righteousness and hate and soul and praise festering at their fingertips and the amens spilling from their lips and the old time religion stomping their feet and puppeteering their flabby, sunspoiled arms.

Amen! God almighty, amen! amenamenamen!

And Pastor Franklin up at the pulpit waving his arms around, his flopping jowls, and his teeth shining and pressed like saxophone buttons. His eyes brewed up and fiery as a home remedy and his hands pulling down the wrath and torment of god. Hands clapping. Hallelujahs rising. Orgy of gut and stink and sweaty exoneration. The words of his sermon came easy now. Right off the top of his head. Words like bees from his papery lips, choking the room with a transcendental putridness. Squelching in the heat.

“Lord God, make us whole!” he cried heavenward, his whole body pried and screwed tight. “Give us strength and make us right!”

No one could hear him anymore.

And no one really noticed when Mrs. Parris fell off of the pew, either, squirming and writhing like a fishing worm on a hook. Too caught up in the frenzy of heat and God. Her eyes wide open. Her mouth tight and rigid and biting her tongue, so that blood squished from behind her teeth, frothy and pink. The shoulder of her dress slipped off to reveal a bony, spotted shoulder. Drowning groans. Old popping bones. Then someone, stood up and screamed for help and it was another minute before things quieted down enough for people to start yelling for a doctor. Pastor Franklin looked down. He felt his heart contract a beat and he stepped off of the pulpit and ran down the aisle. Mrs. Parris, jerking her arms around, a fluttering body dance, but slowing down, like a carnival tilt-a-whirl at the end of a ride. Someone pried open her mouth and stuck a hymn book there. Her tongue was swollen and red. There was blood running down her cheeks and people were saying, Pray for her, preacher! Pray for her! Cast out her demon, Father!

God in heaven, he thought. A devil in my church.

And he knelt down beside her and put his hand on her forehead. He opened his mouth.

But immediately, Mrs. Parris stopped moving.

She looked up at Franklin, her eyes clear and sober. Her white, respectable hair stray and loose and framing her face. A cold pit settled in his stomach just looking at her, a frivolous, frightened feeling, like a gray ghost story told over a fire.

She said thickly, “Wait. Love it. I can't hear them anymore, I swear it! I swear. Hold on. Savor. Swing a minute, but wait and listen.”

“Mrs. Parris,” he whispered.

Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. And her throat gurgled. She spat blood and wiped it away shakily with the back of her hand. People leaned in. Tight-faced and tripwire-lipped. The air humming. Quiet and bent as the rows of corn in the moonlight. Mrs. Parris shivered and balled herself up. She shook her head and her lips pouted, drawn together. “Momma,” she whispered. “I won't eat it, I won't. I don't like it.” Her voice rising to a shrill crescendo. “Take it away from me or I'll scream! I'll scream, I tell you! Oh, now look what you've done! All over the dress! I – ”

The old woman gasped and her spine arched her straight up. Franklin bolted back. Her jaw working and churning. Her arms flapping useless and nerveless at her sides, treading the air.

“Mrs. Parris!”

“We are deceived! We have the devil among us! Flee, children! For the angel comes! Oh, Lord! Oh, good savior! And fear me! We are done for! The wicked have poisoned us all!”

Her mouth clamped shut, like the lid of a music box, and she fell forward, into Franklin's lap. Silent. The crowd was silent. She was heavy. He shoved her off. He realized he was panting, his heart strumming in his chest and in his ears. His mouth dry as cottonwood. The doctor ran in and pushed through the voiceless crowd. He knelt by the old woman's side. Lipless. His hands smooth and vain. Smelling of chemicals and books. He put two fingers to the base of her neck. He waited a moment. He looked up at Franklin.

“Dead,” he said.

The perverted silence sunk, weighted by all the deflated spiritualism.

The heat shivered.