Chapter 27: Way station

Mary’s room was small and musty. The old iron bed frame had once been painted white, but now the peeling and flaking showed as much brown rust spots as old white paint. The tattered quilt was the source of most of the musty smell, along with a few forgotten shirts hanging in the closet. All of the drawers in the chest of drawers stuck. The bottom of one drawer was hanging down, and one of the glass knobs was missing. It had been replaced with a screw.

The paint on the wooden window frame was chipped and peeling like the rest of the house. Mary sat on the bed and stared out of the window across the barren brown field. The tree line was several hundred yards away, across what used to be a cotton field.

Against her will, her thoughts turned to home. The last screeching, blistering, screaming, spitting, name-calling battle with her mother. After that, she couldn’t take it any more. She had left and never looked back. That had been five years ago.

Suddenly, Mary starting sobbing. She couldn’t stop. A lifetime of disappointment, deprivation and disorder spilled out. She couldn’t remember a time when she had felt loved and protected. She had never known a sense of continuity, rules or harmony. Life was one broken, high-pitched cataclysm after another. Her father was a hopeless drunk and drunk because he was hopeless. He was a failure and took it out on his wife and daughter. He couldn’t stand it, either, and deserted them both when Mary was only three. No one had heard from him since. Her mother blamed Mary. “He couldn’t stand you always being underfoot, and so he left me,” her mother scolded. Then it was her mother’s turn to turn to alcohol for comfort. Although Mary was still very young, she was bright enough to see that her mother was heading down the same path as her father. That despair led to rebellion in her pre-teen and early teen years. A teen-ager’s natural rebellion was magnified a thousandfold. Even when her mother’s reprimands, demands and commands were justified, Mary saw them as willful tyranny. It became a vicious cycle. Her mother would give an order, Mary would disobey, her mother would scold and punish and issue more commands for Mary to disobey.

She had left home. Life on the road is not merciful to homeless teens. Then she had found Joe. Now, even that small, faint glimmer of humanity was taken away.

And so she sobbed.

Chapter 26: Uncle Jonathan

“Where have you been?” It was Joe. “I've been calling you.”

“I went for a walk,” Mary said.

“Pick you up tonight?”

“I can't.”

“Why not?”

“Miz Gryder. She knows I was out late last night.”

“We don't have to be late. I'll get you back early. Come on.”

“Well, -- O.K.” Mary was relieved to be persuaded.

When the two of them left the house, Miz Gryder stared at Mary, but didn't say a word.

Joe drove straight to the old bridge. He parked under an old oak tree. He grabbed Mary and pulled her to him. His mouth covered her face urgently, like someone starving to death. Mary responded just as eagerly. She was glad to offer sustenance, to be coveted. In giving herself, she found solace. Her demons were quiet for now.

She lost track of time. She was in a place where there was no pain; a place she had never been before. All her life, it seemed, she had known nothing but stings, scrapes, tearing and rending. That was all forgotten now. She would drive the demons away. She kissed Joe harder.

Mary was floating in a dream. In her dream she walked in a meadow of bright flowers. She walked down the gentle hill to a clear brook winding its way through lush green trees, bubbling over moss-covered rocks. She knelt down and plucked a flower growing at the water's edge. A cool, refreshing breeze stirred the leaves and caressed her face.

Then, suddenly, as it often happens in dreams, the scene shifted. The trees were no longer lush and green. The bare, black branches reached for her, scratched her skin. The gentle wind had become a howling gale, screaming about her ears like a thousand banshees.

“No, stop!” she heard someone say. It was her.

“Mary,” Joe breathed.

“I can't,” Mary said.

“Why - Why not?”

“The dreams. The dreams. They're in my dreams. I have to save him.”

“Save who?”

“I don't know. I just know I can't do it. Not now.”

Joe let go. He pushed away from Mary, roughly.

“Please don't be mad,” she pleaded.

Joe was silent. He turned the key and drove off down the dirt rutted road.

Neither of them said a word on the drive back toward town.

Miz Gryder met them at the door when Joe brought Mary home. Mary's things were packed up and sitting on the porch.

“Take your things and go,” Miz Gryder said. “You can't stay here anymore.”

Mary just looked at her, speechless.

“I told you I won't have any carrying-on like that in my house.” Miz Gryder turned and went back in the house without another word. The screen door slapped back three times in the door frame. Miz Gryder closed the front door behind her.

Without a word, Mary picked up her things and walked down the stairs. Joe waited for her at the car. He opened the door for her.

For a long time they drove aimlessly, wordlessly. Joe took his favorite road down by the river. He stopped and got out. He stared at the river flowing in muddy, lazy swirls. Mary sat still in the car, looking down.

“What are you going to do now?” Joe finally asked. 

“I don't know,” Mary mumbled. “I came this far, I guess I can go on.”

“I don't want you to go,” Joe said. “I - I just don't.”

“But I have no place to stay.”

“Wait a minute. I've got an idea,” Joe said. “How would you like to stay with my uncle?”

“Your uncle?”

“Uncle Jonathan. He has a farm on the other side of town. He lives there alone.”

“Was he never married?” Mary asked.

“Once. A long time ago. The family doesn't talk about it much. They stayed together a few years, then she left. The last we heard she was off in California somewhere.”

“Why did she leave?”

“Nobody knows. Uncle Jonathan won't say. He just lives like she was never there. He's kind of strange, if you want to know the truth. Strange, but harmless. He used to take me fishing a lot when I was young.”

“And now you're SOO old,” Mary teased.

“Well, older, anyway. We had good times together. Sometimes we would go hunting. Uncle Jonathan taught me a lot about the woods - trees, animals, fish, farming.

“I don't know. Do you think he would take me in?”

“We can ask. The worst he can do is say no.”

“I suppose.”

“Let's go then.”

The drive took them way on the other side of town. They drove along silently down the two-lane road overhung with ancient oaks. The road crossed the river again, and soon after, Joe turned down a dirt road that led up a small hill. Clouds of dust rose behind the car. After a few miles, they came to an overgrown, sandy trail just wide enough for one vehicle. The two ruts were still visible, but there were no fresh tire tracks. Rains had washed them clean. In some places, vines from both sides of the trail almost met in the middle. The trail was littered with branches and cut through here and there with gullies. The going was slow and torturous.

At length, the trees and brush thinned and the road passed into a cleared area. It dipped and ran near a small pond. The fields were overgrown and abandoned. There was no evidence of an active crop of any kind. Above the pond was a barn and silo. Passing them, Joe and Mary caught sight of the farmhouse perched on a small hill overlooking the stagnant pond and barren landscape.

Joe drove up in front of the house and stopped.

The dingy white paint on the old wooden house was chipped and peeling. The screen door was askew, hanging from one hinge. Joe went up to the front door and knocked. No answer. He turned around to Mary and shrugged, then turned back and pounded harder. Still no answer. “I’ll see if he’s around back,” Joe said. He walked around the corner of the house calling, “Uncle Jonathan!”

Joe’s voice grew fainter. It seemed a long time since Joe had left. Mary was growing impatient and nervous. 

Suddenly she froze; her heart stopped. There was a hand on her shoulder. Mary’s head jerked around and looked into a pasty white, bewhiskered face.

“Whatcha doin’ here, Miss?” he groused.

Mary recovered from her surprise enough to stammer, “I-I’m here with Joe.

“Joe who?”

“Hi, Unc!” Joe appeared from around the corner of the house. He strode up to the grizzled old man and gave him a tentative hug around the shoulders. “It’s Joe,” he said, after Uncle Jonathan didn’t react to the greeting.

“So. What brings you out here?” Uncle Jonathan asked.

“I -- er -- we need your help,” Joe blurted out. He had been practicing what to say to his uncle after not visiting him for such a long time, but he totally forgot his speech.

Uncle Jonathan stared at Mary, gazing up and down. “I get it,” he said.

“-- No, Unc! It’s not like that!” Joe protested. “She needs a place to stay!”

“Like I said,” Uncle Jonathan said.

“No. She’s not. She’s not...”

“Not yet, you mean?” Uncle Jonathan grinned.

Joe ignored Uncle Jonathan’s vulgar grin. “Her landlady kicked her out.”

“Where was she staying?” Uncle Jonathan asked.

“With Miz Gryder.”

“Why did she kick her out?”

“Because of me,” Joe answered.

“-- Like I figured,” Uncle Jonathan said.

“No, it’s not like that. I kept her out too late. Miz Gryder is very strict.”

“Sure, sure.”

“Can we come in?”

Without answering, Uncle Jonathan ambled toward the house. Mary was able to see his figure for the first time. For a fat man, Uncle Jonathan moved with ease, almost grace. Years of living alone and working with farm implements lent his body a certain skill. Even though he had let the farm run down in recent years, his body still remembered how to move. Uncle Jonathan reached the front door, then went in without looking around. Joe followed, and motioned Mary to get out of the car. Mary sat rooted for a few moments, reluctant to leave the relative safety of Joe’s car. Finally, she got out. Joe held the front door open for her.

The interior of Uncle Jonathan’s house mirrored the appearance of the fields. The planked wooden walls, once white, were a dingy yellow. The paint was chipped and flaking. A threadbare rug covered a portion of the wooden floor. Uncle Jonathan sat in a high-backed, hideous upholstered chair with a faded flower print and worn arm rests. A spring protruded from near the bottom of the chair.

Joe and Mary came in and sat in a couch opposite Uncle Jonathan. The couch was also of faded upholstery. The pattern did not match the floral pattern of Uncle Jonathan’s high-backed chair. An ancient TV set was in the middle of the opposite wall. On top of the set was a device for turning the rusty antenna on top of the roof. It was doubtful that the device still worked. In the corner of the room was a plain wooden chair with cane bottom. To the left, a dark hallway led to the bedrooms and bathroom. The right, one could look into the kitchen and a connecting small room with an old wooden table that served as a dining room.

The three sat for a long time without talking. Uncle Jonathan sat with his chin slumped on his chest. Joe looked nervously around the room. Mary stared at her feet.

“You see, Unc,” Joe finally stammered, “Mary needs a place to stay.”

“Ain’t she got no job?” Uncle Jonathan asked.

Joe hesitated. “Well, she did.”

“What happened?”

“She was working for Jim.”

“And...?”

“Well, she can’t work there anymore.”

“Hmmph. So you want me to take her in.”

“It wouldn’t be for long. Just until --” Uncle Jonathan waved off Joe’s assurances. “Don’t make no promises you can’t keep, son.” Uncle Jonathan half turned to Mary, then pointed down the dark hall. “You’ll stay down there,” he said.

Saying goodbye was awkward. Joe couldn’t look Mary in the face. He hemmed and hawed, cleared his throat, couldn’t form words. Mary said nothing.

Finally, Joe broke for the drooping screen door. “Well, see you,” he finally stammered. He was too embarrassed to embrace her in front of Uncle Jonathan. Tears welled up in Mary’s eyes as she watched Joe’s car go down the dirt road, leaving a cloud behind it and disappearing behind the bushes.

Chapter 25: Give the devil his due

The drifter was in his early twenties. He was lean and hard, with a seven-day stubble on his chin and dirty, stringy hair down to his shoulders. He wore a sweat-stained olive drab t-shirt and dirty blue jeans.

He was feeling mean. He had been hitchhiking for a month. His last ride, not having a good feeling about him after sharing a few hundred miles in the cramped space of a small coupe, had left him at an interstate rest stop.

A middle-aged woman was traveling with her eight-year-old nephew. For the last 30 miles, the young lad had been asking for a rest stop, getting more urgent with every mile. Finally, his aunt stopped the car and led him to the door of the men's restroom. “I'll wait right here,” she told him. After a few minutes,  road-dirty young man came out, looked at her and smiled.

She waited a few more minutes. Her nephew did not come out. She asked a male attendant to go in and look after him. “Maybe he's sick,” she volunteered.

The attendant retched when he found the young boy lying in a pool of blood on the floor of a bathroom stall, his throat cut so deeply that his head was almost severed from his body.

The drifter would later say it was a “spur of the moment thing. It was so easy. I could do it, so I did.”

-------

Screwtape was screaming into the phone. “Of course you've got to go for an execution as soon as possible. We don't want to take a chance on a genuine Death Row conversion, rare as they are. That's where the Enemy has the game stacked against us. Some jerk can do some dirt that would make Hitler blush, but if he really goes over to the other side, He robs us of our just winnings! The Old Cheat!”

Screwtape stopped screaming and chuckled. “Who would ever think that the Devil was interested in seeing 'justice' done, huh? But the sooner they come to us, the better. We can be patient, sure - but life in prison is a long time for some, and it only takes the blink of an eye for them to slip through our fingers.”

Screwtape continued giving advice to the young, inexperienced demon: “We do our best work when we're not noticed. Make them doubt we even exist. Summon up the cartoon image; it's so easy to make fun of a man in a red suit with a pitchfork, tail, hoofs and goatee! Ha ha! And if they don’t believe in us, the next step is not so great.

“What step? My dear chap, you're not that green, are you? The next step, of course, is denying the Big Guy's existence! Then all they've got is their puny, insignificant selves for solace - and that, I can tell you, is not much! Ha! - just a minute - I've got a call on another line.”

Desiree Caliente's soft voice was telling Screwtape that the Lower Demon in charge of the Southeast District was on the line.

“Look - I've got to take this call,” Screwtape told the underling on the other line. Then he abruptly pushed a button cutting him off. He pushed another button. Glubwart was on the line.

“Well, what is it?” Screwtape asked Glubwart.

“Good news, chief,” Glubwart said. “My whisper campaign is paying off. The casinos have been approved. We can look forward to lots of wrecked homes, lost homes, fortunes, families. People turning on each other, focusing on themselves. Uptick in alcoholism, divorce, domestic abuse, the whole enchilada.”

“Jewels?”

“Dozens every day, once we get really rolling.”

“How are you coming on Project Sugarloaf?”

“I'm working on it sir, but I must say -”

“No, you mustn't SAY,” Screwtape interrupted. “You must DO. Get back and work as if your life depended on it. Because,” the Chief Demon for United States Affairs smirked, “it does.”

Screwtape hung up the phone before Glubwart had a chance to protest further.

Chapter 24: Prophecy

Breakfast was quiet. Neither Mary nor Miz Gryder said a word. The kitchen clock and the sighs of the old house provided somber background level, punctuated at odd times by Miz Gryder's strangely muted banging of pots and pans and dinnerware.
Mary's thoughts returned to the vicious circle of the night before. She felt like a rat on a treadmill; mind spinning madly, going nowhere. Trapped. Miz Gryder kept her thoughts a secret.
The meal proceeded in silence. Mary was not aware of what was on her plate.
Cleaning up afterwards occurred without a word being spoken. Finally, there was nothing more to do.
“You better hurry, you'll be late.” Miz Gryder's words, finally breaking the silence, startled Mary out of her mental rat race.
“What?”
“You'll be late for work. What's the matter with you?”
“Nothing, ma'am.”
Mary stood up and excused herself.
Miz Gryder, still looking at her plate, said, “I heard you come in this morning. I know you were with that boy. It better not happen again; I won't allow such carryin' on in this house.”
Mary went out. She turned right onto the sidewalk, up Banes Street, then left to Three Notch, then right into town. As she walked she thought. “Go to Jim's? Don't go to Jim's? If not, then what? Jobs are not that easy to find. How would I live?” She walked right up to Hungry Jim's and put her hand on the doorknob. Then she turned and kept walking.
She didn't know where she was headed. She strolled aimlessly through town, past Slim's gas station. She crested the hill and looked down. Beneath her, the rich farmland of Clayton County spread across a wide valley. The river twisted and turned its lazy way through plowed fields, woods and swamps. She turned around and looked back at the town, hazy and miniature like a town around a toy train set.
Suddenly, Mary had the feeling she was not alone. A quick, cold shock ran down the back of her neck. Out of the corner of her eye, an apparition. Mary whirled and flushed. A thin, shriveled black man with snow white hair sat on a log, his bright eyes boring into her.
“Wh-wh- who are you?” she stammered.
The little man did not give any sign that he heard her. “Make the paths straight,” he croaked. “Make the mountains level. I am come to bear witness of Him.”
Mary was recovering from her shock, but something about the old man unnerved her. “Who are you?” she repeated.
“Make His paths straight! He must be born again!”
“Isn't it, ‘Ye must be born again?’” Mary asked.
“HE must be born again!” the old man fairly shouted, angrily, his eyes flashing. He rose from the log and took a few steps toward Mary. “I am come to bear witness of Him!” The old man reached out a long, sun-dried, leathery hand toward Mary. “Beware the Evil One!” he muttered. “The plunderer! He reaps where he did not sow. He tramples the vintage of the grapes of mercy.”
The old man grabbed Mary’s arm. At first she shrank away, but when she looked into his warm, tender eyes, her fear subsided. She relaxed in his grasp. “Who are you?” she repeated.
“I am a voice crying in the wilderness,” he said; although by now, his shriveled lips were so close to Mary’s ear that he almost whispered. “You will bear a son. He will be the Savior of all who believe! You must protect Him from those who seek to do Him harm!”
The old man’s eyes burned into Mary. He seemed to be reading her soul. “Don't flee now. The time is not right. You will be told when the time is right.”
Just as quickly and silently as he appeared, the old man melted back into the woods. For a few moments, Mary was incapable of motion. She stood rooted to the spot. “Go, or turn back? Go on, or turn back?”
Slowly she turned and retraced her steps back to town.

Chapter 23: Missing curfew

It was after 2 a.m. when Mary kissed Joe goodnight and quietly opened Miz Gryder's front door, trying to keep it from squeaking. Mary took off her shoes and softly eased down the hall to her room, cringing at every creak and crack from the hardwood floor.

She reached her bedroom door. Carefully, slowly she turned the knob. The bolt made a faint click as it slipped out of its hole. She could feel her heart pounding. She could hear every sound the old house made as air found its way through the aged boards. The squealing of the hinges sounded like a banshee scream in her ears. Better to push quickly and get it over with, or drag out the agony, making one heart-shattering squeak at a time?
The door was open a crack. Mary took a deep breath and pushed again. The noise, it seemed to her, was enough to wake Clayton County. Every second she expected to hear Miz Gryder's chiding voice. The space widened. Soon she would be able to slip inside. Her blood pounded in her temples. One more push, one more heart-shattering squeak. She pressed her body against the door. Her back scraped against the door frame. She was inside.
The reverse ordeal dragged on for torturous minutes, until the door was closed. She undressed in a daze and slipped under the covers. She did not sleep.
A thousand demons chased themselves through her harried thoughts. Joe. Jim. Jim. Joe. Miz Gryder. Miz Gryder. Miz Gryder. She couldn't go back to Hungry Jim's. She had to go back to Hungry Jim's. She mustn't tell Miz Gryder. She had to tell Miz Gryder. She had to see Joe. She had to be with Joe. She had to be with Joe. With Joe. With Joe. With Joe.
Her dreams were more terrifying than ever before.