Monday, July 14, 2014
Chapter 1
The angel of the Lord smote him . . . , Bo Bodine proclaimed loudly as he stumbled out from under the live oak and cypress canopy into the glare of the low-slung, late-day sun cradling a twenty-two caliber rifle in the crook of his arm. His ranting disturbed a flock of large, pink birds feeding in an open marsh pool where the narrow, rutted track into the swamp ended. Wheezing from the exertion of the half-mile walk in from the road, he stopped to regard the mass of pink feathers, supported by dozens of legs, it's many heads regarding him askance.
Bodine fumbled in his breast pocket for his glasses. His dingy white shirt, limp with sweat, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, hung open at the collar. The tie he’d left behind on the seat of his pickup truck along with his jacket and Bible, and a half-empty bottle of bourbon he'd been nursing to stave off a hangover on his six-hour drive from Mississippi. His dress pants, shiny with wear and frayed at the cuffs, were dirty and damp and smelled of urine from a mishap he’d had on the road where he’d parked the pickup. His wire-rimmed glasses lay crushed at the rear of the truck in a muddy pool of urine.
The Lord shall smite thee with madness . . . , he cried out now. Bits and pieces of his sermons, scores of them committed to memory over a score of years, came into his head constantly, a din that at times rose to a deafening crescendo.
Bodine’s booming voice frightened the leggy birds. In a single fluid motion the pink mass of feathers crouched and opened its wings. In his near-sightedness the giant birds rose as one creature, a many-headed monster with hooked beaks and blood-soaked talons, a beast out of the Book of Revelation portending the coming apocalypse.
Bodine staggered back, raised the twenty-two and took aim. But he was too slow, too unsteady. The monster, flying low over the tall reeds and sedge, disappeared from sight.
He lowered the rifle and surveyed the familiar landscape or what he could see of it in the glare of the low-slung sun and his alcohol-sodden myopia.
The track through the swamp ended abruptly here at the open water. To the right the thick marsh grasses and pools of open water dotted with lilies, young cypress, and water tupelo extended east and north nearly all the way to Smithy. To the left lay miles of bog extending over the Florida line into Georgia. A narrow but well-worn path skirted the bog along its southern-most edge.
Looking for signs the boy had come this way, Bodine followed the path through the sedge, the rifle resting once again in the crook of his arm. Keeping one eyes shut to stop the path from shifting and becoming two, he staggered along keeping watch for small deer, ‘possum, wild pigs and the occasional boar that had provided good hunting when he was younger. Though it was not hunting season and game was sparse now, he had five kids to feed and would poach game here when he could. The game was his, he reasoned, as the land should have come to him when his father died. Three preceding generations of Bodines had owned this land for most of the last century. But thanks to Margaret Bodine, his stepmother, it now belonged to the State of Florida.
The stagnant mid-August air, oppressively humid and hot and pungent with the smells of rotting foliage and wet earth, was thick with gnats and mosquitoes. The breathless silence, save for the hum of the bugs, the sermons in his head and Bodine's own footfalls, was broken by the shrill chirp of cicada and the occasional drone of an overhead jet.
Half a mile along the path, Bodine came to a fork. Straight ahead the path continued along the bog for another mile or so. To the left the path angled off cutting through palmetto scrub, then up a rise through tall meadow grass. The old cracker cabin sat perched at the top of the rise on the only high ground on the eighty acre parcel that had been the original Bodine homestead.
Bodine regretted leaving the bottle of bourbon back at the truck. His mouth was dry and his head was starting to pound. His eyes stung from the salty perspiration that dripped off his brow. If he could get the old hand pump at the cabin to work, he would splash cold water on his face and neck and rinse the stale taste of liquor from his mouth. Then he would look for the boy.
At nearly twelve years old Norbert, his third child and second son, took after Bodine as Bodine took after his own father. Bodine had seen it in the boy’s eyes and in his bouts of sullenness and in the way he talked to himself when no one was around; he would receive the voices and the visions and would take up the call to preach. But the boy could be wild and defiant, and as headstrong as his mother had been.
Because Bodine’s father had been liberal with his use of the rod, and because the boy had not stood and taken his beating but had run off, Bodine was determined to find him and give him a good thrashing. All five of his kids needed a good thrashing, but Bodine, not quite forty-five years old, was slowing down. The kids kept away from him, disappeared most of the time when he was home. If he surprised them, a willow switch or belt in hand, Norbert seemed determined to take the brunt of his wrath sassing him, taunting him then running off while the others scattered.
The eldest son—named Icabod after Bo who was Icabod Junior after his own father—was, at thirteen, an abomination. Unnaturally effeminate, he was useless around the place. Worse than that, he took to wearing what remained of the clothes left behind by his mother despite Bo’s attempts to beat it out of him. Bodine should have burnt those clothes long ago but he’d saved them for Junie. But Junie, his eldest child, took after her own mother and at seventeen was too tall and too slender to wear them.
Arriving home a day early, Bodine caught Icabod at it again, strutting out from behind the drying barn in a one piece bathing suit, the ample bosom stuffed with raw cotton. Bodine had snatched a switch off the willow and taken off after the boy, but he was still half drunk and his legs were stiff from the long drive. Norbert headed him off and as usual disappeared. Now it was Norbert he was after. Norbert’s range was far and Bodine had gone back for the truck. This time he’d find the boy and beat him hard like he should have long ago. Then he’d go back and beat Icabod, and Junie for letting it happen. He’d give a licking to the two youngest girls for good measure though they stayed out of his way and never gave him cause.
He blamed the boys’ mother. She, the instrument of his downfall with her cascading, auburn hair, her blood-red lips and heaving bosom. She’d wheedled her way in, pushed the other one out. She’d acted all proper and good and knew just what to say to get Bodine to forget his troubles, stayed long enough to give him four bastards, then ran off and married some other fellow. She let Norbert run wild and coddled Icabod.
Bodine had had trouble enough keeping the evils of the world at bay without her bringing trouble into his house. He had never allowed television and despite her objections he’d pulled the phone out of the house. He kept a radio but only to check the cotton and tobacco prices. But he’d come home from preaching trips with his father to find her dancing in the kitchen, the table pushed to one side, the radio blaring, the kids laughing and shouting. Toward the end, she took to sneaking out of the house when he was away. She’d been seen at some of the clubs in Corcoran, dancing and drinking. He’d put a stop to that. Now Junie was in charge when he left and had been forbidden to let the kids off the place though he knew Norbert was beyond her control.
Bodine headed for the cabin wishing he had that bottle. He felt himself becoming more unsteady. A drink would buoy him.
Yes, he drank. He knew it was a sin to drink but it wasn't easy to keep the kids home and the world out when he traveled four or five days out of most weeks just to pay the taxes on the land and put food on the table. They didn’t understand how hard it was to keep vigil against Satan day and night. They didn’t understand that he was losing. Every day Bodine became weaker and the Devil became stronger. And the din in his head became louder and louder. He drank for the same reason his own father had; to keep the voices down.
Plodding hard up the slope, light-headed and out of breath, Bodine spotted the abandoned cabin cast in deep shadow, the sun nearing the horizon. Built in the old cracker style to maximize shade and airflow, the cabin was actually two cabins built four feet off the ground on a large wooden platform that also provided for front and back porches. The two cabins were separated by an open dogtrot about six feet wide that at one time had been enclosed with double screened doors front and back. A single broad roof joined the two parts overhanging the porches.
The cabin was rundown now, though he’d fixed it up years ago. He’d spent a whole long weekend cleaning and painting, fixing hinges and replacing tattered screens. He put up curtains and moved in a daybed and wicker chairs. He stocked the kitchen with canned goods and made sure the hand pump worked. He was ashamed to think why he’d done it. He’d done it for her, the instrument of his downfall. He’d destroyed his life for her and had paid everyday since for his weakness. He knew too late that she’d been sent by the Devil. He’d been tricked, too weak to resist.
He never should have come back here once he’d got away. Never should have brought Junie’s mother to live with his people. They’d been happy, newly married, little Junie not yet teething. He brought them home full of dreams. They’d grow cotton and tobacco, and some truck for their own use and to sell. They’d have chickens and maybe a cow. They would be happy on the land. His mind was clear then. He heard no voices, seldom drank and then only a beer or two. But things quickly changed. Ma Bodine. His father. It was all a jumble in his head how it had gone so bad so fast. Ma Bodine had a way of getting into his head, making him think things, making him doubt what he knew, all the things he had counted on, built a life on. And his father, that lustful old coot. And then the other one came along.
So many regrets. How different his life would have been. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and wishing he could go back, do it over, do it right. He knew he was plagued by Satan for all the bad choices he’d made. He knew he’d never be free of the grip of the Abominable Fiend, that he’d done it to himself, and that he had visited this evil upon his own children. He knew that he had to be the instrument of their salvation. He would wield the rod to save their souls.
As he gained the rise and approached the cabin, Bodine saw a figure emerge from the deep shadow of the porch. He knew it was not Norbert; the figure was too tall and slender to be the boy. Bodine rubbed his eyes with his free hand then looked up at the figure on the porch, tall and willowy with lank hair to her shoulders. It had to be Junie but how had she got here ahead of him. He approached the cabin and was about to chastise her when she moved in front of the open dogtrot that bisected the cabin front to back.
The sun, just then dropping below the eaves, streamed brilliantly orange through the opening, illuminating the girl from behind, transforming her from his lithe, willowy daughter into a fearsomely large apparition, a black figure ablaze in a magnificent fiery halo.
Bodine drew back, shut his eyes then looked again but the apparition remained. This was no earthly being but another monster like the giant pink bird, a demon from Hell. He’d met Satan before and knew him to take on many guises. He lifted the barrel of the twenty-two with trembling hands, ready to do battle.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “What are you doing there?”
The figure moved forward.
“Stop right there!” Bodine cried.
The apparition raised a hand and called to him, but all he could hear was the piercing cry of the cicada, the rushing of blood in his ears and the din in his head. He drew the rifle to his shoulder, heart racing and hands sweating.
“It's me, Pa,” the apparition called out.
The monster had his daughter's voice and called him Pa but he would not be fooled. He took aim.
The figure split into two then three. He squeezed one eye shut and squinted with the other then took aim again.
Trembling violently, Bodine lost his balance and pitched forward then staggered back out of the blinding sun into the deep shadow of the cabin. The figure, no longer backlit by the sun spilling through the dogtrot, appeared suddenly smaller, an ordinary girl of seventeen.
Bodine lowered the weapon, felt in his pocket for his missing glasses.
Without his glasses, Bodine stepped nearer to get a better look. As he stepped once again into the glare of the descending sun, the figure rose up dark and ominous, ablaze in a halo of fire.
He drew his weapon to his shoulder.
She reached a hand out toward him.
“Satan I rebuke you,” he shouted. He shut one eye to take aim but even so there were two of her, and then three.
She took a step forward to descend the porch steps.
“Get back,” he bellowed, swaying in his attempt to stand still and take aim. Then the path seemed to rise up under his feet and as suddenly dropped away. He lunged forward and fell to one knee. His finger caught in the trigger guard and a loud report cracked the stillness, the recoil wrenching the weapon from Bodine's sweaty hands.
The figure did not flinch.
“I rebuke you in the name of the Lord,” Bodine shouted. On his hands and knees, he searched for the gun that had fallen into the tall grass beside the path. He heard the creak of the porch steps as the monster descended. He looked up. Moving out of the glare of the sun, the figure was again transformed. Tall and slender-hipped like his daughter, she held herself, one arm across her belly, the other just below her small bosom. Had the errant shot hit home? He looked for a dark stain of blood on her threadbare dress but found none.
Long, straight, strawberry hair hung limp upon her chest. She was the vision of his wife, of Junie’s mother. Holding herself as though heavy with child, one arm supporting a bulging belly, the other her engorged breasts, she was just as he remembered her, just as he pictured her still even after these long, lost years. He remembered how he had craved her body, even like this, ripe with life. It had been a sin to want her like that but he’d always wanted her, from the very first moment he saw her. He dreamt of her, of how it felt to hold her. In his dreams she’d never left. He’d been a fool to listen to his step-mother, to be tempted by the other one. He was sorry for so much that had happened, for being so blind, for being so weak.
In the deepening shadow of the cabin, he could see that she had not been shot and that she was not pregnant but that it was her, it was her. She’d come back to him, finally, after all these years. He must be dreaming. But he wasn’t dreaming, it was her.
“It’s okay,” she said reaching out to him. “It’s okay.
“Phyl,” he cried raising himself onto one knee. But it couldn’t be, why would she come back? Had she forgiven him? Could she ever forgive him? But no, it wasn’t her and he wasn’t dreaming. It was Satan. Satan was a trickster and he, Bodine, was easily tricked, easily tempted.
In the distant scrub and tall grass he heard a wild pig or maybe a boar rooting about for food. Mosquitoes buzzed, and the cicada cried out. The figure stood just out of reach, a shadow in the dying sunlight. A phantom? A demon? As the rustling drew nearer Bodine grew afraid. Satan closing in around him. He cowered, making himself small. He bowed his head, squeezed his eyes shut. He wept into his open hands and prayed for forgiveness for the sins of his youth and for the weakness of his flesh, and for his gullibility. He prayed, beseeching the Lord to deliver him.
When he raised his head, she was still there standing before him on the path, not a demon or a phantom but an ordinary woman beneath a plain cotton dress, reaching for him.
The dress he remembered. When she spoke, her voice was soft and sweet, but distant. He could not make out the words. Was it her, had she returned to him, as young and comely as when they’d first met?
She reached for him with her arms, with her whole body. Maybe she had forgiven him. She would come home with him. He would stop drinking and the voices in his head would quiet and everything would be better again like it was before when it was just the two of them and the baby.
He took her hand, his shoulders bent, his head bowed, weeping softly. She hugged his shoulders and bent down to kiss his cheek. “It’s okay, I’ll take you home,” she whispered.
He grabbed her and held her to himself, pressed his head into her belly and cried with joy. She was small and warm in his arms and smelled of breath and flesh. She wriggled, pushed against his shoulders as though trying to get free but he held her tighter, so happy she had come back to him. He would not let go of her, not again, not ever.
He pulled her down onto the path. She struggled, whimpered. He lay upon her, pulled her dress up, fumbled with his belt. In an instant he was free pushing himself in between her thighs. She struggled, cried out, turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut. She resisted as any modest woman would but she would yield to him as the Lord had ordained, man over woman, for she was still his wife and the Lord had returned her to him.
There was no more wriggling, no whimpering, only his rhythmic thrusts, the buzz of mosquitoes, his grunts and his final, exultant cry.
From nearby he heard the persistent rustling in the grass growing nearer and a low rumble like thunder. A cool breeze came up as the sun flared once more before it was gone and the dull shadows diffused into dusk.
He struggled to right himself, his trousers down around his knees. The grass rustled just beside him now and he smelled the demon breath, the bile and brimstone stench and heard the low rumble of a great beast's growl.
In the dull light he looked at the face below. So much like his wife but not her, not Phyllis. His daughter, Junie, lay beneath him, her face turned away, a weak blubbering escaping her lips.
He cried out in anguish, shattering the dank stillness of the mosquito-laden dusk. He had been tricked. Satan had won.
Then beside him the tall meadow grass parted. A snarling blur of mottled fur leapt forth. He cried out and felt the hot breath on his shoulder, the tearing of his flesh, the warm ooze of his blood spilling from his neck. The pain came, sudden and sharp. He struggled to free himself from the jaws of the beast but the more he struggled the harder the beast clung to him.
Feet pounded the earth—someone was coming. Bodine tried to call out for help but could only gurgled, bloody bubbles spilling from his mouth as the beast shook its head violently sinking its teeth deeper into his neck. Then he heard shouting, a man's husky voice. “Scout, no. Down boy, get down.”
And another voice, softer, younger, out of breath, “Who is it? Is it Pa? What’s she doing here? Is she shot? What'd he do to her? Oh God, Junie.”
His boy, Norbert, stood over him, a small shadow in the deepening dusk. Beside the boy, another shadow, tall and broad shouldered, one hand resting on the snarling beast's head.
On his knees, clutching his bloody neck, Bodine tried to speak, to explain, but he could not get a breath for the blood that clogged his throat. He waved a finger and shook his head to tell them it wasn’t him but the Devil who had done it, who had defiled his daughter.
The girl scrambled out from under him and fled just as his legs gave out. He tumbled forward and felt the solid ground come up to meet his face.
Bodine fumbled in his breast pocket for his glasses. His dingy white shirt, limp with sweat, sleeves rolled up to the elbow, hung open at the collar. The tie he’d left behind on the seat of his pickup truck along with his jacket and Bible, and a half-empty bottle of bourbon he'd been nursing to stave off a hangover on his six-hour drive from Mississippi. His dress pants, shiny with wear and frayed at the cuffs, were dirty and damp and smelled of urine from a mishap he’d had on the road where he’d parked the pickup. His wire-rimmed glasses lay crushed at the rear of the truck in a muddy pool of urine.
The Lord shall smite thee with madness . . . , he cried out now. Bits and pieces of his sermons, scores of them committed to memory over a score of years, came into his head constantly, a din that at times rose to a deafening crescendo.
Bodine’s booming voice frightened the leggy birds. In a single fluid motion the pink mass of feathers crouched and opened its wings. In his near-sightedness the giant birds rose as one creature, a many-headed monster with hooked beaks and blood-soaked talons, a beast out of the Book of Revelation portending the coming apocalypse.
Bodine staggered back, raised the twenty-two and took aim. But he was too slow, too unsteady. The monster, flying low over the tall reeds and sedge, disappeared from sight.
He lowered the rifle and surveyed the familiar landscape or what he could see of it in the glare of the low-slung sun and his alcohol-sodden myopia.
The track through the swamp ended abruptly here at the open water. To the right the thick marsh grasses and pools of open water dotted with lilies, young cypress, and water tupelo extended east and north nearly all the way to Smithy. To the left lay miles of bog extending over the Florida line into Georgia. A narrow but well-worn path skirted the bog along its southern-most edge.
Looking for signs the boy had come this way, Bodine followed the path through the sedge, the rifle resting once again in the crook of his arm. Keeping one eyes shut to stop the path from shifting and becoming two, he staggered along keeping watch for small deer, ‘possum, wild pigs and the occasional boar that had provided good hunting when he was younger. Though it was not hunting season and game was sparse now, he had five kids to feed and would poach game here when he could. The game was his, he reasoned, as the land should have come to him when his father died. Three preceding generations of Bodines had owned this land for most of the last century. But thanks to Margaret Bodine, his stepmother, it now belonged to the State of Florida.
The stagnant mid-August air, oppressively humid and hot and pungent with the smells of rotting foliage and wet earth, was thick with gnats and mosquitoes. The breathless silence, save for the hum of the bugs, the sermons in his head and Bodine's own footfalls, was broken by the shrill chirp of cicada and the occasional drone of an overhead jet.
Half a mile along the path, Bodine came to a fork. Straight ahead the path continued along the bog for another mile or so. To the left the path angled off cutting through palmetto scrub, then up a rise through tall meadow grass. The old cracker cabin sat perched at the top of the rise on the only high ground on the eighty acre parcel that had been the original Bodine homestead.
Bodine regretted leaving the bottle of bourbon back at the truck. His mouth was dry and his head was starting to pound. His eyes stung from the salty perspiration that dripped off his brow. If he could get the old hand pump at the cabin to work, he would splash cold water on his face and neck and rinse the stale taste of liquor from his mouth. Then he would look for the boy.
At nearly twelve years old Norbert, his third child and second son, took after Bodine as Bodine took after his own father. Bodine had seen it in the boy’s eyes and in his bouts of sullenness and in the way he talked to himself when no one was around; he would receive the voices and the visions and would take up the call to preach. But the boy could be wild and defiant, and as headstrong as his mother had been.
Because Bodine’s father had been liberal with his use of the rod, and because the boy had not stood and taken his beating but had run off, Bodine was determined to find him and give him a good thrashing. All five of his kids needed a good thrashing, but Bodine, not quite forty-five years old, was slowing down. The kids kept away from him, disappeared most of the time when he was home. If he surprised them, a willow switch or belt in hand, Norbert seemed determined to take the brunt of his wrath sassing him, taunting him then running off while the others scattered.
The eldest son—named Icabod after Bo who was Icabod Junior after his own father—was, at thirteen, an abomination. Unnaturally effeminate, he was useless around the place. Worse than that, he took to wearing what remained of the clothes left behind by his mother despite Bo’s attempts to beat it out of him. Bodine should have burnt those clothes long ago but he’d saved them for Junie. But Junie, his eldest child, took after her own mother and at seventeen was too tall and too slender to wear them.
Arriving home a day early, Bodine caught Icabod at it again, strutting out from behind the drying barn in a one piece bathing suit, the ample bosom stuffed with raw cotton. Bodine had snatched a switch off the willow and taken off after the boy, but he was still half drunk and his legs were stiff from the long drive. Norbert headed him off and as usual disappeared. Now it was Norbert he was after. Norbert’s range was far and Bodine had gone back for the truck. This time he’d find the boy and beat him hard like he should have long ago. Then he’d go back and beat Icabod, and Junie for letting it happen. He’d give a licking to the two youngest girls for good measure though they stayed out of his way and never gave him cause.
He blamed the boys’ mother. She, the instrument of his downfall with her cascading, auburn hair, her blood-red lips and heaving bosom. She’d wheedled her way in, pushed the other one out. She’d acted all proper and good and knew just what to say to get Bodine to forget his troubles, stayed long enough to give him four bastards, then ran off and married some other fellow. She let Norbert run wild and coddled Icabod.
Bodine had had trouble enough keeping the evils of the world at bay without her bringing trouble into his house. He had never allowed television and despite her objections he’d pulled the phone out of the house. He kept a radio but only to check the cotton and tobacco prices. But he’d come home from preaching trips with his father to find her dancing in the kitchen, the table pushed to one side, the radio blaring, the kids laughing and shouting. Toward the end, she took to sneaking out of the house when he was away. She’d been seen at some of the clubs in Corcoran, dancing and drinking. He’d put a stop to that. Now Junie was in charge when he left and had been forbidden to let the kids off the place though he knew Norbert was beyond her control.
Bodine headed for the cabin wishing he had that bottle. He felt himself becoming more unsteady. A drink would buoy him.
Yes, he drank. He knew it was a sin to drink but it wasn't easy to keep the kids home and the world out when he traveled four or five days out of most weeks just to pay the taxes on the land and put food on the table. They didn’t understand how hard it was to keep vigil against Satan day and night. They didn’t understand that he was losing. Every day Bodine became weaker and the Devil became stronger. And the din in his head became louder and louder. He drank for the same reason his own father had; to keep the voices down.
Plodding hard up the slope, light-headed and out of breath, Bodine spotted the abandoned cabin cast in deep shadow, the sun nearing the horizon. Built in the old cracker style to maximize shade and airflow, the cabin was actually two cabins built four feet off the ground on a large wooden platform that also provided for front and back porches. The two cabins were separated by an open dogtrot about six feet wide that at one time had been enclosed with double screened doors front and back. A single broad roof joined the two parts overhanging the porches.
The cabin was rundown now, though he’d fixed it up years ago. He’d spent a whole long weekend cleaning and painting, fixing hinges and replacing tattered screens. He put up curtains and moved in a daybed and wicker chairs. He stocked the kitchen with canned goods and made sure the hand pump worked. He was ashamed to think why he’d done it. He’d done it for her, the instrument of his downfall. He’d destroyed his life for her and had paid everyday since for his weakness. He knew too late that she’d been sent by the Devil. He’d been tricked, too weak to resist.
He never should have come back here once he’d got away. Never should have brought Junie’s mother to live with his people. They’d been happy, newly married, little Junie not yet teething. He brought them home full of dreams. They’d grow cotton and tobacco, and some truck for their own use and to sell. They’d have chickens and maybe a cow. They would be happy on the land. His mind was clear then. He heard no voices, seldom drank and then only a beer or two. But things quickly changed. Ma Bodine. His father. It was all a jumble in his head how it had gone so bad so fast. Ma Bodine had a way of getting into his head, making him think things, making him doubt what he knew, all the things he had counted on, built a life on. And his father, that lustful old coot. And then the other one came along.
So many regrets. How different his life would have been. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and wishing he could go back, do it over, do it right. He knew he was plagued by Satan for all the bad choices he’d made. He knew he’d never be free of the grip of the Abominable Fiend, that he’d done it to himself, and that he had visited this evil upon his own children. He knew that he had to be the instrument of their salvation. He would wield the rod to save their souls.
As he gained the rise and approached the cabin, Bodine saw a figure emerge from the deep shadow of the porch. He knew it was not Norbert; the figure was too tall and slender to be the boy. Bodine rubbed his eyes with his free hand then looked up at the figure on the porch, tall and willowy with lank hair to her shoulders. It had to be Junie but how had she got here ahead of him. He approached the cabin and was about to chastise her when she moved in front of the open dogtrot that bisected the cabin front to back.
The sun, just then dropping below the eaves, streamed brilliantly orange through the opening, illuminating the girl from behind, transforming her from his lithe, willowy daughter into a fearsomely large apparition, a black figure ablaze in a magnificent fiery halo.
Bodine drew back, shut his eyes then looked again but the apparition remained. This was no earthly being but another monster like the giant pink bird, a demon from Hell. He’d met Satan before and knew him to take on many guises. He lifted the barrel of the twenty-two with trembling hands, ready to do battle.
“Who are you?” he shouted. “What are you doing there?”
The figure moved forward.
“Stop right there!” Bodine cried.
The apparition raised a hand and called to him, but all he could hear was the piercing cry of the cicada, the rushing of blood in his ears and the din in his head. He drew the rifle to his shoulder, heart racing and hands sweating.
“It's me, Pa,” the apparition called out.
The monster had his daughter's voice and called him Pa but he would not be fooled. He took aim.
The figure split into two then three. He squeezed one eye shut and squinted with the other then took aim again.
Trembling violently, Bodine lost his balance and pitched forward then staggered back out of the blinding sun into the deep shadow of the cabin. The figure, no longer backlit by the sun spilling through the dogtrot, appeared suddenly smaller, an ordinary girl of seventeen.
Bodine lowered the weapon, felt in his pocket for his missing glasses.
Without his glasses, Bodine stepped nearer to get a better look. As he stepped once again into the glare of the descending sun, the figure rose up dark and ominous, ablaze in a halo of fire.
He drew his weapon to his shoulder.
She reached a hand out toward him.
“Satan I rebuke you,” he shouted. He shut one eye to take aim but even so there were two of her, and then three.
She took a step forward to descend the porch steps.
“Get back,” he bellowed, swaying in his attempt to stand still and take aim. Then the path seemed to rise up under his feet and as suddenly dropped away. He lunged forward and fell to one knee. His finger caught in the trigger guard and a loud report cracked the stillness, the recoil wrenching the weapon from Bodine's sweaty hands.
The figure did not flinch.
“I rebuke you in the name of the Lord,” Bodine shouted. On his hands and knees, he searched for the gun that had fallen into the tall grass beside the path. He heard the creak of the porch steps as the monster descended. He looked up. Moving out of the glare of the sun, the figure was again transformed. Tall and slender-hipped like his daughter, she held herself, one arm across her belly, the other just below her small bosom. Had the errant shot hit home? He looked for a dark stain of blood on her threadbare dress but found none.
Long, straight, strawberry hair hung limp upon her chest. She was the vision of his wife, of Junie’s mother. Holding herself as though heavy with child, one arm supporting a bulging belly, the other her engorged breasts, she was just as he remembered her, just as he pictured her still even after these long, lost years. He remembered how he had craved her body, even like this, ripe with life. It had been a sin to want her like that but he’d always wanted her, from the very first moment he saw her. He dreamt of her, of how it felt to hold her. In his dreams she’d never left. He’d been a fool to listen to his step-mother, to be tempted by the other one. He was sorry for so much that had happened, for being so blind, for being so weak.
In the deepening shadow of the cabin, he could see that she had not been shot and that she was not pregnant but that it was her, it was her. She’d come back to him, finally, after all these years. He must be dreaming. But he wasn’t dreaming, it was her.
“It’s okay,” she said reaching out to him. “It’s okay.
“Phyl,” he cried raising himself onto one knee. But it couldn’t be, why would she come back? Had she forgiven him? Could she ever forgive him? But no, it wasn’t her and he wasn’t dreaming. It was Satan. Satan was a trickster and he, Bodine, was easily tricked, easily tempted.
In the distant scrub and tall grass he heard a wild pig or maybe a boar rooting about for food. Mosquitoes buzzed, and the cicada cried out. The figure stood just out of reach, a shadow in the dying sunlight. A phantom? A demon? As the rustling drew nearer Bodine grew afraid. Satan closing in around him. He cowered, making himself small. He bowed his head, squeezed his eyes shut. He wept into his open hands and prayed for forgiveness for the sins of his youth and for the weakness of his flesh, and for his gullibility. He prayed, beseeching the Lord to deliver him.
When he raised his head, she was still there standing before him on the path, not a demon or a phantom but an ordinary woman beneath a plain cotton dress, reaching for him.
The dress he remembered. When she spoke, her voice was soft and sweet, but distant. He could not make out the words. Was it her, had she returned to him, as young and comely as when they’d first met?
She reached for him with her arms, with her whole body. Maybe she had forgiven him. She would come home with him. He would stop drinking and the voices in his head would quiet and everything would be better again like it was before when it was just the two of them and the baby.
He took her hand, his shoulders bent, his head bowed, weeping softly. She hugged his shoulders and bent down to kiss his cheek. “It’s okay, I’ll take you home,” she whispered.
He grabbed her and held her to himself, pressed his head into her belly and cried with joy. She was small and warm in his arms and smelled of breath and flesh. She wriggled, pushed against his shoulders as though trying to get free but he held her tighter, so happy she had come back to him. He would not let go of her, not again, not ever.
He pulled her down onto the path. She struggled, whimpered. He lay upon her, pulled her dress up, fumbled with his belt. In an instant he was free pushing himself in between her thighs. She struggled, cried out, turned her face away and squeezed her eyes shut. She resisted as any modest woman would but she would yield to him as the Lord had ordained, man over woman, for she was still his wife and the Lord had returned her to him.
There was no more wriggling, no whimpering, only his rhythmic thrusts, the buzz of mosquitoes, his grunts and his final, exultant cry.
From nearby he heard the persistent rustling in the grass growing nearer and a low rumble like thunder. A cool breeze came up as the sun flared once more before it was gone and the dull shadows diffused into dusk.
He struggled to right himself, his trousers down around his knees. The grass rustled just beside him now and he smelled the demon breath, the bile and brimstone stench and heard the low rumble of a great beast's growl.
In the dull light he looked at the face below. So much like his wife but not her, not Phyllis. His daughter, Junie, lay beneath him, her face turned away, a weak blubbering escaping her lips.
He cried out in anguish, shattering the dank stillness of the mosquito-laden dusk. He had been tricked. Satan had won.
Then beside him the tall meadow grass parted. A snarling blur of mottled fur leapt forth. He cried out and felt the hot breath on his shoulder, the tearing of his flesh, the warm ooze of his blood spilling from his neck. The pain came, sudden and sharp. He struggled to free himself from the jaws of the beast but the more he struggled the harder the beast clung to him.
Feet pounded the earth—someone was coming. Bodine tried to call out for help but could only gurgled, bloody bubbles spilling from his mouth as the beast shook its head violently sinking its teeth deeper into his neck. Then he heard shouting, a man's husky voice. “Scout, no. Down boy, get down.”
And another voice, softer, younger, out of breath, “Who is it? Is it Pa? What’s she doing here? Is she shot? What'd he do to her? Oh God, Junie.”
His boy, Norbert, stood over him, a small shadow in the deepening dusk. Beside the boy, another shadow, tall and broad shouldered, one hand resting on the snarling beast's head.
On his knees, clutching his bloody neck, Bodine tried to speak, to explain, but he could not get a breath for the blood that clogged his throat. He waved a finger and shook his head to tell them it wasn’t him but the Devil who had done it, who had defiled his daughter.
The girl scrambled out from under him and fled just as his legs gave out. He tumbled forward and felt the solid ground come up to meet his face.
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