John Hart - The Last Child

Before Hunt left, he turned on lights and checked the doors. In the yard, he tried to focus. There was still Tiffany Shore and the ruin of her parents; a wax-faced giant who might or might not be gone by now. There was Ken Holloway, Hunt’s need to see his own son, and Johnny, out there somewhere doing God knows what. Hunt felt it all, a swirl, a massive weight, but he pushed it aside and stole one more moment. That’s all it would ever be, and so he took it selfishly. He stood beneath a blanket of ink, and he thought of Katherine Merrimon, of her bruised eyes and her emptiness.

Nothing else seemed to matter.

Less than a mile away, Johnny’s fire pushed against the night air; it curled orange and shot sparks into the sky. He squatted beside it, shoeless, shirtless. Yellow lines moved in the sweat on his chest, and soot marred his face where he’d dragged blackened fingers from cheek to jaw. His shadow was a stooped giant on the barn wall behind him. He reached for the blue bag that smelled of bird’s blood, mildew, and dried vegetation. The buckles were corroded, stiff under his fingertips, and one of the straps had begun to rot. He opened the bag and took out a stack of crumpled papers. Writing covered both sides of the pages, but he didn’t look at the words. That was for later, so he put the pages on the ground and weighed them down with a pebble the size of a quail’s egg.

Next came a dark leather thong strung with rattlesnake rattles and the skull of a copperhead. The rattles he’d bought from a kid at school. The copperhead he’d killed himself. He’d spent four days in the woods looking for it, then found it sunning on a piece of old tin a hundred feet from his own back door. Meant to be, he’d decided. The snake wanted to be found. He’d killed it with a piece of cottonwood, then taken its head with the knife his father had given him for his tenth birthday.

A second leather thong held five more eagle feathers. They were twice the size of the one on his bike: three golden-brown wing feathers, two that were perfect and white, their hard, pointed ends as thick as his second finger. They still smelled of the bird, and three of them were edged with a rime of dried blood: eagle’s blood, his blood.

He closed his eyes and slipped the thongs over his head. Feathers rustled. Rattles clicked against his skin.

Then he took out the Bible.

It was black and heavily fingered. Johnny’s name was embossed on the cover, gold and shiny. It had been a childhood gift, presented in a satin box by a Baptist minister who’d told Johnny that the words inside were a gift from God.

A gift, young man .

Say it with me .

The same preacher came after Alyssa was taken. His voice did not waver when he promised Johnny that, yes, God still loved his children, that all Johnny had to do was pray. Pray hard enough, he’d said, and God will bring her home. So Johnny had. He’d prayed with all his might and all of his soul. He’d sworn his life to God if only he would bring her back.

Sworn it.

Everything.

Johnny remembered long nights of prayer, and his mother’s fingertips, hot on his arm. He remembered her voice, and how it showed the last of her strength that he would ever see.

Pray with me Johnny .

The desperate, hungry faith.

Pray for your sister .

Next time the preacher came, fingernails buffed and fat face shining, he’d told Johnny that he wasn’t praying hard enough. “Do better,” he’d said. “Believe more.”

Johnny shifted his feet on the damp earth, crowded closer to the fire. He tore the cover off the Bible, and firelight flashed gold on the letters that spelled his name. He felt a burst of superstitious fear, then laid the cover on the fire and watched it burn. He watched until it was ash, then with one hand, he lifted the bag and emptied its contents onto the dirt. Dried leaves rained down, bits of branches and twigs bundled into piles. Cedar and pine, spruce and laurel.

The image of a child carved from birch bark.

A red ribbon that belonged to Alyssa.

He tied the ribbon around his wrist, then looked from the dried vegetation to the Bible, still in his hand. He hefted it, then laid it on the ground, and pages lifted in the heat as if knowing that they, too, were destined to burn.

The sight gave Johnny a grim satisfaction.

He needed older gods.

The need started months ago, and it started with a prayer. It was winter, furnace broken, no heat in the house, and cold burned his words to smoke as he prayed for his sister to come home. He woke at four, blades of air on his naked back, and prayed for his mom. He prayed for an end of pills, for his father to come back to her. He prayed for the slow, painful death of Ken Holloway. That’s what sustained him, thoughts of salvation and the past, sweet, hot pleas for revenge.

An hour later, as the sun stretched some far horizon, Ken beat Johnny’s mother bloody for reasons Johnny never understood. Johnny tried to stop him, so he came next. That’s what started it: helplessness and blood, a failed prayer, and a gilded book that spoke of meekness and submission.

None of it gave Johnny strength.

None of it gave him power.

He laid cedar on the fire, then pine, spruce, and laurel. He stood close to the fire and let the smoke roll over him. His eyes watered and his lungs burned, but he sucked the smoke in and then pushed it out, first to the sky and to the earth, then to the four unseen horizons. He cupped smoke in his hands and wafted it across his face. He said words he’d learned in a book, then crushed juniper berries into his palms and smeared the juice on his chest. He shoved snakeroot into his pockets, lifted the child-image carved from birch bark and laid that, too, on the fire. It caught in a starburst of flame and pale, white smoke, and he did not look away until that, too, flew skyward. Then he tossed the remainder of his childhood Bible on the flames.

He recognized the split second when he could have taken it all back, snatched the book from hungry fingers, and made his way home, still his mother’s child, still weak; but he let the moment pass. Pages curled, a black rose spread, and it was done.

He was ready.

The car still sat in the dark yard of the old couple who lived down the street. Johnny could see it as he cut through a neighbor’s yard. The smoke smell hung on his damp skin and he was dark with berry juice and ash. He hopped a fence and found himself next to a patch of turned earth and fragile young plants. He started for the car but froze when a light flashed on in a rear window of the house. The old lady was there, the veined leaves of her hands very still on the yellow countertop of a bathroom sink. She dipped her head and tears followed one seam and then another. When her husband appeared behind her, he touched the side of her neck and spoke softly in her ear. For an instant something lighter moved on her face, something like a smile. She leaned her back into his brittle chest, and they froze like that, peaceful.

Johnny touched his own chest, felt sweat and ash and the deep thump of his heart. For an instant, he wondered what the old lady was crying about and what her husband had said to bring that flash of smile. He thought of his own father, and of how he’d always known what to do or say. Looking at the old couple, a bitter lump lodged in Johnny’s gut, but he crushed it through sheer will. For one second, his teeth flashed white, then he crept past the window and was gone.

They never saw him.

Few ever did.

The car smelled old and stale. Pushing against the stiff leather of the seat, Johnny arched his back and shoved one hand into his pocket. The pages were crushed and rumpled, their scent reminiscent of pine resin and fire. He smoothed them on his leg and turned on a flashlight. The names were in his handwriting, the addresses, too. Notes and dates were scratched into the margins.