Charles Johnson - Faith and the Good Thing

“I can hardly believe it”—Faith.

“Every birth,” laughed Mrs. Beasley, “is a miracle, ain’t it the truth?”

The child was as wrinkled as a head of lettuce, bluish in the flickering candlelight. Bald, its eyes were pinched together, and it fidgeted and wailed. Warmth rushed over Faith. It had her curious eyes — two brown dots set slightly asymmetrically on both sides of a small nose. There were a few indentations from Mrs. Beasley’s hand on its head. Faith watched it cry, hugged it closer, and sniffled.

Mrs. Beasley rubbed her hands together like a craftsman after a chore, and stepped backward toward the door. “You hang on to her while I check the fuse box in the basement. I can hear the roomers bitchin’ through the walls right now!” She left, closing the door with a slam that knocked the candle over.

Her eyes still shut, Faith pressed the child’s soft cheek against her own, dreaming briefly of the life they might lead together. Then she felt a film of heat pressing against her eyelids, and opened her eyes slowly. The corner of the room where the candle lay was brilliant and crawling with iridescent tendrils of flame that licked along the dry wallpaper, the bare floor. A thick cloud of smoke rolled like a wave over Faith and choked the baby. She tried to rise, only to fall back, weak, watching the fire snake across the floor like a serpent to the bundle of dry rags and towels Mrs. Beasley had left behind; they burst— fooom! — sparkling like precious jewels. Flames of green, blue, and crimson fire surrounded the bed, each glowing like gems in the sand, in the dark, in the loneliness at the bottom of the sea.

Some unknown strength came to Faith. She scrambled to her feet, wrapped the baby in her blanket, and stood swaying in the hot film of heat. Where was the door? Her eyes were blind with water; the child was limp in her right arm. She stretched out her hand and stumbled, hoping to touch the door by chance. Her palm fell on the hot glass of the window. Her palm blistered; the glass was spreading red with flames, darkening at its corners with smoke. It shattered, showering hot shrapnels of glass across her face.

She shouted.

In the hallway someone cried, “Fire! Fire!”

“Is there anybody in there?” Another voice.

“Some woman,” a third voice cried.

For an instant Faith stood wide-legged, wild-eyed, clutching the blanket. The bed to her left was as red as a drop of new blood. Fire blackened the blanket in her arms. She reeled forward, sucking in breath and holding a wail as old, as ancient as the swamps before it could hit her lips. She went mad for an instant, screaming and clawing at the door. A wall of flame seven feet high rippled across its surface, glowing, sputtering, and spewing like a senile old man, changing its outlines before her eyes and assuming a shape — tall, slender, eternal: Big Todd. She called to the trembling figure, reached for it through the heaving black smoke, and felt, without pain, her fingers dissolving along his fiery face. Flames crawled along her outstretched arm, slithered up her shoulder and face and into her dark hair, igniting it like the dry head of a match.

“Want to be a maple tree?” Todd said.

“UHH HUNH! ”

She dropped into the darkness closing around her like a stone down a well.

Sleep.

• • •

This, and for a long time:

She saw herself boiling in West Hell for her trespasses and troubled faith, whirling from burning cavern to cavern and finally falling headlong into a sea of fire. Reverend Brown had warned her, “You’ll be annihilated,” and the spirit man had prophesied her fall—“Flames from the pit will lick your bowels, your heart will explode!”

It was happening.

Demons, not philosopher-kings, swung from the stalactites, giggled and jeered as her flesh popped like grease in the fires; “You are nothing!” Her head was a crackling match, her blood shot out in a stream through her nose. Minotaurs and harpies danced around her and the other sinners who were immersed in filth and flowing seas of blood; serpents devoured men whole — the most fortunate there merely burst into flame. She opened her mouth, and from it shot a jet of steam: Hisssss.

“I don’t think she’ll need that oxygen any longer,” a voice said.

“But,” another voice replied, “she’ll die before daybreak with that collapsed left lung. ”

“And after tomorrow?” a third voice said sadly.

Silence.

Faith opened her eye — her left one, because the right felt pasted shut. She was on her back, lying on something soft and yielding. She tried to arch her back and raise her right arm, but they stuck to the white bed clothing, their surface wrinkled and black as tar. She pulled her arm up again; it rose, but the skin remained.

“Try to be still,” the third voice said.

The room looked warped through her single eye, blurred and distorted. As her eye began to focus, she made out a man’s features — a thin nose, two eyes floating behind thick wire-rim glasses.

“It’s me — Arnold. ”

“Arnnn—?” Faith caught her breath — flashing into the reflection of Tippis’s glasses was a demon; a burned hairless head half destroyed but, through some act of ultimate evil, allowed to persist, its left eye a discolored globe, its right eye closed forever. The nose was gone; in its place were two empty holes. It had no ears, only gaps along the side of its head. And the mouth — a gaping, lipless maw in which swam a bright red tongue. To her horror, the movements of that mouth exactly followed her own. She tried, but could not cry out, or move her gaze from that face so hideous it would have to sneak up on a glass of water. Horrible, children, horrible! A single dark tear fell from the demon’s enormous eye.

Tippis was dressed in white, his sleeves short and ending at the elbow. He lifted Faith’s shoulders a few inches, adjusted her pillow, and took a seat by her bedside. One of the doctors opened the door to what Faith realized was a hospital room, and nodded at Tippis.

“You’ll call if she needs anything?”

“Yes,” Tippis said sadly. The doctors left. Tippis hunched forward in his seat, his head bowed, his hands held together between his knees. He looked at her from the corner of his left eye. “You’re in Michael Reese,” he said. “I’m a male nurse now—”

Once again the flames leaped across her vision. She saw the wallpaper in the hotel crimpling, the ceiling raining hot plaster. “Put it out. please. the baa. bee—”

Tippis looked away from her and took off his glasses. He pinched the bridge of his nose until it grew a dark color, then placed his hand on her arm, shuddering when strips of her skin stuck like soft warm plastic to his own. “Do you want to hear the worst right away?” he said.

Faith did not answer. Her eye seemed transfixed on the sparkling acoustically sealed tiles of the ceiling. She thought of how Lavidia had looked in her casket, how she’d tasted when she kissed her, like an old wax candle. Would anyone, she wondered, kiss Faith Cross? Would the casket even be open?

Tippis exhaled and cleared his throat loudly. It sounded like an engine turning over. “They couldn’t even find the baby,” he said. “Mrs. Beasley’s hotel is a complete ruin. The damn thing went up like a tinderbox. She’s behind on her insurance. Won’t collect a cent. ” He stopped, startled by a low primeval moaning from Faith’s mouth, some primitive sound of sheer animal sorrow. Tippis leaned back, exhaled, and gripped the arms of his chair. He pressed the heels of his shoes on the floor for strength. “The doctors said your right leg is just about burned to the bone. The report — I read it — it says you suffered first-degree burns on three-fourths of your body — you’ll probably have to learn to walk with special therapeutic shoes and—” Sobbing ripped through Tippis’s throat. His hands flew to his face. “They don’t think you’ll live. ” When he drew his hands away his face was wet. He put his glasses on, but in minutes they were steamed. He jerked suddenly to pull himself together. The glasses slipped crooked on his bulbous nose. He didn’t seem to notice. “Faith, they’re wrong! I’ll help you climb back again!” He shook her hand, demanding a response. None came.