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Sean McTeague was the sort of fellow who used righteous anger for everyday occasions. Had he lived in epic times, Sean McTeague certainly would have been an epic hero…or perhaps an epic villain. The trouble with epic times is that the difference between heroes and villains is sometimes rather vague. Take Achilles, for example–a more sorry excuse for a human being has never lived. One treasures the knowledge of his heel and waits with bated breath for the moment when someone will have the inspiration to tap the blighter’s hamstring.

Sean McTeague knew nothing of Achilles beyond Achilles Clark who owned The Blue Boar. No one knew why it was called The Blue Boar, and no one knew why its owner was named Achilles. But everyone knew that Sean McTeague had broken many chairs and shattered the big mirror behind the bar one Saturday night because Achilles Clark had laughed at the Protestant minister. The Protestant minister had not minded, and the Protestants of the parish had not minded, and Achilles Clark had not minded…at least, not until Sean McTeague had come into The Blue Boar with all the energy of the avenging angel to right the slight against Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree.

The indomitable McTeague was always busting and breaking things or people as his passionate rages inclined him. It was said that if Sean McTeague had ever married, his wife would have given up the ghost before the ceremony was over–provided, of course, that she would even have made it to the altar. Popular belief held that Sean McTeague would have conceived some insidiousness in his own bride at the church door and would not have rested until he had struck her up the side of the head with a hymnal or two. No one knows what Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree would have done in such an eventuality; though many suspected he would have cowered in among the pews, praying with all his heart and soul that the disciplinarian bridegroom would not extend the chastisement to innocent bystanders. Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree was not a cowardly man, but perhaps he did pray once or twice that Sean McTeague would go to the little church in the glen. And perhaps Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree prayed nightly that Sean McTeague would never take it into his head to marry one of his young Phiddlegree daughters. Mercy and Patience, those thin-faced, frightened little women with their mousy hair and dull gray eyes, turned pale at the very name of McTeague and were thought to hide in the closet when the mighty step was heard outside the front door.

Sean McTeague had never married, so gossip could do what it would with its visions of nuptial bliss in the house of McTeague.

Sean McTeague had a sister; she was a tall, broad, mannish type of woman, with a red face, red hands, hair that was gray from the moment of her birth, and a perpetually sour expression. The idea that stoutness is a sign of interior jollity had never been communicated to Sally McTeague. She was as dour as they come, and liked nothing more than to frighten the little children who came to peek in at the windows and see if Sean McTeague really did belabor his sister with a chair of a Sunday evening. Whether he did or not is beyond our ken–the thought of the spinster McTeague at the kitchen door with an old stone rolling pin with a nasty-looking chip in one end raised preparatory for projectile assault has hindered our search for knowledge in that quarter.

If Sally McTeague was formidable in her vast ugliness (and she was), her brother was fiercely unprepossessing. He was tall and broad and heavy-looking, with a scowling face ready to be full of violent displeasure at a moment’s notice, tiny black eyes, and rough, damp, fleshy skin. If Sean McTeague could be brought to do anything gently, his gentle touch would fright life back into a corpse, so clammy and deathlike would be his fingers.

But nothing was as striking as Sean McTeague’s hair–not even his fists, and those were rather prone to striking. Sean McTeague had a head of slovenly flaxen tufts that neither curled nor flowed. No, the hair of Sean McTeague seemed to know it was fated to be attached to the head of a violent man, and so stood on end as if anticipating the transference of that violence to itself. At the time of our story, Sean McTeague had never yet visited divine wrath upon his personal display of cranial filamentous outgrowth, but popular opinion was yet wistfully hopeful.

The hair of Sean McTeague was in particularly unruly form on the night when he murdered old Father Gregory, the Catholic priest from the parish of St. Brigid.

The night in question was well-suited to murder. The sky, which was full of intense, angry-looking stars, seemed abnormally black. There was a lusty breeze blowing with unruly energy through the trees and making the dancing branches contrast unpleasantly with the stolid and staid severity of the sky. Being proper Irishmen, the assembled company found many dark forebodings in the weather and nary a pleasant one.

Someone said a gale was sure to come. Another shook his head and said the strangeness of the night meant a death, surely. A third, with only partial sarcasm (for he was well in drink), spoke of ghosts and changelings (and was considered a local authority on the existence of the former, having a ghost in his family on his mother’s side), of the pooka and the banshee, and so frightened young Jessie Moore (who should have been home long ago, and whose parents would have been angered to learn how she had been flirting with Flory Gills for the last half hour) that she had to be coaxed home by many a promise of manly protection.

Now Sean McTeague was in The Blue Boar that night–drinking heavily and growling darkly and looking as if he were simply waiting for a fight. His hair stood out starkly from his head, all in different directions, like the uncombed mane of a particularly scruffy lion.

“What’sth’s?” he demanded, slurring, of the butcher Jamie O’Donnell. “What’sth’s?”

Since Jamie had no idea what “th’s” could be, and as Jamie was more than a little afraid of Sean McTeague, he simply tried to look attentive and avoided making an answer. Sean McTeague needed none.

“Th’bldy old bugg’r!” roared Sean McTeague to the world in general.

“He’s an old man,” began a quiet, well-dressed man at the other end of the bar (both his careful Oxford accents and his foolhardiness in interposing such a comment when the rage of Sean McTeague was waxing hot declaring the well-dressed man to be a stranger to the village).

“N’old man!” burst out Sean McTeague, his eyes blazing and bulging until they looked as if they might pop right out and bounce along the bar to smite the upstart stranger upon the nose, “S’old’s th’ de’il! And th’ JUST MAN (at these words, uttered in emphatic capitals if ever words were so spoken, Sean McTeague tapped himself powerfully on the chest) sh’ll CRUSH (more emphatic capitals, so that poor Jamie O’Donnell’s hearing would never be the same) th’wick’d!”

And so Sean McTeague drained his beer to the bottom, slammed the glass down so violently that glasses shattered all along the bar, and demanded another drink. Achilles Clark served it to him.

If you have ever been so fortunate as to journey to the United States of America (a very vast and wondrous land, as we understand), and if you have ever ventured into the city called Chicago (which is, we have been told, a wild and unlawful place full of gangsters and ruffians), you may have come across a public house of certain notoriety run by a bartender of an even more definitive notoriety. The man in question is of the name Michael Finn (known by some as “Mickey Finn”), and he is well-known for the distribution of certain drinks that have the power of leveling a man better than a well-aimed left hook.

We know nothing of Michael Finn from our personal experience, of course, but one hears talk.

Well, Michael Finn was not present in The Blue Boar that night, but many believe his spirit entered into the body of one man present, and so inspired that man to make a merry imposition between the drink of Sean McTeague and the throat of Sean McTeague.

Perhaps we saw the hand that passed over the glasses. Perhaps we saw what was dropped into one of them. Perhaps we watched Sean McTeague drink that certain glass. And perhaps we watched the merry eyes of Achilles Clark shining even more brightly than usual.

But then, to say so might be to spread wicked slander. So we shall smile knowingly about the drink drunk by Sean McTeague on that fateful day, and tell you nothing at all about it.

Sean McTeague left The Blue Boar with an uncertain step, but his tread became increasingly resolute as he made his way down the lane towards the church of St. Brigid.

St. Brigid’s Church nestles in the glen beside the old village. There is a long, shady lane that leads to the church, and sometimes the thick growth of vine upon the trees and the old stone wall (one of a legion on this island) opens to show the wild, overgrown glen in all of its unruly glory. It was in one such opening that Sean McTeague crouched, awaiting his victim. The raucous breeze that had so held the fancy of the patrons of The Blue Boar suddenly died down, as if the world itself waited with bated breath for the game of Sean McTeague to approach.

Down the lane came the old man–an old man with an awkward limp and wrinkled, kindly face in which two bright blue eyes often twinkled. The old priest walked slowly and cautiously, as if he considered each step, weighing it in the balance of all worldly and spiritual considerations, and passing judgment before lifting his foot to proceed further.

As he passed before the place where Sean McTeague was hidden, the murderer could hear the old man murmuring an ancient Latin prayer over and over, as if he were afraid of forgetting the words.

The undergrowth parted with sudden violence as the righteous anger of Sean McTeague burst forth.

Down came the right fist of Sean McTeague on the head of the old priest. Father Gregory fell to the ground without crying out, for the force of the blow had knocked speech right out of him.

Down came the left fist of Sean McTeague. There was a heavy stone clasped in it, and this came sharply against the old priest’s head. And then the blows rained down in rapid succession upon the priest’s shoulders, back, arms, head, and face.

The old priest clung to the attacker’s leg, and cried out, finally, piteously, upon the name of the Blessed Mother. Sean McTeague wrestled and clutched, clawed and grappled, raining blow upon blow down onto the head of old Father Gregory. Blood was pouring from his broken forehead, rushing down his face to obstruct his aged vision, but still the old priest held fast. In the midst of the violent uproar, his piteous voice gasped out a broken Ave.

Thrusting him away into the revelatory starkness of impious moonlight, Sean McTeague summoned all of the righteous anger of his soul against the priest, and struck Father Gregory down.

The moon pressed down upon the glen beside the lane that leads to the church of St. Brigid’s, illuminating the scene with an eerie intensity. Sean McTeague bent over the bloody corpse of old Father Gregory.

And as he bent over that fearful sight, the sound of an approaching multitude came upon him. He gazed up and saw a host of enchanted souls, venturing forth from Tir-na-n-Og, the land of youth, to look upon the bloody murderer and his silent victim. Trooping fairies in caps and jackets sewn of leaves and flower petals, changelings in clothes stolen from neglected washtubs, leprechauns with eyes shining with the lustre of hidden gold, the gamester Far Darrig in his red coat and his red hat and that animal spirit the Púca, his smile fey and his garments wondrously woven from darkness and cobwebs–all gathered there to commence unruly revels.

The little fairies trooped about Sean McTeague, gazing with callous curiosity upon the body of the dead man, indifferent to the murderer’s incongruous presence in the midst of their gathering. They could not be fully ignorant of his existence, for a little changeling boy stopped in his merry frolic to pull a vicious face at the interloper, extending a blue tongue and rapidly blinking wide blue eyes. Sean McTeague, mighty Sean McTeague, cringed from the ugly face of the little changeling as if it had been the giant and he himself the slight, elfin figure.

From among the throng of playful spirits, Far Darrig, the little prankster in his red coat and his red hat, appeared at Sean McTeague’s side, and with a vicious sneer, sang out:

“Cease, cease, with your drumming,
Here’s an end to our mumming;
By my smell
I can tell
A priest this way is coming!”

Then the glen erupted with the cruel mirth of the fairies. Some cheered, some danced, and all laughed in the face of Sean McTeague who stood, still and cold as stone, with the blood of Father Gregory still wet upon his hands. As the uproar grew wilder, the little changeling boy with the blue tongue and blue eyes called upon the taidhbhse, the dead who haunt the living, to join them in the frenzied rush of the dance. Sean McTeague, quaking with fear, buried his face in blood-stained hands.

A violent thunderclap stilled the clearing. The fairies, halted in their dance, gazed heavenward with so great a look of terror that no man could have brought Sean McTeague to look towards the sky. The red-gloved hand of the Far Darrig grasped the wild locks of the mane of Sean McTeague and forced his face upward.

The sky was ablaze with riotous flames. The fairy spirits vanished in a flash; fire was their only true fear, and they left the blood-stained Sean McTeague to gaze up upon the fiery spectacle. In the midst of the fire stood a lady, and she shone more brightly than the flames that surrounded her. Burning, yet not consumed.

The lady was tall and dark, a black-haired Irish beauty with flashing dark eyes and a blood-red, unsmiling mouth. In the unwavering severity of her gaze, a horrible, haunting sadness lurked–and yet it was not like a haunting, for ghosts vanish in the air, and the lady seemed to become more fully present with every moment, and every blinding flash of light. Indeed, so steadfast was that look that Sean McTeague thought, frightened, that the stern implacability of the stars had been absorbed into her eyes and now bent the full force of their relentless light even into the darkest corners of his secret soul.

“Go!” cried Sean McTeague. “Go fr’me!”

The lady did not respond. Perhaps she shook her head. Perhaps she sighed. Perhaps she seemed more angry and more beautiful than before.

“Mercy!” wept the cringing man, cowering upon the ground beside his victim, as if he would even crawl beneath the mutilated body to flee the penetrating radiance of the lady in her terrible beauty.

The light shone ever more brightly from these eyes, and in the blinding and overwhelming force of that radiance, Sean McTeague cried out in bewilderment and fear, covering his eyes with his hands and still weeping his passionate prayer that the terrible beauty might go from him.

The light dimmed as if some shadow had passed between Sean McTeague and the horrible light.

“My son… ?”

The voice came like a ghostly echo from a distant land. Who spoke? Who was being called from so far away?

“My son… ?”

The voice was closer. But who was being called?

“Are you all right, my son?”

And the voice was upon him.

Sean McTeague awoke to the broad daylight. He was in a field, lying amidst the grass upon a hard stone slab, and with a little beetle crawling with perverse determination up his arm.

A man was bending over him–an old man, with an awkward limp and a wrinkled, kindly face in which two bright blue eyes shone with concerned interest. Those eyes might smile, and did smile often, but they were sometimes anxious. They were anxious as they gazed upon the prostrate figure of Sean McTeague.

“Will you take some water?” asked the old priest. “Shall I carry you to my home where I can care for you?”

The idea of the frail old man laboring under the load of the mighty Sean McTeague was highly comical, but Sean McTeague did not laugh. The tears were streaming down his face, as if carried over from his frenzied dream. He struggled to answer old Father Gregory.

“Are… are y’not… dead?” asked Sean McTeague.

“No,” said the priest with great seriousness and a wrinkled brow. “I am not dead. Nor are you.”

“Not dead,” repeated Sean McTeague, marveling. Then a thought came to him. He looked about him, a little frightened. “Is this Tir-na-n-Og, then?” he asked in an awestruck voice.

“‘Tis not,” said old Father Gregory, “This is th’ graveyard of th’ old church of Saint Mary Virgin. You lie upon the grave of th’ wicked miller of the glen. Many years ago he murthered an old priest in th’ lane. People say that th’ old miller haunts this place and that th’ fairies come here of a moonlit night.” Then the priest smiled. “But this field is sacred to our Holy Mother and she protects it.”

The sight that then followed would have startled even those who believe in fairies and swear they have seen the leprechauns.

Sean McTeague knelt on the ground before the astonished little old man, and kissed his aged hand.

Sean McTeague is the sort of fellow who keeps his temper in the village and sings with lusty devotion any hymn that comes his way. When a self-important stranger comes into the pub (as happens sometimes) and scoffs at our tales of fairies and ghosts, Sean McTeague, with nearly unruffled calm, insists that the enchanted folk have not yet forsaken Ireland. He now attends St. Brigid’s, to the immense relief of Mr. Josiah Phiddlegree and his thin-faced daughters, Mercy and Patience.

Sean McTeague is often seen wandering in the fields with old Father Gregory at his side. He listens to the old priest and marvels at his wisdom, and is heard to quote the simple sayings of the little man with as much reverence as if he had been a great and learned bishop. Sally McTeague smiles upon the children now, and gives them fresh bread straight from the oven so that their hands are toasted at the very touch. Achilles Clark laughs riotously at the mention of Sean McTeague and tells stories of their early encounters with so many exaggerations that by this time the tale involves the destruction of no less than six buildings and the slaughter of a legion of livestock. And if the eyes of Achilles Clark twinkle mischievously when the mysterious alteration in the character of Sean McTeague is discussed . . . well, who are we to say anything about that?

Sean McTeague often goes to the field beside the house of old Father Gregory and kneels before the gravestone of the old miller of the glen. And sometimes, late in the evening, he goes out into the darkness of the field to look for a beautiful lady.

At least, that is what people say. And we are inclined to believe gossip in this instance.

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Within the past five years, this editorial staff has transformed Dappled Things together. No longer an online-only start-up venture run by fresh-from-college kids, it is now the premier, indeed the only, English-language literary quarterly in print that is intended specifically for writers in the Catholic tradition. It is a great privilege to have been a part of this transformation.

Editing shares some traits with mothering: sleeplorn nights, intense attention, and passionate interest in minutiae of detail that may seem irrelevant to less involved minds. But they are not irrelevant. When one gives them the care they merit, their necessity becomes obvious. Meredith is ready and able to give Dappled Things the care it merits. Right now, my care is needed elsewhere.

This is not goodbye, though. I look forward to returning to my previous role as an associate editor and continuing to work with all of you under Meredith’s leadership.

Katy Carl

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1.

I pray for him each morning.
Denied a place where my virginity
could flourish, I became obedient
to a husband who joked on our wedding night
how I had narrowly escaped
having my pretty little thing
locked up where no one could enjoy it.
I feel my baby kick as I leave church
and wonder if the child leaps for joy
like John did in the womb of Holy Elisabeth
when she met Mary.
The convent was denied to me
but I pray for Ambrosias each morning
here in church in the quiet of dawn,
before the heat of day, before the heat
of cooking. It is the only cool and quiet I know.

2.

Mother said we paid our tithe to God.
Ambrosias, she said, went for a monk and I
should therefore marry. One from ten, she said,
sufficed. The priest agreed with her,
it was arranged. I tried not to be sad.
There are two roads, the abbess told me,
and they are equally difficult.
The road I walk is pain of childbirth,
pride of the world, my desire to my husband,
his ruling over me, and the future, so unknown,
filled with children yet unborn, sorrows
unlived—yes, joys as well, I will admit.
The path I was denied, she said, is a long, cold road,
like the snow on the distant mountains of Binalud,
austere and beautiful, yet not an easy way,
fraught with different perils:
From those to whom much is given, she said, much is expected.

3.

There are the dances, the feasts,
the pleasure of intimacy, the joy
of carrying a child. On the road barred to me
there would have been consecration, the silences
I long for filled with God, the joy
of living life wholly to the Lord.
Misunderstanding, strife at times, comes
between my husband and me, and my parents
and his. I haggle in the market place,
broken things are never fixed, and constant work
wears me out. The convent, I imagine,
has its own set of pains—I know in fact,
I have been told as much, and when
I was a little girl some nuns were kind
but some would slap my face and call me dolt
when I got my catechism wrong.
Dust settles on the shoulders of shepherd and king,
and the dust of sin could even creep
into a holy place. I should have no illusions about that.
The pleasure of a nun is to be stoled
in her virginity, white as egret’s down,
as stars, moonlight, carried to heaven
in a vessel filled with her unmingled essence.
I am a vessel pierced, but the cicatrix
is children, pleasure, attraction of warmth,
obedience to the first command to bear
fruit, multiply, and fill the earth,
the task given to Eve, Mother of all.

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Adebanke
Where are you?
My child my child my daughter
Ade with the cat's eyes
Where are you?
You were walking amid the marrow-grass and asphodel
When the fronds came between you and the tribe
Now the sun sets
and the red roars begin
I take lion's bane
That elephant spear which ends life
Many have died on it. It slew
Black Mane, that old feline warlord
That day my face was scarred with fire-ants
The day I became a man.
Come then, fanged sleep, and bite away
The conversation of the neck and vertebrae
Belay the noise of life
Unknot thought
Be the little death of the mind
I do not fear you.
I would rather eat death
than see my child torn.

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How did you first hear about the show? I saw it mentioned on a friend’s Facebook status and checked it out via Netflix, and my husband and I were soon hooked. Despite the second-season descent into soap opera shenanigans, we remained faithful visitors and were parked in front of PBS Sunday night for the Series 2 finale.

I thought you might enjoy this article about how the show’s success came about via word of mouth,  particularly through social media. Nathan Edelsburg of Lost Remote spoke with executives Olivia Wong and Kevin Dando about how PBS helped boost the profile of the show via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media applications. An excerpt:

LR: When did you start to see how passionate the fans were? Where are they most passionate on social media?

OW: We’ve always known that our Masterpiece fans have been extremely passionate (via direct e-mail feedback and on Facebook and Twitter). The real moment when we crossed over from a cult hit to a main-stream phenomenon was when we began to see celebrity devotee comments and all the fan mash-ups and tributes online. It suddenly went to another level.

Read the full interview: How social media helped make ‘Downton Abbey’ a hit PBS show. And, if you haven’t already, check out PAPERMAG’s spread of Downton Abbey stars out of costume. I’m a particular fan of Mr. Carson in bicycle-riding attire.

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“Carla and Jaime” is an excerpt from my novel, Shadow Companion. In 1965, in a period of rampant inflation and weak democracy, the Brazilian military seized control of the government. After General Castelo Branco’s death in 1967, the hard-line wing of the military assumed control of the government. In 1968, there was a particularly severe crackdown. Students, professors, clergy, union leaders, politicians–anyone involved in community, progressive, or social justice activities–were liable to arrest and, in some instances, torture. In Recife, the home of my fictional protagonist Jaime Bittencourt, it was particularly bad; Dom Helder Camera, the Catholic bishop there, lost many of his priests and lay leaders to unjust arrests and several to execution.

Although civilian rule was not restored until 1985, by 1979–the setting of this story–censorship had been eased, and an amnesty allowed exiles to return to Brazil. Jaime–an economics professor who had been arrested, tortured, and exiled for his leftist opinions–would have been one of the many who returned. Jaime was never involved in violent activities. Yet there were still hard-line elements inside and outside of the military that sought to provoke (and sometimes invent) violent subversive activity in order to justify further crackdowns. Jaime would be a perfect scapegoat for such plans.

Throughout the period, the Catholic Church was the one entity in Brazil that stood up to the military government, actively opposing repressive policies. Many leftist intellectuals found refuge in Catholic universities. Through a combination of open opposition and shrewd diplomacy, and with the sympathy of many decent people within the government, the Church provided a bulwark of freedom and dignity in very difficult times.

(Rio de Janeiro, 1979)

The television news commentator was a solid man with a somber voice. The incident today was appalling. Terrorists had fired on the nearly completed nuclear plant at Angra dos Reis–the beautiful beach south of Rio. It was the first major terrorist activity in years. Lives might have been lost–as it was, damage had been done to national progress and to the image of Brazil as a stable, responsible nation. The threat to national security was apparent, but the government’s hands were tied due to the recent repeal of the national security laws. Those who had pushed against the government–who had advocated amnesty for exiles–should have realized that they were playing into the terrorists’ hands. Democracy could not be constructed on the sands of uncertainty, but only on the rock of security.

On the second channel, the commentator was a thin dark man with a sarcastic tone. The government was to be congratulated on this afternoon’s incident at Angra dos Reis. In the wake of another incident–that of Three Mile Island near Harrisburg in the United States–many people had, no doubt foolishly, questioned Brazil’s nuclear energy program. The plant under construction at Angra had particularly drawn attention– located close to Rio, on a slowly sinking beach, under the heavily traveled Rio-São Paulo air route, close to the highway. Located, most of all, at that point where prevailing winds would carry any escaping radioactivity directly to the city of Rio de Janeiro, the Marvelous City, the heart throb of Brazil. Why, some had even questioned whether the plant was sufficiently secure. The government had, of course, pushed for completion of the plant, but had thoughtfully not improved security. And this afternoon, thankfully without loss of life, the terrorists had neatly illustrated the point and then had vanished into thin air. The damage was significant–but what were a few million dollars where so much had already been wasted? The government’s inaction had proved its critics right, and that was, for a change, a service to the nation….)

* * *

Jaime Bittencourt paced back and forth in the small apartment. It was nearing midnight, but he was still wearing the clothes he had worn home from the beach.

“Be calm, Jaime,” Carla said. There was a nervous strain in her voice that betrayed her words. “They can’t know anything….”

“Can’t they?” He stopped and turned toward her, his hands going up and stroking back the thin hair on his balding head. “You don’t know them like I do, Carla. They might even have planned the whole thing…. somehow they knew I would be there….”

“Don’t be silly, Jaime.” She spoke softly, trying to hide how scared she felt when he got like this. “Nobody knew we were going to Angra dos Reis. We didn’t even know ourselves until last night.”

He looked at her then and she knew what was going through his mind–the constant question, the sane, brilliant part of his mind battling against the scared, tortured part. ‘She could have betrayed you,’ the tortured part was screaming, with all the betrayals and tortures of those years to back it up. Then gradually she saw the sane part winning out, and he smiled at her his sad, gentle smile.

* * *

They had gone to Angra on a whim. She had talked about it before, said how much she had loved it there when she was a child. But they had been back in Brazil just a short time–returning shortly after the government granted amnesty to exiles–and he had been busy getting started with his classes at PUC, the Catholic university. It was so different from Paris, he found. The students, raised during fifteen years of military dictatorship, had been taught not to question. At the Catholic universities, where those leftists who had not been killed or forced into exile found refuge, flames of thought had been kept alive–but even there, often fenced off into fiercely protected ideological territories. And the students coming in from the secondary schools–or into the graduate programs from the government universities–were used to ready-made answers. When he gave them articles by two or three scholars, expressing differing viewpoints, the students would turn to him and ask, “But, Professor. Which one of them is right?”

Classes had started in March, and it worried him that he couldn’t seem to find a key to the students’ minds, couldn’t seem to get them to click. They were polite enough, and did their assignments–these, after all, were the successful products of the educational system. It was different that day when he held a special seminar for the students who worked with Padre Felipe up into the slums, but–so far–that had been only one class.

He had been worrying, Carla knew, becoming more preoccupied. After five years, she recognized the signs. His mind would go in smaller and smaller circles, closing in on itself. It needed fresh air.

Literally, as well as figuratively. So they had borrowed her cousin’s car. Let’s go to Angra dos Reis, she had said….

* * *

It was 2:29 in the morning. Jaime and Carla’s telephone rang. Carla hesitated, then picked it up.

“This is Padre Felipe from the university.” The voice was tense. “I need to speak with Jaime Bittencourt.”

“Just a moment,” Carla answered. She handed the receiver to Jaime–”Padre Felipe,” she whispered.

He took the phone and spoke briefly, then listened. She watched his face–tense, worried–but somehow worried in a different way. He was on the phone less than a minute. “Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

“He’s found out that security knows I was at Angra,” he said, and turned away.

* * *

“Go to your parents’ house,” Jaime said. “You’ll be safe there.”

“Come with me. My parents have friends. We can get a lawyer, Jaime. You haven’t done anything….”

He was looking at her with scared, trapped eyes–a wild animal caught in a cage. You couldn’t explain to a wild animal that you were caging it for its own protection, that you would care for it until the danger went away. She remembered her sister Silvi, after she’d been arrested and the family had gotten her released–pacing, pacing in her room, looking up if you startled her with that same trapped animal look.

Carla was afraid.

“Then let me go with you,” she said. “I was in Angra just as much as you were. If they’re after you, they’ll be after me.”

“They won’t bother you,” he said, the infuriating elder professor, waving his hand as if to dismiss a fatuous undergraduate argument.

“Why not,” she flared up angrily. “You think you’re the only threat to the state. I’m in their files, too, you know. My sister was ‘dangerous’–hadn’t you heard?”

He was looking at her, smiling in that warm avuncular way he smiled when he was proud of her–the bright young student showing her spunk. How could she find this man so infuriating and love him so much at the same time?

He was proud of her, but not convinced.

“You’ll be safe with your parents,” he said. “This isn’t 1968.”

“It isn’t, Jaime. You’ll be safe too. Come there with me….”

“You don’t understand,” he said. He was trying, she knew, to sound reasonable, but the panic was in his eyes and his voice, though no louder, was rising in pitch. “They have a reason to arrest me–they can take me from your parents’ house….”

It was that, she knew. It wasn’t whether he would eventually be found guilty of helping plot some silly terrorist act against a half-built nuclear plant. He knew nothing of that; they could prove nothing because there was nothing to prove. But that didn’t matter. . . . to be alone, in custody, under the power of the police again. . . . It was the fear–Silvi’s fear.

“Then let me go with you,” she said again.

He tensed, paused, then relaxed.

“All right,” he said. “Go get your things. But hurry.” He glanced at his watch with male impatience. “It’s past three o’clock. It will be getting light soon.”

She ran into the bedroom, pulled down her small travel case and began jamming things into it–a few changes of clothes, her documents, her toilet kit. She went to her drawer and dug beneath her underwear to bring out the money she always kept there–just in case. This was ‘just in case,’ she reflected. She grabbed her watch and rushed out into the living room. She had taken less than five minutes.

Jaime was gone.

* * *

She slumped down on the sofa and just sat, for a long time, staring beyond the single lit lamp at the darkness outside. She had wanted to go with him, to watch over him, protect him, but he hadn’t wanted her to, had been willing to trick her into thinking he would wait, then had slipped out while she was getting her clothes and money. She felt she should be mad at him, but she couldn’t be. Hurt, for a moment, that he didn’t want her with him–but it wasn’t that he didn’t want her. Only that, like most men when they were doing battle, he could move more quickly, more safely, alone. “He who marries and has children,” Jaime used to say, quoting some Englishman, “gives hostages to fate.” Yes, and to the police, too. He had wanted her to go to her parents’ house, go where she would be safe.

And also, where she could do the most good, she reflected. Her parents still had many influential friends. She could begin contacting people. This was not, Jaime had said, 1968. He was right. Things had opened up. This nightmare could be cleared up, made to go away. She stood up and began getting her things together.

The telephone rang.

She jumped, then laughed at herself and looked at her watch. It was not yet four in the morning. The phone rang again. She hesitated for a moment, then went over and picked it up.

“Alô?”

It was a pay phone, calling–she could hear the clicking of the token.

“Carla. . . .”

“Jaime.” Her heart leapt like a young girl’s at the sound of his voice.

“Carla, this has to be quick. The police arrived in front of the house a minute ago. They may be going upstairs any moment. Leave the light on. Get out of the apartment. Don’t go out of the building–they’re watching. Go to another floor and wait until people start leaving to go to work. Look like you’re going to work, too. Try to leave at the same time as somebody else. Don’t take anything with you that you wouldn’t take to work. I’ll call you at your parents’.”

He hung up.

She caught up her things and ran to the front door, opening it. There was nobody in the hall. She closed the door behind her and started toward the elevator, then stopped, fumbled through her purse for her key, went back to the door and locked it. Better that the police found it locked–they might think she and Jaime had merely not come home, or had left already. Or were locked inside. It would slow them down.

She started again for the elevator, then heard it moving. In a flash, it occurred to her that the police might be coming up. She ran down the hallway to the stairway door, opened it, and closed it behind her. She stood for a moment, feeling safer behind the door. She heard the elevator door open and somebody get off. Silently, she slipped to the stairway and started down, then changed her mind, turned around, and started up. They might expect her to go down by the stairs, but maybe they wouldn’t think she would go up. She went up three floors, then stopped on the landing between the eighth and ninth floors. She stood there for a moment, then closed her eyes and leaned against the wall. She could feel her heart beating quickly, pounding in her chest.

She stood, leaning against the wall, for several minutes. She kept expecting to hear the stairwell door bust open, hear the heavy footsteps of police on the stairs, but nothing happened. She sank down into a sitting position, her back against the wall, and looked at her watch. 4:15. People wouldn’t start leaving for work, mostly, until seven, seven-fifteen. Nobody used the stairways much–the servants used the service elevator that opened into the stairwell, but they wouldn’t be able to see her unless they actually walked halfway up from the eighth floor or halfway down from the ninth. If she heard someone coming, she would have time to stand up and pretend she was climbing the stairs–or descending them–the opposite of whatever the person coming was doing. She looked at her watch again. 4:20. She began to suspect that her worst trial was going to be boredom.

It was then that it occurred to her how incredibly courageous Jaime had been. She remembered the panic in his eyes, how much he feared being caught by the police. Yet, after he left, he must have stayed right across the street for half an hour, hidden in the shadows of neighboring buildings, watching the apartment building. Risking staying close, risking getting caught, to protect her. He must have gone to the nearest pay telephone–she knew it: the big yellow hood down on the corner–risking the street light to call her. She felt a wave of love wash over her.

She looked at her watch again. 4:32. “Look like you’re going to work,” Jaime had said. She glanced down at her blouse and slacks and flat shoes. She had thrown them on before she tried to convince Jaime to take her with him. They were more casual than she herself would have worn to work, but they were something that someone else might wear to work, so that was okay. She had her pocket book and raincoat–they were fine. The only problem was the back–it was a white overnight back with ‘Air France’ in red and blue lettering. She tried to argue with herself that someone might take something like that with them to work in the morning, but she lost the argument. She opened the bag. She took out her toilet kit and stuffed it in her raincoat pocket, putting the raincoat over her arm to test the way it fell. It seemed all right. She looked back into the bag–she had hastily put in four changes of clothes. She was able to stick the underwear in her pocket book and one of the blouses–her favorite–in the other pocket of the raincoat. She’d just have to leave the rest behind.

At five o’clock she began to hear the first maids arriving, getting out of the service elevator up and down the stairwell, unlocking back doors and going in, shutting the doors behind them. She heard the elevator stop at the eighth floor and a boy come out and throw down newspapers. One of the back doors opened, and a maid said hello to the boy and they talked for a minute. Carla stood up, prepared in case the boy walked up the stairs, but apparently he was lazy and had secured the elevator door–was riding it up, stopping at each floor and just throwing down papers. The maids kept coming until about six o’clock, and then things quieted down some, except for occasionally when someone brought garbage out to the garbage chute–she could hear the metal doors clang open, the swish of the garbage, the doors clanging shut. At 6:25 two maids came out on the ninth floor, apparently from different apartments, to smoke cigarettes–Carla could smell the smoke–and talk about their Sunday off. By then Carla was bored enough to be glad to listen to how a guy named Cesar had taken one of the girls dancing and on the way home had slipped his hand under her skirt and got it slapped away, told with a lot of giggling. She was almost sorry when a distant woman’s voice called out, and one of the maids answered “Senhora?” and both of them slipped back into their kitchens, closing the doors behind them.

At five of seven she got up, more than ready to go, but she held herself back for a few more minutes. She could feel her body and mind tensing, the adrenaline pumping into her system, and she found herself saying an “Ave Maria,” something she hadn’t done very much in the last few years. A little after seven, she walked down to the eighth floor. She thought of stuffing the Air France bag with her clothes in it down the garbage chute, but then it occurred to her that something like that in the garbage might attract attention. So she left it beside one of the kitchen doors where there was a lot of stuff–a plastic tricycle, a baby carriage, an empty carton–left it on top of the carton as if someone had just forgotten it there. She hoped maybe one of the maids would find it, would be glad to have the clothes.

She pulled open the stairwell door and entered the front hallway, walking as casually as she could to the elevator. Her plan was to stand there until either someone came out of one of the eighth floor apartments or the elevator passed her going up. The elevator did pass her and, as soon as it passed, she pressed the button. At this time of the morning, chances were the elevator had been called up for someone to go out to work. When the elevator stopped on its way down, there was a well-dressed, middle-aged woman in it whom Carla had seen in the building once or twice before. Carla entered the elevator, greeting the woman warmly. By the time they reached the ground floor and walked out into the lobby, they were talking about the trials of having to go to work on a Monday morning. They kept up the conversation through the open door–there was a man in a cheap beige suit leaning against a car, watching the door–and out onto the sidewalk. When the woman turned left, Carla turned left with her. Then down to the corner, Carla breezing along–I should have been an actress, she thought–until they rounded the corner and the woman said “Tchau” and headed across the street and Carla walked another block, realizing with relief that nobody was following her, waved down a taxi and got in, gave the driver her parents’ address, leaned back and nearly fainted in the back seat.

* * *

Jaime stood in front of the Copacabana Palace in the bright, early afternoon sun, dressed in a light blue short sleeved shirt and beige slacks, his beige canvas bag slung over his shoulder. His shirt and slacks he’d brought from Paris, his shoes were Italian, and he’d picked up the bag once on a trip to Holland. He hoped he looked like a European tourist.

Nervously, he glanced up and down the street. Everything looked normal: tourists ambled by, late lunchers half filled the outdoor restaurants. All day a part of his mind–the part he called his psyche–had been urging him to run. His mind–the sane part of it–had urged him to be calm, to think.

He glanced at his watch. 1:54. He had called Carla at her parent’s house half an hour ago from a telephone in the lobby of the Hotel Meridién. Before that, he had been sitting in the lobby for nearly an hour, reading the newspapers, trying to find out what had happened at Angra dos Reis. Trying also to look like a tourist waiting for someone. But he had felt the eyes of the hotel staff watching him–they had no reason to be watching him, the sane part of his mind said, but his psyche said ‘run!’ And, deep down, the crazy part of his mind was saying: you can’t trust anyone. So, after he made his call, he walked out of the lobby onto the Avenida Atlântica, crossed the wide Avenida Princesa Isabel from Leme into Copacabana proper, and wandered around the small back streets, looking at store windows, browsing, entering a few small shops, killing time.

Again he glanced at his watch. 1:56. It was time now. He would walk over to the Avenida Copacabana and catch a bus. For the moment, the sane part of his mind and his psyche were saying the same thing: keep moving.

* * *

When he had left the apartment in the pre-dawn darkness, he hadn’t known where he was going. He just knew he had to get out–out of the trap closing around him.

Clutching his small canvas overnight bag, he had ducked out of the front door of the apartment building and across the street, into the shadows of a passageway between two buildings on the other side. Once in the shadows, he began to feel the panic subside. He leaned against the wall and breathed in and out, deeply, slowly. Within a few minutes he felt safer, and he turned to look back at his own building. There were no signs of police.

It was then that he realized he couldn’t just leave Carla. He watched the apartment entrance to see her leave. The lights were still on in their apartment. The minutes ticked by. Didn’t she know how urgent it was? If the police came and found her there, if they learned that he had fled….

Nervously, he looked toward the phone at the end of the street. It was standing under a street light, all lit up, but there was one of those big yellow covers over the phone, and he would be in its shadow once he reached it. He would have to call her.

As he started toward the phone he saw it–a dark car moving slowly down the street. Just in time, he ducked into the passageway between the buildings. The car passed by slowly, its headlights illuminating momentarily the sidewalk in front of the passageway, then moving on. It pulled to the curb and stopped in front of his building, the smooth black finish reflecting the light of a street lamp. Nobody got out.

He knew he couldn’t hesitate. It was dark where he was, and he walked out onto the sidewalk as naturally as possible–like someone coming out of one of those buildings–carrying his small bag like a workman with an extra set of clothes. He turned away from the car, in the direction of the corner, and started walking toward the telephone. He wanted to run, half expecting to hear a challenge shouted out from the black car behind him, half sick with worry that he wouldn’t reach Carla in time. But he controlled himself, walking at a natural pace.

He reached the telephone and, under the shade of the yellow cover, stuck in a token and dialed their number. As it rang, he looked back down the street toward the black car. A man was getting out of the passenger side but, instead of going into the apartment building, he crossed over to the other side of the street and looked up, as though he were looking at the window. Carla came onto the line–Jaime spoke to her rapidly, telling her what to do, telling her to hurry–and hung up the phone, all the time watching the man who had come out of the car. The man crossed back over the street but didn’t go into the building–he stood up against the wall and looked at his watch, then glanced up the street.

Thank God, he was waiting for something. If Carla would hurry. . . .

The driver’s door of the car opened and another man got out. He walked around the back of the car and the two men talked for a moment, then entered the building.

Fear and anger swept through Jaime simultaneously. He wanted to run and hide, yet at the same time he wanted to run back into the building and attack the men, keep them away from Carla. He stood by the telephone, his mind telling his psyche not to be foolish. But he couldn’t leave. He walked back down the street to his shadowed passageway and slipped into it, waiting.

He stood there for fifteen minutes, but it seemed like hours. For the first time in years, he wished he had a gun. With a gun, he could have gone in and got Carla out, shooting the police if he had to. If only. . . .

The two men were coming out of the building. Alone. One of them went over to the car, opened the passenger door, and sat down. Radioing, Jaime thought.

For now, Carla was safe. Thank God, he said to himself, then realized what he was saying, and said it again–Thank God–meaning it.

He looked up at the sky. The first light was showing in the east. If he waited any longer it would begin to get light on the street. He couldn’t stay here.

There was no back way out. Picking up his bag, he stepped out onto the sidewalk and–conscious of the policeman standing by his apartment building–started walking once again toward the corner.

He had found one of those little bars in Botafogo that stay open all night, still serving a few half-drunk customers in the pre-dawn. It was a small place on a corner, the tall old-fashioned shop doors open and the light flowing out onto the sidewalk, where there were three small round tables, each surrounded by chairs. Jaime sat down at one of the tables, one that was out of the light, slightly in the shadows that still darkened the tree-lined street. It was conspicuous, he knew, sitting there, but less conspicuous than a lone man walking the streets. There were three customers inside the bar, talking loudly and occasionally bursting into raucous song. The Portuguese owner came out and Jaime asked for coffee. The coffee wasn’t ready yet, the owner said, so Jaime asked for a Coke and the owner went in and brought him out a bottle of Coke and a glass, opening the bottle at the table. The glass had evaporated water spots on it and the bottle, when Jaime picked it up, was only slightly cooled, but he poured the Coke into his glass anyway, and started to drink it. He sat there, sipping the warm Coke, and thought.

He had to calm himself consciously. His emotions were in panic, he knew, and panic would paralyze his mind. If he let himself think about the police–that they were looking for him this minute, that their car might cruise by, that they would arrest him, take him to a cell….

He pulled his thoughts up. He was sweating. Sit still, his mind said, but he wanted to get up and run. Run! his psyche was shouting. Sit still, the sane part of his mind repeated, sit still and think. And the crazy part of his mind in the background: there is no place to run to, there is no one you can trust…. She could have betrayed you….

“Stop it!” he said out loud, then looked up, realizing he had spoken. One of the drunks had been coming out of the bar and stood there, poised on the sidewalk, looking down at him.

“Stop what?” the drunk asked belligerently.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime said, smiling thinly. “I was talking to myself.”

“Who are you to tell me I should stop?” the drunk said, taking a step toward Jaime’s table and grabbing the back of a chair to steady himself. He looked down at Jaime pugilistically; then, as Jaime looked up at him, smiling wanly, the drunk’s face lost its hostile look and crumpled into grief. He pulled out the chair and sat down opposite Jaime.

“You’re right,” he said with an alcoholic sigh, his voice slurring the words but flowing with melodrama and self-absorbed mental flagellation. “Look at me,” he said, leaning back in his chair and focusing his eyes inward, shaking his head in dismay at his own waywardness. “Spending all night in this little hole. I should stop.” He shook his head again. Sighed. Slouched in his chair. Then, suddenly perking up and leaned forward.

“You,” he said, pointing at Jaime. “Do I know you?” he asked, bemused, twisting his head as though to better focus on Jaime.

“I don’t think so,” Jaime said. Run! Jaime’s psyche shouted.

“You don’t know me,” the drunk said. “Yet you tell me to stop. You,” he pointed again, “are a better friend than those,” he indicated with his thumb back toward the bar and held the pose dramatically for a moment. “You,” he repeated, “tell me to stop.” He shook his head philosophically, sat for a moment in silence, then brightened up. “Want a beer?” he asked.

Run! Jaime’s psyche shouted. He could be a police agent, the crazy part of his mind whispered. Stay calm, the sane part of his mind said.

“Sure,” Jaime said. The word cost him a great effort.

“Manoel!” the drunk shouted back to the bar owner. “A Brahma, and two glasses.” He leaned across the table and extended his hand. “Aloísio Pereira de Jesus,” he said, giving his name formally as Jaime shook his hand. “What’s your name?”

“Domingo,” Jaime said.

“Domingo.” The drunk leaned back and nodded his head. “Domingo–‘Sunday.’ It was Sunday when we started drinking–right after the game.” He looked up at the sky–it was turning light gray. “It must be Monday, now, though.”

The bar owner came out, carrying a large brown bottle of beer with a red and gold ‘Brahma’ label and two small glasses. The two other drunks followed him out to see what was going on and seemed delighted to find Aloísio there. They came over to the table and Aloísio stood up and embraced each of them in turn, as though they hadn’t seen each other in weeks.

“My friend, Domingo,” Aloísio said.

The two drunks came around the table and shook Jaime’s hand. One of them put a brotherly arm around Jaime’s shoulder and hugged him, then slouched down into an empty chair.

“Manoel! Another beer and two more cups,” Aloísio said grandly. “This is my real friend,” he said, indicating Jaime. “He tells me to stop drinking.” He took a gulp of beer and launched into a story about his little daughter, and how he stayed out all night, drinking. The guy closest to Jaime turned to Jaime and said wasn’t it a great game yesterday–Flamengo against Vasco da Gama. Jaime admitted he’d missed it, trying to sound sad, and the guy launched into a play by play description, illustrating with broad sweeps of his arm. Jaime picked up his glass, glad for the cold, rich-tasting beer–French beer was pissy stuff, he reflected. The game reached half-time and, across the table, Aloísio was admitting he hadn’t seen his daughter for–how long?–maybe a couple of years or so, but that didn’t matter because he loved her. Two more bottles arrived on the table. The crazy part of Jaime’s mind was reluctantly admitting that these were probably just regular old drunks, and even his psyche was calming down. The game was going into the second half–far more exciting than the first half–Vasco da Gama was ahead by one point but the loyal Flamengo fans–and who could be more loyal than Flamengo fans –knew, they knew–that Vasco wouldn’t win. Then the first goal cutting in at the corner, sending the Vasco goalie sprawling–”Manoel! Two more bottles!”–and then a tense moment when the Vasco forward got close to the goal–”my little daughter, she was seven or eight then, and now–fifteen, sixteen? But how she used to look up into my eyes. . . .”–and shot, but the goalie leaped up and caught it–Jaime’s psyche was lulled now, enjoying the beer: this is what I missed in Paris, sitting in a bar with the men of my own country, drinking good beer–and the ball moving down field, passed from player to player–people were beginning to walk by now, on their way to early jobs–and passed to Junior, who came slanting across from the corner, and…

RUN! Jaime’s psyche yelled. “Goal!” his companion shouted, half standing, putting an arm around Jaime’s shoulder. And the sane part of Jaime’s mind started laughing.

The black car had cruised by, not even pausing, uninterested in four drunks.

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Brother Bob stood behind the pulpit and read the Scripture slowly and sorrowfully: “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” The sleeves of his white shirt were rolled up, so the golden curls covering his thin arms showed when he raised the open Bible. He had been preaching for over an hour. The shirt was wet almost all over with sweat. His red curly hair was combed back into an oily ducktail with curls on top and a single small corkscrew curl falling down on his forehead. His eyes were light blue, and they could look icy mean sometimes. That’s why Glorianne thought he must be a good preacher. One time when he looked at her–she still remembered it–he scared her. Her own brown eyes were wide with fear now. What did “forsaken” mean? Did it mean throwing away? Did God throw Jesus away?

Anyway, she didn’t like to look at the preacher very much and reached down to scratch where the elastic of her panties was stinging and itching. She squirmed to the edge of the painted wooden bench, sticky and wet with sweat, and started to swing her feet back and forth, hoping to make a breeze between her legs. It didn’t work. She picked up a fan and studied it. It was made of cardboard with a thin flat wooden stick stapled on for a handle. On one side was a colored picture of little Jesus in the Temple with the Elders and on the other side some Scripture and “MacDonald’s Funeral Home, Clintonville, Georgia” printed at the bottom.

“Let your Granny have that fan, Glorie–and don’t be playing in church!” her grandmother frowned and whispered.

She handed the fan to her Granny and saw the little backward movement her grandmother always made whenever Glorianne looked at her. Then she would always drop her eyes, or look away. She had always done that; it was just part of Glorie’s world, just the way things were, like the ground or church or summertime heat. She watched her grandmother make long, slow, peaceful sweeps with the fan: the gray-blond wisps at her temples were soft wings carrying the blue eyes to Heaven. Granny is a good Christian, she thought, and wondered what Hell would be like for little girls. Probably a lot hotter than church on Sunday night in summertime. She lifted her dark matted hair off her sweat-damp neck and held it there, studying her elbow, and thought about how fast Granny fell asleep at night. Probably because she was going to Heaven.

Glorie hated nighttime, when everybody was asleep but her. She hated being trapped in bed in the dark, especially in summer. She thought that Hell would be all darkness and heat. She’d lie there, or turn over and over to make mosquitoes go away, and wish for Mama to come home, and sometimes she’d still be awake when Mama did come home. The kitchen light would come on and Glorie would creep softly to the door. Mama would give her a big tired smile and whisper, “Hey there, Baby.” She’d turn on the radio very low and fix her a cup of coffee and milk. Then she’d light a Chesterfield and sit at the table in her slip to pin her hair up. She’d take the little mirror out of her handbag and prop it up on the bobby-pin box made of cedar. It had her name on the top: Inez. Mama would dip her comb in a glass of water, comb it through her hair, and make neat tight little pincurls, opening the pins with her teeth and talking to Glorianne at the same time. The hot dark room, the sweat-sticky sheets, were far away then.

Her grandmother, Evaline, was a widow with heart trouble. For three years now, she and the family had been living off the county welfare and the little money Inez brought home from her job as a waitress. She had many troubles, including asthma. She looked over at her granddaughter’s small tanned body, dirty sandaled feet swinging. She wouldn’t have minded looking after Glorie while Inez worked; she’d been looking after young ones all her life, her own seven and now three grandchildren. She wouldn’t have minded it, but–she’d been there when Glorie was born, so she knew the girl was her grandchild, but somehow she never believed it. Not part of me, of us. The spit right out of her daddy’s mouth, just like him, inside and out. Trash. He’d got Inez pregnant seven years ago and then just took off. It was hard to look after Glorie. She didn’t just look different–there wasn’t a drop of good in the girl. And sometimes Glorie even made her feel different herself, like she was separate from righteousness, strange, and a little frightening, not the way she always felt with her other grandchildren. She gave out one of her deep quivering sighs and closed her eyes. She thought about the cross and saw herself hanging there.

“Sit still, Glorie!” she whispered.

And Glorianne tried to sit still and listen. She wanted to know what that word meant–forsaken–but Brother Bob didn’t mention it again. He was standing down in front of the pulpit now with his hands raised and the Bible in one of them. “Let us sing now, brethren, and pray–pray that somebody here tonight has heard Jesus’ call and opened his heart to the Lord.” The people stood and sang, “Just as I am, without one plea…”

A man came down the aisle–it was Mrs. Johnson’s drunkard husband–with his shoulders hunched over and his head hung low. The singing became a little softer as everyone turned to see who was coming forward: “But that Thy blood was shed for me …”

There were big dark blotches of sweat under Mr. Johnson’s arms and on the back of his faded plaid shirt. He spoke to the preacher for a minute while the people kept singing, “And that Thou bidst me come to Thee . . . ” and then he sat down on the front bench, his head still bowed and his shoulders shaking. Brother Bob stood there, looking out at the people like a hungry and beaten puppy looks to his master. The song ended.

“Sing another chorus, brethren. The Holy Spirit is with us tonight–somebody else is here.” His eyes slowly swept the people as they sang, “Oh, Lamb of God, I come, I come…” Feet started scruffling softly on the wooden floor; handbags moved from one arm to the other under the weight of his gaze. Nobody came. His face looked like the picture of Jesus praying in Gethsemane over Granny’s couch. Mr. Johnson stood next to him then, his hunched shoulders encircled by Brother Bob’s arm. His face frightened her; it looked like the picture she had seen one day last spring. She had run up onto the porch to get a drink of water. Granny was there doing the washing.

“Glorie, you been in that mulberry tree?”

“No, ma’am.” A lie! Suddenly she was staring into brown and white circles of fear over a mulberry-stained mouth as Granny yanked her up under the arms and hoisted her to the mirror over the washstand. “Then what is that, Glorie? What is that? You just tell me what that is!” Glorianne screamed in terror at the mirror. It still gave her bad dreams.

Then Mama was standing there, looking ghost-like through the screen door. “What in the world is all the yelling about?”

“Glorie’s been in that mulberry tree again, Inez. I’ve told her about a hundred times.” Granny sighed heavily.

“Well, she’s a good climber. I don’t think she’ll fall.”

Granny’s eyebrows rose. “No, Lord knows she won’t fall.” She knew Glorie would never be able to fall out of a tree like other children did, and then cry and want to be held and petted. “But them mulberries are full of worms, Inez, and you know it.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it so much, Mother. Let me come out there and help you with that wash. Glorianne, go play.”

The crickets and frogs were noisy as they walked the dusty road home from church. Granny’s broad back was a few yards ahead. Glorie ran from one side of the road to the other, trying to make a breeze, but it didn’t work. Were the crickets praying for rain? Had they been forsaken by the rain? She started trying to pray with the crickets by making a chirping noise with her tongue behind her teeth. It didn’t work, though–there wasn’t any rain.

Later she lay in bed, kicking the heavy sheet off her, then pulling it up again to keep mosquitoes off, trying to breathe the thick air. Hell would be all darkness and heat. Then she heard the sounds of Mama in the kitchen: the striking of the matches, one for the coffeepot, the next one for the cigarette, the radio playing low. Eddy Arnold was singing, “I’ll hold you in my heart till I can hold you in my arms…” Then there was the comb dipping into the glass of water and the soft chink of bobby pins in the little cedar box. Glorianne listened till she fell asleep and dreamed of cool sunlight splashing among the pale green mulberry leaves high in the tree.

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I just returned from a three-month book tour and was discouraged to see eBooks as the requisite travel accessory, the airports littered with travelers hunched over smart phones and Kindles and iPads. It’s true, Bolaño’s 2666 takes up a lot of space in your carry-on bag, but that’s the point! It’s like a pet that requires a 5am walk. The heft is a symbol of commitment —a marriage band.

I have to admit I agreed with him right up until the point where I got a Kindle for Christmas. What say you, readers?

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What do you think of the sketches so far – are they just as you pictured?

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