Broken Branch

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The Year of the Storm

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Broken Branch

John Mantooth

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BROKEN BRANCH

A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with the author

Copyright © 2013 by John Mantooth.

Excerpt from
The Year of the Storm
by John Mantooth copyright © 2013 by John Mantooth.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

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ISBN: 978-1-101-62044-1

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Berkley Special edition / May 2013

Cover Art:
Red
Journal
,
Town
,
Trees
copyright © Shutterstock.

Cover design by George Long.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Somewhere in Alabama

1932

Harold and Joyce Richardson left on a Sunday, a week after the big storm.

Trudy stood with the others in the clearing, near the big oak tree where Sunday services had been held since they started the community nearly eight years earlier. It was late summer, insufferably hot, and a languid silence hung over the clearing. Even the Newtons' puppies were quiet, curled up beneath the porch, drunk off the heat.

Just moments before, Otto had finished his sermon about the sunshine after the storm, about how the community had stayed strong through their trials. He spoke of how they'd been praying for relief, and relief had come at last. How the demons that were attacking the community had been turned back by the everlasting love of a holy and righteous God.

By the time the sermon ended, one suspender hung loose from Otto's shoulder, his shirt was dark with sweat, and his face glowed with an orgiastic fever. Here was a man, Trudy thought, who believed what he said. That had been the reason she and James had agreed to establish Broken Branch with him eight years before. He believed in God as deeply as the next person might believe in gravity, and all the storms in the world lined up one after another didn't stand a chance against a man who believed like that.

At least that was what Trudy had told herself then. Now she wasn't sure. Now she spent much of her time worrying that a demon might have crawled inside her. What else could explain her urges, her new desire to leave this place?

“I have a sad thing to tell you today,” Otto said, pacing beneath the shade of the oak. He was always pacing, and Trudy had heard him tell that it was the spirit of the Lord that wouldn't let him stay still. “He moves me, and I say if he doesn't move you, it may be because he's not in you.” Slothfulness was a sin, Trudy knew, a sure sign that you weren't “right with God,” yet there were some mornings she didn't want to get out of bed, and she didn't feel like a sinner; she just felt tired.

Another reason she was sure the demon had found her.

“Two of our congregation, two of our
family
, have decided it is time to move on.”

Everyone sat up a little straighter. No one had dared leave since word came back that the last family to go—the Nelsons nearly three years earlier—had starved to death on the side of the road. The world outside of Broken Branch was parched, Trudy knew, from turning its back on the love of God. And now, another family was leaving.

Harold and Joyce rose and walked to the front.

Otto stepped back and stood next to James, Trudy's husband, who leaned against the base of the oak holding his guitar.

Harold spoke first. He called Otto a “true man of God and a leader.” He spoke of Broken Branch as a place that would always be dear to his heart. He'd received word that his brother was sick in South Carolina, so he and Joyce decided it would be the “Christian” thing to go see to him.

Joyce tried to speak, but the tears were coming fast, and in the end, she only shook her head and let Otto wrap his strong arms around her.

“One more thing,” Harold said. “I don't want anybody to think this is because of the storms.”

Trudy looked at Otto and saw him stiffen slightly. The storms. He'd declared them over, but Trudy saw the doubt in him then. Another storm, especially like the last one, which had delayed progress on the new church, could break the spirit of this place. Another storm would make it difficult to believe that this place was any more blessed than the dust bowl world outside of these pines.

“We believe that God will protect us. It ain't that. It's my brother. I need to see to him. We hope to come back.”

Then the entire community, all eighteen of them not counting the children, lined up and embraced the Richardsons. When it was Trudy's turn, she almost told Joyce it was okay if it was because of the storms because they scared her too, but she knew that would be foolish. It would show a weakness of character so she only wished her the best and told her that she'd always think of her when she made beef stew because Joyce's beef stew was the best she'd had anywhere.

If anyone said anything about the storm that gathered west of the woods later that afternoon, Trudy never heard. It was a slow one, starting with ominous clouds that grew darker and heavier incrementally until it felt less like a sky and more like a ceiling, cold and hard, like stone. Thunder bubbled quietly, somewhere above the clouds, as if it didn't want to give away the fury waiting on the other side of that gray slate.

That storm missed the clearing where their homes stood in a little semicircle around the oak tree.

The ones that came in the spring did not.

1933

Rodney's attacks had started at the end of December. They frightened Trudy at first worse than anything else, worse than the storms that had rolled through that fall, worse than the way everybody looked at each other with suspicion now, as if one of their own had somehow caused God's wrath to sweep out of the sky and pummel their little community time and time again.

As bad as this was, Rodney's attacks were more frightening. Unlike the storms, they were personal. Trudy wasn't sure most of the time how she felt about the idea of God punishing his people, but when she saw Rodney shaking like a brittle branch in a strong wind, she had to pray that he wouldn't break. If prayer was her first inclination, she was also inclined to believe God had to be responsible. If not Him, then who?

Eventually, she got used to the attacks—Rodney's spells—if you can get used to something that clutches at your insides and makes you squirm, wishing you weren't even a mother at all, but instead a small girl sitting at her father's knee, believing that he was a good man and that the world was a good place. But that was the truth of it, Trudy often thought. We get used to the cruelty and while it doesn't make it any better, we are able to press on.

Trudy discovered his fits followed an eerie rhythm. She'd notice Rodney looking sad or tired, or maybe he'd be angry for no particular reason. If she missed the first signs, she might still catch him canting to one side as he walked or played with his sister. By this point, the attack was imminent. There were signs of fatigue, dizziness, a confused look on his face. This was followed by the actual attack, which would find him on the ground, stiffening and then shuddering so hard he often bucked his small body into the air and his eyes rolled back until they were white, unseeing stones. This was the worst part and also the most unpredictable. Most of his fits would last a few seconds, but she'd also seen them last for several minutes. Afterward, Rodney slept for hours, and Trudy always felt an immense relief that he'd survived another one, and she'd managed to keep it from the others.

Keeping Rodney's attacks from the rest of the community was born out of instinct. She knew his attacks would be viewed suspiciously, especially as winter turned to spring and the storms came again. Especially after the meeting on the third Sunday in March.

It was cold that day, and she'd bundled Mary and Rodney up in winter clothes to stand with the others under the bare oak tree. The clearing was still covered in debris from the twister that had come through two days earlier. One home had been crushed by it, and the entire family buried in the rubble. The Watsons. Thinking of them beneath all that wood made Trudy even colder and she shivered violently before turning her attention to Otto. He seemed warm enough, as he paced furiously from one side of the clearing to the next.

“Some of you have come to me over the last day or two and asked me why we are being attacked again. Some of you have been distraught over this. You say, ‘God is angry with us, Brother Otto.'”

“There's sin!” someone—probably Franklin Meyers—shouted from the congregation.

Otto stopped pacing and looked over the congregation. “There is sin. Yes, there is.” He was quiet now, almost reverent. He started pacing again, this time not as fast, but Trudy could see him building toward something big.

“Are there those among you who do not believe that the Lord is righteous?”

Everyone shouted no. It sounded like thunder, and Trudy felt something inside of her squirm. Was it the demon? Because she hadn't shouted along with the others. In fact, she wasn't sure if she believed in the righteousness of God anymore at all. Rodney's affliction, she realized, was when she'd begun to doubt, and now, seeing the Watsons' home in ruins with them buried beneath it? It was too much to take in.

“Of course he is,” Otto said, his voice going quiet again. “No one who has spent any time in the word of the Lord would dispute that. Of course not.” He shook his head, put his hand behind his neck and scratched slowly, and squinted his eyes as if something troubled him. “Yet how many of you have come to me in the last few days and suggested I was somehow ‘un-Christian' to not dig out the bodies of those sinners and give them a proper burial?”

Everything went quiet. Even the children—who sat in the back—seemed to be listening intently, caught up in the drama of Otto's accusation.

“‘But Brother Otto. Brother Otto, you know the Watsons. They were good people. Horace worked hard in the garden and his wife, Cecily, was a faithful woman, a good mother. Why would God punish them?' That's what you're thinking right now. Oh, I know my flock. Can I get an amen?”

The crowd responded. All but Trudy.

“My answer is simple, brothers and sisters. My answer is I don't need to know what they done or what they left undone. All I need to do is see the facts, the evidence before my very eyes. God is in control of everything–every breeze, every drop of rain, every life lived long and every life cut short–and our God is a just God. If he sets a twister down here it's for a reason. This time, the reason was clear. The Watsons. So, grieve not, brothers and sisters, for the Lord's work has been done. And most of all, fear not. If you are faithful and right in His eyes, no storm will touch you.”

He stepped back, which was James's cue to strike up the guitar. The congregation sang “The Old Rugged Cross,” except Trudy, who only mouthed the words, pretending to sing.