Futile Efforts (21 page)

When they stopped for gas he scrounged around the back of the truck until he found Floyd's five gallon can. He filled that too and stuffed a rag in the top since there wasn't any cap.

The highway ran out and after twenty minutes of gravel and dirt track they were back in bog country. The humidity had risen by fifty percent in the past hundred miles. Vine-draped crescent rows of shanties began to appear along the rim of the swamplands. Bull gators roared in the bog. The lush maiden cane Slopes of Spanish moss and slough remained untouched, emerald and endless. They held a majestic power that was as ancient and awesome as the burning deserts of the earth.

He drove until the last shred of road narrowed and abruptly ended in a morass of willows and loblolly pine, with the river water seeping up around the wild roots. Floyd had drawn his skiff up onto a tussock of bull grass. Mills got the gas can out, went through the back of the truck again and found a hatchet.

"You gonna see anybody 'fore you start?" Floyd asked. The bourbon had done a good job on him. He looked good-natured and content. "Mariel?"

"No."

"Gonna hunt the bottoms first?"

"You know every answer, so why do you bother to ask."

Floyd opened another bottle and took a long pull, wiped his mouth with the wide back of his hand. "Sorry, it's a habit I ain't been able to break. You remember the way?"

Mills held even more tightly to his frustration and fury, letting all the hate throb within him, and he didn't want to waste any of it slapping the shit out of his cousin. "Give me your knife."

Floyd took out the
guthook
and handed it over.

"Good luck," Floyd said. He tittered and hummed, opened his mouth to hiss something more. "God bless."

Mills almost killed him for that. The skinning blade felt so comfortable in his fist, designed to open arteries, clean carcasses. His back teeth ground together and the
guthook
started to come up, weaving as if seeking a throat. Mills stopped himself and clambered into the skiff, threw down the can, knife and the hatchet like they disgusted him. He
stobpoled
the boat through the slimy waters towards
Sweetgum
Hill, where they'd had their fun and lynched
Jorie
in the cypress.

S
ettling on a hillock of moss and orchids, hidden in the green, Mills waited in the river bottoms through the night. He didn't sleep, and the shadow of his ancestor whimpered to him in the moonlight, begging forgiveness for his greatest transgression. Minutes before dawn, Mills heard the first Seraph.

The lyrical rhythm of their pleasant voices snapped gently through the overgrowth. It put him in the mind for his banjo. He wondered if he could still play.

A boy and a girl, looking about eleven or twelve years old, tramped past where Mills crouched.

Their beauty blinded him for an instant. He'd forgotten what true, overwhelming perfection was like. He had to shield his eyes with his arm until the tears stopped flowing, and then he slunk off after them.

Both in blue overalls, wearing wide-brimmed straw hats, barefoot, carrying fishing poles, they walked about fifty feet ahead. Mills felt God in the swamp. He cut into the morass and moved quickly through the slough, his instincts intact and once again guiding him. His feet touched the ground in all the proper places, and he was drawing strength from being home. The blood scent enveloped him until he couldn't even smell the gasoline sloshing in the rag-stuffed can.

A moment of anguish filled his chest, loosened and left him. Mills let out a chortle that almost sickened him.

The children were in the midst of conversation, speaking quietly but animatedly in their own language. The girl laughed and an abrupt weakness filled Mills, until he staggered and his knees nearly fell out from under him. She reminded him so much of
Jorie
that he had the insane urge to scream his dead daughter's name. The swamp would swallow his words, his intent, and his wavering resolve, the way it always had.

They found a comfortable place on the river bank and sat side by side. The boy had a nice easy way of tossing his line out beyond the morass into the water. The girl tried doing the same but didn't quite have the knack for it yet. They each drew white bread sandwiches from their overall pockets and started chewing.

Mills stepped out from behind the tree and said, "Did either of you have anything to do with the burning of
Jorie
Mills?"

The Seraph never lied. They didn't need to. Nothing they ever did broke any law of God. The boy grinned politely, his teeth full of pork and cheese, and said, "Yes, sir. We both did. You're her daddy, ain't you?"

"I was her father."

"You're an ugly soul."

"No more than most, I reckon."

"That's not for you to judge."

Perhaps it was true, but that didn't matter now. A man stood his ground when he had no corners left to crawl into. "Maybe not. I know my own evil."

"You're cruel," the girl said with a tone so tender and caring, Mills wanted to jab the
guthook
into his own throat and just be done with it. Her perfect golden beauty was almost more than he could take. He'd felt the same when Lottie Mae, the midwife, had handed
Jorie
to him that first time.

"What's your name?" he asked.

"
Ashriet
," the boy told him, tipping back his straw hat.

"
Sura
," the girl said, and moved as if to embrace Mills.

The breeze rose. Each skirted around him, leaping with a child's joy, skipping and sailing through the air just out of his reach. If they were in a group they would've formed a ring around him and killed him with a thousand stones. Now, in the face of his purpose, they ran.

Mills took off after them, in the direction of
Sweetgum
Hill. It seemed they were willing him to imagine his seventeen year old daughter
Jorie's
body swaying in the smoke-laced wind. He reminded himself these weren't children at all, but minions of paradise.

Barely any pulse throbbed in his throat and wrists. Maybe he was already dead and this was a purgatory he was forced to relive without ever learning anything. Mills wished he had the old rage again, the self-righteous wrath that once called for murder, but in some strange way New York had weakened him. He'd learned to be more accepting and forgiving there--to be anything else would have driven him insane. He wasn't so sure he wasn't already crazy, but the boiling hatred just wasn't there anymore.

Still, he'd do what he had to do. This was his brood's damnation. He was beyond redemption because he had already been redeemed, thanks to his forefather who'd died on the cross beside Christ.

Two thieves were crucified on either side of Jesus, at the top of Golgotha, the Hill of the Skull. One denied him and laughed even as he himself was dying. The other--despite his own wounds and broken bones--felt pity and accepted Christ as his savior.

The damned fool.

Now, the shadow of the thief fell over Mills. He spun, wanting to face the man who'd accepted God into his heart that day. He imagined the thief's children cowering in the crowd, pressing upon the place of the dead, watching their father become blessed by Heaven, and found that they were blessed themselves. With a gift that made them recognize their own evil. To see the evil in themselves and in others with a hideously exquisite clarity. To recognize it, and in some cases, to skillfully excise it.

Sura
cavorted, squealed in exhilaration and tried to lose him among the morass. Mills dug in and with a growl launched himself at a point three feet above her head. She began to rise just as he reached the spot and he clipped her hard, brought her down. Something cool, damp, and leathery slapped him savagely across the face. He saw she was unsheathing her stunted wings.

"Tell Him to take back his gift," Mills said.

"He'll never take it back."

"Then this will go on."

"So be it."

"I don't want to keep killing your kind."

"Then stop. Beg forgiveness for your sins. Fall to your knees and weep, oh man. For all your transgressions against paradise and the children of heaven. Praise your Lord."

"Not until He takes back His gift. And not if you keep murdering our children."

"It's not your judgment to make," she said sweetly. The Seraph, in all their supremacy and beauty, and following only the will of God, could not do evil, no matter how vicious and brutal they were. "We follow His will. You must be punished for your impudence and conceit."

Her wing snapped against his nose, brushing his cheek like a lover, then gouging. He yelped and fell back but didn't release her. He wanted to be her father, her lover, and her friend, to be welcomed by all that was love and loyalty.

He thought about how foolish it was that the Seraph and the sons of Golgotha had both wandered the world for centuries, only to both end up within spitting distance of one another in Cobb County, Georgia. He didn't understand why such damnation should follow him and his family despite what his ancestor had done on the Hill of the Skull. A malefactor should not be forgiven his sins for a moment of pity. Salvation wasn't so easily won. There was a vein of badness that must've run deep, to go on for a hundred generations worth.

"Will you leave my brood alone?" he asked.

Sura
smiled and said, "What God wills shall be done."

"Does he want us all dead?"

She shook her head sadly. "You only wish yourselves to suffer. It's your sin of pride. You do not accept and so turn your hand against his armies. You call this down upon yourselves."

It was probably true but he couldn't accept it because he could not change what he was. "That's nonsense!"

"So you say."

"Leave us alone!"

"Stop hating your Father who loves you."

"Rotten bitch!"

He grabbed the
guthook
and opened her up. They were almost human inside but not quite. No threads of evil, no bile or acid. She never stopped staring at him with loving eyes, even after he hooked her innards and splashed her lips with them. The wings flopped and snapped against the dirt for a while and finally they stopped trembling.

Turning, Mills saw the boy
Ashriet
grinning at him through a mass of willow leaves. "Tell Him to take back his gift, you little bastard."

"He'll never take it back,"
Ashriet
said.

"Why won't you let it stop?"

"Why won't you?"

He poured the gasoline over the remains of
Sura
and threw a match. The pyre she formed was no less pure than his own ego.

A man who is loved by God is just as damned as one who's hated. Ask Job. David. Saul. Samson. The martyrs. All of them blessed, and yet all of them living and dying in agony and despair.

He walked back to the skiff and
stobpoled
back out of the bottoms, then marched the eight miles back home and stepped into the cabin. Mariel stood at the sink, the same position she'd been in when he'd last seen her ten years ago. He'd had four children with the woman but didn't know a thing about her anymore.

Most of the windows had been broken and boarded over. A few rocks lay in the center of the floor. The walls were scarred with their markings.

She looked up without a hint of surprise and said, "Have you paid them back for
Jorie
yet?"

He could've made an argument that things had been in motion long before this, but didn't bother. "Yes."

"Good."

"Don't be so sure. It's going to get bad again."

"It's always been bad. I want them all gone. Every last one of them. You shoulda done it a long time ago." He saw her evil in her pumping blackness into her heart, and he knew that she could see the exact same thing in him. "I consider and find you lacking!"

"This serves no purpose."

"You can't say for certain. And you're in no position to argue with the ways that be. You do as you must. Even if you do think you can shirk your responsibilities and go have fun up there in the north."

"It wasn't so fun."

"It wasn't your place to be."