Chapter 4
3350words
"Please be seated," Ezekiel called. Mary snapped to attention, bringing her hands into her lap. The congregation sat in unison, the old wooden pews creaking under the weight. She turned her body slightly, flicking her gaze across the pulpit. It was the normal crowd filling the church, nearly half of the town. Mrs. Greengrich sat towards the front, holding the hand of Todd's girlfriend Josephine. Her stomach was enlarged, looking like it might burst at any second. Todd sat next to Josephine, still sweating out last night's whisky but with more of a nervous air than normal. He was a few inches away from his mother and girlfriend and white knuckled the pew in front of him. He looked like he had seen a ghost, but when Mary scanned the crowd before her, she saw nothing out of the ordinary. Todd glanced out the window, his leg shaking slightly, like a hound who smelled lightning on the wind. Mary shivered.
Ezekiel cleared his throat, and Mary turned her head to face her father. Sweat already started to bead onto his forehead, and his cheeks slowly flushed red. He didn't open his Bible, which stayed closed in his tightly grasped hand. He stared deeply at the church before he started to pace.
"There's been talk," he said, low and measured. "Talk of wanderers comin' back home. Of prodigals dressed in good intentions. They come speakin' soft, lookin' sweet as can be. Carryin' the shape of someone you once loved."
Mary's back stiffened.
He didn't say who, or a name. He didn't have to.
"They'll tell you it's still them," Ezekiel said, holding the gaze of the crowd. "That they ain't changed. But church, listen here and listen good. Sin doesn't need horns to be the devil!" He stopped at the stand and threw his Bible on top of it. He grabbed each side and leaned forward. "The devil's favorite disguise is comfort. Familiarity. Something that sounds so close to the gospel, you won't even know it ain't until you're already following him."
The crowd murmured a few amens, a few nodded their heads.
Mary's eyes fell to the Crawfords in the back of the church. Thomas Crawford was the town's judge. A refined man dressed in pressed suits and luxury ties, his black hair always coiffed perfectly. He had left town at seventeen to go to the big city for his law degree, spent a handful of years swaggering through the courtrooms then came back at the perfect time for the election. He schmoozed the other big time deacons of the town, including the mayor. Some had even whispered that his time in the city gave him a handful of manilla folders filled with black and white photos of the mayor sleeping with an underage girl while his wife took care of the town. Others said it was a briefcase full of green to the police station. But regardless, after months of being back in Ashford, he swept the election and found himself as judge. He spent the next few years granting the rich families access to land that had been in impoverished families' hands for decades, tearing down houses and setting up massive oil rigs.
He had met his wife Lorraine before he left, the two were high school sweethearts. She was always an uptight woman from what Mary knew. A good God-fearing house wife. Mary had never seen the woman smile or laugh, a hard line permanently creasing her lips. She was still pretty. She had perfect blonde waves, a long curvy body, a perfect diamond ring perched on her left hand. Her whole life had been perfect and given. Her family was well off, owners of a cotton mill that had been in her family for decades. It had always made sense for her to end up with the equally perfect law man from a family of doctors and lawyers. The only crack in the porcelain were the whispers: Lorraine couldn't have children.
And the rumors before Grace left.
Mary had only heard bits and pieces when she was younger. Rumors, half formed stories whispered in the diner and in the pews before church. She didn't know the details, only that something had happened between Grace and the Crawfords. Something that made the town sharpen their knives and turn their backs.
"Now is a time of testing, church," Ezekiel barked, pacing in front of the pews again. "A time where the weeds and wheat need to be separated. And the enemy? He's not waitin' outside the gates. No. He's sittin' in our pews. He's slippin' in our homes, whisperin' in your children's ears."
Mary clenched her jaw. She suddenly felt exposed, bare. Burnt raw and alive as if her father flayed her and was burning her down to the bone.
Grace's name hadn't been said, but it still echoed all the same.
The diner was busy with the after church rush as usual. The small space was filled with conversations and forks scraping porcelain. Mary and her father sat in their usual booth, the one next to the window facing the side street and the deer head looming on the wall overhead. Ezekiel had already half finished his eggs, eyes scanning the newspaper in his hands. He hadn't spoken much since their arrival, but this was nothing new. Mary had assumed his voice was tired after hour long preaching and polite conversations before and after. Preaching fire and brimstone to a town half asleep on pride and piety must be exhausting, or maybe he just wasn't fond of small talk. Normally, the silence didn't bother Mary but today it gnawed at her after his sermon. She pushed her hash browns around on her plate, her stomach twisting and turning.
She still felt the heat of his words floating in the chapel. He had spoken His word, but every diction was draped with Grace's skin.
The bell above the door dinged and Mary looked up to see Lorraine Crawford stride in, sharp as ever. Her blonde waves bounced as her kitten heels clicked with purpose on the linoleum floors. Her dress and hat were a matching lavender, her gloves tight and bone white. She was the perfect picture of deacon's wife. She moved past the host, walking toward Ezekiel and Mary's booth like a bullet with a purpose.
"Reverend Harlow," she said, her voice high and piercing. Ezekiel looked up from his newspaper, face registering first in familiarity then grew hard. They locked eyes. Lorraine glanced at Mary, then back at him. "May I have a word with you in private?"
Ezekiel sighed and set the paper down. He folded his napkin and slid out of the booth, murmuring "Excuse me" to Mary.
Mary watched them walk towards the pie counter, near the hallway that led to the restrooms. Lorraine leaned close, a burst of frantic hand movements and words slightly above a whisper. Mary couldn't make out what she was saying, but could see the tightness in Lorraine's jaw and the speed of her lips and hands. Ezekiel didn't say much, only listened with his arms crossed, a muscle tickling his jaw.
Mary strained to hear, but managed to catch one sentence that Lorraine let slip into a raised hiss.
"That boy, or whatever he likes to call himself now, is strutting through my town like some painted up tramp like we haven't forgotten who he is," Lorraine spat.
Mary stiffened, the hairs on her neck bristling. There was no question who Lorraine was talking about.
Lorraine glanced over at Mary. She quickly ducked her head and sipped her coffee, pretending not to watch, pretending like the tops of her ears weren't burning in anger, pretending as if she didn't see her father's lips purse in a tight line at the accusation that was just thrown.
After a few more lines of whispers laced in anger, Lorraine strode out and Ezekiel slid back into the booth. He straightened the newspaper out and began resuming his reading.
Mary didn't speak, but her thoughts were racing. Racing with heat, fury, and fear.
She could feel the shift. The walls were listening, the air was tilting. Grace had come back into a town that wanted to devour her all over again - and Mary, for reasons she couldn't quite place, felt her hands closing into a fist.
She glanced out into the street. She could make out the tilted steeple of the chapel in the distance. Her reflection stared back at her, pale and unreadable.
Something was unraveling in Ashford, but Mary wasn't sure where God stood in all of it.
The sun reached high, but Mary's vision felt dim like an unforeseen veil covering her eyes. Her father and her had gone their separate ways. He had mumbled something about golf with one of the deacons and she left the diner in a flurry with his dismissal. She followed her girlhood steps, winding through alleyways and streets, her heels rustling dirt paths like clouds of smoke. Sweat began to bead across her forehead, her pink dress starting to plaster to her skin. But she didn't care, the only thing piercing in her mind was the goal of finding Grace.
Everything was louder now and rang deafeningly in her ears. The cicadas screaming, the cars that passed her by, the rusted chains groaning in the breeze. The world felt anxiously charged. She felt heat and electricity run through her fingers and up her arms, down her legs. Lorraine's high voiced reverberated in her ears. ...that boy, or whatever he calls himself now... The venom coated words, the heat pulsating underneath.
She had known that the Crawfords had something to do with Grace leaving town. It was the same way that every resident of a small town like Ashford knew about these things. But hearing it thrown into the air, receiving confirmation of the suspected, and seeing her father just stand in knowing silence. Mary felt her stomach twist and curdle.
Mary passed by the chapel, it's leaning steeple casting a long disjointed shadow across the gravel. She reached and brushed the climbing vines on the chainlink fence. They want to chew her up again, she thought. Chew her up and spit her back out, and she hasn't even done a damn thing.
The boarding house came into view. A squat brick building with a torn screen door. Grace had told Mary she was staying there, in the furthest room facing the alleyway and woods spanning back. Mary slowed her step and walked inside. She continued walking until she found the last room. The pale wooden door was cracked open slightly, a glow from an open window slightly illuminating the hall. Cigarette smoke lazed out of the cracks. Mary reached to knock on the door frame but stopped. Music wafted through, but not the familiar gospels that Mary was used to her father playing on their beaten radio. A man's voice slurred over the droning guitar and rapid thumps of the drum, dragging like a body across gravel. It wasn't music so much as it was a craving The words she could piece out didn't make sense to her - something about God and being as good as dead, about heroin, all drawn out like a moan.
Mary furrowed her brow. The music was hypnotic, dissonant. It made her skin prickle and her stomach twist. It wasn't holy or worship. It was hungry in tone, aching and raw, a sound too large for the room. Mary couldn't figure if it was lust or grief, or maybe a mixture of both, but the sound made her chest feel pulled taut.
Mary knocked, hesitantly. "Grace?" she called out, softly than she anticipated.
She heard a slight rustle and a creek of mattress springs. "Door's open." Grace's voice was low and tired with a twinge of amusement.
Mary pushed the door open gently. The room was small, barely a bed, a vanity and a thrumming window unit shaking slightly. The fan on the dresser turned slowly, cutting through the cloud of cigarette smoke and heat. The small turntable on the floor spun rapidly, the man's voice still crooning out. Grace laid on the floor, clothed in only a cotton slip, her knees facing the open window, her head lolling slightly to get a better look at Mary. Her arm laid above her head, delicately clutching a half burned cigarette near a small porcelain ashtray.
Grace gave her a lopsided smirk. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Mary didn't join her on the floor at first. She glared at the sun casting its rays onto the floor near the bed, the light slightly reaching up to Grace's bared thigh.
She managed to peel her eyes away and ignore the slight stir in her stomach. She met Grace's eyes. "I saw Lorraine Crawford today," she said finally.
Grace's smirk faded. She looked up to the ceiling as she pulled the cigarette to her lips and took a long drag. "'Course you did. Sunday brunch and brimstone, right?"
Mary didn't speak or move, just stared at Grace.
Grace blew smoke upwards. "She talk about me?"
"Not by name." Mary's throat felt tight, her words falling flat. "But yeah."
Grace let out a bitter chuckle. "Yeah, sound's like her." A slight pause. "What'd she say?"
Mary didn't want to repeat the words. She looked down at her hands. "That you were walkin' around like you forgot who you are."
Grace flinched, but just barely. "Well." She reached above her and tapped the ash off the cigarette. "I didn't forget, I just stop letting them decide."
The words sat heavy between them. Mary finally stepped forward and sat by Grace near her head. "Was it them?" she asked. "Was it the Crawfords that made you leave?"
Grace didn't answer at first. She turned her head back to the ceiling, letting the silence draw out.
"I was fourteen," she finally said after another drag. "Daddy was drinking like he was a duck and the river was liquor after my brother died. Empty bottles and closed fists every night. My mama did what she could, but it wasn't enough. Bills started piling up, the house started creaking. There was nothin' to really hold onto. Until Thomas Crawford came walkin' in like the devil dressed in silk and furs."
She swallowed hard. Cigarette smoke curled thinly between them. "He told us that he had a way to help with the bills. A way that we might be able to keep the house. He told me to come work at his house. Runnin' errands, gardening, cleaning, things like that. Told me that a 'pretty boy' like me could earn a way."
Mary's stomach lurched, her hands curled anxiously.
Grace's eyes flickered, distant. "One day, Thomas cornered me in their bedroom while I was changing out their sheets. Lorraine walked in while he was on top of me. She screamed at the top of her lungs like a banshee, loud enough to wake up God from his nap. Didn't kill him, didn't call the police. No, she went to Ezekiel. Said I'd poisoned her marriage, said I seduced her husband. Lied like the goddamn devil." Her jaw tightened. "But he believed that woman. Shit, everyone did."
She took another drag and stubbed the cigarette out forcefully into the dish. "Ezekiel said I was an abomination. A sickness that needed to be cast out before it reached the flock." She turned her head to look at Mary, her eyes raw and watery. "So yeah, I left. I figured it was better to take my chances out there than to wait to see what they would do to me."
Mary was quiet for a long time, her hands trembling in her lap. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
Grace reached for her pack of cigarettes by the ashtray. She grabbed another cigarette out of it, but didn't light it. She rolled it absently between her fingers. "Don't be. You didn't push me out."
"No. But I didn't stop them either." Mary felt wetness drip from the corner of her eye.
Grace looked at her, softer this time. A gentle smile curled at the edge of her lips. "You were just a girl then. We both were."
Mary swallowed, heat thick in her throat. "But I should've done something."
They sat in the weight of the moment. The record had finished, the empty thrumming barely audible over the hum of the fan.
"Y'know what's funny?" Grace asked, half to herself. "I came back thinking things would be different. Like the world would finally catch up."
Mary slid down, now lying on her side next to Grace. She felt Grace's breath tickle her nose, and her heart thrummed against her ribs. "Well maybe it will," she said steadily. "Or maybe we'll make it."
Grace reached forward and brushed strands of hair behind Mary's ear. She didn't smile, only left her hand lingering on her cheek. The air shifted, but Mary didn't move, keeping her head rested on Grace's hand. She looked into Grace's honied eyes, felt the closeness of her breath. Outside, the world raged on; cicadas cried, dust danced aimlessly in the sunlight. But in Grace's room, time had slowed like syrup sliding down a glass bottle.
Mary's throat tightened. She wanted to say a million things to Grace, but each one didn't seem worth saying, to steal air from the breaths of this moment. So instead, she leaned in closer to Grace's hand.
And in the stillness, something settled in her.
A knowing.
A promise.
Something not quite holy.
