Page 31 of Turn That River Red

MERCY

The sun is just starting to rise when I leave my cabin to help prepare breakfast for the congregation. This is one benefit of summer, even with the heat—I won’t have to walk across the still, quiet campus alone in the dark. If I were unmarried, and living in the single women’s dormitory, I would never have to be alone. But as Gunner’s helpmeet, I’m always isolated.

But even with the dawn’s pale, sherberty light, even with the Texas morning heat, I still feel a chill as I pad down the dirty walkway. Something feels—off.

The devil, I think, drawing my arms around my chest.The devil is close.

The others have noticed it, too, I think. I see more houses marked by charms than usual. Some of them are painted on, the lines neat and even, and others are made out of twine and ribbon. Women’s nonsense, Reverend Gunner always calls them, although he says it with an indulgent smile. Madelyn is more forthright—she calls them witchcraft. When I still lived with them, she would always complain about them. “I don’t see how you can allow them,” she would say toReverend Gunner, and he would respond with, “If it makes the women feel better, leave them. They aren’t an affront to God.”

I’ve never cared about the charms myself. Maybe it was because Madelyn was the closest thing I had to a mother after my own mother died, and so I tend to see them as needless superstition. “Your prayers are what really matter,” Madelyn told me when I was young, although, in the last three years, it feels like that’s not true, either.

All these thoughts swirl around in my head as I make my way toward the kitchen. Which is good, because they keep me from thinking about Ambrose and his slow, soft kisses and the fantasy I nurtured as I tried to fall asleep last night, the two of us standing side by side in front of the well in the chapel, me in a bridal veil.

The idea makes me feel warm and sick with guilt at the same time. Easier to put it out of my head.

I keep walking, my footsteps echoing softly. I’m nearly to Reverend Gunner’s house, rising taller than all the others. I miss living there. Miss being Reverend Gunner’s ward instead of his helpmeet.

But then I turn down the side street, and the wind gusts, bringing a thick, coppery sweetness that lodges in the back of my throat. My empty stomach turns. It smells like someone threw out old meat and let it rot in the sun

And then I see Reverend Gunner’s fence.

I see that there’s somethingonit.

I stop on the walkway, not comprehending what I’m looking at. At first, I think Madelyn draped some of Reverend Gunner’s clothes over the fence to air dry. But she never does that.

And then I realize it’s not just clothes. There’s a face. There are hands.

There’s blood.

I stumble backward, and the world draws away from me. Ihear the ocean in my head. I recognize the face, hanging slack and twisted in fear. It’s Burl Marsh, one of the gruff old soldiers.

He’s stretched out like a Catholic crucifix on Reverend Gunner’s fence, his throat split open, his chest covered in blood. His eyes stare blankly ahead, right at me.

Just like Raul’s did.

That’s when I scream, all my terror exploding out of me in one terrible sound that shatters the silence of the campus into a million pieces.

Then I turn and run. I’m not even thinking clearly; all I know is I can’t do this again. I can’t stare at another dead body. I can’t answer the torrent of questions from Reverend Gunner and Pastor Sullivan and Deacon Price, the head of the Soldier of God. I can’t sit shaking in a room, sobbing and confused.

I run harder than I have in my life, my skirt streaming out behind me, and I don’t even realize where I’m going until I wind up in front of the guest cabins.

Ambrose’s cabin is shut up as tight as all the others, and I wonder, idly, if God sent him to us because He knew the nightmare that was about to unfold.

I wonder if God sent him to me.

Shouts ring out behind me, coming from Reverend Gunner’s house. A woman screams. I know I should go back. Instead, I jog up to Ambrose’s door, still panting and trying to catch my breath. Before I can even press the doorbell, his dogs start barking, my presence announced whether I want it or not.

I shouldn’t be here. The devil has come for us again, for another of my brothers, and here I am standing on the porch of the place where I sinned, and all I want, with a sudden and painful clarity, is to sin again.

I stumble backward, telling myself I have to go back. But then the door pulls open, and when I see Ambrose filling up the frame, dressed in dark slacks and a dark long-sleeved shirt like apriest, I burst into tears. I know I shouldn’t be here. But this is the only place I want to be.

“Mercy?” His brow furrows. “What’s wrong?”

I wipe at my eyes like I can press the tears back into their ducts. “I’m s-sorry,” I stammer out. “I know it’s early. But there was—there was?—”

Grief and terror overtake me again. I cover my face with my hands and weep. I’m not even crying over Burl Marsh. I’m crying over Raul, and the fact that not even our gated campus is safe from evil, and that the only thing that comes close to bringing me comfort is a sin.

“Come inside,” Ambrose says softly. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

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