Faith (a short story)
This one started as a writing prompt, focused on watching a theme emerge organically from a free writing exercise. I fleshed out the wider story later.
You wanna preach religion to me? Try baking for four hours at a bus stop with your disabled older brother and come back to me on that one. Go on. Try it just once.
Try watching some stay-at-home mum, clock you and your brother’s sunburnt heads on her way to the supermarket and just keep on driving. Try watching her come back two hours later ‘cause she forgot to pick up the hummus or something and clock you again—eyes popping and everything, so you know she definitely saw you! And still keep on driving.
Would dropping off a 500ml bottle of water have killed the bitch?
Ok. Ok. Maybe this one’s a little fresh in my mind to be objective. But c’mon, there are more reasons to believe Oasis are gonna announce a spring comeback tour than to get down on your knees for Old JC and the big man. Religion is for poor people and high school recruitment pamphlets.
You want something real to get behind? You should try Adderall.
Don’t laugh I’m serious! Sweetie.
First try to do something hard like reading a science textbook. I don’t mean one of the pop-sci ones that rich people like to quote at dinner parties, I mean one of the full Monty, dry as a junkie’s tongue SCIENCE textbooks that only actual SCIENTISTS can understand. If you don’t own one, find a library that does.
You gotta do it cold turkey though. We need complete sobriety for this bit. This is your control study.
Once you’re all set. Start working through chapter one until you can feel the Chinese burn on your brain and hold on for at least twelve more minutes before you give up. Let yourself feel all that primary school PTSD come flooding in. The shame, the inadequacy. Get yourself to the point where you’re pulling the finger at God himself (I dropped that one in for you sister) and only at that point, finally pop an Adderall.
You’ll feel it.
Maybe not full comprehension. But I can bet you two cokes and a pie that you’ll be able to sit there for at least another thirty minutes. I bet you’ll be able to come out of it with at least one clever fact you can use later on to impress a snooty Hawkes Bay farmer…or what does your type go for?…a visiting priest? A chaplain? A holy ghost?
When’s Jesus ever done something like that for you, hah?
Don’t thank me just try it out.
Amy drew one hand up to the terrycloth headband that seemed to have spurred the boy’s entire rant. She stroked its soft white fabric and crunched her eyes into what she hoped was a friendly squint, “Oh sweetie. You didn’t think I was a Nun, did you?”
Long dark hairs spiked out from all directions at the top of the boy’s oily nose. He and his poor brother were Tomato-red. She’d first spotted them out here when she unlocked the Vet-clinic at opening time. Both smelt exactly how you’d expect them to, given the black Swazi polar-fleeces they were dressed in beneath the beating sun.
The younger boy—the one who’d just finished his rant—shifted the gumboot nearest to Amy, inward, so its rib-grain toe pointed to his brother. He dropped his eyes to the sunken footpath. His head and neck carried the over muscled proportions of a boar. The rest of his body was yet to catch up.
Amy’s mind said, “reach out and let the poor boy know that you’re not mocking him,” but at the same time, her devious thought-factory riffed on the image of her wearing a nun’s habit and gown, baby bump protruding beneath a wooden cross clutched to her chest. A burst of laughter came out instead.
The boy, no longer had trouble meeting her eye as he wiped at the fleck of spit her burst of laughter had just launched at his nose. He drew his entire hand across his face with all the slow-motion drama of an action villain who’s just been slapped by a smaller man. He stepped out from the bus stop with fists clenched.
Amy stumbled backwards, suddenly remembering where she was. Both boys were man sized, that’s why it had taken her so long to come out and talk to them in the first place. Interacting with loitering teens? No thank you. It was only after she’d popped down to grab a custard square for morning tea, and recognized Charlie—the older, disabled one—that she realised this must be Val’s younger boy with him.
Oh Val. Bless her. Salt of the earth. The only local who hadn’t batted an eye when Amy revealed there would be no husband driving down at a later date to join her here in Taihape.
An out of wedlock, pregnant nun! Imagine what that gossiping cow, Trish Drinkwater would have to say about that blasphemy.
“Hey Charlie, where’s your Mum?” she asked the older boy, feeling the thread between composure and panic dangling on a thinner and thinner line which each word.
Charlie’s lips pulled in as small as a rosebud. He released a throaty grunt. Then shouted, “Lucifers spawn!”
This was enough to distract the younger boy, who unfurled his fists and shifted his entire body as if ready to wrap his arms around Charlie at any moment.
Amy took the opportunity to step behind a chained-up push bike, and use it as a barrier between her and the two boys. One hand cradled her belly instinctively as though this would be any help should things keeping heading down hill.
Val hadn’t gone into the details of Charlie’s condition. She hadn’t needed to. One look at his hands—bent at a constant inward angle, eyes heartbreakingly unfocussed—said loud and clear his condition was one that required full time care. Which only raised more questions about the younger brother—
What was going on there? He seemed articulate enough. In spite of the few glaring red flags, she’d already observed. Nothing appeared outwardly wrong with him.
“Hey Charlie, you remember me, don’t you?” offered Amy.
Charlie’s lips twisted into a childish grin and he attempted to clap his hands. Without losing a flicker of this smile, he shouted, “Devine Justice!”
The younger boy, studied his shouting brother with pained, yet complicit eyes—as though these outbursts had long ago been awarded his stamp of approval.
Where had these come from? Val’s kids? She certainly didn’t subscribe to this rot…There’s no way Charlie heard such words under her roof, and he certainly didn’t come up with them himself. Was this too the work of his mysterious younger brother?
Just as Amy was about to dig deeper, the younger boy sucked his hand inside the sleeve of his shirt and used it to dab a smear of slobber from Charlie’s cheek. Something in this action, made Amy soften her grip on the bicycle’s handlebar by just a touch.
“Hey Charlie,” she asked. “What are you boy’s doing out here? Where’s your Mum?”
Amy only asked this question after she saw Bruce Paddle pull up outside the clinic in his Toyota Hilux mind you. His driver’s side door clicked open, and his shaded eyes watched from beneath his Cydectin branded cap with nosy curiosity. Sexist remarks outside the rugby clubrooms aside, he wasn’t the type to stand by if things got out of hand.
Before Charlie had a chance to compute this complex question. His brother put a hand on his chest and shook his head.
“Sister, that’s none of your business.”
Amy, contemplated pulling off the headband and showing him that it wasn’t a nun’s habit, but somehow knew this wouldn’t make any difference.
“He’s right Ame. Best stay out of it.” Bruce’s matter-of-fact tone might have carried more authority if he hadn’t used the exact same cadence to voice the statement, “I think it’s about time we head back to my place then, ay?” just three nights earlier.
Amy didn’t even look over. Stepping past the bike, she strode right up to the bus stop. No longer holding her belly and looked the younger boy in the eye. Yellow sleep-crust clogged his tear ducts, his pores leaked enough oil to keep a fish and chip shop going for a full working day. Amy had feared she’d smell alcohol on his breath when she got close enough to him, but an artificial watermelon aroma stood in its place. The pink remnants of some form of ice-block stained the edge of his mouth.
As if in protest against the belly churns Amy had been ignoring since Charlie starting shouting, the baby threw two swift kicks into the edge of her womb.
“Ame, get away from that little spaz, he’s disturbed!” Bruce weaved two layers of contempt into his matter-of-fact tone now.
Amy kept her eyes on the boy, whose unplucked eyebrows were now almost touching. He hunched—lips quivering, hands shaking.
“Hey sweetie. Can you tell me your name?” she tried.
“It sure ain’t sweetie!” announced the boy, channelling the cause of his lowered gaze into the eruption. “It’s Rui.” He added, gripping Charlie around the shoulder and pulling him behind the shelter’s glass side and taking a seat.
Big win.
Amy followed them, keeping her back to Bruce.
Charlie grinned at her and shouted, “Foster home for you!”
“Well Rui,” said Amy, ignoring the comment and slapping her thigh. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to start talking to the two of you as adults, how does that sound?”
Charlie’s lopsided smile beamed. The taught muscles around Rui’s brow softened. Amy slid onto the steal bar which wasn’t so much a seat as it was something to lean on. She lowered her voice. “Boy’s, if I’m being perfectly honest. I’m worried about your Mum. Was she supposed to pick you up today?”
“Arghh we don’t need your charity, sister!” Rui jumped to his feet and began to drag Charlie down the path.
“Let em go Ame!’ shouted Bruce, all impatience now. “I’ve need to pick up some worm tablets for the dogs, let us into the clinic ay?”
Amy trailed after the boys. Rui, threw a darting glance over his shoulder.
“Boys, we’re talking like adults remember. Adults, don’t break off mid-conversation like this!”
Amy could have sworn she felt the baby wind up for another kick, but hold it back when Rui’s bobbing stride stopped, and he turned his oversized head.
“If you guys don’t feel like walking all the way home—how far is that? Ten Kilometres?”
“Twelve—” said Rui.
“If you guys don’t feel like walking a whole twelve Ks, I could give you a ride back to my place, while I sort out where your Mum is.”
“We already know where she is,”—Charlie’s innocent offering. Rui winced, but seemed resigned to the let the cat run free of the bag without resistance.
Amy’s nametag shook as her heart slammed against the inside of her chest. “Oh really?….” she swallowed, “Do we know that she’s ok?”
“She’s got nothing to worry about…not any more,”—Rui’s words.
“Yea, nuffing to worry about.” Charlie’s voice echoed, “Me and Ru took care of that!”
For one shameful instant, all of Bruce’s nipping words, Trish Drinkwater’s subtle seed sowing and every other depraved bug off this town, colluded to send Amy’s thoughts to the darkest place. Was she seeing the tail end of something awful here? Could it be? Sweet poor Charlie, and his brother Rui who must have been through so much in his short life.
She swallowed a lump, doing her best to keep the shake out of her voice. “I’m glad to hear you boys have things under control. But, if we were to pop around to your house right now…or let’s say, I sent a friend over there. Do you think your Mum would be around to meet them?”
The closest that Amy had ever felt to the internal writhing she experienced as she asked this question, was the awful moment before the moment when she had to ask a sobbing pet owner, “Will it be surgery or the needle?”
“Yea she’ll probably be there—”
Probably? Amy scolded herself for letting the town corrupt her, if only for a moment. Hope rose in her chest like the sun emerging from behind a cloud.
“—that’s if she hasn’t gone off with those Church freaks.”
A different type of darkness set in. Trish? It had to be.
That awful cow. Had she finally decided the passive approach would never get through to Val’s stubborn ways. No wonder Rui had spun off on his anti-religion tirade! Had the time finally come where Trish would see her number one rival repent—one way or the other….
Before she had a chance process a plan of action to get the clinic locked up, keep these boys contained, and if she had time, call in some support before driving over to Val’s place, Val herself appeared over the rise.
Hurtling between the McDonalds and the TSB bank, tucked behind the wheel of her green Holden commadore, Val threw up her hands at the sight of Charlie and Rui.
That afternoon in the Vet Clinic, marked the longest hours Amy has ever had to work in her life. Sure, she had to deal with the backlog of disgruntled customers who’d watched from the locked clinic front, throwing up their hands, while Amy tried to pry some explanation out of Val. Sure, she’d had to navigate the thorned words of Dr Becket who’d received upwards of ten phone calls while he was supposed to be enjoying the sun out in a dingy on Lake Taupo. But neither of these had any part in what made that afternoon so long. It was the second guessing, the wondering.
Val had said enough of the right words to convince Amy, that she was best to leave the two boys with their mother. Get them cleaned them up. Showered, watered, fed. But what if this was a mistake? Val had left the kids alone for hours on end after all…Taihape isn’t exactly a huge place. What had she been doing during that window of time? How hard could she really have been looking?
Passing “jokes” about sometimes wanting to swallow a whole container of pills came to Amy’s mind. Had Val finally decided to live out that punchline, but lost her nerve at the last minute? Could she be trusted, not to go through with it next time around? What if the tipping point, was the fear of leaving her two boys behind? What if next time, she decided to make it a full family affair? End all of their pain?
The huntaway whose paw Amy was in the process of wrapping up, looked up at her as if to say, “reign in the speculation, honey. You’ll get the full story tonight.”
As it turned out, Val could only offer parts of the story. She clutched a hot mug of Dilmah and pushed a plate of macaroon biscuits towards Amy as she spat out a series of lip-heavy words.
“That Trish…It’s one thing to air your Jesus-groupie opinions at me, but to do it within airshot of the boys…” A teaspoon almost fell off the table as she slammed her fist into the yellow tablecloth.
Trish turned up on Val’s front porch that morning. Val—knowing the boys were watching TV in the front room—had thought about asking Trish if they could finish the conversation down at the Cafe, but kept her mouth shut after deciding she might be able to talk Trish off her porch if she folded her arms tight enough. She was wrong.
Granted this is Val’s version of events. But it sounds like, Trish capped off her usual, “You need Jesus in your life. Your Boy’s conditions are a smite from God yada yada yada” rant, with an additional warning, “one of these days, we’re going to send the nuns in to take those poor kids away from you.”
Naturally, this set Val off—did I mention she’s got a temper on her? But the lack of violence and cussing in the version of the story she shared with me, make for a blurry picture of the three-hour window that followed that little encounter.
The parts that seem reasonably credible however, actually came from Charlie and Rui themselves.
It seems they were both listening in—as feared. But, rather than stick around to hear Val’s response, they decided to relieve her of the burden. Picking up a popsicle each and the warmest set of clothes they had, they took themselves down to the nearest intercity bus stop, no cash, but figuring they’d be able to sweet talk their way into a lift out of town—Rui’s idea obviously.
For all his disarming verbal acuity, Rui, wasn’t quite cognisant enough to check the timetable however. By the time they set out, they’d missed the only pass-through bus from Wellington, which had arrived at seven am.
Hence all the hours in the hot sun.
Amy ended her night with a detour to the Chapel—which since 2009 had extended it’s opening hours till ten pm, for the benefit of old man Drout, who after losing his licence for drink-driving could no longer make it back from the paper Mill in time to get in his nightly prayers. Amy’s next quick stop was at Trish Drinkwater’s house, about a kilometre out of town.
Amy made sure to be silent as she crept onto the Drinkwater porch. The double barrel shotty Trish’s hubby kept under the bed had been well advertised around town.
She took the terry-cloth headband, set it against one of the faded black “NZ-med” t-shirts she’d kept in the boot of her car since Uni, and created a makeshift cross out of four sticks of dog biscuit.
She opened the equally neglected pocket bible she’d shoved into her glovebox down at the chapel and opened it to the line of scripture that had stuck with her since her catholic school days.
Luke 6:22: “Blessed are you when men hate you, and ostracize you, and insult you, and scorn your name as evil, for the sake of the Son of Man.”
The cap of her blue vivid pen made a popping sound that sent Amy’s neck hair on end as she leaned over the terry-cloth and scrawled bold, capitalized letters across it. As the pen’s fumes crept up her nose, Amy briefly empathised with those kids who’d developed a glue-huffing habit during the brief years she’d attended public school. As she sucked in those chemical’s and admired her handi-work, she too felt euphoria.
Indeed, the set up formed the splitting image of a nun’s habit. Righteously clutching a cross. The words read. “Jesus Christ Trish, you must feel blessed as can be right now!”
