A Gentle Hell Read Free Page A

said.
    “It’s Bill,” Thatch said.
    “My sister didn’t kill herself,” Tuesday said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Will you marry me under the dogwood tree, Bill? Julie wanted to be married under the dogwood tree. We were all so mad at Julie. She was going to leave us and she was the only one who took care of us.”
    “Tuesday, what do you mean your sister didn’t kill herself?”
    I looked over at Thatch again. He was on his cell phone text-messaging someone, while there we were, surrounded by twelve children and empty Oklahoma farmland. The night rose like smoke. The stars and half-moon sliced off the ends of our fingers. I heard nothing but the children’s slow dance breath and my ribcage breaking and Thatch’s phone going click-click-click.
    Tuesday moved toward me and I realized how tall she was, taller than me or Thatch, her bones a church ceiling.
    “Did you know God died this week?” she whispered, her lips electric against my forehead.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “The preacher says God is inside all of us, but Momma said only rich people get to be God. I think she might be right.”
    “Did someone kill your sister, Tuesday?” I asked.
    She grabbed my hair in her fist and pulled my head back. She kissed me on the forehead.
    “That’s all you’re going to get,” she said, “until after we’re married.”
    She released me. I jerked back and hit my head on the ambulance. Thatch continued to text-message. Click click click. Tuesday and the children fled into the dark and disappeared, as if swallowed by a thick, black-tongued wave.
    I woke the paramedic up by banging on the window and dragged Thatch to the squad car.
    “I think we might have a murder case,” I said as I drove back into town. “You heard what that girl said, didn’t you, Thatch?”
    “Who would murder one of Mimi’s poor, white-trash children? That girl was just messing with you.”
    **********
    When I got back home I couldn’t sleep so I watched late-night news. They were still showing the footage from when the Triple Goddess went to the White House. Everyone in America knew the country belonged to the gods, and not the politicians, but nobody really knew what to think of this new era. The Triple Goddess was a stunner, no doubt, wearing six-inch heels and cruel shadows, walking across the White House lawn in the same dresses that Angelina Jolie wore at the Grammy’s. She had tall, severe bodies, because Cosmo said the most successful women were the tallest, and the most beautiful, but she was a goddess and the bodies couldn’t look too innocent, or welcoming, and could only be sexual in the most alien way.
    “Now that the demiurge is dead,” she said into the microphones with her brass, slow-over-the-water voices, “we will see vast improvements in the quality of life in this country. I’ve already drawn up a nationwide health care plan for the middle class, as well as a plan for several new worship centers to be built in forty-four states.”
    Everyone knew the Triple Goddess killed Jehovah. There were three bodies of the incarnate, all-Supreme Being. There were three trash bags of summer-heated, red exposed fetid god flesh that washed up on the Gulf of Mexico. It couldn’t get much more dark and symbolic than that. She tore Jehovah apart, probably while He was out on his pontoon shark fishing, and then made sure America knew He wasn’t in charge anymore.
    The station received another emergency call from Mimi’s trailer. A domestic abuse call. Thatch and I drove out there in the tar dark.
    “Fuck,” Thatch said while we were on the road, “no cell-phone service here. And they say nationwide coverage.”
    I said nothing.
    “The Triple Goddess is going to start regulating the cell phone companies. So they’ll stop ripping people off. That’s what I heard.”
    “That’s nice,” I said.
    Thatch and I drove up to Mimi’s trailer. All the children were out in the yard, and I had to slam on the brakes to keep from driving