Engines of the Broken World Read Free Page B

the cup. The pants were just about the best I could do, so I folded them up and put them aside and tucked the needle and thread carefully into Mama’s sewing kit. I supposed it was mine now, though that didn’t seem right. And still the Minister just sat, staring into the dark, the tail always moving, so that for a moment I thought maybe it was nervous; only that was silly, because a made thing couldn’t get nervous.
    The light was poor and ruddy in the bedroom, but bright enough to see that Gospel had taken over Mama’s bed as someone should have, but it might ought to have been me, since I’d been here all the time taking care of her and he hadn’t. But he was older, and anyway, he got to the bed first. Probably he wouldn’t stay to use it long, but then, I supposed neither would I, and the bed, the entire house, would go to rot and ruination like so many other places around here.
    I tugged out my bunk, the upper one, and then flipped down the supports that my father had built so long ago that I couldn’t remember it. The lower bed in the cupboard was bigger, and I was only just still able to sleep in my own. I should probably have moved to Gospel’s like he moved to Mama’s, but it smelled like my brother, all farts and sweat and greasy hair and wild things, and I hadn’t had any time to air it out, so I just hopped on up into my own bed.
    “Did you shut the door?” Gospel whispered.
    I hadn’t, because we almost never did, not since Papa died and the big bed just became a bed, not anything else ever. “No. Why would I?”
    “The Minister’s out there, not in here, right?”
    “Yeah,” I said. I wiggled into the quilts and worn sheets that made up my bedding, not caring to climb back down for Gospel’s silly idea, whatever it was. Turned out I didn’t have to, because he rolled out of bed suddenly and bounded to the door, throwing it shut in a flash. Beyond, I heard the scrabble of claws on the floor, then scratching at the door.
    “The Minister wants in,” I said softly. In the dim light, I could barely see Gospel, could barely tell he was pacing over to my bedside. His shoulders and head were above the level of my body, and he rested one hand on the frame that held my mattress.
    “I know it does. That’s why I kept it out. It wants to hear everything we say, Merce. And maybe I don’t want it to hear every word I’ve got to say to you.”
    “You already said you want to run away while it was there, right in front of us. What’s worse?”
    He breathed out slowly, completely. “There is worse, Merciful. And I got to tell you, because I can’t tell anybody else. And I don’t want that made thing to hear, because who knows why it was made?”
    “It was made to keep us on the righteous path, the path of goodness, and to tend to us, body and soul.” It was what we were taught, and it was what I was supposed to say, and I even think I believed it, most often.
    The scratching was almost frantic now, but the door was sturdy wood, and there was no way the Minister was going to get in.
    “Come and sit on the bed, away from the door, and we’ll talk. I got a lot to tell you. You’re clever, Merciful, and I want to hear what you think.” He stepped back and flopped onto the big bed, crawling over and away toward the headboard, and then settled down where the light was a tiny bit better, sitting cross-legged, with his hair falling into his face like it always did.
    I didn’t want to move, finally getting a little warm, and not wanting to hear whatever cockamamie nonsense Gospel was about to spew out. But he was my brother, and my mother had just died. I had no one else, so I went to listen to him speak, quilts wrapped around my shoulders, on the bed that was almost still warm from the dead woman.

 
    T HREE
    I dragged the tails of quilts over the wooden floor to the head of the bed. Gospel had set himself on the fire side of things so he would be a little warmer, but I had my pile of covers, which