Shelter (1994) Read Free

Industrial School for Boys where he'd spent the last six years. He lay in bed in his closet room behind the small kitchen and listened to Preacher pray alone in the parlor furnished with folding chairs, chairs filled three meetings a week with Christ's pilgrims. Phrases cut and slashed across Parson's vision like colors and worked their way into his sleep.
Hear ye, Jerusalem! Cast out your sinners and entreat your guests, slick with the liquid gold of the Devil's songs
... Parson mouthed the cadences of the lines and forgot what his name had been before, at the orphanage in Huntington, the city and the dingy park, at the foster homes where he'd always just arrived or was preparing to leave until the last, the one where he'd set the house on fire to get away and old Mr. Harkness had died, stone drunk on the broken bathroom floor, where he'd staggered from Parson's bed. Harkness was one of the Devil's weaker servants, but foster homes for older kids were hard to come by in the coal towns, and the social workers sometimes placed boys with a widower on a farm. The caseworker called Harkness, rheumy-eyed and sober,
the picture of sincerity;
Parson had been there four months, along with another boy of seven or eight who never talked, just ate his rice and beans and grits and boiled chicken at Harkness's scarred table without looking up. There was the familiar mud of the country winter and the hogs and the six goats to milk, and that was all right, the goats were warm and quick. Their strange vertical pupils scared the little kid, who tailed along after Parson regardless, eager to be outside because Harkness was in the kitchen, drinking. After dark he took his Wild Turkey out of the tin cup that hung by the door on a hook. Even then he didn't hit them; he staggered, cooking suppers, and reeled around in the downstairs rooms after they'd gone to bed. Later he came up, crying softly or whimpering, and lay down fully clothed on their beds. The little boy slept under his bed but Parson lay wrapped in his blankets, motionless under Harkness's tentative, cautious touch until the old man fell asleep or stumbled away, afraid. Now in the shack at night Parson watched the shapely dark congeal into faces, all their powerful faces, his succession of keepers and parents. Harkness wasn't the worst of them but he was helpless, sober all morning at his half-time job as a postal worker, offering his apologetic grin, seeing their clothes were clean and making a show of buying new schoolbooks instead of used ones. The night of the fire was cold and Harkness's cold face felt dead to the touch, used and stretched like putty. His mouth and the smell of the whiskey were on Parson's ears and neck. Harkness begged to get into the blankets and did, then walked to the bathroom, fell down. Parson got up and went downstairs. There were still hot coals in the fireplace and he pulled the iron grate across the bricks to the rug, and the rug caught and began to blaze. It was warm quickly and there was a lot of light, and Parson went back up and pulled the kid from under the bed and they went out the bathroom window, walking over Harkness, and as they slid down the roof they could feel it was already hot and smoke came off the shingles. The kid said they'd better get the goats out, since the barn was attached to the house. They did and the goats went off, their hooves crackling over dry leaves in the dark.
    The boys watched the fire from the edge of the woods. They weren't even cold, the old place made such flames, and later at the police station there was a Christmas tree on the desk. Parson told them he made the fire but no one believed him, and the kid said nothing. Parson said other things, how the Devil had licked his ears and breathed on him with his sick breath and begged to get warm. Then he was sent to Proudytown and the psychologist found out he couldn't read. He learned, decoding old texts no longer used by the county schools, a few words to a page with