The Sound of Building Coffins Read Free

had been generous, in His way, with every one of them. All were healthy and happy children—save for Cholera, who died after only two months on this earth, ironically, from cholera.
    Although he believed it wrong to admit a favorite, Father Morningstar secretly saw his youngest as the gem of the lot. Although Gloria had died on the occasion of Typhus’ birth, Morningstar knew his wife would have gladly consented to that sacrifice to bring a creature so magical into the world. It was only a shame she hadn’t lived to know her little Typhus, her reason for dying.
    About a mile and a half northwest of Congo Square, the Morningstar family’s tiny two-room house sat on a too-big piece of marshy ground too near where the Bayou St. John met the Old Basin Canal—a manmade waterway dredged from the bayou to the city’s heart nearly a century ago. It was a poor choice of real estate, prone to flooding—but the Morningstars had few possessions to lose and, in a pinch, could always relocate to the little church near the Girod Street potter’s field for the few days it took the waters to subside. Building a home on flood ground was something few were foolish enough to do, but the recklessness of the choice rewarded the family with unprecedented privacy in the fast growing city. Right out the front door was pure, wild beauty; dark, soft ground alive with salt meadow codgrass, water hyssops, and towering cypress trees—the latter entwined with boskoyo vines that proudly sprouted their sweet smelling violet and white flowers. At night there was only blackness, but if you ventured out with an oil lamp the ghostly trumpet-shaped blossoms of moonflowers would make themselves known.
    The two rooms of the Morningstar house had their work cut out for them with five occupants to accommodate, so functionality was the rule. The larger was for sleeping and storing—the littler one for cooking, eating, and praying. The living water of the bayou could be strained then boiled; then used for washing or drinking. There was no real need for anything more—it was a fine place to live.
    Tonight the timid hum of the children’s sleeping sounds offered guilty comfort to Noonday’s weary heart, and the stove fire failed to relieve his chill. He meditated on the glowing embers as they struggled to maintain orange—but meditation and prayer did not soothe on this night. He stabbed gently at the burning wood with a pointed iron, absently noting the fluttering patterns of white as ash broke apart and drifted to the stove’s base.
    Earlier today, Noonday had done a thing that had brought shame to his heart, having put his own well-being above that of an innocent. Called to the home of Sicilian immigrants, he had believed he was to perform the last rites for a fatally ill child, a common enough sort of call. But when he entered the house a smell like burning compost hung in the air and a heavy sense of dread settled into his bones. The child appeared asleep in its crib as Noonday read aloud from Matthew 18:
    “ Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
    “ And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me.
    “ But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
    At that, the child’s eyes sprang open to lock with his own.
    It was in this moment of eye contact that Noonday heard the voice of Jesus telling him to leave, telling him that to stay would mean to sacrifice himself in vain, to make his own children orphans—and The Savior’s tone had not been gentle in the telling. Noonday had often heard the nagging voice of God in his head, had never before questioned it. But the kind of blatant abandonment suggested by his God today felt wrong to him. The words of the reporter who’d stopped him outside the house had echoed his