the ax (from novel, KINGDOM)

The mama cries when they wet down her worn out body and cut her hair to the scalp. Only brown clumps remain after. The papa is still out cold, and he’s stripped naked now too. I don’t get that part, how they embarrass them before the punishment, but I guess it helps make them desperate to repent.

I can’t pull myself away from the sight. The mama is a thin woman, with only enough meat on her bones to keep from looking like a skeleton. Four Steppes is a dirt farm. I don’t know when they claimed this parcel and could be that a long time ago it was covered in fertile soil. It’s the town joke that it has the driest dirt around. They have the upward-going steppes though, good timber and even some ingot-metal when they’re not too lazy to mine it, which they mostly are.

Papa of Four Steppes cries when his arms are twisted up by two of the papas. He watches his wife’s anguish. If these were bones people gathered, the punishment would come almost too harsh to watch. Guts would be poured like butchering an animal for dinner.

The whipping starts. Each of the other mamas gets hold of a tough, leather strap and slings it hard against the woman’s back. Her cries burn my ears. The crackle of the impact on her skin startles us all. Each quick jolt comes with a spasm from her and mutual turns of the head from us. It’s hard to believe how much blood splatters. It drips down her legs in forked lines. Her face comes undone in pain.

It goes on like this for a good while until all the women are crying, their arms tired. Every so often one of the mamas tosses a bucket of cold water on the mama. The papas have turned their heads down. But preacher is in a fervor.

“Anael, show this wretch your knowing! Let her understand.”

He shouts in his loudest voice, his face stretched as if in shock. “Show her Anael! Seep into her and show her repentance! Touch all of us with your presence. Oh yes! I feel you! You see through my eyes. Your body, oh yes, I feel it now. You touch her, you feel her pain. Do you feel her, mama of Four Steppes? Annonim, woman, do you feel her? Touch her, touch Anael in return, let her pleasure you. You will be forgiven and made fresh. Yearn for her! Repent woman and you will be rewarded!”

It’s getting past midday and I wonder how long he might go on. No one is paying attention to me anymore. I squirm with each lashing she takes, grow belligerent at each word preacher says. I daydream of gutting papa while no one is looking, think about the witch’s bargain.

“Stop,” I yell and walk toward the mama.

It comes as a shock to them, especially preacher, who is in his divine frenzy. Sweat drips down his cheeks and glistens along his beard. His back is drenched with it too. I ain’t sure anyone is still listening except to note the high pitched sound his voice makes, coming in a frantic rise and fall. The women stop with their whipping. Everyone looks at preacher to know what’s next, but preacher isn’t speaking. He only looks as if he’s trying to keep from killing me.

“Daron, it ain’t your call,” he says.

“I know that isn’t true. This is my family’s business, you only made it yours.”

He stares at me like I’m a wild animal. “Boy, you don’t understand what’s happening here. If your papa wasn’t a drunk maybe he’d have learned you. Get on home or I’ll kick your ass until you can’t shit right.”

This is a moment. He stares me down to where I look away and into the dirt. Preacher’s a strong man, angry more times than not, and I’ve seen him beat on men to near death. His fists are peacemakers. The mama stares at us wild-eyed, desperate, not able to catch a normal breath with that icy water burned into her cuts. I’m not even sure what I thought I could do. They’re all going to do their justice Anael’s way, and that’s that.

“I need my justice too,” I say.

Preacher shoves me in the chest back toward papa of Treeline Forest. I expect to be kicked out, but the moment changes in my favor. The bones are doing their work, nudging little decisions here and there. Preacher tells me to get to the open door, then calls for the papa of Four Steppes to be dragged to the woman’s place, that she’s done with her bit. She is untied, her body withered and stained red, and dragged to the bales. The other papas hold papa of Four Steppes down as a wide, round stump is dragged from the wood pile outside, and with it the ax that had been leaned against that pile.

“Alright boy, we’ll do some justice now,” preacher says and gives me a vicious smile.

“Papa of Four Steppes clan,” he says, “what you done can’t be made good again. But you can be redeemed! That’s the wholesome goodness Anael gives me in this moment. As her ways tell us, as she learns us up from babies, and she guides our knowing through tough, hard years, you will learn redemption through her! Grab his left arm men and put it on this wood.”

Though the papa lurches, the four men splay out his left arm across the wood, the elbow center stump. Preacher gives the ax one slow, test swing. I want to do it myself, but they’d never trust me to stop at one arm. Papa of Four Steppes looks contrite in these seconds beforehand. The writhing stops. The begging stops. His bottom lip quivers and he nods at me, and a part of me feels sadness. It will be a jagged cut by the looks of that ax, notched and wobbly at the end of the shaft.

All of these people spread out in front of me, from the cluster of women on the left, huddled around the mama still naked and wet, her own bowed agony so wretched it tightens my chest, to the men, dirty and brutal in the moment before bloodshed, directly in front of me hovered over the papa. Finally, preacher is on the right with the ax, pacing before he fires away with the deed.

I’m no believer in Anael, not what she says nor has people do. I’m one of those who sees her for the liar she is, and I know how she lies to people when she wants something. But this, a gesture of goodwill maybe to me and my family, even through this is a tortured moment, and we’re all of us aghast at the agony, this all shows something about her power. I feel her in my head now, though maybe she ain’t circling around in mine like she is in preacher’s. I feel her wanting me to express regret too. I think of the times I have felt her presence as power and real force like we all do when we’re young and she appears to gift us language and writing and treasures of whatever crafting she deems we should know. But I think she’s always in there, lurking, teasing her way around, laughing.

The ax handle begins its downward arc, with preacher’s body tensed for acceleration, his hands moving forward before the metal wedge itself actually moves, it suspended above his back. Then it comes, the force driving it first upward with velocity. Papa’s face goes slack and he turns his gaze toward me with a crazed smile. It happens quickly. When the ax finishes its journey through flesh and slams into the wood, I do feel forgiveness.

It occurs to me the moment has been a negotiation of what Nuriel wants and what Anael wants. I feel it. The rage at the papa is gone from me, just as his arm is separated from him, now fresh on the ground yet already growing ashen. I’m still ravenous for his sons, but for today, what needed to happen has happened.

The papa never cries. Once the moment settles the mama whimpers though. Everyone else sighs like you do after orgasm. That drive to do what you were doing is ended, and you wonder how your focus could have driven down to such a pinprick of action. You only want to wash yourself up.

I step outside. The sunlight burns my eyes. The change to warm air from the barn’s damp cold is sudden and brings a tenderness on my skin. I hear more tears and wailing as I climb Garlee, who has been lounging in a triangle of shade on the southeast side of the barn, gnawing on brown grass.

I start off with a gallop and keep it that way for a long distance from them before I slow to an easy walk. The sky has some darker clouds rolling in over the mountains, but otherwise it’s a clear day, and the sun shines with angry vigor. I want Aubrey in my hands, the warmth of her like a winter fire burning hot in a stone pit. It’s only early afternoon, but I feel like I haven’t seen her in years.