The kettle is screaming, and I know if I hadn’t been awake already, I would be now. The house is filled with the high-pitched shriek of rushing steam. “I see . . . I see . . .” Mother says. “You go out with the boys for two days, drinking and who knows what else. Leave me and Peter here to starve. To starve!” She screams this last at him and I see my Father’s face redden. His eyes close tight, then open wide.
“Shut your goddamned mouth!” he yells, spit flying in the lantern light like mist. “Shut it. Shut it. Shut it!”
“You’re horrible, Jack! You’ll wake Peter . . .”
Father slams his hand on the table and Mother, realizing she’s gone too far, pushed him too hard, quickly removes the kettle and pours coffee into a cup next to the stove. The reprieve of the kettle’s whistle is luxurious. “You’re a disappointment,” she says as she pours. “How dare you swear in my house. Use the Lord’s name in vain . . .”
He mumbles something. It sounds like “that’s enough,” but I’m not certain of the words. I just know he’s upset. I’ve never seen him in such a state. His downcast face is stone, his eyes black pearls.
Mother brings the coffee cup to the table. Lips tight as a pulled drawstring. “You aren’t no husband,” she says. “You aren’t even a man!”
He turns to retort just as she arrives with the cup. His elbow knocks it from her hand and the hot coffee drops into his lap.
Father screams in pain, leaps up. The chair clatters to the floor and Mother backs away, hands raised in supplication. Apologies and terror spill from her mouth.
“Enough,” he says.
I watch as Father, with a practiced and casual movement, raises the barrel of the rifle and cocks the lever with a hideous smoothness.
Mother holds up her hands. “Oh Lord Jesus!”
The eruption of the gun shatters the air.
Mother jerks backward as if tugged by the hand of God. She hits the stove with such force that the door pops open and coals fly out in a shower of sparks like burning souls. A lantern on a nearby hook crashes to the ground and fiery oil splatters the floor and wall. Frail curtains catch the hot spray and burn.
There’s a moment where time stands still, and then Father is howling.
“Oh, Sissy!” He puts a dirty hand over his mouth as the room brightens. “Oh damn it, Sissy!” He kneels beside her and sobs.
Wet heat runs down my leg and I look down to see a puddle forming around my foot. When I raise my eyes, Father is once more seating himself at the table.
One wall crawls with flame. Dark smoke rides the low ceiling like storm clouds.
Father turns his head toward my door and for a moment our eyes meet. I imagine how I must look to him. A sliver of son. A bright probing eye in the dark, watching his sins.
Father holds his eyes on me. I make a study of him. Wet eyes and mussed hair. Straggled beard. A sweat-sheened face smeared in prancing red flames. He looks away, back to my mother.
He doesn’t turn toward me again.
I want to cry out, to scream. To run to him.
My teeth chatter. I begin to moan and can’t stop.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe.
All I can do is watch.
He slowly cocks the lever of the Winchester—the very one he’d taught me to shoot with that past summer—puts the grip between his knees and the barrel’s lusterless tip beneath his chin.
Something inside me comes awake and at the last second I shut my eyes.
This shot is duller than the first.
Breathing fast and heavy, I pull open the door and stare boldly at the scene.
For a moment, I see myself as a spectator—a thin shadow shaking before a fiery dragon—crotch-stained and whimpering.
Before me is nothing but death and blood and smoke and flame.
My whole world is fire.
Part One
We Are Many
1
St. Vincent’s Orphanage
Delaware County, Pennsylvania. 1905.
“PETER, WAKE UP.”
I open my eyes to the familiar.
White walls. Two rows of metal-framed beds. Bleached pine floor. Bright pale light bursting from large, uncovered windows that line the east-facing wall. Two large, arched oak doors at the far end of the long room are closed. The winking glimmer of the polished iron cross that hangs above them a constant sentinel. Always watching.
Simon pokes me in the shoulder. “Wake up. You’re having a nightmare.”
I sit up, rub my eyes. Most of the kids are still asleep, so it must be early. Not yet six.
“I’m up,” I say, and shove Simon gently back toward his cot. He laughs and sits down on his mattress, looking out the large window between our beds.
“Might snow today,” he says excitedly, as if that’s a good thing.
“Too soon.” I yawn and stretch. It’s icy cold in the dorm. My thin robe is balled up at my feet and I pull it on over my wool pajamas, which I’ve long grown out of, annoyingly exposing my ankles and wrists. I slip my feet into shoes and follow Simon’s stare through the glass.
The sky outside is white as bone and just as hard. I stand up to get a better look at the grounds.
The surrounding trees are leafless and gray. They look dead and withered. The earth is a wealth of weedy grass that, in the dim light, looks as gray as the trees. Colorless. The barn that holds our horses, sheep, and goats sits to the south. Ahead is the field we’ll be working that morning, pulling what we can from the earth and storing it for the winter, which I’ve heard will be long and harsh. I wonder if any of the boys will die before spring shows its face again, and say a silent prayer for all of them.
I glance at the metal wind-up clock on my dresser—the only furniture we’re allowed—and see it’s a few minutes before six. I’m the only one who has a personal clock, and it’s the only thing I have left from my childhood, my prior life; the only thing I saved when I fled the burning house.
I push in the knob on the clock’s alarm, disabling it. No need to hear the shrill bell to wake me. My memories serve well enough to break my sleep.
“Go wash, Simon. And take Basil with you.”
Basil, a small, sickly, black-haired English boy not even ten years old, watches me and Simon from across the room with wide owl-eyes. He is already fully dressed.
“Oh, why Peter?”
“Because he’s up and ready.”
I watch them as they trudge out the dorm toward the washroom. I study the others in the early-morning light, curious if anyone else has woken.
It seems my nightmare didn’t disturb the others, and I feel badly for rousing Simon. But it’s near dawn now, and Poole will be ringing first bell shortly, expecting us to be dressed and ready before the subsequent bell ten minutes after.
I shed my robe and pajamas, begin pulling on the heavy shirt and pants folded neatly inside my dresser. It will be cold today, and the idea of winter’s arrival worries me for reasons I don’t fully understand. I’ve been through many winters here at St. Vincent’s and they’re all the same. A seemingly eternal purgatory of cold and dark.
And yet, as I look through the window at the dreary landscape, I find myself frowning with worry.
My melancholy breaks when the first bell brays its command from the foyer. I turn to the room and see the lumps beneath the sheets begin to stir and groan.