Part One

It was the last thing on Mary Flynn’s mind when she crawled into bed that night, but by the time she closed her eyes for sleep, the overwhelming lure of sin had wrapped itself around her neck, as comforting as a scarf.

The year was 1853. Mary was ten years old, a little girl in a small southern Illinois town, and each night, before blowing out the candle in her room, her father told her a story from the Bible.

“Adam named me serpent, so serpent I shall be,” her father had begun tonight. “I watched Adam name every beast of the field, the cattle and the fowl, and then the next day I watched Eve form of Adam’s rib, and I thought, she’s mine.” He reached out and pinched Mary in the area of her ribs, and she squealed.

The entire time her father spoke, Mary imagined the snake speaking directly to her. Was the snake smiling? Yes. Well, sort of. All snakes smiled, more or less. But this snake was meeting Mary’s eyes as it spoke and slithered closer.

Her father concluded, “And that’s when I saw something in Eve I had not seen before, something that made me want to slither from a branch and onto her arm, and then slither from her arm to her breasts, and then wrap my cold flesh against her warm flesh, tightening ever so gently so as to feel her against me, the two of us one flesh, as she had been with Adam. I saw it in her eyes, how she would enjoy this, and then she reached for the fruit and plucked it from its stem.”

Her father set his black cowboy hat atop his head and then put his lips close to the flame, so close Mary was certain he was going to burn them, and then he smiled and blew gently, allowing the flame to flicker and grow before he blew harder. The room went dark.

Her father, the Sheriff, extinguished lives in much the same manner. He would tell a story to the gathering crowd while the criminal stood with a noose around his neck, wrists tied behind his back, and rope so tight around his ankles so that the condemned man had to be carried to his final destination. A balled-up kerchief would be stuffed inside the criminal’s mouth. It was too late for pleas, her father reasoned, and he certainly didn’t want to be interrupted while telling the crowd a story, sometimes the same story he’d told Mary the night before – the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the story of Abraham giving his son Isaac back to God, or, as tonight, the story of the serpent and the Tree of Knowledge.

“Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan,” he yelled last week from the gallows, quoting from memory. “If you do and they cry out to me, I will certainly hear their cry. My anger will be aroused, and I will kill you with the sword. Your wives will become widows and your children fatherless.”

He stood by the lever that opened the trapdoor, but instead of simply pulling it, he waited until the crowd had worked itself into a lather – the wronged party yelling for the lever to be pulled, the condemned man’s family begging for mercy.

At her father’s request, Mary had gathered as many of her classmates as she could find, and they called out for the Sheriff to pull the lever, parroting the adults beside them. And then, finally, her father pulled the wooden stick, the floor below the criminal’s bound feet opened, and the crowd fell silent as the condemned man’s neck snapped. The dead man’s family wailed loudly, running to the gallows before deputies could cut the body down.

The candle’s been blown out, Mary thought upon seeing the dead man. Smiling, she shut her eyes.

•

Until she was ten years old, Mary held a prestigious and much-envied position among her classmates as the daughter of the town’s sheriff, but then the cold wind blew and a shift occurred. Most of the adults in town remained at home during the executions, and once some of them found out that Mary had been luring their children to these displays, they openly criticized her for what she was doing.

“You’re an evil little girl,” they told her while other parents clutched their children closer whenever Mary appeared in the town square, as though she were capable of the most heinous acts.

Mary still had her friends, but once word circulated that she was an evil girl, it eventually penetrated her inner circle. One by one, the girls dropped away until one day Mary found herself all alone.

And then came the snake.

•

For as long as Mary could remember, she’d always walked to school with her friends, cutting through acres of woods together, using a path that had come about from years of use as a shortcut. The rest of the woods flourished, a dense patch of bizarre weeds, some poisonous to the touch, and vines that slowly strangled whatever they had seductively wrapped themselves around. There were dozens of fallen trees, leafless and gray, including one large tree lying across their path, requiring the children to climb over it each morning, risking a torn dress or skinned knee.

After rumors of Mary’s wickedness took root and spread, her friends stayed several yards ahead of her, as though they didn’t know her, picking up their pace even as she called out for them to slow down.

“Please,” she whined. “I can’t walk as fast as you in these shoes. Please slow down.”

Her friends, speaking amongst themselves, acted as though they hadn’t heard her. Only Rachel, the last friend that still talked to Mary, waved her arm and called out, “Hurry up, Mary! We can’t wait for you!”

It was an unseasonably hot May morning. Mary attempted to cross the fallen tree, but before she could swing herself over the trunk, her left leg snagged on something. It burned, too – a searing hot pain. She attempted to detach her leg from whatever had taken hold, but her leg barely budged. The pain grew sharper, her leg hotter. When she finally looked down, she saw that a cottonmouth had sunk its fangs into her calf and wasn’t letting go. It had come from the nearby Big Muddy River, no doubt, out of which snakes slithered every fall, searching for cracks and crevices to burrow for the winter.

Mary almost fainted at the sight of the snake, but she held on long enough to shriek for help.

“A snake’s got me! Please come back!”

But the girls walked faster, rounding a bend and disappearing from Mary’s view. They never even looked back.

Mary slid off the tree and tried running home, hoping the snake would let go of her, but the snake held on, and Mary’s progress was excruciatingly slow. She was barely able to move the leg that was being bitten. When she looked behind her and saw that the snake was longer than she was tall, she fell to her knees. She felt as though she were swimming through the woods, each wave of bark and stone growing darker than the last, until everything turned black.

•

What Mary saw when she opened her eyes was an old man’s lips pressing tightly against her bare leg. First, she screamed and tried wriggling away, but the man, keeping his lips firmly in place, looked up at her, and his eyes told the whole story: Don’t move…I’m saving your life.

And this was, in fact, what he was doing. He was sucking the venom from her leg. He would suck then spit, and then he would suck some more. When he was done sucking out the venom, he stood and lifted Mary up into the air, draping her over his shoulder, as though she were a sack of grain, and began walking into town. He didn’t speak. He was as old as her grandfather but stronger than anyone she knew, except for maybe her father. He picked up his pace.

“Am I going to die?” Mary asked the man carrying her.

The man didn’t answer.

He carried her to Dr. Merchant’s front door and kicked with his foot. The doctor himself opened the door but took a step back at the sight of the man.

“What did you do to her?” Dr. Merchant asked.

“Snake bite on the leg,” the man said. “Big one.” He handed the girl over and said, “I seen to sucking out the poison.”

“Okay then,” the doctor said. “You can go now.”

The old man regarded Mary in the doctor’s arms. He tried to touch Mary’s head, as though to say, “You’ll be all right,” but the doctor stepped back and said, “Go on now. I’ve got work to do.” The doctor carried Mary into another room, shutting the door between her and the man who had saved her life. The doctor said, “I don’t know who’s got more evil in him – the snake that bit you or that old man.” He set Mary down atop an examination table and said, “Let’s see your leg now, dear.”

•

The old man, it turned out, was Phineas T. Rider. Rumor was that Phineas had murdered a child twenty years earlier, and although he’d been found not guilty – the child’s broken neck and head injury were blamed on a fall from Phineas’ hayloft – there were some in town who maintained that Phineas, a mysterious character who lived alone, was somehow responsible. A year after the child’s death, Phineas further isolated himself, rarely coming to town. His house, choked by weeds, had started to look like a natural part of the Earth itself, a berm of vines and moss, according to the few people who claimed to have seen it. Until the day he carried Mary to the doctor’s front door, it had been two years since anyone had laid eyes on him. Many people had just assumed the old man had died, but no one had bothered to follow up on their conjecture.

Upon learning that Phineas T. Rider had saved his daughter’s life, the Sheriff said, “Whether that child died by his hand all those years ago or not, he’s square with me. His debt’s been paid.” On other occasions, the Sheriff said, “I never did believe he’d killed that child. You can’t keep twenty-four watch over your own hayloft, now can you?” Weeks after the snake bite occurred, the Sheriff said, “I should pay the old man a visit. To offer my thanks.” But he never did.

Mary saw how easily it could happen – the accusation followed by isolation – because she had seen it happen to herself. She also saw how the old man’s act of saving her was his way to set things right with the townsfolk. Her father called it redemption.

“Some men eventually redeem themselves. Others are incapable of it,” he said. “Those are the ones we hang.”

•

As her leg healed, she spent a good deal of time thinking about Phineas T. Rider. What did he do all day? What did his house really look like? Was there anyone – anyone at all – to whom he spoke regularly?

When she was ready to go back to school, she decided to look for Phineas’s house on her walk through the woods. The few friends who had been with her the day of the snakebite no longer spoke to her, leaving her to walk through the woods alone, which was fine: they certainly wouldn’t have understood Mary’s fascination with a man who had been accused of murdering a child.

During that first week, as hard as she tried, she couldn’t see anything that resembled a house. But then she had an idea. She waited until a cool night and then walked to the highest elevation in town, which she had already staked out, and from this vantage point she peered out over the woods looking for evidence of Phineas’s house. And sure enough she found a thin twist of smoke deep in the woods. From the best she could determine, the house was located closer to the south part of the woods, where no path could be found. She would have to fight her way through weeds and fallen trees, risking more snakes and God only knew what else, but seeing where Phineas lived had become more than just idle curiosity: it had become a chance to glimpse her own future. This could be me, she mused.

•

The next morning, Mary set off to find the old man.

Before she could veer off the path toward where she believed Phineas lived, a group of boys and girls stood waiting for her by the fallen tree.

Andrew White was a fat boy whose double chin waddled when he turned his head, and until this moment, Mary didn’t even realize that Andrew had any friends. He stepped out from the whispering assembly and said, “Let’s see it.”

“Let’s see what, Andrew?” Mary said. She grinned defiantly, expecting those who normally would have spoken ill of Andrew White to smile along with her, but all eyes remained on Andrew, who held some heretofore unseen power over her old friends.

“Let’s see the mark on your leg,” Andrew demanded. He was holding a Bible. Mary saw that now. Andrew’s father was a minister with a tiny church in the deep woods, but Mary had never met anyone who worshipped there.

“We’re going to be late for school,” a girl behind Andrew complained. Mary had assumed the complaint was leveled at Andrew for making this silly request, but then the girl said, “Come on, Mary. We’re not playing. Do what Andrew tells you to do.”

Mary took a deep breath. Sensing the mood had shifted, Mary began to shiver. “Okay then,” she said, and she hiked up her skirt to reveal the two still-crimson fang marks. The skin around the marks was as puffy as a snake’s throat.

Andrew White moved closer to examine Mary’s leg. The other children formed a circle around her, as though they’d rehearsed this moment. Andrew knelt down, set the Bible on the dirt, and took Mary’s leg in both hands, the way he might hold a small, valuable statue. While on his knees, he peered up at Mary once, and she remembered dragging the long snake behind her, barely able to move her leg at all. A chill ran up through her.

Andrew picked up his Bible, stood, brushed off his knees, and walked backwards, until he had reached the circle of Mary’s former friends. He raised his Bible in the air and shook it while pointing at Mary’s leg with his free hand.

“Behold!” he yelled. “The mark of the beast!”

Mary opened her mouth to laugh, but the other children reached into their satchels, removed various objects, and began throwing what they held at Mary. Mary didn’t move at first, frozen in place as her head, torso, and legs were hit with old, hardened bread, a ball of twine, a piece of fruit. But then, as more things hit her, she screamed and crouched, yelling for them to stop.

“Satan lives among us!” Andrew called out.

Small pebbles, a pencil, and an apple core struck Mary. A clump of dirt exploded against her ear, causing her to tip over onto her side and clutch her head.

When Phineas T. Rider stepped out from the woods, the children scattered, all except for Andrew White. Andrew held the Bible up to Phineas and said, “Are you going to kill me, too?” He asked this without fear. It was more of a challenge, a dare, but Phineas ignored Andrew, scooping Mary off the ground and carrying her safely away, into the woods.

•

“You and me,” Phineas said as he carried Mary, “we’re the same.”

Mary had her arms around Phineas’ neck. She was shivering and sniffling.

“How did you know I needed help?” she asked.

“I din’t,” he said. “Two times you been where I walk. Same place.”

“They said I had the mark of the beast,” Mary said.

Phineas nodded. “They would.”

Phineas reached a house that looked as she’d imagined it, like something out of a fairy tale: low to the ground and covered in vines and weeds. He carried her inside and set her on a bed that was no more than a board covered by a thin blanket. There was only one room, dark and cool, and it smelled smoky. Phineas lit two candles. He busied himself at the corner of the house, opening cabinet doors and then stirring something in a bowl. Mary thought he was making her something to eat, but when he returned, he nodded at her cuts.

In the bowl was paste, and Phineas used a wooden spoon to apply the paste to Mary.

“Use it my own self,” Phineas said. “Look at me. As old as old gets.”

Mary nodded. She showed him the places it hurt most – below her left ear, her right thigh, both elbows.

As Phineas smeared paste onto each place, Mary thought she could see a pair of eyes peering into the house from a window that wasn’t entirely covered with vines.

“It’s him!” Mary screamed. “It’s Andrew come to get me!”

“You’re safe with me,” Phineas said.

But she wasn’t safe with Phineas. She felt in in her chest.

Phineas finished applying paste to Mary’s wounds and told her to get some rest.

“I need to go to school,” Mary said.

Phineas said, “And who’ll be waiting for you there?”

Mary could still see them, Andrew and her old friends, as though they were ghosts now surrounding her, their hands reaching into satchels, pulling out things to throw at her. She understood why her father hung the men he did, those incapable of redemption. She started to drift off as Phineas sat in a chair across the room and lit a pipe, the sweet smoke traveling toward Mary, wrapping around her like a silk cocoon.

•

Mary was asleep on the old man’s bed when a distinct noise invaded her dreams: a hive of bees. The buzzing grew louder and louder, straddling both Mary’s dream life and her waking life, and for a moment, as she opened her eyes and tried to focus, she was unsure where she was, whose unfamiliar bed she was in, or what was happening.

The room was lit with four candles now, but it must have been night for she could see flickering torches outside. Mary stumbled out of bed and ran to the window through which she had thought Andrew White was peering earlier. The buzz was a crowd of people outside Phineas’ door, some young, some old, including her father, and the door to the shack was about to give way as someone outside attempted to cleave it open with an axe.

Phineas sat calmly in a chair, his eyes fixed on the door.

“What’s happening?” Mary asked. Her hands were shaking. Wave after wave of shivers ran up through her.

“They think I’ve done evil,” he said.

Mary, her voice strained, said, “What do you mean?”

Phineas shook his head, resigned. “It’s coming to an end now.”

Mary approached the door. She yelled, “Go away! Leave us alone!”

“There’s no stopping an approaching storm,” Phineas said. “I’ve seen it before.”

Each time the axe hit the door, Mary screamed. It was as though the axe was meant for her. And maybe it was meant for her – all those things thrown at her earlier that day, pelted as she was by whatever her classmates could get their hands on. Maybe they’d gone to town to gather more people to dole out an even harsher punishment. She remembered his voice, high and shrill: Behold! The mark of the beast!

Mary collapsed to the floor as the door split in two. Several people kicked the broken door so that it opened down the middle. Two men pulled her from the old man’s house even as she protested, screaming and punching, her heels collecting splinters along the floor.

“What are you doing?” she yelled. “Let me go!”

That’s when she saw a noose hanging from the thick branch of a tree. Sitting in the tree was an older boy she recognized from school, a boy who had once killed a frog with the side of his fist. He had evidently climbed up there to tie the noose to the branch.

Mary was certain they were dragging her to the noose, so certain that she wailed and kicked, tears streaking her face. But then she saw her father lead Phineas T. Rider to the tree, along with two other men, and together they quickly bound his hands behind his back and his ankles together, and then lifted him up into the air so that the older boy in the tree could place the noose around his neck. For a moment, Phineas looked as though he were floating up into the sky on his own, as though God were saving him from the hands of man. But then the boy in the tree tightened the noose around Phineas’s neck.

“No!” Mary yelled. “He saved me!”

“Hush now,” an older woman said to Mary. “The devil’s speaking through you.”

Mary spotted Andrew White in the distance, clutching his Bible in both hands, his lips moving to prayer.

Mary pointed at Andrew White and screamed, “It was him. He attacked me!”

Andrew White’s parents, as fat and pasty as their son, stepped in front of Mary and said, “It’s a sin to lie, girl.”

“You’re murderers!” Mary yelled. “Murderers!”

Because there was no platform for Phineas to stand on, no trapdoor to open beneath his feet, the men let him hang there for a few minutes as he choked, his eyes growing wider.

Finally, Mary’s father wrapped his arms around the man’s ankles, which dangled near her father’s neck, and he yanked down as hard as he could. He did this a few more times, just to be sure that Phineas’s neck had indeed snapped.

Fat Andrew White lifted his Bible into the air and said, “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

“I hate you!” Mary screamed. She broke away from whoever had been holding onto her and charged Andrew. Grabbing his doughy face, she tried sinking her fingers into his eyes. Andrew dropped his Bible and a howl released from his mouth as Mary pressed harder, all the while pushing him backwards, toward a tree. Something had come apart inside her, and she was acutely aware, even as she was doing what she was doing, that her actions were wrong…and yet she couldn’t stop. Andrew was helpless – weak, even – and Mary was confident beyond doubt that she could kill the boy.

It took three adults, all men, to pull Mary from Andrew as another man pried her fingers from the boy’s eyes. When her fingers came free, she saw that Andrew White’s eyes had been clenched shut but that he was crying. She kicked his Bible at him. While a man she didn’t know kept his arms wrapped around her torso, her father lifted her legs and held them together to keep her from kicking.

“Get some rope,” her father called out.

“You’re going to hang me, too, aren’t you?” she said. “Good! I want you to!”

“I should,” her father said. “But not today. There’s still some hope you can be redeemed.”

“Is there?” she asked. The words came out of her mouth like venom from a fang.

“There is,” his father said calmly. “There surely is.”

It was all Mary could do not to spit in his face. She realized that this was her new self, the new Mary, and that whatever line she had crossed would be hard to back away from now. She suddenly hated everyone in this vile town, the adults, her classmates, her own parents. They were all here to make her life miserable, every last one of them, even the babies yet to be born in this unholiest of places. They could all burn in Hell for eternity, as far as she was concerned. Every last one of them.

Part Two

After the incident with Phineas T. Rider – a topic her father refused to discuss – Mary wasn’t allowed to return to school. Instead, an old woman named Olivia Purdy, who had been a schoolteacher for over thirty years, came to the house to teach Mary, ending each day with a reading from the Bible, this at the request of Mary’s father.

Mary’s mother, Bernadette – a tall, striking woman with black hair and eyes as blue as sapphires – often excused herself whenever Mrs. Purdy came over.

“Oh, take the air,” Mrs. Purdy liked to say. “It’s good for you.”

“I think I will,” Bernadette would reply, and if Mrs. Purdy wasn’t looking, she’d smile and roll her eyes conspiratorially at Mary, an acknowledgment of the old woman’s silliness. Mrs. Purdy was, in many ways, silly – she wore tiny glasses on the tip of her nose and enunciated each and every word – but she was also a kind woman who did not think Mary was an evil girl for the things she had done. And Mrs. Purdy would surely have heard about Mary since the entire town had heard. Ten years old, and her fate had been sealed.

•

Four years came and went – four years during which her father had refused to mention the incident. One day, when Mary was fourteen, Olivia Purdy stopped mid-lesson and said, “I’m not feeling well today, dear. I think we’ll just end here.”

There were many days that Olivia Purdy didn’t feel well – she was never shy about documenting her various aches and pains – but she had never ended a lesson early.

“Are you all right?” Mary asked, reaching down and touching her fang marks, which she did whenever she was nervous, which was often. The fang marks had never gone away. Several times each day, without realizing what she was doing, Mary would reach down and rub two fingers over the marks, the way another person might pinch the bridge of her nose or chew her nails.

“Don’t worry about me now,” Mrs. Purdy said. “Nothing a little rest won’t take care of.”

Mary hugged her goodbye and saw her to the door.

“I’ll check on you later,” Mary said.

Mrs. Purdy nodded then made her way uneasily down the front stoop, heading in the opposite direction from the main thoroughfare. The old woman lived on the outskirts of town in a house no larger than the front room where Mary took her lessons. Mary had been there only twice before, but she could still recall the smallness of the house and the smell of it, like damp dirt and rotting fruit.

After Mrs. Purdy left, Mary paced about, unsure what to do with herself. Then she became worried about Mrs. Purdy. It wasn’t like her to leave mid-lesson. What if something serious was wrong with her? She was old, and like a lot of old women Mary had known in her life, Mrs. Purdy was likely to die sooner than later. Mary reached down, about to touch the fang marks again, but caught herself this time. She needed, she realized, to find her mother. Her mother would know what to do.

Outside in the brisk air, Mary couldn’t remember the last time she had walked alone while other children were in school, and she worried someone might scold her, grab her by the arm, and take her to her father, whose jail was in a nearby log cabin. She decided it would be best to walk with purpose, head up, long strides, nothing apologetic or meek in her demeanor. Walking past First Hide and Leather National Bank, Peabody’s Dry Goods, and the post office, Mary casually glanced around to see if anyone noticed her, but no one gave her a suspicious look. In fact, no one seemed to recognize her. Was it all about how one carried oneself? Was that how one got what one wanted from this world? She continued on, past the feed store and the general store, past the house where Mrs. Kent made dresses while her husband, Mr. Kent, made hats, past the land office. That’s when she finally spotted her mother.

Mary hesitated before approaching. Her mother was talking to Ephraim Flynn, the odd fellow who sold medicinal tonics and remedies from a cart he set up each day at the side of the road. What could her mother possibly need from him, this man who sold a bag of live insects to be worn around the neck? Her mother didn’t have chicken pox, cholera, or consumption. She didn’t suffer from whooping cough or convulsions. Mary wasn’t sure what any of these maladies were, but she’d heard people mention them, sometimes whisper them, and she could tell by their expressions that none were good. Did her mother already know about Mrs. Purdy’s illness, and was she describing the old woman’s symptoms to Ephraim Flynn? But how would she have known this already?

Mary’d had a nightmare once about Ephraim Flynn. In it, Ephraim approached her with his bag of insects and lowered its string over her head, settling it against the back of her neck. As he backed away, the string tightened like a noose, choking Mary, and bugs crawled out from holes in the bag, their tiny legs and antenna touching her flesh. She screamed so loud in the dream that she woke herself up. Covered in sweat and breathing hard, she opened her eyes and swatted her arms and chest, trying to knock away the dozens of bugs that weren’t there.

For a moment Mary considered the possibility that her mother was buying a potion for her or her father, but why? Neither was sick. This theory, however, dissolved when Mary saw her mother laughing at something Ephraim had said. When her mother placed the back of her hand against her mouth to hide the laugh, Mary knew with absolute certainty what was happening. She knew because she, too, had laughed that way once.

It had been after church a year ago when Ephraim’s son Jeremiah sat next to her on the pew. He had a lazy eye into which Mary could read any number of things, and he had a thick swoop of hair that hung interestingly over his forehead. Throughout the sermon, he had looked over at her several times. One time, he pretended he was falling asleep, but then he opened his eyes wide and smiled at her. After church, as the congregation mingled outside, he walked right up to her and said, “The preacher looks like a toad,” and Mary laughed – too loud. And then she raised the back of her hand up to her mouth, to shield her laughter so others wouldn’t know. But what she really didn’t want anyone to know was that she liked this boy. She liked him in a manner that she had never liked any other boy. Mary thought about him for weeks afterward and imagined all sorts of things she could never tell anyone. Some nights, thinking about him, Mary felt on fire. She’d wake in the middle of the night, tangled in her blankets, her arms wrapped so tightly that she’d be unable to move at first, until, after quite a struggle, she wriggled free.

But Ephraim Flynn? His father?

Her mother looked around after she laughed, as Mary would have done, and then she touched Ephraim’s shoulder with her fingertips and backed away. Ephraim smiled, but it was furtive, and he quickly packed up his supposed cures into his pushcart. While Mary’s mother headed in one direction, Ephraim proceeded in another.

Mary needed to talk to her mother about poor Mrs. Purdy, but she decided to follow Ephraim Flynn instead, although she couldn’t have said precisely why. She stayed several yards behind him, surreptitiously glancing behind her, taking ten steps forward before stopping to assess her surroundings. She had to remind herself that the best way to remain invisible was to be visible, and so she held her head up and maintained a confident gait while still calculatedly lagging behind the peculiar man who himself appeared to be on a dire mission.

Ephraim pushed his cart well beyond any of the public businesses, down streets where there were only boarding houses and horses tied to hitching posts. The further he pushed, the fewer boarding houses there were, until he reached a stretch of weedy land on which sat an old barn. There were not many old barns in these parts, since most of the buildings had been constructed in the last ten years when the city officially became a city, but there were, here and there, a few rickety buildings remaining from the first settlers, and this barn appeared to be one of them.

Ephraim pushed his cart into a patch of overgrown shrubs, as though he had done this many times before, and then he walked over to the barn and pulled open one of its large doors. The door creaked shut behind him.

Since no one else was around, Mary decided that now was a good time to be furtive, walking on the balls of her feet, creeping slowly toward the barn. Mary knew this wasn’t where he lived because she had been to his house many times, trying to talk Ephraim’s son, Jeremiah, into going to the hangings downtown. It was Jeremiah’s mother, in fact, who had first spread the notion that Mary was an evil little girl for doing such a thing; it was Jeremiah’s mother who mentioned Mary’s name in the same breath with Satan’s.

Mary crept around the corner of the barn, expecting her mother to appear any second from the direction she and Ephraim had just come. Deep down, she knew this was what would happen, because she knew what sorts of plans she’d have made with Jeremiah if she could have made plans with him. She knew she’d have made such plans because of how her temperature rose at night and because of the kinds of things she thought about, those things that would forever stay inside her head, lest someone use it as proof that she and Satan were indeed of the same mind.

Mary waited.

Sooner or later, she thought. Sooner or later her mother would come walking toward the barn, and all the puzzle’s pieces would fit snugly together.

A good deal of time passed before the barn door opened. Mary crouched, expecting to see an impatient Ephraim Flynn, but it was her mother. She must have taken a short cut and arrived before Mary and Ephraim.

Mary’s mother brushed off her dress, smoothing the wrinkles, while looking around for spectators, but there were none that she could see. Mary sunk even lower to the ground, but then a sudden fear of a snake biting her caused her to spring back up in plain sight. Fortunately, her mother was already on her way, walking quickly (too quickly, Mary thought) in a part of town where she had no business to be.

Mary made her way promptly to the street, hoping to escape before she was spotted, but when the barn door creaked open again, Ephraim Flynn emerged whistling a tune. Mary froze. He didn’t see her right away, as he was busy shutting the barn door and then adjusting his shirt.

While Ephraim walked toward his concealed pushcart, Mary thought she could make a run for it, but then he looked up. A dark look crossed his face at the sight of Mary, as though he wanted to strike her. But then he smiled – a forced smile, Mary thought – and said, “Mary? Is that you?”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“What are you doing all the way out here?”

Mary said, “My teacher is ill. Mrs. Purdy? I was looking for her house to see how she’s feeling.”

Ephraim said, “Mrs. Purdy lives all the way on the other side of town. Don’t you know that?”

“No, sir,” Mary lied.

“How long have you been standing there?” Ephraim asked.

“Just long enough to notice your pushcart,” Mary said. “I recognized it, and I thought maybe something terrible had happened to you, sir.”

“Something terrible? Like what?” Ephraim Flynn smiled wider and took several steps toward her. Was he going to murder her?

Mary shrugged. “I don’t know. It just didn’t seem right. Your cart being there.”

“I see,” Ephraim said. “And did you notice anything else unusual while you were standing there?”

“No, sir,” Mary said.

“Nothing at all?” Ephraim asked.

Mary shook her head. Be calm, she told herself. Be calm. “How’s Jeremiah?” Mary asked.

“Jeremiah?” Ephraim repeated. His smile faded “You’re a smart girl, aren’t you?”

“I hope he’s well,” Mary said. “But I really should go find Mrs. Purdy now.”

“All right,” Ephraim said. “You run along now. You go see how old Mrs. Purdy is doing.” Mary took two steps when Ephraim said, “Wait! Here.” He pulled his pushcart from the hedges and opened it up. He reached inside and pulled out a blue bottle. He shook it several times and said, “Give this to Mrs. Purdy. It’s a tonic. A cure-all. Very effective.” Mary reached for the bottle, but Ephraim quickly pulled it back, out of her reach. “But you’d better show this to your mother first. And tell her who gave it to you and where you found me. Tell her you saw me by this old barn and that I gave you this to give to Mrs. Purdy.” He wasn’t looking anywhere except into her eyes, as if staring at his own reflection inside them. “It’s always best to make sure your parents know what you’re doing. And that’ll keep me from getting into trouble, too.” He winked at Mary and then handed over the bottle. Rolling his pushcart away, he called out over his shoulder, “Just make sure she shakes it. Two small sips in the morning. Two small sips at night. And she’ll be as good as new! Good day, Mary.”

“Good day to you, Mr. Flynn.”

•

Mary didn’t give the bottle to her mother or to Mrs. Purdy. She dropped it onto somebody’s yard when she didn’t think anyone was looking.

By the time she reached her house, her mother was already there, as Mary suspected she would be.

“And where were you?” her mother asked, but she wasn’t angry, more curious if anything.

“Mrs. Purdy was sick and went home. I thought I’d check on her but didn’t know where she lives.”

“You do, too, know where she lives,” her mother said. “Remember? Over on Webster Street? The last house at the very end of the block?”

Mary shook her head. “I don’t feel good myself now.”

“You should get some rest,” her mother said.

Mary obeyed. In fact, she had wanted to go to bed so that she wouldn’t have to face her father, who often said that he could peer into a suspect’s eyes and determine what he was hiding. “I see things other men don’t,” he had said once when Mary had visited him at the jail, his feet up on his desk, ankles crossed. “That’s why I’m the Sheriff and not a deputy,” he added, staring into her eyes.

No, it was better to steer clear of everyone until she could sift through all the various pieces. Not that nighttime brought any peace. She spent most of it awake thinking, and when she did slip into sleep, she dreamed of Ephraim Flynn and his dreadful bag of live insects. She kept slipping into and out of sleep, but each time it was the same dream – Ephraim placing the bag’s string over Mary’s head, as though helping her with a gruesome necklace. Why can’t I stop this dream? she wondered once she had awoken, her chest quickly expanding and contracting. What’s happening to me?

The next morning, Mrs. Purdy arrived at the usual time. Mary was so happy to see her that she wrapped her arms around Mrs. Purdy and pulled her close. The old woman was short, and since Mary was growing taller by the day, their heights had recently evened out.

“I was worried about you,” Mary said, still holding onto Mrs. Purdy.

“Worried about me? You shouldn’t do that, dear. Why, I survived the cholera epidemic when it swept through and killed an entire town. Not this town. Another town. That was before I moved here, dear. Before you were born. I survived scarlet fever and smallpox, too. You don’t go worrying about me now, you hear?” She took Mary by the shoulders and stared at her. “But look at you! You look terrible.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” Mary whispered.

Her mother walked into the room and said, “She came home sick yesterday. Said she went out looking for you.” Then, cheerily, she said, “I believe I’ll take a morning walk before the weather turns.”

“Oh, yes, take the air,” Mrs. Purdy said. “It’s good for you.”

Mary knew her mother was trying to get her attention so that she could roll her eyes, but Mary refused to look. On the one hand, Mary didn’t want her mother to leave the house, because leaving the house meant that she would learn from Ephraim Flynn where Mary had been yesterday afternoon. On the other hand, if only to unburden herself of this knowledge, Mary wanted her mother to find out. Both choices, however, made Mary’s stomach hurt, and she couldn’t help grimacing.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Purdy said. “Perhaps you need the day off today as I did yesterday.” In a lowered voice, Mrs. Purdy asked, “Is it your time?”

“My time?” Mary asked, suddenly frightened. Time to die? When Mrs. Purdy glanced down in the general direction of Mary’s waist, Mary understood what Mrs. Purdy meant.

“When I was your age,” Mrs. Purdy said, “they called it ‘female hysteria.’” She snorted at the thought.

“Oh,” Mary said. Mary really didn’t want to talk about this, but no other subject came to her, except for that other subject.

“You do know what I’m talking about, don’t you? You’re not a late bloomer, are you?”

“No, I know,” Mary said. “It’s not that.”

“I have some black cohosh, if you want some,” Mrs. Purdy said. “It helps my rheumatism.”

Mary shook her head. She didn’t know what black cohosh was, and she didn’t want to know.

“I’ve been told,” Mrs. Purdy said, “that Cannabis Indica is also effective, although I’ve never personally tried it.”

“That’s not it,” Mary said more forcefully than she intended. “That’s not the problem.”

Mrs. Purdy looked as though her feelings were hurt. “Well then,” she said gently, opening her satchel, inside of which she kept her daily lessons. “I suppose we should begin.”

“I’m sorry,” Mary said, but Mrs. Purdy wouldn’t look up. “Really,” Mary said. “I am.”

“I suppose we should talk about your reading assignment,” Mrs. Purdy said. “Yes, let’s start there.”

•

Mary’s mother, stepping through the door a few hours into the day’s lessons, looked pale and weak. Even from a distance and with her poor eyesight, Mrs. Purdy remarked on how poorly Mary’s mother looked.

“I do believe I’ve passed something on to Mary and now Mary’s passed it on to you,” she said. “I suppose the next victim will by the Sheriff.”

Mary and her mother looked at each other at the mention of Mary’s father. So, Mary thought. You know now. There was no reversing time. It stood between them, Mary’s knowledge of the evil deed. But then the light in the room shifted, as it often did at that time of the day, and Mary saw her mother differently. She saw a sad woman married to a man who never made her laugh, and Mary couldn’t help thinking of the tree of knowledge, the way her father had told it from the serpent’s perspective.

“I need to lie down, I think,” her mother said.

“You do that,” Mrs. Purdy said. “Some rest will do you good. It did me good yesterday, that’s for sure.”

Mary’s mother nodded, although her thoughts were clearly across town, where the man with the bottled potions must have stood pining for this sad woman even as he wondered about his own fate. Everything that mattered in life, Mary thought as she watched her mother walk away, hung by the barest of threads.

•

That night, in her dream, the bugs tore through the canvas sack. In addition to all the ants, grasshoppers, and centipedes, there were wasps, too, and they sunk their stingers into Mary, one after the other, even as their wings brushed against her flesh.

Mary opened her eyes and gasped. There sat her mother on the side of her bed, her fingers gently pinching her, nails digging into her skin. Mary sat up, trying to catch her breath.

“I didn’t want to startle you,” her mother said.

“It was a dream,” said Mary.

“A bad one?”

“It’s the bag of bugs,” she said, and looked up at her mother for a reaction. Her mother, who held a candle, looked away. This was how it had been earlier during dinner with her father – whenever Mary caught her mother’s eye, her mother peered down at her plate.

“Look at me,” Mary demanded.

Her mother looked. She’d been crying. Mary could see that now.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” Mary said.

Her mother asked, “Are you going to tell him?”

“How do you know I haven’t already?” Mary asked.

Her mother said, “We’re all still alive.”

Mary took a deep breath. She said, “No, I’m not going to tell him. But what about Mr. Flynn? Are you going to keep seeing him?”
“Shhhhhh,” her mother said. “You must never mention his name, you hear me?”

“Well?” Mary asked.

Her mother shook her head. “I won’t see him again. I promise, love.” She said, “He’s a good man, though. He knows a lot about the world. He knows where there’s a spring that makes a person stay young forever.”

“That’s Satan talking,” Mary said.

“Maybe so,” her mother said. “But sometimes you want someone to talk to you. Anyone.”

“Even if it’s Satan?” Mary asked.

Her mother ignored this last question. Or maybe she was afraid to answer. She put her hand on Mary’s cheek. “Good night,” she said, then leaned forward and kissed Mary’s damp forehead.

Part Three

Four years later, the War Between the States had begun, and the city’s population grew with newly arrived Southerners – families from Tennessee, in particular, settling in southern Illinois. “Too rocky to farm down there,” these new arrivals told the locals, but it didn’t take long for them to discover that farming wasn’t any better on their new land. You had to go further north for the good soil.

“Too many paddies,” her father complained one night at dinner. “I don’t like it.”

Mary asked, “What’s wrong with the Irish?”

Her father gave her a sharp look, as though the question were a challenge. Mary was eighteen now, her prospects for marriage in town were low, and her father’s patience with her was shorter as of late. “They’re a dirty people,” her father said, “if that answers your question.” He sighed, shook his head. “Take old Ephraim Flynn. What’s that man ever done to earn an honest living?”

The name Flynn caused Mary’s heart to speed up. She imagined the bag of insects. She imagined her mother and Flynn in the old barn on the edge of town. Did her father know something from all those years ago? Her mother kept her eyes trained on her plate, idly pushing her food back and forth.

“How’s that make him dirty?” Mary asked.

The blow came before Mary saw it. Instead of reaching up to touch her cheek, which her father had struck with the back of his hand, she reached down and touched the scars from the old fang marks. There was a time when her father rarely hit her, but lately it didn’t take much to set him off.

“Too many Copperheads in this town,” he said as though he hadn’t just struck his own daughter. Copperheads – northern Democrats who opposed the war – had become his favorite topic of conversation. He said, “They don’t want us to get involved in the war. Leave the south alone, they say. Fine. I understand the position. I can’t say I entirely disagree with it, either. If someone has slaves, what business is it of mine? But these Copperheads, they’re causing too much trouble around here lately. Too many deserters moving here. I heard one of them say he’d rather lie in the woods until moss grew over his back than help free slaves.”

Mary thought she might scream the next time he said the word copperheads. It was the repetition of the word and the way her father said it that made it feel like someone gouging out her eyes, the way she had tried gouging out Andrew White’s eyes all those years ago. This was all her father talked about. The war. The Copperheads. The deserters. The trouble they caused the town. He spoke about it nonstop, repeating himself every meal, as though he hadn’t said the exact same thing using the same words the day before. He never listened anymore. Not that he had ever been a very good listener, but he didn’t even make an effort now. He just talked and talked and talked, and whenever anyone else spoke up to interject a thought, he’d cut them off or talk over them.

Throughout all of this, her mother stared down at her food, occasionally spearing a piece of pork or scooping boiled beans onto a fork but mostly shoving it from one side of her plate to the other. Both she and Mary had to be careful, though, not to make her father think they were sick. He had decided that the doctor couldn’t be trusted anymore and had taken to bleeding them when they fell ill. Her mother had numerous white marks up and down her arm from where her father had cut her with a knife to let the poisonous blood flow out of her while keeping the humors, as her father called it, in balance.

“We should have left Africans in Africa,” her father said. “When all’s said and done, they’ve been a lot more trouble than they’ve been worth. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“Yes,” her mother answered absently.

Mary, whose face still stung from the blow, kept her eyes low.

•

Mary’s only respite came when she allowed herself to think about Jeremiah Flynn. Rumor was that he was leaving town soon. The thought of him leaving filled her with irrational despair – irrational because she had rarely thought about him anymore – that is, until she’d heard that he was leaving town. Perhaps she’d always had in the back of her mind a plan for the two of them to get married one day. And now the news of his pending departure had loosened this fantasy, causing it to bubble up to the front of her thoughts. Could that have been it?

The day after her father struck her, she ran into him outside the Feed Store, knocking her shoulder against his arm, causing him to lose his footing. He’d had to plant his palm against the Feed Store’s wall to keep from falling.

“Whoa!” he said, laughing. “What’s your hurry?”

“No hurry,” she said and smiled. “Just not paying attention.” She wondered if he had ever found out about his father Ephraim’s secret. And then another thought came to her, that Jeremiah’s father and her own mother had known each other as a man knew his wife. The very thought made her blush.

“Easy now,” he said, taking her by the elbow. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “I hear you’re leaving.”

“I am,” he said. “Going to Chicago to stake my claim!” He laughed nervously. “Or maybe just to get away from here.”

Mary said, “It’s not so bad here, is it?”

Jeremiah cocked his head the way a dog did when a sharp whistle sounded.

“All right,” Mary said. “It’s awful. It’s the worst.”

“I wouldn’t say that necessarily,” Jeremiah said.

“A hideous place,” Mary said, enjoying herself, “where snakes bite little girls!”

Jeremiah narrowed his eyes at her, and Mary wasn’t altogether convinced he wasn’t going to say something mean to her, but then his eyes brightened and he said, “Where people gossip because they have no ambition!”

“Where fat little boys rule the roost!” Mary said.

“Where people can’t wait to move away from!” Jeremiah said.

“Where small minds shrink to the size of peas!” Mary said.

“Where the most exciting place in town is the feed store!” Jeremiah said.

“Where men sell bags of insects to cure the whooping cough!” Mary said.

Jeremiah’s smile disappeared.

“Oh, no,” Mary said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Jeremiah said.

“You’re mad now,” Mary said.

Jeremiah shook his head. “Not at all. But I really do need to get going.”

“Please don’t go,” Mary said. “Not yet.”

“But I really do…”

“Hold on,” Mary said. “Please. I said something stupid. If you leave right now, I’ll never forgive myself.” She was on the verge of crying. “Please don’t tell him what I said.”

Jeremiah said nothing at first, but then he shook his head and smiled. The smile suggested that his father was a sore subject. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

Without meaning to, Mary took hold of Jeremiah’s arm and said, “I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“I would never tell him,” Jeremiah said. “Trust me.” He leaned toward her and said, “You really should leave this town, though. It’s not good for a person. It’s bad for the soul.”

Nodding, Mary let go of Jeremiah’s arm. She wondered why she had waited so long to talk to him this way. Playfully. Flirtatiously.

Jeremiah walked away, but when he reached the end of the sidewalk, he called out over his shoulder, “Come to Chicago!”

“I may do just that!” Mary replied.

Stepping off the sidewalk’s lip and without turning around to look at her, Jeremiah lifted his arm and waved goodbye.

•

A week later and Jeremiah was gone while Mary remained, like a widow. The town was unrecognizable with all the deserters and Confederate sympathizers pouring in. Men were always whispering lewd things to Mary when she walked by, men whom Mary had never before seen, or they’d lick their lips for her benefit and then spit and laugh. They knew she was the Sheriff’s daughter, and they knew the Sheriff’s position on the war. Who in town didn’t know his position? It was all that came out of his mouth.

One night at dinner, her father started in on his favorite subject, the Copperheads, but there was a new twist: Josiah Woods. Under the unusual name of Clingman, this man Josiah Woods traveled southern Illinois and terrorized the locals.

“And guess what?” her father said. “He’s a Copperhead. No surprise there. No, sir.”

Mary’s mother, whose jaw appeared to clench, continued sawing at her food long after she had cut through it.

“Clingman?” Mary said. “Does he have a fake first name, too?”

“Just Clingman,” her father said.

“What’s he done?” Mary asked.

“You name it. Murders. Robberies. He’s burned down two bridges.”

To break the monotony of her father’s endless monologues, Mary said, “I’ve been reading about medieval torture devices.”
Her father laughed and shook his head. “Have you now!”

“What you need is a crocodile tube,” Mary said.

“A crocodile tube?” her father said, laughing harder. “Tell me you’re making this up.”

“No, I swear,” Mary said. “It’s real. You put the criminal inside a tube, and the tube has these teeth that slowly press into the criminal so that he can’t move. All you can see are his face and feet. And then you start a fire under the tube to heat it up.”

“A tube?” her father asked. “How do you construct a tube that won’t catch fire?”

“I don’t know,” Mary said, “but you can also inflict pain on the exposed parts. According to the book I read, facial mutilation and toe ripping were preferred choices.”

“A tube,” her father said. “I’m having a hard time imagining what it looks like.”

“Okay then,” Mary said. “How about a knee splitter?”

Her father’s eyes lit up. “Now, I do know what a knee splitter is. Saw one once when I was a kid.” He shivered. “Now that would hurt, by God.”

“What we really need around here,” Mary said, “is something called the Brank.”

“What’s that?” her father asked.

“It’s for women who gossip,” she said. “It’s a metal cage that goes over the gossiper’s head. You hang all kinds of ridiculous ornaments on it to humiliate the woman. A bell is attached at the back of it to announce the arrival of the town gossip.”

“I don’t understand,” her father said. “How does it hurt?”

Mary explained how most of them were designed simply to humiliate. “But there’s one with spikes that penetrates the flesh when the gossiper speaks and…”

A scream so loud and tortured interrupted Mary, causing her to think a small animal was biting her mother beneath the table.

“What’s wrong?” Mary asked, frightened. “Are you hurt?”

“Stop it!” she yelled. “Just stop it! The two of you speaking of torture. It’s awful.”

“We’re only talking, Bernadette,” her father said. “Get hold of yourself.”

“No,” her mother said. “You’re not just talking. You’re savoring it. You’re enjoying yourselves.”

Mary had wanted to defend herself, to say that it was better than listening one more time to her father’s outrage over the Copperheads, but she let it go.

“I’m sorry,” Mary said.

Her father said nothing. He dug back into his food. Soon, all three were eating in silence, their forks clicking against the plates, a pack of dogs barking somewhere nearby. But then her father said, “They say this Clingman fellow has a lot of charisma. They say other men are joining him.” Her father sighed and said, “I don’t know what’s become of this republic. I surely don’t.”

•

One afternoon after visiting Mrs.Prudy, who was bedridden these days and dependent upon her former students’ help, Mary saw her mother talking to a man named Dunphy. She didn’t know much about Dunphy – she didn’t even know if Dunphy was his first or last name – but what she did know was that he was the most vocal of the Copperheads, her father having mentioned his name more than once over dinner. When her mother laughed and then covered her mouth with the back of her hand, Mary felt so weak she thought she might fall to her knees.

Unlike the time with Ephraim, Mary didn’t want to follow them. In fact, she didn’t want to know more than she already knew.

•

Over the next week, Mary kept seeing her mother standing around talking to Dunphy where anyone could see them. Once, Mary watched her mother squeeze Dunphy’s arm and then lean up on tiptoes to whisper into his ear. Mary quickly sized up her surroundings and determined that no fewer than a dozen others had probably seen this, too. And then a theory materialized: her mother was attempting to take her own life. Why else would she be so brazen? Why else would she flirt with the worst of the Copperheads, her father’s sworn enemy, where so many others could see and report back to him?

Mary wasn’t planning to do what she did next; it just happened. She yelled, “Mom!”

When her mother turned in Mary’s direction, she was still smiling, but when she saw that it was her daughter calling out for her, the smile disappeared.

“Mary?” her mother said. She left Dunphy and quickly made her way toward Mary. “Mary?” she said again as she approached. By now Mary was crying, although she was trying not to. “Mary, what’s the matter, dear?”

“I…” Mary began.

“What?”

“I need your help,” Mary said, although for the life of her Mary couldn’t think of what she could possibly need help with. “I can’t do all of this alone,” she whined.

“Do what?” Her mother looked over her shoulder, toward where Dunphy had been standing, but he was gone now. “Come on,” her mother said. “Let me get you home.”

Mary wanted to hurt her mother for being so indiscreet, so common. How would her mother like it if Mary slept with one of her lover’s sons? Mary had just a mind to do it, too, just to spite her mother. She didn’t know if Dunphy had a son, but Ephraim Flynn sure did. She wanted to force her mother to think about her own indiscretions, her own follies.

When her mother put her arm around Mary to help her, Mary looked over at her father, who stood hidden in the shadow of the Feed Store’s side wall. From his vantage point, he could have seen everything unfold. He met Mary’s eyes and then put his finger to his lips. Shhhhh.

•

Remarkably, it was an uneventful night at home, as were the two nights that followed. Her mother stayed in, and her father ate dinner without bringing up his favorite subject. If the ghost of what they all knew hadn’t been lingering in the room, Mary might have been encouraged that they had returned to a time when things weren’t so tense between the three of them, a time when Mary could eat her food without the fear of getting slapped for saying the wrong thing, a time when her mother still participated in the conversation. But had such a time ever really existed, Mary wondered, or was the threat of violence always there, coiled and ready to strike?

On the third morning after the incident, Mary’s father opened her bedroom door and walked inside, as though it were the front door of their house, and he walked right up to Mary’s bed and looked down at her. It was dark in her room, dawn just starting to break, and her father’s features were murky, not fixed in place. When he spoke, his voice didn’t match the movement of his mouth, which made Mary think the devil was speaking through him.

“There’s going to be a hanging at one this afternoon,” he said. “I want you to go around and tell people. I want you to get as many people as possible to come out.”

“I haven’t done that since I was a child,” Mary said.

“You’ll do this today,” her father said. “This one’s important.”

“But…”

“Hush. Don’t disobey your father. Now go back to sleep,” he said before turning and leaving her room.

•

Mary couldn’t sleep. She knew she had to do what her father told her to do. She knew that much. Since her father had already left for work by the time Mary had risen, there would be no more discussion on the matter. She looked around for her mother, but her mother was nowhere to be found, either.

“Mother?” she called out. “Mother, where are you?” Mary’s breathing became shallow, and she could feel a throbbing at her neck. Where’s my mother?

“Mother!” Mary shouted. “Mother!”

She wanted to push away the most horrifying thought she could imagine, but it kept coming back to her: her father slipping the noose over her mother’s head, then pulling the knot up against her throat until it was snug. Her mother’s punishment would be a warning to all the women in town as well as to the men who made fools of the town’s husbands.

Mary wept as she prepared for her door to door visits…visits that had given life to the notion that Mary was an evil little girl and thus needed to be shunned.

The sun was up now, but it was raining outside – spitting, her father would have said – and the sky was rapidly darkening while black clouds moved in from the west. Normally, she liked these kinds of mornings, where daytime felt like night, and where everyone, damp and sad, walked around looking sleepy. She couldn’t have said why she liked them. Perhaps because no one else did? Because it was the kind of weather that sent people back inside, where Mary didn’t have to look at those who had been so cruel to her over the years? Today, though, as the rain fell straight down and threatened to become heavier, Mary imagined each drop a punishment, a needle sticking her or a slap across the face. She left the house without her parasol. It was a crude parasol, anyway, covered with animal skins. The skins still had hair on them for protection from the rain. Some of the hair was fine, as though from a pig, while some of it was thick and white, probably from a goat. Mary had paid little attention to its patchwork construction when she was a child, but lately the mere thought of the parasol made her queasy.

Outside in the rain, Mary considered her options, but in the end she defied her father and visited only one house. She knocked and knocked until, finally, Ephraim Flynn opened the door.

“My father requires your presence by the jailhouse at one p.m.,” Mary said.

Ephraim was holding a glass bottle in one hand and a cork in the other. His spectacles sat on the tip of his nose. He looked like an old man now, someone more likely to speak of grandchildren than woo her mother. “Mary?” he said. “Is that you? Mary Gant?”

“Yes,” Mary said. “My father, the sheriff, requires your…”

“Yes, yes,” Ephraim said, raising his hand with the cork. “But…requires? What does that mean?”

Mary said, “It means you need to be there, Mr. Flynn.”

“All right then,” Ephraim said. “I will. But…”

“I really need to leave now, sir. You need to hurry.”

Ephraim nodded. “I trust your mother is well?” he asked just as Mary had turned around.

Mary hesitated. Was she well? She decided not to face him again. “One o’clock, sir,” she said.

“All right then,” he replied.

•

Mary felt as she had the day she was to see her grandmother’s body in a wooden coffin, knowing that later they would be lowering her into the ground and that she – Mary – would have to scoop dirt with a shovel and toss it over the box. Her father had explained to her the night before what was going to take place and what her role in it would be, and all night long and into the next morning, Mary’s stomach roiled and gurgled. As she accompanied her parents to the undertaker’s house, where her grandmother’s body had been taken, she felt with each plodding step that she was dying. Grief and nervousness were like strychnine running through her veins, and all she wanted was to curl up somewhere and wait for Death to place his mouth against hers and suck the final breath from her lungs.

At ten minutes to one o’clock, no one was standing outside the jailhouse, save for Mary. The rain dropped harder, falling straight down, as though buckets of water were being poured down onto her from on high.

At five minutes to one, Ephraim Flynn appeared. He, too, had come without a parasol, but he was wearing a stovepipe hat, like the president’s, and when he saw Mary, he tipped his head ever so slightly toward her, probably fearful that the hat would fall from his head and land in a puddle if he leaned too far forward.

At one minute to one, the Sheriff walked out of the jailhouse’s side door. He climbed the steps of the gallows alone. He stared disconsolately out into the rain at the only two witnesses. Clearly, he had expected more people. Many more.

The gallows his pulpit, the sheriff yelled out to his meager congregation, “Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh! What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder!”

At this, Dunphy was carried out of the jailhouse by two deputies. His ankles were bound, his wrists tied together behind his back, and his mouth stuffed so that he couldn’t speak. Mary’s mother followed the men, crying and pleading. Apparently, her father had taken her mother to the jail to bear witness.

“I’m begging you. Don’t,” she said. “Please. Don’t.”

Ephraim Flynn walked closer to the gallows, as though to be closer to Bernadette, but then stopped abruptly. He didn’t, Mary figured, want to find himself in Dunphy’s position, and to move any closer, where the sheriff could identify him, might raise questions. Why, after all, should Ephraim Flynn, salesman of homemade remedies, care about the Sheriff’s wife?

The deputies carried Dunphy up the gallows. Mary’s mother tried to follow, but one of the deputies grabbed hold of her as another deputy put the noose around Dunphy’s neck.

“Let me go, Jim,” she screamed, swatting at the deputy. “Let me go now!”

Her mother’s voice was unlike anything Mary had ever heard before. It reminded her of a dozen animals being slaughtered, or of a locomotive braking but unable to stop.

Mary was shivering violently now, and she felt more alone than she’d ever felt. She walked over to stand beside Ephraim, who looked down at her, his face pale, water from the brim of his hat pouring between them.

“Does he know?” Ephraim asked. “About me?”

“No,” Mary said.

“Then why did you bring me here?”

Mary was crying now, barely able to speak. She looked up at Ephraim and said, “To save your life.”

From the gallows, with the noose around Dunphy’s neck, her father yelled out, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked!”

“Jeremiah,” Ephraim said to himself.

“Your son?” Mary asked.

“No,” Ephraim said. “Chapter 17, verse 9.”

Her father pulled the lever, the trap door opened, and Dunphy dropped through, his swift descent abruptly halted once the rope went taut, his head leaning all the way to the right as his body swayed. Mary’s mother screamed. The deputy let her go, and she ran up the gallows’ steps and, stopping at the edge of the trapdoor, fell to her knees. Dunphy’s body swayed before her, twisting left then right, again and again.

Mary’s father stared down at her mother for the time it took to breathe in deeply and exhale, and then he walked away, down the gallows’ stairs. Along with his deputies, the sheriff entered the side door of the jailhouse. The door shut after them, leaving the dead and the grieving alone.

Mary turned toward Ephraim, who himself looked about to weep. She put her arms around him, and together they stood in the rain until Mary released him and said, “Now go home. Go home and don’t ever think of my mother again. Do you hear me?” Her voice was pleading, begging.

With a trembling lip, Ephraim nodded, but there was no fear in his eyes. He said, “I still love her. I always will.” And it was while staring back at his blurry, stupid, rain-streaked face that looked like it had been punched that Mary wondered what there was for her in this world where men yelled lewd comments, where boys she loved moved far away, where her mother would so easily fall into the arms of other men, where her father struck her face as a reflex to the mere words she spoke. And here was this pathetic man whose own head might as well have been full of a thousand humming insects.

“No,” Mary said. “For your own sake. Don’t.” But there was no telling him otherwise, and Mary remembered the serpent sizing up Eve: She’s mine. When would it all end, she wondered. What would it take? For once, her father was right. The heart was deceitful above all things. And wicked. Desperately, desperately wicked.

•

That night, alone in her room while her mother wept loudly in another part of the house, Mary took from her closet a burlap sack. The sack writhed and hissed, but it was not filled with insects, like one of Ephraim’s home remedies. Inside was a timber rattlesnake. Using a stick, Mary had lured the snake into the sack after the rain had stopped.

She sat on the floor now before the sack. Was she the evil girl that people in town had once believed her to be? Almost two hundred years earlier, Mary would have been burned alive by her own neighbors and friends, but that did not mean that no punishment awaited her now. There would always be punishment for girls like Mary.

She loosened the cinched opening of the sack, and the snake slid angrily free, unrestrained now. Using only her hands, Mary pulled the snake back toward her so that it wouldn’t slip under a door and into another part of the house, but when she pulled the snake back a second time, it struck her arm, sinking its fangs into her flesh.

Mary expected this response, same as she expected the war deserters to yell lewd things at her or her old friends to throw objects at her. She expected it the way she expected her mother to find comfort with men who were not her father and the way she expected her father to punish the men. She pulled the snake back again, and again it struck her. As the snake struck her for a fourth and then a fifth time, Mary felt the truth fill her veins and course through her – that there never had been a serpent in a tree, and that whatever it was that women were made of, it wasn’t the rib of man. She had never met a man who would have given so much of himself for a woman.

She reached for the rattlesnake again, but it escaped this time, slithering under the door. Mary was having difficulty breathing now, and her vision blurred. When she reached up to touch her face and felt nothing, she imagined herself in a town square, tied to a post. She shut her eyes and thought, I will pay for my sins, whatever those sins are, if that’s what the people desire. She wanted nothing more than to be left alone. There was no white light awaiting her. She knew that much. But maybe it wasn’t too late to save her mother. If it made everyone happy, they could anoint her with their torches, flames to flesh, and she would burn brighter than all the women who came before.

---

WANT to support HMS’s programming mission to empower Chicago-area adults using storytelling techniques to give them a voice and publishing to give their words a visible home? You can donate HERE or buy a journal HERE.