as the sparks fly upward

Boy Hamilton was once more the victim of cosmic cruelty.

There was some conspiracy in the Divine Counsel. He was sure of it. Jesus, God and The Holy Ghost had guided the wiffle ball to the sprawling, wild branches of an oak. Said oak was currently suffering the fiercest blows Boy's ten year old muscles could muster. The bat bore the marks of Newton's Third Law in the form of an amorphous, brown dent at its repeated point of impact.

Boy cast his weapon aside. He began his ascent, his sneakers clumsily begging the wet trunk for some sort of grip. The intermittent slips were accompanied by fierce scrapes of bark on belly. Finally, in an ache of defeat, the child plummeted the short distance to the ground beneath.

The wet soaked through Boy's shorts; moisture cooled his white skin. Hands against knees, he forced himself upright. He bent to pick up the thin, yellow bat. His helpless gaze seemed to appeal to the better nature of the wiffle ball lodged in the branches of the oak. Boy was scandalized by the betrayal perpetrated by his plaything. He resolved to create a new game in a more hospitable area of the rolling countryside. He led the bat, which trailed the ground just behind his sneakers, to the open fields, amber with the high, aged grass.

Dawn was edging into morning and the brilliant beams shot through the lattice of foliage that surrounded the fields. A small figure trudged in the evolving brilliance to the center of a particularly lush pasture. Boy felt the lightness of the bat become the weight of a standard issue military rifle. Private Hamilton, first class, considered the vulnerability of the rebel forces enjoying a late breakfast just over the crest of the hill. Shame to interrupt, his commander said, spitting amber juice at a spider near the private's arm. He missed. Pfc. Hamilton didn't bother to wipe the spit from his blue uniform. They were on their bellies now. The private's yellow tube of a rifle was braced against his shoulder as he took aim at the bobbing, barely visible head of a confederate soldier. He was probably his own rank and age--maybe he had a girl like Hamilton did. I could make his head explode from 150 feet, he thought. Alright boys, his commander said. Fix them bayonets. Give them bastards hell. They crawled on their bellies till Boy got bored and they were charging down the little butte of land and thrashing the soldiers to pieces. Private Hamilton was the hero of the operation. He leapt and swung and battered his thin and weak enemies into a thousand shards and shivers that sailed through the air and settled upon themselves. He would get a medal, for certain.

One half hour later, a panting Boy Hamilton emerged from the visage of the soldier.

Thin fingers released the unassuming form of a bat into the grassy carnage. Boy began the journey back to the brick farmhouse his grandfather called home. It was stone and as old as the constitution--about the age, Boy surmised, as was its owner.

Jeremy Lively was currently sitting in the upstairs study of Rev. Constantine Hamilton. The strong scent of pipe tobacco (an unmistakable and loathsome odor to Constantine's most conservative congregates) was rivaled only by the foul perfume of Lively's pomade (an unmistakable and loathsome odor to all but Jeremy himself).

"Ten years," Constantine said, "Is too young to understand the curse, to know that no boy is meant to live without a parent." He said this to Lively, one of his deacons, but not really to him, but to the curse itself--the curse of Adam that he saw lingering behind every thread of the universe. Constantine knew that Jeremy had lost patience with his theologizing long ago. He also knew the poorly kept secret: the denomination was quietly awaiting the Reverend's fast approaching death to install a young, vital, more palatable pastor.

"Reverend," the deacon said, and then corrected what Constantine considered a theological faux pas. "Connie..." he began again in his thick West Virginia drawl. The deacon, still mustering his courage, sweated and longed for a hard drink. Constantine secretly delighted that he was the only person capable of unraveling Jeremy Lively's composure. He quietly confessed this in silent prayer, but could not help the smirk that was creeping in. However unrighteous in Constantine's eyes, it was a handsome decoration for his well-worn countenance. "...Connie," Jeremy's distant voice intoned.

Connie smiled. "You can call me 'Reverend' if you are more comfortable with that, Jeremy," he said, knowing that the deacon's trouble did not concern the proper way to address the preacher.

Jeremy sniffed a laugh. "Ummm..yes. Reverend. Well...well, Connie..."

Constantine's lips spread to a wide grin, forcing his lips apart and a pleasant yet almost silent chuckle from his rattling chest. Jeremy's start at Constantine's hushed outburst further betrayed his quiet agitation; this only further humored the old pastor. "Jeremy. What is it?"

Jeremy moved to the window. "It's about the boy, I mean, Boy. It's about Boy." Constantine visibly stiffened. "Look, Connie. You're old. Your daughter was old. And when she had Boy, nobody judged her. Nobody asked questions. Might as well been a'mmaculate conception all we cared." He snorted. "We never asked a single question. And maybe we should've." He paused. "We've stayed out of everythin', Connie. When Stephanie died, we just grieved your loss along with you. Losin' your daughter--" here he affected mourning, "--I just can't imagine. And when you said you were gonna raise Boy yourself, we said nothin'." Jeremy moved to Connie, assuming a kneeling position. He executed the illusion of piety and concern like a masterful magician. "Connie, you're old. The denomination..." A pause. "Connie, the denomination already has someone lined up to take your place when you...move on."

"I know."

Silence.

"We know you know. Connie. We all know it's coming soon. We need'ta think of Boy."

Connie stood on quaking legs and shuffled to the window Jeremy had just left. In the distant field, Boy was battering a thousand blades of amber grass into the creamy blue sky. Boy was born in the old farmhouse, his mother refusing the aid of a doctor or anesthesia. For Constantine, his daughter's screams through the painful labor bore testimony of the devastation of Adam's curse--the pain of child bearing. Maybe that's why he saw in Boy a type of all humanity. Had he taken him into his home and care as if by loving him he could release all of mankind from the curse?

Lively, Constantine knew, saw a different kind of curse in Boy. Constantine sensed a mysterious discomfort on the part of Lively whenever the deacon was near Boy. Constantine assumed this went beyond Lively's self-righteousness, but shuddered to think of the implications. The fact that boy was a bastard was reason enough for someone like Lively to deem the child worthy of his disdain. Stephanie hadn't named him, and so he was known simply as Boy. For Lively, Constantine believed, this made Boy a nameless bastard--unwanted and unloved. In Lively's scheme of things, God had rejected an unworthy son. Boy was cursed to be forever unloved and unwanted, and no amount of care by a senile minister could alter the work of God. Constantine sometimes prided himself on being the only person who could truly disturb Lively, but he knew this was untrue. Even Constantine's theologizing and antiquarian ways could not disarm Lively the way a casual glance from Boy could. Lively was forever suspicious of Boy's solitude and imaginative recreation. A nameless bastard--a bastard son of God-- could produce no holy thing from his imagination, only evil devisings meant to separate all of humanity from its place of sonship. When night was advancing to morning and Lively would slip into an alcohol-induced slumber, his nightmares always contained Boy and what Lively supposed to be his sadistic fantasies.

Constantine stood silent at the window, considering what place Boy might truly occupy in God's schemes. "I've raised him." He turned to Lively. "I raised him, Jeremy. I raised him by myself. For the sixty five years I have been in the ministry I have always sought to make my private life private." He turned to the window again. "And here you are interfering."

"Connie, I..." The back of a withered, protesting hand stopped him mid-sentence.

"Thank you. Thank you, Jeremy, because no life is private, nor is it meant to be." The silhouetted shoulders of the old man trembled. He smeared his hand across his face and clawed at his eyes. "This curse..." he muttered. "We each have our own lot, Jeremy. Each of us. Mine is not yours, and yours is not mine, and yet they are the same. We are all in this curse, though we each bear it differently. And I suppose we are meant to bear each other's."

"Reverend Hamilton, you know a family in Iowa that will take care of the boy? We need'ta make the proper arrangements now."

"Iowa." Connie turned to Jeremy. "The Chandlers...yes." A sigh. "Yes."

One week after the meeting with Lively, as if he was unburdened of a final responsibility, Constantine's soul slipped from this realm to the other while his body slept. The Livelies begrudgingly accepted the duty of delivering Boy to the Chandlers, whose pressing work had prevented them from attending Constantine's funeral.

The thousand poles and wires that stitched together the Midwest shot before Boy's eyes. Before the last wooden beam could fully escape his periphery, another jostled into his field of vision, forcing his eyes into a darting madness. His balled hand would finally massage his sore eyes with a fervor equal to the maddening display. Then he would return to the hypnotic-frenetic task. And when his eyes met only the stitching of the seat before him, still he saw telephone wires and poles working their macabre magic in his brain-- and eventually his stomach. Once he said audibly, "Can you pull over please?" but was met with no reply.

But Iowa was in no way cruel. And here he was just barely across the Mississippi, where the gentle roll and tumble of the earth imitated a fond West Virginia memory. What was more, it was summer, and there was a barn with chickens. Boy counted thirteen deer grazing like livestock, then darting into the vast and mysterious woods--woods that hid all neighbors, the closest a mile away.

Shaking telephone pole visions from his road-wearied body, Boy was introduced to Mrs. Chandler who, in contrast to his fellow travelers, exuded warm and genuine affection.

"So this must be Boy," the lady said, crouching in the damp lawn. Boy heard the hissing of the sprinkler system and wondered at its steady rhythm. "I'm Mrs. Chandler. You'll be staying with us for a while." Her white dress touched the wet grass and Boy wondered if she cared that her white dress was touching the wet grass. "Would you like to come inside? Dinner's almost ready. You could even take a nice bath if you like?" Boy thought of how each phrase sounded like a question, even the one that wasn't a question. He thought about the sweetness and the pity behind the words and this in contrast to his own misery felt like the curse itself, which Boy knew was silly, but there it was, as Mr. Lively might say.

"I don't want a bath."

Mrs. Chandler said that Mr. Chandler was inside and would really like to meet him, but maybe Boy would like to wander around a bit, explore a little first? Mr. Chandler was finishing up the meal and it would only be a few minutes. Telephone poles and electric lines passed before Boy and he followed their path to the barn at the edge of the forest.

Mr. and Mrs. Lively followed Mrs. Chandler into the kitchen where Mr. Chandler was peeling potatoes. He half turned to say, "So you must be the Livelys! It's so nice to meet you!" Dropping the potato and peeler he grabbed a dish towel and approached the stoic couple. "Thank you so much for going to the trouble of driving him here. We both work and it's so hard to make time for such a long trip. Please. Sit down." He motioned to the kitchen table and the Livelys obliged. Jeremy removed his hat, releasing the fantastic smell of his pomade. Mrs. Chandler's eyes signaled the exact moment the foul odor reached her olfactories. Almost choking she asked how the trip had gone, to which Lively replied, "Well, I'll tell you Mrs. Chandler. It's a long trip, and not a pleasant one. It certainly isn't a trip I would have made for any other reason except that I had to because of the circumstances."

Mr. Chandler seated himself across from Mr. Lively and talked to the table about how awful and unfortunate the entire situation was. He was cut off by Lively.

"I'll say it's terrible. Yes. It's awful. The truth of the matter is, Mr. Chandler, and I hope you don't mind my saying so, and excuse me Mrs. Chandler if it offends your ears for me to say it, but truth be told the boy's mother was...well everyone knew she was a slut. And slut is putting it mildly, and rather crassly I know, but then, that's that, and the good Lord knows its His own truth, so there it is. She was a harlot."

Mr. Chandler told the table that yes, that is very unfortunate, poor woman...

"Well the 'poor woman' shouldn't have been so loose and then there wouldn't have been a thing to be so sad about." He said that that's the thing about those kind of people, that they think they can live any old way they want and then when everything goes to--he excused himself--pot, then it's the burden of the rest of us to deal with the aftermath. "Well, anyway," he said, "she was rather loose and I am not sure whether to feel ashamed or justified in the deacon board's desire to leave the issue be rather than approach the pastor about it. But we didn't and so of course she got, excuse me again Mrs. Chandler, knocked up, and even then we never said a thing to Constantine."

Mr. Chandler choked on the pomade and headed back to the sink to peel the last of the potatoes. "Constantine," he said to the sink, "was terribly...concerned for Stephanie. He called me often, asking for prayer. And he would always say how desperate he was for privacy, and that his unresting conscience seemed to force his hand to the phone, to dial our number and tell us about Stephanie and what he was feeling. He would say how hard it was to share himself with even us and how...how sometimes he...how sometimes he hated his calling."

Mrs. Lively made a noise in her throat and said, "Well. That's quite a thing for a pastor to say. I wish I could say I'm surprised. It always seemed that Constantine had no desire whatsoever to meet our needs. He certainly did enjoy lofty talk, however."

Mrs. Chandler shook her head and watched Mr. Lively drink from the coffee she had poured during the conversation. "Oh, Connie," she said, as if this was the final word on the matter. "Oh, Connie," she said again anyway.

Mr. Chandler turned from the sink again and said how ashamed he was that he and his wife couldn't make it to the funeral.

"None of that," a detached Jeremy said blowing on his coffee.

Mr. Chandler shook his head and gently tossed the hand towel on the counter in self-disgust. "It's so easy to become caught up," he said. "In the last five years I only called Connie once, and that was to tell him about the new studio. I just...I don't know how I could ever come to that." Mrs. Chandler moved to her husband and wrapped her arm around his chest. "He said he hated his calling because he hated sharing himself, even his pain."

They stood there for a few moments--Jeremy blowing on his coffee and Mrs. Lively fingering a tea spoon and Mr. and Mrs. Chandler in a sort of awkward embrace-- before Mr. Chandler broke the mood and commenced peeling the potatoes.

Boy found the fluorescent light bulbs in the loft of the old barn. The ladder was splintered and unsteady. When Boy put his weight on the first rung it gave way, crashing him to the boards. He brushed off the dust and splinters and ascended once more. Emerging from the floor of the loft, he surveyed the high pitch of the tin roof. He noted the weathered quality of the rafters that supported the floor boards of the loft. The sparsely scattered hay bales gave Boy a sense of history, an almost reminiscent sensation, as if he had walked the creaking boards in a previous life, many decades removed from the present, when the depression hit hard and the heat scorched the crops. He settled on this and imagined the cap and suspenders and the cotton shirt with three buttons, all undone, and ample chest hair protruding through the tiny meshwork of fabric. He breathed a heavy sigh and thought about his kids, ah the kids, and how old man Leary was always working him so hard for so little money, how he was taking such advantage of such unfortunate times. He tried hard to think of ways to feed the kids, and little Boy Hamilton wept and wept.

Old man Leary ascended the ladder and said, Hamilton, what you doin' up here? Blubberin'? I done told you what I wanted from you! Get this hay down and get it to my milk cows, et cetera. Hamilton caught each word while Boy heard them distant and strained, wiping the tears from his face with his tattered sleeve. Hamilton! You listenin' to me? Yes Sir. I can't hear you, boy! I said yes sir. You know what yer problem is Hamilton? You ain't nothin' but white trash. Ain't nobody want you, and you lucky I take you on at all. Look at you'self, blubberin' up here why my cattle need they hay. What I pay you fo', anyway? You listenin', Boy? I said what I pay you fo'? Pay you fo nothin' but an ulcer!

Boy wondered if Leary saw him coming when he seized him by his long, thin, white neck and pushed him to the opening in the siding. Would his squeezing hands shatter Leary's neck into a thousand lacerating pieces? He said, You know what it is to have children you can't do nothin' for, Leary? You know what it is to be alone in the middle of everybody? and with a supernatural strength Hamilton hung the old man with one hand over the hexed ground three stories down. Leary's feet dangled and his arms splayed about, clutching at Hamilton. Boy let go and the fluorescent bulb made a terrific shatter. There was then the immediate explosion of gas forcefully releasing upon the bulb's impact with rocky hillside. Kish-boom, it said.

There was a lot of Learys, but eventually they were just bulbs, and Hamilton was just Boy dropping them the three stories, reliving that terrific sound. Kish-boom, Kish-boom, they said. Thirty-six, thirty-seven. Kish-boom. Thirty-eight. Kish-boom. Thirty-nine. Boy was sad it couldn't have been an even forty, but the Leary-bulbs were a bazillion pieces thirty feet down and strewn across rocks and grass. The killing completed, he returned to the house.

Boy sidled through the door and settled himself on the stool in the corner of the kitchen. Mrs. Chandler was running the mixer, mashing potatos, and Mr. Chandler was plopping drum sticks covered with egg and flour into the sizzling oil. Jessica sat at the table and only slightly acknowledged Boy's presence. The oil popped. Mrs. Chandler stopped the mixer abruptly and gently grabbed her husband's hand to inspect the damage inflicted by the grease. They both caught Boy at a glance.

"Well, there's the man!" Chandler said and shook off his wife's fingers. "It's fine honey," he said to her, and then to Boy, "How was the trip young man?" Boy saw the scene swathed in grey. Mr. and Mrs. Chandler and Mrs. Lively were ghost-figures. Lively, Boy figured, was off somewhere inspecting the house with his "keen eye, I swear I've always had a keen eye. I can tell everything about a man by his possessions." He was floating like an ember somewhere, leaving ashen residue like ectoplasm on everything he touched. He felt a hatred begin to surge within him. He realized he hadn't answered the question, and Mr. Chandler had moved on to asking him something else he wasn't quite interested in. There was Mrs. Chandler to the left, down right demure, hands in front, interlaced, that white dress and raised eye brows and stupid grin like she was anticipating something. What was she anticipating? He still hadn't answered what was Mr. Chandler's second--no, third question. He was thinking about Lively going through the house like a phantom. He wondered if when Lively left there would still be a part of him in the house, if Boy would be stuck with his pomade funk when he was seventeen dressed for the prom-- if the smell would stick in his clothes and make him repugnant to the rest of the world.

Boy soon found himself in a stiff wooden chair. Quite a spread of fried chicken, pork and beans, mashed potatos, jello salad, peaches and boiled kale lay before him. Mrs. Chandler kept smiling a different sort of stupid grin that made Boy feel like something sinking. Lively had returned from his wandering and had seated himself across from Mrs. Chandler. Next to him was Mrs. Lively and Mr. Chandler took the head. Boy was on the end barely observing the goings on. He perceived in the fog that the Livelies were disimpassionately offering their astonishment that my, what a spread you got here Mrs. Chandler. Didn't have to go to all that trouble at all. And kale, Mr. Lively just loves kale. All the time Boy sensed Mrs. Chandler's stupid grin. He felt a sort of hatred rise up within him. She was spooning the stuff on his plate while Mr. Chandler and Boy would periodically meet each other's gaze, Chandler forcing a smile that seemed a grimace. Boy recognized it as pity.

By now they had all begun eating and talking and firing periodic questions at Boy, which he did not hear. His eyes were fixated on a red hen outside the sliding glass door. It made sickening, jerking movements, lifting one leg and bobbing the red comb back and forth like something dead and foreign. It glared at Boy with its great unblinking eye. It nauseated him that the hen could glare at him without turning to face him. Like a coward. The orange sky effused itself in streaks across the green hills, transforming the hen into a jolting silhouette. As the sun inched closer to the hills it became more and more difficult to discern her from the lengthening shadows outside of the glass. The only thing visible was the blood red plume of flesh and the evil glint of her round eye. Her shadow penetrated the glass and inched across the carpet, wrapping around Boy's chair--now it raced at an unnatural speed toward his dangling hand. He felt it grab hold of him and drag his unwilling gaze back to the solitary penetrating eye. She was completely still now, focusing all of her energy through the disturbing orb and deep inside of Boy. She was passing on a curse; Boy felt it as a shudder through his bones, head to toe. It reached his ribs and curled around them, then slowly descended to his stomach where it worked some evil magic, shaking everything up. Boy imagined the hen growing from the ground and sprouting the comb like a sick bloom, her eye the fruit offering the curse to others, forcing it on them--to unite them with the earth and all who had been touched by her evil stare.

"...was a slut," he heard Jeremy say and he jolted.

"Mr. Lively, now really. That is not necessary," Chandler said in a high, suppressed voice.

"What," Jeremy said, pouring another glass of wine. "On account of the boy? Don't you think he knows it?" He sort of laughed. He turned to Boy, jabbing a drum-stick in his direction. "Don't you know your momma was a whore, boy?"

Mr. Chandler stood in an awkward, subdued rage. "I said that's enough now, Lively, and I mean it. You're drunk."

"Yes."

Every eye turned to Boy, save for the hen's, whose work, it seemed, had been wrought. She had turned down the stoop and was working at some unseen worm. He said yes again and they all stared. "Boy," Chandler said but Boy just said yes again. "Yes. I know she was a whore."

The effect his comment had on those present began to satisfy the growing hatred within Boy. He hated them perfectly now, with all the power the hen had invested in him. He saw the despair and confusion in the Chandlers and the startled indignation in the eyes of the Livelys. There was a stiff silence for a few moments, which then gave way to the reluctant clinks of forks and knives against dinner plates. Chandler sat down.

Jeremy began to defend his sobriety, but thought the better of it and said, "Well, anyway, I ain't sayin' the whole thing ain't unfortunate." Chandler's eyes never left the jello salad he was prodding with his spoon. Jeremy tore a clump of greasy flesh with his front teeth and sprayed through the carnage, "Yes sir," and turning to Boy, "Son, you sure do got a difficult lot."

"All got the same lot," Boy said.

There was that stiff silence again. It teased Boy's flesh to goosebumps and he said it again. "All got the same lot. Y'all got the same as me. Ain't no difference. All got the same curse sprung from the same bird."

Jeremy guffawed, his meanness loosened from the wine he was imbibing at an increasing rate. "Didn't ol' Constantine teach you nothin'? Wasn't no, bird, Boy. Was an apple in the garden."

Boy shook his head as if he were instructing a toddler to drive a car. "He taught me fine. And it weren't no apple, it was the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil."

"Why don't we just change the subject?" Mrs. Chandler suggested. "Did you have a fine time lookin' around the place Boy? There's a lot a boy could do around here-- if he's got the right imagination, that is."

Boy smiled a genuine smile-- one mixed with malice. "I got just the right kind," he said, and took to soaking his kale in vinegar.

After dinner Mrs. Chandler showed the Livelys to their room, but Jeremy needed "some assistance from your husband, if you don't mind. Ain't that I can't hold my liqour, I'm sober as anything," and then his knees weakened and he caught himself on Mrs. Chandler's shoulder. Her husband threw his arm around his own shoulder and heaved the drunken deacon up the stairs. He threw him in the bed while Mrs. Lively mumbled an apology to Mrs. Chandler on the landing outside the door. As Chandler turned to walk away, Lively grabbed him by the arm. "Let me tell you somethin', listen. I need to tell you somethin', Chandler." He suppressed a belch while Chandler shook off his grip.

"What is it, then? Tell me somethin'."

"That Boy's a bastard and the son of a whore. He ain't got no daddy."

"We all know your opinion, Mr. Lively," Chandler forced through his jaw.

"Listen to me!" Jeremy said. "I seen the Boy lost inside himself and lettin' that imagination run wild and evil. I'm a God-fearin' man and I know what is and what ain't of him. That Boy ain't. He's been rejected by God himself and everyone else. Boy's a bastard, mother's a whore, dead Pappy was out of touch with the world. He's a wedge, separating the true sons of God. Separating the Father from the sons. That Boy is cursed, Chandler. Do yourself a favor." He suppressed a belch.

Chandler shuffled a bit and then put his hands on his hips. "What should I do, Mr. Lively?"

"Kill the bastard," he said and laughed as Chandler left the room and, without acknowledging the conversation on the landing, went to the kitchen where he flung a dish into the far wall.

Boy awoke to a strong odor and a metallic clink. He pulled himself up to see Lively, the moonlight glinting off of his metal flask. He was slumped in the wingback chair at the foot of the massive bed. It seemed to be swallowing Boy. Boy fell back into the soft tongue of blankets and lay for a moment. Feeling Lively's eyes still upon him, he said, staring at the ceiling but in his strongest voice, "Well, what the hell do you want?" His throat was dry and he was embarrassed at how raspy it sounded. He almost squeaked "hell". He was certain it wouldn't intimidate Lively. For a moment, only the crickets could be heard through the open window. Boy sat up again and found Lively still staring at him across his eyebrows, his eyes half rolled back inside his head. He had shaved and was wearing his best suit. The foul odor of his pomade so permeated the room that it was apparent the stuff had been recently applied. Boy wasn't sure if Lively was sweating because he had just stepped out of the shower. He had a strange sense that he had been staring at him that way for some time--that the sweat was induced by whatever was hidden in the flask. His suitcase was leaning against the chair, the handle of which was being fondled by his dangling left hand. He threw his right hand to his lips again and swigged, his eyes never leaving Boy's.

"Shee-it." He said laughing, his head rolling around like a rag doll's.

"Go to hell, Lively," Boy heard himself say.

Lively laughed louder and longer. "Well, Boy! Alright, I'll go to hell. You comin' with me?"

Boy was sitting up completely now. "Kiss my ass, Lively. I been washed by the blood of the lamb." He stuttered through it, knowing it wasn't true. He could only think of the hen.

Lively stood from his chair and stumbled toward Boy. Boy looked like a mouse cowering from a swooping hawk. "Listen to me, son," Lively screeched. "You ain't washed'a nothin'! Your momma was whore, son. You're a bastard. We don't want you. Nobody wants you, son." Boy didn't like the way he kept calling him "son". It was as if he had to force the word through his teeth, like he had to hear himself say it. Lively was laughing again. He dropped to his knees by the bed and took another swig from the flask. Boy noticed the curtain cord dangling between the middle and index fingers of his right hand. It was frayed on the end, having just been cut. Across the room a tattered foot of cord gently slapped against the floral print in the quiet summer breeze.

"Can't you do nothin' sober?" Boy said. Lively grabbed him by the throat. As their eyes met, Boy thought of passing on the curse the way the hen had to him. He focused all his hatred through his eyes and let it reach inside of Lively and permeate his soul. Lively's grasp was sloppy and ineffective. When he reached his other hand up to Boy's neck, he forgot about the flask. It was swallowed by the bed, its contents emptying onto Boy's arm. Lively fell backward and fumbled for the flask. Not much of the stuff had emptied. He took a big swig and laughed again. When he got up to leave, Boy said, "You forgot your cord," but Lively didn't hear. He woke his wife and yelled something indistinguishable through the walls. An hour later the headlights of the Lively's Oldsmobile scanned the walls of Boy's bedroom.

Boy didn't sleep that night. He thought of Lively's fumbling fingers at his neck. Why had he been unable to pass the curse onto Lively? And then he realized that Lively was deeper in the curse than Boy was himself. But mostly he thought of Lively calling him "son," which made him sick. Twice that night he snuck to the bathroom and threw up.

When the sun finally began to inch over the horizon, Boy put on overalls with no underwear or shirt and snuck down the stairs and out the back door. In the distance, the sun silently bathed the countryside in rust.

He stood there taking in the morning when the voice of Chandler caught him from behind. "You're up," it said. Boy nodded and made a quiet noise. "C'mon," it said. "I want to show you something."

Chandler cut in front of Boy and led him around the western side of the barn and through the hay field. It was late summer, and so the hay had been harvested, but Boy thought of the army he had battled in similar West Virginia fields for the entirety of that summer. As Constantine's condition had worsened, the battles had grown fiercer and longer. Soon, the bat failed to complete the transformation to rifle and Boy had snuck the hand scythe from the barn. He would sharpen it at the beginning of each week so that the heads of his enemies would noiselessly slide from their necks. Eventually he had worn an empty patch in the rolling field. He found another spot, and vanquished another army. He moved onward. He was Napoleon. He subdued his weeping by investing in more carnage.

The tractor had worn a path through the grass. Chandler led Boy off of the tractor path and onto a smaller, foot-worn trail that rose with the knoll and emptied them into a clearing one hundred fifty yards from the barn. In the midst of the clearing stood a large, angular building. It was clearly the product of modern architecture, and stood in sharp contrast with the lush countryside it was incongruously dropped in the midst of. The barely visible trail on which they were walking slowly became dirt and then gravel. Soon the trail was defined by parallel lines of stones, which guided the path to the grey building. Halfway to the building, the path forked in three directions--one to the left and another to the right, the third, upon which they continued their walk, headed to the great sliding metal door of the building.

As they approached, Boy got a better look at the imposing structure. He was incapable of estimating the square-footage but could easily see that, though spread across a single story, it rivaled that of Constantine's humble farmhouse, and possibly Chandler's own, comfortable accommodations. The building was made of heavy, weathered steel, though it was obviously no older than five or six years old. It's base stretched for at least fifteen yards. Boy could not see how deep the structure was. Off of the western corner, the roof rose to a sharp apex, but stopped abruptly. A smooth wall came down to meet the flat portion of the roof, a full twenty-five feet beneath. Just beneath the apex, a series of seven large rectangular windows gave what was doubtless a breathtaking view of the countryside.

On the large sliding door hung a metal sign that read Skunkworks Metalworks. No, it was actually engraved into the door, or rather, stood in relief with the door. The letters were shaped like springs and spark plugs and other rubbish. Chandler keyed a six digit code into a pad on the door. "Six, eight, four, seven, two, four," Boy kept repeating in his head. There was an immediate click. With effort, Chandler slid the door left-wards to reveal a large, open room resembling a factory or warehouse. It was filled with grotesque sculptures made from scrap metal. Canvas tarps and welding equipment lied about the place. There were at least thirty sculptures, some smaller than three-feet in height, the largest standing twenty-five feet in the midst of the great room, the darkness obscuring its form. Just off center and to the right, a winding staircase led to a small loft with a desk before the rectangular windows. When they entered, the windows and cracked door offered the only sources of light, illuminating the strange environment with solid white and twittering shafts that lengthened the shadows of Boy and Chandler.

"This is where I work, Boy," Chandler said. "It's my studio. I work with four other artists. We share this space."

Boy wanted to ask what the things surrounding them were, but the hatred choked the words. Chandler answered the question asked by his silence and awe.

"They're sculptures. We make sculptures from scrap metal. Car parts, refrigerators, sheet metal, you name it."

"Why?"

"Because we see things that other people don't see. We're prophets. You know what a prophet is, Boy. A prophet sees things that others can't see. A prophet is anyone with an imagination. But not just an imagination, a message. Something that has to get out."

Boy shook his head.

"Your grandfather prophesied from the pulpit. We prophesy in the cities, from fountains and parks and galleries. But here is where we receive our revelations. This is where we are spoken to, and we decide what to say and how to say it. We see things others can't see, Boy. Most folks look at junk and see junk, but we see potential, we see what it could be."

Boy nodded again, gazing at the grotesque images surrounding him. Some looked like men. Some looked like animals. Some looked like both. Most truly did resemble images of some prophetic revelation--great beasts with straddling whores, goats and horns and dragons.

Chandler knelt before Boy and grabbed his hands. "You see, some people see things that have been discarded, left alone on a hill side or in a trash can, and they just call it junk. They say it's worthless. Someone may walk by and see that junk and think that nobody wants it. Some folks may think that it's got no value. But we see it for what it is. It's just been abused and hurt. It just needs loved. It's not the fault of the junk that it's junk. It's not really junk at all."

Boy pulled his hand away abruptly, as if bitten. Chandler made a sad laugh and looked down. "Anyway," he said. "These aren't finished in here. They still need a lot more love. I can show you some finished pieces outside."

Chandler closed the great door and led boy to one of the forked paths. It wrapped around the building, adorned on either side by flowers and foliage, and opened into a sort of loading area where figures wrapped in canvas stood like mummies in the brightening light of the morning. Two trucks sat parked with their gates down and facing the loading yard. "These fellas," he said, gesturing to the ten or so mummies, "are headed to Des Moines. They'll be doin' our prophesying in a city park." He headed to one of the figures and began to untie the ropes. He worked at the knots for a good three minutes while Boy just stared into the woods. "Alright," he finally said, and tore the gauze from the mummy.

The sculpture was almost exactly the height of Chandler. Hubcaps and exhaust pipes and over turned buckets formed the figure of a farmer casting seed. The seed was a trail-mix of nuts and bolts and screws and nails wired from the farmer's open palms, arching magnificently before ceasing mid-air. "They're all pretty much the same, these ones." He motioned to the other mummies. "They'll be surrounding the big one in the studio."

Boy nodded, remembering the large sculpture that still sat in the dim studio.

"Do you like it?"

He shrugged, his arms crossing his chest.

Chandler chuckled, though disappointed. He began throwing the canvas over the farmer again, and to tie the ropes. "Well, anyway, Boy. I thought I'd show you all this because I could use your help. I'd like to show you how to do all this. I can show you to weld. Have you ever welded before?"

"No."

"It's something else, let me tell you," he said, stretching to place the canvas and tie the rope around the neck of the farmer. "There's nothing quite so elemental as fire. When it hits the metal and the sparks start flying, you feel like God himself. Blake made God an architect. I like to think of him as a welder." Boy shuffled his feet and stared at the rocks. "Anyway," Chandler said. "That's all. Mom...I mean, Mrs. Chandler will have breakfast here in a half-hour or so. You can go wash up."

"I don't wanna wash up," Boy said in a strange, angry voice.

Chandler stopped his work and squinted at Boy, shading his eyes with his free hand. He was quiet for a moment and then said, "Well, that's fine I reckon. Nothin' wrong with a boy being a boy. Well, why don't you go find some fun? Be a boy."

Boy left Chandler adjusting the canvas around the ankles of the farmer and repeated to himself, "Six, eight, four, seven, two, four."

As he reached the barn he heard a gentle scratching in the dirt. He ceased his motion and listened intently as the scratching continued, crawling his spine. Finally there was a quiet cluck, and Boy rounded the corner. Before him stood the hen from the previous night. There were, of course, no distinguishing characteristics to the hen, no markings or mannerisms by which Boy could determine its identity. But the way the thing grabbed hold of him on the inside stalled Boy in his tracks and convinced him of their familiarity. The hen, however, failed to recall their interaction during the previous night's dinner and, after a few moments' staring contest, once more raised and lowered her head in an incessant pecking motion. Boy stood transfixed as the hen began moving away. He winced, realizing that his clenching fist had driven his long, unclipped nails into the palms of his hands, drawing blood. He raised the wounds to eye level, examining the self-induced stigmata. Conscious only of the fresh gashes in his palms, he blindly followed the hen to the face of the barn and rounded the eastern corner.

The Chandlers were artists, not farmers, and had taken up the hens as a sort of hobby. Mrs. Chandler had some six months prior ceased gathering eggs from the hens' coop. The hens, which had free reign of the farm, had never seen fit to lay their eggs solely in their roosting spot, but would drop their cargo in drain pipes and out buildings and even in the mist of the drive. By the time Boy came to the Chandler farm, the hens were little more than neglected pets. Nevertheless, at night they roosted in the barn storage room Chandler had converted to a makeshift coop.

Boy shook himself from the trance and found himself entering the basement level of the barn. He followed the leader through the darkened doorway and came to face the twelve or so hens that had failed to rise with the sun. The curse-bearing hen entered the coop ahead of Boy. Reaching the center of the room and illuminated by the patch of light streaming through the chicken-wire window, she commenced the previous night's activity. Her great, unblinking eye, brimming with the curse, once more reached inside of Boy. He wiped the blood from his hands onto his overalls, but it seeped at greater speed from the gash. He wondered at his strength as he examined the strangely deep wound.

The walk with Chandler had somehow quieted his hatred, but the hen reminded him of the curse which he now owned. She had somehow resurrected his passion. He felt the separation from the Chandlers and the Livelies and Constantine and his dead whore-mother and even the hen itself, which had once again lost interest and was now roosting with the other chickens. His mind swirled with telephone and electric lines, metal grotesques and crashing light bulbs and amber waves of falling armies, hand scythes and slippery tree trunks. The coop was filled with old Constantine's quotations and scriptures, the Livelie's criticisms, the Chandler's well-meaning yet sickening love and hospitality. He told them all to stop, I said stop! but they bobbed and squawked louder with his yelling, moving with those sick jerking motions. Jeremy croaked that she was a whore and Boy said he'd rip his goddam head off, and this he did in a swift, unhesitant movement. Now it was Jessica and Mr. and Mrs. Chandler and Constantine and his own mother. It was the hub capped and sheet-metal farmers spreading their nuts and bolts seed, free of their mummy-gauze. Boy rushed to the coop door and held it shut with the cinder block, which was being used to prop it open. He let them fly and squawk and holler for help, O please God help us and don't, Boy, what's gotten into you? He let their talons and wings and arms and legs flail against his face, let their shit fall inside his bibs. Now it was Mrs. Chandler and she was flapping and screaming but he ended her with a swift jerk from his wrists. She fell to the floor and writhed, then gave a quick jog about the place before falling next to Mr. Lively, may he rest in peace. And he was onto both the Chandlers at once, one in each hand, swinging them wildly above his head until he heard the satisfying crack and he dropped them next to the others. He did in Constantine. He found his dead whore-mother and let her have it, too. By now he was covered with blood and feathers. He looked at his hands and thought on how the stigmata was still oozing, how maybe this was not the blood of the hens or the people, but his own. Now there were just chickens, and he let them have it too. He left the coop when the last hen had gotten all the reflexes from her system and collapsed into the filth.

"Six, eight, four, seven, two, four."

He was peering around the corner of the barn, his body hidden, when he saw Chandler climb the porch steps and slam the door behind him. He thought to be safe he should go around the back anyway. Soon he emerged from behind the barn, a great heap of brers and briars and blood and sweat and feathers running over the crest of the hill, across the one hundred fifty yards to the studio. Six, eight, four, seven, two, four down the gravel path.

Six, eight, four, seven, two, four, and he was straining with the weight of the impossible metal door. It grinded open, emitting a mournful dissonance. The sunlight silhouetted Boy's form, his long shadow stretching across the floor of the studio. But it was not as dark as before. The wall opposite the door he had entered was a large door itself, and it stood open, letting in the purity of sunlight. Boy could hear the accented laughter of what must have been three men milling about the loading yard, though the yard itself appeared empty. The large statue which had filled the center of the room was absent, and Boy supposed that these men, probably Mexican immigrants, had been hired to transport it to Des Moines.

Boy's imagination had finally lost its grip upon him, thus transferring his destructive creativity entirely to the world of the concrete. He was no longer anything other than Boy, possessor of the curse laid upon him by a hen, which he had killed. He was not a soldier, nor a father suffering through the depression. It was 2004, and he was Boy Hamilton, bastard son of a dead-whore mother, grandson of a senile minister, under the guardianship of those who shared his curse, though ignorant of its presence.He had killed chickens, not men. This room was an artist's studio, not a prophet's habitat. He would burn a studio, and nothing else.

He had noticed the rags and the turpentine when he was in the loading yard with Chandler. They were lying by the back wall of the studio, in the loading yard. He heard the Mexicans laugh loudly. He would have to sneak the rags and turpentine while they were busying themselves with the sculpture. Stealthily, he slipped across the floor of the studio and to the large doorway. He sensed no movement from the loading yard. He stuck his small head around the doorway and saw the two pick-ups, now with their gates up, and loaded with the grotesque mummy-farmers. A semi, only the cab and skids, was parked next to a small crane.

It was then that he saw it. Earlier that morning, without the aid of much light, the large form that occupied the center of the studio had been a meaningless tangle of junk and metal. Now, in the piercing and blinding sun, boy saw its true form and significance.

In the loading yard, the way it was resting on the yellow dirt, it appeared as if it were sprouting from the ground. The talons rooted themselves in the tough soil. Each feather was fashioned individually, pounded into fulfilled potential by a "prophet" under Chandler's supervision. The comb was a rusted red. There was no junk in this one, though surely crafted with scrap metal. It was a hen, large and terrifying and twenty-five feet above Boy. Boy realized that it was not seed the mummy-farmers were casting, but feed for this monster-hen.

Boy felt his legs waver beneath him as he fought his inclination to run and drew closer to the image. The Mexicans laughed, and for a moment Boy turned to see them crowded into the cab of one of the pickups. He didn't notice the quiet pop music coming from the radio, nor the gentle puffs of smoke that emanated from the small cab, nor the little joint they were passing to one another between their pleasant bursts of laughter. They took no notice of the grotesque image of Boy, covered in feathers, approaching the large hen. Boy's gaze turned once again to the sculpture. He made his approach in a series of minute steps. He felt a feather fall from his skin, and realized he was approaching his likeness.

A large, metallic eye gleamed, reflecting the brilliant light of the sun. It cast quiet spots of light onto Boy. The eye stood in contrast to the rusted, twisted form of the hen's body. It was as if the hen had gone through the greatest of suffering, had seen the lot of the curse and had succumbed to its pains, Boy's own pains. Yet the eye maintained a spark that could not be extinguished by the ugly suffocation of its body. Boy stopped short of the image and fell on his knees and let the light from the hen's eye fill his own. He was pleasantly blinded for a few moments before he collapsed onto the ground and wept.

The pleasing laughter of the workers filled his ears as he passed into a peaceful sleep.