About Crows

Scenes from a Village: A Triptych

43 Scen e s fro m a Vi l l ag e : A T r ipt ych Or, “They retained a bias for deductive reasoning that distinguished them from English-speaking newcomers.” We spent the better part of the afternoon scrubbing his brains from the wallboards. After the clerics caught wind that it was a suicide, the police arrived at the house to apprehend the body and force it to stand trial. The jury commenced before supper and evening prayer, finding the corpseguiltyofself-murder.Theydraggedhimoutintothesquareandfloggedhimonehundred times across his stripped-bare back. Skin split but nothing dripped out. Papa’s head just hung heavy from the rack they flung him over. His head cracked by birdshot like the watermelon I accidentally dropped last summer. They sent a clear message to all: no one escapes God’s law. 44 Or, “By self-examination, the pious always found failings in their own conduct to be confessed and expiated.” Becausesomepartofhumanfleshisalwaysleftstickingtospirit,self-punishmentwastheonly fit penance for the widow’s lack of perfection. Exile from family and friends: sleepless nights on the cold ground of animal pens, shuffling around the village square in corn husk shoes, iron-studdedbeltsturnedinward—tightened,wormwoodaddedtooverpowertheunintended pleasure in food, swallowing phlegm of diseased drunks dying of bedsores in poorhouse and work farm shacks. She envied the missionary priests above all, captured and beheaded by Huron insurgents. And her self-punishment was most ruthless for this lust of martyrdom. 45 Or, “Being divinely ordained, disasters were heralded by natural signs, such as comets, lightning, and thunder.” Each firefly blinking above the marsh: the lost soul of an unbaptized infant. Limbo in frontier , frontier in limbo. Englishmen who go there lately after dark with instruments and jars say they’re not fireflies at all, but luminescent gas rising from beneath the wasteland. Further proof they’re damned souls, I say. Visions of a canoe, crown of fire floating in the sky above! A baby crying from inside his mother’s womb. Last week, the sun disappeared behind the moon.Lightshoneoutlikeahalo.IrepeatmyprayersthreetimesbackwardswheneverIleave the house: Me upon mercy have God, me upon mercy have God, me upon mercy have God. ...