To Us May Grace Be Given

4.

The next day I woke up aching with my monthlies, just as the devil had said. Mam bled out a chicken and went to the barn. I felt sick inside, thinking of what the devil might say to Mam, but there were no fights or hollering. When Mam came back out the bowl was empty but she wasn't smiling. "Sicked up most of it," she said when I followed her into the kitchen. She was plucking the chicken so hard she ripped a wing half off. "We'll have to try again tomorrow."

I nodded. I had decided to say as little as I could, in case I gave away about going to the barn, but I knew that Mam was totting up the days and the animals just as I was. Put that in your fucking plan. I was, and it wasn't adding up.

That night I watched the moon rise. Just a thin curve of white in the sky, nearly all blotted out. But soon it would grow fat and full, and then they would come, and even if we kept the devil alive that long what if she chose to help Bill Boyland instead of us? For the first time in a long time I wished, really wished, that Da was still alive, so he could tell Mam if she was doing right or not.

After supper Mam sat down at the table with the carpetbag again. She read one of the papers carefully, then opened up some of the other vials and mashed their contents in the mortar until they made a black paste. When she saw me watching she said, "poison."

"For who?" I asked.

"For the devil, who d'you think?" She laughed then, low and bitter. "If I could get away with poisoning Bill Boyland I'd have done it years ago. Would've saved this whole territory a lot of grief."

I sat down across from her. "How will you get her to take it?"

"I won't. We shoot it into her." She heated the tip of an awl and made a little hollow in one of the bullets. With a spoon she pushed in the paste and scraped it smooth, then put it on the table. "Let it dry. It only takes a little. Turns their blood to powder." She squinted again at the paper as she picked up a second cartridge. "No, sand, I think it says sand. That'll be something, eh? Cut her and watch her pour out like a sack of flour."

"What if it doesn't work?" I asked.

At that her face grew dark. "I got her here, didn't I? I've got a god-damned devil tied up in our barn, how many times have you seen that before? When your great-grandda would hunt them he would take six men with him, and still they would get killed often as not." She shook her head. "You need to ask less and do more. Now go to bed."

I got under the covers, listening to Mam singing under her breath:

The Son of God goes forth to war,
a kingly crown to gain;
his blood red banner streams afar:
who follows in his train?
Who best can drink his cup of woe,
triumphant over pain,
who patient bears his cross below,
he follows in his train.

I gave myself over to thinking, about what little we had and what might happen when Bill Boyland came. Mam seemed to be fixing to break her word to the devil, and that didn't seem like it could lead to anything good. And even if she killed the devil, even if we got rid of her and Bill Boyland and all his men, we still wouldn't have a proper deed to the land.

When Mam finally came to bed I listened carefully to her breathing, and then I went out to the barn with my stained rags wadded in my hand. There wasn't much blood yet, but I didn't want to wait; it felt important not to wait. In the distance I could hear things crawling in the horse's bones, could hear the goats nervous in their pen, but I didn't dare try to comfort them in case the noise woke up Mam.

It wasn't silent in the barn this time; there was a wheezing sound, long and low. In the stall the devil was slumped in the yoke. She looked all bone in the moonlight; she looked like she was dead, until I heard again the slow wheeze of her breath.