Read Online Dominion by Calvin Baker - Free Book Online

committed to his act, Sanne sat down and ate alone. Merian left her to the table and entertained himself with a pack of playing cards he had acquired. When the boy started to cry Merian cut his eyes between mother and infant, seemingly annoyed with both of them for disturbing his peace.
    Sanne went to the baby and began to feed him. Merian watched for a while without comment as everything in his house satisfied its bellyexcept him. Nor did he speak the remainder of that evening, but went to bed sometime after Sanne and the baby, giving both a wide berth.
    They continued in this way for several days, neither admitting they had given offense to the other or doing anything to change his behavior. They shared the bed together with the child but did not touch, until Sanne began to think of moving back into the other house permanently.
    It was another week before she offered the baby to her husband for holding again, and days even after that before Merian could bring himself to take him, who still had yet to receive a name of his own.
    Merian had borne his exile as repentance for his behavior on the night of the birth, but when he looked at her curled up with the wrinkled form, although he knew it to be his own issue, he could not help but think a tiny new master had come upon his lands.
    It was the baby who finally broke the tension in the house. Sanne woke in the middle of one night, disturbed by something in her sleep, to find Merian holding the child on his chest and speaking to him in the same abracadabra he sometimes used with Ruth Potter.
    â€œHe must of crawled on top of me in the middle of the night,” Merian said, when Sanne sat up and looked at the two of them. “When I opened my eyes, he was here on my chest.”
    â€œHe probably had a nightmare about utopia,” she said.
    Merian ignored her barb and continued to play with the boy. “Did you dream of utopia, Mr. Purchase?” he asked.
    â€œWho is Purchase?” Sanne wanted to know.
    â€œIt seemed like it fit him.”
    Sanne did not answer but let the man hold his child and continue to speak to it in his gibberish meant to make the uncomprehending understand.
    As Merian played with the tiny new baby, it was the first time he could remember ever holding anything so small. Nor could he remember being held by either mother or father when he himself was little. He knew this, of course, to be only a likely trick of the mind, one of the false floors or hidden rooms of memory deceiving him. There was, however, no way to verify either the one thing or the other.

seven
    An orange liquid sun clung low over the white landscape most of that winter like a shield, cast and left as welcome gift for whichever strange new god slept and dreamed in the western lands.
    Merian spent the darkened months beneath the burning sky learning to dote over his new son, Purchase, until the two of them started to became as inseparable as the boy was from Sanne, who considered him a miracle brought to her barren womb by unseen Providence. In the evenings, after finishing work on the buildings and grounds, Merian would go home, where instead of turning directly to food, corn whiskey, or wife, he would go to the boy and check on him, asking about his day. “Purchase Merian, what did you do while me and Ruth Potter were out cording firewood?”
    Sanne regarded the child with protective affection as his father tickled him or else tossed him into the air. “That’s enough, Jasper,” she would say then, when she felt he was roughhousing the baby. “He’s still just a little one.”
    Sometimes Merian argued the toughness of the child. More often he gave in to her demands and placed Purchase back on the mattress or else withdrew his hand and stopped trying to make the baby laugh. He found himself pleased that the building was still unfinished, as it gave him a project and excuse to be indoors and near them.
    After Sanne finally vacated the other