interest in Moses himself, reaching at him withclawing fingers, stretching out one arm in desperate hunger
through the bars.
It isn’t him, Ignatius says again. It’s her.
*
It was in a travelling sideshow that Ignatius discovered her. It was a mangy troupe of men who passed from place to place, seeking shelter and services in exchange for an
opportunity to view their menagerie of freaks. The troupe travelled in a convoyof caged vans. They would park the vans in a row and open the back doors of each to reveal a slug or two behind
welded metal bars. These slugs were monstrously transformed – some just remnants of animated bodies, and others surgically altered as if by a mad Frankenstein. There was one creature that was
just a head, suspended in a large fishbowl and swaying back and forth from a harness madeof belts, its mouth opening and closing like a Venus flytrap waiting for something edible to fly into it.
There was a dead woman whose body was gone just below her shoulders, just a head, neck and a pair of arms to drag herself about. Another had an additional head stitched on the shoulder of a body
that had had its arms removed. The two heads gnawed at each other, chewing away the flesh ofthe cheeks not in animosity so much as boredom. The arms had been removed, presumably so that the
creature couldn’t simply rip off the added head. One playful van contained a dead child, a young boy dressed in a sailor suit. His cage was filled with severed hands which he chewed like a
dog or gathered into piles or tossed about. One dead woman had multiple rotting breasts sewn all over her torsoin imitation of a nursing sow and, in the same cage, there was a man with multiple
penis lengths sewn together in a row so that he dragged around his penis like a tail, tripping over it with cartoon absurdity.
A bizarre and horrible exhibition of distorted humanity indeed – an antic and fleshy rococo delivered in metal boxes roving across the country. And she was one of them, the redhead,shut
up in one of the vans with an emaciated slug who showed no interest at all in eating her. They had been wretched cohabitants for nine weeks before the troupe stopped at the mission and Ignatius
found there his holy woman.
It was immediately clear to me, he says, that she is an offering from God Himself. The incarnation of His grace. A breathing, walking end to our suffering.
So he attempted to barter for her, trying to convince the leader of the troupe, a man named Fletcher, to trade her for supplies, shelter, meals, blessings, even some of his congregation willing
to sacrifice themselves for the exchange of this imprisoned seraph. But Fletcher would not have it. The redhead was his prime attraction.
He was a greasy, spotted man with scabs and scars all overhis body. He chewed on his own fingers as though he were himself part slug. But even though he smelled of foulness and pestilence, and
even though he was oozing with abomination, he was among the horrid crew of the living.
She ain’t for sale, padre, Fletcher said. But you can take another glance at her on the house. Or for a sift through your medicine cabinet, I could arrange you a quickwick-dip in her. I
know you’re a holy man and whatnot, but holy bangin holy’s gotta be a lawful act, don’t it?
So Ignatius cast them out of the mission and told them to move on. But he followed them and, three nights later, when Fletcher and his men were drunk and whoring in a compound near Yuma, he
stole the woman away and brought her back here to stay in the mission with them.
Threedays I waited, Ignatius says. Three days I followed. And when I acted, I left it to look as if she had managed to escape herself. I even had her run for a mile in the opposite direction in
case they followed her tracks, though I don’t think they are hunters by nature. I didn’t want them to trace her back here.
They’ll come back, Moses says. Sooner or later. She’s too valuable to them. Evenif they
through the bars.
It isn’t him, Ignatius says again. It’s her.
*
It was in a travelling sideshow that Ignatius discovered her. It was a mangy troupe of men who passed from place to place, seeking shelter and services in exchange for an
opportunity to view their menagerie of freaks. The troupe travelled in a convoyof caged vans. They would park the vans in a row and open the back doors of each to reveal a slug or two behind
welded metal bars. These slugs were monstrously transformed – some just remnants of animated bodies, and others surgically altered as if by a mad Frankenstein. There was one creature that was
just a head, suspended in a large fishbowl and swaying back and forth from a harness madeof belts, its mouth opening and closing like a Venus flytrap waiting for something edible to fly into it.
There was a dead woman whose body was gone just below her shoulders, just a head, neck and a pair of arms to drag herself about. Another had an additional head stitched on the shoulder of a body
that had had its arms removed. The two heads gnawed at each other, chewing away the flesh ofthe cheeks not in animosity so much as boredom. The arms had been removed, presumably so that the
creature couldn’t simply rip off the added head. One playful van contained a dead child, a young boy dressed in a sailor suit. His cage was filled with severed hands which he chewed like a
dog or gathered into piles or tossed about. One dead woman had multiple rotting breasts sewn all over her torsoin imitation of a nursing sow and, in the same cage, there was a man with multiple
penis lengths sewn together in a row so that he dragged around his penis like a tail, tripping over it with cartoon absurdity.
A bizarre and horrible exhibition of distorted humanity indeed – an antic and fleshy rococo delivered in metal boxes roving across the country. And she was one of them, the redhead,shut
up in one of the vans with an emaciated slug who showed no interest at all in eating her. They had been wretched cohabitants for nine weeks before the troupe stopped at the mission and Ignatius
found there his holy woman.
It was immediately clear to me, he says, that she is an offering from God Himself. The incarnation of His grace. A breathing, walking end to our suffering.
So he attempted to barter for her, trying to convince the leader of the troupe, a man named Fletcher, to trade her for supplies, shelter, meals, blessings, even some of his congregation willing
to sacrifice themselves for the exchange of this imprisoned seraph. But Fletcher would not have it. The redhead was his prime attraction.
He was a greasy, spotted man with scabs and scars all overhis body. He chewed on his own fingers as though he were himself part slug. But even though he smelled of foulness and pestilence, and
even though he was oozing with abomination, he was among the horrid crew of the living.
She ain’t for sale, padre, Fletcher said. But you can take another glance at her on the house. Or for a sift through your medicine cabinet, I could arrange you a quickwick-dip in her. I
know you’re a holy man and whatnot, but holy bangin holy’s gotta be a lawful act, don’t it?
So Ignatius cast them out of the mission and told them to move on. But he followed them and, three nights later, when Fletcher and his men were drunk and whoring in a compound near Yuma, he
stole the woman away and brought her back here to stay in the mission with them.
Threedays I waited, Ignatius says. Three days I followed. And when I acted, I left it to look as if she had managed to escape herself. I even had her run for a mile in the opposite direction in
case they followed her tracks, though I don’t think they are hunters by nature. I didn’t want them to trace her back here.
They’ll come back, Moses says. Sooner or later. She’s too valuable to them. Evenif they
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