Read Online House of Prayer No. 2 by Mark Richard - Free Book Online
Authors: Mark Richard
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is a photo of a derailed steam engine alongside some broken train tracks; someone has written in white marker with an arrow pointing to spilled firewood nearby:
The bodies were found here
. Hereâs an envelope with two mint-perfect Confederate currency notes, a five and a ten, and two five-cent stamps with Jefferson Davisâs portrait. In the bottom left drawer of the rolltop desk are the
Playboys
, and on the top shelf of his closet, by where he keeps the snake pistol, is the book you only flipped through once, having been stopped by the words urging the reader to remember to pluck the womanâs clitoris like a banjo string.
In a bankerâs cardboard box are maps and plats of the lake property. Your father is going to subdivide the whole thing himself on weekends with a surveyor friend of his. You are no longer on crutches, you can now walk with a cane, and your father says you and an unemployed sharecropper he has found are going to pull rod and chain for him down on the flooded Roanoke River basin on Saturdays; the weather is still cold and there shouldnât be too many snakes.
There are old wagon rut paths and ancient corn rows from a hundred years ago grown over by pine and brush where the valley falls off, and the footing is sharp, and you are no good at pulling chain. You keep falling down and Mason, the sharecropper, keeps helping you back up. He doesnât understand how heâssupposed to balance the rod. Your father keeps stalking back and forth from point to point hacking at things with his machete. Mason lives in a large one-room house set on a clay mound. Heâs always ready when your father pulls up in front of the place, he meets you coming out the door, closes it quickly behind him in a way that even as a kid you understand that heâs ashamed to let you see inside. He slaps on handfuls of English Leather that only partially cloak the smell of the house he shares with his wife and children.
When itâs time to stop for lunch, your father has made a couple of peaunt-butter-and-fig sandwiches for you, but Mason doesnât eat lunch, says he isnât hungry, and you realize he didnât bring a lunch, so the next time your father doesnât bring a lunch either. You all drive to a colored country store, and your father buys lunch for everyoneâlittle tins of Vienna sausages, cellophane cubes of saltines, slices of hard rat cheese the black man cuts off a block with a large knife, and RC Colas to drink. What you notice is how your father knows the owner of the little colored store and some of the black men who sit on the soft-drink cooler. Outside the store your father introduces you to a hundred-year-old black man sharpening a piece of metal on an old grinding stone. When your fatherâs surveyor friend asks your father later how he knows the hundred-year-old man, your father says he gave him a ride home once.
Heâs a very interesting fellow
, your father says.
One morning your father pulls in to Masonâs yard and a hound youâve never seen before comes scramble-barking out from under the house. When Mason doesnât come out, you openyour car door to knock. Dogs never bite you. You and your father are let inside the house by a woman who says she is Masonâs wife. The single room is bright, lit by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The windows are plastered over with newspaper. Itâs stifling hot from a woodstove, and smoky. Single beds are braced together, clothes are hung on long ropes. Things look like theyâve been blown against the walls by a tornado. When you look closely, there are faces in the piles of rags on the beds. Masonâs wife is very sorry, but Mason is in the county hospital. Mason has gone insane. At the hospital they found that a roach had crawled into one of his ears and become stuck and died. The fluid built up behind the blockage and affected his brain. Mason went insane in the one room with his family for a few
The bodies were found here
. Hereâs an envelope with two mint-perfect Confederate currency notes, a five and a ten, and two five-cent stamps with Jefferson Davisâs portrait. In the bottom left drawer of the rolltop desk are the
Playboys
, and on the top shelf of his closet, by where he keeps the snake pistol, is the book you only flipped through once, having been stopped by the words urging the reader to remember to pluck the womanâs clitoris like a banjo string.
In a bankerâs cardboard box are maps and plats of the lake property. Your father is going to subdivide the whole thing himself on weekends with a surveyor friend of his. You are no longer on crutches, you can now walk with a cane, and your father says you and an unemployed sharecropper he has found are going to pull rod and chain for him down on the flooded Roanoke River basin on Saturdays; the weather is still cold and there shouldnât be too many snakes.
There are old wagon rut paths and ancient corn rows from a hundred years ago grown over by pine and brush where the valley falls off, and the footing is sharp, and you are no good at pulling chain. You keep falling down and Mason, the sharecropper, keeps helping you back up. He doesnât understand how heâssupposed to balance the rod. Your father keeps stalking back and forth from point to point hacking at things with his machete. Mason lives in a large one-room house set on a clay mound. Heâs always ready when your father pulls up in front of the place, he meets you coming out the door, closes it quickly behind him in a way that even as a kid you understand that heâs ashamed to let you see inside. He slaps on handfuls of English Leather that only partially cloak the smell of the house he shares with his wife and children.
When itâs time to stop for lunch, your father has made a couple of peaunt-butter-and-fig sandwiches for you, but Mason doesnât eat lunch, says he isnât hungry, and you realize he didnât bring a lunch, so the next time your father doesnât bring a lunch either. You all drive to a colored country store, and your father buys lunch for everyoneâlittle tins of Vienna sausages, cellophane cubes of saltines, slices of hard rat cheese the black man cuts off a block with a large knife, and RC Colas to drink. What you notice is how your father knows the owner of the little colored store and some of the black men who sit on the soft-drink cooler. Outside the store your father introduces you to a hundred-year-old black man sharpening a piece of metal on an old grinding stone. When your fatherâs surveyor friend asks your father later how he knows the hundred-year-old man, your father says he gave him a ride home once.
Heâs a very interesting fellow
, your father says.
One morning your father pulls in to Masonâs yard and a hound youâve never seen before comes scramble-barking out from under the house. When Mason doesnât come out, you openyour car door to knock. Dogs never bite you. You and your father are let inside the house by a woman who says she is Masonâs wife. The single room is bright, lit by bare bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The windows are plastered over with newspaper. Itâs stifling hot from a woodstove, and smoky. Single beds are braced together, clothes are hung on long ropes. Things look like theyâve been blown against the walls by a tornado. When you look closely, there are faces in the piles of rags on the beds. Masonâs wife is very sorry, but Mason is in the county hospital. Mason has gone insane. At the hospital they found that a roach had crawled into one of his ears and become stuck and died. The fluid built up behind the blockage and affected his brain. Mason went insane in the one room with his family for a few
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