Read Online John Crow's Devil by Marlon James - Free Book Online Page B

had heard from a church sister. She imagined seven priests all in a row, whipping their bloody backs while staring at their hardened penises. They would whip until blood flowed like tributaries and their erections shrank in shame. She deserved no less for being a whore in the way she thinketh. Lucinda had known the Apostle just as surely as Ham had known his father Noah in the Bible. She became both at once. A drunken Noah, staggering naked in his tent, knocking over food and drink and crashing on cushions, spread wide for nature to see. She could see a body hardened by obedience, giving nothing to age, pissing and farting with that magnificence that men had when they did not care. Lucinda blinked and became Ham, his dark son, who slipped in the tent and was blinded by magnificence as well. She became father and son at once, shuddering through drunken blindness at the father’s sudden pleasure, shaking with fear and sin as the son took his father in his mouth. Lust came to her when most unwelcome and shattered the wall she had constructed between her two selves. It was the damn blood. That cursed time of the month that played out in wetness, pain, and bloat; that stirred a frenzy deep inside her pinker self. Twice in her thoughts he had made her burn bright with his own flame, as red as his books. Jesuits did this. She wanted to be good. No more Night Lucinda. She would whip darkness out in the name of Jesus. In the closet it waited; the black snake, the belt reserved for disobedient Sunday school children. She took her blouse off and stared at her weakness in the mirror, at her breasts, one drooped slightly lower than the other. She saw his wings, the demon of her sin waiting to rip her legs open. Consuming fire. She pleaded the blood of Jesus and swung the belt over her left shoulder. The leather tore through soft skin like a massa’s whip. Lucinda shook, tears fell, and she looked at herself again. Now for resolve. She beat out the Lucinda that could not serve the Apostle with purity, swinging the belt over the right shoulder, then left, then right, then left, then right again. And again and again and again until there was nothing but leather slicing through the air pungent with flesh and blood. The mirror spoke her shame in a chant until there was nothing left between her and it but light.

    Dressed in two shirts and torn cloths wrapped up, down, and crossway over her back, Lucinda went to church. That she had appointed herself secretary was neither questioned nor challenged. Her first duty was to dispose of the multitude of cakes that came daily from every widow, spinster, and daughter who had reached consenting age. It was good that a man not marry. That’s what the Bible said. Even better for an Apostle. There was no need for the distraction of a wife; all he needed in a woman he had in … She trembled, yearning and fearing the end of her own thought. The office needed cleaning. She began by putting his red books on the shelf.
    “Lucinda?”
    “AAAH!”
    “You reach here before me? I starting to wonder about you, you know. Maybe you’re coveting my job. I didn’t startle you, did I?”
    “No! No, Pastor, I mean, Apostle.”
    “I’m pulling your leg, Lucinda. But still …” He went over to his desk. “We have to do something about that constant slip of yours.”
    “Slip? It a show?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Me never mean to sin with this short frock.”
    “Slip of the tongue, child.”
    “Oh! Me did know that, Pastor, I mean, Apostle.”
    “See, I caught you again. There you go, calling me Pastor. Do you miss Pastor Bligh?”
    “No baba! Me miss him like me miss seven plague of Egypt in me panty. Lawks, sorry, Apostle.”
    He waved her off.
    “Him is a abomination before the Lord. Him is—” she started.
    “Still a child of God and God loves him as much as he loves you. God gave you permission to rebuke him?”
    “Jes—” He covered her mouth quickly. She smelt the soap on his fingers and did