Read Online The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman - Free Book Online Page B

back as if affronted, looked at Cale as if to say, “Do you see what you’ve done?” then reached down and tore the undertrousers away from the wound to expose the skin of his thigh. Blood was pumping out of the small wound in spurt after spurt. He stared down at it, utterly perplexed, then looked at Cale with the same expression. “Bring me a towel,” he said, gesturing over to a pile of large swabs on the table near the dead girl. Cale responded by standing up but stayed where he was. It was as if only part of what he was seeing was real. The Redeemer in front of him trying to stem the bleeding with his fingers and sighing in irritation as if he had sprung a small but deeply inconvenient leak—the black stain of blood spreading relentlessly across the floor. The sight and what it meant for him were impossible to take in. The part of him not able to grasp what he had done was thinking that it would be possible to go back and things would be like they were less than a minute before, and that the longer he waited to change things back the harder it would be. But he also knew there was nothing to be done. Everything was changed, utterly changed, horribly changed. A line he had heard a hundred times from the Redeemers’ Book of Proverbs came back to him and kept repeating itself over and over in his head: “We are like water spilled on the ground that cannot be gathered up again.” And so he kept on looking, paralyzed, as Picarbo leaned back as if terribly tired, resting first on his elbow and then on his back.
    Cale continued watching as the breath of the lord’s body stopped and the light in his eyes failed. Redeemer Picarbo, the fiftieth Lord of Discipline of that name, was dead.

6
    K leist woke up with the sensation of being smothered and held down. This was for a simple reason: Cale had his hand over his mouth and Vague Henri had his hands pinned to his side.
    “Shhhh! It’s Cale and Henri.” Cale waited until Kleist stopped struggling and then took away his hand. Henri let his grip relax. “You have to come with us now. If you stay, you’re dead. Are you coming?”
    Kleist sat up and looked at Vague Henri in the moon-illuminated dark.
    “Is this true?”
    Henri nodded. Kleist sighed and stood up.
    “Where’s Spider?” asked Kleist, looking around for the sleepshed Redeemer.
    “He’s gone for a smoke. We have to go.”
    Cale turned and the others followed. Cale stopped and bent low over the bed of a boy who was pretending to be asleep. “You say anything to Spider, Savio, and I’ll disembowel you, you little shit, all right?” The not-sleeping boy nodded without opening his eyes and Cale moved on.
    Outside the door, which Spider had left unlocked with his usual carelessness, Cale led them into the ambo and, keeping to the wall side, made toward the large statue of the Hanged Redeemer and the entrance that they had uncovered the day before.
    “What’s going on?” asked Kleist.
    “Be quiet.”
    Cale pushed open the door and ushered the other two inside. Then he lit a candle, much brighter than anything they had ever seen before.
    “How did you get the door open?” said Kleist.
    “A crowbar.”
    “Where did you get that candle?”
    “The same place I got the crowbar.”
    Kleist turned to Vague Henri.
    “Do you know what’s going on?” Vague Henri shook his head. Cale moved over to the far left of the tunnel and raised the candle.
    “God!” said Kleist as he looked at the terrified figure crouching on the floor.
    “It’s all right,” said Cale as he leaned down toward the girl. “They’re here to help,” he added, without much conviction.
    “Tell me what’s going on,” said Kleist, “or we’re going head-to-head here and now.”
    Cale looked at him and smiled, if a little grimly.
    “Listen . . . ,” he said, and blew out the flame. Twenty minutes later he had finished his story and relit the candle.
    The two boys stared at him and the girl in turn, appalled at what they had