The Martyrdom of St. Alison
A short story
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own
despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
— Aeschylus, Agamemnon (trans. Edith Hamilton)
…God can use whatever you have, even if it looks unpromising. Even if you're just kind of an arrogant teenager, that can be something that's transformed into something holy.
It was at exactly 1:30 p.m. on the first Wednesday after Easter when Chris Novak experienced his first vision.
He was sitting in Mr. Leslie’s fourth grade math class at St. Francis Xavier Elementary learning the finer points of integers. The window adjacent to Mr. Leslie’s desk was wide open to take advantage of the gloriously mild April breeze. The trees were newly green and the flower beds surrounding the school lined with bright regiments of daffodil-soldiers the color of rich butter. It was the variety of bucolic vernal afternoon straight out of a richly illustrated Victorian storybook, something approximating a closeted Oxford don’s fantasies more than reality.
All of the sudden, an oversized brown owl with glowing blue eyes silently swooped into the room through the open window. Chris was an avid enough connoisseur of nature documentaries and animal factbooks to know that this bird was far larger than an owl had any right to be — it sported something like a ten-foot wingspan and was nearly as tall as Mr. Leslie — and knew from mere intuition that owls did not typically have blue eyes, let alone blue eyes like this. The light completely blotted out whatever irises or scleras it had; it appeared alien, like the tractor beam from some extraterrestrial UFO in a sci-fi B-movie.
The owl alighted on Mr. Leslie’s desk and stared directly at Chris. The light of its eyes was cold and harsh, reminiscent of arctic ice. As it shifted about on the desk, the blues within its eyes lightened and deepend, running the gamut from washed-out security blanket to the depths of the open ocean. Sometimes it was almost gray, other times nearly ultramarine.
The owl’s eyes burrowed deep into Chris’ soul, far deeper than he would have liked. Despite only being ten years old, he felt like the owl knew some ancient, buried guilt that dwelt within his breast. It was intolerable; more than intolerable, it was horrifying. He could take it no longer.
“An owl! Mr. Leslie, there’s a big evil owl on your desk! Shoo it away! Shoo it away!” screeched Chris like a soul in Hell.
Mr. Leslie’s eyes widened like large porcelain saucers and his face reddened. Chris blinked and noticed that the owl was gone. His classmates morphed from dumbstruck to smirking to outright guffawing in the span of thirty seconds.
“But it was there! I saw the owl! He was so big, his eyes were blue, I swear, he was…”
“Christopher Novak, please go to the principal’s office now.”
As Chris filed into Principal O’Hanlon’s office, he noticed his big sister Alison already seated there. This was such a common occurrence anymore that Chris was not surprised in the least — a terrible level of cynicism for someone so young to bear, especially regarding a sibling. Alison’s hazel eyes simultaneously burned with bitter defeat and enduring defiance behind round Lennon glasses, the reds in her shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair surging with each sharp inhalation.
Alison’s “decline” was noted with dismay and increasing anger by both the Novaks and St. Francis Xavier. While always a tad quirky and occasionally stubborn, Alison was such an academic star and so perfectly behaved that whatever flaws existed were beside the point; the spelling bee trophies and perfect attendance ribbons more than made up for the infrequent episodes of pigheadedness or rare odd utterance. The beginning of sixth grade undid all this; in quick succession, she discovered Green Day, the Cure, Sylvia Plath, cigarettes, and boys. Her grades plummeted and she retreated to her bedroom for entire weekends. She dated the white trash kid across the street for a week and then ran out of his house crying one crisp fall afternoon and never spoke to him again. She made rude sounds during weekly Mass. She had, in short, gone from star pupil to lost cause in record time. At the very least she was an eighth grader and in a couple months she’d be out of St. Francis Xavier’s hair for good; for the Novaks, though, the “terror” was likely just beginning.
Today’s incident wasn’t the most egregious offense, but it certainly was one of the stranger ones. “And just what does this mean, miss?,” snarled Principal O’Hanlon, holding up the sweatshirt Alison wore for about five minutes after lunch before the late-in-arriving social studies teacher Mrs. Williamson started spitting nickels and ordered her to the office. The sweatshirt — ordered from some jokey Etsy account out of Austin, Texas using her dad’s credit card — was the color of pine trees and sported the words I KILLED LAURA PALMER in big white letters.
“It’s a reference to something you wouldn’t get.”
“I don’t care what it’s a reference to, this is threatening and violent.”
“Ha, that’s rich coming from you. You’re the most threatening and violent bitch in this fucking school.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t think I did. You have ‘till the count of five to repeat what you said. One, two, three…”
“Four, five. Suck my dick.”
“Oh, that’s the last straw, Miss Novak. Your parents are getting a call and it’s Saturday detention for you. Your phone is going in my desk drawer, too.”
It was only then that Principal O’Hanlon even noticed Chris’ little shock of straw-colored hair sitting three chairs down from his sister.
“Chris, I’m sorry you had to see your sister like this. What’s the matter?”
“I saw an owl with glowing blue eyes in Mr. Leslie’s math class and he sent me here.”
“An owl?”
“Yes. Except this owl had glowing blue eyes and was bigger than any other owl that ever lived, including in prehistoric times. I read in my animal book that…”
“Excuse me, Mr. Novak. An owl with blue eyes? Are you for real?”
“The owls are not what they seem,” Alison smirkingly interjected.
“I heard that nonsense, miss!”
Chris swallowed hard. “I swear, Principal O’Hanlon, he perched on Mr. Leslie’s desk. But only I could see him.”
Principal O’Hanlon’s face rested somewhere between bewilderment, horror, and vague frustration. She methodically rubbed her temples. “Chris, Alison, I’m sending you home early. I don’t know what’s going on in your house that you’re acting like this but I’m calling your parents to get to the bottom of this. Keep this up and you’re both seeing the school counselor at the same time. Is that clear? Go get your backpacks.”
After the Novaks left, Principal O’Hanlon slumped in her chair, shutting her eyes tight and massaging her tear ducts. “Goddamn Czechs,” she mumbled. “I need a stiff drink. Goddamn fucking Czechs.”
“You should be ashamed, both of you!,” hollered Joseph Novak at his children, his growing bald spot reddening like a volcano spewing fiery lava. “Look how you’ve upset your mother!,” he said, gesturing to the big gray-brown couch to his left, where Beatrice Novak held her head in her hands, softly crying.
“Alison, I know you’ve been doing some wild things lately, but cursing out Principal O’Hanlon like that? That’s out of the question, young lady. We’re paying good money for St. Francis Xavier. I’m working overtime so we can afford the best education for our kids that money can buy. And what are you doing? You’re flushing all that down the toilet! Enjoy public school in November, because your mother and I aren’t paying an arm and a leg for Catholic high school again if you’re gonna have a D average and take hour-long bathroom smoke breaks.”
Alison didn’t respond to her father’s tirade and just sat there scowling. Joseph turned towards Chris, taking a slightly softer tone that was still stern and harsh around the edges.
“And Chris, what is this nonsense? Seeing an owl in class? Have you been sleeping well? What else have you seen or heard? Do we need to take you to the doctor?”
“Chris,” sniffled Beatrice, “remember cousin Gabe? How he started hearing voices and had to drop out of Duke? He was a bright kid, just like you. Got a scholarship and everything.”
“What’s a scholarship?”
“A scholarship is-”
Alison interrupted her mother. “A scholarship is when a college takes pity on poor kids, so they pay for them to get laughed at by rich kids.”
“Alison!,” Beatrice wailed, her eyes glistening with tears once more.
“I’m not wrong though!”
Chris was just baffled. He was as frightened by the blue-eyed owl as all the grown-ups were but he wasn’t really confused. He didn’t think only he’d seen the owl. In fact, he thought Mr. Leslie and all his classmates saw it too and were just as scared and didn’t say anything and then laughed it off to save face.
Joseph shook his head. “Chris, you have to tell me these things. From now on, every time you see or hear something I want you to tell me or your mother or the school counselor.”
“Yeah Chris, they’ll put you away for life with all the other schizos!”
“ALISON!”
“What? The little twerp should know the facts of life. Better now than ten years down the line when they truly bite him in the butt.”
Chris despised being called a “little twerp” and he knew that was Alison self-censoring for Mom and Dad. “Little shit,” “dumbass brat,” “dick muncher”... now those were more familiar. Couldn’t say anything about it, either, because she’d just double down.
Just then the door creaked open and Grandma Kateřina — Joseph’s mother — ambled in, carrying her oversized purse and a brown paper bag full of groceries. She’d come to live with them ever since Grandpa Miloš passed three years ago. Chris adored her, even though he couldn’t always understand what she said through her thickly accented English. Alison, for her part, was frigidly kind towards her, which in a rare moment of generational agreement exactly matched her parents’ demeanor towards the little old immigrant.
“Jožin, why my grandchildren home so early?”
Jesus, how am I gonna tell her? I barely understand this bullshit myself. My son is likely schizophrenic and my daughter has fucked up her Saturday because of Twin Peaks. “Just some stuff at their school, Mom. We’ll sort it out tonight and I’ll call the school back tomorrow morning.”
“Bad behavior?”
“Something like that.”
Kateřina paused and then bemusedly narrowed her eyes. “So no different than you in ‘81, ‘82, eh?” Joseph didn’t respond — couldn’t, really. He was never sure his parents ever really loved him, so cloistered were they with their suppressed immigrant emotions and whiffs of the trauma of history. She and Dad acted like I was some kind of little freak and never gave me anything and now that she’s got grandchildren, it’s time for soft indulgence? I don’t care what went down in ‘68, you’ve gotta be consistent with your love.
“Anyway, if they behave bad, they should be punish. Send them to rooms without dinner.”
They’ll just sneak Hershey bars upstairs, like I did. “I’ll do that, Mom.” Get them out of my hair for once. Wish I could do the same with you.
That evening, Kateřina crept into Chris’s room, carrying a little plate of peas and mashed potatoes with her.
“Chris?”
“Yes, Grandma?”
“Your father tell me you been naughty boy today.” Chris gulped. Should I tell her the whole truth? I don’t wanna make her think I’m crazy. Best not to. “Yes, I was.”
Kateřina patted the bed. “It’s fine. Your father was also naughty boy when he was your ages, you and your sister. Have dinner.”
While Chris unenthusiastically shoveled his dinner into his mouth — after seeing that blue-eyed owl, he really didn’t have much of an appetite — Kateřina pulled a picture out of her pocket. It was of a grinning, brown-haired man around the age of thirty, looking hale and hearty in a magenta button-down shirt and sporting a prominent mustache and longer-than-average sideburns. Behind him, slightly blurred, a tram breezed by.
“You know who this is? This is Grandpa Miloš.”
Chris’s eyes bugged out slightly. He’d met Grandpa Miloš a few times before Grandma came to live with them, but he was always vague in Chris’s mind, a bow-legged, pot-bellied phantom with a long white caterpillar of a mustache and heavy old-person shoes. Here was that same man — this strange, ancient creature reeking of half-forgotten old country memories — not only still alive but in his prime. Looking into his glinting hazel eyes, Chris felt a strange sadness pull at him. This was not the overwhelming, warped terror of the owl, oh no; rather, it was the knowledge that this old man was once young, and so was Grandma, and so were Mom and Dad, and that one day he and Alison and everyone at St. Francis Xavier would be old and decrepit and then condemned to the grave. In many ways, it was even more distressing than his azure-eyed feathered friend.
“Grandpa was good man. He was so handsome, so strong. He did good work at factory, took me to many dances. We were young and happy, oh so happy. Then Russians came into Czechoslovakia. They angry, they not like us because of who we make president. Chris, you not understand all this now, but it is good you know. Your Grandpa, he angry with rest of them. Russians bought in tanks, we threw bricks at tanks. They bought soldiers, we threw bricks at soldiers. Then they shoot in crowd. His brother, he die. We come here because America mad at this, America welcome us. Your father born here, first American boy. When you born, he name you after brother Christopher. We told him to, in fact.”
For a time the room was silent. Chris mindlessly played with his mashed potatoes, arranging them in little blobs, using the peas to make little “snowmen” of the melting-in-the-late February-sun variety.
Kateřina continued: “Chris, you think I crazy for saying this, but Grandpa would be proud of your sister. He love her, always did. She behave bad now but that is to be expected for someone her ages. We threw bricks at tanks, remember. If no one threw bricks at anything, we’d all be your father.”
Alison casually leaned against the chain-link fence separating the school yard from the street beyond, trying to project some strange combination of toughness, diffidence, and vulnerability before Wednesday’s 8:15 bell. Next to her were her two best friends Sara Washington and Sadie Nussbaum — or more precisely, two new best friends. In her younger, better-behaved days, Alison was included in the packs of giggling girls in the heart of the schoolyard, gushing about their Disney Channel crushes and swapping friendship bracelets. The tumult of the past three years pushed Alison way to the margins but in the process gave her these two comrades-in-arms, raising the red banner against something or the other.
Sara was the one black student in the eighth grade class, while Sadie’s father was Jewish (it was her Italian mother who — despite being essentially irreligious — wanted Sadie to have a Catholic education). They had spent their lives terrorized by the snickering packs of Connellys, D’Emilios, and Dubrowskis who sniffed for any sign of difference and then laid it on thick until it became little more than a white-noise hum, an unfortunate torrent of provincial bigotry the girls had to deal with. Alison, of course, had never been mocked for who she was — no one at school actually hated Czechs, they just didn’t know anything about them, and being seen as a weird subspecies of Polack was pretty decent in the round. Suddenly being thrown to the margins changed her perspective.
That all three liked and hated the same things and people and smoked like chimneys helped, too.
Right next to them stood Nick Peters, a conundrum if there ever was one. Nick had been endlessly — and needlessly — tormented since kindergarten. He wasn’t the brightest kid and probably had a variety of undisclosed mental challenges, but he was high-functioning enough to be mainstreamed with the other kids. His speech was slow and deliberate and he got a reduced workload from the teachers and an in-class wraparound. He was mocked for who he wasn’t, getting pelted with sweet corn and spitballs at lunch and tripped in the hallways — yet through it all, he remained one of the most genuinely sweet and gentle students in the school. Driven to the schoolyard margins, Alison, Sara, and Sadie became something resembling his protectors, the three Furies guarding against falsity and conniving, proving the dignity of Hades against the depravity of Olympus.
Braving the stench of cigarettes and withering stares of the girls, their sworn enemies swaggered forward: consummate goombah Marc Coppola, with his infamously snooty girlfriend Ashley Flannigan wrapped around him. Marc strutted with the trained swagger like the trust-fund Travolta with daddy issues he was, the lace-curtain Irish Ashley smirking at the foursome with all the sincerity of the serpent in Eden.
“Hey Ally, is Nicky Czeching you out?,” slimed Marc.
Alison absolutely despised that nickname her entire life. Christ, they think I’m some kind of baby, still. Fuckers. “Get lost, asshole.”
“Oh sorry, I forgot. He likes bagels and lox with a side of grits, don’t ya, weirdo?,” Ashley joined in. Nick just stared at them, his face twisted with vague hurt and dismay.
“She said get lost,” interjected Sadie.
“Sorry, did I ask Jew?” Sadie hardened her gaze at Ashley, eyes flinty and determined. I get better grades in religion than she does. This bitch doesn’t even believe in God. I mean, neither do I, but I’d like to. I’d convert to anything to spite her.
“Y’know, Ally,” leered Marc, “you used to be so nice and warm. Now you hang out with these bitches and read dumb books where some brat offs himself. If you dropped the act and put on some makeup,” — he leaned in close to her ear, his overpowering cologne assaulting her nostrils — “I might even dump Ashley for you. I’m not trying to fuck Irish.”
A weak shadow yet noticable passed over Ashley’s face, a sign of limp sadness boiling inside her, of despair mixed with anger that she was popular and attractive and dating the Italian Stallion of St. Francis Xavier and oh God I’ll never be loved. I have it all and I’ll never be loved. I can cover it all up with makeup and nail polish and still my beautiful boyfriend hates me. Christ, he hates me, I know it. Maybe hanging out by this stupid fucking fence isn’t the worst thing in the world.
“Feeling emotions for once?,” Sara interjected venomously, ending Ashley’s self-pitying reverie.
“Eat me, hoodrat.”
“Hey dude, I’m from this stupid lily-white town just like you.”
Not so different after all. Not so different. A hair’s breadth away. Only a hair.
Nick just stood there the whole time, silent and trying not to cry. It wasn’t safe to cry. They called him stupid and special and far worse but he knew that much. You don’t cry. Boys don’t cry.
The hideous clanging of the round scarlet bell rang out in the yard. Time to rush through the Pledge at the Hail Mary and head off to class. Time. A time to love, and a time to hate. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. There is nothing new under the sun.
At 11 o’clock Mass, Chris experienced his second vision.
Each Wednesday, the younger grades filed to the St. Francis Xavier parish church to be subjected to the perfunctory rituals and plodding homilies of Father Pulaski, a man who in his total boredom with and disregard for the Mass was more of an atheist than the most vituperative Hitchens acolyte. He mumbled the readings, routinely butchering the more arcane Old Testament names and on one occasion — to the profound unhappiness of Chris’s psychotically devout religion teacher Miss Salazar — confused Gilead with Galilee. His homilies were your typical bland invocations of God’s love and living a good life, with occasional half-hearted bromides about school vouchers or birth control which provoked neither agreement nor anger (although Alison saying “we must preserve the sanctity of life” like she had a mouthful of marbles produced reliable giggles from Chris).
Today, Chris was seated underneath the stained glass window depicting the martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Felicity. Their faces were crumpled and tearful, shrieking silently, the boyish, rather confused-looking centurion’s sword gliding awkwardly across Perpetua’s throat with long arcs of blood shooting out. It was the typical awful scene of death and destruction, from the era when Christians were butchered in Carthiginian amphitheaters; soon, though, the Roman heathens saw their error, the apostates were eliminated, and the Mother Church rose on the Tiber’s banks. Miss Salazar’s hectoring tones inscribed all this Chris’s brain as sharply as the centurion’s sword right in front of him.
And then, like a crackling thunderbolt on a cloudless summer afternoon, Perpetua’s face morphed violently into that of Alison’s. Her wide, terrified eyes were Alison’s eyes, her wailing mouth Alison’s mouth, her outstretched arms Alison’s arms — even her hands now had Alison’s chipped purple nail polish. The centurion’s face changed, too; he was no longer the nervous boy-soldier hesitant to execute this young woman but a sneering wannabe criminal, a hideous glint of bloodlust in his eyes. He looked, in fact, like that Italian boy — Michael? Manny? Something like that — he saw hanging around the fence some mornings. He knew Alison and her friends didn’t like him, but he always assumed he was just some weird tough guy; maybe a little aggressive, sure, but not a murderer. But what if he was? Oh my goodness, oh my goodness, I can’t lose her, he’s just a tough guy, he’s just a tough guy, he’s just…
Chris teetered on the edge of a panic attack, his entire body shaking and cold sweat seeping through his baby blue polo shirt. He was even more terrified now than with the owl. The owl was a bad omen, sure; seeing a nocturnal animal in daylight was surely a portent of something awful, especially one of monstrous size and eyes of piercing blue light. This, though: this was direct. This wasn’t some strange bird confused as to the time of day; this was his sister. This was his sister being killed — no, not killed, something even higher; Alison was being martyred. Like a saint. And if there was one thing Mrs. Salazar always insisted on — besides that Che and Fidel were burning in hell for eternity for their sins against God (and her wealthy Havana grandparents) — it was that martyred saints were the holiest of all, especially if they were devout young women of virtue.
Well, Alison wasn’t particularly virtuous, but she was a young woman. Chris knew, on some level, that his sister was going to die imminently. Worst of all, he had to remain silent about this. After all, he didn’t want to go away to the funny farm in the country like cousin Gabe. He couldn’t tell his teachers or his parents or his Grandma or the school counselor or Principal O’Hanlon or Father Pulaski or anyone.
Well, almost anyone. Strangely enough, he knew on some subterranean level there was one person who just might actually believe him.
“You think I’m gonna get martyred? Like some kind of stupid saint? By goddamn Marc fucking Coppola? Oh this is so fucking sick, I gotta tell the group chat pronto.”
Here Chris thought he’d spoken the harsh but necessary truth to the king (or, in this case, queen) like a latter-day Isaiah or Daniel, and in return he received a wide crescent smile of unalloyed, irony-sick delight from a bespectacled nicotine addict in a Caroline Polachek t-shirt.
“C’mon, I’m serious.”
“Of course you are, Chris. Honestly, getting my throat slit by that dago douchebag sounds pretty tight.”
“Alison, wait — don’t you believe me? Please, big sis, put the phone down and listen to me.”
“Chris, no one gets martyred anymore. They’re all just weird stories from a thousand years ago. They probably aren’t even real, most of them. Some girl tried fucking a soldier and his friends got jealous and merked her and then some bald virgin decided it was because she loved Jesus too much.”
“But Miss Salazar…”
“Miss Salazar is a bitch and a half. Her grandparents got their shit taken away by commies back in the fifties and now she acts like Christ on the cross. You’ve seen her, she glowers at Pulaski because he doesn’t give a fuck. What Christ said to Peter on the Sea of Gilead — I mean, Galilee… — stop frowning, you love this impression!”
“Alison, now’s not the time!”
“Chris, stop being a little shit.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Oh okay, you prefer big shit?”
“Fuck you!”
For a second there was silence. Chris’s face turned whiter than the Antarctic ice shelf, while Alison’s jaw slacked so far over her face looked like it might split in twain. This was Chris’s first f-bomb, and they both knew it. Chris was as much of a goody two-shoes as Alison was at his age, and neither would have dreamed of saying that word. The matrices of guilt were simply too strong.
“Get lost, Chris. Get lost now. Go back to your room and hallucinate a penis or whatever.”
Chris sprawled on his bed, closing his eyes tight as possible, trying to wish all this cosmic drama away — if, indeed, it was even real. All the sounds were softer now, somehow; he could feel himself soften too as he entered the antechamber of sleep. If only the world could soften as well.
Then for the next four and a half days, it seemed things returned to normal. Thursday and Friday passed totally without incident. The weekend was warm and lovely and Monday was similarly glorious. Alison moped through Saturday detention, writing a half-assed apology-essay so she could return to her beloved group chat, and on Monday morning Marc left her and the girls alone to make out with Ashley behind the dumpster. Joseph Novak cheered up a little; he learned he’d received a pay raise at work and — with Alison definitively headed off to public school in September — would no longer have to work overtime to pay for Chris’s tuition at St. Francis Xavier. Beatrice laughed at her reality shows more, and Kateřina sometimes joined her — it seemed like Joseph’s tide of good fortune rose all boats. Chris hadn’t had another vision since Wednesday morning, and as a new week dawned his optimism returned. The owl he saw? That was just because of sleep deprivation; he hadn’t slept well the night before because his room was too warm. He’d only thought Perpetua resembled Alison; it was just the way the light slanted through the window. There was no grand battle in Heaven right now. Marc Coppola was merely a wannabe mafioso. His sister was not going to die.
Then, in Miss Salazar’s religion class — the final class of the day — Chris’s peculiar “gift” struck again. The third vision came right as Miss Salazar launched into a detailed description of Christ’s temptation in the desert, luridly conjuring up the hot sand and the dark voice of Satan and the sharp rebukes of the Savior, wrapped in a pure white garment to protect against the wild wind of the wastes.
Right as she reached the portion where Satan displayed the riches of the world before Christ — the cheering multitudes, the golden city — Chris’s mind’s eye spilled over into the third dimension. The classroom receded backwards at warp speed, bending and splitting to the new reality until it was totally displaced. Before him rose a great, sprawling Levantine metropolis with silver-clad domes and caravans of camels freighted with exotic spices and bags upon bags of ducats and doubloons. Every house was made of solid gold, every man — even the beggars — wore the finest silk, and every woman was dressed like a princess. It was an opulent Orientalist fantasy without equal, like something conjured in the pleasure-nightmares of Coleridge on opium.
Then it all melted away. A great throng of soldiers barreled through the streets, toting mortars and machine guns and wearing insectoid gas masks. Noxious yellow fumes flooded the palaces and courtyards and everyone within them hacked and wheezed and suffocated to death. Tanks rolled through the streets, crushing small children before them and leaving bloody treadmarks in their wake. Cobblestones flew through the air from all angles and in response every building was indiscriminately annihilated with mortar fire.
Suddenly there came the din of hard metallic clanking. A vast, hideous shadow passed over the smoldering ruins of the city, and there — towering some one thousand feet off the ground — was the figure of a sneering Roman emperor cast in bronze. His hands were wet with blood, his crown of olive branches made from the twisted remains of those he murdered (“they make a desert and call it peace,” lamented Tacitus’s Pict).
The emperor twisted his neck to one side and grinned. It was a familiar grin, a grin of deep, abiding horror, a smarmy Mediterranean smirk redolent of bloodlust and destruction.
It was the grin of Marc Coppola.
Emperor Coppola’s great brazen mouth clanked open, his voice mechanical and affectless.
“Wednesday at 10 a.m. It will happen Wednesday at 10 a.m.”
“W…w…what will happen?”
“The Carthaginian woman will die.”
“You mean…like I saw in church?”
Emperor Coppola’s eyes widened to their greatest degree, two blindingly white globes like spotlights in the middle of his shimmering face, rounded by his crown of corpses. A mouth full of jagged, blood-streak teeth revealed itself to Chris in all its uncanny glory.
“You were indeed the first witness.”
With that “witness,” the vision melted away. It was 2:50 p.m., with ten minutes to spare before dismissal. Chris’s classmates shifted impatiently in their seats, their minds already zeroed in on home and freedom.
The voice was not Emperor Coppola’s but someone almost as sublimely terrifying in her harshness and stature: Miss Salazar, who had now changed the subject to Easter Sunday (because Easter mattered every day, not just once a year).
“Magdalene was indeed the first to witness the Lord after His resurrection.”
“Grandma, could you tell me the story of St. Wenceslas again?”
“Christopher, I tell it to you many time. You must know it all by now.”
“But Grandma —” Should I tell her? I can’t tell her — “Grandma, school was tough today, and Wenceslas was a brave man.”
“Yes, but Chrsitopher, he die.”
“But he was brave.”
Sighing softly, Kateřina took the icon of Wenceslas’s martyrdom down from the kitchen wall. It was a simple, hand-painted thing, a gift from Miloš’s cousin Ondřej on their first post-Velvet Revolution trip to Prague.
“A thousand year ago, Wenceslas was Duke of Bohemia, now our Czech land. He was great man and built his people up. He was kind ruler, kind to every Bohemian — man and woman, young and old, rich and poor. He was handsome and tall and every woman wanted to be his duchess. Strong man, good man, handsome man. What every man should be.
“But not everyone in kingdom loved him. He was so strong and good and handsome that some resent him because they were not. His worst enemy was his wicked brother, Boleslav. He was ugly and cruel and no one love him, not man or woman. He say to himself, ‘Surely other hate my brother, and they will join me if I kill him.’
“There were other nobles, other dukes and earls and knights who hate Wenceslas too. One autumn night, Boleslav and friends make plan to kill Wenceslas. They invite him to feast for to celebrate saints, with music and laughter and wine. If there was one thing the duke love, it was music and laughter and wine. So he go to feast to see brother, who he loved. See, Christopher, he love so much that he even love his ugly and cruel brother.
“At feast they pull trick. Boleslav’s friends there with knives and swords and they chop his body. He bleed and bleed and bleed and then his treacherous brother run him through with lance, put big hole in his body. Then Wenceslas die.
“Boleslav become duke and reign much longer than his brother, but he was never love. The Bohemian people still think he ugly and cruel. They tell stories of Wenceslas and what generous and handsome man he was. They write song about him, how he save man freezing in snow. Boleslav got power but he not win in end. He is remember as villain, as traitor. So Christopher, if you yourself do good, even if you die by sword, you will be remember as good.”
Kateřina looked down and noticed Christopher was crying — glistening cheeks and runny nose and everything.
“Christopher? Christopher? I tell you story many time and you never cry. Why you cry? He good man but he also die! You want to die, eh? Is that so? Tell me, Christopher, please. I no want you to die, neither do your Mother or Father or Sister…”
Chris’s mind was far, far away. He knew every part of the story; there really was no need to repeat it again. Yet this time the story achieved a tragic richness it never had before. Chris liked the story very much — there was something so beautiful about a man whose good works allowed him to live on, even though his life was short and his brother reigned for many more years than him. Now, though, the story gained a new, shimmering resonance. If you are martyred, people will remember you. Whatever you did that was bad is gone because you were martyred. Alison has done much bad, even to me — but maybe God loves her more than we do. Maybe Principal O’Hanlon doesn’t have the final word on what makes you a good person. Maybe, but I don’t know.
It was noon on Tuesday, only ninety minutes away from the seven-day anniversary of the beginning of Chris’s mystical episode. This was it: the penultimate day before tomorrow’s inevitable martyrdom. The air felt sick with blood and decay even though it was a perfectly lovely spring day; each and every flower emanated the scent of death, noxiously sweet, swallowing the plodding bumblebees inside them like fat sailors consumed by the watery main after a shipwreck. The owl with its all-consuming blue and Perpetua and Felicity and the city destroyed and the hideous colossal Coppola — it was simply all too much. The combination of impending doom and the gentle vernal weather simply didn’t make sense. Someone Upstairs — someone with medieval sensibilities and a modern sense of humor — had set this ball rolling and now we were all trapped, sealed in a body bag by the cold, clear Northwestern river, our own brother’s sharp lance piercing our hearts.
Chris and his friend Ezra — Sara Washington’s younger brother — ambled along the schoolyard’s parameter. This was their usual custom: two young men in cahoots talking about all and sundry for at least three full cycles around the parameter before the bell rang and it was time for lunch. Ezra was better liked than Sara; while there was still a fair share of bigotry in his grade, there were also more black kids, and the boys largely got on better than the girls (just ask poor Helen Cho if racism was endemic in their ranks, though…).
“Ezra, I have an honest question.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you love your sister?”
“Of course I do.”
“But doesn’t she say all those mean things? I mean, she called you ‘fuckface’ at drop-off this morning and you were very, very mad.”
“Doesn’t Alison say those mean things, too?”
Right to the heart of the issue. “Yes, she does. All the time. She loves calling me ‘little shit.’ Stop laughing!”
“No, Chris, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just that Sara’s mean nickname for me is ‘fuckface’ and yours is ‘little shit.’ Sadie doesn’t have one, of course, because she’s an only child. All big sisters have them for their little brothers. Don’t take it personally.”
They fell silent for half a minute. Robins poured forth their burbling songs in the tree branches. On the other side of the schoolyard were the high-pitched murmurs and piercing playground screams of their peers. There, at the far end of the yard, they were marooned. Isolated. Crawling along the chain-link fence, they realized they had become their sisters. Somehow, they both knew this, but could never in a million years verbalize it. It was some great fog rolling out from their souls and it frightened them terribly.
“Chris?”
“Hmm?”
“I think something’s wrong. I don’t know why, but I know it’s wrong.”
“You and I both, Ezra. You and I both.”
Nick Peters didn’t notice the gleaming, patent leather shoe at the end of Marc Coppola’s outstretched, khaki-clad leg; his mind was completely fixated on Tuesday’s calzone lunch special. In the blink of an eye, his world became a whirlpool of vertigo and laughter. The green plastic tray flew clear across the cafeteria and clattered pathetically on the floor, ruined calzone splattered like a split-open decapitated head. His chocolate milk carton broke and splashed all over him, dousing his hair, back, and the nape of his neck in dull brown liquid. Gales of screeching laughter filled the room, with Marc’s hideous whinnying chortle cutting above the din.
“Run and eat that calzone, moron. Run and eat it off the ground.”
Alison slammed her tray on the table and dashed over to Nick, helping him up and maternally cleaning his head with her napkin.
“Yo Ally, I didn’t know you liked ‘em with single-digit IQs.”
“I don’t, because I don’t like you.”
Oohs and aahs resounded through the cafeteria as multiple broccoli-haired internet addicts reached for their phones and started recording.
“You okay, Nick?,” whispered Alison.
“I think so, yeah. I’m just kinda damp,” grumbled Nick.
“Enjoying yourself, Nicky? This your first time?,” purred Ashley Flannigan with consummate insincerity.
Alison knew better than to respond. There was no profit in doing so; it’d just continue the endless cycle of insults and mockery that emerged out of the blue at the top of sixth grade and never let up, burrowing itself into Alison’s brain where it festered like a sore that never closed. And the fourth seal was opened, and one of the four beasts said, come and see. Come and see the abuse descend. Come and see the laughter descend. Come and see me getting pelted with plastic sporks in the lunchroom. Come and see me getting my hair pulled. Come and see the screams of my mom and dad. Come and see the racism and anti-Semitism and classism and idiocy and hypocrisy. Come and see it, Christ. If you’re real, come and see. Come and see Marc and Ashley and show them the fate of the rich man and Lazarus. Come and see Nick and comfort him, because he is the least of us. You hear me, you dumb fucking carpenter? Roll back the clouds and descend and come and see. Come and see. Come and see.
Chris’s sleep that night was late in coming and provided him no rest. His heart was a thumping kettledrum, his lungs two great panting sacks, his whole body consumed with sweat. As the evening faded and day plunged deeper and deeper into night, Chris’s sleep became ever more intensely confused and jumbled. Every unknown and half-forgotten element of his life and his family’s lives and God and books and music and meaning collided on a vast canvas like a Jackson Pollock painting. A crazy quilt of phrases and imagery sourced from every angle of his life and everyone he knew and loved spewed forth from his unconscious. Ivan go home. Beatrice, you fucking bitch! Oh fuck you, Joseph, you can’t even get it up. Boleslav and Wenceslas. Wenceslas and Boleslav. On the third day He rose again, in fulfillment of the scriptures. I’m Miss World, somebody kill me. The Sea of Galilee and Gilead and Coppola. Bombs are falling bombs are falling bombs are falling. It is happening again it is happening again it is happening again. Don’t worry about the phonies, Holden! And don’t try and kill yourself, Esther! And it’s the bottom of the ninth, the game is nearly over, Fidel Castro once played baseball and now he’s in hell, Miss Salazar doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about, how do you know Alison? You live in country like that? Ivan go home Ivan go home Ivan go home Ivan—
Chris's eyes flew open upon that final “Ivan.” He felt this strange presence by his bed, like something or someone looming. It was large and adult and male and he’d seen the “stranger danger” videos in class and he was deathly scared.
“D-d-dad?”
Still no answer. Chris swallowed hard and looked up. Here it was, the fourth vision. Oh my gosh, what scary shi— I mean, scary things will I see now?
It was 11: 30 p.m. on the second Tuesday after Easter and right there, towering next to his bed, was Grandpa Miloš. Not the decrepit Grandpa Miloš of the end, either, weakened and wrinkly and cancer-ridden; no, this was the Grandpa Miloš of the photograph, with his brilliant magenta button-down and luxurious brown mustache, youthful and handsome and beloved. The second King Wenceslas.
“Ahoj, Chris.”
“Ahoj, Grandpa.”
“So how is Grandma Kateřina?”
“She’s fine. She showed me a photo last week and you looked just like you do now.”
Grandpa Miloš smiled beatifically. “Yes, that was always her favorite photo of me. I never fully like it, it remind me of painful things.”
“Painful things?”
“It was last photo taken by brother Christopher before he shot by Russians.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, it sad. You know, Chris, I thought about him every day until I die. Your father never get that, never know it it like to lose brother. To see your country’s youth run over with tank. I think you do though.”
Wait, did he create that vision with the city for me? “I think I do too, yeah.”
“Good boy, good. I love you and your sister very much.”
Chris couldn’t help but ask the question. “Grandpa, was your brother Christopher a martyr?”
“You learn that word in school?”
“Yeah.”
“He was, yes. He was martyr. Now that I also dead, I talk to him sometime. He says it good he die for freedom but he wish he live. It is better to live for others than to die for them. No matter, though. He not regret it. He made difference. You see, Chris, so many go through life doing nothing, never caring, never knowing. You love world, you die to protect it. But going on living, that is just as brave.”
“...Will there be any other martyrs in our family?”
“You will find that out today.”
“You mean tomorrow.”
“No, I mean today. The sun is rising now. Ahoj, Christopher. Tell Kateřina I still love her so very, very much.”
As the first glimmer of sunlight snuck through under the bedroom shade, Grandpa Miloš vanished. Chris thought he’d only spoken to him for maybe ten minutes, but in fact it was 6:25 p.m. Strangely, he didn’t feel tired in the slightest. Then, through the crack in his door, a conspiratorial half-whisper.
“Wakey wakey, little shit. Time to go learn your spells at church today.”
Marc Coppola reeled drunkenly in the predawn gloom of his parents’ tacky faux palazzo. He was a totally inexperienced drinker, and he’d never gone this far yet; just a couple of glasses of wine — given to him by his uncle at last year’s Feast of the Seven Fishes, no less! — plus some beers downed in the woods behind his house. But this — this was raided straight from his dad’s liquor cabinet, and it fucked with his head big time.
His brain was throbbing and he wasn’t thinking. All he knew was that this — his moribund relationship with that cold Irish bitch Flannigan, his simultaneous raging desire for and deep hatred of Alison (What does she see in those stupid skanks up against the fence?), his dad who was never around, his mom and her trashy leopard-print heels — this was nonfunctioning. This couldn’t go on any longer. Something had to be done. Someone had to be eliminated.
How about that dumb autist Nick Peters? I’m tired of him and his zero IQ bullshit. That’s enough. If he can’t see my fucking leg in the middle of the floor ready to trip his dumb ass, how’s he supposed to survive in the world? In some group home, drooling on the goddamn floor? That’s no life for anyone.
Marc gingerly took a knife down from a shelf in his room. It was a present from his dad, and it was gorgeous: hand cut in Italy, its immaculate blade shimmering in the weak early rays of the sun, a beautiful instrument of death. Nothing looks better than something that kills people.
He fingered the knife, stuck it in his jeans pocket, and then took one last swig of liquor. I’ll save what’s left for Flannigan. They like this shit anyway, the micks. In a way, I’m helping poor Nicky. I’m putting him out of his misery before someone else does it for him. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
The worst plans are always hatched at dawn, when one half of the soul is cloaked in the cold, twinkling stars of night, and the other in the glory of the daytime sun.
Suddenly, the half-volume strains of “Gonna Fly Now” piped through the hitherto silent house. His parents’ alarms were going off. Yeah, but they’re not the real alarms.
Chris and Alison loitered in the schoolyard that morning, dragging their feet to classes neither really felt like attending today — both for different reasons, of course.
“Be careful today, Alison.”
“Why, Chris?”
“The church window, remember?”
“Oh, Chris…”
“I really mean it.”
“Chris, it was just your imagination.”
“But it wasn’t though, it wasn’t!”
“Alright, so maybe it was real. Doesn’t mean anything. It’s the 21st goddamn century, Chris. We’ve got rockets to Mars and computers in our pockets. We’ve explained everything. Maybe try and stay awake in science class next time.”
“But Alison, you don’t stay awake in science class.”
“I’m not talking about me, I’m talking about you, dickmuncher.”
A minute’s quiet.
“I love you, Alison.”
“Love you too.”
“Alison?”
“Ugh, what?”
Tell her about Grandpa. “What does ‘I killed Laura Palmer’ mean?”
“It’s from a show, Chris. It’s from a show. Watch it when you’re older, I think you’ll really like it. Anyway, time for class.”
“Bye, Alison.”
“Bye, Chris. See you at 3.”
St. Francis Xavier Church seemed even bigger and more hostile than usual. The spire shot up higher and higher in Chris’s mind, until it looked like an Empire State Building made for God, a huge phallic symbol of worship and sacrifice. The doors were rusted prison gates, the marble made of icy, sparkling diamonds, the colorfully painted statues of Christ and the Virgin and all the saints ripe and lurid in their rich reds and blues and browns.
It was 10 p.m. The appointed time. Chris very much wished he could save Alison and change her destiny. He wanted God to listen. He felt His silence deep in his bones and for the first time in his young, innocent life entertained doubts about his existence. Listen to me, please. Listen to me you — you — you little shit! You don’t have to kill her. You really don’t. I love her. I love her. Where are you, God? Where the fuck are you?
Frigid silence. Then Father Pulaski’s mealy-mouthed ritual began. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…”
“Amen.”
The hallways of the fourth floor of St. Francis Xavier School rattled and echoed with the squeaky-voiced chatter of the seventh and eighth grade students. A noisome sea of polos and khakis and pleated skirts, everything literally uniform. All dressed alike. You could disappear here so easily, just one face in a crowd where everyone dressed alike and looked alike and had the same gray pallor and same empty minds and all the teachers hated your guts and you could never be right.
Mr. Ferrara’s religion class let out, and it was time for Section 1 of the eighth grade class to begin its trek down the great long hallway to Mrs. Costello’s science lab. Nick, as usual, walked with Alison, Sara, and Sadie — but today, he was lagging behind. He was tired and his parents were arguing again and the teacher was saying things he didn’t fully understand.
Sadie glanced behind her. “Everything okay, Nick? You need to talk about something? We got five minutes before class.”
“No, I’m good.”
A sinister squeaking of shoes advanced towards Nick, trying to peel him off from the girls. Marc and Ashley had just exited the bathroom, both clearly bombed out of their skulls on something alcoholic. Ashley’s face was totally red, a fully blown Irish tomato, while Marc leaned back and then lurched forwards, like a guido version of the inflatable car dealership tube-men.
“Yo Nicky,” he slurred. Nick began speeding up, drawing closer to the girls.
“I said, yo Nicky!”
“I don’t wanna talk to you right now.” How dare he defy me? I run this fucking school.
Marc angrily charged at Nick, pinning him against the wall, drunkenly screaming in his face. “Nicky, you motherfucking spazz, are you listening to me? You’re never gonna have a real life, you know that? You’re dying alone. You wanna die alone?”
The girls surrounded him — not just Alison, Sara, and Sadie, but a chucklingly intoxicated Ashley was well.
“C’mon Marc, that’s enough right now babe.”
“Whaddya mean ‘that’s enough right now’?”
“C’mon Marc, it’s me, it’s Ashley. Be nice to him. You could stand to be nicer to —”
“To you? You, you fucking mick whore? Why should I be nice to you and your dumbass wannabe-Kennedy dad? Get the fuck off me!,” he screeched, violently shoving Ashley to the ground. She whimpered the kind of betrayed whimper that marks the death of childhood.
Nick’s eyes widened to their fullest extent as Marc closed in on him. “You can choose to either die alone or die here now, surrounded by everyone you love. Surrounded by Novak and Washington and Nussbaum who — by the way — are only taking pity on you! You hear me? They’re only taking pity! They probably agree with me! So what’s it gonna be, huh?”
Alison was the only one who saw the knife poking from Marc’s pocket.
“Marc, what the fuck?”
“Ready to die, Nicky?”
“Marc! Marc! Marc! Don’t! I hate you but don’t! Listen to me! Don’t do it, please! You fucking guinea, are you even listening to me?”
“Fuck you, Ally!”
Alison barreled forth and forcefully shoved herself between Marc and Nicky, blocking the latter with her body and holding back the arms of the former with all her strength.
“Don’t you fucking touch him!”
“Y’know, you’re cute when you’re mad.”
“Don’t you fucking touch him!”
“Ally, you know I always loved you. Ashley, I only liked her because she’s rich. You’re beautiful, Ally. Stop fucking around with this drooloid and go out with me. Alright, bella? This could all end right now. I’ll get rid of this little asshole and I’ll dump Ashley and you’ll dump That’s So Raven and Jewssbaum back there and we’ll all live together happily ever after. You agree with me, don’t you, Ally? I know you do. C’mon, Ally, c’mon.”
Alison drew her mouth right up against Marc’s ear, her mouth bent into a righteous sneer.
“Marc Victor Coppola ,” she whispered in a tone of simultaneous fear and defiance, “I hope you’re going to hell.”
Marc angrily pried Alison off him and drew the knife forward. Nick was totally frozen in terror. Alison locked eyes with him, both their pupils dilating to the maximum extent. With Nick this was merely fear, but for Alison it was something different. Some kind of weird phantom electricity ran up and down her limbs. She felt strong and invincible, like something in the vaults of the cosmos was calling her forward to do this. Death didn’t mean anything anymore. It wouldn’t even happen, and if it did, she wouldn’t feel anything.
The whole thing played out in an instant. Right as Marc prepared to raise the knife, Alison ran from behind and tried to grab it out of his hand. He violently turned around and threw her to the floor, his rage so fully blind and fiery that the whole world became completely numb to him. There was no such thing as flesh or spirit, only this single moment.
He took the knife and stabbed Alison ten times in the chest, screaming unintelligible profanities and slurs and curses like a homeless schizophrenic roaming the city streets at night. He was Mars, the bringer of war. Behold, a pale horse.
Suddenly, his sense returned with a new, forceful clarity. The knife weakly slid out of his hands without him even noticing it and clanged on the floor. Ashley was wailing, pulling his numb arm and forcing him off the ground. Immediately after she let Marc go, a swarm of security officers and police slammed him against the wall at mach speed and cuffed him with maximum harshness. Sara and Sadie were distraught, hugging one another on the ground and wailing wordlessly. Nick alone kneeled next to Alison, rubbing her hand and comforting her like the humble busboy and Bobby Kennedy, when the martyred brother of the martyred president breathed his last.
“Nick?,” said Alison faintly.
“Yes?”
“He was right.”
“Who was right?”
“He was right.”
“Who was right?”
“The Christophers. The Christophers. Both of them.”
It was right when Father Pulaski started in on his homily that Chris saw someone out of the corner of his eye. He knew what it was this time. He knew somewhere deep in his bones that he would have five visions . The fifth vision would be the final one and he might never have another vision as long as he lived. It was time to come and see.
Barely levitating off the ground in the middle of the aisle was Saint Wenceslas himself. He was covered head-to-toe with blood-flecked, clanking armor and sported a dark red hole in the center of his chest where the lance had gone through, a puncture the color of blackberry jam surrounded by a crimson ring. His face was youthful and handsome, sporting a close-cut brown beard and kindly blue-green eyes twinkling in the slanting yellow mid-morning light. Atop his head rested a gold crown, a reminder to all in eternity that he was the true lord of his kingdom, the protector of all Bohemians — indeed, of all those in this world who were kindly, good-hearted, and humble.
A soft quietude settled into the church. Small gray-white motes danced in the sunbeams. The chirruping sparrows in the dense bushes right by the window fell silent. Father Pulaski was totally inaudible Chris realized that he simply couldn’t feel nor say anything. He was conscious but his mind was elsewhere, somewhere between earth and eternity.
Chris should’ve been dumbstruck but wasn’t. He knew the prince’s countenance intimately: he’d memorized every painterly detail of the little icon on his kitchen wall — no matter how crude it was to the art historian, to him it was magical — and remembered all his grandmother’s stories. This man was a prince and a saint, and he’d tell the truth.
“Ahoj.”
“Ahoj.”
“Is my sister dead?”
“Yes.”
“Will she go to Heaven?”
“More than that. She will enter Heaven as a saint. St. Alison Novak the Martyr.”
“Despite all she’s said and done?”
“Yes.”
“What about her smoking? The time she cursed out Principal O’Hanlon? The I KILLED LAURA PALMER sweatshirt?”
“God does not care about any of that. One moral act is all which is required to enter Heaven.”
Chris and Wenceslas gazed at one another for what appeared like an eternity. The saint smiled. Chris unconsciously gazed above Wenceslas’ head and noticed a pale, golden splash of light in the middle of the air.
There, floating, looking down on the children and priest and all the functionally dead souls below was Alison, clad in a spotless white tunic. Her eyes shone brilliantly behind her luminously clear Lennon glasses and pierced through the musty gloom of the church, that strange enemy of springtime. Chris noticed that there were now stigmata on her feet and hands, little red-black holes puncturing her smooth, pale skin like holes burned into paper by a magnifying glass. Her strawberry blonde hair framed her shoulders like a natural halo, an enduring symbol of God’s promise that the last shall always be first and the first must make up the rear of the great train of the saved.
Chris felt warm tears streaking down his cheeks. He was going to miss Alison terribly; all the insults and profanity and self-loathing meant nothing now. She was not only at peace but achieved a rare variety of grace and virtue that the stiff-necked, harrumphing Principal O’Hanlon or the droning, ancient Father Pulaski could never hope to even approach.
“Ahoj, Alison.”
“Ahoj, my beloved little shit.”
They both couldn’t help smiling at this. This, the last thing Alison Novak would ever say to her little brother! Yet it was somehow so apropos, somehow so majestic in its joking simplicity as to be genuinely heartrending.
Wenceslas locked eyes with Chris for the very last time. “Remember to treasure the glories of earth as well as Heaven. Ahoj.”
“Ahoj.”
Suddenly a piercing wail blasted through the mothballed hush of the church and halted Father Pulaski’s self-indulgent monologue. The swelling screeches and bellowing trumpet blasts overwhelmed Chris’s brain, a great swelling, onrushing collage of red and white and rich shining blue like the giant owl’s eyes.
The priest and teachers pleaded for calm as a great crush of children swarmed towards the heavy red doors, trying to bust it open in a combination of deepening fear and morbid curiosity. The sensation of red and white and blue which pulsating through Chris’s mind gained heft and tactile reality in the form of ambulances and police cars and fire trucks rushing towards the school, careening past the church in a true death-race.
Chris knew exactly what happened. He hadn’t seen the incident itself, but he saw it all in the lurid detail of his mind’s eye; not a true vision, not external, but a sensation, an immensely detailed passion play planted by the saints themselves. The boy with the knife. The other boy behind his sister. The screaming and the crying and the pouring blood. The weakness of the devil and the monstrosity of God.
He descended the hard, gray, stony steps of the church. He saw his father’s face in a state of numb shock and his mother embracing him, bawling her eyes out, and his grandmother standing beside them, stoically weeping one tear at a time. He saw the heavyset cop with his glistening gold badge. He knew what the cop would say. He knew. He wanted to cry but he could only smile. He had seen sacrifice and sainthood and the real, vibrant world emerging from the darkness and muck of everyday life and achieving something transcendent. Alison really was Perpetua, but also Felicity and Cecelia and Agatha and Agnes and Joan of Arc and Sophie Scholl and Simone Weil and Janis Joplin and Amy Winehouse and all the other billions of young women who were destroyed by the world and then ascended via grace.
The wind was mild with just a tinge of residual frost. The first orioles returned north. White clouds with slate gray fringes drifted towards the sun. It was April.