Alone in the candlelight, Vi wept. She removed her T-shirt, wiped off the baby, and pushed back her blond hair that clung to her sweaty face. Then she took Max into her swollen breast and began to nurse.
The sucking of the infant produced the only sound in the cell.
Vi closed her eyes.
The soreness between her legs was nothing now compared to those contractions. Loneliness, joy, and horror came in equal measure. She looked down at her infant son, eyes open and shining, sucking away. She stroked his cheek, the firelight dancing across his face. All she wanted now was her husband, looking down on them. She was certain of it—Max would’ve cried.
Vi started to pray, but stopped herself. The fuck had He done for her? She should be grateful that He allowed her to give birth before an audience of psychopaths? Did He need to hear her say she wanted her child to live? How could He not
For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that she was all alone and always had been. She’d bought into the God of suburbia. Comfy, predictable, and manmade to revolve around man. The God of her Baptist upbringing was clearly unconcerned with her current predicament. He’d denigrated the birth of her son by allowing it to occur in a basement that she’d probably never leave.
Her God was fine on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings when all was hunky-dory. And it was even possible to write off the tragedies that befell others as 'part of God’s plan.' But hold that sentiment up to the flaming knowledge that your newborn child will never see his father, that he might die horribly before he’s even a week old, and see if it doesn’t burn.
When life turns into a real horrorshow, the God she knew was about as useful as a water gun in a war. She felt blasphemous for thinking it, but He was no comfort to her now. She was drowning. He was watching. Either impotent to deliver her, or unwilling. And especially if it were the latter, she had no use for such a god.
# # #
Luther’s room stands at the south end of the third floor, unchanged for more than twenty years. His toy chest still occupies the corner, filled with the playthings he treasured as a lonely child. Even his stuffed animal collection remains—hanging from the ceiling in a rusty wire fruit basket. Dolphie the dolphin, Birdie the blackbird, Polar Bear, and Clementine the barn owl were the major players.
Luther enters his bedroom and closes the door. He approaches the window. Across the sound, a line of late day thunderstorms clobbers the mainland. Zigzags of lightning strike the water a few miles offshore, but their thunder never reaches Ocracoke.
Luther glances back at the desk beside his bed. He’s written only half a page in that leather-bound journal, and it’s utter shit.
'You’re no different from the rest of them,' his father told him last night. 'Best figure out what you believe and why. Time’s a wastin’.'
Luther feels very peculiar. He hasn’t encountered the emotion of fear since childhood, though it isn’t fear of his father and what he may do to him if Luther doesn’t write an exceptional treatise. He could give a remote shit about Rufus. Fuck Rufus. Fuck the goddamn old codger of a bastard. What Luther fears is his own expanding emptiness. He thinks of Baby Max, the moment the infant’s head broke free into the world, and acknowledges it for what it was: the most powerful thing he’d ever witnessed.
Luther lies down on his bed and stares up at the cracks in the ceiling as the storms pass over the island.
It’s dusk when he rises out of bed, takes Dolphie from the fruit basket, and walks downstairs. His mother and father are in the kitchen, flirting and cooking dinner for the guests. He smells wafts of browned hamburger meat and steamed broccoli. As he opens the small door under the staircase, he overhears Rufus say, 'Why don’t you grab holt of my stick and see what you’re in for tonight, you old stinky woman.'
The downstairs runs the length and breadth of the hundred and eighty-six year-old house, unique to the island as the vast majority of residences sit several feet above ground to protect them from the flooding nor’easters and the storm surges of hurricanes. Consequently, this basement has been underwater numerous times since its construction.
It served as slave quarters in the 1830’s. Servant quarters at the turn of the century. And one of the most extensive wine cellars in North Carolina in the 1920’s. Ten years ago, Rufus wired two of the rooms for electricity.
The rest are lit by candle or not at all.
The stone in one of the rooms is charred black all the way up to the ceiling.
In another, the rock is stained burgundy.
Though Luther has spent many hours down here, he’s still prone to losing his way, especially when he ventures beyond the cluster of rooms near the stairs. Two thirds of the basement lies behind the staircase, a maze of confusing passageways that were lined with wine racks eighty years ago. Broken glass and pieces of cork can still be found in some of the alcoves.
One of the Kites’ favorite pastimes is playing hide and seek with the failed converts. The game is started by turning the guest out of their cell and spotting them a two minute head start into the labyrinth. Then the entire Kite family sets out in search of them. Sometimes they play with headlamps or candles. Sometimes they play in the dark.
Because Rufus has never trusted a body of water to keep a body hidden, all of his failed experiments are stored down here.
It’s deathly silent as Luther arrives at Vi’s cell and unlocks the door. She sits naked against the wall, snoring, the baby asleep on her chest, wrapped in her T-shirt, the candles all but melted away.
He drops the stuffed animal on the floor.
Vi wakes, startled.
'I want to hold Max,' Luther says.
'Why?'
'I just want to.'
'He’s sleeping.'
'I won’t hold him long, and I’ll be careful.'
Luther steps forward, leans down, and lifts the baby out of her arms.
'Support his head,' Vi says.
Luther cradles the baby’s head in the crux of his arm.
Vi takes the pillow from behind her back and hides her nakedness.
'What’s today,' she asks.
'Why?'
'I want to know my son’s birthday.'
'July twenty-ninth.'
'Thank you.'
Luther stands there for several moments, gazing into the face of the sleeping infant.
'You’re never going to let us leave, are you?' Vi says.
'That’s up to my father.'
Luther bends down, hands Max back to Vi.
'That’s for him,' he says, motioning to the stuffed dolphin on the dirt floor.
'What’s his name?'
'Dolphie.'
'Thank you, Luther.'
He nods, turns to leave.
'I saw what you did to that family in Davidson,' Vi says. 'And their two boys. Why are you nice to my baby?'
'I don’t know.'
It is one of the rare truthful moments of Luther’s life, and he leaves, trembling.
# # #
