Cyber Circus

The thought festered. Boxed in on either side by Mrs Lisa Goodwin’s plump respectability and old Mrs Johnson’s hoary bones, Carrie-Anne felt jostled into a slot that didn’t fit. Somewhere at the back of that dull stone coffin of a chapel, Julie and Wesley were amongst the other coloureds standing because the lord’s house didn’t see fit to offer them a chair.

“Your aunt is not with you,” shot Lisa Goodwin suddenly. Her tone sat the wrong side of polite.

Carrie-Anne watched Preacher Richards lean in to discuss the sheet music with his wife, the organist, and willed him to start his sermon.

Old Mrs Johnson peered over her. “Josephine Splitz? Ain’t she dead?”

Lisa Goodwin bundled her arms beneath wasteful breasts. Her eyes betrayed a mind full of nasty. “Word is she’s alive but no one’s seen hide nor hair of her at chapel for three months. What do you say, Carrie-Anne? Is your aunt still with us?”

Carrie-Anne sensed the weight of her respectable gloves on her lap. Humming lightly, she rocked forward onto her toes and back.

“Is she dumb?” Mrs Johnson squirted sideways, sucking her bottom lip like a teat. “You dumb, girl?”

“Dumb, no. Ignorant maybe.” Lisa Goodwin’s hot fat fingers branded Carrie-Anne’s arm. “Your coltish act don’t work with me, girl. Just like your aunt, think you’re better than the rest of us. In her case, because she got brains and money. In yours, because you’ve got beauty and you know how to spread it.”

A mind full of nasty, thought Carrie-Anne. She kept humming, imagining the tune dispersing through her like sunlight.

There was an undercurrent in the chapel that morning, half-whispers that left a shadow on the glorious day outside. Young men, who usually snatched off their caps and shuffled whenever she walked by, had watched her with a new, hawkish intensity. One even spat on the floor. Everywhere she’d looked, she’d seen the folk of Bromide grouped about the chapel walls like a swarm; they’d stung her a hundred times with their barely disguised distaste.

Let them judge, she decided, stilling herself as the Preacher took to his pulpit. They’d find fresh meat inside the month. What’s more, she couldn’t help agreeing with them in part. Aunt Jos should’ve honoured Palm Sunday, should’ve cared enough about events on the surface to let alone what lay below. But instead, at 6.00am that morning, the Burrower had lowered its nose and descended with a tremendous roar of grit and steam. And she’d been left to drape herself in fresh cotton, put a tea rose behind her ear, meet Julie’s stone-faced silence and come alone into the lion’s den.

It’s a dark spell, Carrie-Anne thought to herself. Virgil’s fresh absence so soon after the last, Julie’s cold-shouldering, the hungry, bored minds of the townsfolk. A dark spell. But soon the clouds will pass.

She fixated on a shaft of sunlight streaming in at the nearest chapel window. Dust whirled in its soft golden element. She could hear the preacher’s voice as from a distance, and for a moment she imagined that she was back on the porch again, head resting against the corner strut, listening to the stillness of the plains. Virgil had come to her then... just as he came to her now as a memory of tenderly bruising lips and franticness. She smiled secretly.

“Smears up her mouth even now,” hollered a male voice, piercing the illusion so that she refocused to find a sea of eyes turned towards her.

“What’s that?” Her voice sounded set adrift.

“Dixon, please.” Preacher Richards gripped the lectern, his face lined with irritation. “This sermon is about aiding your fellow man not abusing him. If there is tension in our community, let us resolve it at an appropriate time and without resorting to verbal attacks.” After a brief pause, the preacher held his arms out from his sides. “My words are a lesson in scripture. They illustrate that...”

“‘Their god is their stomach... their mind is on earthly things.’ Ain’t that what you read out just now, Preacher Richards?” Dixon Goodwin rose up out of his seat on the far side of his mother and stared over at Carrie-Anne, an angry crease between his eyes. “Some folk fatten themselves like hogs while the rest don’t have a bean.”

“Need I remind you this is a house of God, Dixon, not a two buck brawl pit?” said Preacher Richards in the deep voice he reserved for children who couldn’t sit still in the pews. There was a waver in his tone though. Anger at the interruption or something else? Something like fear he could not control his flock?

Carrie-Anne wanted to start humming her song again. She wiped her gloves between her palms. Heat pawed at her.

“You better sit your backside down, son,” said Lisa Goodwin quietly. Carrie-Anne detected a trace of indifference, pride even. Yes, I have raised my son well. He takes a stand when no other will. He is the rock all others hide behind.

“Sure, Momma. Just as soon as I get the measure of what Preacher’s teaching. ‘Their god is their stomach?’ Well, I’m here to tell ya there’s one home near Bromide where that sure does apply. Boar House. Seen it with my own eyes. I work there as a yard man...”

Not anymore. Carrie-Anne dabbed the moist hollow of her throat with the gloves. Not content to pour his eyes over her – oh yes, she’d felt their weight, familiar, uncomfortable, and a sensation she’d laboured under before several years ago – it appeared that Dixon wanted to invent some hocus-pocus about those she held dear.

Go on then, she urged. Expose the darkness in the hearts of Boar House’s occupants. Tell these good folk all the horrors you have witnessed.

“Take a seat or leave, Dixon.” Preacher Richards was flushed. His son, Ben, got to his feet at the fore of the congregation – Carrie-Anne marvelled at the height of him and thought again of the potato fern posy she’d picked as a child. Had time ebbed so quickly that Ben Richards was now built like a quarterback while a squirt of a kid could evolve into a creep like Dixon Goodwin?

“All I’m saying is there’s a reason why they’re growing crops while the rest of us are struggling to harvest soap weed. More than that, ain’t we preaching abstinence from earthy things?” Dixon jabbed two fingers at his eyes. “Out there, I seen filth. I seen fornication. I seen witchcraft.”

A few folk gasped audibly. Carrie-Anne felt a squeezing tight up inside. She resisted twisting about in her seat and staring at the back of the chapel; best thing she could do in that moment was sit soldier-straight and offer no emotion.

“Witchcraft?” Preacher Richards’s eyes appeared to supplicate his wife from her seat in the organ pew. Whatever he saw there must have reassured his indignation because he rose up out of the girdle of his hips and asserted, “A vicious accusation, Dixon, and not one that we abide inside the lord’s house. I repeat, I must ask you to leave. Mr and Mrs Goodwin...”

The preacher would not win over Lisa and Dixon Senior. They rose to stand alongside their son, oozing superiority and righteousness.

“Preacher, my son’s got news about Josephine Splitz and her kin which is of interest to this congregation,” said Dixon Goodwin Senior, a barrel-bellied man with a circlet of white hair and the same bristled baby face as his son. He planted his hands on his hips and revolved at the waist. “So I ask ya, folks. If my boy says what he’s got to tell ya is in keeping with the preacher’s sermon, shouldn’t the rest of us rightly hear it?”

“This is not the time or place to discuss disputes between individuals,” embarked Preacher Richards. He was immediately shot down.

“...Ain’t no matter between individuals. This is town talk.” Dixon Senior thrust a finger towards the back of the chapel. “This is about one of ‘em negresses and her pantry of potions in Jos Splitz’s workshop!”

There was a second expulsion of air from listeners’ lips. Ugly words were spoken under breath.

Dixon Senior rubbed a hand around his bald spot. “You seen it, ain’t you, son? And that ain’t all he seen? Tell ‘em about the giant maggot, a burrowing machine that sucks up all the water.”

Was she labouring under a brain-fever or were folk speaking in tongues? Carrie-Anne glanced back at Julie; the woman had the look of a startled jack rabbit and was working hard to push Wesley away. Carrie-Anne recognised why; when coloured folk were accused of something, only way to protect those they loved was by disassociation. Wesley didn’t get a bit of it though and kept wriggling his head up under his mother’s arm, all the while nervously flashing that broad smile of his as if he’d found it got him fuss before and he figured it might work now.