Country Roads
“You want to though, don't you?"
"No—"
"No, no, no, no, don't fucking lie to me, Father. Don't lie to me, God is listening, he's listening to your prayers, Father—"
"Harry, please—"
"That's what you used to say wasn't it? Huh? 'God is listening, Harry. God is watching. It's between you and God. God loves you, Harry.' Well, what's between you and God now?" Joe watched as he pressed the barrel of the gun down into Martha's head. She cringed, her eyes still closed. "She is," he said. "I know she is!"
"Harry, no!"
"Don't lie to me, Father," he said again. "I swear to God— I'll do it. I'll blow her fucking head off—"
"She hasn't done anything wrong, Harry!"
"You were supposed to be different," he said. "You were supposed to be good— you acted like you were good, but all along you were just like the rest of them—"
"The rest of who?"
Martha Moore was sitting with her knees curled up close to her body, her arms around them, her shoulders drawn in. It was where she had fallen after Harry had released her arm, flinging her to the ground. It was cold. She was too scared to get up. She was too scared to move.
"Tell me the truth, Father Delaney," Harry said. "Tell me now, tell me in front of God and Miss Moore—"
“Tell you what?" It was too much, the gun, the questions— he couldn't understand. He didn't know what Harry wanted to hear, though he felt he should, but all he could see was the gun in his hand.
"That you want to fuck her."
"No," he said, and Martha's eyes opened then. Harry couldn't see her face from where he was standing over her, but Joe could. She looked over at him.
"Lie to me again and I'll do it."
As he spoke he dragged the barrel across her scalp, parting her hair to one side gently. Martha looked at Joe and it seemed she was trying to say something but she couldn't because her lips were shaking too badly.
"Yes," he said.
"Joe—" Her voice was like a puff of air but it took both men by surprise, Harry bending over to look at her. "Joe?" he said.
"Harry, please—"
Harry held up one hand to silence him without looking away from Martha; in fact, he knelt down so he could lean in closer and see her face. "You didn't know," he said, speaking softly. "Or did you?"
She didn't say anything.
"You better answer me, Miss Moore," he said after a moment. "Did you, or did you not know that the priest wanted to fuck you— to know you. Did you know he sat in the confessional thinking about it while you were just on the other side of the wall? How he leaned over the communion rail on Sunday imagining it was you and only you kneeling in front of him? Did you know when he stood up there, at your husband's funeral mass, he was thinking to himself about how you'd look without your dress on—"
"No—!" Neither of them turned to Joe in spite of his outburst, Harry's eyes still on Martha and Martha's on the ground.
"How he prayed to God at night to be absolved of his sin, of his desire, of you—"
The sound that came from her mouth wasn't anything discernible, just a disjointed sputtering that resulted from her trying to speak but shaking so hard she was unable to form her mouth around the words.
"Miss Moore?"
"She can't talk," Joe said after a moment. "She's scared— please," he said again. He wanted to tell her too that it wasn't true what he'd said, any of it, except for the parts that were. "Put the gun on me, Harry," he said.
But Harry just laughed. "Everyone gets scared when they think it's coming to the end."
“She has a son, Harry—"
He shrugged and turned his attention back to Martha. "I bet your husband killed people, huh? He ever write you about that? Count his tally for the month—"
She shook her head.
"No?" he said, shaking his head and then spitting into the dirt. "Yeah. Your husband was a good man. That's why this—" his voice went hard again as he shifted his weight off of his knee where he'd knelt as if making a proposal, "—this ain't right." He stood up, the gun never moving from her head.
She said something then, something that was too hard to make out.
"It's not what you think," Joe said. "Martha doesn't— she isn't—"
"No? You didn't just say here, in front of me, her, and God above that you wanted to fuck her?"
"I did."
"Don't lie, Father."
"I said it."
"And you meant it?"
"Yes."
"Do you love her?"
"Yes— but— she didn't—" he was stammering hopelessly— "She didn't know what I wanted— I never told her—"
"Shh," he waved his hand at Joe. "She knows now, and now, you're both going to do it."
He understood, but it took a moment to react. And Martha understood too. If she could have made herself smaller she would, he could tell, but she was already holding herself so tightly.
"You can't— you don't—"
"Take off your fucking clothes."
"Harry!"
He pushed the gun further down into Martha's head. "Take off your clothes, Father. For me and for God."
"Please—" he said, and Harry leaned over to hit him, the gun darting out like the head of a snake and striking him where his shoulder joined his neck. He went forward and then came back up again, wiping dirt out of his mouth. "Harry! Please! What did I do?"
"Joe—"
"Shut up," Harry said, turning to Martha and returning the gun to its place on her head. "Get undressed."
His hands were shaking, she could feel them, and it scared her. If he wasn't in control he was afraid, and if he was afraid he might react on that alone. She did what he said, and she did it much quicker than Joe did. He took his shirt off with startling, painstaking ineptness, like he'd never encountered a button before in his life. When he moved on to his belt it seemed as though he'd lost the use of his fingers altogether, dragging them over the buckle several times before catching at the edge and prying it open. She had never seen anything like it.
She had watched him up until now blink between autopilot— the priest, counsellor, confessor, mediator— and the man sitting in the grass off a country road, the man who had a gun to his head, who saw her now with a gun to hers. The fracture deepened to where he was nearly severed.
Maybe he didn't fully understand. Maybe he was in a state of shock, at least partially. She wasn't though, and she did understand, so when Harry said to undress she did. She knew one way or another he would get her how he wanted. She could tell already.
"Everything," Harry said. So she unclipped each of her nylon stockings and rolled them down each leg, the thought flickering inanely through her mind that she was taking care only out of habit, seeing as they were too stained with mud and ripped from where she'd fallen to ever put back on again. She pulled off her underpants by lifting her hips barely off the ground— mindful, always mindful of the cold pressure on the top of her head— and then, last of all, unhooked her bra.
"I'm sorry," Joe said to her. "I'm so sorry—"
"You have nothing to be sorry for." She started to shiver. It was of minor note to her (given the major situation at hand) that the threat of one's life removed all sense of shame and modesty. All she felt, sitting naked between these two men— who up until this moment she only knew in decidedly social contexts, their relationships playing out mainly in public, in the community: Joe Delaney, the priest, and Harry Swanson, junkyard owner and flatbed tow operator— was cold and scared. Scared that she might die, cold because all of her skin was exposed to the night air.
In senior history class the teacher had shown them Life Magazine pictures of Jewish women lined up in a concentration camp, standing naked along a low building, their heads shorn. Some of them were facing one another, arms crossed loosely, legs bent, but others turned to stare into the camera. The skin around their eyes was dark and hollow and below, breasts and buttocks and pubic hair exposed to the daylight and to each other. Martha was stunned by the indifference on their faces— she was sixteen at the time, and so sheltered it was almost pathetic.
Every single morning before school she'd hooked herself dutifully into a Junior Misses' padded Merry Widow, even though she weighed ninety pounds and had nothing to pad. She lived in passing fear of her skirt clinging to the outline of her legs when she stood up from her desk, of her bra strap peeking through the neckline of her shirt when she twisted around in her seat. She carried Binaca, Secret, and Baby Soft in her school bag, making liberal use of all three throughout the day. She rushed to the girls room in between class to stand in front of the mirror, teasing and coaxing her stubbornly limp crown of hair with a plastic comb. At home, she spent hours on her room pouring religiously over issues of Seventeen and Young Miss every month, eager to target the defects of her body and personality that up until then she didn't even know existed.
Her mother said once that if she was ever seen outside of the house without lipstick on, it would be because the coroner was carrying out her dead body. But survival promoted detachment; one of the first divestments was from things that, as it turned out, didn't really matter after all.
"Touch her," Harry said to Joe. No one moved. "Go on. Touch her."
Martha reached over and took Joe's hand, putting it on her waist and holding it there.
"Okay," Harry said. "Now the other one."
It was like his limbs were weighted down with concrete. He couldn't have moved them if he tried. Martha looked at him.
"You think I'll just shoot you if you don't, huh?" Harry said. "You'll sacrifice yourself out here for pretty Miss Moore, in front of our Lord God for the kingdom of Heaven—"
"I can't do it—"
"I'll kill her!" His voice rose sharply in pitch. "I'll shoot her, but I won't shoot you, and then you can pray for forgiveness every night for the rest of your life. And in your mind you'll watch her die while you do it. Again and again, her brains blown out into the dirt— You like that? Huh? Is that what you want to see? The inside of her fucking skull?"
"No." He sounded like he was crying, and Martha started to cry, too. He looked up at Harry. "Please," he said again. "What did I do wrong?"
"It's okay, Joe—" Martha's voice came out low and rushed, with a deranged edge of reassurance that skewed her words haphazardly. Every second was like a minute. "Look, it's okay— I'll show you," she said.
Harry grinned. "Go on then, sweetheart," he said. "Show him what to do."
"I can give you money, if you want— tell me how much and I'll have it wired. Any amount. I have some with me—" He fumbled not for Martha but his pants, producing a money clip which Harry took and then dropped on the ground between them.
"I don't want your fucking money, Father." He crouched down so he was eye level with the priest, man to man, and spat into the dirt. "How about this— how about I take your place, and I'll show you what to do." He looked over at Martha for just the briefest moment, smiling. "Watch me first and then take your turn. How about that?"
She took Joe's other hand and put it on her, then put both her hands on his shoulders. She looked at him. They were both shaking, although her skin was cold to the touch and he was flushed, sweating.
"I'm sorry," he said again.
She pulled him in very close to her, her lips maybe a inch from his ear. "Don't apologize," she said. "You haven't done anything wrong."
Her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Pretend you're somewhere else."
Behind them Harry was saying something but he did as she said and pretended he was elsewhere, that he couldn't hear him.
"Anywhere else. And you're doing something you really love to do— maybe you're at the beach, lying on the sand, and it's warm— really warm—" It was almost unthinkable that she could speak to him this way, right as they were doing what they were doing— the thing they were forced into doing— "Or you're in church praying, and it's just you, and the candles are lit and you can smell melting wax all around you—"
She remembered he'd told her once how that smell was one of his favourite things about being in church. One of his favourite things in life.
By doing what she said he could almost remove himself fully from the situation, even from the physiological sensation that was developing in him— between them.
"Walking in the woods," he mumbled, the words coming from somewhere in him that was so far removed that they fell on his own ears like they were hers, like someone else had said it.
"In the fall," she said. "Or the spring, right when the lake is finished thawing and the air on your face is warm instead of cold—"
"Yes," he said.
"We're not really here," she said. "This isn't actually happening." The whole time her voice remained low enough that Harry couldn't hear her— no one could but him. "Right now, you're outside walking by the lake."
He thought about how she'd removed her clothing when Harry told her to, quickly, mechanically, about how she was shivering now on the cold ground, and how she was still able to reassure him— him, the one who was— and how he thought he would protect her just by virtue of being male, larger, stronger— but she was protecting him. She told him what to think, what to do. She was a sensitive person and you'd think she would crumble to pieces put in such a gruesome situation. He expected it.
He felt the urge to put his arms around her as tight as he could, to hold her close and comfort her, independently from what they were being made to do— to somehow reciprocate for her what she was doing for him, make her safe with him even while he was doing this awful thing, and then the gun went off and everything turned white. God was all around him, and when he came to he was looking up, the sky glowing a sick greyish-yellow above him.
