My father said there was no point in sowing or reaping anymore, because the Lord was coming & these were End Times. So he took us all out to the field instead & there we stayed from the beginning of one week to the end of the next, fourteen whole days. We were waiting for Jesus & His angels to come get us, to take us away to Paradise on doves’ wings. We were waiting for the trump & the breaking of seals.
& some of us were sick when we first went out there, & some of us got better, which my father considered a blessing & a miracle, but some of us got worse. I was holding my littlest brother when he died & my grandmother died while she was holding me. & after a time I was glad that my eyes were glued together with sickness, because then I did not have to see how both of them changed. Besides which my father would not allow us to bury them because Jesus was coming & if we tried to move he would brandish his sword at us, which he had beaten out of a ploughshare. So we all just lay quiet & still as we could & pretended we were praying.
& then things were dark, but a light came, bright as though it was noonday. Yet perhaps it was noonday, since the doctor told me later I was eaten up with fever when they found me, so time may have passed me by. Even now, even here, I do not truly know.
& then, in the midst of it, with the flies & the heat & the burnt flowers nodding, the useless flowers & the ruts all overgrown with weeds. Then a smell came, such a bad smell, so hot & dreadful. Like when you make sausage & blood drips into the fire. & I heard a voice ask my father why he was not at work.
Who are you, woman? he asked, & she said: It does not matter who I am. Who do you think you are, that you neither till nor harvest & your field is gone to ash, not crop; where is your horse, your plough? Why is this land I gave you watered only with kin-blood?
I do not have to talk to you, he told her, & she laughed. Ah, but I think you will, she said.
You will.
If she comes to you at midday do not look up, my grandmother always told us, but my father said those were old wives’ tales, witches’ prattle. But my father told tales of Jesus & His angels in his turn, & those were not true, either. None of it is true, before or since.
She is the only true thing.
& I did not look up, I could not, my eyes were shut, I could not see. The doctor said I should have gone blind, that I should have been scarred for life, but I was not & this is a true miracle, not one of my father’s tales. A miracle that occurred when she touched me, cupped my chin in the palm of her white-hot hand & burned me to the bone, deeper, down where no one can ever see just for looking. She came & I saw, I saw. I am still seeing.
No, nothing ever came in the field but her, whether at noonday or midnight & so I know she is real, if nothing else. Everything else is lies or tales, the sort we tell ourselves when we are eaten up with fever, when our eyes stick together, when we are too hungry to move & too tired to pray.
When light reflects off the ploughshare-sword like a mirror & there is no water anywhere, no voice but his & then. & then.
& then, hers.
Safie’s notes say we made arrangements to join Val Moraine’s usual Saturday tour of Whitcomb Manor, aka the Vinegar House. Outside the museum, however, she mistakenly left the camera on, even while it was pointed downwards, allowing this snatch of conversation to be recorded—
HEWSEN: The fuck was that, man? That story—
CAIRNS: Yeah, I know.
HEWSEN: No, but seriously. Was all that real?
CAIRNS: Mrs. Whitcomb thought it was, I guess. Granted, she was young . . . just
been through an ass-load of trauma, too.
HEWSEN: She thought she saw Lady Midday, is what that was. Thought Lady Midday killed her dad.
CAIRNS: Wait, no. Didn’t she say her eyes were shut the whole time? I mean—Tierney said she was blind, right? So—
HEWSEN: Blind after. “I saw,” that’s what she said.
CAIRNS: Well, we can’t possibly take her at her word, ’cause that’s just . . . that’d be crazy, yes? Totally. No, she was just—she remembered the story, the one her grandma told her. The fairy tale. So she saw it, but in her mind. That’s what must’ve gone on.
HEWSEN: Right. [A beat.] So . . . what happened to Mrs. Whitcomb’s dad if it wasn’t . . . that? I mean, with his head?
CAIRNS: I don’t know. No way to know. It’s a great story, though. Isn’t it?
HEWSEN: Great, yeah. Uh huh.
CAIRNS: Oh, it’s just perfect. The perfect narrative strategy. Everybody in the world is gonna want to—what?
HEWSEN: Nothing.
CAIRNS: Safie, c’mon. These people’ve been dead a hundred years, long before either of us was born. Before my mom and dad were born. It’s sad, but it’s true . . . what bleeds, leads. So this leads.
HEWSEN: You’re happy about this. That we found this out. That this is why she was doing what she did.