Watering Stones

Bene's always been told, "not to ask questions of Father". One day, he lives a mystery far too sinister not to question.

 

Watering Stones

j a jones

 

I stand in the stone yard spraying water on the stones. They don’t grow. They just stand there, poking out the earth like crooked teeth. My water makes a rainbow come, and I move the hose back and forth to make it dance. It never does. It always disappears until I stop. The water makes a hissing noise, and its drops are hot on my hands, but its beads fall over the grass and stones and make all the colors come through. Father tells me that rainbows come from distorted light. I don’t know much what that means, but he says it’s like the light gets broken passing through the water. I don’t know much how water could break light, but Father says it does, and I reckon that ought to be enough for me. I don’t reckon I remember seeing a time when water breaks nothing, save on TV, but father tells me about The Flood and Noah and how God destroys everything. I don’t know much why God makes a flood, but Father tells me he does. He tells me God makes lots of things, like everything.  I reckon he makes all the stones in this yard grow once, but Father tells me that’s silly.

Just then, I hear Father’s voice behind me.

“Bene.”

I turn my head, and the hose still sprays the stones. Father stands in the Church doorway. He holds a white box, and he has his shirt off. He looks kind of hunched over, like he’s tired, like he’s worked all day at something and finally finished, like he’s dug a hole in the heat. 

“Bene. Get over here quick,” he yells. I ain’t never known Father to yell at no man, never. 

I drop the hose, and the water starts chugging out in gulps in the grass. I run to Father, and he limps to me from the doorway. 

“Take this box,” he says, handing it to me hard, like it’s about to catch fire. The box is all white, with a red cross smeared into it like with paint. “Take this box outside the fence,” he says. “Bury it.”

Father tells me not to ask questions never of him, just to do, so I do. I take the box and start for the fence. The church door slams shut before I start away. The box don’t hardly weigh nothing. I hold it with both hands and go to the back shed to grab the shovel. The shed stinks from standing water, and fruit flies hover over everything. A couple of stray cats scurry for cover when I swing the wooden door open and flip on the light switch. The shed floor is nothing but dirt, damp, slippery from turned over oil cans and puddled with rain water. Broken glass crunches under my feet as I reach for the rusted shovel, its wooden handle rough and splintery.  Father tells me that any good man must have an old shovel. Never trust a man with a clean shovel, he tells me, it means he never does nothing himself. Father gives me lots of things like that. He told me once that a man with dry grass lives a deserted life. That’s about when he teaches me to water the stones. He teaches me lots of things, save where I come from, who my real father and mother is. He just tells me that I come to him like a bird fallen from the trees. That’s how he puts it. That’s what he tells me. We’ve buried lots of birds and things like this, beyond the fence, in a white box, with a red cross. Birds and cats that Father says come from God. I start to tell him that all things from God, like he always say, but I figure he knows something more, and I ought just to listen.

I let the shed door swing closed, and I make for the fence that surrounds the stone yard. The fence is made from wire with rotted wood posts every so often. Vines and thorny bushes grow over some parts of the fence, but some parts still lay bare, the rusted wires wrapping around one another, twisting into a mangled mess. I drag the shovel behind me in the grass and hold the box with one hand, my thumb over the lid and the rest of my fingers under the bottom. It feels like nothing’s in the box, like maybe just some old cat, some old dead cat from the back shed. 

I remember them cats when they were born in that old shed. Seems like clear ten years ago now. I was just big enough to mow the stone yard, and I always seemed to find a way into that old shed to pull the mower out and weave in and out of those crooked stones, sending the dry blades of grass out the side. One day I found this old mother cat resting on some dry dirt in the back corner, and I saw that she don’t run when I come in like she usually does. She just sat there, and I leaned in and watched her stomach heaving up and down. She kept one old eyeball on me, but she don’t move for nothing. I knelt there and watched as three kittens come out of her on that dirt, all slimy, all wet and shinny, their eyes shut, almost like they were born asleep or dead. I just stood there that day, sweating in the old back shed, watching this mother cat lick her kittens clean. She don’t look at me no more, like she forgot I was standing there. She just licked clean those wet slimy critters, and they huddled up and nursed. Just then, the shed door swung open, sending light onto the floor and onto the mound of new kittens. I heard Father behind me.

            “Bene,” he said to me. I turned, and he was standing there with Dolly. That’s the first time I ever saw her, and just then I almost forgot about the whole mess of kittens I just seen. She’s standing there holding Father’s hand, her socks up to her scraped knees, and she kind of smiled at me.

            “What you got there?” he asked, stepping down onto the damp floor, kneeling beside the litter of kittens, watching their bodies roll over one another to reach the mother’s milk. 

            “Kittens,” I said, standing up, still looking at the little girl. I told him how it happened, and he smiled.

            “I see. This won’t do,” he said, touching his hand on the ground. “We need to get them somewhere clean to sleep.”

           The little girl came closer and knelt beside Father. She wore her blonde hair straight down, cut even. She must’ve been about the skinniest thing I ever seen on two legs, like she don’t eat much, or like she don’t never stop moving. She looked about clear skinnier than the new kittens in the mud. I tried to see what color her eyes were, but I couldn’t look without her seeing me. I don’t know if she even looked at me once, except when the door opened, but as Father put those cats in a box and brought them inside, I watched her, I watched her like there were no cats, no Father, no nothing but her and me. 

 

            I get to the fence, and I pick a nice spot where the bushes aren’t too thick, and the thorns aren’t too sharp. I stab the shovel into the ground and set the box down in the grass. The breeze gets cold, and the sun looks like it’s about to fall away behind the field. A truck passes down the road winding behind the church. The driver honks, and I wave back. Out here the dirt usually feels like crust, like dry bread or burned wood. I never spray no water outside the fence.  Father says there’s no sense in it. Digging out here is always mean work. I sit down for a moment and look at the box. The grass feels dry like Father’s hair, and the breeze don’t even blow it or make it move none. It don’t bend and wave like Dolly’s hair when the wind runs through it. I pick up the box and put it in my lap and think about Dolly some more, about her hair and how I imagine God must smell something like it. 

            I don’t see Dolly again until the kittens been cats a while, rummaging through the shed all the time, killing mice. Them kittens must have been clear five years old the next time I saw Dolly, but I knew it was her by her hair. I came in the church after watering the stones, and all the lights were out, the candles were lit, and I think the electricity must have busted. It felt cold inside the church, and I shivered. I knocked on Father’s door. He took a spell to come to the door, so I knocked again, and he opened it. When he saw it’s me, he smiled and patted my head and let me in. His office was dark, and some music played, horns, violins, a piano. A few candles were lit, and the room smelt like rain. The walls were red, not like apples, more like roses. The floor was cold wood, dark with a smooth finish. He sat down behind his wooden desk and leaned back in his leather chair.

            “You already done watering that lawn Bene?” he asked me, his arms behind his head.

            “Yes, Father. I done rolled the hose up and everything.”

            “Good boy. Here’s ten dollar, go on and go ahead into town. Do what you want,” he said, leaning forward and standing up, handing me the money.

            I took it and said thank you. Behind me I heard the bathroom door open. I turned around real quick, and a woman came out. She looked young, like my age, like she might could drive, but might could not. I looked close and saw her blonde hair, straight down, cut even, and I knew clear it was her. Her face looked painted around the lips, and her eyes looked big and wide with black around them. She stopped and turned real fast like she was afraid. 

            “Don’t worry. It’s fine. Come out,” Father said. “It’s Bene. He was just leaving.” Father came out from behind the desk. He was wearing a robe and no socks.

            She came out the bathroom slow like, looking at me. She was wearing a long dress, and she picked up her purse from the floor. She still looked at me while she stepped into her shoes. She pointed her foot to slide them into them black shoes that make her look clear taller than me. Her leg looked so smooth. She fattened up since the last, but good, like a grown up woman, with rounded hips and chest.   

            “I was just leaving too,” she said, looking at me. Her hair looked so soft and warm, and her skin looked pale, even in the dark room, like it held all the lights and flashed them back out like the moon. The room felt warm, like it’s not Fall, more like Summer was about here instead.   

            Father followed her out, and I felt like my legs were coming loose. I sat down and watched them walk out. They stopped in front of the altar, and she turned to him quick and kind of looked up at him. She was short to him even in her tall shoes, and she stared up and shook her head back and forth, her blonde hair flying around her face and back. He put one hand on her shoulder and ran a hand down her side to where she sits and put his mouth on her neck. She kind of fell to him like a leaf, like she ain’t got no legs. He put his face onto hers, and they kind of stood there for a spell. He took his face away and smiled, looked down and shook one of his big old fingers at her face. My chest felt hollow. I felt like the wind could come right through me, take me up and drag me along the ground. Dolly walked away, and Father came back in with lips on his face. He smiled at me and shut the door. 

            “Ten dollar enough?” he asked, looking in one of his big old mirrors.

            I don’t say nothing. I still think about Dolly, her dress, how long it was, how she stepped into her shoes, pointing her foot down into it, looking at me.

            “Here’s another ten,” I heard him say.

            I still don’t say nothing. I still stare at the door, wondering if I open it, if she’d be there. 

 

            The sun’s almost gone now, and I figure I best get to digging this hole. I don’t know much how deep a hole for a dead shed cat supposed to be, but I figure there ain’t no sense in digging one so deep as a man’s. I sometimes wonder why a man always gets buried six feet deep. I remember this one funeral in the stone yard when they dropped this one in. They lowered her down, and only a few people were there. Me, Father, Dolly, a few old ladies who cried the whole time. They say she had a baby in her. They lowered her box down slow, and the chain clinked all the way down until it settled down in the dirt. I wonder if she went deeper than six feet, being she was pregnant. I remember Dolly that day too. She had on black like everyone else, but she looked brighter than the others. Her hair waved a little in the breeze while Father said something about ashes and dust.  I watched her the whole time. She kind of looked off over the field while the others cried. Father walked with the older ladies, his arm around two of them. He kissed one on the head and hugged another by the church wall, rubbing her back and patting it. Dolly still stood over the hole, watching two men shoveling dirt back into it. 

She just kind of stared at me. I still don’t think she saw me. She looked like she didn’t see me, like I was just a tree. She turned back and stared down into the hole. The shovels scraped into the dirt pile. The dirt dropped into the hole. The men never looked up. My chest felt tight, looking at Dolly, her hands on her stomach, her face down, her cheeks wet. I wondered if it might be her mom in the hole. I wanted to talk to her. The more I thought about it, the more my chest hurt. I stepped closer to her, my hands in my pockets. I reckon I decided that my chest hurt so bad that if I didn’t talk to her it would blow up. I couldn’t stand it no more. 

            “You’re pretty sad for her?” I said. The words sounded like they came from somewhere else, like they echoed off the stones.

She turned to me, her hands still on her stomach, and a tear on her face. I thought she might run away. I thought she might hate me, maybe for standing there while she cried. I wished I had walked away. I wished I was a tree. That way, I could blame my words on the wind.

“I’m not sad for her,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her arm. “I don’t even know her.”

I looked down and listened to the shovels, the dirt falling into the hole. I wondered why she was crying. 

“She was pregnant,” she said. “She had a baby in her, you know?”

“I know,” I said. “She still does.”

That made her cry harder, and I wished I didn’t say nothing. 

She sat on the grass in front of the hole and held her head in her arms. I sat down too, kind of far from her, but close enough to hear her crying. 

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know if it’s still there. I just think that maybe it’d be nice for it to be with her down there.” I looked at her, watched her crying, her blonde hair falling straight down over her shoulders, hiding her face. 

She stopped and picked her head up out of her hands. “That’s sweet to say,” she said. She leaned over and touched my hand. I watched her hand the whole way, and then I looked at her face. Her eyes were blue. I thanked God that I wasn’t a tree.

 

I stand and place the white box on the ground again. I jump on the shovel and it goes in a bit. I jump on it again, and it goes deeper. The whole time I dig, I look at the box on the ground, the red cross smeared into it’s top. Father always tells me what’s in it. We always bury it together. This time, it’s different.

I dig and toss the dirt over my shoulder. Mosquitoes start biting, and I smack one dead on my arm. My blood smears on my arm a little. I flick its body away and jump back on the shovel. The hole starts getting good and deep, and almost plenty deep for a dead cat, but I figure I could dig just a little more. I wished Dolly was here to talk to. We never talked much, not much more than that day beside the hole, but since that day she always seemed to smile at me. She came to see Father a lot then, almost clear every day. I worked in the yard mostly, and sometimes I would see Dolly come. She stayed clear until sunset and would drive away. She always honked as she passed on the road behind the church. I’d wave. Sometimes I’d wish I was with her, honking at me in the yard, leaving to wherever she went from here. 

As this Spring began she started staying in the Church. Father said she needed our help, and he was letting her stay there for a while. She never leaves. Father or I go out and bring food back. She never goes outside, not even in the yard to walk or to feed the shed cats. She mostly cleans inside the Church, Father’s office, the storage room where she sleeps. She never comes down to the basement where I sleep. She says she can’t risk the fall. She’s gotten big, like she has a baby in her. She always walks around with her hands on her back, like she’s trying to keep straight. I never say nothing to Father about her, but I watch her cleaning, scrubbing the pews, polishing. She always makes me feel warm. I sit with her while she eats sometimes. I ask her about why she’s big. She usually stops eating and looks at me. 

“It’s God’s baby,” she says, her head tilted. 

“But all baby’s God’s babies,” I say.

“This is different.”

            Sometimes she don’t answer. Sometimes she just acts like I didn’t say nothing. I usually just watch her. I look at her stomach. It hops and jumps sometimes. I want to touch it. I never ask.

            Today Father tells me to water the stones clear earlier than I ever did. He comes out of his office quick. I hear the door slam upstairs in his office, and I think I hear Dolly scream. 

            “Bene,” he says. His face looks white. “Bene, get outside and water the yard.”

            “The sun hardly up Father,” I say.

            “Bene. I told you, never ask questions of me. I don’t ask much. Do as I say,” he says, turning around to go back upstairs.

            “Is Dolly okay?” I ask.

            “I told you, Bene. I told you. No questions. Now go,” he says, his back to me, his head looking down. 

            I never ask no more questions. I get on my working clothes and head up. On my way out I hear Dolly screaming and Father yelling, telling her it’ll be okay. My stomach feels empty. I stop and look at the office door. Father tells me never disobey him. He’s a good Father, I know, and he tells me never to disobey him. Dolly screams so loud it makes my neck cold, like waves of ice breaking on me. I can hardly move my feet. 

I know Father is a good Father, I know. I know he tells me never to disobey, to listen to him and accept him. He tells me he doesn’t ask much, only obedience. He tells me God’s children are obedient children. He tells me that to question God is to answer Satan’s call.

He tells me to go water the stones.

I water the stones. 

I water them until the grass around them is puddled, until the dirt patches are nothing but mud holes. 

I water the stones until my thumb can’t feel the water no more. 

I water the stones from sunrise, past noon, and it looks clear like the sun’s about to set. 

I water the stones longer than God usually do. Sometimes I hear Dolly screaming from inside. Sometimes I hear Father slam a door. I wish it would rain. I wish God would make it rain, so I could go back in. I wish Dolly would come out okay. I wish Father would come back out and pat my head and tell me how proud he is of me, how proud for never questioning. But he don’t. He only comes out, near about sunset and hand me this old white box with a red cross smeared on it. He only tell me to bury it, not what it is, not where, but only to bury it. I know I should just keep on digging this hole and drop this old box in and cover it up and never ask no questions never again, but I feel so sick. I feel like Satan must be inside me. I feel like I am going to hell, but I cannot help feeling sick like something in this box more than some old dead shed cat. I drop the shovel and sit down and start to cry. I ask God why I’m so evil. I ask God to forgive me for being weak and stupid, for questioning Father. I ask God to help me not look in the box, to make me have faith. Father tell me God cannot give faith, that it comes from me.

I tell God I am sorry. 

I tell God that I think I’ve lost my faith.

I tell God that I know what’s in the box. 

            I take the box in my hands, hold it in my lap. The sun is almost gone. The box looks gray, and the cross looks brown. I touch it, and it feels dry. I chip some off with my finger. My fingers run along the edges of the top, reaching underneath it. I think about Dolly, Father, God, and the Devil. I wonder which one I am closest to right now. I feel like God. But I know it must be the Devil.         

Reviews

[deeps]

Wow! This brought a tear. This is so wonderful
This tugs on the heart. I like this. It is very well written.
I really like this part here;

I tell God I am sorry.
I tell God that I think I've lost my faith.
I tell God that I know what's in the box.
I take the box in my hands, hold it in my lap.
The sun is almost gone. The box looks gray, and the cross looks brown.

These are such wonderful lines here.
There is alot of truth in yoru write as well.
Very impressive write here.

[Sean M. Addams]

very deep well written piece... very emotional to me... overall i liked this alot and thought you did an amazing job with this!!!

[Sincerely, Alex]

......
I see now why you teach English, Mr. Jones.

That was amazing. There were so many little details that I loved and really added to the story.
You captured my attention right from the first sentence.

There are too many favorite lines for me to name, but just know that this is one of the best things I have read on here.
There are tears in my eyes.

Alex