Longlisted for the 2019 Bristol Short Story Prize

Grace the Worm

The Watford Faith Church burned the night I turned seventeen. I could see the thick pillar of smoke from my house down the street. The big, grey coiled up into the sky and the next morning the church was a black skeleton, off-white slats torn up by scaly ash. Dark claw marks streaked across the building and left only some of the church’s old stark whiteness, the paint chipped down to grey charcoal in places. The interchangeable sign next to the curb once read “What were you created to worship?” but was now slashed through with a smudged, red exclamation: “BURN WITH YOUR FALSE SHEPHERD.”

            The scene was fenced in by yellow police tape, bright lines that swayed with the rain. Two officers stood in the patchy church lawn and cradled thermoses of coffee, navy-blue slickers dripping. I picked out one of their faces, recognized him from Dad’s rec centre sermons: jar-shaped head with a thick salt-and-pepper moustache that carpeted his upper lip. His words turned to steam as he and the other police officer conversed.

            The pair did little to poke around. Other than the incriminating evidence of the spray-painted threat across the signboard, the church had been ready to go up in flames on its own. It’d been a dry transition into winter up until last night and if it hadn’t been for the sudden rainfall, the half-there church would have been cremated on the spot.

            The moustached officer caught my stare and waved. Definitely from Dad’s sermons. I lowered my head to avoid his sullen eyes and noticed a pink string of a worm that writhed at the toes of my sneakers. Half-alive, it waved its head as it drowned in the rainwater. A brownish red, it had a thick, blood-coloured mark wrapped around its belly. The worm would likely be smeared along the concrete by a careless gumboot before the downpour let up. But until then it dragged the bulge of its head along the concrete.

            “Grace!” Dad stood in our lawn at the end of the block dressed in a heavy coat and propped up against the junker Honda Civic that collected rainwater in the driveway. The street – and the entire town of Watford City, North Dakota – was made up of one-story houses with chain-link fences that stood in for picket. Front lawns were patchy with grass and the rain made mud pits out of driveways.

            “You’re going to get a cold,” Dad said. “C’mon, Grace.” The roofs were tin and dogs slept outside on doorsteps and in garden beds. Pickup trucks under blue tarps that drummed with rain sat in every second lawn. A few streets down most of the homes were mobile, planted on concrete cinderblocks. The Watford Faith Church was the only property without a metal, crisscrossed fence.

            The moustached officer motioned with a tilt of his head towards Dad, a serious look on his face. I ducked away and sloshed down the road, socks and sneakers drenched. When I reached him, Dad flicked open an umbrella and held it over me. “Couldn’t find your raincoat, Grace?”

            I was born Courtney Albert Beckett, after my grandmother, my father, and a great-great-great relative who came to America to escape religious prosecution. But I’d been Grace for as long as I could remember.

            “Grace,” Dad said one night after a sermon. “My little girl has grace.” Mom began to echo Dad’s pet name, then my sister and brother, teachers and classmates. And so I became Grace.

            “I was thinking,” I said as Dad led me to the front door, “I could go see James this weekend.”

            “James?”

            “Mom could drive me. Or I could borrow the Civic.”

            “You know how I feel about you driving the car.”

            The door to our house swung open into the kitchen and the welcome warmth that bubbled from the space heater. Mom palpated a lump of ground beef into a pan at the counter. Meatloaf stuffed with green peppers and onions was dinner before every sermon night.

            “I could bus,” I said. “I don’t need to take the car.”

            “Let’s not talk about this,” Dad said. “It’s Friday. And Friday is for…?”

            I sighed. “Friday is for the sermon.”

            “That’s right, Grace.” Dad thumbed my cheek as he left the kitchen. His hands smelled of cedar wood, half-seeped in rot by the rain. He must have been splitting logs before he came to find me.

            Six years ago, back when we stopped going to church, back when the construction crew let Dad go, that’s when the sermons first started. Mom and Dad would unfold plastic chairs and fill the family room with them, an old podium at the very front of the rows. Dad’s flock trickled in every Friday and filed into the chairs, odd folk from around town: neighbours, ex-churchgoers, Dad’s old coworkers, all there to sit in the makeshift pews and listen to my father preach. Back then it was Sally and me in the last row of chairs dressed in scratchy, polyester dresses. James had attended sermons for a few weeks but quickly grew too old for Dad’s preaching – even with his siblings’ company – and began to skip out to buy cigarettes off of roughnecks with his allowance money.

            Mom pushed the pan of red meat into the fridge and wiped her hands with a cloth. She turned to me and scooped her twine-like hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ears. “Where were you?”

            “Faith Church,” I said and sat down at the kitchen table. “Wanted to see it.”

            “Oh, it was ready to fall down anyways.” Mom produced a styrofoam carton of eggs and a pan and lit the stove. “Your father was talking with some of the old construction friends last Friday about the crew doing a fix-up for it. Have you eaten yet?”

            I shook my head. Mom cracked the eggshells and the yolks dribbled and hissed on the pan. What had happened last night? The Watford Faith Church had been in one piece and painted a virgin white, sitting at the end of the road with the threat of rain in the sky above it. Had a handful of men – ignored in their construction hardhats and vests – lugged jerry cans into the church? Or had a police cruiser pulled up across the street and a moustached officer slipped onto the property, hidden in the dark?  Or even my father, dressed in his sermon robes, throwing a torch onto a pile of kindle as his followers watched on.

            Mom slid a plate of fried eggs in front of me and the yellow centers wobbled under my nose. My stomach flipped and I pushed the food aside.

            Dad entered the kitchen brushing his hands on his jeans. “Better eat up.” Mom passed him his own serving and he kissed the top of her head. “You’re too good to me, Cath,” he said.

            Dad sat across from me and met my eyes, his irises the colour of blued concrete. It hadn’t even been a day since the church burned down and Dad’s gaze already cut into mine, the glassy blue too sharp to maintain eye contact. I wanted to see James more than ever.

Sermons had moved into the local rec centre three years ago as the attendees had become too many for our crowded house. Sally and I used to sit in our usual places in the back of the crowd. The pink hem of dress scratched against my thighs and Sal’s foot bounced with impatience, James’ spot to her right empty as always. Sal’s gaze would jump around the room and flicker from Dad to the window to the ceiling. She had brown irises and brown hair and a spatter of freckles flecked her face: Sal scratched at them when she looked in the mirror as if they would come off under her fingernails, but I thought they were pretty.

            “You should not fear!” Dad would say and punctuate the line with his fist struck against the podium. “The flock should not fear, for the shepherd guides them.” Heads bobbed, engrossed in my father as he shook his hand at the ceiling.

            “The flock grazes from the pasture, the flock grazes from the shepherd’s hand!” His fist would slug the lectern again. “For if we do not flock to the shepherd, what more are we than worms in the dirt?”

            After most sermons Dad let me and Sal venture out into Watford with the promise that we’d be home before it got too dark. One night, when the sky loomed dusky and warm, I asked Sal what Dad meant about being a flock as we ambled down the sidewalk.

            Sal kicked at loose cigarette butts and told me she didn’t know. Clouds above us were a hushed pink, the colour of half-healed scabs.

            “C’mon,” I said. My dress still itched and I wished I’d changed like Sal, swathed in a sweater and jeans and her nose rubbed red by the breeze.

            “Dad thinks people are worms,” Sal said. “A flock of worms.”

            “Dad doesn’t think that.”

            “Enough about Dad.” Sal plucked at a loose thread from the hem of her sleeve. We neared the baseball diamond behind Watford High School. The field dipped into a gulley that snared plastic bags and aluminum cans. James sat on the chain link fence with the red leather jacket he wore religiously slung over his shoulder. He dropped down onto his feet when he saw us.

            “How was church?” He smirked and the corner of his mouth punched a dimple into his cheek. James’ hair fell in spikes into his eyes, the sides slicked back, damp and blonde.

            “Shut up,” Sal said and held out her hand. “You got smokes?”

            James pulled a cigarette pack from his jeans. He and Sal hung the white sticks from their mouths and lit them.

            James jabbed a finger at me. “Narc?”

            I shook my head, mimed a zip and lock across my mouth and flicked the key into the woods.

            “Good.” Smoke spooled from James’ nose. “What’d Dad go on about tonight?”

            “If you wanted to know you should’ve shown up,” Sal said and blew clouds into the bruise-coloured sky.

            “Dad talked about the flock,” I said.

            “What, his flock of worms?” James said. He smirked again, creased the left side of his face like wrinkled fabric.

            “God, shut up about Dad,” Sal said. She sucked at her cigarette and frowned at James. “Both of you.”

            “Sorry.” James shrugged and tapped the tangerine-coloured bulb off the end of his smoke. “It’s just that he’s our shepherd and–”

            Sal punched his shoulder and he doubled over in feigned agony.

            “Bitch!” James laughed. The black of the sky erased the outlines of fir trees around us, pointed crowns indistinguishable from backdrop.

            “We should go home,” I said. “It’s getting dark. Sal?”

            “Sh. Look,” Sal said. She dropped her cigarette onto the leaves and stamped it out. “First star.”

            The tiniest flake of white. Sal sat down in the gulley and leaned back, the moon just a loose, silver hair on the canvas above.

            James snuffed his cigarette and took my hand. “C’mon, Grace. Bedtime.” He pulled me along and the perfume of tobacco and beaten leather fell over me.

*

Dad wasn’t a physically impressive man. He just reached 5’10” and any muscles he’d built up when he worked in half-constructed basements melted into a chubby paunch long ago. But his appearance soothed when it creased into an expression of welcome. He stood behind the polished podium dressed in a collared shirt and robe and exuded charm. His fist would crash down onto the lectern and he would spit of brimstone – the echo rang around the rented rec centre auditorium – and the onlookers would gasp. He’d lift his palm to the ceiling and lament on the white light that washed down on us and the flock would melt into the warmth that spread over them.

            When the sermon ended I found Mom in the back row of chairs. She smoothed her dress out and offered a placid smile as I approached. At the front of the auditorium Dad shook hands with members on their way out, his smiles, physical touch, and eye contact measured. A few stopped at the podium to scribble in their cheque book and pass their monthly payment to Dad.

            “Do you want to help fold chairs, Grace?” Mom said.

            “About seeing James this weekend…”

             “What did your father say?”

            “He didn’t say no.”

            “Grace…”

            I grabbed a chair and collapsed it, then a second and third before swaying towards the back of the auditorium, the plastic seats dragged behind me. Mom stood and creased her dress again, the royal-blue hem flared at her knees. My own dress, the polyester-pink swapped for a quiet purple made of cotton, was wrinkled and in dire need of an iron.

            “You shouldn’t carry more than one, Grace,” Mom said.

            “It’s quicker.”

            Mom sighed. “Just as impatient as Al.”

            “When’d you last see James?”

            Mom twisted the wedding band wrapped around her finger. The skin of her hands had gotten closer to the bone in the past few years, opaque flesh lined with blue veins. “Same as you, I suppose.”

            “Do you remember when he used to wear that dumb jacket?” Another chair folded up. “And he’d tell people he was named after James Dean?”

            “He looked handsome.”

            “Or the ugly dresses me and Sal used to wear for sermons?”

            The chair in Mom’s arms snapped shut. “I remember that pink one you wore.”

            “Well,” I said. “It really itched.”

            “Grace,” Mom said, “if you want to see James, that’s up to you father.” At the front of the room Dad clasped hands with Ron Kurich, one of the heads of Dad’s old construction crew. He had a thin face and his eyes hid under a worried brow. Kurich shook his head and gave my Dad an apologetic look. Dad’s grip tightened as he pulled Kurich closer and murmured something in his ear. The gaunt man retrieved his cheque book, scribbled one out, and ducked out of the room. Dad caught my stare, smiled, and waved.

            All those years ago when Dad came home, sat Mom down on the paisley couch, and explained how the company was cutting workers, weeded out those without seniority. Me and Sal listened under our door as he told Mom how people listened to him, how money was so tight in Watford, and how people needed someone just to make them feel safe. He was that someone. I didn’t know if he believed it or if he thought he could pretend to. But now, as he let his easy smile wash over me, I could tell he knew it. That he knew he tended to a flock of sheep that grazed from his palm.

The pockets of sky that seeped through the tree leaves in our backyward were muted by rain clouds and slowly turning to blackness. Dad’s bent figure could be seen through the window of the family room, the felled stump that he used to split wood in front of him. He lifted his arms and brought a worn hatchet down onto log after log. The halved remnants fell and piled around his feet. He rested for a moment to glance up at the clouds and swipe away the rainwater from his brow with a flannel sleeve, hair plastered to the wrinkles above his eyes. 

            Our backyard was small, small as everything else on the property. Chain link fence bordered other neighbours’ backyards, the lawn consisted of clumped grass and patches of gravel Dad used to clog up particularly muddy divots. A tiny dogwood tree sat in the corner of the yard, hunched over from years of rain and feebly pushing out a few white petals. Ashes had been sucked into the ground at the tree’s foot, drained into the dirt and through the dogwood’s roots. Poured from an urn on a winter afternoon, the silver capsule quickly tucked away and hidden by Dad.  

            Dad buried the axe head in the cutting stump and trudged up the backdoor steps. He wiped his boots on the already soiled mat, shook out his wet hair, and pulled himself from his thick coat.

            “Don’t know if the kindle will dry by the time we need it,” he said. “Thoughts, Grace? You don’t look quite here.”

            “The Watford Faith Church burned down last night,” I said.

            Dad nodded, tossed his coat over a hanger draped with layers of winter clothes.

            “Who do you think did it?”  I stood up from the paisley couch and tugged at the hem of my sweater’s sleeve. Dad turned his grey eyes on me.

            “Old thing was ready to go up in flames.” His lips stretched out into a thin smile. “Getting dark out. Wouldn’t want to stay up too late.”

The house was still by the time Mom and Dad were locked in their room and asleep. I laid on my back and connected the glow-in-the-dark star stickers that dotted the ceiling with mental lines. From the other side of the bedroom I could make out the shadow of Sal’s old twin bed, sheets still perfectly folded over the mattress after all this time. I slid out from under my own comforter, already dressed. The family room was a dull grey without any light and the hushed, steady breaths of Mom and Dad could be heard from behind their door. I pulled Dad’s heavy flannel from the coat rack and slipped into it, the weight of his keys in the pocket. Through the kitchen and out the front door and I was in Watford’s cold, wet night.

            You could still see the faded dents in the hood of the blue-grey Civic if you searched close enough. Dad pulled some strings, preached to some people who knew how to fix up cars. If you didn’t look for it, the wrinkles that patterned the metal in front of the passenger’s side were invisible. Inside, years of use stained the upholstery with a familiar odour. The sweat of backs in the summer, food dropped by kids, menthol fumes from Mom’s more anxious days. The windshield was the newest addition to the vehicle, now a mosaic of fat globs of rain. I turned the keys in the ignition, the Civic hummed, and the wipers swished along the glass.  

            The green, blocky numbers on the dashboard read 1:00 AM. The streets of Watford were slick and dead. A gas station swished past and imprinted a harsh, white light against the deep-blue town. At a red light a lone truck pulled up next to me, an ugly, miscoloured door on its passenger’s side. I turned to the driver, we met eyes, and I caught the gaunt face of Ron Kurich lit up in the orange glow of streetlight, his features sunken into his skull. His eyes widened, the immediate recognition tangible. I peeled out, the back end of the Civic slid haphazardly on the wet asphalt, and took a left through the red light. I could feel the beat of my pulse in my throat. I knew Kurich would turn around towards my house to wake Dad and rouse a search for me.

            The road wound out of town and became a highway that cut through flat, grassy fields rolled by the wind and rain. The Civic’s headlights illuminated a few feet in front of me and caught the yellow glimpses of traffic signs, the rain a flurry that sped past the windshield, stretched into fine lines by the speed of the car. Parallel to the road, telephone pole wires whipped back and forth like jump ropes.

I reached Bismarck in under three hours and pulled into James’ apartment building with the stars barely visible above the glow of orange-bulb streetlamps. I banged my palm against the copper number plaque of James’ suite and waited. The slit under the door lit up with the faintest glow when I thumped my fist against it a second time and a voice inside insisted that they were coming. Heavy footsteps approached, and the door finally swung open to James slumped in the entrance. A white scar split the middle of his left eyebrow, small enough that you’d only notice if you looked for it. The rest of his face held the same boyish appearance as it did all those years ago, despite the crookedness of his nose. He still slicked his blonde hair back at the sides, spiked into his eyes, but he looked better than he did the last time I saw him.

            “Grace?” James rubbed an eye. He turned back into the apartment and I followed. James limped over to a couch, collapsed into it, and I followed suit.

            “How’d you get here?” James said.

            “Hi.”

            James sighed. “Hi, Grace. Did Mom or Dad drive you? Where are they?”

            “I took the Civic. Alone.” Evidence of apathy littered James’ apartment. Beer cans, dirty laundry, orange canisters of painkillers – assumedly still prescribed for his weaker leg. A dull lamp steeped the sitting room in yellowed light and a musky, lived-in odour sat in the air.

            “Jesus, really? Grace, you know–”

            “I know.”

            James stood up, leaned on his left leg for support from his gimp right knee. He stumbled into the adjacent kitchen, and the clinks of glasses and a faucet could be heard.

            “I want to talk about Dad,” I said. “About his flock of worms.”

            “What?” James returned with two cups of water. He placed one in front of me, unscrewed a bottle of pills, and washed down a white capsule with a gulp of water. He coughed, wiped his mouth. “What do you mean?”

            “Why’d you leave? You and Sal.”

            James sat again and winced. “Grace, we were kids. Teenage rebellion. Everyone does it, clearly.” He gestured at me, as if I was the one in the wrong. As if I had been the one to steal the car first, to slip away with Sal and put a telephone pole through the passenger side of that beat-up Honda Civic.

            “It wasn’t about Dad? It wasn’t because you were afraid?”

            James scratched the side of his nose, looked at the closed shutter shades over his window. Lines of false light streaked through and projected an orange barcode across the room.

            “Because you felt like a worm?” I said. All the things I wanted to say, to ask, fell from my head into the pit of my stomach. Were you scared of Dad? Did Dad terrify you and Sal, not because of what he did, but because of the threat of what he could? Was it enough to risk your lives?

            “Dad isn’t evil, Grace.” James stood. “He’s a father who wants to look out for his kids, just as much as anybody else.”

            “James–”

            He pushed back his hair and let his eyes betray the unholy tiredness behind them, eyes that spoke of sleepless nights after leaving the hospital. “If you’ve forgotten,” he said, “Dad forgave me.”

            I hadn’t forgotten. How could I forget the way James burrowed his face greasy with tears into the folds of Dad’s coat, sobbed apologies into the fabric? How Dad had disappeared him in his tree trunk arms and whispered “I forgive you” again and again into the crown of James’ head. I could feel the worm writhe within me.

            “I’m gonna call Dad, let him know where you are,” James said. He left the living room and me on the worn couch next to a TV with twisted bunny ears. My cup of water sat untouched on the chewed-up coffee table ringed with stains, the glass foggy and streaked. The air in James’ apartment smelled sour and the worm in me wriggled and drowned.