Free A Choir of Ill Children by Tom Piccirilli

experience are alive in her eyes. She tilts her head at me, her teacher in these lessons, as if giving thanks. I nod back.
    The wild boar continues its judgment from above. My mother, unseen but only inches away, titters. The smoke circles around us until I can almost believe we no longer exist.
    We do, and we know this, but there’s no need to ever admit it.
     
    C HANTING, THEY HURL HEXES.
    The river is flooding out the bottoms and a host of granny witches, led by Velma Coots, have staked out the house. They’re parked there in the woods at the edge of our property, performing rituals and pointing their fingers and curses. It’s starting to piss me off just a tad.
    I head into the storm and face them. Besides Velma Coots there’re six other women—three of them homely, one a beautiful teenager, an elderly hag, and an ancient crone. They wear shawls and rags for this ceremony, lace wrapped three times around their hair. In a matter of seconds I’m as drenched as they are. They’re all grounded deeper than any tree around us. They’ve come from out of the swamp for this bizarre meeting—this invocation.
    “We need your seed,” Velma Coots says.
    “Will you cut that shit out, lady!”
    “We have to have your vinegar.” Water rushes into her mouth as she speaks. I turn and spot Dodi in the bedroom window, rain spouting in a thick stream from the weathervane and arching directly before her. She’s excited by the role she’s playing in this confrontation. Behind her there’s a sudden blur of activity. Stirring shadows as my brothers lurch forward. They understand that they too have a part in this service. Our seed is the same.
    I really want a cigarette. “No.”
    “Your pride is going to cost us all our lives!”
    “You say that standing out here in the middle of it?”
    “I’m doing what I have to do.”
    “We all are.”
    “Not you. You’ve got a duty to perform, Thomas.”
    A laugh starts deep in my chest but it doesn’t get too far. “There’s power in names, Dodi said. My name is a part of me and so is my pride. You can’t have one without the other.”
    The tempest moans and tears at us, with the sumac and cottonwoods and willows bowing and waving wildly all around. I won’t wind up like my father, and I won’t be mocked.
    “This storm’s a reckoning that’s come looking for you, Thomas. They out there, the dead.”
    “I don’t much mind.”
    “Dodi’ll get some of your brothers’ seed, if not yours.”
    “I don’t doubt it.”
    The other conjure women begin a different chant, something with a singsong lilt and an Assyrian melody. It’s a piece of antiquity, this song, and it sounds right on the brunt of the thunder. I tap my foot in the mud, going with it. They spin and thrust their hands in my face. None of them has said a word directly to me.
    I ask the teenager, “What’s your name?”
    She draws back as if I’ve slapped her. Her nostrils flare as ozone burns and the lightning skips by. Drowned grebes and ducks float by our feet, and the mud laps like whitecapped breakers on an ocean. The Crone looks from me to the girl and goes, “Ssssshhh, chile!” A name has power, and to allow another to know it is a dangerous venture.
    The wet lace runs across the girl’s forehead while glimmers of sheet lightning ignite to our left, to our right.
    “Lottie Mae.”
    “You work at the mill.”
    “Yes.”
    “You ought to be there right now.”
    She’s offended by this small talk and because I’ve questioned her competence as one of my own employees. Even in the gray soaked day I can see a flush of crimson enter her cheeks. “I got someone to cover my shift. And you shouldn’t be caring about such things right at this here moment. You’ve got a greater responsibility, I hear tell. You’ve an obligation to Kingdom Come.”
    “No more than you or anyone else.” I gaze at her and she holds my stare. I think I’m falling in love. I take a step forward and she nearly retreats