Free Twenty Twelve by Helen Black Page A

moon. Mama is still hunched over the book. ‘It’s the police,’ he says
.
    ‘What do they want?’ Rebecca hisses
.
    Isaac shrugs. ‘Didn’t say.’
    Mama pushes back her chair and stands. She wipes her hands down her apron
.
    ‘They’ve come for us as we always knew they would.’
    Isaac shakes his head. Mama has been expecting the Forces of Darkness for a long time. ‘I don’t think they mean no harm, Mama.’
    A strand of hair has fallen from her plait and she pushes it back with a shaking finger. ‘And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them.’
    Isaac shakes his head again
.
    ‘Are you sayin’ you know better than the prophesies, Isaac?’ she asks
.
    ‘No ma’am, I ain’t.’
    They hold each other’s eyes for a long while, Isaac wishing Daddy were here. He’d kiss Mama’s head and tell her to hush. Then he’d go on outside and shoo those strangers off the land like a couple of noisy possums. Isaac glances up at the clock above the range. Daddy ain’t likely to be back for more than an hour
.
    ‘I just don’t reckon it’s time is all.’
    Mama pauses, her eyes flitting between her boy and the good book. Her voice drops to a whisper. ‘And I stood up upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up.’
    Isaac takes a step towards her. ‘I know, Mama. I just don’t think now’s the time.’
    Mama blinks, torn in two. Isaac takes another step towards her
.
    ‘So if they ain’t come for us, what are they doing here?’ asks Rebecca
.
    Isaac could kill her dead. He turns towards her and glares
.
    ‘What?’ she says, tears tumbling down her cheeks
.
    Can’t she see that he needs to calm Mama down? That he was doing it, too, before she stuck her stupid nose in? He’s trying to convey this to her silently when a voice comes from outside
.
    ‘Mrs Pearson?’
    Mama jumps at the sound of her name
.
    It’s the policeman calling. The fat one
.
    ‘Mrs Pearson,’ he shouts again. ‘We’d like to talk to you for a moment.’
    Rebecca runs across the room and throws her arms around Mama’s waist. ‘Don’t do it, Mama. Don’t go out there. He wants to make war with us, like you said, I know he does.’ She buries her face in the folds of Mama’s apron, sobbing
.
    ‘There ain’t nothing to be afraid of, Mrs Pearson,’ the policeman shouts
.
    Mama automatically straightens her spine and calls back, ‘I ain’t afraid of you or your master.’
    ‘Mrs Pearson.’
    It’s the other one now, the one that smells of beer, the one Isaac didn’t like
.
    ‘We need you to open your door now.’ There’s something in his voice that makes it clear he isn’t asking. He’s telling
.
    ‘I have to warn you that if you don’t open up and come talk to us voluntarily we’ll have no alternative but to come in.’
    Mama nods as if the matter is at an end and takes Rebecca’s shoulders in her hands, pushing her away to arm’s length. ‘Dry those tears, missy.’
    Rebecca lets out a sniff and wipes her nose with her sleeve
.
    ‘We always knew this day would come, right?’ Mama smiles. She looks at Veronica-Mae, then Isaac. ‘Right?’
    ‘Right,’ Isaac mumbles
.
    Sure, he’s a good Christian boy and reads his verses each evening after supper. He knows that the Devil is abroad and that one day the righteous will be called upon to fight. But he’s always imagined a battle between two huge armies, like the civil war or something. Maybe when he’s twenty-five, or even thirty, and his life is pretty much over, he won’t rightly mind being drafted to take up arms against the Beast. But like this? In his own yard? With Daddy and Noah away from the farm?
    ‘Come now, children.’ Mama approaches them each in turn and kisses their foreheads. ‘Today we are the soldiers of the one true God and his only son, Jesus Christ.’
    Clem didn’t speak as he frogmarched Connolly out of St Barts. What the hell had the stupid idiot been thinking? She worked for the government,