Free Sufficient Grace by Amy Espeseth

all he likes, but they call him Smell-ule both behind his back and to his face. Samuel is held down in the world as firm as he is held up here. And it is hard being us at school. Most of the worldly kids won’t waste their time on us except for teasing, so we are friends amongst ourselves and with the Bible-believing Baptist kids and other Fundies. They sit out the dances and sex talks with us Pentecostals, so we all know each other from the school library. But we aren’t many.
    Samuel is spread out on the carpet, arching his back and stretching his bowed legs. He smiles and shines his eyes soft.
    â€˜Are you in season, Ruth?’ This is how this boy is, trying to joke like a man. ‘You sure are real pretty.’
    And I can see how he will be then, taller but still not much thicker round; he’ll be the pastor of this church and the father of children. He will lead. They’ll all think they’ve drowned him, but he’ll still have a secret fire buried. Amongst all the pale ghosts that sit in this church — baby-weary mommas and work-broken men — hardly anyone holds that spark inside. Samuel does, but I don’t know how he keeps it safe. Maybe he could guard mine too.
    I shouldn’t think such things and he sure shouldn’t say them: cousins are too close. But it ain’t the first time. Whenever Samuel is near — especially if we are alone — he holds his eyes too low on me and leans closer than he should. Even in church, he’ll press my hand hard during prayer. But all the boys do it: sitting thigh-to-thigh in the pews with the girls, they breathe in our smell. Reuben always makes sure he’s next to somebody who’s not blood, but it seems like Samuel aims to claim me. And sometimes, even I like feeling a bit special, maybe chosen.
    Samuel’s eyes shine blue in the light from the Noah’s Ark lamp. Holding each other’s tails, the elephants and all the handpicked animals march two-by-two, male and female, around the shade. Animals’ histories can be traced in their bones, whether they had a leg break or a too-heavy load. Diseases, too, can show themselves on the inside of a carcass, old wounds or whatever brought the thing to finally give up and lay down. Whether you’re slaughtering goats or killing weasels, the inside will show the creatures’ lives. Samuel has spaghetti sauce caked in the corner of his mouth. His heart knows that he can take without paying, at least for a little while.
    I stare at the chewed Noah’s rainbow in my hands; he don’t need to tell me what I already know.
    After church, Mom and I are squashed together in the truck, our sweaters and jackets making us wider than we should be, as we wait for the windshield to thaw and fog to clear from the glass. Outside, Daddy is struggling with the ice and I feel the sound of his scraping down deep in my teeth. My tongue prods a hollow place inside my molar while the noise rasps our ears. Reuben is kicking frozen slush away from the tyres; it is finally time to head home. I tilt my head to rest on Mom’s shoulder and I hold my mittens over my nose to keep it warm. The day is done.
    â€˜Why on earth would that woman be walking?’ Mom rubs on her side window to melt a way through the frost to double-check. ‘In this weather?’ Freezing cold air whips into the truck as she opens the door to call out. ‘Glory? Something wrong with the van?’
    Gloria’s head doesn’t so much turn as twist hard on its stalk. I didn’t see her and my cousins bundled up and crunching across the parking lot, but now with my aunt’s eyes raging all afire, I wonder how she hasn’t melted a way through; her hat is pulled low across her forehead, but it can’t tamp down her heat. They walk over to the truck.
    â€˜Van’s fine, Marie.’ As she stands at the gaping vehicle door, Gloria’s breath puffs like smoke, and her