Judas Payne. Michael Hemmingson
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Jedediah.”
“You speak...”
“What? Like a white man?”
The Devil laughed, stood up, and revealed his true form—with a snap of the finger.
“Behold, my dear!”
Katherine was not frightened; she was not surprised or horrified. She sighed, closed her eyes, said, “I should have known.”
When she opened her eyes, The Devil was gone.
11.
The walk from the barn back into the house felt, to Katherine Payne, like forever. She cringed, feeling The Devil’s seed coming out of her, running down her leg. Violated. She had just been raped. Couldn’t Jedediah hear that? No. The sounds were not loud, and the house was placed a good two hundred feet from the barn. It goes without saying she felt quite soiled. She could smell The Devil’s grime and sweat on her. She wanted a bath, needed one more than anything she ever needed in her life. But Jedediah might wake up and want to know why she was bathing at this odd hour.
So she went to her bed, prayed to the Lord. Asked Him to erase the incident from her mind, if not history. How could she tell her husband? She could not. In the morning, she decided she would not.
12.
Katherine Payne’s belly was growing; the sickness she’d had when pregnant with Evangeline was also present. She knew what she had to do. She attempted, on several occasions, to coax her husband into the marriage bed. He ignored her, he had no interest in the act. He said, “Woman, what has gotten into you? Only whores ask for it!”
She looked at Evangeline one night and cried, saying to her child, “You should have been a boy, this is a world of men; for a woman, there is only anguish and affliction....”
One night, her daughter put to bed, Katherine went to her husband, who sat by candlelight in the front of the house reading from The Book. She saw that he was reading from The Book of Samuel.
“Jedediah,” she said, “have you noticed something different about me?”
He looked up. “What say you?”
“Look at me,” she said, turning to her side, “can’t you see?”
“See what?”
She sighed, then lifted up her blouse and showed him her naked belly.
“Katherine!” he bellowed, rising to his feet. She pulled her blouse down. “You are with child?!?” he shouted, rather stupefied.
“Yes,” she answered, oh so timid and soft...
13.
Yes, Jedediah Payne was, needless to say, quite the flabbergasted man in God’s flock. The last time he had relations with his young wife was in Boston. Not once since their months out here had he gone to her...touched her...or even considered the vile desires of wanton flesh.
“I cannot be the father,” he realized, saying this accusingly to his emotionally embattled spouse.
“No,” she admitted.
Payne was surprised by how calm he reacted; it was almost as if he was relieved that he had not spawned another offspring.
He said, flatly, “You have some explaining to do, wife.”
She began to talk, fast, fearful he might stop her before she could tell her story. She told him of a wounded Indian who had been in the barn, and how she had helped clean his injuries, and how she gave him some food, and how she hoped he just might go away, and when she went to check to see if he was there, he violated her. It was against her will, she assured him of this. There was nothing she could have done. He was a strong, irreligious animal.
She did not confess who the Indian really was. She was certain she had a hallucination, that vision of evil.
“Why...” and he cleared his throat. “Why did you not tell me of this when it occurred?”
“What would you have thought of me?” she asked.
The anger started to boil inside him. “So you only tell me when you are with child!?!”
“I did not know I—” and she began to cry.
“Look at me,” he said.
She sobbed.
“Look at me, wife!”
She turned to face him.
Was she telling the truth? There seemed to be no deception. He struck her across the face, very hard. Katherine fell to the porch, spitting blood from her mouth. Payne wanted to kick her, boot her in the belly and flush this evil tot from her bowels. He stopped, taking heed of what he had done. She lay at his feet, choking.
He couldn’t do it. It would be murder. He wouldn’t do it.
“You are no wife of mine,” he said, and went into the house, into his chamber, locking the door. He opened the Good Book, sought a passage to soothe his mind...
He found none.
14.
Payne and his wife did not exchange words after that; they avoided crossing each other’s paths. Payne fed himself. He didn’t see his daughter, either, but that did not matter. He was a stranger in this home, his own home, purchased by the dirty money of his defiled wife’s father. He spent most of his time in town, tending to the congregation, saving their eternal souls from damnation. When people asked of his wife’s whereabouts, he said she wasn’t feeling well, and opted to stay home with the child. This was not entirely a lie.
Many notions danced (like demons) through Reverend Payne’s mind. The first, that there had been no Indian. She had a lover somewhere, some young man from town who came to her when he was gone, and gave her that child; she was lying to him, trying to play at role of victim, trying to win sympathy. Payne looked into every man’s face in town, wondering: Is he my wife’s lover? Is he the David to my Bathsheba? He later ruled this out; what man would be so low as to seduce the wife of a Reverend and risk eternal fires? Anathema, yes: Satan. It all became quite clear now. This was the work of Satan. The Devil feared Payne, always had: for wasn’t it Payne who saved so many souls in Boston, causing The Devil to possess the men of his church and go against him? Satan had followed him out here, and struck him straight at home. Perhaps there was an Indian out in the barn, a shape Satan had taken. It made sense: why would she help such an animal? Like the serpent who had sweet-talked Eve in the Garden, so had this devil-in-Indian-guise do to his wife. Women were such ignorant, gullible creatures, indeed! Satan had beguiled her, taken her, placed his wanton seed into her womb to give forth an anti-Christ. It was so damn clear now, and the Reverend knew his mission. The world’s fate was in his hands. The Devil would have a son here to rule and destroy the planet as was prophesied in the Book of Revelations. God, he knew now, had chosen him to change the face of the future.
Payne dreamt one night that he came across a burning cacti plant in the desert.
“Tell me my mission,” he said, for he knew what the plant was, as did Moses.
“Thou salt not kill,” the bush boomed in a large voice.
“I will not break a commandment,” Payne avowed, falling to his knees.
He woke, thinking, I shall not kill....
The Devil was sitting outside the window—listening to Payne, having watched Payne’s dream—and quietly laughing.
15.
When she went into labor, Katherine stumbled from her room, knocking hard on her husband’s door; he opened it reluctantly. She was on the floor—water broken, blood at her feet.
Reverend Payne refused to fetch the town doctor or take her to him. He helped his wife back to her bed, but this was all he would do. He would let this aberration take its own course. If Satan’s child should die due to lack of proper care, so be it. This was out of his hands.
Evangeline