Gia467: Glad you've joined the fun! Hope you enjoy the ride. And Johnny my favorite charter as well, so I glad I'm writing him good.
Guest: Yes, I love the WW2 era, and its a crying shame it's not mentioned more often. I'm glad you like the backstory on Wendy's mother and Windrixville. Theres a little more of it here.
Happier than Most: A master of words and story telling?! Wel I have to say, I sharpen my style to compete with yours, so thank you right back. Oh Jerry indeed. This chapter explores how the rest of the family take it. And I think you'll love the twist at the end.
lulusgardenfli: a huge fan of background stories? then you'll love this chapter. And gut punch is what I was going for, so thank you.
songsingsitself : Don't worry about Jerry, he's stronger than he looks. I hope you like this!
Chapter X
S*S
You never forgot the sound of a broken heart, once you've had the misfortune of hearing it. No banshee, thunderstorm, or power on earth could rival it, imitate it. It was like listening to someone being murdered...and surviving.
That was what the Wood's cozy little home sounded like now, from every corner; by the power in eight measly little words becoming a morgue without a body. The terrible, keening wails from Uncle Jerry's and Aunt Jeanie's room battled with Sam and Eric's, who were giving off sobs of their own; together creating an unholy, mismatched, un-silly symphony. It was music from hell itself.
And horrid as that was, Wendy honestly though she preferred it to the utter silence that came from Connie's room, where she had quickly retreated and shut the door the moment Father Hank finished delivering the death noticed for their cousins.
Wendy's head throbbed, and she leaned against the railing of the staircase, paused in her journey to bring lavender tea to some of the afflicted. It had all happened so fast...
The moment that awful truth flew out of the Pandora's box, all pandemonium erupted in their little porch gathering. Both Uncle Jerry and Aunt Jeanie rendered helpless in a matter of seconds, shattered from the people they were into something slacked jawed and wretched, fumbling in the dark. If Daddy and the Father hadn't been right there to catch Jerry, Wendy thought there was a strong possibility that her uncle would've dropped senseless to the ground. And in accordance to his weight, he still wounded up there, only more slowly, gently. Like he was being lowered into his grave.
Aunt Jeanie was given no such manner of luck. After relapsing into a ear-splitting shriek of denial, she'd crumpled out of her chair and to the porch in a hysterical mess, which in turn set off the twins. Partly from shock, partly from fear, and partly from receiving, far to soon, the reality of how short life could be. Again.
And Wendy herself wasn't much better...or of much help, she was ashamed to admit. Stunned still and rendered mute, one of her hands tried to reach for the twins, while the other fumbled for her aunt, her rattled brain unable to figure who or what to help first. And that wasn't even touching upon the how. Connie was no help -big surprise there - having already vanished inside the house, moving stiffly up the stairs for her guest room.
Thankfully...Dad had known what to do, and wearily took charge. And in that moment, the grieving man that had ruled him from his wife's death yield to the shadow of an eighteen year old medic, who still fumbled in the foaming surf on Omaha beach, defiantly patching up the holes bullets had torn through bodies not a day older than himself.
"Wendy, take your brothers inside and put 'em to bed. Stay with them a bit. The Father and I will take care of your Aunt and Uncle out here. When I need you, I'll call for you. Go."
With only a jerky nod, Wendy had done exactly that, pulling herself up by what strength she didn't know, pulling Sam and Eric up after her. One arm around each of their shoulders, she pulled them like tug boats in an unthinking path behind her. It was a blessing not to have to think.
And another blessing that it was dark already. That made ignoring the ghostly images of Peter and Joseph that align the walls, marking their growth, all the easier. Wendy had to ignore them. If she look at any of them when they were Sam and Eric's age or younger, it just might kill her.
S*S
Getting the boys ready for bed ended up being surprisingly simple...their tears making them more obedient than the church belles on a Sunday morning. Trouble only came when they all painfully remembered that the twins were suppose to sleep in Pete and Joe's old room. Still filled with their things, and sheets, and the model airplanes still strung up like lynched men from the ceiling, in their never ending circles.
Without a word, and the mere halting of their steps in the hallway, they point blank refused. Wendy couldn't blame them; so they all ended up in her guest room instead, the boys tucked in her bed side by side like two bawling sardines (it looked like that meant she be getting the window seat for herself).
They seem to forget she was there fairly easily, turning to each other, and Wendy envied their quick escape from the world. Didn't appear that she be joining them soon. She couldn't until she made sure everyone else was being taken care of as well. Well at least...that had been the plan. But at the very moment she stepped out her bedroom Wendy instead bore witness to the sight of Dad as he half carried, half dragged, Aunt Jeanie to her own room down the hall; hushing comfort to her as she continued to shatter. The names of Pete and Joe bled from her mouth alongside other names, her brothers' names, the pain of two wars merging together in an open, gaping wound that had perhaps never closed in the first place.
"Wendy..." Dad said, still in medic mood, still impossibly, wearily calm. "Go downstairs and make tea. Strong lavender tea."
So of course she had. Because as long as she was doing something, anything, she didn't have to think. She didn't have to remember. Remember how her mouth had hung open at how tall her new cousins were. How bright the playful gleam in Pete's eye had shone, eyebrow lifted in challenge. Or how laughter sniggered between Joe's teeth, spunky as a mongoose.
Don't think, she thought, as she fumbled back down the stairs, once more ignoring the photographs, the thought serving as both a mandate and a prayer. Please God, don't let me think...
A prayer that picked up speed and desperation as she walked past the living room on the way to kitchen, only to stop in numb horror at the scene before her. Somehow, Father Hank and the military man had moved Uncle Jerry back into the house and sat with him in somber triangle, like Job and his friends. At first Wendy thought they were silent, which, given the circumstances, struck her as odd. She knew how the route was suppose to go: the there, there, the it's okay, the one day it won't hurt so badly...
Then she realized, after silently ducking into the kitchen and starting the tea, that they weren't silent at all. Or at least Father Hank wasn't, since from his age speckled hand dangled the ancient beaded necklace of their faith, intone with the rest of the trinity a prayer for the departed souls. And the defiant Latin somehow carried all the pain a human being could feel and suffer since time immemorial. Carried in a way the English language simply couldn't hold, and modern words couldn't even try. Carried in a melodious, humming praise and promise of the Eternal, and a petition in that Eternal's mercy.
"Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto. Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sćcula sćculórum. Amen," Father Hank nearly whispered, and against conscious thought Wendy's mind, horned from dozens of careful lessons at Mama's side on her own necklace, immediately, automatically, translated. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
"Amen," both the military man and Jerry intoned back, voices rumbling in unison.
Amen, Wendy mouthed silently, as she went about adding the lavender. Don't think...was there a more perfect way to not let yourself think?
Meanwhile, the Father continued. "Requiem, requiem aeternam concedat ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat lux, requiescant in pace. Amen."
Eternal rest, grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine, rest in peace. Amen.
Tea done, Wendy set the prepared cups on a tray, and tried to creep back out both without being seen, or seeing something she wasn't meant to. On the first note she was successful given that none of the men even looked up. On the other...well...
Not so much, and Wendy felt the contents of her stomach roll as she got a shadowed look at her Uncle's face. Now obviously, she had seen grief before. She seen a husband grieve for wife, and the joy and love and companionship that lead a young immigrant girl to declare on her wedding day that "my lover is mine and I am his." She seen herself and her siblings grieve for their mother -yes even Connie. Grieve for the strength and safety and connections to the past that died with her.
But until now, she'd never seen man mourn his own offspring. And had never realized just how blessed she been for it. Carved into testimony upon Jerry's face was a truth as universal as the rosary's Latin: that to lose a child was to die yourself, only to have the burden to go on living.
Fast as she could without spilling the tear, Wendy ran for the stairs, away from her Uncle's -and probably any parent's - personal trip to hell. Pausing only on the middle step to force herself to breathe, to remind herself that she still could.
S*S
It wasn't a good night. And for the lonest time, Wendy wasn't even sure if it would ever end. Somewhere around three in the morning, she had even begun to entertained the thought that this, maybe, was what purgatory was, her own personal purgatory; filled with endlessly trips up and down the stairs with so much lavender tea, that if she never saw it again, it would be too soon. Certainly she'd never be able to smell it again without thinking of Aunt Jeanie's almost compete breakdown -to the point where Dad finally added a sedative to the drink in order to give his sister a chance to rest.
Wendy wasn't sure how she felt about that -somehow, watching her Aunt twitch and gasp and hiccup in her sleep, where she had no control, was worse than watching her sob wildly while awake. But what was done was done, and their was nothing to do but wait for morning.
If it ever came...
Though of course, it did. Cause it had too. After Father Hank and the military man left, and Dad was finally able to sit down with Uncle Jerry, quietly talking to him in the low way men did when they wanted to get all the fact's straight. And to Wendy's misfortune, she was back in the kitchen again, refilling the tea cup she left outside Connie's closed door, intending on having some for herself, and instead hearing every word.
"I don't think there's gonna be a funeral, Frank…how can ya have?...told me there's nothing left...totally disintegrated..."
Yep, that did it. Air rushed out of her lungs and blackness swarmed her head, so much so that when she came too, she was on the ground, hands grasping the legs of a chair like it was her last teeter to a kinder world.
In a silent scramble, Wendy picked herself up and shuffled to the checker draped back door, slipping outside into the cold dewy grass that soaked into her socks, like the ground itself was weeping along with everyone else. Doubled over, wheezing, yet tearless, Wendy felt her arms tighten themselves around her waist, as if to keep her from braking in two from the plain terror of it. She had pleaded with herself not to think, but how could that one not dominate the mind?
Disintegrated…what in God's name had happen to her cousins?
Of course she could make an educated guess...after all, both Dad and Uncle Jerry had told stories of friends who'd jumped on a hand grenade to save his buddies...that hadn't left much of them behind.
The most fire power she'd ever seen were firecrackers in the street on the fourth of July. Fun and bright. Glory, but how much power would it take blow a person clean out of existence? And leave no trace?
Thank God Sam and Eric hadn't heard that...they loved fireworks and all the color and noise. So did she for that matter. At least she did. Now a part of her wonder if the next time the Fourth rolled around, if she'd be able to think of anything other than explosions in a death infested jungle, on the other side of the earth.
Had Pete and Joe even been together? Or...had it happen separately? Had they been alone? Did anyone even know?
By this time, Wendy had slumped back down, landing on the wooden step that cracked under her slim weight, fingers curled to her mouth to hold back the swell of misery at the thought. Surely God couldn't be that cruel. If He had to take them, He'd take them together. He had too.
Then she shifted, angry, eyes closed to collect her thoughts. And what was this talk of no funeral? Dis...disintegrated or not, a funeral wasn't just a body -b-bodies- lowered into the ground, covered in the earth that had created Adam. It was a celebration of all the things that happen before that moment. The good that you did, the things that you learned, and the people you loved. The journey you took. Pete and Joe's had the strange privilege of fitting many long miles in a short amount of time - twenty one and twenty two years. And what time they got had been in service to others. That had to be honored. Had to be.
Wendy didn't care if she had to organize the whole thing herself. Just as she and Connie had to do for Mama, basically, Dad being rendered incapable of offering help. So it wouldn't be the first time. She had the experience. Her cousins would be celebrated. Hell or high water.
S*S
She wasn't entirely sure when or how it happened, but when Wendy opened her eyes again, the sky had lighten to a mournful pinkish gray, the crescent moon and stars still flickering in the firmament like weak candles. And from her ear to her ankle, the left side of her body ached. Apparently wooden steps weren't the ideal place to nap, cause even sitting up managed to hurt.
From behind her, the backdoor creaked open again, to her surprise, Uncle Jerry blinked down at her. "Wendy? What are doing out here?"
She bit her lip, before shrugging sheepishly. "Just...thinking, sir."
Then her eyes looked back up, soft and cautious. "What about you?"
Jerry sagged a bit, heaving a primordial sigh straight from his belly to his nostrils like the breath of life, his fingers moving to pinch the place between his eyes. But then he dropped them, lifting his mournful gaze to the horizon.
"I was thinkin' about takin' a walk back up to the old church...just to get out...and if you like...I wouldn't mind the company."
He didn't have to say more. Wendy was already on her feet, heading back into the house for her shoes.
S*S
It was a good thing nobody in their right mind was up this early to see them coming down the lonely country roads. Because they were a sight: with their wrinkled, unchanged clothes, bloodshot eyes, and unseeing steps. They'd frighten all the neighborhood kids back to their mothers should any see them now. But in a small mercy, the roads were deserted, and the way to the church unhalted.
When their journey was complete, Uncle Jerry crossed his arms over his chest, and leaned against an old fence circling the site of their family's picnic. He motioned Wendy over to his side, then sweep a wide palm out over the vast ground the covered. Glory it was a pretty, picture perfect view, the little town with it red and brown roofs next to a broad field of sleepy, rippling grass. So peaceful.
"It's beautiful," she commented quietly, feeling that such a sentiment couldn't go unvoiced.
"Yes it is. But it wasn't always. That's where the battle that took Jedidiah Wind's sons took place, sweetheart," Jerry informed her, his voice slipping into the teacher's mode he'd used when helping the twins with their homework. Wendy blinked, and did her hardest not to look at him oddly, confused as to where this history lesson was coming from.
Maybe it's his way to cope, she reasoned. So politely, she just nodded. It was interesting after all. "Oh?"
"Oh," Jerry echoed with a sage's nod, before it deepen to something else, as the sky lighten further, almost ready for the sun. "You know, hon...I didn't tell the full story last night. Didn't want to give your brothers any ideas."
That caught her attention. "What do you mean Uncle Jerry?"
The man straighten his spectacles, and cleared his throat. "Well...the story technically not finished yet. It won't be until this summer."
Wendy's head was starting to hurt again. "But...that all happened in the Civil War..."
"Yes. June 23, 1865, under the Cherokee Brigadier General Stand Watie of the Confederate States. But this summer will be 1965. A fully century," Jerry seemed a long way away now, fingers flexing drumming. And the way he said it, Wendy could almost see the men in union blue and stone gray charging across the peaceful grass to bludgeon each other. "People who remember been keeping it in mind, on account of Jedidiah's Curse."
It was funny how such a small word could drop a boulder on a mood, sinking it like the Titanic. Something terrible twisted in Wendy's gut at the mere thought, and her own fingers twitched to make the sign of the cross. Mama had believed in curses, the Old World Evil Eye that never let you escape the Devil's gaze. Connie and Dad thought it was nonsense, by Mama had insisted it wasn't. And Wendy was incline to agree, her mother's words of warning coming back to her.
"There is evil in this vorld, chey. Evil beyond vhat men, of there ovn inclination, can create. It is evil vich does not sleep. It watches, lidless, breathed in flame, vaiting to find a soul damaged enough to vork it malice through, to touch the most souls it can with its poison. It vill come to that damaged one vith lies that speak sympathy. Offer ungodly power and say it's comfort. And vhen the evil is done, that damaged soul will be as consumed as the rest. For the only vay to undo the evil of a curse is by blood. Human blood, Wendy -"
"Curse?" she said weakly. As if things weren't bad enough...
Jerry nodded, oblivious, still in teacher mode. "Yes."
"But...you said Jedidiah was a preacher. A man of God. Why would he curse someone?" she protested.
Jerry released a bitter laugh. "Wasn't someone...it was the whole dang town. You see, the battle he went looking for his sons at was...horrific. The photographs in town archives made it look like a smaller-scale Gettysburg. It looked impossible that anything could come out of it alive, and the whole area was in mournin'...and they were getting angered at how Jedidiah refused to stop looking for his other two boys. After all, what made his sons so special from theirs? So they mocked him, insulted him, hurling stones at him. And according to the legend, the devil was in Jedidiah's ear the whole time, asking why he tolerated this, that such people deserved to be punished. Well...I imagine old man Wind was already at the brakin' point -hard to blame him for that - cause he gave into despair and curse the town, saying 'So is this how you comfort mourning fathers? Then perhaps you'll be just heartless to each other. I say to you, as my children were consumed in fire for the defense of your land, so shall your littlest children perish in flame hotter than hell, so that angels weep and demons turn their eyes.' "
Wendy blanched, nearly falling off the fence in shock. "That's...horrible."
"Of course it is," Jerry readily agreed. "The things human beings do when their in pain always is. But there is a bright spot to it."
Here, his gaze tried to turn wry, but instead looked one shade from desperate. "There always is in these things Wendy. Always. When Jedidiah found Samuel and John alive and well in this here church, he was overcome with remorse. Fell to his knees, and prayed three whole days and nights for God to undo what he had done. Without stop for nothin'. Not food or sleep. The whole time, the devil was still beside him, mocking and threatening him. But Samuel and John joined in, and the devil was forced to leave 'em be as an angel appeared. He told them that their pray was heard, but the curse would be used to test the town they would help build up. In a hundred years, that fire would come, but as the church had sheltered the Wind boys, another pair of brothers -as stained with blood and guilt as Samuel and John- will be there to bear the test in the town's place, and redeem themselves."
Again, Wendy heard her mother's voice. "And only through the shedding of blood can the evil of a curse be undone."
"Oh," she said faintly. She was surprised she didn't squeak.
Jerry still didn't noticed, his gaze still in the distain, seeing something Wendy couldn't. "You have no idea how many pairs of boys the sheriff had to chase away from this place over the years. It's almost become a rite of passage at this point. Pete and Joe...they use to sneak out, and camp here to try and speak to Jedidiah's ghost. Swore to me the saw the ghost of boys in blue and chatted with em..."
Some ancient weight seem to make Wendy head to hard to hold up, and it lowered into her hand, the sting of wetness finally leaving her eyes as her breath hitched. "...Oh God...I hope they can find their way home, Uncle Jerry."
Mama's Old World ghosts stories said that when soldiers died, they lingered where they'd fallen. The thought that could be Pete and Joe -a thousand miles from home- was too awful, too awful.
A giant arm suddenly closed around her, strong as a grizzly bear, bringing her close, smoothing her hair.
"Don't you worry your head none about that," Uncle Jerry told her gently, though his own eyes glimmered with a wet sheen. But the morning sun finally began to brake across the counter top of the sky, golden as any liquor. "My boys got strong souls and nothing staining them to hold 'em to this earth. So don't you worry about it..."
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Okay I hope you all enjoyed this -obviously there some high power stuff going on here, some enrichening of they story, depth wise.