Praise Him

Goddamn her. GodDAMN this motherfucker. Twenty-five people in the clan, ten of them women of age. The others - seven healthy men, one older couple, and six toddlers - are running like clockwork. The killing floor, the offerings, the fucking worship (praise him), all of it smooth and hassle-free, and now his own flesh and blood, his brother, and Walt's ridiculous wife: making noise and agitating. Nine fucking waiters. At least nine banquets. A simple math for simple people, and always - like our words tell them -“We move on…”. And now this.

Jack Hartley was sitting watch on his valley and running down his appointments and worries in his mind while he sharpened the bone-hilt dagger his mother had given him almost twenty-three years ago.

It was bad luck (and, unfortunately, all too common) for a waiter to have second thoughts and dread feelings about the Price. As clan leader, Jack dealt with anxious, terrified waiters on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis. It was a twenty-four hour, heart-and-soul gig simply to keep them focused on bare survival without his own family playing the treasonous malcontents. Jess had made a hideous example for the others, especially - he feared - the new family. They heard Jessa’s proclamations and threats from dawn to dusk almost from the moment they’d arrived three weeks ago. The mother, Meegan her name was, had been hardening her stare at him almost from the moment she’d stopped thanking him for saving her family’s lives. He’d expected them to spirit off in the night for days now, to flee their strange new family and seek a more immediate safety somewhere lower in the valley. Once they arrived there - he knew - they were as good as dead. Would that blood be on his hands? His brother’s?

***

I didn’t knock. They were at the table praying when I came. Walt was leading, and Jessa and the girls were staring at him with faces twisted, like he’d just asked them to factor out pi or some shit. I was mad enough to interrupt, praise HIS name. Manstock couldn’t be allowed to live a minute passed three years and Jessa knew that. We were four fucking hours away. Risking fucking damnation. Praise HIS name. I was yelling, but the girls looked at me and they were already crying so I quieted down pretty quick. I says:

Jessa, Walter…I understand the reservations. I know where you are - both of you. But we are too damn close here. There’s too much at stake.

That was it. That was all I got out and Jessa was all over me like a mountain lion:

The Choice. Everybody gets a choice Jack you said it yourself.

She’s talking now about the choice. The option. Four hours left and it’s the bloody choice HE made. Praise HIS name.

Fuck the Choice, Sister.

I says to her. I says:

His choice, praise HIM, so we never have to make it. Never. Now come. I’ll go with you. Rhea already dressed theirs, so we’ll be alone in there.

Now Walt pipes up, and it’s another hour of: “Well that’s not the way I’m reading this Jack….It’s an interpretation Jack…The choice Jack“.

He’s waving the book around the whole time he’s raving and yelling.
Meanwhile it’s getting colder, and my people need to live through a winter. The world is moving on and I’m treading old, rotten ground. I swear If they weren’t family I’d have marched them out to the pyre and we’d all have feasted, unexpected. Praise HIS fucking name.

Well after a few more minutes of this, Walt’s quiets down. He says to me, (and looking back on it now, I guess I should have known right then): “OK then Jack, I guess you’ve made the choice for us. Now we’re going to have to live with it.” Then Jessa says “You too, Jack. You’re going to have to live with it as well”

Yes, looking back, the things that they said just then were foreboding, but rushing like I was, I didn’t see. Just like I didn’t see the weird looks I’d been getting around the camp, or the way the children had stopped eating blessed meat for the last two weeks. When I’m under the gun I tend (or tended) towards myopia. I was an average student at best, so I have to concentrate right?

Now we got minutes. Fucking minutes. I grabbed the instruments and blessed it. Walt spoke, I spoke. We were down there ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Praise HIM.

***

They were in the pen at 11:40. And by the time they checked and readied there were like, five minutes left. Jessa woke the stock, a giant male, fat and wide and clean. He’d been on a valium and ethyl drip for three weeks and hadn’t had a non-alcoholic drink in two years. His skin was the color of the smooth cement floor. He was hairless, and his eyes were only colored quarter-spheres on the upper part of his face, like an abbreviation of eyes. Panting and snoring when we went in, he didn’t scream until the very end and even then not very loud or very long. Jack's killing stroke was to the neck, and he only needed one swing. The doomed manstock's eyes and mouth blinked and twitched for what seemed like hours, by the time they'd stilled, Jack was halfway done dressing the meat for banquet.

A giant yield, and tasty although they did not know it then. Jenna caught Jack just as he has finished fetching water from the cisterns to wash the killing floor. He’d dumped only the first of six buckets when Jessa pounced:

I’m out.

Jack didn’t speak.

Hello!? I said I’m gone, you heartless fuck. It’s atrocity! You know it…

Jack - dumping water and brushing with an ancient mop - said nothing.

Not answering me won’t make this any less true. Walter and I are heading south, looking for others. I need your word you won’t send Lu out after us, won’t send anybody after us. The kids, Jack. I can’t…We can’t do this anymore. Elyse and Michael are asking questions. Last week he snuck out of the house and we…

She sobbed then, and sniffled. The lake of tears that had been pooling in her eyes since he first saw her in the kitchen finally outgrew it’s banks. The flood tide rolled and rolled as she pressed on:

They were at the door of the pen :

Jack. Michael said he knew he had a brother down there. He wanted to see his brother. This is wrong.

He’d dumped the last bucket and finished up. He didn’t look at her. He didn’t listen to the things she was saying, and he felt that if she continued, he might have to cuff her around a bit. It was late, and he knew that somewhere the new family was wide awake, hearing all of this. He moved towards the bulkhead steps with a stack of empty buckets. Jess gave him three steps before wounded and crying she turned frustrated and enraged:

Fine. Fine you ignorant fuck, listen up: We’re out. Don’t look for us. Don’t ask after us. If you send riders I’ll kill them. If you hurt anyone of my people I’ll kill you, Jack. That’s it. That’s all the warning you’ll get.

She left the pen before him.

***

She’d talked about it forever. Since before, before. When it was just the three of us she used to threaten to leave. “And go where?” he’d answer. Usually the idea wasn’t broached again until her next shift, at which time she’d become enamored of her impending child, and the cycle would begin again. It was amazing to me how hypocritical! When the plates were served she was only too happy to reap the nutritional benefits of the “atrocities.” On top of that, thankless and unappreciative. I broke the rules for her. More than once. Tell me: if your ex-wife shacked up with your brother after fucking him in secret for a half-decade, would you be inclined to turn the cheek and offer your hand in friendship? Right. Not many would. Not only did I not exile them, I allowed them to have a child together and keep it. Every time Jessa looks on Reni’s face she should fall to her knees and praise me right along with HIM.

Instead she just wants more. By this time she’d served the tribe three times and had two more kids of her own. You’d think there would be some hardening there, a resignation to fate. But no. She protested each time and skipped the meals until another waiter had served. It was embarrassing. For the last two years she and Walt had threatened almost every month, hell every fuckin’ WEEK, to leave us. Walt’s even taken to the streets, preaching the Choice, preaching a new way, preaching AGAINST me. It was sickening. I guess this time I’d just had enough.