The Depth of a Curse

"Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable..."

Her voice quavered and her tears fell free. She slammed his bible shut, and threw it into his open coffin.

It landed with a heavy, wet smack, on the fresh hole in her husband's breast.

That had been his favorite passage. So she'd read it.

Not because it fit the occasion, but because he would have wanted something of a christian burial, despite the way he left the world.... And this was the closest she could come to a prayer.

That was it, the very best she could do.

No real depth, no outcry from her soul to the divine.

She was grieving, and that was real. But she knew better than to beseech God, because God had lied to them.

The words reeled over in her trembling mind and she regretted reading them aloud:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable..."

In light of their dismal end, any other passage would have been better. This one was a mockery. Hell it would have been better to burn that book than to read that passage over his grave.

They'd read it often enough during the long winter and into the growing season. Living off the fat of their stores, they'd held faith that right rains would bring bountiful crops and a timely harvest...

Faith that the LORD would provide for them, like he did the birds of the air. After all, they'd sown and toiled! They'd put in work, built callouses on their palms and nurtured the soil-- hoping in the LORD, that He would tend to the rest.

Such blind, stupid faith.

That passage was a mockery!

One shred of truth: He took such care of the birds of the air! And then a cold misdirection: the wretched, deceitful implication that He'd care all the more for His people.

She started with a yell but it faltered into a pitiful moan, "Are we not much more valuable than you're damned fucking birds?"

She spat, into the dry dirt.

Their crop had seemed so promising. Though their mason jars had all gone empty, and their dugout pantry utterly bare-- still they'd held out faith. And it seemed right, because their plants had been growing so beautifully.

One day they were full and healthy and the next morning they were wilted and dry. They'd dug one up to find a ruined, chalky mess were a tuber should have been....

They'd lost every damned plant to some disgusting little grubs.

The LORD God, who provides for the birds of the air had taken the food right out of their mouths! Stolen from her and her husband and used their labor-- their very lives-- to provide for the worms and maggots of the dirt!

She looked at her husband's cold, ashen face.. She remembered that last miserable sunset and grimaced.

She had begged him not to go. Begged him with all her heart and ever drop of her soul.

But he had been adamant. He'd said it was a husband's job to provide for his wife. And he'd taken up his shot gun, pressed the barrel against his chest.

She'd screamed then, wild and desperate. The agony of seeing him on the brink had been unbearable.

Then he'd said, "This is the only way I've got left. The only way to make sure you've got food enough to move you to a land God hasn't forsaken-- the only way-- is to give you what little I'm carrying."

His intention had been clear.

Had he made that decision the moment their crop had failed? Or had this vile gift been his back up all along, a plan to see her through if the worst should happen?

It was desperation. She knew that. Her stomach knew it.

But his sacrifice had been in vain: she couldn't bring herself to eat of his flesh.

And God was gloating, and she couldn't help but hear it in her broken soul:

"Are you not more valuable than the birds of the air? Your husband's body is manna from heaven-- a bountiful harvest. Your hands have tilled the soil and worked the plow, and I have provided! The buzzards will come, and they will eat of his flesh. Why should you go hungry -- when you are more valuable than they? You've already come this far, done such work... Eat!"

She shuddered, her stomach groaned. And she could see God laughing in the storm clouds on the horizon.

What kind of monster drew satisfaction from watching the suffering of His own lesser creatures?

Well she loathed to bear it.

She would not eat. She knew God was watching, leaning in for the show.... She would not give Him the twisted satisfaction.

Suddenly, urgently, she needed to escape the open sky. She needed a roof between her and the LORD.

She fled to the home she and her husband had shared, and flung open the door. She saw her husband's shotgun lying on their bare table.

Her hands trembled. What escape was a roof when it sheltered such memories?

The gun would be quick. And there was something right about ending the way her husband had.

She picked it up and aimed it at her heart, but the barrel was too long, she couldn't reach the trigger.

It was such a terribly long barrel. Too long for anyone to reach really.

She wondered how her husband had ever pulled it off.

And she heard his voice again, like a ghost on the wind rattling the eaves: "The Lord will provide, we must have faith. Please, for Godsake, please! Trust in God!"

And hadn't he been ready to rattle off that goddamned passage? THAT FUCKING PASSAGE! About the birds of the air?

Hadn't her stomach screamed? Hadn't her blood boiled-- hadn't she hated him then for his shortsightedness, for bringing them out here against all hope and in the face of all reason!

Hadn't she begged him to take to the road, and journey back east to the settlements before their food stores ran out? Before they were doomed?

And hadn't he always, ALWAYS told her to put her faith in the lord!?

She set the gun back down, and folded her quaking hands before her. Her stomach. It demanded. It could not be denied.

Not after all the trouble she'd gone through.

And she stormed back out of their house, under an indifferent sky.

The deepening dusk cast a gloom over his grave, and that was good. Because this next part out to be done and left in the dark.

She heard a screech, and looked back to the house-- and there perched on the peak: a pale-faced ghost. A barn owl, come out to hunt.

She cursed it, for a demon. Her shriek was all but animal, "Go ahead! Watch and be jealous! You and all the birds of the air! Let the LORD provide for you, you meagre shits! I'm more valuable than you! I've will enough to take my meals and next time let it be you and let you be damned!"

It's lamp-eyes stared at her, a declaration that she was known. She could not be hidden, not from herself, or from the world or from God.

But she laughed. A hungry, desperate laugh.

She'd long since stopped giving a care about who was there and who wasn't and who might like to watch.