When Arrows Rain

By Ileen McDuring

Image-bearer breeders. They're only too real.

In this haunting new novel, Ileen McDuring, author of House of Tables, composes a darkly elegant requiem of womanhood. It is 2011 and Jena Thompson is wife to handsome and powerful Senator Tim Thompson. Raising her nine children in Memphis, Tennessee, Jena's life is filled with home school, purity rin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grey Warbler Press
• Release date: Jul 27, 2015
• ISBN: 9780989505062

Ileen McDuring

Ileen McDuring is the author House of Tables and When Arrows Rain. When not writing, she can be found practicing various taijiquan 108 forms, playing her guitar, or laughing with friends. She lives in Texas with her husband and ever-loyal, one-eyed puppy.

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Prologue

Did she give her informed consent? The lawyer dragged his finger over the knotty pine rail that had seen better days, when Oxbow had been a town and not the dying thing it was.

Her con-what?

Morley Dunaway, his poor education never a source of shame, looked straight at the attorney.

Did she ever indicate that it was okay?

A mockery is what this is, thought the attorney. This sham of a hearing should have been conducted a few hundred miles away in a real city, but the girl’s father had refused to drive her, had said there wouldn’t be a hearing at all if he had to drive her. There was nothing for these pro bono, guardian ad litem assignments, the attorney thought.

She gave her con-whatever-you-call-it when she let me kiss her.

Didn’t she, in fact, tell you ‘no’ when you started to…to touch her…didn’t she say ‘no’ many times?

What’s it matter, said Morley, looking at the judge. ’Sides, her daddy said it was okay.

He said it was okay?

Yeah, when he taught her that kissing could get her pregnant. She knew that much when she let me kiss her…an’ look what happened. Ev’rybody ’round here had sex before they got married—even Mr. Blanchard. You can ask anybody. Ask Judge Thurlow.

Never mind that—it’s not about anybody else. Don’t you know that you can’t get pregnant from kissing, Morley?

Cain’t you?

No. It seems you knew that. Why didn’t you use a condom?

Ev’rybody knows that condoms don’t work.

That’s exactly the opposite of what a condom does. You know it, I know it.

Morley sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. I told you she let me kiss her.

Let’s move on, Donnie.

Judge Thurlow leaned back in his chair, looked at Marnie, and scratched himself under the desk. Marnie squirmed in the rickety defendant’s chair.

Donnie Waters looked at his client. She was a blink short of outright crying. He didn’t understand why the young man hadn’t been charged with rape. The town was moving backwards. Ass backwards. Confirmed. The hearing was a show of power, not justice. He’d be surprised if anything good came of it.

Okay then, let’s move on. Why’s it so important that she keep the baby?

She cain’t decide.

The law says she can. But you say that you want the baby.

I didn’t rape her an’ I didn’t mean to get her pregnant, but it’s mine. Morley eyed the attorney for a few seconds. But I don’t wanna raise it if that’s what you mean.

That’s exactly what I mean.

She might as well keep it…so she won’t be lonely. Won’t nobody want her now. I don’t.

From behind the railing at the defendant’s table, Farly Blanchard leaned over and whispered into his daughter’s ear. Marnie Blanchard turned as white as a lemon-soaked sheet left to dry in the sun.

The girl hung her head, allowing a few tears to fall on the hard pine table. Without gettin’ into more trouble, how was she gonna tell Mr. Waters she’d drop her defense, keep the baby—just to keep from bein’ forced to marry Morley? Like Daddy said, it’d go a lot worse for her if she was married to Morley. Better to follow the rules at home. Even if she didn’t hold to her defense, Daddy wasn’t gonna give his consent for her to finish growing up. She was three hundred miles from the nearest clinic, and they’d need Daddy’s consent. How was she supposed to raise a baby anyway? She didn’t have a dime to her name, couldn’t even get a job, ’cause there weren’t any in town to be had. And the taint Morley put on her was visible by each of Oxbow’s two hundred residents. Bein’ kept at home for the duration and school taken away from her was gonna be worse than any punishment, worse even than the beatin’ she’d gotten at thirteen for running naked to the bathroom, ’cause there wasn’t time to finish dressing before she puked on the new carpet in her room. No, the punishment for kissing Morley was gonna last a lifetime.

She raised her hand, signaled Mr. Waters.

Donnie knew that Mr. Blanchard had corrupted the course of the girl’s hearing. He walked over, wondering why saps as himself still bothered with the fake hearings. A prosecutor would’ve never gotten her on the stand to testify in her own defense. In an hour, shore as shoot, he’d watch the young man leave the dusty courtroom with his new girlfriend, Shelley Turner.

When Donnie Waters left Oxbow, South Dakota a couple of hours later, he topped off his tank at Oxbow’s only filling station, twenty miles outside of the town. Drinking a Dr Pepper and breathing fumes, he vowed to himself: Cheers, mate, drink ’er down, won’t ever be back. Oxbow is quicksand. Mighty fine quicksand.

+ + +

It was exactly as her daddy said it would be. Marnie didn’t leave the house for the entire pregnancy, didn’t do anything but cook, clean. She listened to Daddy read the Bible every night, like he was tryin’ to clean the fetus of its own mother. Three hundred miles away had been a chance to do something with her life, to make something of herself. Never gonna get it now. There wasn’t a way to feel good about any of it, ’specially with Daddy calling it, the fetus, a child of sin. But it was a rape child. Daddy could’ve at least let her give it away, but he couldn’t abide that either. Somethin’ about it being her burden to learn from—so she could see God’s blessing in it, however misbegotten.

At first, Marnie tapped her inner will. From the languages she’d taught herself, she spent lonely evenings reading the Spanish dictionary and translating old Dr. Seuss books into French for the growing fetus. She went from Dr. Seuss to The Little Prince, translating it from English back to the original French and incorporating the story into practiced teddy bear and stuffed animal plays, a teddy bear the king, a bunny the prince.

‘One must command from each what each can perform,’ the bunny king quoted. ‘Authority is based first of all upon reason. If you command your subjects to jump into the ocean, there will be a revolution. I am entitled to command obedience because my orders are reasonable.’

‘Then my sunset?’ asked Marnie, squeaking out a tiny bunny prince voice.

The little bunny never let go of a question once he had asked it, she said to her belly before continuing, hoping for a child who questioned everything. Most couldn’t want for better.

‘You shall have your sunset. I shall command it,’ said Marnie now in her soothing, deep bear king voice. ‘But I shall wait, according to my science of government, until conditions are favorable.’

By the time the baby was born, all Marnie knew was that God must hate women, and she didn’t wanna be one anymore. Her parents even liked Morley again; they told her how he showed up to church with Shelly Turner three times a week. There wasn’t any chance of Shelley Turner gettin’ pregnant or losin’ her purity, they said. Her parents said that Morley had even re-dedicated himself to God. Said she had to forgive Morley now, ’cause God had.

It did not take long for Marnie to decide. She was gonna disappear, just like Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. She was gonna leave behind her own story and a son that was half Morley’s, half regret. When she disappeared two days after the baby came, her mama away to the store for a gallon of milk and a box of corn flakes, Marnie’s last question came without need of an answer.

What blessing will Daddy see when he finds my feet danglin’ inches off the back porch while the baby cries from his crib upstairs?

+ + +

Ever praying for his daughter’s soul, Farly Blanchard found Marnie’s death worth something as soon as the pastor said he’d found a nice couple, one who promised to raise the baby in a way the pastor saw right fitting. Washed twelve hours and over seven hundred miles away from Oxbow, a stain whitened and his soiled origins erased, Baby Blanchard started a new life as a blessing—when before he couldn’t.

Chapter One

Why he thinks I can’t hear him I’ll never know. He thinks he can stand a few feet away and I won’t hear him, but I do. I’ve been good over the years about not confronting him with what I hear; that’s not our way. The sound of my heartbeat, the swollen drumming in my ears almost drowns out Tim and Dr. Stanley, but not quite. The nurse wearing the matte red lipstick fumbles with the needle aimed at a vein in my left arm. I think I see the deep indention over her top lip quiver, nervous moisture forming there. She’s very young, I think—the dewiness of her skin unmarked, her pouty lips without creases, everything from her chest up unaffected by gravity. Not that I’m skewed that way—every woman notices everything about any others in the vicinity—but it’s hard not to notice that her bra must be very thin; her breasts unreasonably large for her size and her nipples erectly pressing against the tight uniform. I must be high, I think. I feel high, lightheaded to the point that it’s hard to think. Not that I really know what it’s like to be high, but it feels like it did when I was coming to from the last C-section, when Tim said that I talked as if I was high—as if he’d know. I couldn’t think of a time that Tim had ever done anything wrong. He was born as straight as an arrow forged of steel and tempered through and through.

There now, the nurse got it. I watch to see if she throws away the bloody cotton ball fallen to the floor before she hooks the plastic tubing to the IV bag hanging above me. She connects me first, throws away the cotton ball, washes her hands, and hurries from the room. The room is the same in which I had birthed Tamara, my sixth child. The Monet-inspired water lilies wallpaper had faded, leaving impressions of muddled, dauby color.

…have a choice to make here, Tim, said Dr. Stanley. And quickly. Her pressure’s critically high.

On Dr. Stanley’s white jacket sleeve is a smudge the color of the nurse’s lipstick. I tell myself it could be blood.

Save him.

Is that Tim’s voice?

If that’s what you want.

"That’s what she would want."

I shake my head.

No. No. No. No.

The son I carry now will make ten—one baby for each year since I turned twenty.

It’s too early yet. Why can’t I think clearly?

Nine’s enough. I want to stay, I say, my voice echoing cloudily in my head.

Tim and Dr. Stanley turn to look at me.

Good, Tim’s walking over here.

What’d she say, Doc? I can’t understand her.

It’s the hypoxia…she’s not getting enough oxygen.

Tim pushes the hair off my forehead. Hang in there. It’s gonna be all right, darlin’.

Gonna? Darlin’? He hasn’t talked like that since…well, ever really. Definitely not since running for and winning his election for U.S. Representative. Now he was a thirty-one-year-old freshman senator. Smiling my pride, I weakly squeeze his hand.

We’re gonna make sure the baby’s okay, sweetheart. He strokes my forehead. You know I love you more than life, don’t you?

That’s when I realized that this place, where I lay now, wouldn’t be one of those moments that people, when saying their life flashed before their eyes, talk about in grandiosity and awe, for a flash is sudden, all too brief in the scheme of things, less than a kiss goodbye on the forehead. This, and I could feel it in my bones, was a different kind of moment—longer than a flash but less than a life.

Another nurse covers my mouth with an oxygen mask.

Calm down. Breathe, Jena.

Be careful of the ring, Doc. Want to keep that, said Tim, rubbing the side of my belly.

In my ear, he whispers that he won’t lose it. The smell of his minty breath comes in under the mask. When had he found time to brush his teeth or, for that matter, put on the red tie visible above his scrub top collar?

The non-lipsticked nurse, the same who always frowns at Tim, pushes him out of the way to adjust the partition at my torso, to keep me from watching the surgery. I don’t know why she doesn’t like him; everybody likes him. Too tired to watch or think about that further, I give in to my fluttering eyelids and shut out the room.

That’s when I remember the ring.

+ + +

It all really started when Daddy met Mr. Thompson Senior, Tim’s daddy. Then, Tim Thompson Junior was just T to everybody. Now he was Senator T to all the guys on The Hill. I never called him anything but Tim, which was of my own predilection. As far as I was concerned, he was too much of a man—handsome, confident, influential, and deserving of respect and godly honor—for me to reduce him to a nickname.

Tim’s family was like nothing I’d ever seen before. He was the oldest of fifteen children at the time the Thompsons joined our Southern Baptist congregation a few days before our Fourth of July picnic, and Tim’s mother was pregnant with her sixteenth. In effect, they tripled the size of our children’s church group. That was 1996.

They turned out on that god-awful hot day with all the girls dressed in ankle-length jean skirts and short-sleeved polo shirts. The men stood around sipping iced tea and talking about it being hot enough to cook eggs on pavement. My brother and his cocky friend Jack set out to test an egg on the hood of Pastor Brandt’s new pickup truck. God only knows where they found the raw egg—teen boys have ways of invention when they set their minds to something. Truly, they were well on their way to success before Sister Clara, who we swore was God’s personal emissary for parents with eyes in the back of their heads, caught them in the act. The egg left behind a white, sticky scramble when hastily scraped off of the black paint.

The morning of the picnic, I also got my first period. Mama left me alone in the bathroom while she went to buy feminine products from the Stop-n-Go up the road a ways. She returned and showed me how to use everything, all the while complaining about the price of pads and how the natural condition accorded to women had become such big business. I begged to stay home from the picnic. Crampy and irritated, the last thing I wanted to do was sit in the heat and wait for the day to end.

You can’t lock yourself in every time the world comes calling, Mama said, promising that two Tylenol would do the trick.

I may have bemoaned the cramps, but I never, not once, regretted going when the Thompsons walked over to the table where my family sat with Pastor Brandt.

Mama was spooning a big helping of her jalapeño corn casserole onto Daddy’s plate. Daddy’s focus was on the nearby card table set up for the desserts; he had an eye for anything sweet and could go through a few pieces of pie in nothing flat.

Pastor Brandt stood.

Tim, this is Dale Winston. Dale, this here’s Tim Thompson, said Pastor Brandt, introducing the stranger to Daddy. While Daddy shook Mr. Thompson’s hand, Pastor Brandt added, Dale’s wife, Leigh Ann, and his daughter, Jena. Dale’s boy, Erwin, is around somewhere, up to orneriness, I imagine.

A pleasure to meet you, said Mr. Thompson to Daddy. Then Mr. Thompson proceeded by introducing his wife and then on down the line with his children’s names and ages.

I didn’t hear much after he introduced Tim, until he ended proudly with, Each and every one of them an arrow for Christ.

It was a strange way to introduce kids, I thought, but I didn’t care a single lick. Tim was cute and new. He was also sixteen and the first boy near my age I’d met outside of First Baptist’s private school co-op. Though I was only fifteen, I was in the same grade as Tim, and along with my new period, I felt every bit as old as he was.

I never forgot the first thing Tim asked me when he sat down across from me.

Is it always this hot here during the summer?

He wasn’t complaining; most would. It was a strict question, as if he were starting a catalogue of averages—how and when to monitor expectations of his new environment. Pastor Brandt had mentioned something about Tim’s family coming from somewhere up north. South Dakota, Wisconsin—I couldn’t remember. Our Tennessee summer had to be shocking, but Tim didn’t seem the type to register discomfort.

Usually, I said.

By invitation from Daddy, the Thompsons came the next Tuesday to the weekly potluck Bible study at our house. As the adults got down to the business of talk, we kids played in the fields until it was too dark to look out for snakes. Uninterested in play, though, Tim sat on the porch. For a while, he watched us, until Erwin, Jake, and I broke away from the younger children to talk to him.

That’s when we learned that Tim wasn’t a biological Thompson, that the Thompsons had adopted him when he was nine days old, and that he didn’t know anything about his real mama or daddy, not that he ever wondered or worried about them. Tim already knew he wanted to work in government and make godly legislation, something along those lines, which was funny to me because I still tossed around several ideas regarding my future career. He told Erwin, Jake, and me how his adoptive mother, Mrs. Thompson, had miscarried their first baby and, after that, was unable to conceive for another two years. That’s how Tim got his new family—during that dry spell when adopting seemed to be the only alternative left for the couple.

They went cold turkey, explained Tim of his parents’ eschewing birth control. No pills, shots, or rhythm. A baby or twins has come every year since.

No ways that’s a method, having that many babies on purpose, said Erwin.

Lest you call it madness, added Jake, staring at Tim and shaking his head as if dizzied by coming face to face with distinct folly. That was saying something for Jake.

Erwin and Jake didn’t want anything to do with Tim after that. Instead, they spent their time showing Tim’s little brothers and sisters how to fish from our stocked bass pond in the middle of the sheep field. Erwin’s cold shoulder allowed Tim to cash in his ticket for attendance to the adult Bible study. I followed for no other reason than to be close to him, despite Tim showing little interest in me. For that, I naturally liked him all the more—method of madness or not, there was nothing to be done for love at first sight, and I wanted what I wanted.

By attending the study, it didn’t take long to learn that the Thompsons brought more than numbers to our church. They brought a new strand of purity, and when I learned that purity came with jewelry, the angels of heaven couldn’t have stopped me from signing up for the regaled ceremony.

+ + +

The purity ring promise was something Mr. Thompson heard about before moving to our town just outside of Memphis, and it was his idea to arrange a purity ball for all the girls, ages seven and older, in our church. We only needed the desire to pledge, they told us.

I was the first and eldest enthusiast—anything to get Tim’s attention. Next in line was twelve-year-old Corrie Marshall. All of the daughters at our church signed. Word got out at another Baptist church down the street, and their daughters wanted to join the party, too. The deacons, by any means, turned away no one. All in all, thirty girls arrived with their daddies on the big day.

That first year, and every thereafter, the girls dressed alike in short-sleeved leotards covered by white gauze skirts. There were few who stood still, most impatiently bouncing from one tippy toe to the other. We were an angelic ballerina troupe waiting outside the church for Mr. Thompson, choreographer of our grand procession, to signal the beginning of our commencement.

I was the first to walk. Daddy, whose first gray hairs stood out brightly his carefully combed hair, grasped my hand and looped it inside his arm to escort me inside. I knew there couldn’t be a luckier girl in the world, and the spring in Daddy’s step concurred proudly that I had to be the most special girl of the batch.

The smooth soles of my new white ballerina flats glided over the crimson carpet stretching from the gravel parking lot and into the building, the path ending at the lacquer-thickened oak altar where two bronze offering plates sat heavy and old. At least that’s where I guessed the carpet ended.

Every other step, I wished Mama could see how pretty we girls were together, how handsomely the men wore their tuxes.

This rite, though, was off-limits to mothers.

It spoils the vows, Mr. Thompson had informed the church deacons. Nothing can distract our daughters’ vows or keep fathers from performing their sacred duties.

Daddy explained to Mama and me that the ceremony was a symbol of that future date between and a daughter and her husband, a father-daughter date, if you will, to establish a lasting commitment of respect and honor to the godhead of our family.

So today was our day, the daughters’ day, and I would make the biggest vow I’d ever made in my life. I would do anything for Daddy, especially pledge purity, agreeing that there wouldn’t be anybody touching me before I married. Not if I always wanted Daddy to look at me like he did now, as if I was as beautiful as any bride on her wedding day.

We stopped under the chandelier inside the foyer. Tim’s little brothers opened the double oak doors engraved heavily with crosses, lilies, and dogwood leaves. Daddy patted my hand.

What do ya think of those, darlin’? he asked, pointing at two enormous pedestal vases.

I sucked in my breath.

The pedestals were at least two feet across and nearly four feet tall. Added to their height were white carnations by the hundreds, maybe thousands. I’d overheard Daddy tell Mama that Mr. Havlicek was the only dissenter when it came to using carnations, something about them being a symbol of death instead of innocence and purity. I had wondered about anybody who thought of white as a symbol for death, but whatever tithes it had cost for the displays was well worth the trouble, in my opinion.

Pay attention now, said Daddy.

I tore my eyes from the flowers and looked ahead, my heart quickening when I saw what waited beyond the open double doors. Reality often fell flat to expectant imagination. Not this time; what I saw neatly fit the bill. I looked at Daddy. He smiled and patted my hand again.

On each side of the aisle, a dozen brothers of the pledgers and daddies whose daughters were too young to take vows stood before us, holding aloft a sharp bower of twenty-four swords. The sword bearers, decked out in matching white tuxes and white gloves, stood with heads held high, serious faces, and chests pushed outward. I couldn’t help but think that, whether or not they lent extra purity to the occasion, they were stunning.

Daddy, who considered himself more of a moderate, had been surprised to learn of Mr. Thompson’s enthusiasm for the Arthurian legends. That’s how Mr. Thompson got the idea for the swords.

The swords between the ruin, Mr. Thompson had called it, referring to the blade that separated the cave-bedded, star-crossed lovers Tristan and Isolde.

Some kind of representation that the lovers were chaste in their illicit love, explained Daddy to Mama when I had tarried outside their bedroom one morning after waking early.

If ever tempted, we were to think about the bower of swords, as if held by Christ, to keep us chaste.

Christ doesn’t hold the swords today, though, I thought, and as we started forward, I couldn’t help but raise my eyes to the crossed pairs of Confederate saber swords.

Watching from the pews were brothers, uncles, grandfathers, and daddies-to-be. All were dressed in white suits pinned with white carnation corsages. I didn’t bother to look for Erwin.

Damn creepy, he had called the whole thing, storming out after refusing to attend.

Maybe a few years ago Daddy could have forced Erwin to attend. Not now. Erwin was taller and more muscular than Daddy.

Too smart for his own britches, is what Daddy said after Erwin left in a huff.

I peripherally looked for Tim and spotted him in the third row from the front, near the aisle. In his pressed white suit, he looked ages older than the other boys, which made him more handsome to me. I kept my eyes ahead and pretended not to see him.

Thus, on we marched, fathers escorting a flesh-and-blood daisy chain, petals of white satin-slippered and gauze-dressed girl children wanton for purity.

Waiting at the pulpit was Pastor Brandt, his face a little more ruddy and energetic than usual. He directed Daddy and me to the right side of the aisle, where we turned and waited for the next girl-daddy pairs.

During those moments, as girls are akin to do, I reflected on my disappointment that I wouldn’t walk in last—as a real bride would. Rumor had it that the youngest girls would bring up the rear with a grand surprise. As the others made their way in and walked under the swords, my thoughts of disappointment turned to daydreaming about my future wedding. How I’d be the only bride, my ring chosen by my husband instead of Daddy.

When Corrie tripped on a small wrinkle in the carpet, my attention snapped back to the present. Mr. Marshall slowed his daughter’s descent but couldn’t stop it—one daisy down. Corrie jumped up unhurt, smoothed down her dress, and resumed walking.

I returned to thinking about the purity rings symbolizing our marriage to Christ, obedience to Daddy, and our stainless chastity. I was excited beyond words about my ring in particular. Daddy had never bought jewelry for me before now.

He went all by himself to find it, Mama had told me.

She told me nothing about the ring itself. She would see it for the first time when we returned home.

With the bulk of us now at the front of the church, the procession paused. Billy and Max Marshall, Corrie’s eight-year-old twin brothers, leapt from the front pew and raced to the back of the church. Billy tripped and fell when he took his eyes off the carpet to look up at the swords. He hit the floor, arms and legs askew, rolled off the ceremonial runner, and came to rest on the church’s old burgundy carpet. One of his legs lay across a sword bearer’s feet. In awe of the shining blades, he lay there breathing deeply. A shrill, raise-the-dead whistle from his father’s lips reminded Billy of his task. He propped himself up and peeked down the aisle. Mr. Marshall tried not to smile, failed, and then winked at his son. A big grin spread over Billy’s face. He waved to his father, jumped up, and ran to join his brother in the bell closet.

The hair on my arms stood when the bells rang, echoing my joy. Then I saw why Daddy and Mama had worked so hard to keep the surprise, and I didn’t feel as pretty anymore, wanting now to be part of the group of seven-year-olds entering the church.

On their shoulders, eight girls carried a large pine wood cross. Leading them was a nubile pair carrying large reed baskets. Interpreting King David’s quickening, they leapt, twirled, and clouded the air with carnation petals abandoned of stem, peduncle, and ovary. The dancers and cross-bearers were barefooted, their bare legs easily seen through the long skirts. Behind the cross came another pair bearing between them a slightly molded copper pan with three hand-made incense briquettes lit and smoldering. Using chain loops attached to either side of the pan, the girls