Douglas Bruton

A Pebble from the River for Annie

Annie in the shadows, a shadow herself, shoes off, creeping barefoot through the moon-radiant street, all the way to the church with its windows blank and its door shut fast. And Annie, with a soft-mewling babe cradled in her arms, and the church door locked against her, and her small fist making little noise on the cold wood.

Annie cross with the minister, cross with god, cross with all men, kneeling at the river’s edge, kneeling in the dew-damp grass, the webs of spiders like tattered scraps of silver lace on her skirt. She must have a name, the babe in Annie’s arms, the child she delivered herself in the gagged dark of the barn. She knew what to do; had seen lambs spring-born to ewes, and calves to frighted heifers. The child, her child tonight, wrapped in a torn sheet marked with the blood of its birthing, must have a name. Annie cupping her hand and scooping water from the river, sharp and soft at the same time, and wetting the baby’s head, as she’d seen the minister do at the stone font in the church, and calling her Judith.

Annie kneeling at the river’s edge, her night-black hair like a veil, muttering prayers and songs that never were heard in any church, and her child, Judith, face tight closed in sleep. And the moon in a cloudless sky and a pebble from the river for Annie.

Annie back through the village and finding the bakehouse lit up like the sun slept there. And the ovens already hot and the smell leaking out onto the street where Annie is, the smell of new bread. The door open and someone inside singing, a man’s voice that she recognizes, and his wife laughing somewhere in the back. Annie has written in mud on the torn sheet, written her name, Judith. Annie, then, kissing her child and laying her down inside the door where it is warm.

At the far reach of the village Annie finding her shoes where she left them, putting a pebble in one, hard and round, and ever after limping as she goes-not that she needed a stone to remind her of what she had done. And Judith growing through the quickening years, and singing in church like her father, and laughing by the river like her mother; but not like Annie, except that her hair was dark, glossy-black like the wings of crows. Or a veil.

Return to Volume 3.3

All files © 2005-2012 Blood Orange Review