by Derek Updegraff
She imagined Harry, Hermione, and the rest of the gang squealing as the flames colored the gray sky. Her mom had said, “Toss them in. Go on, Becca. Toss them in.” So she tossed them in seconds ago, not hesitating because she knew better than to defy her mom. Her hands stung because she’d been clinging to her books, pressing them against her stomach. She wished they’d fused into her fabric, or magically broke through the wall of her dress and the wall of her skin and then nestled into the warmth of her stomach until the bonfire was over. At the very least she hoped her mom might have forgotten she was holding her books, that maybe she thought she’d already thrown them to the flames.
Her mom took her empty hands and rubbed them. Then she brought them to her lips and blew hot air on her palms. She rubbed her hands again, her mom’s calluses gliding over Becca’s fingers, calluses that were thick but not rough or peeling. Becca loved it when her mom’s strong hands held hers. Honeysuckle wafted to her nose. Later in the car, she knew her mom would pull the round container of hand cream out of her purse and rub some in before driving home, offering Becca a dab as well for her skin to absorb.
Her mom said, “You did good, Chipmunk.”
Becca said, “Thanks, Momma.”
They were among the earliest to arrive, having come straight from Becca’s elementary school, where she’d had archery team practice in the gym. Her best friend Brea was on the team too, and coach called the two of them the Bullseye Bs, which Becca liked because it made her think of herself as a bee flying straight toward a bull’s eye, stinging it dead center, causing the massive creature to crumble. She’d like to save enough money for T-shirts or hats. Becca and Brea, The Bull’s Eye Bs. Or should it be Bees after all, she wondered.
In the church’s gravel lot, Becca and her mom had stood there quietly while Pastor Will and some men from the congregation dragged cinderblocks from behind the church to make a circle. Then they placed wooden pallets in the center and threw some old peach crates on top. And they brought over three wheelbarrows full of dried branches, and they carefully arranged the branches into a pyramid until the wheelbarrows sat empty. Hollow metal stomachs, Becca thought. Then women cradling books walked by Becca and her mom. And she didn’t know anyone had been behind them. Like apparitions, she thought. They popped out like apparitions. And she whispered, “They popped out like apparitions,” because sometimes her head wanted her to say aloud the things she’d been thinking. Then each passing woman in turn stopped in front of a wheelbarrow and unburdened her arms, the books thudding into the metal. The wheelbarrows filled quickly. Pastor Will squirted lighter fluid on the crates and branches. He stepped out of the cinderblock circle, then lit a match and flicked it in. The flames roared.
Pastor Will said, “Stay behind the blocks. Especially you kids.” And then he faced the crowd and said, “Some people won’t understand this. Some people will say we’ve lost it. That we’re nuts. But I don’t care what other people think of me. I care what God thinks of me. And these books are full of magic and spells. They’ve got people changing into animals. They’ve got witches, wands, incantations. They’re from the devil. And they’re not good for our kids.” He reached toward a wheelbarrow and grabbed the book on top. He waved it around, and then his arm stilled. The cover showed a boy and a girl riding a pegasus. They were high in the air, white jagged mountains behind them. Becca wanted to read it. She memorized the title, The Magician’s Nephew, right before Pastor Will hurled it into the fire. The crowd clapped. And he said, “Protect your children. Help me get rid of this filth.” Then parents and their kids grabbed one, two, three books at a time and threw them in. Then Becca’s mom had said, “Toss them in. Go on, Becca. Toss them in.” So Becca peeled the boxset of books off her stomach, and she took a few steps forward and tossed the seven books in together rather than offering them to the flames one at a time as some were doing. The boxset clunked against burning wood, and the flames danced on top of the castle’s pointy spires for a few seconds before devouring the cardboard and paper.
Her friends Harry and Hermione stopped squealing after the castle burned to ash. And Ron too. And Hagrid. Even Voldemort couldn’t wiggle away from this death. Then her eyes darted here and there. The silence in her head filled with more terrible sufferings as other book covers were eaten up. Over there a unicorn squealed. And there a werewolf squealed. And a cyclops squealed. Then another boy on a pegasus squealed. And his pegasus squealed at the same time and then a bit longer after the boy was gone. And three witches around a cauldron squealed. And the squealing pained her head, so she stepped back to her mom’s side, and her mom’s breath warmed her hands, and the honeysuckle calmed her mind, and she thanked her mom after she’d praised her, because when a mom says, “You did good, Chipmunk,” what else can a daughter say except, “Thanks, Momma,” and grit her teeth to hold back the tears that can’t quench anything anyway? Then the pair stood silently while the gray sky stayed gray, and the smoke rose, and the flames rose, and the crackling of pages rose, and the crowd was not loud or disorderly but full of reverence as they continued their work of offering the pages to the flames, and Becca marveled at the ceremony of it all despite herself.
She loved bonfires. She loved hotdogs on sticks, marshmallows on sticks. She especially loved grandad’s firepit and tree-stump chairs. But what she really loved was fire itself. She was only eleven, but she knew there was a primitive appeal to it. She knew fire was sustenance, life. And she knew where the good books were in her school library, and she thought, You were pretty brave, Prometheus, and we thank you. Then she whispered, “Thank you, Prometheus.”
And her mom said, “Don’t mumble, dear. Say it clear, or keep it to yourself.”
And Becca said, “Yes, Momma.”
And then someone ran out of the woods in black pants and a black sweatshirt and a black beanie and yelled, “Fucking morons! This is the occultic book you should be burning!”
He stopped at the cinderblock circle and held up a large Bible for the crowd to gaze on. It was a Family Bible. It was massive, like half a pizza box, made of maroon leather with The Holy Bible in gold block letters at the top and gold decorative trim around the edges. But most of the cover was filled with a scene of Jesus riding a donkey, a glowing halo to show his holiness, bright green palm fronds around him. Becca smiled at the way the greens and golds popped off the dark red background.
It must have been heavy. His arms trembled while holding it above his head.
Pastor Will said, “Friend, that’s your history. That’s your heritage. No one’s going to stop you. The good words aren’t going anywhere. All that’s lost will be your own.”
The man in the black sweatshirt hurled the Bible onto the burning pyramid. The flames ate it like the rest, but the golden-edged pages hissed, and the flames turned green, like Becca had seen Christmas wrapping paper do sometimes, and its ashes floated upward with a longer glow, flittering in the night sky like lightning bugs.
Maybe the man expected resistance. Maybe he thought he would be tackled by the men. Sworn at, cursed. Or maybe he had stunned himself. But he stood unmoved, and everyone else went back to the business of tossing in the last books from the wheelbarrows, and then he seemed to wake from some vision or other and drifted toward the woods until the trees swallowed him.
The rest of the book burning finished without incident. Pastor Will thanked everyone and encouraged the kids to keep reading from their Bibles and other morally sound books chosen by their parents and trustworthy teachers. Then the congregation wordlessly slipped into cars and trucks and drove away while a few of the men stayed behind to watch the embers fizzle to ash.
Becca and her mom opened their car doors and buckled their seatbelts. Then her mom silently removed the honeysuckle lotion from her purse and dabbed some on her own palms before reaching over and smearing the excess into Becca’s palms. She kissed the back of her daughter’s closest hand and pulled the car out of the church parking lot. The reverence of the ceremony had followed them into the car as the pair sat in silence. It was a recent thing that Becca’s mom had started letting her sit in the front when it was just the two of them. Becca liked the view from up front and focused her eyes on the jagged outlines of cypress trees dotting the side of the road, still branches in a windless night, dark boughs and needles against a purplish gray.
Then Becca’s mom asked, “Had you read them? Did you finish the set?”
“Yes,” said Becca. “Twice. Some more.”
“That’s good. It doesn’t hurt as bad then. Think if you were in the middle of the story.”
“But I liked having them. They were mine.”
“That’s true. And you worked hard for them.”
“Then why?” asked Becca. “Why did we go?”
“Because Pastor asked the church to come. So we went. And he noticed we were there. And he saw you offer your books.”
Becca rubbed her hands, and then she brought them to her nose and closed her eyes and thought of spring and being barefoot.
“Do you know what a benevolence fund is?” her mom asked. “Have you heard Pastor say that?”
“I know it has to do with goodness. And I know a fund is a collection. And I saw you put a ten-dollar bill in the plate once.”
“Smart girl. It’s also how our gas and electric was paid last month. And it will be again if me or Dad can’t find more hours.”
“But we didn’t have to bring my books.”
“We did have to. You can be sad. But not for long. It’s best not to get attached to things. You’re learning that now. You know everything turns to dust. That’s not wisdom. It’s just fact. And now you experienced it, so you know it differently. Everything turns to dust. Your books. Our house. All things. We can’t make anything that won’t be rubble one day. The more you think on that, the less you get busied by things that don’t matter.”
“Yes, Momma.”
Outside Becca’s window the cypress trees gave way to the field where she and the other kids would shoot their bows. Mr. Peeler was nice enough to replace the haybales after they’d deteriorate, and he’d pack the hay nice and tight so the arrows wouldn’t blow through. They had sticks marking the ten-meter and fifteen-meter distances they used in tournaments, and there was also a marker way back at thirty meters, which was about one-hundred feet, and the boys called it the Hercules distance, but Becca and Brea called it the Artemis distance, and either way they all had to angle their bows upward to get the arrows to soar down on the bales. They spraypainted circle targets on the hay since rains ruined paper targets in no time at all. Sometimes Becca got lucky and found extra stray arrows in the shrubs past the haybales, but that didn’t happen often because all of the kids around here valued their things and would search and search for a stray arrow until they had no choice but give up because a parent was calling them in for supper. She kept her bow in the hall closet, next to her dad’s, and in her quiver she had the six arrows that came with the bow. But outside her house she had a secret spot where she kept stray arrows she’d found, even if she knew who their rightful owners were.
Then her mom said, “Dad’ll be home soon. He might ask how it went tonight. But he might not remember it. If he doesn’t ask, it’s up to you if you want to bring it up.”
“Ok,” said Becca, and then there was more silence, and then Becca asked, “Momma, do you agree with Pastor? Were those books from the devil?”
“Some yes. Some absolutely. All of them? Probably not. That’s not for me to worry about. But . . .” Becca’s mom reached for a hand, squeezed it, glanced down at her with eyebrows up. “I’ve warned you about men.”
“Yes, Momma.”
“And I’ve said that some have worms in their brains. Men and women, but more men. When we’re in the ground, dead and buried, we’ll all have worms in our brains. But it won’t matter then because our souls will be in heaven or in hell. And the brain and the rest of the body is the worms’ feast. But sometimes worms get to people’s brains before they’re in the ground. If burning those books kept worms from feasting at some kids’ brains, then that’s a blessed night. Count it a miracle. Once the worms find a warm home, they don’t leave easy. That’s why I tell you. It’s many men. Some women.” She looked again at Becca. “But many men. That’s why we’re lucky with Dad. Chop off his nose. Chop off his ears. Yank his hair out. We’ll love him still because he is kind. Even when he’s stern with you, he’s kind in the heart, and his brain is as undefiled as one can wish for in this world.”
“I know, Momma.”
“Good, Chipmunk. I know you do.”
At home, the two made dinner, and then her dad came home and the trio sat at the table, and the family prayer chart said that Friday night was Becca’s night to say the prayer, so she thanked God for her parents, and for Brea, and for her teachers, and for her archery coach, and she prayed for the safety and health of all of them, and she prayed for the safety and health of her extended family members, especially Grandad with his wheezing, and she thanked God for the food in front of them, and for their clothes, and for their shelter, and for their warmth, and she thanked God for the seasons, and for all things beautiful, seen and unseen, and for anticipation and the energy that comes with change, a never ending cycle of joy in anticipation, and then her dad shifted in his seat, and she knew he’d had a long day, so she ended by saying, “And God, please bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and us to thy service. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.”
Her dad said, “Beautiful prayer, Bucket.”
And Becca said, “Thanks, Daddy.”
And they ate the pot roast and the mashed potatoes and the carrots and the biscuits, and then all three rinsed, soaped, and dried their own plates, and her mom put the leftovers in tupperware, and they sat in the living room while her parents drank decaf coffee and talked and Becca read two more chapters of Lord of the Flies for Mrs. Rifkin’s Super Readers’ Club.
After she brushed her teeth, after she peed, after she washed her face and kissed her mom and dad goodnight, she lay awake in bed, staring at the glowing stars on her ceiling. From the corner of her room, she could make out all her objects in the dim light. The wooden rocking chair that was too small for her now but was perfect for her brown bear stuffed animal, which she named Griz even though she’d read that grizzlies never lived in the Southern Appalachian forests. And there was the desk that had been her mom’s when she was a girl. And of course her bookshelf, which now had an empty spot in the middle, where her prized boxset sat this morning before she had to offer it to the fire.
Hours passed. Her legs fidgeted. She didn’t see what the ash heap had looked like after the dwindling fire was forced to curl into itself, to curl into smallness and then nothingness as all fires must. She wondered if any pages had been spared. Hers or others. Fragments here and there with a sentence, a phrase, a word. Bits of cover, bright cardboard shards piercing through the dusty gray. She wanted to see. She wanted to gather the stray bits and collect them in her sketch journal. She wanted to sift through ash on hands and knees, rescuing each uneaten word, pasting them together on blank pages to create a book from what remained.
She stood and was surprised that she was standing. She put Griz in her bed and pulled her covers over him. She crept out of her room, gently closed her door, then carefully opened the hall closet. She put on her boots. She put on her beanie. She put on her jacket. She put on her gloves. And then she grabbed her bow but left her six matching arrows to stay behind in their quiver. She had never snuck out of her house before. But this mission was important. She needed to rescue the remnants. She felt the words tugging her.
Outside, the temperature was something close to freezing. They didn’t get much snow, but winter mornings brought frost to the windshields, frost to the dormant grass. Her boots crunched as she walked away from her house. Then she knelt beside a bush and slid out a black trash bag tightly wrapped. She untied the bag and pulled out a cardboard tube she’d made into a quiver. There were five arrows inside. Three were strays that Bobby, Jonathan, and Tobias never found. And she didn’t know who the other two once belonged to. But she liked them best, with their lime-green shafts and purple fletching. Like the others, they were target arrows, not hunting arrows, with bullet points easy to pull out of styrofoam or hay. As she walked, she kept four arrows in the quiver and had a lime-green one out in case she needed to protect herself. They weren’t near the black bears, who’d be in their dens up the slope and not by the foothills, and they weren’t near wolves because they’d been killed off a long time ago, but Becca had seen coyotes sneaking around, scraggly things but she had to admire them for their adaptability, and she knew that even mild animals like raccoons could be dangerous if they felt threatened.
She’d walked from her house to the church just once, with her parents, on a Sunday morning when her dad’s truck was in the shop and her mom’s car was low on gas. It took about twenty minutes, and they weren’t rushing. She walked quickly now, and the field where she and the others shot their bows was just ahead. The night was quiet. The land would be teeming with sounds in the months ahead, insects and animals assaulting the stillness. But there was only the breeze now with its gentle stirring of shrubs and leafless branches. The stars burned bright against the black, like arrow holes in a distant ceiling. At the edge of the field she stopped at the Artemis marker, one hundred feet away from the haybales. She couldn’t see the targets, but she knew where they were, and she knew the right upward angle and pull to bury the arrow into the hay. She loaded her lime-green favorite. Her gloves were thin and allowed her fingers to work, so she kept them on. She fired the arrow, confident she knew where it would land and that she could pick it up as she kept walking toward the church, but then in the darkness someone screamed a bloodcurdling “Ahhh!” And she ran toward her house, but then she paused, and she thought of Brea and Bobby and Jonathan and Tobias, and she thought, Who in the world would be at the range at night? And she turned and ran toward the scream to see who she’d hit.
She slowed her pace as she neared the targets. She grabbed the other lime-green arrow and readied her bow. She stepped lightly. A man sat on top of a haybale, his legs dangling down.
“You can put that down now,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get up and chase you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Her arrow had pierced his thigh, pinning him to the haybale. The purple fletching and an inch or two of the arrow’s green shaft poked out just above his kneecap. The rest of the shaft was buried in his thigh and the hay beneath it.
“I’m so sorry,” Becca said. She let down her bow. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think anyone would be here. I just didn’t think. I’ll go get help.”
But the man said, “Wait.” The man said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”
And Becca wondered why he wasn’t screaming. So she asked, “Why aren’t you screaming?”
“It hurts,” he said. “And I did scream. I squealed like a stuck pig. You heard me, I guess, since you came on over. And I’ll scream again I imagine. But I just feel like being real still right now. And maybe the cold air is helping.”
“I should get help,” she said again.
And she shifted to run home, but he said, “Wait. Please stay and talk for a minute. I don’t need help right now. I need to stay still. It will help if you talk to me.”
“Ok,” she said. “Maybe for a minute, and then I should go.”
“So why are you out? A bit young for trouble.”
“I was going to the church. The lot. There was a burning and I wanted to see the ashes.”
“You and two other kids. And me, I guess.”
“You were there?”
“I lost something too. I knew it was gone. Gone for good. But I couldn’t get it out of my head. I had to go back and make sure.”
“You’re the guy who threw his Family Bible in.”
“Momma’s Bible. Yep. I saw it go up. But later, at home, I thought, maybe by some miracle it will be okay. Sitting there by itself on top of the ash heap. Protected by God or put back together or something. You know, some miracle. I’m no believer, but I thought, just maybe. And I didn’t understand pastor’s words at first. He said it was my history I’d be burning. I figured it out later. That’s momma’s Bible. My late mother. I kept it in the closet. I never looked to see what was written in it.”
“Probably the last thing she wrote was your birth facts. If you’re the youngest. Or an only like me.”
The man didn’t say anything. He shifted on the haybale and grimaced.
“You were supposed to add her place and time of death,” said Becca.
He winced again.
“But it doesn’t matter now. She doesn’t care. You shouldn’t worry.”
“I’ll need you to get that help soon. I didn’t feel like getting up before but now I do.”
“Sure thing,” said Becca. “But wait, who else was there? What two kids?”
“Two teenage boys. Older than you. Both tall and skinny, wearing capes. Faggie-ass looking wizards or something. Sifting through the ashes before I got there. On their hands and knees. Desperate. By the look of them, they’ll be spending lots of time on their knees. They ran away when they saw me. Better you’d stuck one of them instead of me.”
“Those are the Paterson twins. They’re harmless. Their prized possession was a book with spells in Latin. Their dad whipped them good when he found it.”
“I’m sure he did. Now if you could help me up at least.”
Becca stepped closer but stayed out of his arm’s reach. The straw beneath his leg had absorbed a lot of blood. “You need to pull the arrow out,” she said. “If you lunge at me, I’ll put the next one through your head. Ok?”
“You’re a crazy little girl,” he said. “It’s almost too bad I can’t get to you.”
“It will slide right out. Pull it hard.” Becca took a few steps back, loaded the other lime-green arrow, and aimed it at the man’s head. “But stay there or I’ll give you another.”
“Ok. Ok. Jesus!” he shouted. And he pulled the arrow out, and he screamed the same harrowing “Ahhh!” as when it first went in, and he threw it at her feet, and he screamed some more. Then he pressed his palms to the edge of the haybale. He stood on his own power. He said, “I just need to lean on you.”
She said, “No!” She said, “I can run home and get my daddy. And we’ll call for help. Or you can walk that way.” She nodded to the road leading to the church. “The same way you must have come from.”
He said, “It’s no good. Come over here. I need to lean against you. I won’t make it.”
“Try,” she said. “Try walking that way.”
But he stepped toward her, and she let the arrow tear through an eye and his brain until the back of his skull killed its progress. He crumpled to the earth. And his good leg shook. And then he stopped moving. She grabbed another arrow from her quiver, her friend Jonathan’s, then loaded it and aimed it at the still body. She stayed poised to shoot him again until her breathing calmed. He was dead. She knew this. So she put her friend’s lost arrow back in her quiver, and then she stepped forward and yanked the bloodied lime-green arrow out of his head, pushing against his forehead with her left hand while the right hand pulled. She couldn’t tell if blood had gotten on her thin dark gloves. She tossed the arrow beside the one he’d yanked from his leg. Her two favorites that she’d have to leave behind now.
She stared at the hole where an eye had been. The night was quiet. Her breath was warm against the frigid air. Her skin was hot beneath her jacket, her gloves, her beanie—her blood jetting down its pathways. She stared at the hole and waited. She would not leave until she saw them. Soon she would head home. She would abandon her mission of rescuing scraps of words from the ash pile. She would head home and hide her quiver with her three found arrows. And she would sneak into her house and return her bow to the front closet next to Dad’s. And she would crawl into bed and grip Grizz, whispering to him throughout the night, “It’s okay. It’s okay. Because I saw them.”
But right now she stared. She would stare until she saw them. And at last the first worm poked its head tentatively through the eyehole, and then its whole body crawled out, testing the air and thinking whether it should journey out to find a new host or crawl back into this one a bit longer. And then other worms followed the first out of the eyehole, and she breathed deeply and thought, What a relief, but her mind wanted her to say it aloud, so she said, “What a relief. I was worried he didn’t have any.” Then she stepped over the bloody arrows on the dormant grass and headed home.
Derek Updegraff is the author of the novel Whole (Slant Books, 2024), as well as two short story collections and three poetry collections. His stories, poems, and translations have appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Fiction International, The Greensboro Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Notre Dame Review, The Saturday Evening Post, and other places. Originally from southern California, he lives and teaches in upstate South Carolina.