A Good Burnin'

                                A Good Burnin'

         Black ash began to choke the air, scraping an ugly scar across the morning sky.  A shame to douse a beautiful morning with an inky frown.  Only one hour past sunrise and the mobs were already stacking wood and lighting tinder.  A smoke cloud thickened and the crackle of fire snapped and popped amidst the murmur of the gathering crowd.  Paul could hear their voices and their shouts and wished they had stayed home.  He wished they had kept their hands to the plow and carried on like any other morning.  Each burning became another excuse to leave the field.  His brother had steadied his hoe in one hand and looked toward the burning.  Paul knew what his brother was thinking and tried to ignore him, slashing at another clod.  Only two rows so far with twenty to go, and his stomach was already aching.  On the other end of the field a few farmers and their sons jogged past whooping and hollering. They waved for the boys to follow and then disappeared into the woods.  When Paul looked back up from his row his brother was gone, his solitary hoe standing upright in the dirt.  A heavy hand of foreboding smoke was now gaping ominous over the wet field and ash began to swirl down like hellish snowflakes.  Paul wondered if this is what the sky looked like when the God of Israel thrust his plagues upon the Egyptians.  And the smell! The rotten burning!  Paul hid his nose in his shirt.
         "Are you comin'?" Father Dan shouted from across the field.  His siblings were waving from behind the fence.  He could see Rachel's smile as a golden halo of sunlight danced around her head and wrapped down her back in heavy braids. 
         "The burnin'!  The burnin'!"  She was jumping up and down now, becoming more and more frantic. 
         Paul's hoe wouldn't come loose of his hands.  He simply stood, shoulders hanging low, boots mudded heavy in the deep soil.  He wanted to shake his head.  He wanted to turn his back and keep hoeing.  Nineteen rows and counting.
         "Paul!" Father screamed.  "Drop that hoe and come with your family to the burnin'." 
         Paul dropped the hoe, plodded across the field, and ducked through the beams of the fence.  Father grabbed him by the collar and pulled him through.  Paul stumbled a few steps and then caught himself.
         "It's a burnin', Paul," Rachel said skipping beside him.  She had gathered a clutch of meadow flowers and was plucking their petals.
         Paul nodded. 
         Once they had reached the first fork in the road a thick congregation of farmers, children, housewives and horses joined in the cacophonous fray.  Rachel grabbed Paul's hand and was singing a children's hymn.  In a nearby knot of neighbors Paul caught a glimpse of Sarah, a neighbor girl, through the crowd.  He looked for her again and noticed she had looked back -- and even smiled.  His concentration was broken by a hard cuff to the back of the head. 
         "Remember what the good Lord says 'bout wicked thoughts," Father said.  Paul tried to rub the sting out of the back of his head. "And surely the priests wouldn't be pleased."  Father nodded ahead at a cloaked warrior, riding high and heavy on a stone gray steed.  A shield emblazoned with a bloody crucifix was strapped to his side and a broad sword was sheathed on his back.  A pair of cold eyes stared menacingly at each passerby from the shadows of a dark hood.  He kicked he flanks of his horse and trotted through the crowd.  Up ahead Paul could see the fires raging, stronger and bolder.  The fractious crowd had formed circles around each of the fires and took turns tossing branches and tinder into the flames.  Paul was still shorter than most of the folks and couldn't see past his father and the other neighbors who pressed tightly together.  He didn't want to see anyway.  And he didn't want Rachel to see.  He pulled her back, but she tugged forward pulling at his fingers. 
         "Come on, Paul, I want to see the burning.  Let go," she squealed.  "Let go!"
         Paul finally let go and she tumbled into father's back.  Father grabbed her by the arm and lifted her up onto his shoulders.  Deep in the churning sea of the crowd, Paul could see the smoke above and hear the crackle of the flames.  He heard the branches snapping like dry bones before they were tossed into the fire.  He heard the laughs and jeers of the crowd.  The taunts, the curses.
         "Heretics!"
         "Devils!"
         "Demons!"
         Women were screaming, children were shouting.  Paul had jammed his fingers into his ears now.  The jeers and the snapping of branches and the rush of the brutal flames were stoking the memories that haunted him.  He remembered so little from his childhood, but the same, single memory was always there, menacing and laughing and maliciously swearing to never leave. The same smoke filled the sky the day that mama cried into the night and papa never came home.  Paul didn't know why mama wasn't at the door when he came in from playing.  He heard her sobbing through the door of her bedroom.  He had never seen mama cry before.  She was always the one who could heal the tears.  But if she was the one with the tears who would heal her?  The same smoke rose into the evening, followed by the same shouts and the same crackling of branches in the flames.  The same folks had whooped and hollered into the night and Paul could see the embers whirling upward from the town square where the fire raged.  The same fire, the same town square, and the same folks.
         Rachel was crying now as she always did.  She begged and begged to go to the burning, but when it got ugly she always cried and tore at her father's pant leg, begging him to leave.  Little Jacob had his arms outstretched and Paul picked him up, holding him close as he buried his face into Paul's shoulder.  This was the part he didn't like.  It was always so fun to come -- but when the screaming began all of the children joined in the wretched, wailing choir.  They still cried when the demons cried, while the adults just watched or joined in the mocking and jeering.  It was too long ago to remember adults crying at a burning. 
         "Now how do you like 'em things that tick?  Huh, here-tick?"
         "Chirpin' n' mutterin', peepin' n' tickin'!"
         "Feel the wrath of the eleventh commandment!”
         Paul pulled Little Jacob closer and squeezed him tighter as the wails of the demons grew louder and more plaintive. 
         "Save me!  Oh, save me!" one demon shrieked. 
         "Jesus could have saved you," one woman cried out. "But you forsook him for soothsaying and witchery!"
         "Yes!" another replied. "Jesus could have saved you.  But now Beelzebub will be your keeper."
         The farmers, their wives, and some children were hurling stones now.  They picked up bricks, rocks, tools -- anything heavy within reach.  Some threw stones out of fear; some to silence the cries that ate at their hearts;  some out of mercy for the suffering.  And everyone else threw stones, because everyone else was throwing them and it seemed like the proper thing to do.
         Paul could hear the heavy hoofs of the high priests' horses as they galloped around the bonfires and supervised the execution with care.  They could have granted mercy with a fatal swing of their swords, but instead they looked on with cold and callous eyes.  The obliteration of these demons added to their energy.  One less disease to infect the people.  One less devil that disagreed.  A little less fear of the unknown and the alien.  One step closer to a perfect world where the children of God stood in line and Jesus Christ reigned supreme. 
         After several minutes the cries of the demons subsided to pathetic, throaty whimpers.  Most of the children ceased crying and those still crying felt their parents calloused hands clap over their mouths.  The high priests carried out a wooden box of the demons’ illicit belongings;  their "contemptible devices of black magic."  It was the high priests duty to burn their things with their bodies.  Paul couldn't help but be curious at what the "devices" were, so he watched as one high priest emptied them out onto the ground, stomped on them with his  boot, and then kicked them into the flames.  Paul saw one object he recognized.  It was a "ticking-thing."  His eyes widened.  Papa had given him one just like it the day before he disappeared.  It had stopped ticking just after flames went out that smoke-clouded night.
         The chiefest of the high priests galloped to the front of the crowd and began to shout scripture at the villagers:
         "God command the children of Israel that they should not permit a sorceress to live!"
         The people cheered in agreement, feeding on his words. 
         "And to the children of Israel he condemned diviners, fortune tellers, charmers,  and necromancers.  Praise be to God that we have cleansed this village of its sins."
         The people cheered again.
         "Those who have been burned today were not the children of God...they were not even human.  After forfeiting their souls to the devil the Spirit of God left them.  They became depraved animals and instruments of Satan to suffer a earthly death of smoke and flames...and have gone onto an eternal suffering of fire and brimstone."
         The high priest unsheathed his sword and flashed it in the direction of the crowd, his eyes flaming brighter than the high flames behind him.  "And any who dare break the eleventh commandment as these heretics have will suffer the same ignominious fate!"
         The cheering was had melted together in an earthquake of shouts, stomping feet, and banging metal.  They pressed together  tightly and children were lifted up in fear that they might be trampled.  Paul struggled to extricate himself from the churning gauntlet of frenzied villagers, catching a stray elbow in the jaw.  He squeezed out the back and stood watching as the fervor of the villagers bated with the flames.   
         After the heretics were completely burned with little of their remains left in the dwindled flames and heaping ash,  the villagers began dousing it with buckets of water.  Another handful of villagers dug several holes and shoveled the ash mingled with branches, "contemptible devices", and mangled corpses into them.  The high priests observed closely as the holes were filled with dirt and packed down.  A woman spat on the freshly earth and stamped a foot on it. 
         Not long after the high priests had departed the children followed their father home.
         "Don't you feel clean, children?"  Father Dan asked. "When the burnin' begins I feel  full of sin...and confused.  Like Lucifer himself has hold of my heart.  But when the demons are consumed I feel pure." 
         Father tried to lead them in a familiar hymn to buoy their spirits, but they struggled to sing.  He understood.  He had been the same way when he was little.  Someday they won’t mourn.  Someday they will feel the cleansing power of a good burning, he thought.  Someday.