Agnus Dei

Mark Child

Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon upon upon us, but entwine entwine our work with laughter laughter low and all is well now, hush now, close your eyes and sing hush-a-bye loo lo loo lo lam, sing hush a bye loo lo loo, and our work with laughter loo lo loo. All was in play, everything in play while distant ocean-engines hummed in his ear: sing hush a bye loo lo loo lo lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world grant us peace. Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon us and grant us peace. Now close your eyes.

A hand, a wrist, her bluest vein to kiss. The lake water beaded and ran in capillary rivulets, dragged by gravity and the angle of her arm and Daniel lay his lips upon upon upon her wrist, her bluest vein to kiss and tasted a hundred thousand hundred thousand years of watery life on her skin: algae, silky, silvery mud – the decomposed bodies of fish and microbes and the watery green plants that waved in billows with the waves that moved within the lake – and something darker still. All was well now. He closed his eyes as he traced the bluest capillaries to where they fattened to wider veins, kissing her hand, her wrist, her arm, her shoulder from front to back, drinking in the lake’s pungency along her collarbone, in the hollows there, and below her neck he stops and traces with his finger the curves and rays of her body and can see, just see rising up from the curve of her shoulder to her neck, a tiny pulse pushing against her skin, moving without volition or permission and he thinks without volition or permission, “All my life, all my life, all my life,” and kisses her lakewater lips her lakewater lips.

A hand, a wrist in bluest ink: “Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon us, but entwine our work with laughter low.” As if by inking the skin something could be made so. And it was so. And in his sliding orbit of some further star, Daniel lay on cooling blankets, and water waves appear and sweep away forgotten works and days and wash back the grit and schist of memories of memories all twirling all twirling in slow slow motion as he, a vessel once filled to the brim, lies a-bed, emptied, upturned.

Against her neck he can smell every man who has come before him, can smell their sweat, their desire and her aloofness, her distance from their desire. This far. This body, but no more. This body is yours, but the rest is mine. Spores of desire evaporate on her skin in waves of lake-bottom richness. Daniel whispers, “Close your eyes.” And they sleep on the sun-painted shore: he in full certainty that the mystery of the other had been opened; she in dreamless silence, and hush now, go to sleep, all is well now. Take the time to sleep, for the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand, than you can understand, than you can understand.

 

“But he’s my father, don’t you understand? Why won’t you understand?” And Daniel heard voices hushing his daughter. “There’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing more we can do. All that can be done has been done.” Hush now. Quiet now. Let him sleep if sleep will come to him, let sleep take him.

 

Unbidden universe, what summons us, awakening, unbidden in its midst?

 

Sing hush-a-bye loo lo loo lo lam, sing hush-a-bye loo lo loo, the whirr and click of the machines attached to him a lulling, a deadening of his senses and he thinks of lakewater lips, her bluest vein to kiss, his leg thrown over hers, turning her hips into him, and there and there and there, now, close your eyes. We’ll sleep a while then go and the sun painted them in ochre and then fading to dull, blood red and then fading to blue, her bluest vein to kiss. Marry me was on his lips and in his mouth, but he could smell the distance in the lake bed of her willingness to give him her body and slept instead, and now a-bed, emptied, upturned, the click and whirr of the machines monitoring his respirations, administering saline, morphine, unpronounceable antibiotics trying to lull him into a gliding orbit of further a star, he wakes and whispers, “Marry me. Marry me. Marry me,” his blistered, burned and weeping hand trying to rise to his unburned eyes and instead he reads from memory the bluest ink stitched there, “Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon us…” The rest now lost below the charcoal reds and bluest blacks of the burns that cover his arm, his shoulder, across his chest and reach like black flames up the sides of his neck where his daughter, Anne, free now of the nurses’ hushing, swathed in mask and gown and glove, can see at his unburned temple his pulse insisting on itself and she thinks, “He will not die.” She prays, “Do not die.” And he prays, “Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon us, but entwine, entwine, entwine…”

 

Why this existence? Why exist? Nature’s laws defy all change. Courses are run and all must die. Why this existence and not another, why?

 

Her hand. Her wrist. Her bluest vein to kiss and not another, not ever again. This vein, this wrist is why.

 

Twenty two years from the sun-painted lake shore, his leg draped over her, drawing her close, as if he were receiving her, their ankles locking them together and here, here, here, now, a-bed and burned, half his body seared, the wide, pornographic holes in his skin black and weeping, sticky from its transformation: beloved body in blacks and blue tipped edges, blood soaked and streaming to eternity.

 

What is the deepest loss you have suffered?

 

“Marry me,” and before the words had dried in her ear Aislinn pulled herself upright, holding the sheets to her chest not in modesty – This far, this body, but no more – but in a spasm of flashing rage, the blood flood rising to her ears, burning, her pulse throbbing there inside his words: marry me, marry me, marry me… This body is yours, but the rest is mine. And Anne a-bed in her lace-trimmed basinet by the side of their bed and her mother thinks, I have given you two bodies. Why isn’t that enough? Isn’t that enough? And the baby cries and hush now, close your eyes, all is well now, sing hush a-bye loo lo loo lo lam, sing hush a bye loo lo loo. And Daniel traces the knobs and buttons of Aislinn’s spine, their indentation like fingertips grasping her central self, the sweet line, tracing the curves and hollows of her back and he kisses each vertebrae until she softens and lays back down beside him, the blaze of her eyes unchecked as if she has something to say before she’ll allow him to press his flesh into hers. His begging hand lies near. I have no more for you, she thinks and his mouth covers hers before she can speak.

 

“What’s this all about,” and she traces each letter inked into his right forearm: O-H-L-O-R-D-H-E-A-P-M-Y-S-T-E-R-I-E-S-U-P-O-N-U-S-B-U-T-E-N-T-W-I-N-E-O-U-R-W-O-R-K-W-I-T-H-L-A-U-G-H-T-E-R-L-O-W, the lakeside sand stippling the letters in colonies of tan chits and flakes of mica black. She brushes his arm softly to clear it all away. Again, she murmurs, “What is this all about?” Daniel smiles, his lips to her forehead and says, “When I know you better.”

 

“You know me now.” And Daniel’s smile ignites and he laughs from his sun-painted throat.

 

What is the chiefest deed that’s asked of us? No more questions now.

 

“Dad, I’m here. I’m here,” and Anne looks for some place on his body to touch him, but she know she cannot, she must not, so she spreads her hands as wide as her fingers flare and holds them just above his blackburned flesh, a magician conjuring… what? skin? life? her own power to withstand? Black curtains of flesh are held aside by the seraph who, just hours, hours, just hours before scoured him and found him neither worthy, nor unworthy, but combustible, and left him melted down to black curtains of flesh. Anne knew the difficult calculus of the burned: age plus percentage of body burned multiplied by degree. Any number over one hundred twenty means death. Daniel registers 160 and yet he lives. But it is early. His open flesh a tilled bed inviting infection from spores of microscopic animus. How long will he live? How long will he be Daniel? How long before the rest of his body is consumed? At his temple, his insistent pulse and Anne thinks, He will not die. My father will not, will not, will not die.

 

All was well in guileless depths and all was in play, everything in play while distant ocean engines hummed in his ear: her hand, her wrist, her bluest vein to kiss. “I hope this feels as good to your hair as it does my fingertips,” and he slowly pulled her long, dark hair through his fingers like a comb, stopping at a tangle, smoothing, straightening, over and over until her hair felt like cool lakewater in his hands.

 

So far from here, so very far away, a floor of sand and overhead the sun sways in its regular ways and all is well now, hush now, close your eyes. I hope this feels, I hope this feel like cool water: the smell of the lake in her hair, the smell of her in the lake, her kisses to steal and steal again until she is charmed by his theft. Sun-painted throats turning into each other, craning to tilt their mouths at such an angle that each is consumed and spit out with each breath and the smell of her breath, the breath of the lake in his nose: moist, dark, siren-song. Their sun-painted throats to kiss and all is well now, all is well in his guileless depth touching her sun-painted throat, the floor of sand and this antiseptic bed at the same time, without time, both present and all was well for him, black curtains pulled back for all to see.

 

Who binds up the sun at night? Who uncloaks its light? What virtue the moon?

 

The cold woke them, but where their bodies touched it was warm, heated by each other as if facing a fire and all that looked away cooled and stilled and dried, but where they held onto each other, the fire, the fire, the fire of another’s willingness to be held, to hold, the willingness was all, was all, was all to him. “We should go,” he whispered in her ear and he watched her shoulder stipple in the cool, cool early evening breeze. “Not yet,” she

whispered back, “Once we stand up this will be over and I don’t want this to be over.” And he kissed her eyes and felt her melt into him by just a further degree, a further shore and he could feel her still even absent the skin that once held her sun-painted, willing and his. His until they stood and all was in play, everything in play and he could feel her hand on his face: sand grit and soft in the blue light of the moon. Moon-painted now, moon-lit as if from within. I remember, I remember, I remember, I remember…

 

“Dad? Can you hear me? Dad, It’s Anne.”

 

Annihilation gusting nearer, but hush now, close your eyes now, all is well with wondrous deeds and accomplishings: a record of a summons not refused. Here, here, here he lived, here he died and here born again in tide and after tide of nameless names and places, each believing in his importance, signifying his importance with wondrous deeds and accomplishings, but hush now, close your eyes now, all is well.

 

Daniel stands, bending to offer Aislinn his hand and he brushes sand from her shoulders and smoothing, smoothing, he sweeps cascades of sand from her back, down her back, across her skinny, flat bottom, down her legs and he can feel the muscles in her legs tighten and shift when he stops brushing and can only kneed the muscles of her calf, her thigh and he kisses those muscles, sand and dust on his lips and he cannot stop. He kisses the length of her leg, kisses her hip, can smell her sex and kisses her there, pressing hard, releasing more of her into his senses and she places a hand on his head as he kneels in the sand, “Slow down. We have time. Slow down. Take me home,” and he closed his eyes and drank her in and tried to dream of ways to be her, in her skin, to know what she knew but could only kiss the flat of her stomach with sand-coated lips and dreamed he could know what she knew and be in control of what un-moored him. She un-moored him and he was glad it was so. This was not forgotten like some unrecorded storm, but stormed inside him still: her hand on his head, the sand on his lips, her words: “We have time,” and a-bed and upturned, black curtains of flesh pulled back in grotesqueries of lace-burned skins, he recalls her hand on his head, the tenderness there, her patience, her

willingness, her forgiveness of his need, her lie, her lie, her lie about time and he can smell her a-new in tide after tide of voiceless desire. Wasn’t it this moment, out of all possible others, out of larger others, out of all possible others that came to him on the floor of the warehouse, a truss, a wooden arc fallen, in coal red embers branding him in its primal physics – fire seeking new fuel – and calmed his fear of… not dying, he wasn’t afraid of death, but of leaving them. As if without him they could not find their way and on the floor, the weight of the wood, the depth of the heat, he thought for the first time that maybe his death was their way, that dying would free them and give them, give them, give them… and he felt her hand on his head. We have time. We have time. We have time.

 

What is the chiefest deed that’s asked of us? No more questions now.

 

Daniel walked into fires and one day did not walk out. It is the way of all firemen, fire-walkers, fire-eaters: not water, not air, not earth but fire-born, fire-nursed, fire-run, fire-hindered, fire-blest. It was in how one used it, how one approached it, how one imagined it and it was so.

 

Who can tell what took place? Things impalpable swarmed. Who can tell how they were formed?

 

Marry me, and the words were hardly out of his mouth when she sat up, as if struck and he could see he’d gone too far. Marry me was in his throat, on his mind, as if that act could give him what he’d desired. There was no more to give. She’d already given him everything, but he didn’t know and so he said, Marry me, and she sat up from their bed as if struck. The curve of her back silenced him: bones as buttons, the flare of her hips, the small flat indentation of her tailbone, the downy hairs there and he slid his arm around her waist, holding the further hip in his hand and kissed his way up her spine, pressing his fingers into the meager plushness of her waist, kissing each vertebrae, and pulling her back down to his arms and he could feel her unhappiness in her resistance and tried to kiss it away when Anne stirred in her basinet next to their bed: Sing hush a-bye loo lo loo o lam. Sing hush a-bye loo lo loo. And he kissed her while she cooed to their baby, while she cooed, and he kissed her while she cooed.

 

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis.

Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.

 

Nothing denied, held back, a throttle stuck open, he kissed her while she cooed.

 

Who binds up the sun at night? Who uncloaks its light?

 

Anne, gowned, gloved, masked refused to bear the sight of her father’s fire-branded body, and instead would look only at his face. How different from hers. She held nothing of her father in her looks. It was her mother that molded her: a long, thin face, a high-bridged nose and pale, pale skin, her veins always visible where the skin pulled tightest over her bones. She looked like Aislinn, but lived like Daniel. How could it not be so? How could it not be so for it was he who raised her, he who combed her hair, he who read to her, he who tended her fevers, he who bandaged her losses? It must have killed him to look at her – so like her mother physically – and yet he never said.

 

Anne placed that thought there because it fit her story of her father and her mother.

 

Oh, Lord heap mysteries upon us, but entwine our work with laughter low.

 

It’s Anne, Dad. I’m here, Dad. Dad, I’m here,” and she refused to look anywhere but at the beloved face.

 

He was the holy life, complete unto itself as all fathers are to all daughters. Anne could not say how it was for sons. Daniel, Daniel, Daniel all that ever was, sacred in her sight, his unarmored skin blistered away in tongues of fire revealing only deeper layers of what could only be his soul. Blistered away in tongues of fire as the Sacred Heart is aflame. The Sacred Heart, The Sacred Face, his secret heart and his willingness to suffer a daughter who looked like the one he loved. The one who was gone, gone, gone for so long: Aislinn. His great love. His great, abiding love. His Sacred One: gone, gone, gone and never gone.

 

Anne refused to look anywhere, but at his unburned face.

 

What is the chiefest deed that’s asked of us?

 

And Daniel knew he was dying – the absence of pain, the absence, the absence of fear, the fear he learned raising Anne alone, the fear that followed him into every fire since Aislinn left. These are not for the living he thought. Not for the living and yet I persist, and he opened his eyes to see if he could still see, or if all that was allotted to him now were his dreams. Anne, her hand, plastic-gloved, sterile, hovered below his blackburned hand as if she was only awaiting permission to hold it – all of his fingers spent in the heat’s fury – refused to look anywhere but at the unburned, beloved face and saw her father open his eyes, saw him swimming up to meet her eyes, swimming up out of the darkening pool, saw him open his eyes and heard him whisper: Anne? Aislinn? She could not tell. She did not care. Her father lived and that was all. That was all.

 

She slipped her hand from under the sad, charred stump of what now had to be imagined as a hand, and touched his face where the fire had left him be. “I am here. I am here. I am here. I am here,” she whispered.

 

“I am here,” she whispered, “with Anne.” Daniel crept into their bedroom, the floorboards creaking like an aged ship at dock. Aislinn, long Aislinn, long-boned, long-haired, stretched out on the bed, her right arm tucked behind her head, her left hand lightly stroking the sleeping Anne. She drew her forefinger to her lips and hushed him before he could speak. Daniel smiled. The apartment was hot and the fan overhead turned slowly, slowly turning the air and he eased himself onto their bed, tipping and rolling it to accommodate his weight. Anne stirred and fussed and Aislinn shushed her, “Hush now. Hush now. Hush.” She flashed Daniel a cross smile and he smiled back, shrugging his shoulders. “Hush, baby. I am here. I am here.” He stilled his everpresent desire to touch and hold his Aislinn and instead lay and watched them coo and sleep, but could still it for no more than a few moments and Daniel lifted Anne from the bed and placed her in her crib, the sheets cool and she never slid from her sleep.  Aislinn lay on the bed and stretched her arms over her head, her joints popping, a sigh on her lips. Daniel watched his daughter sleep in the half-light of a street lamp pushing past the blinds and through the edges of the curtains for just a moment more. Then he lay down beside Aislinn and whispered as he kissed her, “I am here, baby. I am here.” And she laughed and he could feel her opening up, taking him in, accepting him one more time and he sang in his chains.

 

Unbidden universe, what summons us, awakening, unbidden in its midst?

 

We attend such transitions with senses so ablaze as to block out all information save the one great thing in front of us: birth or death and we are dumb to speak of their sameness. Atoms arranged and rearranged and always the same number only different shapes and what is the difference except to those who love a particular arrangement of those atoms? Caramelized flesh was no more or less important to the universe than the sticky, milk-wax vernix of a newborn. Both were equal in the sightless sight of God. Dear only in particulars. Dear only to those who touched or were touched, skin to skin, by such equals – their private history of touch a tattoo of memory as unique as the whorls and ridges of their thumbs and fingers. Daniel was just another dying man, one of three hundred thousand to die that day, one of two hundred and eight who die each minute of every day. He was as anonymous as the next. The universe could not bend to notice, for what was there to notice? A life, a single life ending? Show me something worth seeing and I will look, I will attend, but a single life, a single man burned pink and black in baroque crenellations of fire-sealed flesh, and I will tell you of a hundred thousand hundred thousand others who burned as he did, who suffered as he did, who disappeared into the endless fires and were never missed or mourned. Why one and not all? If one then all. Can such a thing be imagined? Can you mourn them all, or must you turn away? Do not lecture me about the value of one man. He has no value. Simply fuel for the eternal fire stoked by three hundred thousand deaths a day, two hundred and eight every minute.

 

Anne sat by her father’s side in defiance of this forced anonymity and insisted this one life be saved. This one life was worth saving for no reason other than he belonged to her and she to him. “I am here, Dad. I’m here. I’m here.”

 

“I am here with Anne,” and Daniel stood in the doorway to their small bedroom, the tall windows facing the street blocked with blinds and curtains and still the orange glow of the street lamps leaked in and around the edges and filled the room with the urban half-light that always took his breath away. On winter nights it spoke of warmth and comfort to him. On summer nights like this it him asked to stay awake, to stay with her, to stay, to stay, to stay. “I’m here with Anne,” and he could still smell the smoke from the yesterday’s fire on his clothes, the firehouse a vault of such smells and everything and everyone took on the residue of each fire fought and won. He used to apologize to Aislinn about the smoke smell, but she only kissed him harder, bit him to taste more of it. In the creeping half-light he saw Aislinn, long Aislinn, stretched out, her arm tucked under her head, her loose t-shirt, his t-shirt, pulled up, revealing her breasts, his baby, Baby Boo, sweet Anne, asleep with her mouth open around one of her mother’s nipples, a drop of milk on the tip, and Daniel could imagine no greater joy than to be of these people, these strangers who chose to be his family.

 

The fan overhead turned slowly and slowly turned the air.

 

Why this existence? Why exist? Nature’s laws defy all change. Courses are run and all must die. Why this existence and not another, why?

About the author…

Mark Child lives in Woodstock, IL with his four kids and a smelly old dog.  He earned his MFA in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago.  He maintains a blog at <www.unfuckyourlife.com> while continuing to track down the stories that occur to him at inopportune times.

 

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