To Us May Grace Be Given

5.

The next day I made my own count of the cartridges, and whatever else we could use to protect ourselves: knives, cast-iron pots, shovels and loys and Da's two big sickles. Mam killed another chicken and bled it out. It was a waste, but if she knew what I had done with the devil it would be the whip for me. She had it out now, coiled on the ground by her feet as she wrung out the chicken.

Beside it lay the revolver. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I didn't like it.

"Addy," she called.

I went over and reached for the chicken but she handed me the revolver, then the bowl of blood.

"I need your help," she said. "We don't have time for her games and I can't have her sicking up again." She took up the whip and gave it a good crack. When it struck the ground it made places on my body hurt. "Keep the gun behind your back so she can't see it. That's it. Now when we go in there, you just get that blood down her throat. I'll do the rest. If she breaks loose, shoot her dead."

She waited until I nodded, then led the way to the barn, her skirts tossing the dust one way and another. As we swung the door open a buzzard rose off the horse at the noise and Mam threw a rock at it with a cry. I hated when she was like this, raging and stamping her feet and with her shoulders pulled up. Before Da died she never got angry, she had been kind and gentle, always laughing and singing. She was still kind sometimes, but more and more she was this Mam, almost like she wanted to be angry. I'm doing this for you, she always told me. I'm doing this so you won't be afraid of anything. Fear is death out here, Addy. Never forget that.

We went to the stall and I was afraid the devil would give us away, but she only looked from Mam to me and back again. Mam held up the whip and she flinched.

"You need to eat," Mam said in a loud voice. "Now you're going to drink this and you're going to like it, understand?"

"I'm doing my best," the devil said. "There are other kinds of blood that suit me better, as well you know."

"Don't give me that. Blood is blood." Mam nodded at me. "Addy, help her drink."

"Like meat is meat?" The devil's eyebrows raised. "I don't see you two dining on rats, or that horseflesh rotting out there. No, it's all chickens and sweet little goats for you."

I stopped halfway towards her, swallowing. Mam uncoiled the whip. "Addy, give her the bowl."

As I got close the devil looked up at me and mouthed bargain, and then she took a sip from the bowl. She gagged at once, pushing me away as she strained to work it down, just as I had struggled to swallow the stew Mam made out of Isaac. Her face became damp and she made a choking noise.

"More," Mam said. "She needs to drink it all."

I started to angle the bowl and the devil shook her head. "Wait," she gasped. "Wait, I—" She broke off, gagging.

"For God's sake," Mam yelled. She cracked the whip and I cried out as it whistled past me and struck the devil in the face. "Addy, get it down her throat!"

But I couldn't move for looking. The whip had opened a cut on the devil's face, a big ugly gash that was running dark blood. Only as I watched the blood became sticky and the edges puffed up, then moved together. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks, I blinked and blinked, but every time I blinked the cut looked better. As if it was healing right in front of me.

"Mam, what's she doing?" I whispered.

"I told you, Addy," she said, and there was something heavy in her voice. "She's a child of the serpent, a devil made flesh. You can't kill 'em like you would a man. Right now the only things keeping her from killing us are the blade in her backside and her hunger." She pointed with the whip. "Now get that god-damned chicken blood down her throat."