Aminadab (excerpt)

Cam Terwilliger


Our hovel is on the outskirts of the village not far over the bridge from the magistrate’s chamber. It sits at the edge of the forest and, to be honest, me calling it a hovel is doing it a big favor. It’s a hump of sod, really. Inside though, Delia keeps it neat—mostly by putting the kids and goats outdoors every morning where the nine of them run around in the mud of the front yard, the kids trying to catch the birds and shouting and pulling one another by the hair. They’re all girls except for Christopher, who they pretend is their husband. Usually he plays along. He grunts and hoots and wriggles the little vestigial tail that pokes from the bottom of the burlap sack that he wears. That’s how you know he enjoys it.

When I get home from the laboratory, I always smell like sulfur or ground up newt eyes or whatever Master was working on that day. The kids ask what they’re smelling. “I don’t know,” I say. “C’mon, Dad!” they scream. “Okay, fine,” I say. Today, I tell them about the crate of rare chilés Master had delivered from the swamps of Borneo, and when they ask me what Borneo is, I make something up about an island where men have tattooed faces and everyone owns five or six boxes of black shrunken heads. They laugh and say, “What will Master come up with next?” I tell them nobody knows. Then their mother tells them to get outside and piss before they go to bed. While they’re out doing their business, I hear Christopher snarling and barking at the moon: grah, grah, grahlooo! It’s a sound like a crocodile eating a wolf.

Meanwhile, Delia takes the kettle from the fire, ladling soup for my bowl.

“So what happened?” she asks.

I lift the bowl to drink, then pull a strand of goat meat from my beard. I roll it into a ball, then eat it.

“He killed her,” I say.

 

[end of excerpt]

You can read the rest of the story in Issue 20.1, Winter & Spring 2008.