Jacob's Claim

By H. Mel Malton

PROLOGUE

David chose several pieces of scrap styrofoam insulation from under the cottage and hauled them one-by-one up to the deck. The styrofoam slabs were blinding white, reflecting the summer sun with such intensity that David seemed to be lit from below.

Margie offered to help.

"No, thank-you," he said. "I must do this all by myself because it has to be holy." Margie hated it when he talked like that, as if she weren't really there, as if she didn't count.

He worked bare-chested, his thin, pale shoulders turning rapidly pink, then red. He usually allowed Margie to put lotion on his back before he went outside, but this time he slapped her away.

He used a mat-knife to cut several roundish pieces, each smaller than the last so that they stacked up like twin wedding cakes.

"Be careful with that knife, darling," their mother said. She was sitting in a shady corner on the deck, writing and sipping at a pink gin.

When the knife slipped, David smiled and held his dripping finger out over his work, making patterns.

"You've got blood all over your project," Margie said.

"It's okay," he said, still smiling. "Blood blesses it." He glued each styrofoam piece in place with his father's thick, yellow glue, which came out of a gun, like military toothpaste. The trigger was stiff and Margie said "Let me do it."

David sighed and put the gun down. "Margie," he said, "I'm doing this for you. Just let me get on with it."

"You're too weird," Margie said and went fishing.

Margie's father said once that she could talk fish right onto the hook. She wasn't sure how he knew this, because she fished in the normal way when anyone was watching. When she was alone, though, out by the drowned tree where the water was see-through clear right to the bottom, she liked to lie belly-down on the floating dock and put her mouth to the skin of the water. She'd loop the fishing line over one ear and talk softly to the exciting shadows six feet below.

"Choose," she'd whisper to them. "Choose which one." The fish would hover in a circle around her baited hook, their tails waving. "It has to be one of you," Margie would say.

It was never the biggest fish that darted forward. The big ones knew better. It was always a juvenile, an adolescent, mesmerized by the writhing agony of her hooked worm. She always felt a little sorry as she hauled the fish up into the light, stared for a moment into its moist, golden eyes, then clubbed it to death with the butt of her oar.

"How come you mash their heads in?" David asked once.

"They swallow the hook," Margie said. But really it was so they wouldn't grow up to be a nuisance.

When the Jesus boots were finished they stood eighteen inches high, the uppermost pieces foot-sized, with straps made from scrap leather. They were two-feet wide at the base. David tried them out on the wooden deck and waddled forward, his thin legs spread as if he were walking in show shoes. He was small for his age - looked more like eight than ten. He looked like he had two pure-white Mayan pyramids strapped to his feet.

"Tomorrow," David announced, "I will walk on water."

Dawn came with rain. It whispered on the roof and stole past the window next to Margie's bed. When she awoke, the pillow was damp with the scent of pine-needles and fish. She dressed quietly and gathered her rod, bucket and the single oar, stained at the tip with blood. David stopped her at the door, gazing up at her with a pain on his face she couldn't understand.

"Please don't fish today," he said.

"Why not?"

"If you kill anything before I get there, the water will be angry and I'll sink."

"That's nuts, David. You'll sink because your Jesus boots are a dumb idea, that's all."

"Please. I need you to make a crown for me."

"What kind of crown?"

"Leaves. Special ones. The kind that don't have holes in them. Perfect ones. And wintergreen berries. For me to wear."

Margie put down her fishing gear. They were whispering because the grown ups were still asleep. The rain fell softly in a fine mist, which swirled in past the glass doors, twining around their feet like a cold cat left out all night.

"Where do you get your ideas from, Davy?"

"The Bible, mostly. And dreams from my head," he said. "Will you help?"

"I thought you wanted to do it alone. So it would be holy," Margie said.

"You have to make the crown," David said. "I had a dream that said you had to. Please, Margie."

Finding perfect leaves was hard. Most of them had some flaw, some imperfection - a hole where a bug had gnawed a home or a place where the sun had been too hot and had burned its skin. Margie wove the leaves into a crown for her brother, intent on her work, knowing that it was important. Maybe there was one leaf she put in that wasn't perfect, because she was in a hurry to finish it in time. Maybe that was the reason. The wintergreen berries were perfect, though. Moist and blood-red and utterly unblemished.

The rain was gone by mid-day. Margie's older brother Simon was out somewhere in the canoe, but Mother and Father came down to watch, bringing their drinks with them. They were laughing at nothing, laughing as David stood unmoving at the end of the dock with his Jesus boots placed ceremoniously, dead straight, pointing towards the opposite shore. He wore a pair of white bathing trunks.

Margie walked towards him as if she were in the communion line, waiting for her turn to receive the body of Christ. She held the crown in her hands and walked slowly in small, even steps. When she placed the leaf crown on David's head, he muttered a few words, which she couldn't quite hear.

"Wait!" Mother said. "Wait. Those things have just got to be christened." She tottered forward and sloshed a little of her drink on the wedding-cake piles of glued-together styrofoam. "To miracles!" Her voice bounced across the bay and returned, distorted and oddly pained, like the cry of an injured loon. The waves of sound continued back and forth across the water for a long time. David waited patiently until it was quiet again.

He strapped the Jesus boots on and lowered them into the water. His lips moved as he focused his gaze and stepped out. Margie would swear he walked. For a moment, she saw him walk on water, just like he said he would, before the styrofoam broke under his weight and crashed sideways in a fluttering of white pieces.

Mother and Father collapsed into giggles and Margie burst into tears. Not that she had expected anything but failure, but she had truly wanted it to work. She had wanted David to save her. She had almost believed that he could. After a while, the laughter stopped and Margie's tears subsided. David had still not surfaced.

Margie took a running dive, landed with a stinging belly-flop and when her head broke above the water, she heard Mother shout "somebody do something!" She headed for the white, foot-shaped pieces that floated out by the fishing-place. She opened her eyes under water. Her brother hung there, looking at nothing. There were tiny bubbles coming out of his mouth.

David's crown washed up on the beach a few days later. Margie tore it apart, desperately searching for that one unclean, goddamned Judas leaf.

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