“Clockface Jesus,” she says.
I glance up. “What?”
“That knot on the wall,” she says, pointing with her fork. “It looks like Clockface Jesus.”
I pause, leaning back. “You go to church growing up?”
She shrugs. “Yeah, everybody did.”
“What church?”
“Baptist,” she says. “Leland’s family is Catholic. It was more of a scandal in the holler that I got pregnant by a Catholic than by a crime lord.”
I laugh, and she smiles. “Funny how that is. And we all end up in the same place in the end,” I say.
“Where’s that?”
“On a cooling board.”
She sighs like she’s thinking about it. “You’re pessimistic. You don’t think there’s anything after?”
Into my head comes all the times I sat in church beside Brothers Boyd and wished I felt the way he did. That was one of the fundamental differences between us. He had hope, whereas I had no concept of something beyond.
I look at her, Della Caudill.
Maybe it’s foolish, but I see something to hope for now. Up ahead, like a light at the end of a dark tunnel.
Her lips part, tongue darting out to wet them.
“You really don’t think there’s anything?” she asks.
“Honestly?”
She nods.
“I think if there is hell, it’s the here and now.”
The house goes silent. She sniffs, staring into my bowl.
“You really think it’s all bad?” she says finally. “I’m not religious, but there’s got to be something good somewhere, don’t you think?”
I remember the night I saw her for the first time in the stockyard. How she blinded me, made me hopeful. That felt like heaven to me, but I can’t say that aloud.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice so low, it cracks.
“Well, I think there are good parts in life,” she whispers.
“Your kid. That’s a good part, I guess.”
Her mouth twitches into a smile, a little bittersweet. “Yeah, he is.”
“We’re animals, Della,” I say. “People aren’t good. We’re conscious, evil animals. We’re not above anything. We’re below it—hell, animals wouldn’t do the shit we do to each other. That’s the only thing that makes any sense to me, after the things I’ve seen.”
Her eyes are huge. I wish I hadn’t said all that aloud.
She deserves to have hope.
“You’re really hurt,” she says finally, voice soft.
