Life on the Preservation, US Edition by Jack Skillingstead Page A

before The Judgment. She followed Kylie to the top of the basement stairs and said, “Wait just a minute, please.”
    Billy had been living in the basement for three days. It was almost a week ago that Father Jim had hit him in the head with a baseball bat. Kylie had stayed with him at his house for two days, and Billy never once got off the sofa or ate anything. Every time he tried to sit up dizziness overcame him, and with no food in his stomach he couldn’t afford to do any more retching. Frightened, Kylie had gone to her mother and told her what happened. Maggie had been a nurse in the days before The Judgment. She came, looked at him, and pronounced him, “Seriously concussed, maybe dead serious.” Kylie refused to leave him alone, and Maggie wouldn’t allow Kylie to stay in the house with him, now that he was incapacitated. The two of them moved him across town, rolling him in big wheelbarrow. People came out to watch. Some of them looked like they had wanted to throw rocks, just like Ray Preston. It was better at Kylie’s mother’s house. Maggie had superior pain pills for Billy. She had OxyContin.
    Maggie said, “I heard a shot.”
    Kylie didn’t say anything.
    “What happened?” Maggie said. Yellow discharge had accumulated in the corners of her eyes, a progressive sign of the illness. It hurt Kylie to look at her mother. “You might as well tell me,” Maggie said. “I can smell that little gun in your pocket, so I know you fired it.”
    Kylie shrugged. “Ray Preston threw a rock at me, so I scared him off is all.”
    “Dear God,” Maggie said.
    “He’s stupid.”
    “Kylie.”
    “Well, he is.”
    “He has a good core, I’m sure. I remember before the–”
    “His core’s not good . He tried to hit me with a rock . Father Jim put him up to it. Father Jim’s going around telling everybody he’s some kind of prophet, just because he got shot in the head and didn’t die.”
    Maggie pressed her lips together and blew air out her nose, a trick she used when she didn’t want to speak in anger.
    “He’s not a prophet, Mom.”
    “No, he’s just lucky,” Maggie said. “But Kylie, God does favor the lucky. Gunshot wounds are tricky. A boy came into the ER one time, his friend had shot him in the back of the head. An accident. God knows how you accidentally shoot your friend in the head. Doctor couldn’t remove the bullet. It was lodged deep in the brain. Didn’t know that at the time, of course. Just this boy acting perfectly normal except guess what? He’s got a hole in the back of his head, and all of a sudden he’s left handed when all his life he had been right handed. Plus he said he could see light around people, like auras? That might have been a miracle wound or dumb luck, who knows? I’d guess dumb luck. Now Father Jim, that little bullet never penetrated his skull. It’s either stuck in the bone or under the skin someplace, guaranteed. Most people who survive headshots, that’s the case. That little hole in his forehead should have healed over by now. My guess is he gouges at it with something to keep it looking fresh. Starting to look infected , you ask me. None of that matters to the people in this town, though. It’s a miracle of God, and that’s that. Because they need it to be one.”
    “I have to see Billy now,” Kylie said.
    He was lying on the day bed in the basement room Maggie had formerly used for entertaining. It was the same bed where Father Jim had thrown her after he razor-nicked his cock. Kylie’s mother, of course, knew nothing of that incident.
    “I’m back,” Kylie said to Billy. “Are you awake?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Will light hurt your eyes?”
    “No, it’s okay.”
    She quickly lit a few homemade candles, and the room became cozy, almost, except the floor was cold linoleum.
    “I brought some books.”
    “Okay.”
    “Want me to read one to you?”
    “Sure.” Billy tented his fingers delicately over his eyes.
    “It sucks God made you all