Benjamin and the Family Gathering
Ben was six years old when he heard his mother weeping, snarling, and, to his amazement, she seemed to be gnashing her teeth. He sneaked downstairs and heard the screams. All his brothers were either in their rooms or out of the house. Why hadn’t they heard this or done anything? The door from which the screams were coming was definitely his parents’ room. His older brother Reuben grabbed his shoulder and clasped a huge, callused hand around his mouth, preventing him from crying out.
“You don’t want to see this,” Reuben said, his tone scaring Ben even more than the screams coming from that doorway. “You don’t want that scene in your head, little man. There are some things I think I need to protect you against, and this is one of them.”
Ben said nothing but allowed himself to be carried away to his room, where he shared a bed with one brother, and the room held five others—all brothers. Since Ben was the youngest, and Joseph was the next youngest, they had to have seven in their room while the other bedroom held the older five boys. Even though he was too young to really understand it at the time, it dawned on him in retrospect just how unsanitary the place he lived in really was. It wasn’t like hoarders you see on the television shows nowadays, but it had a certain amount of filth that Ben recollected only years later.
The screams abruptly stopped, and at that point, two of his older brothers scrambled into the bedroom and led those boys outdoors.
The place they lived was miles from anywhere, as he liked to say years later, so the older brothers dragged them all into the wooded area and waited. The bugs were nasty, and the humidity was unusually oppressive that evening, but the older brothers warned them sternly to shut their mouths if they wanted to be safe.
Later, Ben heard his older brothers snapping at each other—something he never learned to delete from his memory. It was an undeniable feeling of tenseness that moved him to his core, like a drug. Of course, he never knew what drugs were at that age, but he witnessed his older brothers drinking and smoking something that smelled particularly icky compared to the cigarettes his father and mother smoked. The words he heard he knew he should never say in school, but the anger was palpable, and if he could have done something about it, he would have.
When he asked when they could go back to the house, his oldest brothers presented sleeping bags and bug spray. Ben wasn’t too sure about this, but he figured his brothers knew what was best and that they would take care of him better than Mom and Dad could.
When he woke up in the cold and dew of that October morning, he turned his aching neck to his left. What was his mother doing there, lying next to them? She wasn’t there last night. Hadn’t his brothers seen her? Ben tried to move but was paralyzed, and he could feel his eyes brimming with tears. A shadow loomed over him, and Ben saw Reuben had finally woken up. Why couldn’t he take his eyes off his mother, who was still lying face down on the ground? He stuck out a tiny finger, poking his mother. She did not move. After several sob-filled cries of “Mom” repeated over and over, Reuben quickly scooped up his little brother, tears filling his eyes as well.
Reuben woke up the rest of the brothers and shooed them toward the rusty Ford Econoline. Ben could hardly believe they were leaving his mother face down in the cold grass.
For a couple of days, Ben could never be too certain about how long it was, as the days seemed to melt into each other like snow and rain on a November day. They stayed in the small town in Montana, where most people just minded their own business and never talked to each other too much. Reuben had been asked by the local sheriff what brought them into town, and Ben remembered Reuben telling him that their father had been drinking a lot lately and they thought it would be better if they just stayed in town for a bit.
“I can go out and check on him and your ma,” he drawled in a western accent that seemed more natural to Wyoming than Montana.
“You know how he gets,” Reuben told him. “Mean as a rattlesnake and stupid as a thirteen-year-old retard in a kindergarten class.”
“You sure about that?” the sheriff replied, sounding quite concerned.
“Yeah,” Reuben said, his eyes only shifting slightly. “Ma can handle herself when the old man starts drinking. Always has.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Just let me know if I can help, and I’ll throw the old buzzard in jail a few days to dry him out.”
“We’d appreciate that, and if we need it, we’ll give you a call.”
Ben took a step forward and was about to blurt out what he’d seen, but Simeon gripped his arm painfully and pulled him back. Ben shut up.
When they finally returned to the house a week later, their mother was no longer lying in the same spot, and even though Ben had an inkling of what happened—as he had seen a few pets of his die or be killed, particularly by his father when he was on a raging drunk or acting wild when he took or smoked some kind of stinky powder—he couldn’t quite understand that his mother was never coming back, and that they didn’t have some kind of funeral disturbed his young mind, though he had no idea how to articulate that feeling to his brothers.
For the next three weeks, just up until Thanksgiving, Ben kept away from his father and was thankful his brothers were there to feed him and to keep the ranch running.
Ben knew his father had guns and wondered why his brothers never took them. Maybe he would find a gun and use it. He knew where they were kept. He knew where Dad kept the key to the cabinet. That’s what he’d do, just like the comic book heroes his brother Joseph read to him all the time. He pictured his father on one of his drug-fueled rampages and Ben squeezing the trigger, the gun knocking him to the floor as the bullet tore a huge hole in the man.
When he considered all the crazy things his father had done, Ben realized the rampages he could handle; it was the quiet, evil things his father would do that scared him the most.
It was a day before Thanksgiving, and he was watching his father in the kitchen, all by himself, while all the older sons were out doing their chores and taking care of animals, hunting turkey or something so that they’d have fresh meat to eat. Father stood at the oaken countertop, holding a knife—one of those Ben had seen his father and his brothers use to cut meat when they butchered a steer or skinned a deer or something like that. His father started talking to himself. At first, the words were not discernible, but then Ben began to recognize what he was saying.
“Our father,” his father said in a strange monotone, eyes bloodshot and glazed, nose dripping, and spit drooling out of his mouth. “Which art in heaven.” And then he would laugh. “Yeah! In heaven! Too far away from here. Too bad Mamie wasn’t there with you!”
Mamie, Ben knew, was his mother’s name.
“By the way,” he slurred, “I didn’t actually mean for that to happen to her. Just got a little out of hand and wished I could take that one back.” And then he laughed uncontrollably for a few seconds, coughing wildly, spitting viciously right on the floor.
Ben wanted to run, but found he could only watch in great horror and unquenchable fascination.
His father spun around once, fell to the floor, got up again, still holding the knife. For a second, it looked like his father was glaring straight into Ben’s little brown eyes, and just before Ben was going to avert his gaze, his father blinked and seemed as though he were looking beyond or even through him.
“Hallowed by thy name,” he said and looked at his pinky finger on his left hand. “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And at the word heaven, he laughed so maniacally that Ben started to walk away, but still he just stared as though he were powerless to pull himself away from this horrible scene. For a moment, he was certain his father was going to collapse from laughing so hard.
“Give us this day our daily bread! Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors! Come on, you know that can’t ever happen!” At that, he stabbed the knife into the oaken countertop only fractions of an inch from that pinky finger.
Ben screamed silently, not even letting out a breath, though he badly wanted to screech aloud and make the whole countryside hear him. Why didn’t his brothers come home? They had to see this, but Ben could not move, and he could not say a word, and he wondered if he was even breathing. He felt the pulse of his heart inside his head like a rock drummer.
“Ahh!” His father screamed quietly but with such effort that Ben thought his father’s eyes would either pop out or start bleeding. His father finally pried the knife from the counter but sent it flying across the kitchen in the effort, hitting pots and pans, making a terrible racket. Still, Ben did not move.
“And lead us not into temptation!” His father laughed again. “So, does that mean you will lead us into temptation? C’est la vie? Why would you lead your own people into temptation? Wait, here’s the answer. But deliver us from evil! Yeah! Lead us into temptation so you can deliver us from evil.”
Father stood quiet for a moment, staring at his hand, then back to the knife, then back to his hand, wiggling his pinky with the left hand. Then he placed that hand flat on the countertop.
“Oh God,” his father said more as a desperate, sick prayer than an oath. And he laughed for a moment, then scowled for a moment, and then he seemed to cry for a moment. “Deliver us from evil? What about delivering me from myself? How do you do that? Tell me. TELL ME! Is that your ploy, oh God? You lead me into temptation so you can deliver us from evil—be the knight in shining armor? What kind of spiritual scam is that? You get the glory, but you’re the one who got us into the trouble in the first place! What a crock! Is that what you did to the Pharaoh? Didn’t you harden his heart? Again, what kind of God does that kind of thing? You make the Pharaoh harden his heart and then you get a chance to show off your powers? That’s pretty cheap if you ask me. If the Pharaoh had relented, you wouldn’t have gotten to show off and kill all those people like you seemed to really want to do when you were in the Old Testament, huh?
“You get all ticked off at people and instead of finding a way to change them, to make them see your goodness, you commit genocide by wiping out the entire planet except for a dysfunctional family who spawned some nasty people themselves, like Lot.”
Then he peered at his hand again and slammed the point into the wood so close to that pinky, Ben swore he could see his father make just a little slice into the flesh, enough to make some red dribble.
“And the Catholics just end it there, don’t they? Deliver us from evil. The Lutherans and other crazy Protestants who actually recite this little prayer end it with ‘For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever, amen.’ What a cute little ending; I like the Catholic version myself.”
He pulled the knife out of the wood again and lifted it to his face. He touched the point to his cheek, and it looked like Father pressed hard enough for the point to draw a little blood. It was then Ben realized the sight of blood did not bother him at all; in fact, just the opposite—it fascinated him, even excited him.
As he watched, mesmerized, hypnotized, unable to withdraw, barely able to breathe, barely able to move, his father began mumbling to himself.
Ben thought about demons and wondered if Father hadn’t been listening to one as he mumbled unintelligibly. As his father’s voice increased in volume, his diction became clearer and quite understandable.
“I’m gonna cut my pinky off, and I’m gonna wear it round my neck. I’m gonna cut my pinky off, and I’m gonna take a bite. I’m gonna cut my pinky off, and I’m gonna wear it round my neck. I’m gonna cut my pinky off just for spite.”
In one swift motion, Ben’s father brought the knife down on that pinky, and Ben watched in horror and fascination while his father sliced it off and placed the pinky in his mouth. The man bit down hard, trying to tear off a piece of flesh. Ben stared at the blood slowly flowing from that finger and from that now pinky-less hand. What was his father doing? What made him do what he was doing? The man’s eyes were still glazed over, and when his father began vomiting, Ben’s six-year-old brain had had enough, so he left.
Later that evening, when his brothers finally came home from the fields, Ben looked for Reuben because he really wanted to tell him what he had seen their father do.
Ben thought about running the incident by Dan and Asher, but he didn’t want to tell them because there was something weird about them that Ben was a little suspicious of. He loved all his brothers, but there were those he observed taking after their father a little too much. They too would drink that stinky liquid and even take some of the powdery stuff Father put in his nose. They would sometimes put the powder in a glass thing, take a match to it, and smoke it like it was a pipe, and then they would act like they were completely out of their minds, and they would swear and yell and threaten to go looking for their father. No, Dan and Asher were not the right brothers to tell.
“What happened in here?” Ben heard Reuben yell as he finally got into the kitchen. “Ben? You shouldn’t be seeing this.”
“But Reuben,” Ben said quietly. “I saw it.”
“What do you mean, you saw it?”
“I saw what happened,” Ben said, wondering if he was smiling slightly. He forced himself to stop.
Reuben looked at him, the expression on his face showing disgust layered with concern. Ben couldn’t be sure about what he was concerned about, but he figured it had something to do with him, and maybe something else.
“You need to tell me exactly what you saw,” Reuben said. “Don’t leave anything out.”
Ben told him the complete story, leaving nothing out.
“I think you need to make sure that you hide yourself tonight so Father can’t find you,” Reuben said. When these words finally registered in Ben’s mind, he felt genuine fear that morphed into terror. “I want you to find a spot where you think Father can’t see or find you. Just promise me you’ll do that tonight.”
Ben nodded, and then Reuben turned to the sink and began cleaning the countertop where the blood was globules of flesh. As Ben moved to obey his brother’s instructions, he heard Reuben yelling for his other brothers, and then there was general murmur and muttering in the kitchen while Ben slowly walked up the stairs to find a place Reuben would find acceptable.
The clamor got very muffled when he found a large and mostly unused closet in a room that was really part of the attic. Ben sat there in the dim light of the room and noticed there were enough cracks in the attic room so he could see below in both his brothers’ rooms.
As the evening descended, Ben had been in the closet for nearly five hours, and it dawned on him he wasn’t at all bothered by the close quarters. It was very dark, but much warmer than he expected because there weren’t any heat ducts in this part of the house, and he was surprised there were so many blankets, pillows, and old clothes.
That’s when he realized this space must have belonged to his mother. There were many items of clothing Ben seemed to instinctively remember from when he was a toddler, and because he remembered what his mother had looked like the last time he saw her, he felt a tear coming. He almost started crying out loud, but then he remembered that Reuben did not want Father to find him. So, he allowed tears to come down, a mourning tribute for his mother, a memorial he would carry with him for a long time, particularly if the demons came and the voices would speak to him and make some rather incredible suggestions as they were doing right now.
“Watch,” the voice said. “Watch carefully.”
It never seemed to get completely dark in the attic room, but that was because there was always some light leaking from the rooms below. Ben listened with rapt interest to the conversation his brothers were having below.
“Father cut his own finger off right in front of Ben,” Reuben said.
The brothers swore and huffed, muttering words mostly unintelligible to Ben in his isolation in the attic.
“It looks like the freak even took a bite out of his own finger,” Reuben said.
“Should we do something about this?” Dan asked.
“I don’t know,” Reuben said. “The drugs and booze are really taking over his whole life.”
“Why didn’t we tell the sheriff about what happened to Ma?” Asher said. “We should have said something.”
“Yeah,” Reuben said. “And then have Ben and Joseph have to find a foster family to live with? We’d never see them or be able to protect them. You want that?”
“You know what Father has done to Joseph,” Ben heard one of his brothers say, but because it was said so quietly, he didn’t know which brother said it. “You know that sick man has done terrible things, and you know what it’s done to Joseph.”
Ben took a look into the room where Joseph, the brother closest in age to him, slept. Ben wondered what they were talking about when they said terrible things were happening to Joseph. He had never seen anything bad happen to Joseph, but he recalled how quiet Joseph became after he spent time with Father. He turned his attention to his big brothers’ room again. He heard Reuben talking quietly but not loud enough for Ben to understand.
“Where’s Ben, Reuben?” Asher asked.
“I told him to find a place to hide, and I didn’t ask him where he was going to go, and I’m glad I didn’t because that way we can’t tell Father where he is when he asks.”
“Why are you worried about Father asking where he is?” Asher countered.
“Just a feeling,” Reuben said. “Just a cold, dark feeling. Did you hear what he did? I mean, have you seen him at all today?”
“I have not seen him,” Issachar said, “but I haven’t really been looking for him.”
During their long conversation, Ben fell asleep. When he woke with a start, he would have been at a loss to explain why he woke up when he did. It seemed like the silence got very loud. The floors below him were dark, darker than it seemed possible, but yet he saw furtive shadows crawling below.
There was a hulking figure in the dark, a shadow, a demon or a ghost. Ben thought the being wore very dark clothing and seemed to be able to float. When he saw the flash of the metal of a blade, Ben could also see the loosely fitted bandage wrapped around the hand of the demon that must have been his father.
There was just enough light for Ben to see that knife slice the throat of one of his brothers. There was no sound, but Ben found himself upset in two ways: one was that he was hyper-frightened about his brother probably losing his life, but he was upset that he couldn’t see the blood. The knife came out four more times in his older brothers’ room, and each time, there was no sound. And Ben became acutely aware of why Reuben had wanted him to hide. Something told him he should cry out because suddenly he saw the flash of the knife in his other brother’s room.
Ben made a slight guttural noise that made the demon look up and all around, and for a moment, Ben thought he saw the glowing eyes of a demon inside his father. He really wanted to take those eyes out of that head because they scared him, but he also desired them and wanted them in his own head.
When one of the brothers woke and screamed, the demon took out a gun and began firing at the beds of his brothers. The only one he didn’t shoot was Joseph.
In that dim light, he saw his father move on top of Joseph amidst the carnage. Ben heard one of the brothers moving, gurgling, like he wanted to escape. The boy tried to stand up, though it was difficult to tell in the dim light. But a flash from the gun and the loudness of the shot removed all the possibilities of that brother escaping.
Ben was torn between moving and running away as fast as he could and sitting there, knowing what was happening below would have happened to him except for the grace of his oldest brother’s warning. He thought briefly of Joseph and what was happening to him because of Father, but he decided to go down to their room and check out the sight himself. When he saw his oldest brother’s room, he stood there in the dim light, barely able to see, but realized five of his eleven brothers looked exactly like his mother did when he saw her on the ground next to his sleeping bag.
He moved to each brother, one by one, put his hands on their wounds, feeling the slick and still-warm blood, looking into the eyes that stared into nothingness. He started crying silently, trying to wish them alive, but failing to do so, he got so angry he could almost taste the rage. He realized he had bitten his tongue and was tasting his own blood.
He slowly opened the door of the room he was in and moved clandestinely to the next door where his other brothers had been sleeping. For a moment, he watched his father and wondered if Joseph was in the same condition as the other brothers, but he didn’t wait to find out because he saw the gun on the floor next to the bed where he normally would have slept.
As his father grunted and swerved on top of Joseph, Ben did a quick and quiet check of the other brothers. For a moment, Ben lost himself as the warmth of their blood covered his left hand. He blinked several times to bring himself back and then picked up the gun.
The weapon felt heavy in his hand, but he’d watched his brothers shoot pistols and rifles many times. Reuben even taught Ben how to squeeze the trigger carefully. Because of this schooling, he knew exactly what to do with it. He took aim at his father carefully and shot one time. The gun nearly jerked out of his hand, but the bullet must have met its mark because his father howled in agony and then rolled off Joseph. Ben, with tears in his eyes and whimpering softly, approached his closest brother.
“Joseph, Joseph,” he muttered.
When Ben looked into those eyes, he knew his brother would never be able to say a thing to him again. He didn’t know why, but Ben moved the blanket over his brother and then he turned to look at his father.
“What just happened?” Father said, looking around him.
Ben made sure the gun was still in his hand, then he walked to the doorway and flicked the switch. The lights burned into the room like a dreadful flame, graphically showing the gore-covered room. Ben both clenched his eyes but quickly opened them, watching his father.
“What’s been happening in this place?” Father said, dazed, as though realizing for the first time what he had done.
“I think you know what’s been happening,” Ben said in his six-year-old voice that seemed centuries old now. “Take a look around you and tell me what you see, Father.”
“I can’t move because you shot me, you little….” Father began.
“Don’t,” Ben said, holding the gun close to his father’s head.
“You need to pay for what you have done, and I am going to make you pay for what you have done,” he said. He grinned a little to himself because he remembered hearing those words from some movie or TV show or it may have even been something Reuben had said. “You killed all my brothers and you killed my mommy.”
“Does it count if you can’t remember?” Father said, the pinky finger hanging around his neck by a thin gold chain that must have belonged to Ben’s mother. “I don’t even remember what happened to your mother.”
“Liar,” Ben said. “This is going to take a few moments, but you need to know I can’t let you keep doing this. If I hadn’t shot you, I think you would be coming after me to kill me like you did with my brothers. It means that I have to kill you, Father. I don’t want to kill you, but I can’t let you get away with what you have done.”
“If you kill me, the sheriff will find you and you will be sent away somewhere…”
Ben shot his father again, and his father howled in agony. Ben didn’t know if the knee was a good place to shoot someone or not, but he figured it was as good as any.
“They’ll take you….”
“You need to shut up now,” Ben said, his six-year-old voice sounding particularly ominous. How could a small, high-pitched voice like his contain such a horrifying sound? Ben knew it was working because his father, though in extreme agony, turned his head away from his son.
“You need to tell me that you know what you did to your family,” Ben said.
“I blacked out,” Father slobbered.
“What were you doing to Joseph?” Ben said, and he began to cry quietly again.
“What I should have done to you a long time ago!” his father said, trying to move but unable to because of his wounded knee and the bullet that shattered his elbow. “You won’t get away with this because you can be blamed! You can be blamed!”
“I need you to be quiet now,” Ben said so calmly that his father froze in place. He glared at Ben, wide-eyed, shaking. “I’m going to put this gun in your mouth, and I am going to squeeze the trigger like Reuben taught me. I’m pretty sure that will work. I think I can make it look like you killed yourself after I take care of you. I wish you had not left Mommy on the ground like that. I can’t seem to get it out of my mind.”
As he said this, he put the gun in his father’s mouth.
His father grunted, but Ben could understand none of it. Ben jerked the gun upward and downward, and when Father’s teeth crunched, instead of cringing at the sound, he grinned.
“That must hurt a lot,” Ben said, frowning quickly.
He shoved the gun deep into his father’s throat and giggled slightly at his father’s discomfort. His father emitted more gurgles of pain, and tears cascaded out of his eyes. Ben wasn’t certain whether it was from the gunshots to the elbow and knee, the teeth, or from the fear that he was going to die shortly.
“I wanted to see what it would be like to take your life but make you wait for a long time, because you need to understand what you have done. I know you’re not sorry, and you should be sorry. If you die now, you won’t have a chance to pray to Jesus and get forgiven and then go to heaven.”
Ben pulled the gun out of his father’s mouth but kept it trained on the older man.
“What are you talking about?” his father mumbled, blood dripping out of his mouth.
“I remember in Sunday school hearing that Jesus will forgive you right at the end of your life even if you’re really a bad person. If you accepted Jesus into your heart, then you could still go to heaven.”
“What are you….”
“Why don’t you start asking Jesus to come into your heart?” Ben asked seriously.
“What are you talking about?” his father said, barely understandable.
“I mean right now! Ask Jesus to forgive you. Say sorry, and Jesus won’t let you go to hell.”
“But I don’t believe in that stuff,” he said. “But come to think of it, it may not be a bad thing to do just in case.”
Ben shoved the gun back into his father’s mouth. The boy’s eyes grew wide and even twinkled for a moment.
“Just begin now, please,” Ben said, holding the gun further in his father’s throat.
“Dear Jesus….”
And Ben pulled the trigger.
Later that day, Ben dialed 911, as he had been taught by Reuben, telling the dispatcher something terrible had happened at the house and that Father had gotten crazy and was doing terrible things.
The look on the sheriff’s face when he arrived at the house registered such shock and awe that he was speechless for a very long time. So long, in fact, Ben wasn’t sure the sheriff could talk anymore. He took the sheriff by the hand to both rooms and showed him Father with the gun in his hand and the bloody carnage all around him.
Someone Ben did not recognize took him away quickly, carrying him to the front seat of a car. It was very odd that after a few months of moving from foster home to foster home, Ben thought about what his father had said about people taking him away and living in foster houses. But Ben decided that, no matter how crazy things got, he would remain calm and serene. Yet, every moment of his life, every time he moved, he pictured that moment when he squeezed the trigger and watched his father die. He was certain he could hear Father say the name of Jesus just before he died, and that always made Ben feel better.
Two years later, Ben was moved far away to a different state, Minnesota, where he lived with a kind family. However, he knew the family was never comfortable while he was around. And that was all right with him.
About the Author
Mark’s work has appeared in Down in the Dirt, Brief Wilderness, Rundelania!, Straylight and The Main Street Rag. He earned his first payment for a story in 2008 thanks to The Tabard Inn.