Smite the Wicked

The lady at the rest home said I should write this down, on account of it’s gettin’ hard to recall everything, exactly, and she thought maybe someday I’d want to remember it, so here goes…

My name is Angel Wheeling, and the county lady says when this happened, I was fourteen years old. I guess I have to trust her, ‘cause I never knew how to reckon my age until lately.

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Daddy always said God would smite the wicked. I guess I just never thought I was one of them, and I sure never figured Daddy was God.

When I was a young girl, I heard someone say they were smitten with a fella, and I thought she meant that god was punishing her with him. I didn’t understand why she’d be so happy about it. When Daddy smote me, I wasn’t happy – I was scared, and it hurt. He would say “If I have to beat the devil out of you, girl, I’ll do it! You will be a good Christian if it kills you!” And he’d cut a rod, ‘cause sparin’ the rod spoilt the child, and that was the thing Daddy said almost as much as “God shall smite the wicked!”

I think this time, he maybe smited too much, because now here I am, all drifty and loose in the between places, and there’s me down there all quiet and still, and bein’ split like that doesn’t set right. I can’t seem to move anything, but sometimes I can feel the me down there, and it ain’t nice. I like this betweeny place better, since it’s soft and comfortable, once you get used to bein’ nowheres at all. Once, I saw a program on the TV at Mercy Peel’s house that told about some people who died and come back, talkin’ about light and music and such – there’s none of that, here, jus’ me and me, so I guess I am smote and not dead, after all. And that means Daddy is God, doesn’t it? And I am wicked.

I wasn’t tryin’ to be wicked, God. I was tryin’ to be a good girl, but it ain’t always certain what’s the right thing. Daddy said I should bend myself to his will, and to the will of God, and I guess they must be the same thing, anyway. I tried. When the lady from the county asked me about my learnin’, I said my letters proper, and numbers, and all the things Daddy told me they liked to hear, and I never said nothin’ ‘bout the extra schoolin’ he did, ‘cause he warned me they wouldn’t unnerstand it, and would lead me away down the path of temptation and wickedness, and then God would smite me, ‘cause I must have wanted to go.

So I said what he told me, God, what you wanted, and tried to bend myself to Daddy’s will and be a good girl, but I guess I was just born stained with wickedness, because it seems no matter what I did, Daddy would be angry and have to beat the devil out of me. I keep trying to think what I did this time to make You so mad, God, but I can’t recollect and it hardly seems right, that I should be punished an not have a chance to be sorry. I am sorry, anyway, even if I don’t know why. If I made Daddy and You mad, I am purely contrite, and won’t never do it again, if only I can remember what “it” is.

I can sometimes hear people talking in the place where I am, down below. I don’t like what they are saying about Daddy. It’s wrong, it’s a sin to question a father. He said so, and You did, too, in the Book. I know, ‘cause Mrs. Kelly from the next hill over learned me my letters good, and I can say out almost all of the verses Daddy sets me, even the long ones, without hardly missing any of the words. Honor thy father and mother, it said, only I got no mama ‘cause Daddy said she was full of sinful pride and God smote her, too, took her into the river and drownded her for her wickedness. Bobby Hetfield told me Daddy pushed her in, but I know it was God, punishing her, because she was prideful, and pride goeth before a fall. Bobby Hetfield said mama was pretty, and Daddy couldn’t abide other men lookin’ at her all lustful, and so he kilt her, but Bobby Hetfield is a liar and cheats at cards, which is the Devil’s sport, anyway, so I didn’t pay him no mind. I told Daddy about what Bobby said, and he beat me but good for bein’ near the boy, and I didn’t go to town for two whole weeks ’cause my leg wouldn’t walk right, until Daddy reminded me sloth was a sin, too, and I needed to do my duty by him without complaint, like a good Christian girl, so I had to get up and go anyway, ‘cause we needed food. That was only a few months ago, and now I remember a little closer to when I ended up here.

Are you leadin’ me to my salvation, God, lettin’ me learn my sins so I can repent them and come home to you? Only, will I go to Perdition for thinkin’ that if you are Daddy, maybe I don’t want to remember after all, ‘cause I’d rather stay here? I tried to submit to him, God, to you, but I couldn’t always. Sometimes I’d cry ‘cause he hurt me somethin’ fierce, and he’d get mad at me and say You would be angry ‘cause I wasn’t honorin’ him proper, and I’d have to kneel and pray until the willfulness was gone out of me and I could obey again, which took a powerful long time, sometimes.

I remember. Daddy wanted me to submit myself to him again, and I was trying to roll out a crust, but I did what he wanted, because I am a good girl and he is Your servant, and I want to serve You, too. I had been sick with an ague or something, ‘cause nothin’ I ate seemed to set right, and he was mad ‘cause he said I was wastin’ your good victuals all the time. That was a few weeks ago, and then he got real quiet for a few days, and then he told me to come and stand before him, because I had to be judged. I was scared, ‘cause I didn’t know why he was judgin’ me, since I hadn’t left home for a long while, and that was just to go to the store for more flour and some eggs, since the hens stopped layin’, and I didn’t hardly talk to anybody when I went, and I couldn’t hardly sin with Daddy always watching me, or sleepin’ right there where I couldn’t even go make water without him knowin’, and anyway I tried real hard to be a good girl. Daddy said I was with child, and I must have been whoring myself out, just like my sinful, prideful mama who couldn’t say no to a man, and now I had got myself with child and if I didn’t tell him who the daddy was, I’d know what God’s wrath was. I didn’t know what to say, since I ain’t never been with a man but Daddy, and that ain’t hardly wrong, since he told me hisself that it was what Your Book says I should do, and how can bein’ with a man get me with child, anyway, when it’s God’s will who has babies, and I tried to tell him, but he just got madder an’ madder, until he told me to shut up. He said he though I must have let that Bobby Hetfield get at me, and I was a lying, sinful bitch like my mama, givin’ away what was his by right, and he went and cut a rod, and I thought “This can’t be right, because I never let Bobby near me after he said that about mama, and anyway, how could just bein’ near him get me with child, and why is Daddy so mad at me?”

And Daddy said he would beat the Devil out of me, that God smites the wicked, and he wouldn’t spare the rod even though now I was spoiled for usin’, and after a little while it just sort of stopped hurtin’, and then after a little while more, I just went away from myself, and didn’t see me again until just now, when I noticed I was here and there, kind of floaty and drifting in this nowhere place, and there in the bed all tucked up, too. And I’m not dead, because I’d be with You, God, wouldn’t I? Or in Perdition where I belong, ‘cause I must have sinned somethin’ powerful big to need a beatin’ like that, and now the people who come into the room where I’m tucked up are sayin’ that Daddy’s going to be judged for somethin’, and how could he sin if he’s God? There’s one woman, she talks to me like she knows I’m floatin’ nearby, and she keeps sayin’ I’m safe, now, and no one will touch me in a bad way again, but I don’t know what she means. What bad way? ‘Cause even though Daddy thought I let that Bobby Hetfield get at me, I never did. I am a good girl, and I wouldn’t let anyone touch me in a sinful way, and only ever let Daddy take what was his by divine right, so I don’t rightly know what to think, now. Still, I didn’t always like what Daddy did, and I know that’s wrong, and another sin, but I won’t lie about it.

I guess I’ll just keep to myself until someone comes and tells me what’s what. That lady come in again a few minutes ago and told me that Daddy was goin’ to jail, maybe for always, so I guess he’s not God, after all, ‘cause You can’t go to jail, can You? And maybe he was wrong about how he could use me, since she seems real upset about that, and she even cried a little when no one else was in the room, and said it was a real shame people lived so ignorant even in these modern times. And there was a police man, too, and she told him about some kind of abuse and how I was with child until Daddy beat the devil out of me. Well, she didn’t say the devil, but he must have thought that baby was the devil, ‘cause he sure beat it out of me, and I feel kind of sad about that, ‘cause maybe I wanted to be a mama and have someone to love and raise up right, like Daddy raised me, and then I could show him I am a good girl, after all. Now Daddy’s going to jail just for being a Daddy, and I guess I am going to end up down the road to Perdition after all, ‘cause I am getting close to me again, and kind of feel like I am being pulled that way like a trout on a hook, and I don’t much feel like fightin’ it, anyway, ‘cause the floaty place feels nice, but it’s lonely with only me there, and if I come back to myself then I will have to talk to the police and the county people will take me away, and that will be the end of me being a good girl, since I am sure to fall into their sinful, wicked ways, since I am weak and wicked already.

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I found out, it was that Bobby Hetfield who found me all broke up on Daddy’s porch, when he come to give Daddy a new axe handle his own Daddy carved from a lightnin’ struck hickory, ‘cause everyone knows that’s the best kind to have. That Bobby, he thought Daddy had a deer carcass, first, all skint on the porch, until he got closer and saw the dress I was wearin, and he high tailed it all the way to the store in town where he told Mr. Fitch he thought Daddy had done murdered me for sure, and a whole bunch of them men come up and found me there, not quite dead but as near as makes no never mind and Daddy laid out drunk on his bed, still holdin’ the rod he cut, and they got Daddy all tied up and called the sheriff, and the ambulance and the county lady come and took me away, and I ‘ventually woke up, and now here I am, and that Bobby Hetfield, he even come calling once and said he didn’t hardly mind if I was a little broke up, I should mend fine, and maybe he’d come callin’ again if I don’t mind, and my new Daddy would let him, so maybe things will be fine after all.

And maybe since it was Daddy who smote me, and not God, maybe I’m not wicked after all. Anyway, Daddy did say that God would smite the wicked, and here I am, mending up, even if it has been almost a year since it all happened. The county lady says Daddy can’t ever come near me again, and I am living with a nice family where their Daddy doesn’t ever make me submit, ‘cause he says that’s wrong, and I’m still a child, even if back home I am almost an old maid. He was real angry when I tried to sleep on the floor next to his bed, in case he wanted me in the night, and he told the county lady that he wished he could have just ten minutes with Daddy to teach him a lesson. I think he wanted to do some smiting of his own. And the preacher at the church I go to now said that God won’t smite me for talkin’ to the county lady and the judge about Daddy, since I never did tell a lie but only the truth, and even if I helped put Daddy away, I couldn’t have lied, ‘cause that would have been a sin, and I really am a good girl, after all.

I guess that’s everything, as good as I can recollect, and if I think of more, I’ll put it down, ‘cause the county lady says I should, so they can use it to help Daddy get justice, and I don’t want to keep him from that, as even the Book says our God is a just God, and no one should meddle with that justice, should they?