Strange Highways

saw her father glaring down at her, dark irregular splotches of perspiration discoloring the underarms of his faded blue work coveralls, dirt smeared on his chin and caked to the beard on his left cheek.
     "Throwing stones," she answered quietly.
     "At the fish?"
     "Oh, no, sir. Just throwing stones."
     "Do we remember who was the victim of stone throwing?" He smiled a patronizing smile.
     "Saint Stephen," she answered.
     "Very good." The smile faded. "Supper's ready."

     She sat ramrod stiff in the old maroon easy chair, looking attentive as her father read to them from the ancient family Bible that was bound in black leather, all scuffed and with several torn pages. Her mother sat next to her father on the dark blue corduroy couch, hands folded in her lap, an isn't-it-wonderful-what-God-has-given-us smile painted on her plain but pretty face.
     "Suffer the little children to come to me, and forbid them not; for such is the kingdom of God." Her father closed the book with a gentle slap that seemed to leap into the stale air and hang there, holding up a thick curtain of silence. No one spoke for several minutes. Then: "What chapter of what book did we just read, Marnie?"
     "Saint Mark, chapter ten," she said dutifully.
     "Fine," he said. Turning to his wife, whose smile had changed to a we've-done-what-a-Christian-family-should-do expression, he said, "Mary, how about coffee for us and a glass of milk for Marnie?"
     "Right," said her mother, getting up and pacing into the kitchen.
     Her father sat there, examining the inside covers of the old holy book, running his fingers along the cracks in the yellow paper, scrutinizing the ghostly stains embedded forever in the title page where some great-uncle had accidentally spilled wine a million-billion years ago.
     "Father," she said tentatively.
     He looked up from the book, not smiling, not frowning.
     "What about the kittens?"
     "What about them?" he countered.
     "Will God take them again this year?"
     The half-smile that had crept onto his face evaporated into the thick air of the living room. "Perhaps," was all that he said.
     "He can't," she almost sobbed.
     "Are you saying what God can and cannot do, young lady?"
     "No, sir."
     "God can do anything."
     "Yes, sir." She fidgeted in her chair, pushing herself deeper into its rough, worn folds. "But why would he want my kittens again? Why always mine?"
     "I've had quite enough of this, Marnie. Now be quiet."
     "But why mine?" she persisted.
     He stood suddenly, crossed to the chair, and slapped her delicate face. A thin trickle of blood slipped from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with the palm of her hand.
     "You must not doubt God's motives!" her father insisted. "You are far too young to doubt." The saliva glistened on his lips. He grabbed her by the arm and brought her to her feet. "Now you get up those stairs and into bed."
     She didn't argue. On the way to the staircase, she wiped away the re-forming stream of blood. She walked slowly up the steps, allowing her hand to run along the smooth, polished wood railing.
     "Here's the milk," she heard her mother saying below.
     "We won't be needing it," her father answered curtly.
     In her room, she lay in the semidarkness that came when the full moon shone through her window, its orange-yellow light glinting from a row of religious plaques that lined one wall. In her parents' room, her mother was cooing to the twins, changing their diapers. "God's little angels," she heard her mother say. Her father was tickling them, and she could hear the "angels" chuckling - a deep gurgle that rippled from down in their fat throats.
     Neither her father nor her mother came to say good night. She was being punished.

     Marnie was sitting in the barn, petting one of the gray kittens, postponing an errand her mother had sent her on ten minutes earlier. The rich smell of dry, golden hay filled the air. Straw covered the floor and crackled underfoot. In the far end of the building, the cows were lowing to each other - only two of them, whose legs had been sliced by barbed wire and who were being made to convalesce. The kitten mewed and pawed the air below her chin.
     "Where's Marnie?" her father's voice boomed