Children of Paradise: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

not to tap or touch if she wants to remain in the reverend’s good books. An assistant appears and hands Trina a wooden flute. Joyce nudges her.
    —What do you say?
    —Thank you very much.
    Trina turns the flute over in her hands and hugs it. She wants to try out a few notes, but she thinks better of it because her lips are covered in dark lipstick. Her mother leads her out of the house and Trina hangs on to the flute with one hand and her mother’s hand with the other. They head from the main house to the infirmary with the nurse and the doctor, who says he wants to make sure the child is all right.
    Very few people remain in the wide clearing between the preacher’s house and Adam’s cage. Most have dissolved into the surrounding buildings, back to the kitchen and food hall, the bakery, the schoolhouse, the laundry building, the separate dormitories for adults and children, and the mill with its adjoining incinerator and chimney stack, or else farther out to the fields and outlying pig farm. The preacher retreats from the cage, dips his hands into a basket, and returns to the side of the cage with his hands full of fruit and bread. An assistant carries a bucket of water. Father unlocks the cage. Adam thinks fleetingly that he should dash for the exit and keep running until he is far from this place of sticks and whip and back with his mother among the trees, vines, and chatter of birds, in her embrace before she was knocked to the ground by a nail hole he tested with his finger hoping to wake her moments before a net pinned him down and he was dragged away from her. But his Father cares for him in a way that makes him want to stay in his cage and hope for more gifts of fruit and back scratches, maybe even for his master to return the life robbed from his mother’s body. As his master steps into the cage, Adam holds out his hands and lowers his head to make it clear that all he wants are the treats and nothing else. Nothing bad will happen, no grabbing, no sudden movement, not even a growl. And it works. The preacher hands treats to Adam and pours a bucket into his drinking bowl, and all seems to return to the harmony of before, except Adam remains confined to his cage. No mother for him but Father. Many people visit his cage, and he turns his back, and a friendly hand that is not his master’s scratches him.
    The children exercise the utmost care in the vicinity of Adam’s cage. They still stone him if an adult is not nearby to catch them. Not Trina. She walks close by if her mother is not looking, almost within an arm’s length. She asks Ryan and Rose not to pelt Adam. Ryan wants to know why her change of heart. Trina says being locked in a cage is bad enough for the beast. When she looks at Adam, she says she feels lucky to be alive. Adam could have crushed her after she fainted in his arms and the men continued to lash him. But he did not.
    —He killed you.
    —No, Rose. All Adam did was squeeze me a bit too hard.
    —Ryan wants to know if Father really did that to you, Trina.
    —Yes. We must never speak about it. I am a ghost.
    Trina holds up her arms and shakes her hands:
    —Boo!
    Ryan and Rose recoil from her and laugh, hands over mouths to stifle the sound, eyes roving left and right for any prefect or adult sure to object to such levity.
    Adam likes to watch the children at work or running and screaming with delight. Their missiles puzzle him. He never meant to hurt the girl. He feels sorry that he grabbed her and held her too tight and she ended up in a box on display in front of his cage, lying as still as his mother when she fell with a finger-sized hole in her head.

THREE
    T he preacher hands Joyce an envelope containing a list of names of government officials with sums beside their names.
    —Go to the capital and disperse these funds for me.
    —Yes, Father.
    —Come straight back. I need Trina and you here.
    —Of course, Father.
    Joyce and Trina almost break into a run to get to the landing