Minor Prophets


 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Part I
 
 Baptism 2002
 Chicago, September 2016
 Genesis and Exodus
 On Why We Left
 Chicago, October
 The Bottomless Pit September 2008
 On the Forms He Takes
 Acolytes October 2008
 On When He Comes and Who He Comes To
 Chicago, October
 Apostates 2008
 On His Origins
 Chicago, November
 Damascus 2008
 Chicago, December
 Apocalypse 2009
 On the End of the World that Didn’t Come
 
 
 Part II
 
 Chicago, March
 Lamentations 2013
 On How He Does His Work
 Chicago, April
 Acts 2013
 Rapture 2013
 On Recognizing Him in our Midst
 Chicago, April
 Pentecost
 Benediction
 
 
 Acknowledgments
 Works cited in the novel
 
 
 
 Guide
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 Part I
 Baptism 2002
 Acknowledgments
 Start to Contents
 
 
 
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 Minor Prophets
 Blair Hurley
 
 
 New York, NY
 
 
 Copyright © 2023 by Blair Hurley
 All rights reserved.
 No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:
 Ig PublishingBox 2547New York, NY 10163www.igpub.com
 ISBN: 978-1-63246-150-6 (ebook)
 
 
 To Kamil, for the adventure of a lifetime and to Mallory, for our best adventure
 
 
 
 PART I
 
 
 
 
 Baptism 2002
 
 WHEN NORA IS EIGHT, and they’ve been living in the woods for a year, her father holds out a rifle to her, almost longer than she is tall, and asks if she’s ready. She nods and shoulders the gun. She’s been practicing for months.
 Her mother didn’t want her to go that morning. She said, “It’s not right. Killing things, so young.” But her father replied, “She needs to know how it’s done.”
 A few hours later, her first kill is slung up on a hook in the yard, the porcupine limp and heavy, half as big as herself. She’s never skinned an animal bristling with quills; you could get it so wrong. She hesitates, runs her hand down one of the spines, unsure of how to proceed.
 “Like this.” Her father pulls out a quill with a hard jerk. He shows her the tiny backward-facing barbs along the quill’s length. “They’ll slide into you and not come out,” he says.
 Nora jostles with her twin brother Henry to touch one of the quills, both of them sliding their small hands carefully along the barbs.
 “Like a fish hook,” her father says. “It only goes one way. It worms itself farther in, a millimeter an hour. Like when you think an evil thought. When the devil gets his hooks in you. Once the sin is in you, it only ever goes deeper.”
 A dog on the compound was struck in the face with a porcupine once, and came limping from the woods, whining. It took days for the quills to dry up and fall out. Nora wonders if their tiny spines are still inside the dog somewhere, traveling through its bloodstream, flicking in and out of the red chambers of its heart.
 Her father spins the knife in his hand so that the handle faces her. “Your first kill, you make the first cut,” he says.
 Nora has seen him do it so many times. She’s always hanging around the yard while he chops wood or consults with the other men, talking new irrigation ditches, more root cellars, gasoline storage sheds, gun lockers. She’s watched him slide the knife along the belly of a deer, the care, skill and attention it takes, the importance of saving every usable piece. There’s an elegance in his movements when he does it, a brutal usefulness.
 She hesitates for a moment too long, feeling the responsibility to make good use of the animal life, Henry breathing loudly behind her. “Come on, don’t be such a girl,” her brother says.
 Nora grasps the knife, holds the spiny skin back, and cuts. The guts bulge out warmly from the incision, still so close to being alive. She’s opened the animal’s insides to the cold fall air.
 Her father takes over, enlarging the cut and removing the intestines. He cuts out the bladder, which is full and glowing yellow with the afternoon sun behind it. It looks like