Excerpt from "Scars on the Face of God" by C.G. Bauer

April 1909, Schuetten, PA

We heel-toed our way through the kitchen, all moon shadowy dark this early in the morning, me first, Heinie following real close, past the hearth and the three stoves and around the two butcher block islands, over to a covered bin. I held the lid open so Heinie could pull out two empty potato sacks. Sister Irene would be up at six to make the oatmeal so we had an hour.

Heinie was a skinny kid who said he was a full eight years old but I was sure he weren't a speck over seven. The nuns picked him up last year the day after my ninth birthday, after someone seen him wandering the bungalows eating from garbage pails in the middle of the night. His mother was dead on account of she froze stiff in a snowdrift outside the hotel taproom. His father was a tannery worker except Heinie said his mom never knew which one. I cut him in on a good deal only because he had the guts to lie to me about his age.

"Them dogs been crapping two full days since we last been out," I said, my voice low. "Let's go make us some money."

I tugged at the knob of the heavy back door with both hands till it pulled open. In seeped a door full of night mist that settled thick and heavy on us, tickling my nose with the smell of drying creek mud and plants what rotted in it. We looked through the screen door into the grayness, all mixed in with dark swirls left over from a rain we got overnight.

"Looks creepy outside," Heinie whispered, his eyes big as all-day suckers.

"Night fog," I said. "Came up from the river. That's all it is."

"Yeah, but how do we tell the difference if there's ghosts out there?"

I unhooked the screen door latch and told him to quit bellyaching then I pulled him outside by the shoulder when he didn't move. We stayed put under the overhang of the back porch, potato sacks in our hands, me listening to crickets and frogs, him listening to who knows what. A full moon played peek-a-boo behind the clouds until it poked itself through and lit up the back yard. The shadowy mist what surrounded the orphanage was now crawling down the slope. If there were any ghosts mixed in there with it they were heading back to the river.

I hopped down the steps, reached my hand under the porch floorboards and pulled out two wooden spoons from a ledge. Time to get to work.

First stop was the Schuetten Hotel, opposite side of the road from the orphanage and down a bit, around a bend lined with maple trees. Pale yellow shingles, brown trim and four rounded corners what looked like small grain silos with windows. Real pretty in the daytime but now it was all tan and gray, the only light on it coming from the moon. Out front of the hotel the gray had a shine to it, sparkled up some since this was where the town cobblestones began. Sister Irene said folks often traded in their country smarts for city smarts once they stepped off the dirt and onto the brick, and weren't it too bad their common sense didn't always tag along for the trip.

A puddle of muddy rainwater made trickle-drip noises as it ran through a black iron sewer grate set flat in the cobblestone out front of the hotel. Heinie and me stepped slow around the grate, kept our eyes on the empty spaces between the bars, spaces I knew were wide enough for cats and other small critters to fit through if they got pushed hard enough 'cause I seen it done. We tiptoed past, listening for noises different than the trickle-drips, heard nothing else from underneath. We quickened up again till we were on hotel property.

(Read the rest of this excerpt at: http://cgbauer.net/excerpt-scars-on-the-face-of-god/.)