the annunciation of appalachia mary

by Allister Nelson

God comes hungry to your table. The crops have rotted. Tins of bean, ash in the cornbread. He asks you for food.

“Mary, only what you can spare.”

He comes to talk with you often, driving an old Harley, ramping in with the rains.

It is storm season, and He always washes the dirt away to the roots.

“I did what I could, God.”

“I did what I could.”

To love God, is self-harm, a Big Thing encased in the cocoon of your thighs.

Afterwards, you wonder at the clear skies, when they had been thunder at His climax.

He smokes Chestertons, and reads Woolf.

“My favorite writer, you know. Second only to you, Mary.”

“I can’t hold a candle to Virginia, God.”

He comes more frequently, when the winter draws, and your camellias bloom.

Snow, in the yard, on your old shit-colored truck.

His Harley crowds the garage.

“Will you be my Bride, Mary?”

“I’m not going to be a pregnant teen like my own, ma, God. Wait a few years.”

He does.

When you are twenty-one, God takes you on His usual Harley ride. The storm chases you both.

He brings you up to a cloud, soft on your belly. He lays you down, spends His seed on your feet.

Bathes you in a River. He says it is sacred.

You are not much of one to marvel at sacred things. All the fruits and bread He offers, the wine. It tastes barren.

So you stick to the depot produce when your victory garden fails. The Boys are fighting a War, over There. Joseph left and died in some goddamn field in France.

God always tells you He can bring Joseph back from the Dead, if you want.

“Why disrupt Azrael. He’s a kind boy.”

“Mary, you are too humble. I’d move Heaven and Earth for you. Why won’t you be my helpmate, my Rib?”

“I want to work as a riveter, honey.”

So you do. Rosie. Wings on biplanes. Then, you start flying cargo for the Air Force, supplies Stateside for the Boys. Gabriel begs to be copilot, in his soldier uniform, and plays at

War.

“You’re twenty-three, Mary. I can give you a Kingdom of Eternity,” God whispers between your neck and shoulder, as you picnic in the Shenandoah FDR’s boys built. Chestnuts. You remember cracking the meat open in your youth for Christmas, when the woods thinned of deer, and your no-good Papa would show up Christmas Eve, boozy from the mines, with a too-small buck.

Mama cooked it up anyway, they quarrelled, and you prayed

The Rosary.

“I just want my garden to grow, God. You need to be gentler with your Harley. It rains here, so much, even for the Smokies.”

The War ends. They find Joseph’s remains. God helps you bury him in a plot, in your front yard.

It’s the finality, of Joseph – your middle school sweetheart – just bones now.

“I’ll be yours, God. But you need a factory job. The Ford factory, or the mines. Make a proper Man of yourself.”

So now God comes home, smothered in coal, smelling of salt pork, and your belly rounds with the Moon. Son of Man, Child of Mary.

Heir of the Heavens.

Mortal-born.

When you give birth, you do a home ritual. You read about it in a baby book. Lailah, the angel of childbirth, delivers.

You hold Joshua Bethel in your hands – first of his name, your own nom de plume his last, because God is just God, and Yeshua was too old-fashioned.

You kiss God’s brow through your sweat, held on the pounded dirt and hay floor in His strong arms, as Joshua latches.

“What We made is Good, honey,” you say.

God and the angels, they sing.

The town loves Joshua. God gentles his rains, turns in the Harley for a dented, used Chevrolet flatbed. You have a Good Life.

And no one dies on a Cross, and you have a daughter. Eva.

God gives it all up in the end, for you. Puts Lucifer in charge. That First Sun repented over the years, Malik Taws you read in a worn dime store copy of National Geographic, a Yazidi girl with dirt cheeks like you and your own green eyes glimmering back from the cover.

She, an Atlantic and then some away, looks like she knows God, knows rains, too.

Good, that. God, Mary, Joshua, Eva.

Normalcy, and He sings you to sleep each night

In His Arms.

And by now, you smoke Virginia Slims, and you die

cherished

In His Arms.

Joseph greets you at the gate. God stays on Earth to care for the grandchildren.

You get a New Beginning, in

the End.

“Welcome home, my Merry Little Mary,” Joseph winks, and you kiss for the first time in eighty years. Your real true love.

And that, well?

That’s all you wanted:

God’s blessing, Joseph’s kisses for all eternity.

Your children Ascend, after they die. God comes Home.

And Gabriel still flies copilot as you shepherd souls in your plane to Gan Eden.

And all is blooming in your Heavenly Garden.

And oh, the rains?

They come.

Photo of Allister Nelson

BIO: Allister Nelson (she/her) is a multiple Pushcart Prize-nominated author whose work has appeared in The British Fantasy Society, Apex Magazine, ILLUMEN, Eternal Haunted Summer, Renewable Energy World, Frontiers in Health Communication, The National Science Foundation, Luna Station Quarterly, Prismatica Press, Coffin Bell, FunDead Publications, and many other venues. Her work has been translated internationally into Polish and Spanish, curated by Kevin J. Anderson, nominated for Poland's top fantasy prize, and appeared in anthologies alongside Graham Masterston, CMarie Fuhrman, Bill Willingham, Jane Yolen, Sebastien de Castell, and Alan Dean Foster.