The Place I Belong

by Inez Kelley

  “Maya, I told you.” Noah tugged her light brown curls. “Just like I didn’t have a big boat with a lot of animals, he’s not the Jonah from the Bible story.”

  “No, I’m not. But I was swallowed by a whale once.”

  Jonah pulled his niece onto his knee and told a long winding tale of being swallowed by a huge fish who took him on a deep-sea adventure, complete with pirates and talking dolphins. He gave each character a different voice and the little girl’s eyes gleamed with excitement as he described racing seahorses through Rainbow Coral Pass to escape the wicked Sea Thing.

  He ended his tale with vomiting sounds as he was deposited back on the shores of Lake GimmeGoomee. Maya laughed, a childish tinkling of sound that erased much of his sorrow.

  Noah shook his head. “All right, you’ve had a pretty far-fetched bedtime story. Now inside, lil’ miss, and get your bath.”

  “But the sun hasn’t gone to bed yet.” She pouted prettily and batted her eyes. “Can’t I have just one more swing? Please, Daddy.”

  “Bath. Now.” Noah swatted her lightly on the rump, sending her in the back door, then collapsed into a lawn chair beside Jonah. “It’s always ‘just one more swing, Daddy.’ She’d go all night if I let her.”

  “Doesn’t sound too bad.”

  “You push her for two hours and then tell me that. You’re good with her. You need a couple kids.”

  “No, thank you. That’s one thing I definitely avoid.” Jonah chuckled. “My Mustang’s my baby.”

  “Sweet car.” Noah grinned. “Pricey, too.”

  Jonah motioned to the house. “You’ve done pretty well for yourself.”

  “Can’t complain.” He fiddled with a toy shovel from the porch table. “How ’bout you? You have a house?”

  “I rent. It’s small but all I need. One day I’ll get around to buying a place.”

  Noah frowned. “I figured you’d be settled by now.”

  “I’m as settled as I want to be.”

  “What about her?” Noah motioned with his head toward the window. “You settled on her?”

  The itch returned to his neck. He rubbed at it. “She’s a business associate.”

  “Business.” Amusement lightened Noah’s tone. “Personal business maybe.”

  The itch would not go away. Maybe he had an insect bite or something. “Zury’s the manager of Black Cherry Falls State Park. My company bought the surrounding canyon and is harvesting it. I’ve been assigned as a park liaison, so we’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

  “She stood up to the old man like a tiger. Looked like more than business to me.” Setting the shovel aside, Noah leaned forward, hands loose between his knees. “Can’t tell me there isn’t more there.”

  An uncomfortable weight settled in his belly. Noah was his brother and they had a bond, but he was also as close to a stranger as you could get. A stranger who just happened to share his blood and some of his darkest memories. “No, but we’re not serious. Just having fun, that’s all.”

  “That kind of fun led to Maya. It also made the one that’s coming in January.”

  “Courtney’s pregnant? Congratulations, bro.”

  “Thanks. We haven’t told many people yet, but did tell Mom before she passed.”

  Longing tightened the cords in his neck. “Bet she was happy.”

  “Yeah.” He ran his hands down his legs nervously. “She never forgot you, Jonah. Every year she made a Jell-O cake for your birthday. It always went stale ’cause no one else liked it. Dad used to scream and fuss but Mom... She never missed a year.”

  The phantom sweetness of fruit gelatin, angel food cake and Cool Whip burst onto his tongue and brought a sheen to his vision. For a moment, it was almost real in his mouth. He could see his mother standing in the kitchen doorway, candles blazing on the cake, singing “Happy Birthday.” Sweet Jesus, that cold old lady in the casket had not been his mother. The mother of his memory was full of life, teasing him about getting another year older and another inch taller. The last birthday he’d seen her, he’d scooped her up and spun her like a doll before kissing her cheek.

  Uglier, louder memories forced the scene from his mind and he swallowed the bitter taste of them with a grimace.

  “Looks like you could use a drink.” Noah stood, digging into an ice-filled cooler beside the grill.

  “Yeah, definitely need some Jim Beam. Maybe some Jack Daniels. Hell, they could bring their buddies Jose Cuervo, Johnny Walker and Captain Morgan along as well.”

  “Try their doctor.” Noah handed him a soda. “His name is Pepper.”

  Jonah snorted in irony. “So no alcohol still, huh?”

  “No, sorry.” Noah swigged his own drink, then sat next to him on the step.

  “No booze, no television, no cursing, no doctors, no blue jeans, no secular music, no no no no. You work, you pray, you worship and you die. Sweet Christ on the cross,” he muttered. How in the hell had he lived seventeen years of that kind of hell? Would it have been tolerable if his dad had been the kind of father Noah was?

  “That kind of faith chokes the life out of you eventually.” Noah capped his bottle. “I go to a church that fits me, believe in God, don’t drink or curse. But I’m not like Dad. My God isn’t his, Jonah, or at least his interpretation of God. What he did...sending you away like that was...I could never do that to my kids, ever, no matter what they said or did. He was wrong. You know it. I know it and Mom knew it. She never forgave him for it, either.”

  The spicy soda burned Jonah’s lips but he sipped, trying to force his tongue to work. “She let him do it. I begged her.”

  A hard sigh poured out of his brother, bleeding into the falling dusk. “When she married him, she took his religion as her own and followed it, even when it broke her heart. Don’t hate her for that.”

  “I don’t hate her for that. Despite everything, I still loved her.”

  “But part of you hates her. Why?”

  That point-blank question slammed into his chest like a bullet. It forced emotions he hadn’t examined in years to the surface, and it hurt. The pain rushed out of his mouth. “She was my mother. I came from her and she still chose him over me. That isn’t supposed to happen. Every decent mother I’ve ever met would walk through hell for their kids but she...”

  The first lightning bugs appeared, darting through the grass in tiny yellow-green blips. A smile tickled his lips, thinking of Zury’s tattoo. She fought him so hard on almost everything. He couldn’t imagine her willingly letting her child go without a word. She was willing to face a multimillion dollar company over a picture-perfect view; she’d certainly go to the ends of the earth for someone who shared her blood.

  The sun slowly sank, dipping below the mountain peaks. Sounds of a little girl enjoying her bath filled the quiet with laughter and silly songs. Such innocent noise as a backdrop for the turmoil roiling in his gut made him nauseated and he capped the soda.

  “You love your wife, right? So if Courtney wanted to put this new baby up for adoption, would you let her?”

  “Of course not, but she’d never—”

  “Mom did, Noah. Because she loved that son of a bitch, she let him turn me out with a bloody back and five hundred dollars. That’s what her love did to me. No, thank you. You have a great family, and I’m happy for you, but I learned a different lesson. If you love one person too much, it’ll destroy you and everyone else you care about.”

  Noah’s bottle clunked against the step. He pushed to his feet with a firm set along his jaw. “Come on, I want to show you something.”

  They headed for an outbuilding that housed a riding lawnmower, a workbench with tools and a couple mismatched kitchen chairs circled around a small boxy television set. Noah waved him toward a chair that Jonah ignored. “Courtney hates NASCAR so I watch it out
here.”

  “God, you are a redneck.”

  “Tried and true, my brother.”

  Above the workbench, wrenches and screwdrivers hung neatly aligned on a pegboard wall. His eyes traced over them then stopped, held captive by a long piece of wood. A backwash of disgust flooded his mouth.

  “Jesus Christ, Noah. Tell me you don’t use that on your daughter!” Jonah pointed, unwilling to touch the vile thing. The paddle was hickory, stained with age and countless layers of polish. At twenty-four inches long and three inches across, it resembled a traditional fraternity piece, but to him, it was far more ominous. This one didn’t read Tau Kappa Epsilon or any other Greek combination.

  This one was in English.

  Three backwards letters.

  SIN.

  The raised and slightly rounded edges of the letters had lost their crispness on his ass. One awful, life-changing afternoon, he’d worn them on his back, with the skin breaking and blood dripping down his skin.

  “Of course not.” A dark scowl hardened Noah’s face. “I’ve never laid a hand on Maya or Courtney and never will. I hung it there to remind me of what not to do.”

  “Should burn the fucking thing.” The breath he sucked in was hot, flavored with wood shavings and grease. The tool-laden pegboard faded away as memory consumed him.

  The field mouse had squirmed in his hand as if it knew its fate. Tamping down his fear, Jonah flipped the latch on the snake cage and tossed the live rodent inside. He didn’t watch, just turned and repeated the move with the three other cages along the wall. The rattles were loud, making his skin crawl. He hadn’t been bitten yet but knew it was only a matter of time. The older he got, the more his father expected him to take part in the ritual. Hate was a sin but he couldn’t help it. He hated snakes.

  The Bible said they had power over all the serpents but he’d seen his father bitten as well as a few others. That didn’t sound like control to him. It was only one of the reasons he’d started questioning his faith more and more, which was dangerous in this house. Strangely, he found it easy to fake the belief, speaking in tongues and being possessed by the Holy Ghost. He just couldn’t fake his aversion to snakes.

  Once the reptiles were fed, he went to the kitchen to wash his hands. His dad read the newspaper at the kitchen table, his three gnarled and scarred fingers curled into his palm. “Snakes fed?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ll be marrying Hannah Stalnaker.”

  Jonah’s blood turned to ice. He shut off the faucet with numb fingers. “Excuse me?”

  Without looking up, his father turned the page. “Eye of the sparrow, boy. God sees everything, even what happens out back behind the church. Fornication is a sin.”

  His vision dimmed and everything tilted sideways. Fornication? He’d never made love to a girl. A couple kisses and a glancing feel of her breast wasn’t sex. “I didn’t...we just... It was a few kisses, that’s all.”

  “More’n that.” Another page turned. “Don’t lie to me, boy. I saw what I saw and the good Lord saw it all. And you’ll make it right.”

  “He didn’t see anything because I didn’t do anything.” His voice raised in denial. “I’m not marrying Hannah. I’m seventeen.”

  “Man enough to want a woman, man enough to marry one.” Frosty blue eyes looked up. “You’ll be eighteen in four months and married in five. That’s the end of it.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  If he was old enough to marry, then by God, he was old enough to choose his own path, and it would not be saddled with a nitwit like Hannah. She was sweet enough and pretty as the day was long, but she didn’t have a single thought in her head. He’d only kissed her because he was curious and she was willing. Shoot, she’d taught him the right way to hold his head and to breathe through his nose so they could keep their lips and tongues entangled longer.

  Reuben Alcott rose to his full height and fixed his steely gaze on Jonah. That look, what Jonah had always thought of as his fire-and-brimstone look, speared into him. “Don’t defy me, Jonah. You’ll obey and do as you’re told.”

  “No.” His legs quaked until he thought he’d fall. He’d never stood up to the old man like this but he couldn’t back down. This was his future, not some chore like sweeping the machine shop or chopping wood for the stove. This was his life, damn it!

  The curse burst into his mind and strengthened him. It was a defiance in itself. He matched his father’s stiff-spined stance and looked straight into his face. “I won’t marry Hannah and you can’t make me.”

  “Colossians 3:20,” spat Reuben. “‘Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord.’”

  Jonah had no idea where the power to stand up to his father came from, but it flooded his soul like sweet water on a hot day. His hands clenched into fists and his voice deepened with resolve. “James 4:17, ‘So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.’”

  “Get to your room.” Reuben reached for the paddle that hung beside the cross on the kitchen wall.

  Fear shook his newly found strength but he refused to let it crumble. “Make up your mind, Dad. Am I a man who can marry Hannah or am I a child you can paddle?”

  His head snapped back with the force of the slap. As he grabbed the edge of the sink to remain upright, his eyes blurred with automatic tears and his cheek burned. That slap had carried the same force as a punch.

  “I said get to your room.”

  Years of obedience guided his feet up the stairs. Heart pounding so hard he feared it might explode, he burst into his room and threw himself on the bed. The soft pillow hurt his sore cheek. He was not going to marry Hannah because of a few stolen kisses, no matter what his father did to him. Willpower and anger cemented in his belly.

  The door opened without warning. Like an archangel full of Holy Judgment, his father filled the frame, wooden paddle in his left hand. He always used his left because the right couldn’t grip the handle well enough to control the swing.

  Sunlight streamed in the window, golden rays that danced along the raised letters. What kind of monster created a paddle like that? It wasn’t enough to use his hand or his belt to punish his sons. Reuben had gone further, fashioning a length of hickory to a satin smoothness and adding raised letters reading SIN backward. That assured that the message was bruised into their skin in all its readable ugliness. Disobedience was a sin and the repercussions would stay with them for weeks after the whipping.

  “Get up.”

  Jonah climbed from the bed, locking his gaze on the floorboards, girding himself for the upcoming reprimand.

  “You will marry Hannah.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Reuben’s nostrils flared. “Bend over.”

  It was a familiar position. Jonah turned the chair to his desk around, bent over and placed his hands flat on the seat. He tried not to tense. The blows hurt more when he did and he knew this whipping wouldn’t be a light one. None ever were.

  The first blow nearly buckled his legs. Fire exploded on his buttocks with a thunderclap. He didn’t even have time to gasp before the second one fell.

  “Proverbs 22:15. ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of a boy, but the rod of discipline drives it far away.’ You will obey.”

  Jonah clung to the chair seat. Pain-induced sweat beaded on his face. “No.”

  Another blow, another scripture passage and still Jonah’s answer never changed. “No.”

  There was no mercy in his father’s arm. It swung, over and over, until Jonah’s legs were on fire. Never before had he stood his ground so strongly, and his father reacted the same, not lessening his punishment. The blows moved, from his butt to his thighs, the agony erasing everything from his mind except the single word that kept falling from his mouth.
r />   “No.”

  His vision dimmed, blurred by tears and darkened with pain. His shaking legs grew weak, his knees quivering so hard he could barely stay on his feet. His fingers dug into the chair, praying his father would wear out soon. The paddle fell again and again.

  “Reuben, stop!”

  His mother’s voice barely penetrated the fog. Another swing landed and Jonah’s physical strength gave out. He crashed to his knees, his forehead slamming into the wooden chair. But the paddle was already in its descending arc and landed. This time, it cracked across his upper back.

  Something inside him burst. Every muscle in his torso convulsed, seizing tight. He couldn’t breathe. Crashing to the floor, he tore at his collar, popping the top button of his white shirt. It pinged somewhere under the bed.

  “Do not defy me in this, Jubilee!”

  Jonah heard it but couldn’t do anything, couldn’t see through the black spots flashing in his eyes. The sound of a hand striking skin was followed by a soft feminine cry. Suddenly everything relaxed and blessed oxygen rushed into his lungs with a gasp. His sight snapped back into focus.

  “Oh my God, Reuben, what did you do?” His mother knelt beside him, tearing at his shirt. She wrangled it off him with tears streaming over her reddened cheek. The back of the shirt was blood-smeared. Beneath his spine, the floorboards were slick and sticky.

  His father shook with rage, pointing the paddle in his face. “You obey me or you get out of my house.”

  The decision came without thought but with a lifetime of pent-up anger. “Go to hell.”

  Reuben went stone still. His eyes shifted from livid heat to chilling scorn. “You leave now. Pack your things and get out.”

  His father thundered from the room as his mother sobbed. She rushed into the bathroom, returning with several towels, a wet washcloth and the first-aid kit. She helped him sit up, shushing when he moaned in pain. The washcloth turned red. The ointment she spread on the wound stung and she blew on it with a soothing breath that skated across his skin.

  The medical tape was tough and she struggled but managed to fasten thick gauze pads under his shoulder blade to staunch the blood. “I don’t think anything’s broken. He didn’t mean to hit your back. You fell and he couldn’t stop the—”