by Lucy Snyder
Miz Ruthie strode over to him and squatted near his head, frowning down at him. He tried not to stare at the dark furry fringe peeking from beneath the hem of her dress.
“Is your leg broken?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t think so.” His voice was a dry croak. He’d broken his leg when he fell off a pile of logs at the mill once, and aside from the initial pain his leg wasn’t hurting nearly as badly as it had back then.
“Did you pray for God to strike me down?” Her sharp blue eyes bored down into his, daring him to tell her a lie.
He tried to shrink back into the tree’s branches. “Yes, ma’am. I did. But…but you deserved it for what you done to my grandpa!”
She laughed at him. “Oh, I did, did I? Let me tell you a little something about just desserts, boy. Let me tell you a little something about that dead old bastard over there that you hold in such high regard.
“Dear ol’ Uncle Bob there took over the church when I was about your age, still in high school. My best friend in the whole world was a girl named Jenny; she was the finest fiddle player in the whole state, sweet as orange blossom honey, smart. Would have made a hell of a doctor some day. One afternoon, one of her older cousins offered her a ride home from school, only he didn’t take her home; he drove out to the old bridge and raped her. She was so wrecked she wouldn’t even talk to me about what he’d done to her, but when she realized she was pregnant, she went to Uncle Bob for help. She thought he surely knew everything, and would make things right. And Uncle Bob, ever the student of Christ’s wisdom and forgiveness, cussed her out for telling lies about her choir-boy cousin and accused her of being a whore. Jenny left the church in tears, went to her room and wrote me a letter, then went out to the woods behind her family’s house and killed herself. Her father passed her suicide off as a hunting accident so she could be buried over there in this rusty old cemetery.”
Ruthie nodded toward the headstone where she’d left her bouquet, then pointed a shaky finger at his grandfather’s grave. “The Reverend Robert M. Dockholm might as well have loaded the shotgun, put it to Jenny’s head and pulled the trigger. As far as I’m concerned, he murdered that girl. Bob deserved to be broken like he broke Jenny, deserved a load of buckshot right between his sanctimonious eyes, but instead he got thirty more years of respect as the pillar of the community, thirty years of ill-gotten wealth by spiritually blackmailing all the sick old folks in the county into signing their worldly possessions over to his church. Jenny’s cousin at least had the decency to pick a fight in a biker bar and get his head caved in with a tire iron the year after he assaulted her, but that Bible-waving sack of shit over there got to enjoy a nice life and a nice quiet death. And so tonight he got me paying my respects the best way I know how.”
Miz Ruthie stood up and put her fists on her hips, glaring down at Andrew. “There’s a whole lot more you need to know about this fine little town and the people who live in it, but it’s up to you whether you want to open your eyes and get a clue about the world, the real world, and get out of that nice warm pile of small-town bullshit you’ve been wallowing in. And here’s clue number one: God isn’t your personal hit man. I learned that a long time ago, because believe me, I prayed for Him to take out your grandfather. You pray for anyone else’s death ever again, boy, you best be prepared for your own.”
She inhaled like a diver preparing for a plunge. “So. You’ve got two choices here. Your first choice is to close your eyes and start praying again, pretending I’m not really here, and I’ll call a cab to take me to the airport and call the VFD to come get this tree off you. You’ll never have to hear from me again. Your second choice is you take my hand, I’ll help you up, and I’ll get dressed and we’ll go down the road to the Steak and Shake. I’ll buy you a malt and tell you all about the skeletons in the family closet.
“So what’s it gonna be, Andrew?”
The boy stared up at her, took his own deep breath, and held out his hand.
The Good Girl
My cell chimed just after I fell asleep. Swearing, I fumbled for it on the nightstand. I was sure I’d set the thing to vibrate. I stared at it blearily, wondering if I should just let it go to voicemail.
Sharonda stirred sleepily beside me. “You gonna get that?”
Polite reflex overrode my better instincts. “Yes.”
I punched the answer button and pressed the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Praise Jesus, I finally got through to you, girl.” My father’s voice was faint over the bad connection.
Shock ran down to the soles of my feet. My parents and I hadn’t spoken for fifteen years. I’d thought they were out of my life for good.
“Hi … Dad.” The words threatened to stick on my tongue.
In the darkness beside me, Sharonda inhaled in surprise. The bed creaked as she sat up, listening.
I continued, casual, as if this was an everyday conversation: “How’s it going?”
“Well, I reckon I have some bad news. It’s your sister. She got the cancer. She don’t have much time.”
“Oh no.” It had been two decades since I’d last seen Leanna. I had no idea she’d been back in touch with our folks. The last time we’d talked, she’d made it clear she was done with all of us.
I don’t have nothing ‘gainst you, Maybelle, she told me at the Greyhound station. You were always real good to me. But I can’t go on livin’ if I have to keep rememberin’, and you’re a reminder.
“I’m real sorry to hear that.” I winced at the sound of my own voice. All those years of trying to fit into Middle America and suddenly my Southern accent was creeping back.
“She wanted to see you before the Good Lord takes her,” my father said, his voice hollow and echoey. “You reckon you could get down here to pay a visit? She surely would appreciate it. Your ma and me would, too.”
“I’ll try.”
“Praise Jesus. You always were such a good girl.”
We said our goodbyes and I ended the call. My heart was thudding and I was sweating like I’d just sprinted around the block.
“That was my father. I have to go to South Carolina.”
Sharonda fumbled on the light and just stared at me for a moment. “You’re actually going down there?”
“He says my sister’s dying. I should see her.”
“Oh, Belle. No. I’m so sorry, but … you couldn’t save her then, and you can’t save her now.”
I hugged my pillow to my chest. “I could have tried harder. Part of me knew what was happening, and I just … I did nothing.”
“You were just a child, honey. What could you do?”
“Something. Anything. Shit.” I wiped hot tears from my eyes. “If she’s there now, that means either she’s got no place else to go, and this is a living nightmare for her … or it means he’s genuinely changed and they’ve reconciled. Either way, I should go see her.”
“How did that old bastard get your cell number anyway? It’s not enough that you had to spend the last ten years in therapy to get him out of your head?”
I rubbed my temples. “Dr. Boyle said it was important to know that I am better than he is. To know that I can rise above everything that happened. How can I know that if I can’t even face him?”
Sharonda was silent for a long moment.
“I know where you’re coming from, but I don’t think I can go with you,” she finally said, twisting the white sheets around her dark fists. “I’d kill him. The moment I saw his face I’d punch what was left of his teeth straight down his throat. I don’t care if he’s changed. That man deserves to be torn apart by pigs for what he did to you and your sister.”
I squeezed her arm to show her I understood and wasn’t disappointed. “It’s okay. I think I only have enough frequent flier miles to cover my ticket anyway.”
Sharonda hugged me tightly. “Do what you need to, baby. But promise me this: don’t stay at his house. Anything gets weird down there, you get the hell out, okay?”
On the plane to Hillsonville, I wondered what I really did owe my family. I knew how things were supposed to work. A good daughter would visit her father. A good woman would go to her sister’s deathbed. A good person would forgive and forget. It was so simple to turn the other cheek right up until the day you got a broken jaw.
I stared down at my trembling hands. They’d always reminded me of my father: we both had the same slight bend in the first joints of our ring fingers. I heard his voice every time I cleared my throat. I couldn’t burn his winding genes away no matter how much I wished I could.
At least I could console myself that I wasn’t the same little girl who’d first thought of committing suicide at the age of 12. I’d gotten out and grown up. I’d done my best to break the cycle. Tied my tubes so no child would ever suffer because of the jagged ways I’d been raised. Even if I was stuck with half his DNA, I wasn’t passing it on, and the atoms in my body had cycled in and out at least three times.
I was my own person now. And that had to mean something.
I hailed a yellow cab outside the Hillsonville Regional Airport. The cabbie pulled up to the curb and got out, smiling at me. He was a thin brown kid in a starched white camp shirt and skinny jeans.
“Do you have any luggage besides your backpack, ma’am?” He pushed a pair of designer glasses up his nose.
I shook my head. “I’m only staying a few days.”
He eyed my orange pack as he came around to open the back door for me. “That’s a weekender model, right? Those are nice. You can fit a whole lot in those with compression packers.”
“Sure can.” I got into the back of the taxi and he shut the door. “I did a whole week in California once with just this and my laptop bag.”
“My name is Alonzo, by the way.” He slid into the driver’s seat and flipped on the cab’s meter. “Where can I take you this afternoon?”
“The Comfort Inn off 178,” I replied.
“Oh, that’s a good place. You get your room online…?”
Alonzo kept up his friendly, low-key chat all the way to the hotel. He was going to college up in Ohio but was staying with an aunt near the airport that summer to earn some money for the upcoming semester. I liked him; I wished I’d known someone like him when I was in high school. Wished I’d been able to know someone like him. As far as my father was concerned, my only friends could be Jesus and his apostles.
At first, it was simultaneously pleasant and painful to hear Alonzo talk about his family: normal, flawed human beings who wrangled and squabbled but ultimately behaved like people who cared about each other. But the fun of living vicariously through strangers always wears off.
So when I felt my hands start to shake in the way I knew would be hard to stop once they really got going, I gently redirected the conversation back to Alonzo’s schooling, and he was more than happy to chatter about that instead.
“… so if it all goes right, I’ll have my degree and be able to get my social worker’s license soon after.”
“And then you’ll be pulling down the big bucks, right?” I joked. My legs jittered behind the passenger seat.
“Right.” He laughed as he pulled into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn. “But I mean, I don’t have kids, so I won’t need much money. I feel like if I can help people, I should, right? I saw some bad stuff growing up, but I had it easier than lots of kids. My daddy always said, society’s only as strong as the weakest links, so … I want things to be better for everybody, you know?”
“You’re a good guy, Alonzo.”
He laughed again. “I try. I don’t always make it to church, you know? My aunt gets after me about that.”
Alonzo totaled up my taxi ride, and I paid him in cash. He brightened considerably when he saw the tip.
“Hey, thanks. Do you think you’ll need a ride anywhere later?” he asked.
“Yes. Could you come back around 6pm?”
Alonzo got me to the gate in front of my father’s property just before dusk. My hands trembled the entire ride out, but I did my best to keep him from seeing my fear.
He squinted uncertainly at the rusty chain link gate and the rutted gravel road that seemed to disappear into a gloom of pine trees and kudzu. “You sure this is where you need to be?”
“Very sure.” I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and handed him the cash I owed him for the ride. I tried to do it quickly so he wouldn’t see that I was shaking so badly.
But he saw, and he looked at me, concerned, as he took the bills. “Are you really sure you want to be here?”
I forced myself to smile. “I’m not planning to stay, so I’ll call you when I’m done here, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll be on duty until midnight.”
I got out of the cab, waved to Alonzo, and pushed open the gate. It was in desperate need of oil. Back in the woods to my left I could see a cell phone tower, the kind that was made to look like a pine tree. It had to be just inside the neighbor’s property; my father would never let someone build a transmitter on his land. When I was little, I’d heard him rant about demons traveling into people’s souls through radio signals. If the local AM country station was a force for Satan, I could scarcely imagine the threat of AT&T.
On second glance, the cell tower looked … dead. Kudzu, so darkly green it looked nearly black in the fading evening light, had climbed nearly to its top. The suffocating vines had wound their way through the artificial branches. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my bars. No service.
I stepped back to flag down Alonzo, but he’d already driven out of sight down the highway. My stomach dropped and I swore softly to myself. Wait. My father called me, so he must still have landline service. It would be fine. I wasn’t stranded there in the woods. It would be fine.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and began the quarter-mile hike up the road to the house.
The wretched condition of the front gate made me fear what I’d find at the top of the hill, but the house and yard looked exactly the same as I remembered it: tidy cedar shingles on the roof, fresh-painted sky-blue siding, the broad wraparound porch, the wide oak stump my father used for splitting pine logs for the stove.
I remembered the rough wood splintering my cheek as my father forced my head down onto the cutting stump, gravel biting into my knees and palms, the Lord’s Prayer shuddering from my lips as I begged my father not to kill me for talking to a boy at the convenience store –
I forced myself to look away and stare at the red hummingbird feeder my mother liked to look out on while she cooked meals.
Her silhouette flickered past the kitchen window, head dark against the yellow kitchen light. That’s how I mostly remembered her: quiet, in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning, a dutiful Christian wife who only spoke when she was spoken to and deferred to her husband in all matters. She was the fifth of ten kids who grew up in a three-room house in the Smoky Mountains, and I guess my father looked like salvation when he stopped at the diner she’d had to waitress in since she was 14.
Food was the truest love she’d ever known, and every meal she made was a humble feast. We never went hungry except for the occasional week my father’s mood swung and he decided God had called on him to starve the Devil out of us.
I could smell ham and biscuits baking in the oven, and my mouth began to water despite the huge chef salad I’d had at the restaurant beside the hotel. I’d resolved to myself that I would be polite in my father’s home, but I would not accept any more of his and my mother’s hospitality than was necessary. They’d shunned me for fifteen years, and I wouldn’t let them treat me like family now. I wouldn’t even eat so much as the proverbial six pomegranate seeds there if I could help it.
I went to the front door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” I heard my mother call.
Moments later, the door opened. My mother was there dressed in one of her home-stitched gingham dresses and her favorite ye
llow apron decorated in embroidered blue clematis flowers and curling vines.
“Maybelle, we missed you so much!” Not quite meeting my gaze, she grabbed my hand in hers and pulled me into the house. She didn’t try to hug me, but she was never much of a hugger. “Your daddy is in the living room waiting for you.”
“Is Leanna here?”
“She’s taking a nap. Poor thing gets so tired. I need to get back to dinner—can’t let the greens scorch! We’ll have a chance to set a spell and catch up after dinner.”
And with that, she disappeared into the kitchen again. I stood there in the hallway, breathing in ancient house dust, willing my heart to stop hammering. This was a nice place now. A perfectly nice place.
My father’s artwork covered the walls. He made his own frames and cut his own glass to size. He’d started out selling portraits and landscapes at fairs and festivals around the state, and from what I heard he made a good living at it. But by the time I was five, his mind had turned in on itself and after that he only sketched religious figures, mostly Jesus. In the biggest piece above the entryway to the living room, he’d portrayed Christ with a square jaw, fierce eyes and flowing blond hair, as though the Savior was some Viking conqueror. He even had a sword tucked in a studded belt.
My gaze fell on the closed sewing room door. My heart started pounding again. Funny how one old brass knob and plain wooden door could be so thoroughly terrifying.
I was eleven and Leanna was fifteen when our father went from religious eccentricity to predatory insanity. After her birthday, he found a card from a boy in her book bag, and he was furious. He made her take a purity pledge at church, but that wasn’t enough. He started going into her bedroom at night to make sure she hadn’t been “sinning”.
I knew what he was doing to her. I should have comforted her. I should have tried to protect her. I should have gotten the rifle down from the mantel and blown the sick bastard out of his boots. But I didn’t do any of that. I pretended I couldn’t hear him violate her, couldn’t hear her weeping afterward.
