Hell on Church Street

by Jake Hinkson

  He waved that away. “Glad you did. We’ll pray about it, and I’ll talk to Angela and her mother.”

  I said I’d pray about it and left.

  Back down the hall the kids were taking their seats. I preached them a good message that night on the dangers of alcohol. I was above reproach when it came to drinking, as I had never done it. Isn’t that sad? Never touched the stuff.

  I preached it a little harder than usual since I was worked up about my love and her basketball player. I made sure to point out that while some religions said it was okay to drink, the Bible said it was wrong. Which, of course, the Bible didn’t say exactly, but I was giving the parents in the back of the room what they wanted to hear and what most of the teenagers present had already come to expect.

  Take that, Catholic boy.

  Oscar, for his part, didn’t seem impressed. He spent the entirety of my message looking around the room, sizing up the girls. He never even saw Angela. She might have been an empty chair for all he cared. She beamed, though, as if he’d come riding in on a rainbow. The pudding sisters giggled as they cast glances at him, but he never looked back at any of them. I doubt he even knew their names.

  I went home after work that night more excited than I had been in a while. As I lay in front of one of my pornos, I contemplated the mechanics of stage one of my plan. I’d need to get Brother Card as riled up as possible against Oscar. Let him do the hard work. Then, slowly, I’d work on Angela. Shower her with attention, praise, understanding.

  I paused in the contemplation of the mechanics of my plan because the porn had reached its pivotal moment, and I reached a pivotal moment along with it. I went to the bathroom and cleaned up and then returned to my bed. I popped in another video and let it play as background music of sorts while I thought.

  The Cards…

  Even if I could get Angela to fall in love with me, what about the parents? They wouldn’t approve of their only begotten daughter being with the likes of me. I knew that. Do you doubt it? Do you think they would be happy to have me as a son-in-law? Don’t bet on it. They wanted me where I was, leading the youth group, teaching the study lessons. They trusted me (at least Brother Card did), but they wanted me in my place. No one had ever wanted me to move freely about, doing what I wanted, chasing their daughters. Does that sound self-pitying? Maybe it is. Then again, the third fundamental truth of life is this: to 99.9% of the world you don’t exist. I’m not being self-pitying when I say that because I’m talking about you. You do not exist to most of the rest of the world. How many people even know you’re alive? Of those, how many care? Don’t add it up if you’re the type that gets easily depressed. Me, I’m not easily depressed. Never was. This nasty little world has always kind of amused me. I knew the world wanted me in my place—in a box on a shelf in the garage that they could take out when they needed it. That’s why I became a youth minister in the first place, to serve a function. People would need me. (There’s truth number four for you in case you’re keeping count: how much people “care” about you is directly proportional to how much they actually need you.) They needed me to teach their zit-faced children about Jesus, to read the Bible to the kids and tell them, yes, it does say what your grandpappy told you it said. I was a tool and they cared for me like a tool, kept me clean and out of harm’s way.

  But now I wanted something. My love. I didn’t know how to get rid of the Cards, but I hadn’t ruled anything out.

  I was thinking about all of this when someone knocked on my front door. I sprang up and turned off the television so quickly you would have thought my parents were coming through the door. After I got dressed, I hurried through the darkened living room to the front door.

  When I opened the door, Angela was standing on my welcome mat. I said her name, and she started to cry.

  Chapter Six

  She wasn’t wearing a coat, and when I pulled her to me and hugged her it was not a pleasant experience.

  Leading her inside, I said, “You’re freezing.”

  “I walked over,” she said.

  I sat her down on the couch and knelt next to her. A long strip of light from my bedroom gleamed across the hardwood floor of the living room, but she and I were in the dark. We were very close, but it wasn’t an erotic moment. She smelled like cold wind and snot.

  “Stay here,” I said, as if she were going anywhere. I fetched some Kleenex, and she blew her nose. After throwing the tissue away and getting her a wool blanket, I went into the kitchen and microwaved some hot tea packets the Ladies Auxiliary had given me in a housewarming basket.

  I paced the kitchen. Was now the time? This quick?

  I shook my head. You have to wait. You want to do this, but you have to wait it out. You don’t know what’s happened. If you pour it on too quick, it could scare her off. Take it easy.

  I noted my fortune in having just jerked off. Had I been humming along at full capacity when she showed up, I don’t think I could have controlled what would have happened.

  When the tea was ready, I took it in and gave it to her and sat down on the floor by her legs. Sweet, understanding guy.

  “You seem better,” I said.

  And she did. She wasn’t crying or shivering. She grinned and sipped her tea.

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I’d fill out the census for you,” I said, but I thought, Rein it in… Don’t flirt.

  She smiled. “Have you ever been in love?”

  “No,” I said.

  Leaning forward, holding the cup with both hands, she said, “I think I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?”

  “Yeah.”

  She frowned. “I don’t know. I just feel love. Why haven’t you ever been in love?”

  I sighed. “I’m married to the work, I think. I want to serve God. Some people can do that without being married, some can’t. Paul said that it was better for us not to marry, provided we could control our…urges. I’ve just always been able to control mine.”

  And Jesus, what a load of horseshit that was. Angela, my sweet untarnished goddess of light, thought about what I’d said for a while.

  “Urges?” she finally said.

  Here we go…

  “Sexual,” I explained. “But emotional, too. Are you having trouble with those?”

  She shut her eyes and let the steam from the tea waft across her face. “I didn’t run away from home, you know.”

  “I didn’t figure you had.”

  “I just had to get out of the house.”

  “Is everything okay there?”

  She shook her head and looked at me. “My father…”

  “Is a good man,” I said.

  She took a sip of tea and said, “I know he is. He loves me and all, but he’s such a …” she tried to think of a word that wasn’t a cuss word and came up with “…pedant. Do you know that word? I looked it up a couple of weeks ago for a paper I was doing in English. It means someone who’s always bringing up little things to make themselves look smart because they don’t know anything big. And that’s what he is. That’s why he’s always quoting the Bible at whatever I say. No matter what point I try to make with him he brings up some scripture that proves I’m wrong.”

  “I thi—”

  “And the thing is,” she said, “I believe the Bible. I know it’s God’s word and whatever it says is right and all that, but everything I say can’t be wrong.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did he tell you about Oscar?”

  “Oscar…the boy at church tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is…Oscar the object of your affections?”

  She took a long hard gulp of tea.

  I said, “He seemed like a nice enough boy.”

  “He’s just a boy at school. I think he’s cute or whatever, but my father thinks I’m obsessed with him for some reason. He doesn’t approve of him, so he doesn’t like me havi
ng a stupid little crush on him.”

  “And why not?”

  “Well, Dad doesn’t want me to like anyone, but mostly it’s because Oscar’s Catholic.”

  “Surely it’s not just that he’s Catholic.”

  “Oh yeah,” she said moving closer to the edge of the couch, “that’s all it is. That he’s Catholic. Now what kind of sense does that make?”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  She frowned. It was as if she’d just heard herself talking about the love life of a movie star. “Plus, none of it matters anyway because…Oscar doesn’t even know I’m alive, which, for some weird reason, my father doesn’t believe. I mean, how is it his business who I like anyway?”

  I mumbled out some more your daddy loves you business.

  She shrugged. “I know, but he acts like I’m sinning by liking a guy. Oscar doesn’t even know my name. It’s crazy.”

  If she was uncomfortable sitting in the near dark she made no sign of it. She had warmed up now and even in the dim light I could see more color in her face. Angela. Such an ugly name, I think. Yet even now it sets me on fire. Angela. My angel.

  “So what are you going to do, kid?”

  She shook her head. “Go back home, I guess. My parents would kill me if they knew I was here.”

  “Why?” I laughed.

  She frowned again, this time at my dimness. “At an older guy’s house in the middle of the night? They’d die. My father would drop dead, and Mom would kill me, you, and then herself.”

  She laughed and seemed so much older all of the sudden. Was she used to sneaking out of the house? And she called me an older guy.

  I shrugged it off. No Big Deal. “I don’t think they’d mind but—”

  “You’re wrong,” she said.

  “But,” I laughed, “maybe you shouldn’t tell them you came over. No need worrying them about something that’s not a problem.”

  She said, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good. I’m sorry about showing up like this. You live closer than any of my friends, and my father keeps the only phone in the house in his bedroom.”

  “Gee, make me feel special why don’t you?” I teased.

  “No,” she said with that pleading smile only a teenage girl can master. “It’s not that. I think you’re great.”

  “Thank you. I think you’re pretty wonderful yourself.”

  She smiled. My angel.

  “I should go,” she said.

  I said okay. We stood up and I walked her to the door. She touched the doorknob but turned around before she opened the door.

  “I can’t believe you’ve never been in love. You’re the sweetest guy.”

  I smiled. “I’m waiting for the love of my life,” I said.

  She stared at me, opened her mouth to say something but then didn’t. She smiled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “C’mon, it was something.”

  She bit her lip. “Can I come back over here again?”

  I had to take a deep breath just to find any breath at all. “Of course.”

  “I just like talking to you.”

  I looked into her eyes, and I didn’t blink. Neither did she. I told her, “I like talking to you, too.”

  She blushed, turned and opened the door and slipped out into the night. I stood there for a moment. My hands trembled. Something inevitable was moving beneath the surface of my life, moving inside of me. I knew it, and it scared me, but I couldn’t stop it.

  After that first night, she started slipping out to see me.

  I did very little on each occasion. Please believe that. She sat on the couch and talked and talked and I listened. Oh, I said things here and there, mostly affirming her view of the injustices visited upon her by her parents, but I didn’t touch her one bit except for a hug to greet her and one to see her off. She came to think of me as a valuable friend and ally, certainly against her parents, but also against Oscar. It wasn’t that he was mean to her. It was worse than that. He didn’t know she existed. To make matters still harder for Angela, he would occasionally grin at her in the hall between classes, one of his big meaningless goofy grins, and every one of them was a bullet to her young heart.

  Even though a lot of those early conversations were about Oscar, it was still fun to talk to her. She was, I suppose, the only girl I’d ever really sat and talked to for hours. All of it—her voice and her fears and her dreams and even her stupid love for that boy, all of it made me love her. Her self-esteem was lower than a slave’s, but she could be funny and sweet, and everything about her fascinated me.

  One night we were sitting and talking, and she told me, “I’ve never kissed a boy before.”

  “This sounds like the beginning of a question.”

  She chuckled. “Is that weird or what?”

  “It’s not so weird,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “I think God wants us to wait until we find the right person. The one he intends for us.”

  She nodded, but then a wicked little smile crept onto her lips.

  “Yeah. Well, that’s not why I’ve been waiting, you know. It’d be nice if I was waiting for that, but I’ve been waiting because I have to. I ain’t got a lot of options.”

  I wanted to lean over and kiss her then, of course, but I thought, wait.

  “You’ll do lots of kissing before you’re done,” I said. “The Lord shall provide.”

  She laughed and blushed and looked at her hands. When she looked back up at me, the space between us hung with the weight of what we weren’t saying yet.

  Finally, I broke it with a joke. We moved on to something else, but when she left that night she gave me a long hug. Then she stared at me for a while.

  “You think I’ll get to do some kissing?” she asked finally.

  “I guarantee it,” I said.

  The next time she showed up things were different. We were both acting odd. She was nervous, but she was dressed up. She wore makeup and her hair smelled nice. She just looked so pretty.

  My hormones were having an orgy. I swear to God, it was like I was sixteen. The difference, of course, was that I never got near a girl when I was sixteen.

  We sat on the couch, just talking, and she kept looking at me. The lights were low, and it was late, and she just stared at me.

  “Angela,” I said.

  She smiled. “I like when you say my name.” Her face turned red; I could tell, even in the dark. I think I must have been the first man she’d ever flirted with. Her hands shook, and she held them tight on her lap.

  “I like saying your name,” I said.

  She tried to smile and bit her lip at the same time. Poor thing.

  “Angela?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  She looked off and up and feigned thought. “Hmm.” Then she smiled and we both laughed. “Yes,” she said. When she said it, it was as if that little bastard Oscar had never been born. She never mentioned his name again.

  I leaned over and took her trembling hand in my trembling hand and kissed her. She was the first girl I’d ever kissed. She is still the only girl I have ever kissed. I was at least as scared as she was.

  After that we made out every time she came over. It progressed quickly into touching each other. Finally, one night it ended with us on my bed, our clothes half off and Angela pushing me away, “We shouldn’t,” she said. She covered her chest with one arm and her soft, white gut with the other arm.

  “But we love each other,” I said.

  She said, “I love you more than anything, but we can’t do this. What about the Lord?”

  I took her hands slowly away from her torso and noticed a brown birthmark above her navel. “I want to marry you,” I said.

  She touched her bare chest as if she were short of breath. “Do you?”

  “Of course, I do,” I said. “Do you want to marry me?”
r />   Her eyes filled with tears. “Yes, I do.”

  I rubbed her hand. “Then I think in God’s eyes we are married. Marriage isn’t some piece of paper, it’s a holy bond. Two souls joined together in God.”

  She held my hand and looked down at it. “Yes,” she said.

  I squeezed her hands in mine. “Would you marry me right now?”

  “Yes.” She frowned. “But I’m too young.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t mean ‘let’s go to Vegas,’ I mean right now, in the eyes of God. You, me and the Lord. The only three people that matter.”

  She chewed the inside of her cheek. “Yes. Yes, I’d do it right now.”

  We shut our eyes, she with her pale breasts bare as the noonday sun, me with a hard on, and I prayed a long and intricate prayer about the holy union of souls and the sacred covenant of marriage. You might think I was just trying to fuck her that night, trying at long last to lose my own virginity—and I won’t say I wasn’t—but I did also love her and I meant every word I said. I did want her to be mine. When I finished it, Angela was crying.

  I said, “We’re married.”

  I held her for a while and then we started kissing. Slowly I lowered her onto the bed.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “What?”

  She stared at me, looked me right in the eyes. I tried to look consumed by love instead of raging with lust.

  Her brow was tight, her mouth crooked as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. She kept staring at me, thinking.

  “What?” I said.

  Still she stared and thought, and I didn’t think it was going to happen, but then I saw the insecurity flood her eyes and she smiled painfully. And I knew I had her.

  “You do love me, don’t you? If we do this, you won’t…”

  “You’re my wife,” I said. “I love you. I will always love you.”

  She nodded. “I trust you,” she said.

  “And I love you,” I said.

  I had her at last.

  After that, we didn’t see each other for a few days. She was scared of me, I think. When she did finally come over she didn’t want to have sex again, which hurt my feelings, of course.