The Preacher's Son

by Lisa Henry

  He could almost smell the marketplace again. If he closed his eyes he’d be there.

  The waitress appeared, pen in hand. “You ready to order, hon?”

  She must’ve been close to sixty.

  “Coffee, thanks. And waffles.”

  The waffles here were good, once. Back in high school, you drove thirty miles out of town for good waffles. Because there was nothing else to do in Pinehurst. And now he was on his way back there, to live. Jesus. The place was sucking him in like a black hole. Some evil fucking vortex with Reverend Timothy Tull’s smiling face right at the center of it.

  And Nathan’s face too.

  Jason pushed away the the memory of Nathan’s face from that night: flushed, open, and full of hope.

  “Okay, hon.” The waitress left.

  Jason leaned back in the booth. He looked out the window as a blue sedan pulled into the parking lot. A man and a woman got out of the front. A teenage boy climbed out the back. He was tall and heavyset, with longish, light-brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. Feet like boats in black Converse. A pinched, anxious face. He stared at the ground as his parents ushered him toward the entrance to the diner.

  Jason glanced up at the family as they walked past him. They sat in the booth next to his; the parents on one side and the boy on the other. He looked miserable and outnumbered as he slouched into his seat.

  “Sit up,” the father chided. “Sit up straight.”

  “Isaac,” the mother said in a weary tone.

  The kid straightened up.

  “What can I get you folks?” the waitress asked them.

  “I’ll have the coffee and the chicken Caesar salad,” the father said.

  “Two, please,” the mother said. “Isaac?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You haven’t eaten anything since we left.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “I’ll just leave the menu right here, in case you change your mind,” the waitress said.

  Silence settled over the family group. Jason spun his coin again.

  “Mom,” the boy said at last in a low voice. “Dad. Please don’t make me go. Please.”

  Jason stared over the back of the booth, between the parents to Isaac.

  “We’ve talked about this,” the father said. “They’ll help you.”

  “Why do I need help? Why don’t you like me?”

  “Honey.” The mother’s voice cracked. “Oh, honey, we love you. That’s why we’re sending you. So you can lead a happy, healthy life.”

  “I didn’t mean to look at those pictures,” Isaac said, his voice straining. “Please, let me come home and I won’t do it again. I promise!”

  Jason felt sick. He clenched his fist around his lucky coin, and tried to tell himself it was none of his business. Except an outrage this big, an anger this all-encompassing, it was everyone’s fucking business. The kid was hurting because his parents just wouldn’t see. All that talk of love was bullshit. Their love was conditional. They held it over their son like it was the promise of a treat they could withdraw at any time.

  Jason was angry.

  The whole world should have been angry.

  “You’re not being punished,” the father said. “That’s not what this is. Reverend Tull will help you. You’ll be able to come home in six weeks.”

  Whatever Isaac tried to say was smothered by his tears.

  “Isaac.” His father’s voice was pitched low. “Don’t make a scene.”

  Make a scene, Jason willed. Kick and scream and swear and spit.

  But Isaac only reached out and tugged a napkin out of the dispenser. Balled it up and wiped his nose. Then he slid out of the booth.

  “Where are you going?” his father asked sharply.

  “Bathroom.”

  Both his parents watched him as though they were afraid he’d run. His shoes squeaked on the linoleum as he headed for the bathroom. He’d tugged his hoodie up to hide his tear-stained face.

  “Here you go, hon.” The waitress set his plate and coffee cup down. “Our waffles are homemade. Best in Washington.”

  “Thanks.” Jason unfolded a napkin and stared down at his plate. It smelled good, but he’d lost his appetite.

  He stood up and moved slowly toward the bathroom, trying to hide his limp.

  There were two stalls in the bathroom. One was closed.

  “Isaac?”

  A sharp intake of breath from behind the door. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the guy who was sitting in the other booth,” Jason said. “My name’s Jason Banning. Look, I know you don’t believe me right now, but have you seen those things on YouTube? The ‘It Gets Better’ videos?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  So he’d been doing more than looking at pictures. Jason closed his eyes for a moment. Fuck, he’d been so lucky. First with his parents, and then with Aunt Rose. And he’d expected the worst from Aunt Rose, knowing she was a churchgoer. Knowing that he didn’t fit her ideas of what was right. She’d surprised him.

  “Jason, when I got the call about the accident I begged God: Don’t let Jason have been in that car. Well, He spared your life, so I’m sure as hell not going to complain it’s not the one I imagined for you. You’re alive, and that makes you perfect.”

  They butted heads on everything, him and Rose, but they loved each other.

  In fact, the only thing Rose hadn’t been able to forgive him for was what he’d done to Nathan Tull.

  “Jason Banning, what you did was ugly. So incredibly ugly.”

  Four years later, the words still hurt like a blow.

  “I don’t think you realize how wrong you were.”

  Death threats. So many he’d had to shut down his social media accounts. People claiming they knew his address, knew how to find him. People calling him human garbage, a disease, a sex criminal, saying he deserved to be gang-raped and have it filmed. Fucked with barbed wire, burned alive, thrown in prison to be some biker’s bitch…

  And people said liberals were the compassionate ones.

  Still, Rose had been right, in a way. Those months following the expose had been surreal. He’d gone on the defensive, snarling back at his accusers on Twitter and Facebook, writing follow-up articles to justify his choices. Berating people for focusing on him instead of on the real enemy: Reverend Tull, and all the reverend stood for. He lay awake each night, alternately burning with anger and shivering with guilt and terror. He was wrong. He knew he was wrong. But one night, snow falling outside his window and Rose snoring down the hall, he’d experienced a flash of clarity, felt the weight and strength of all the barriers he’d put up to avoid thinking too hard about his own cruelty. If he removed those barriers, if he let himself feel all the guilt and shame festering inside him, he knew he wouldn’t survive.

  Better to focus on his anger. At the unjust world, at Reverend Tull. At this poor kid’s parents.

  “It’s true,” Jason said now. “It does get better. You just have to hang in there, okay?”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know I don’t.” But I don’t want you to be another statistic. “But I know that camp. And I’m telling you this because I think you need to hear it right now. I think you need to know there are people on your side.”

  Silence from the other side of the door.

  “I’m gonna go now,” Jason said. “Take care, Isaac.”

  He pulled the bathroom door open, and heard the whispered “Thanks” just before it swung shut again.

  Chapter Two

  Nate always felt tense when the new kids arrived at Moving Forward. He hated the way that his father displayed him as though he was a shining example of the program, and he hated the scrutiny of the parents as they looked him up and down. What were they looking for? Secret signs of gay? And what did that look like anyway?

  He felt bad for doubting his father, for doubting the other parents. Everyone was here because they wanted to help these kids, and if Nate could serv
e in any way, even as an example, then it was the right thing to do. That had been his only consolation for a long time: that maybe it had been God’s plan all along for him to fall into sin that night with Jason Banning, because now he could help others walk that difficult path to happiness and redemption.

  This group looked like any other from past years—thirty some fresh-faced kids between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, from all over Washington and the surrounding states. They’d had about an hour to settle into their cabins and meet their counselors before being called out onto the green for introductions.

  Nate stood on the expanse of lawn between the dining hall and the chapel, trying to concentrate on what the kids were saying, trying to commit names to memory. “I’m Steven. I’m from Hood River. Gonna be a junior.” The kid beside Steven elbowed him, and Steven snickered. “Um...I guess I came here because, like, being a Christian is really important to me. And homosexuality is an abomination against God. So I want to learn to overcome my urges.”

  “I’m going to stop you there, Steven,” the reverend said genially. Nate knew what was coming, and for some reason it made him feel sad and a little sick. “I don’t like the word ‘abomination.’ Does anyone know why?”

  No one answered, and then Carter, one of the counselors, waved enthusiastically. “I do!”

  The Reverend and the kids from Carter’s cabin laughed. “Yes, Carter?” Nathan’s father said.

  Carter looked around the circle. “Because none of you is an abomination.”

  “That’s right,” the reverend said. “You are not abominations. God is not angry at any of you. He has not abandoned you. I need you all to understand that.” His tone had grown very serious. “You are human; you are flawed. And you are loved. Say it with me now, everybody. I am loved.”

  “I am loved,” the kids repeated, with varying levels of certainty.

  “Very good.” The Reverend smiled warmly. “God tests us in many ways. But He also gives us the love and support we need to pass those tests. So, Steven—not an abomination. A test. All right?”

  “Sure.” Steven nodded flippantly.

  The Reverend indicated the boy next to Steven. “Let’s continue.”

  “I’m Tyler,” the boy said. He glanced at Steven, and they both snickered again. “I’m also from Hood River. I go to school with Steven.”

  “Wait, wait,” said another boy, dark haired and dark eyed. Nate’s attention had strayed to him several times over the last few minutes. He knew the type—flamboyant, class clown, loud-voiced. Popular with classmates and an annoyance to teachers. “So if you put your names together, it’s Steven Tyler?”

  “Yep,” Tyler said. “You can totally call us that. People at our school do.”

  Nate was surprised any of these kids knew who Steven Tyler was.

  “Anyway,” Tyler went on. “I’m here to, uh, pass my test.”

  The next kid was quiet and sullen-looking. “I’m Isaac,” he muttered. “I’m here because my parents made me do this.”

  Nate’s parents exchanged glances. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Moving Forward didn’t accept any applicants who weren’t willing. Usually the phone interviews weeded out any of the kids who were being forced into this by parents or church leaders. But apparently Isaac had slipped through the cracks.

  “Did you want to come here at all, Isaac?” Reverend Tull asked.

  Isaac hesitated, then shook his head. He was a heavyset kid, a full head taller than many of his campmates. His straight hair was parted in the middle and fell just past his ears.

  Reverend Tull said, “Isaac, can you look at me?”

  Isaac looked up reluctantly.

  “If you want to leave at any time, you may. That goes for all of you.” The Reverend glanced around the circle, his gaze landing on Isaac once more. “But if you choose to stay, we’ll see that you get something out of this experience. Okay?”

  Isaac grumbled something that made the kid to his right look over sharply, eyes wide. Then Nate heard him say, “Okay.”

  Nate was glad when the introductions were over and the whole group headed to the mess hall. The hall was a long, low wooden building that reminded Nate of the historic inn downtown. There were six tables inside, and the kids all sat with their appointed cabin and counselor. The staff members had their own table, and Nathan and his parents ate at one end along with Kevin, one of the workshop teachers, who was currently engaged in a conversation with Talia, who led evening group prayer.

  “I’m worried about Isaac,” Nate’s father said to his mom. “I’ll have to check and see who did his phone interview.”

  “A lot of them sound okay on the phone,” Nate’s mom pointed out. “They feel like they have to say yes, or risk disappointing their parents.”

  “Still,” Nate’s dad said, “I can’t imagine that boy putting on a convincing act. Whoever conducted the interview must have missed some signs.”

  Nathan’s mother shook her head almost imperceptibly, and kept eating. Kristin Tull was tall and thin with a long, pretty face. She looked clever and harsh, like she was always on the brink of saying something cutting. The kids loved her, though she sometimes said things to them out of the reverend’s earshot that Nate knew his father wouldn’t consider appropriate.

  A lapsed Catholic who’d married at eighteen, converted immediately to Presbyterianism, and had Nate at twenty. Nate often wondered what had drawn his mother to his father.

  “I was headed down a bad path,” she’d told him once. “Your father saved me.”

  She’d been a wild teen—Nate sometimes thought she and Marissa had a lot in common, which was probably why his mother liked Marissa so much. Easy to see what had drawn Nate’s father to his mother—the reverend lived to save others. Harder to know if Kristin, who’d never quite cast aside her wild streak or her restlessness, was truly happy in her marriage. Nathan knew she loved his father. He also knew that loving someone wasn’t always enough to make you happy when you were with them.

  I love Marissa. I know I do. But sometimes…

  No. He wasn’t going to think about that right now.

  Kristin didn’t deal much with the camp. She spent most of her time heading the Pinehurst Christian Women’s Alliance, a charity that helped victims of domestic violence in Africa. Moving Forward had been Reverend Tull’s brainchild, and Nate got the feeling that as much as his mother liked the kids, she was less thrilled by the camp itself.

  The reverend took a bite of his potato salad and chewed. Swallowed, and said to Nate, “I told your mother you’d been having some trouble with phantoms lately. How’s that going?”

  Nate glanced anxiously at Kevin, whose conversation with Talia had quieted down. Then back to his father. “Uh, fine. I mean, the last couple of days have been okay.”

  Not true. He’d spent the last couple of days thinking obsessively about Jason Banning. Is he back in town yet? How will people treat him? Has he been thinking about me—worried he’ll run into me somewhere? Or…thinking about me…like—like that? But he wanted to keep this to himself for the time being.

  “Good,” his father said. “I’ve been worried. Haven’t seen you much this week, and I wanted to check in.”

  Nathan stared at his tray.

  Because I don’t like to be at home when I’m thinking this way. Don’t want to bring impure thoughts into the house.

  “I don’t really see what the harm is if he still has thoughts like that on occasion,” Nate’s mother said. “We all have thoughts about things we’re not supposed to.”

  The reverend chuckled as though she’d made a joke. “‘He who looks at another person with lust has already committed adultery in his heart.’”

  Kristin rolled her eyes. “If that’s the case, I’ve committed adultery a hundred times over.”

  The reverend looked surprised, and even Nate paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.

  “Oh, come on,” Kristin said. “Like you haven’t too? Every time we go to the
bank—who’s that teller with the red hair? Lucy?”

  The reverend’s neck flushed. Nate ate quickly, eager to escape the mounting tension.

  “And I don’t mind!” Kristin said. “That’s my point. Sometimes we have feelings. And as long as we act right—”

  “Please,” the reverend said. “Keep your voice down.” He leaned toward her. “You know what the relapse rate is for kids who complete this program. We’ve been working hard to get that percentage down, and believe me, thoughts matter.” He looked at Nate and tried to smile. “You know we’re here for you if you need us. And I’d love it if you’d join group prayer tonight.”

  “Uh…” Nate pushed his green beans with his fork. “Maybe. I’ve got plans with Marissa.”

  “She’s welcome too.” The reverend finished his potato salad, wiped his mouth, and stood. “I’d better make the rounds.”

  Nate’s dad always went around to each table the first night to get to know the kids better and make sure everyone was settling in okay. Nate watched him go, then turned to his mother. She raised her eyebrows. “You really doing okay?”

  “Yeah. I think. I just…” He kept pushing the beans. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to evaluate all my thoughts. That I could just...have them, you know? Like you said. And as long as I don’t act on the bad ones—”

  Kevin leaned across the table. “’Scuse me, Mrs. T. You gonna eat your ranch dip?”

  “No, Kevin, I’m not.” Nate’s mother handed the little paper cup to him. “Go for it.”

  Kevin took it and went back to talking with Talia.

  “Anyway.” Nate shrugged dismissively. “It’s no big deal.” He glanced around. “Seems like a good group.”

  His mom watched her husband, who was standing beside the far table, laughing with the boys there. “He’s so good with them,” she said quietly. “I admire him so much for that. For his optimism. But I just don’t...I mean, if the program hasn’t worked on you, how does he expect it to work for all these other kids?”