Chicken (18 page)

“I want us to start spending more time together, son.” He smiles. “Silently, of course.”

I hate to admit it, but there’s a flutter of excitement in my stomach. Maybe he’s going to teach me to drive. Or maybe he’ll find a horse to borrow and we could ride some of the mountain trails if we take it easy. Or maybe we’ll start with something more practical, closer to home.

“I was thinking you could help me build that bridge to Sister Bonnie’s. Nothing fancy. Maybe just a couple of boards. I just need help securing—”

Daddy shifts in his seat. “Ah, well, you know, I might not be up to that, but you know Brother Hank has said he’s willing—”

I look out my window at the white line whizzing by, all the black spots that used to be critters but now look like giant splotches of sunbaked gum. “Right. Of course.”

Daddy drums his fingers on his windowsill. “I was thinking we could start out with something simple. Simple and meaningful.”

An alarm sounds in the back of my skull, because the only thing Daddy finds meaning in these days is church. He pulls into the Walmart parking lot and finds a handicapped spot. He turns off the ignition and looks at me, smiling—nervously?

“We’re having service at the lake in the morning, and I told Brother Mackey to put us both down for baptism.”

If there’s a bright side to everything, then the bright side to Walmart is the blinding fluorescent lights. But also air-conditioning. Lots and lots of air-conditioning. Which I need because with the combination of the heat and the bumpy truck and Daddy’s plan, I am feeling more than a little sticky and nauseous. I find one of the sweet spots below a giant vent and take off my Longhorns cap, letting the fake wind ruffle my hair. 

After a few minutes, I tug my cap back on and wander away from the vent, rubbing the goose bumps off my arms. Daddy made it clear his idea wasn’t really an idea so much as an important personal decision that my father and my pastor have planned out behind my back. I wind up in the sporting section where every aisle smells like something I can’t do. Basketballs and wooden bats over here, catfish chum and bottled doe pee over there. Lingering whiffs of cigarettes and motor oil everywhere. Still hugging myself, I turn the corner onto the back aisle where they keep the almost-life-size deer dummies for target practice. 

Tyler Mathis. Staring up at a buck statue wearing its guts on the outside so the hunter learns how to aim at the vital parts. He’s ripped the sleeves off his white T-shirt, tucked the bottom into his khaki cargo shorts in a way that accentuates how his flabby belly spills over and hides his belt. My belt. He’s wearing my horse belt. He’s stamped the word “STUD” on the back where my name ought to be.

My whole body clenches, and I feel the muscles in my arms rise up under my hands, the same muscles I use to control a thousand pounds of thundering horseflesh, and it occurs to me that I could apply that strength to punching Tyler Mathis in the kidneys. His guts can’t be arranged too differently from that deer on the shelf.

Mathis lifts his hand and points a finger-gun at the deer’s heart. I take a step backward because I am obviously not going to attack Tyler Mathis. I am going to keep taking steps backward until I can turn around and high-tail it back to the grocery section. Mathis cocks his invisible trigger with a click of his tongue. Spins and points it at me.

“Boom.”

He stares down his finger at me. 

“I said boom.”

I clutch my heart. “Oh no. You got me.”

“Play dead.” His eyes dart at the white tile floor.

I take two more steps backward. He eats the distance in one long stride, jabs his dirty, broken fingernail into the center of my forehead.

“Play dead, Cassie.”

I jerk my head back, push his hand away. “Cut it out, Tyler.”

He flashes his yellow teeth. “S’alright. I’m after bigger game anyway.”

I glance over his head at the inside-out buck. “Ain’t deer season a couple months away?”

He licks the corner of his lips. “You ain’t heard? There’s a panther on the loose.”

I can’t help rolling my eyes. I know he means a mountain lion. These people always say panther when they mean mountain lion. 

“I shit you not.” Mathis holds up one hand like he’s got some scout’s honor hidden under that mullet. 

“Let me guess, you seen it yourself.”

“No, but I seen this.” Mathis pulls a square of folded paper from his back pocket and thrusts it into my hand at just the right angle to paper cut my index finger. 

I unfold it and find a grainy, green picture taken with some sort of night camera. Mathis was not shitting me. There’s a long, lean lion in the center of the frame, its legs frozen in the middle of a stride that says I own this place. It looks grown, but I know it’s young because parts of its coat are still smudged with baby spots. It’s beautiful. 

“If I were you, I’d be careful where I rode my little pony because this is from a game cam on the old Pitcher place.”

I don’t bother asking how Mathis knows about my ride. If I farted under my covers tonight, he’d bring it up at church tomorrow. But I do feel a twitch in my gut about this panther. The old Pitcher place is the property on the other side of the Ditch from the Mitchells. It was a high-dollar deer farm at one time, and Brant does a lot of his bottle-digging over there.

Mathis slaps me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about your boyfriend. I’ll protect him. I’m a great shot.”

I snort. “If I can smell you coming a mile away, this cat sure enough can.”

His hand flies at my face, flips my cap backwards off my head. 

“Pick it up, bitch.”

I know as soon as I bend over, he’ll put his boot on me, hold me down. I take another step backward, over my cap so now it’s between us. Kick it toward him. “Keep it.”

“Yeah?” He grins. “You think it’d look good with my belt?”

He hooks his fingers under his stomach and lifts, showing off the plain silver buckle. He’s poked a rough new hole in the leather to make it fit, and I realize he couldn’t just buy this belt in his own size, he had to buy the only belt like it that was my size. He lets go and his gut jiggles as it settles back in place. 

“Wait. Maybe you’d like it better if I unbuckled it?” 

He laughs and laughs, and I take another step backward and another and another and another until I’m at the far end of the aisle. I high-tail it out of there, weaving around loaded shopping buggies and bargain bins. I find Daddy in the produce section, picking out ears of corn. I squeeze between his buggy and the produce. 

Daddy looks me up and down. “Weren’t you wearing a hat?”

“No, sir. No hat.”

He frowns and points at the paper in my hands. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” I slip it in my back pocket. It’s one thing to have gone trail riding in bear and hog country, but it’s another thing to have been in a lion’s territory.

Tonight’s Catch the Fire is packed with all the adults who feel guilty for skipping during the storm on Thursday, and the AC is having trouble keeping up with the increased body heat. It takes me five minutes to get past everyone who wants to shake my hand. I find Brant tuning his fiddle at the piano, plinking the keys and adjusting his strings. 

I perch on the chair where the old guy who plays the trumpet during “When the Saints Go Marching In” usually sits. Brant straddles the piano bench and barely looks up at me. He keeps chewing on his lip. I wonder if he’s had time to get weirded out by what happened during the movie last night.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

I pull out the paper that’s been in my pocket today. “You see this?”

He recoils, waving one hand like I’m a whole swarm of mosquitoes trying to land on him. “No, and I don’t want to.”

My hand and the paper hover in the air, like a whole swarm of confused mosquitoes. “Do you know what it is?”

Brant’s jaw clenches. “I know it’s not real.”

I cock my head. “Like someone photoshopped it?”

“Exactly. Just some dumb hoax.”

“Why would someone do that?”

“Yeah, not like anyone around here gets off on making up stories to scare people.”

I frown. “I did get this from Mathis.”

He looks up, alarmed. “He bothering you again?”

“No. I mean, I ran into him in Walmart and he bothered me, but it was okay.”

Brant looks down, runs a thumb across his strings like a tiny guitar. “So you saw his belt then.”

I scuffle my shoes on the carpet. “Yep.”

“I went back—” Brant says. “To get it for you. For your birthday. But it was gone. So happy birthday every time you look at Mathis.”

“Thanks. That’s really special.”

He looks up into my eyes and we smile. He reaches out and taps the paper in my hands. “Don’t fall for it. We ain’t got no mountain lions in these parts. Ask the Game and Fish Commission.”

I start unfolding it. “They sure did a good job on it though.”

Brant turns his face, shielding his eyes with his elbow.

“Okay, okay.” I tuck it back in my pocket. “So guess what?”

He peeks over his elbow. “What?”

“I’m getting baptized in the morning.”

His eyebrows shoot up under his forelock. “You’re what?!”

“Daddy decided it was time.”

Brant scowls. “That’s a really personal decision.”

“Did you make it for yourself?”

He just looks at me. Stupid question. Then he looks past me at Brother Mackey coming down the aisle. Everyone moves toward their pews, and I see a couple of spots where regulars and visitors are tensely sorting things out. 

I stand up, wiping my sweaty palms on my jeans. Brant catches my wrist. “If you try and get out of it, they’ll just bother you until you do it, so you might as well get dunked and have it over with.”

Brother Mackey steps onto the stage, and Brant lets go of my wrist. I hop down the steps and hustle across the church toward the youth pews, meeting Lauren on her way to the stage. 

She smiles and hisses, “Tickle his feet with your nipples.”

I’m still chuckling when I slide in next to Hannah. We kiss on the cheeks. Brother Mackey hovers behind the pulpit, waiting for everyone to settle down, but it takes a little longer tonight. I pull the picture out of my pocket.

“Did you see this?”

“Yeah, and I’m really glad you didn’t get eaten yesterday.”

I peer at the grainy image. “It don’t look fake to me.”

“Doesn’t, Casper. Talk like you’re going to college. And it’s not fake. Who’s saying that?”

I nod at Brant, who’s leaned over the piano bench whispering to Lauren and pointing at her sheet music.

“Oh, yeah, he’s being weird about it. But he’s wrong.”

“How do you know?”

“Duh. Because my brother’s the one who checks those game cameras.”

I open my mouth, but Brother Mackey interrupts with the beginning of his prayer. I bow my head. Hannah takes my hand, squeezing my knuckles and the soft spot behind my thumb. I try not to squirm. Brother Mackey prays for all the usual things, ending with a plea for God to send down the latter rain. I have no idea what that is, but the ecstatic contortion of Mackey’s voice tells me it comes from the Holy Spirit rather than Mother Nature. 

When he’s finished—but not until we’re all looking at him—Brother Mackey takes a hankie from his pocket and dries his puffy eyes. My guts clench up, waiting for him to say something about Wings of Glory, but he don’t—doesn’t—say a word, just motions to the worship team before stepping quietly off the stage to sit on the front row with his super pregnant wife. My guts relax. Maybe Sister Bonnie had a talk with him about making people feel bad. Maybe he’ll never bring it up again.

Brant sidles up to one of the mics in front of the piano, tosses his forelock and grins. That’s all he’s got to do to get people to clap for him. I wonder why no one else ever see it in his eyes—the bored sleepy lids under curious quirked brows, the big black pupils under bright fluorescent lights. I wonder what it means if the worship leader can’t do his job without getting high?

After a couple of popular choruses, Brant motions for us to take our seats. Hannah nudges me with her shoulder, but I shake my head, hug myself like I’m too cold to put my arm around her. She rubs my thigh. Once everyone’s settled and reasonably quiet, Brant leans into his mic.

“I asked Brother Mackey if me and Sister Lauren could sing a special song tonight, one the Lord’s really been laying on my heart. I recently heard a wise woman say that in all the words that have ever been written, there’s really only one plot, one story—Who am I?”

Hannah grips my thigh, suppresses a snicker. I fake a yawn so I can cover my mouth and smile. Lauren ducks her head like she’s in deep agreement, but I caught the twitch at the corner of her lips. Brant Mitchell is plagiarizing The Amazing Spider-man from the pulpit.

“I know it sounds crazy, but just let it sink in. Ain’t it the truth? Every book, every movie, every play—it’s what they all come down to. One little person trying to figure out their place in the whole big scheme of things.” Brant rests his bow on his fiddle. “It’s a story we see over and over again in the Scriptures. Moses. Samuel. David. Mary. Paul. What makes those stories so great, what keeps us coming back to them time and time again, is that unlike the world’s stories, those Bible stories give us the real answer.”

His bow pulls a strand of notes from his strings. Lauren softly hums.

“You see, folks, whenever I’m feeling anxious or confused, I know I can just pick up that Book and be reminded that it’s already been decided.” His voice cracks and he licks his chapped lips. “I am His.”

He lifts a finger off the neck of his fiddle and points toward Heaven, but as the congregation applauds, and Lauren begins to sing, his eyes are boring into me.

SUNDAY, JULY 8, 2012

There’s a reason Christians talk about going down to the river, not going down to the lake. Rivers flow. They don’t just wash your sins off, they carry them away. Lakes on the other hand just sit there, and anything you toss in will sink to the bottom and rot, or if light enough, wash back up on shore. I’m anxious to find out what my sins will do today.