Reckless: Shades of a Vampire (15 page)

“Good evening, Sir,” she says. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“You look like your father,” he says. “He’s a good man of God. I don’t know about all those snakes. But, he’s a good man.”

“Snakes?” Emma asks.

“Snakes.”

“Emma was bitten by one father,” David says.

“David likes the s…” Emma says, before David clinches her hand, tightly, cutting her off mid sentence.

“Emma, I, uh…let’s go sit in the parlor,” David says. “Father, I’m sure you would like to join us.”

“Let me get you all some eggnog,” David’s mother says, giggling amid words. “Pentecostal style – heavy on the egg, without the nog.”

“David,” Emma says, pulling at his hand. “Why don’t you show me around first?”

David walks Emma through the house, showing her the parlor, before walking her down a hallway lined with bedrooms.

“That’s my parents on the end,” David says.

“I see,” Emma says. “Where is yours?”

“Mine is here,” he says, turning to the right. “It’s the smallest. But it has the best view.”

David points to the window, revealing a small pond outside lined with trees surrounding the water glistening in the slight moonlight.

“I love a good window view,” Emma says. “Let me see how yours stacks up.”

Emma walks to the window. She spreads her arms wide, reaching side to side, and places her face in the middle of the pane, gazing out.

“Nice,” she says, looking back through a cocked eye to see if David is watching.

 David is looking through some papers on his desk, talking nervously.

“Yes,” he says. “I love a good view too. That’s something we share in common. Maybe we can have a good view together.”

Emma is carefully studying the window as David talks. She notices it is only latched in one spot – a twist lock in the center when the top and bottom panes connect. She turns slowly away from the window, back toward David, so she can see him, but she runs her left hand across the center of the window, so that her hand bumps against the latch.

Just before Emma pulls away from the window, her hand connects with the latch and she turns it, freeing the panes. She asks David a question as the latch is turns to muffle the noise.

“How long have you lived here?” Emma says.

“Long as I can remember,” says David.

“It’s nice,” Emma says.

“Really,” says David, surprised. “I’m glad you like it.”

Emma doesn’t want to sleep. She wants to see Michael while he is in town.

She listens to activity in the house, hearing her mother and father turn out the lights and get in the bed. They turn in earlier than usual on Saturday nights, since her father has two sermons to give on Sunday and the added calm from knowing their daughter is closer now to marrying a Pentecostal preacher man.

Praise be to God.

Emma watches the ceiling for hours, with thoughts of Michael working on the Denton farm prancing in her head. She sees him pitching hay. She sees him driving the tractor. She sees him walking the fencerow with pliers. She sees him opening his mouth to clutch hers.

Emma opens her bedroom curtain to see that the moon is resting at about the midnight hour. Her time has arrived, and she stirs with an energy that feels like she just woke up.

Emma gets out of the bed, slips on her black dress, some shoes and a jacket, and tiptoes up the hallway, past her parent’s door, into the parlor and out the front door, making nary a sound.

In the night, Emma bounds across the parsonage yard and pasture, crosses the highway, hops the fence to the Denton farm, slips down to the rustic roadway that leads to Josh’s truck, reaches the truck, pries the door open, slips in through the tight crack, and sits there, huffing and puffing and catching her breath.

“Whew,” she says aloud to herself, wiping her brow with the back of her hand. “Okay. Now. What would David do?”

Emma puts her right hand on the key in the truck’s ignition. She pushes her right foot into the brake, just as she has watched David do. She puts her left hand at the 10 o’clock position on the steering wheel.

She turns the key.

Ur-ur-ur-vroooom
.

The engine starts.

“Oh my,” Emma says.

The radio is on. A country station is blaring an Alan Jackson song.

“
Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee…never knew how much that muddy water meant to me…
”

She’s never heard it before. She smiles.

Emma puts her right hand on the gear stick on the steering column, keeping her foot on the brake as she’s seen David do. She clutches the gear stick, and pulls it back to the “R” position. She eases her foot off the break. The truck tries to move, according to her commands, but the thick brush holds it back.

Emma looks down at the gas peddle. She puts her foot on it, trying to ease into it for more gas. The truck’s engine gains pace, but it still doesn’t move. She shoves her foot farther into the pedal.

Vrrroooooom
.

“Ahhh!” Emma shouts as the truck jumps.

The truck races backwards, out of the brush.

Emma moves her foot from the gas pedal to the brake, thrusting her foot into it –
wham
.

The truck stops in its tracks, and Emma’s head snaps against the back window with a thud.

She is thrown back forward, where her arms hit the horn.

Hooooonk
.

Emma sits upright, pulling her arms off the horn. She rubs the back of her head. She looks around.

The truck is free from the brush, sideways in the road. Emma searches for the lights, finds the switch, and turns them on. Slowly, she creeps the truck forward and backward until she’s straight in the road, facing the highway.

Now, she is creeping the truck up toward the highway, without a foot on the gas or the brake. She stops at the end of the farm road with a brake, brake, hard STOP. Emma finds the blinker stick. Pulls it down to indicate a right turn, and eases the truck into the highway in the dark of the night.

Driving down the middle of the roadway -- neither hedging to the left or to the right -- Emma winds the truck across the Sand Mountain plateau toward Ider, traveling at about 35 miles per hour. She has her hands at ten and two positions on the wheel, and her eyes are fixated on the road.

Near Ider, a car is coming her way. They flash their lights on bright, and she clutches the steering wheel tighter and eases off the gas pedal while slowly moving the truck to the right so that she’s running partially on the shoulder as the car passes by.

They honk, but she keeps moving up the road, easing back onto the proper road and trying to stay in the right lane. Emma twists the truck around the bends, passes downtown Ider, and keeps going until she sees the green sign with white letters flashing back to the right, “Grinder’s Switch Road.”

She puts on a blinker, slows the truck and turns down the gravel road. Emma looks left and right for the big American flag flying by the roadside. About a half a mile down the road, she sees it flapping in the partial moonlit night on the right, above a wooden mailbox and two fence posts framing the driveway. She turns into the driveway, and sees the house about 100 yards away with only one dim porch light on. She drives about 50 more yards, and pulls the truck to the side of the driveway, turns it off, gets out, and starts walking to the front door of Michael’s house.

The doorknocker is a fist-size steel ball wrapped in twine that is nailed to the front door. The steel ball lands when knocked in the middle of a hand painted sign on small tree stump.

“Bless This House,” the sign reads.

Emma bangs the twine-bound ball against the sign on the front door.

Rap, Rap, Rap
.

A dog howls and barks.

Rap. Rap. Rap
.

Emma knocks again.

The door opens with just a crack. The dog sticks its nose through the door.

“It’s okay, Blue,” says a sleepy male voice. “Quiet.”

Emma puts her right hand to the dog’s nose. It sniffs, and silences.

“What do you need?” the man says.

Emma senses this is Michael’s father at the door, though she can’t see him.

“Michael,” she says. “I need Michael.”

“Do you know what time it is young lady? Michael is asleep. He’s traveling back to New York in the morning. Shall I tell him you paid a visit?”

“No,” Emma says. “I mean, yes. But I must see him. Tonight.”

“I hate to wake him. He’s got a long trip back, and semester exams start Monday.”

“I see. But sir, I … I must see him. Please. I must.”

“Who should I tell him is calling at this late hour?”

“Emma,” she says. “Tell him its Emma.”

“Emmaline Mays? The preacher’s daughter?”

“Yes. Emma.”

“It’s awfully late for you to be out.”

“Maybe I’m just up very early.”

The man laughs.

“That you are. Very well. Wait here. I’ll see if I can get him up. Sleeps like a log you know.”

No, Emma thinks. She doesn’t know.

Emma waits for four or five minutes, pulling her jacket tightly in the chilled late-November air. She hears fast footsteps coming her way. The door swings open wide.

“Emma!” Michael says. He’s wearing a tight white cotton t-shirt with an NYU logo and baggy, light-blue sleeping pants, and a sort of smile.

“What are you doing here?” he says.

Michael looks out the door, beyond Emma, and to the left and the right. “How did you get here? Is anybody with you?”

“No. Nobody is with me. I’m here alone.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes, sorry. I, umm, yes. Come in.”

Michael walks Emma into a dark living room lit only by remaining embers simmering in a large brick fireplace. Blue follows.

“Here,” Michael says, moving a quilt from the couch, “have a seat.”

Emma clutches her arms around herself. Michael gets a log from a stack next to the fireplace and tosses it on the embers. He stokes the fire, making it pop and sizzle.

“Now,” he says. “Tell me what you are doing here?”

“Where did you go Michael?”

“I left early for school. I took classes in the second summer session at NYU. I haven’t been home since. I’m leaving in the morning to go back.”

“Your father told me.”

“I like you Emma,” Michael says. “Well I guess I never really got to know you. But I feel like I like you. I feel like I know you.”

“I’m just a girl,” she says. “Just a simple preacher’s daughter.”

“That’s true,” he says.

“But there’s more.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. All I know is the parsonage, the church, the garden, chores, and a few books.”

“You know you want something different. That’s why you are here. Right?”

“By the way, tell me now. How did you get here?”

“I drove.”

“You drove? You have a car? You can drive?”

“I am learning,” Emma says. “I borrowed one.”

“You borrowed someone’s car at midnight and you are learning how to drive? Okay.

“Tell me about David. You will marry him?”

“That’s the plan. It’s not my plan. It’s my father’s plan, David’s plan, and David’s father’s plan. It’s an arrangement. You know. This is Sand Mountain. How we do it up here. In case you didn’t know.

“He gets a wife who understands her place, who is supposed to be delivered pure and loyal. She gets out of the house. They start a new Godly family. Simple as that.”

“You want to marry David?”

“No,” she says. “I didn’t say that. I said it’s my father’s plan. That means I don’t have a choice.”

“Sure you have a choice. It’s a free country.”

“Sand Mountain is not free,” Emma says. “My father’s house is not free. I have nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do. If I disobey, it is as if I have disobeyed God. I would be banished.”

“Okay. So you will marry David?”

“I hope not. But nobody is asking me.

“I hate him.”

“You hate who,” Michael says.

“David. My father. God.”

“Surely you don’t hate God,” Michael says. “Maybe you mean you hate how those around you use God wrongly to their advantage. It’s not God doing this to you. It’s is your father, and David.”

Emma looks at Michael.

“Maybe,” she says.

“How is college?” Emma asks.

“Wonderful. The city is so vibrant. I’m in a dormitory in Greenwich Village.”

“I thought you were in New York?”

“Greenwich Village is in New York. Near Lower Manhattan. It’s great. Lots of coffee shops. Good food. I’ve got some great professors. Students who want to learn.”

“I want to learn,” Emma says. “But they won’t get me any books.”

“I’ll get you some books,” Michael says. “What do you want to read?”

“Anything,” Emma says.

“How about
The Catcher in the Rye
by J.D. Sallinger? Have you read that?”

“No,” Emma says.

“I’ve got a copy here. I’ll loan it to you.”

Michael gets up, walks to a shelf lined with books, retrieves a paperback copy, and hands it to Emma.

“Thank you,” she says.

“What’s your favorite color?” Emma asks.

“My favorite color? That’s an odd question for the middle of the night.”

Emma giggles.

“Blue,” he says. “I like blue.”

“You named your dog Blue.”

“Yes,” David says. “The color is neither black nor white. It’s a nice combination of the two. That’s the way life is, I think. It’s blue. Not down in the dumps blue, just a nice warm blue that’s pleasing to look at.

“It’s never as dark as it seems, and it’s never as bright as it seems. It’s just blue. Like life. But blue gets a bad rap for most for being low. It see it differently.”

Emma smiles.

“What’s your favorite color?” Michael asks.

“Black,” Emma says. “I like other colors. I like my yellow dress. I like my lavender dress. My white dress. But in the darkness, I am free.