Winter Heart

by B. G. Thomas

“Yes, I’m right,” he hissed and then once again was just too tired to rage on.

  Another tear, impossibly big, spilled from her left eye and landed with an actual sound on the white sheet over his mattress. “Things would have been different had the finger of God killed him rather than changed him into… what it changed him into.”

  Wyatt willed the energy to shake his head. Shake it vehemently. “No,” he said with surprising strength. “Not God.”

  “I think God is Love. I think that is all that God is. I don’t think ‘It’ hates or gets jealous or punishes and floods the Earth or sends anyone to hell. I don’t even believe in hell because how could a God that the Bible said is ‘agape’—unconditional love—have any conditions?”

  “God is love,” he told her firmly. Marveled that he was saying it. “That’s all God is.”

  From the corner of his eye, he saw Kevin and felt his strong hand rest on his right shoulder and give a gentle squeeze.

  “Dad made his choice. He chose to be a vile, mean old man. God didn’t have anything to do with it.” And in a flash of insight: “And he was always a fucking bastard—” Wyatt ignored her wince. “—and after what happened he let ‘God’ be his excuse.”

  Then she said it, and it was like a punch to the gut, knocking the wind from his lungs.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “But please, Son. Do not speak ill of the dead.”

  Dead? Did she just say…?

  She nodded. “He died yesterday morning, Wyatt. He had another stroke, and he was gone before anyone even knew.”

  The tears began to flow again.

  Wyatt tried to get a breath. Tried again. Gasped. Kevin’s hand squeezed again. Wyatt struggled for a breath. Finally got it. “He—he’s dead?”

  “Listen, you old bastard! You touch her again and I don’t care that you’re on your fucking death bed, I’ll beat the shit out of you!”

  His mother nodded once.

  “Daddy’s dead?”

  “You are a vile evil old man! That lightning should have killed you. I wish it had!”

  “Yes, Wyatt.”

  Wyatt looked to Kevin, eyes wild. “Did you know?”

  Pain filled Kevin’s face, his beautiful eyes going dark like storm clouds. “I’m sorry, Baby Bear. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—tell you the night before your operation.”

  Wyatt sighed and was just too fucking worn out and pain-wracked to be mad at his big, beautiful loving man.

  He didn’t tell me because he loves me.

  But he should have told me.

  Wyatt shook his head slowly back and forth, once.

  “I’m sorry, Wyatt.”

  He did the right thing.

  Somehow Wyatt reached up and touched that big hand that lay still upon his shoulder.

  “No need,” he whispered.

  Wyatt looked back at his mother. She was still crying. Crying for that hideous old fuck. And even though there were shadows of guilt waiting around the edges for him—guilt for the last words he’d ever said to his sire—

  “Fine! And I have no father!”

  —with a mighty, exhausting thought, he banished them.

  I don’t have a father….

  “Are you okay, Mom?”

  And then she did something that surprised him most of all.

  She smiled.

  It was weak and it was small. But she smiled, and a flicker of light came to her eyes.

  “Yes, Wyatt. Because I’m free. At long, long last. I’m free.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  HE HIT her. Wyatt’s father. He hit his mother.

  But never anywhere anyone could see.

  The rage at that nearly overswept Wyatt, but she took a hand and laid it on his heart and told him what was past was past—although gloriously so.

  “I think Norman hits Wendy,” she said.

  Wyatt’s eyes flew wide again, and once more came his mother’s hand. “I shouldn’t have told you,” she said. “At least not yet.”

  “Mom. We have to do something.”

  His mother let out a long sigh. Then finally, “I think maybe you’re right. Although I am not sure what we can do. I let your father treat me the way he did for over twenty years.” She closed her eyes again. When she opened them, they were wet once more. “I let him do the same to you. Oh, Wyatt….”

  A different kind of pain hit Wyatt then. Something different than medical. Something deeper than that. Something that had been opened when she walked into his room.

  “And the kids,” Wyatt said. “Mary? Norman Jr.?”

  “That she won’t put up with,” his mother said. “And that was when I pretty much knew what was happening. And I blame myself for that too.”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Because our children learn more from their parents than we might want.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I taught her that it’s all right to let her husband treat her any way he wants. My parents taught me that. They so ingrained the Bible in me, it’s automatic. Still. After all this time.”

  “Mom.” He reached out to her.

  “I would dream about leaving your father… but I just couldn’t. It was like asking a fish to fly.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t.”

  “Mom. It’s not like that at all.”

  She caught him with a steady gaze. “No. Not entirely.” She looked away, then back. “I did things your father didn’t know about. And I hid my books a lot better than you did.”

  The comment startled Wyatt.

  His Scott Cunningham books. The Spiral Dance, by Starhawk. His small collection of tarot cards. He thought he’d hid them well. Nothing as silly as a box under the bed or a high shelf in his closet. He’d found a loose board in the floor by his bed. It was like something out of a movie. And it had worked for years.

  “I kept mine with my… female things.”

  Female things? Oh! He blushed.

  “Your father didn’t even know I didn’t still need them. He actually had no idea I’d stopped using them years ago. No idea what menopause really meant. At least that’s what I thought.” She shrugged. “He must have figured it out finally. I came home one day a few weeks ago and he was sitting at the same table, right there in the kitchen, with my books in front of him.”

  Wyatt shuddered. The image was too real, one he figured he might never forget.

  But then…. “What books?” he asked.

  Their eyes found each other again. What was that he saw in hers?

  “A book by the Reverend Troy Perry.”

  Wyatt’s mouth fell open.

  “You’ve heard of him?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a Christian,” she said in an offhand tone.

  Wyatt nodded. “But a hero.”

  She tilted her head. “Really?”

  “Mom. He started the gay church. He founded an entire denomination! For all those people out there who thought they were going to hell because they weren’t straight, because of lifetimes of being told they were abominations.”

  His mother raised a hand. “I know. I read it.”

  The world seemed to go off skew. His mother read a book about…. Wait….

  “But I wasn’t sure if you would have heard of him since you don’t believe in God.” A pained expression came to her face.

  “But I do, Mom,” he said, and the other hurt came back.

  She held up her hand. “I know…. But it’s been… hard. It has been a heck of a journey.” She shook her head. “A lifetime of being told there is only one way.”

  Wyatt sighed. “If only you knew why I believe what I do.”

  “Wyatt. The book by Rev. Troy Perry wasn’t the only book that was lying on that table the day I got home from grocery shopping.”

  Wyatt clenched his jaw, then sighed.

  “Actually it all started one day when your dad was out of town. I was watching TV, and this movie came on called Prayers for Bobby. Gosh. That was six or more years ago? It star
red that wonderful Sigourney Weaver, and it was all about—”

  Wyatt knew what it was all about, but the world skewed off even more at the thought she knew what it was about.

  “—this woman who loses her son because he kills himself because he’s gay. I was frozen, baby. I couldn’t move. And I cried! Oh, how I cried. That sweet boy killing himself, and the mother…. Thinking over and over again that he did it because she told him it would be better that he was dead than be gay.” Right then more tears started down her face. “But then she did this search, tried to understand, and how she was led to believe it was all right to be homosexual. That God didn’t hate gay people.” She trembled. “I bought the book and read it and read it and read it. It’s a true story. And the mother—Mary Griffith? She became a gay rights activist. And she came to Little Rock, and I wanted to go meet her.” She let out a very long sigh. “Of course, it wasn’t going to happen.” She looked up at Wyatt. “But it started me on my inner journey, Wyatt. I had come to believe it was possible you could be gay and be a Christian—”

  “But not pagan.”

  There was a long pause, then she continued. “A lifetime of being told there is only one way, Wyatt. It was a pretty huge thing for a woman like me, growing up where I did, a country girl, to accept you were gay, honey. But the pagan thing? The witch thing? All those verses in the Bible about not suffering a witch to live! And not to seek out mediums and necromancers. How sorcerers were lumped right in there with murderers and idolaters and the sexually immoral. Which took me right back to the gay thing!” She raised her hands, spread them wide.

  She took another long breath. Then looked him in the eyes again.

  “So I did what I did before. If I could read that book about Mary Griffith and that one by Troy Perry. Or this really amazing book called Stranger at the Gate by a man named Mel White. Oh! And—” She trembled. “—the one by Matthew Shepard’s mother! And this wasn’t easy, honey. I couldn’t just order them from Amazon because then your father would want to know what I was buying! I used the cash tips from the diner, and even then I had to be careful because your dad knew how much I usually made in tips.”

  “Mom?” Wyatt couldn’t believe what he was hearing. His mother read all those books? And went through so much trouble to buy them. For what?

  For me?

  “So if I could read those books, why not see if there was a different truth about your whole pagan thing? And I bought a book called Gay Witchcraft by Christopher—”

  “Penczak,” Wyatt finished. “You read that book?”

  She nodded. “I did. Heart pounding the whole time, I might say. Scared me to order it. Scared me when I first started reading it. I was afraid I’d be struck dead.”

  This was a dream. Had to be. This couldn’t be real. Couldn’t.

  “And then when I didn’t die—when God didn’t strike me dead—”

  “You mean with a bolt of lightning?” Wyatt asked.

  Again they just looked at each other for the longest time.

  “Did you know Christopher Penczak converted his mother to his religion?”

  Wyatt had to clench his jaw to keep his mouth from falling open.

  What was she saying?

  She was looking out the window. It was not a very good view. She could see the sky at least, but the rest was the roof of part of the building. Dull and not very uplifting. Not that he’d seen much of it. He had to get out of bed to do that, and it took a lot of effort, and thank the gods for Kevin there as well.

  “Your father had the stroke when I told him,” his mother said quietly.

  “What?”

  “I came home and saw him sitting there. Wendy and Mary and Norman Jr. were with me, and my stomach dropped down through the floor and then…. Then he said, ‘So like son, like mother?’ and I didn’t know what to say. Then he said, ‘What the hell is this, Rebecca?’ Using my full name. And then…. Then I saw him hit you. In my head. I wondered, Is he going to hit me now? Right in front of Wendy and the kids?” She turned back, and the faraway look was gone. Her eyes flashed instead. “And… and I saw red.” She nodded, once, twice. “So I says, ‘What the hell were you doing in my maxi pads, Charles?’ and you should have seen the look he gave me! I thought his eyes were going to pop right out of his head.”

  Wyatt all but gasped. This had happened? His mother had talked back to his father? She had said hell?

  Her eyes flashed again. “Then before he could do anything more, I lifted my shoulders high and I thrust my big old breasts out—”

  Wyatt did gasp then.

  “—and I walked straight up to him and started to grab my books, and his hand came down on them and I shot him such a look and I yelled. I told him. I said, ‘What’cha gonna do, Charles? Hit me? Like you did our boy? You gonna hit me right in front of your daughter and your grandkids?’ And I thrust my chin out and I said—no, no, it was more like I hissed it—I said, ‘Go on. I dare you. But you better not sleep in this house tonight, Charles Dolan, or you might just find yourself wakin’ up in hell!’”

  Wyatt’s mouth fell open.

  “Wendy was crying out about how we needed to calm down, and Mary started crying and he—the lord and master of his domain—jumps up, then his eyes go even more buggy, and he just falls on the floor. Had a stroke. And that’s how it happened.”

  “H-he died?”

  “No, this was the first time. Scared the crap out of me, Wyatt. I even had me a little setback. I felt terrible. But darn it, I wasn’t going to let him hit me. I was tired of it. Tired of all of him. And bless me, Lord, there was a part of me that wished he had just died.”

  For the longest time neither of them said anything. Then finally Wyatt broke the silence. “Mom, what did you ever see in him? Why did you marry him?”

  She let out a long breath and then seemed to almost melt into the chair. “Oh, baby. He was different once upon a time. I was working in the school lieberry—”

  She pronounced it just like that, and it used to drive Wyatt insane, it was so small-town, and he hated “small-town” with a passion, but today it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  “—and he would come in and get books on sports and such. And he was so darned handsome, and all the girls were head over heels about him. He always made sure I was at the desk when he checked out the books, and then one day he just asked me out. And of course I said yes. He picked me up and opened the car door for me and took me to dinner and then a show, and he was the perfect gentleman. And there I was, living in my house with three brothers and four sisters in a tiny town and knowing my grades weren’t good enough to get any scholarships, and I thought I’d be trapped with my bastard of a father for the rest of my life. I’m hardly the pretty sister.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Wyatt said, because he thought she was beautiful. Kathleen Turner beautiful, even older as she was now. “You’re gorgeous.”

  She shushed him and went on. “He made me feel wonderful. He made me feel special. I felt like he’d saved my life. He went to church in those days, or started to so he could take me, and he did really well there and joined and went to Sunday school even. He learned his Bible verses and impressed everybody, and that whole year we was going steady, he never tried anything sexual. Or not too much anyway. We kissed, of course, and he would sneak in little squeezes of my bottom when we danced—”

  “Mom!”

  “—but that was it. So when he asked me to marry him, of course I said yes. And things were grand at first. But then they changed. He changed. Bit by bit. He started belittling me and telling me I was fat.”

  Gods, he thought. He felt a rush of goose bumps. Just like me.

  “And then one day he hit me. I would blame it on the booze, which he had started to drink, but only a few beers at first, on Fridays after his week at work. But then he was drinking every night, and then it was the heavier stuff, and I thought about leaving him, but you just don’t do that in Damview, Arkansas, population 700-some. And we were Christian, alth
ough he’d stopped going to church by then. Saturday night was his big drinking night, and he was always too hung over on Sunday to go. And you two were in the world by then, and how was I supposed to take care of you? I couldn’t move back home. Lord, no.”

  The faraway look was back and she stared out the window, but Wyatt couldn’t help but think she was looking somewhere else. Back through the years, perhaps?

  “And then he got struck by the lightning. And he did change. For the better.”

  Wyatt didn’t remember that. He remembered it for the worse. And he opened his mouth to tell her so, but she cut him off before he could start.

  “No. I lie. It was better for a few weeks, maybe. At least the hitting stopped. Well, for a while. And I don’t know why I didn’t leave. Sometimes you just get stuck. Because I was afraid to leave him. Because I didn’t know what I would do. And he told me that if I left him no one would ever want a fat old cow like me.”

  “Sometimes love has teeth….” Wyatt’s eyes went wide. And the dark echoes threatened to come back.

  No! No, you won’t! he shouted inwardly at those voices. Done with you.

  She turned back to him. “This Kevin….”

  That startled him. Kevin.

  “Is he a good man?”

  A warmth came deep out of him and spread out in waves, and the echoes were gone. “Oh, Mom. He’s wonderful.”

  “He seems nice.” She smiled. “He sure is a handsome fellow.”

  Wyatt blushed.

  “Does he treat you right?”

  “Mom….” He started to feel giddy. “Yes, Mom. Like I’m made of gold.”

  She nodded. “Good. That’s good.” Then: “I need some water. How about you?”

  She got up and told him she was getting some ice, and when she came back and poured them each a glass of water, she sat down and reached in her bag and pulled out another book. “I want to read to you from this. And no eye-rolling! I love this book, and I want to share it with you.”

  She held it up. Wish You Well, by David Baldacci, was the title and author. He’d never heard of either.

  “Mister Baldacci usually writes these action thrillers, like Last Man Standing. But this is my favorite, and it’s all about this precocious twelve-year-old girl who lived in New York City but then has to move with her family to live on her great-grandmother’s farm in Virginia….”