Dry County

by Jake Hinkson

  I can’t even really contemplate telling her about Gary. It’s like contemplating suicide. And if this became public . . . she would never forgive me. Humiliation is her greatest fear. My place in the community determines her place. At its best, this works beautifully. I’ve made her an important woman in town. If I get caught up in some tawdry scandal, however, she’ll lose that place of importance. She’ll become a figure of pity and shame. I honestly think she would sooner forgive me if I beat her.

  Besides, it’s not just Penny who would listen to Gary. I told him everyone would believe me, but that was bluster. Yes, many people love and respect me. And yes, many of them would stand beside me, no matter what anyone else said.

  But I have my enemies, too, even among the elders of our church. The chairman of the deacons, Brother Amos, would entertain any slander laid against me. I cringe every time he rises to his feet in the middle of a business meeting and calls out from his pew, “Brother Weatherford, may I say a few words the Lord has laid on my heart?” Could I ever possibly say no? Could I ever possibly suggest that not every idea that pops into that old man’s head was put there by the Almighty? No, of course not. So Amos stands there, with one hand jangling the car keys in his pocket while he delivers an oration in stentorian tones fit for the Gettysburg Address. And what has the Lord laid on his heart? Always the same thing. Always that the preacher is wrong, every time. The Lord has never told Amos that I did something right. To imagine him standing up in the middle of church and uttering the words “Gary Doane” makes me nauseous again.

  And then, of course, there are all the people who would benefit from my public humiliation. I’m sure that the folks in the wet coalition would leap at the chance to point out my hypocrisy. The only thing Amos has in common with someone like Brian Harten is that they would both love to see me fall on my face.

  I would be the local scandal, and my wife and children would be swamped in humiliation. And these days every local scandal has the potential to become a national one. I’m God’s representative, called by him to proclaim the cross of Christ, and the world loves to see a man of the cross brought down by his own weakness.

  It would be better if I’d died in my sleep last night.

  I lower my face to the carpet, and I try to cry. I’ve cried many tears into the carpet of this room. Tears of misery and tears of exultation, all wept as I beseeched the Lord for one person or another. But I cannot weep for myself now. I cannot pray for myself.

  I am too ashamed to face God.

  Breakfast is served. Penny and the kids have prepared quite a feast. We hold hands as I say grace, and then, as we settle down to eat, the cacophony of voices rises around the table.

  The older children discuss college. Mary talks about a history class she’s enjoying, her favorite class of her freshman year, in fact.

  Matthew seizes on this to critique the way our secular universities teach history. “It’s worse than how they teach science,” he says.

  “Nothing,” Mark says, “is worse than how they teach science.” His voice slurs the r in worse to an l, a result of the cognitive damage he suffered at birth. My poor son. Though he still deals with a significant learning disability, he is pursuing a degree in cyber security from an online school, and he’s been talking recently about moving out on his own. That would make things easier on us, but we worry about him heading out into the world.

  Johnny, who has been sulking since I castigated him earlier, warms to the science topic, intuiting a way to return to my good favor. “Dad, how could people think we come from monkeys?”

  “I don’t know, son. Hitler said if you want to get people to believe a lie, you just keep repeating it. The secularists keep repeating the whole evolution thing, and people just accept it uncritically. They hear learned men with impressive degrees holding forth about monkeys and fossils or whatever, and they think, ‘Well, I don’t get it, but I guess it must all make sense, if these smart guys believe it.’”

  Johnny shakes his head dramatically and turns to his little sister and says, “Monkeys . . .”

  Ruth giggles and eats some bacon.

  I smile at them. I don’t have much of an appetite, so I merely sip some coffee.

  Matthew says, “Well, at the college level, the problem’s tenure. These wheezy old sixties liberals clogging up the academy—they’re the fossils we should really be worried about.”

  For Matthew, everything is political. He’s about to graduate from the University of Arkansas with a degree in Political Science—or Poli Sci, as he insists on calling it—and he’s interested in going into politics himself. He expressed an interest in politics from an early age, even becoming president of the Young Republicans chapter in his high school, but his rage at Obama’s reelection in 2012 fueled the fire of his ambition as nothing ever has. We’re a family that discusses political matters, and I’ve never shied away from taking a stand on controversial issues in the pulpit. But I am a little wary of Matthew’s obsession with the political. Still, while I fear the cost of him being too involved in the grimy world of politics, I am certain he would be a good leader.

  I look around the table, at the faces of my bright and beautiful children. I labor to draw my breath. My chest feels tight. I close my eyes to concentrate, to find another breath.

  “Richard, are you okay?” Penny asks.

  I nod.

  “You sure, Dad?” Matthew says.

  “I’m fine.” I reach for my glass of water and knock it over.

  Mary puts her hand on mine. “Dad?”

  “Perhaps I should lie down,” I say. I find some air. I open my eyes.

  Penny is at my side, her hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?” She feels my face. “You’re clammy. And you’re sweating.”

  Worry covers all their faces. I’ve never seen this before, my wife and all five of my children staring at me this way. Poor Mark looks scared.

  I attempt to smile. Sweat drips onto my glasses. I try to wipe it away and it smears my vision. “Perhaps I should lie down.” I reach for Mary’s glass and drink her water. “I’m fine.”

  They continue to stare at me. Matthew gets up and reaches for my arm to help me, but I affectionately swat his hand away and tell him, “I’m fine, I’m fine. You all stop making a fuss about it. Finish breakfast. I’m going to have a quick nap. I got up too early and had too much coffee. Just need to lie down.”

  Penny tells them all, “You heard him. Finish up.”

  She follows me down the hall and up the stairs. We don’t say a word until we get in the bedroom and the door is closed.

  I take off my glasses and lie down, and she asks, “Is it your chest?”

  I rest my feet on the bed, and she starts pulling off my shoes.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “Richard, don’t be stubborn. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  She sits down beside me.

  I close my eyes so I don’t have to look at her concerned and somewhat accusatory face.

  “I felt suddenly dizzy, light-headed, and I had a little trouble breathing. It’s nothing.”

  “It’s not nothing to have breathing problems,” she protests. “You should see Dr. Ritter.”

  I want to end this conversation, and I want her to leave. I learned long ago that the quickest way to get her to leave is to agree with everything she’s saying. “Yes. Of course. I’ll call first thing Monday morning.”

  “You sure you don’t want to see someone right now?”

  “I’m fine, really. I was dizzy for a second, but I’m okay now. My heart rate is fine. I’m sitting here talking to you, so my breathing is fine. I’ll call Monday.”

  “I’ll call Monday. Can’t trust you to do it yourself.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “I’m going to let you rest.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “Is there anything I can get you?”

  “You could close the blinds and pull the curtains.”

  She closes off
the windows and then kisses my forehead. I don’t open my eyes until the door shuts behind her and her footsteps move down the hallway.

  It’s mostly dark in the room, but resilient slivers of light slash out from the edges of the windows and strike across the wall. I pull the bed’s comforter over my head and twist around until I’m encased in a black cocoon. I settle into the comfortable darkness. I can see nothing. I can feel only my breath. It’s as if I have no body, as if I’m merely the breath that God himself breathed into Adam.

  But the dark isn’t a respite for long. The thoughts come. The regrets.

  How could I have been so foolish? Satan comes cloaked as an angel of light; 2 Corinthians 11:14 tells us that. But I never thought Gary was an angel of light, did I? I was supposed to be the angel of light. His father was upset because Gary had flunked out of college. And the concern wasn’t just about wasted tuition money or a stunted future; his parents were afraid that Gary might hurt himself. I was supposed to help.

  How did that all go wrong? Was I always looking for someone like him? Nothing like this has happened to me before.

  What about the man in Asheville?

  No, the man in Asheville was an insane moment of weakness, fifteen years ago. That was about the abnegation of my whole self—Richard the man, the husband, the father, the Christian. The whole experience was traumatic, some stranger fucking me—I don’t like that word, but there really is no other word for it—fucking me with conquest in his eyes, and after he had gone, I was in the motel shower, shaking and bleeding, more alone than I had ever been in my life.

  I hated myself for it. I repented of it through tears. It was so traumatic that I thought I had been cured of the impulse.

  But then one day Gary looked at me and didn’t look away. We are nothing alike, our lives are nothing alike, but when he looked at me, I felt stripped of my defenses. Helpless. Exposed.

  What did he see? I don’t know, but I learned many years ago that there’s nothing romantic at the center of man. I suspect there’s nothing at the center of me except need and wanting. Maybe that’s what he saw.

  Gary was as much a pawn of the devil as I was, and I know I failed him. He gave me his trust, and I abused that trust. I didn’t seduce him, though. I never meant for anything like this to happen. Neither did he. It just happened. The devil tricked us both. The devil promises the same easy solution to every problem, the same patch for every breach: do what you want.

  I did. I fed my wanting.

  So, yes, I was tricked, but I can’t hide behind that. God is a mystery, but the devil is not. In all the ways that matter, I knew what I was doing. Certainly, I was clearheaded enough to orchestrate our interactions. I didn’t want it to be like that night in Asheville. I wanted it to be playful and light. Fun. I wanted to watch him pleasure himself, my adolescent pornographic fantasies made flesh. Mostly, though, I wanted him to watch me, to see me. I wanted a man to witness my pleasure.

  Or did I just want a witness to my depravity? Is there any real pleasure in this world without depravity? I’m not sure that there is, unless it’s the ecstasy of finally shaking off the shackles of the flesh.

  Eventually, I don’t know after how long, there is a knock at the door. I unpeel myself from the cocoon and say, “Yes?”

  The door opens. Penny says, “Sweetheart, Randy Ellis is here. He wants to talk to you about—”

  “About the dry vote. Right. Tell him I’ll be down.”

  “Are you sure, honey? I can tell him—”

  “No, no. Don’t be silly. I feel rested and much better.”

  She stares at me a moment, says nothing, and retreats.

  I get up and walk over to the windows and throw open the curtains. The radiance of the day overwhelms my eyes, and I have to look away.

  I slip on my shoes, pat down my hair, and walk downstairs.

  Randy is in the kitchen talking with Matthew about Obama’s foreign policy. Randy’s wearing jeans held up by suspenders over a gray T-shirt that reads ONE NATION UNDER GOD, which accurately summarizes his views on all political matters.

  When Matthew sees me, he says, “Feeling better, Dad?”

  Randy pushes the sweaty Razorback ballcap back on his head. “You feeling poorly, Brother Richard?”

  I wave it away. “Small headache. Penny acts like such a thing is the end of the world. Matthew takes after her, I guess.”

  The comment could hardly be more cutting to Matthew. While he loves his mother, he’s always been rather uncomfortable with her position of authority within the family. Even as a small boy, he seemed to resent her power over him. He respects her as his mother, as a nurturer, but not as an authority. He aspires—as all my boys do—to be like me, and I think he’s always felt that Penny was something of a usurper to the role of second-in-command of the family.

  He tries to smile and roll with this slap, but the brightness in his face goes out. Now he knows he should be more circumspect.

  While Matthew retreats, Randy—affable, good-natured Randy Ellis—is wholly unaware that anything has happened. He just rubs his big belly.

  I ask him, “You get Patricia’s Whopper yet?”

  “Not yet. Get it on the way home.”

  With their sons grown and out of the house, Randy and his wife, Denise, live alone with an obese cocker spaniel named Patricia, and every day, Randy buys her a Whopper from Burger King.

  As I walk him to my office, I ask, “Tell me something, you ever feed her a Big Mac, just to mix it up?”

  He shrugs. “She don’t like McDonald’s.”

  We laugh about that, and I shut the office door.

  “What’s the news, Brother Randy?”

  My desk faces the window, so I spin my chair around to face him. He takes the chair by my bookshelf. He starts to cross his legs, but his belly gets in the way. Instead, he grips his knees with his hands.

  His face is serious, more serious than I’ve seen it in a while. “Well, I been talking to the folks on the quorum court, like you asked,” he says.

  “You talk to the Methodists?”

  “I sure did. Tubb and Carter are both on board.”

  “That’s encouraging news.”

  He asks, “That’s the ball game, ain’t it? I mean, if Tubb and Carter vote no, then there’s no way a wet vote gets brought to the ballot. Or are you still concerned?”

  “Well, it’s fantastic news,” I tell him. “No doubt about it. The wets are already in a shaky position, and without the Methodists, their odds just got a lot worse. But remember, the ball game’s not over until they shut off the scoreboard and everybody goes home. Let’s see how it plays out.”

  Randy takes a deep breath, a heavy breath. “You know, Brother Richard,” he says, “I really appreciate you bringing me in on this deal.”

  I’m surprised by his somberness. “Of course, brother,” I say. “I’m thankful for all your help.”

  He nods and clears his throat. “What I mean is . . . I just mean, and I don’t know if you realize this, but tomorrow is the eighth anniversary of the first time I set foot in church.”

  “Has it been that long? I didn’t realize.”

  He clears his throat again. “Well, I won’t ever forget it. Denise dragged me in eight years ago.” He smiles. “‘It’s Easter,’ she said. ‘Get your butt up. We’re going to church.’”

  “I know she’d been praying for you for a while, Randy.”

  “That’s right, and she brought me to service and I heard you preach and it changed my life.”

  “Well,” I say, “the Lord changed your life. I just tried to relay his message.”

  “You did his will, like always, and it turned me around. I quit drinking that week. I thought it would kill me. Now, though, I don’t miss it at all.”

  “Praise the Lord.”

  “Praise the Lord,” he repeats. “That’s why I’m so proud to stand with you against this wet vote, Brother Richard. Stopping this thing from happening . . . I tell you, it feels pretty
good. We can’t have this.”

  “No, we can’t.”

  “I just wish,” he says, stumbling a bit, “just wish I’d quit sooner. Maybe my boys would be in a better place.” He stares down at his thick hands.

  I might have known that this was what was on his mind. His sons, Carl and Bobby, were both in high school when Randy was saved. Perhaps the hardest thing for a born-again Christian to do is to reintroduce himself to his family, particularly his children. It’s not simply that you’re telling your kids that you’ve changed; you’re telling them your sins have been forgiven by a higher power. Some people, to put it mildly, do not want to hear that, particularly children. Children like to think of themselves as the only ones qualified to judge their parents. By his own accounting, before he got saved, Randy had been an imperfect father, given to casual drunkenness on one hand and a heavy-handed discipline on the other. When he came home that Easter and announced that he’d been saved, his boys reacted with extreme skepticism. And when he began to curtail their freedoms—forbidding secular music in the house, banishing alcohol and cigarettes, vetting their friends—their skepticism turned into angry defiance. Randy and Denise reacted to this rebellion by doubling down on the restrictions, forcing the boys to attend church for the first time in their lives. Bobby, only fifteen or so, grudgingly went along. Carl, eighteen and about to graduate, simply left home and didn’t come back.

  Now the boys are both in their twenties, and both are adrift. Bobby still lives in town, working second shift at the chicken plant and living with some meth addict in her forties. Carl, somewhere down in Little Rock, is lost to drugs. In a sense, it strikes me, Randy’s salvation came at the cost of his family.