The Serpent King

by Jeff Zentner

  “I highly doubt we’ll get in a staff fight in Nashville,” Dill said.

  “I like it. It makes me feel good to have it.”

  Lydia rolled her eyes and put the car into gear. “Bless your heart. Okay, boys. Let’s do this. The last time we ever go school shopping together, thank the sweet Lord.”

  And with that pronouncement, Dill realized that the dread in his stomach wouldn’t be going away any time soon. Maybe never. The final indignity? He doubted he’d even get a good song out of it.

  The Nashville skyline loomed in the distance. Lydia liked Nashville. Vanderbilt was on her college list. Not high on the list, but there. Thinking about colleges put her in a good mood, as did being in a big city. All in all, she felt a lot happier than she had the day before the start of any school year in her life. She could only imagine what she’d be feeling the day before next school year—freshman year of college.

  As they entered the outskirts of Nashville, Dill stared out the window. Lydia had given him her camera and assigned him to be expedition photographer, but he forgot to take pictures. He had his normal faraway affect and distinct air of melancholy. Today seemed different somehow, though. Lydia knew that visits to Nashville were a bittersweet affair for him because of his father, and she’d consciously tried to pick a route that would differ from the one he took to visit the prison. She spent a fair amount of time on Google Maps plotting, but to no avail. There were only so many routes from Forrestville to Nashville.

  Maybe Dill was looking at the homes they passed. Houses as cramped and dilapidated as his didn’t seem to exist even in the parts of Nashville with cramped and dilapidated houses, at least along the path they took. Maybe he was thinking about the music that flowed in the city’s veins. Or maybe something else entirely occupied his mind. That was always a possibility with him.

  “Hey,” she said gently.

  He started and turned. “Hey what?”

  “Nothing. Just hey. You’re being so quiet.”

  “Don’t have much to say today. Thinking.”

  They crossed over the river into East Nashville and drove past coffee shops and restaurants until they pulled up to a restored Craftsman-style bungalow. A hand-painted sign out front said ATTIC. Lydia parked. Travis reached for his staff.

  Lydia raised a finger in warning. “Do not.”

  They walked in, but not before she had Dill take a picture of her standing next to the sign, and another of her leaning on the wide porch.

  The shop smelled of old leather, wool, and denim. An air conditioner purred, pumping out cool air with a whiff of clean mildew. Fleetwood Mac played over hidden speakers. The wood floor creaked under them. A pretty, bohemian-looking strawberry blonde in her twenties sat behind a glass counter display full of handmade jewelry, staring intently at her laptop screen. She looked up as they approached.

  “Okay, I love your look. How hot are you, seriously?” she said to Lydia.

  Lydia curtsied. “Why thank you, madam shopkeeper. How hot are you, seriously?”

  Lydia gave Dill a look that said Try to get this kind of treatment at stupid Opry Mills Mall.

  “Are you guys looking for anything in particular today?”

  Lydia grabbed Dill by the arm and pushed him in front of her.

  “Clothes. Duds. Britches. That will fit this guy and make women swoon across Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau region.”

  Dill averted his eyes. “Let’s maybe focus on the fitting part for now, Lydia,” he said through clenched teeth.

  The woman gasped. “My parents almost named me Lydia. They went with April.”

  “Lead the way, Miss April,” Lydia said. “I see you have an excellent and well-curated selection.”

  Dill went in and out of the dressing room while Travis sat on a creaky wooden chair and read, lost to the world. Lydia was in her element, seldom happier than when playing dress-up with Dill, her own little fashion charity project.

  Lydia handed Dill another shirt. “We need some clothes-trying-on-montage music—‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ or something. And at one point you come out of the dressing room wearing a gorilla costume or something, and I shake my head immediately.”

  Dill pulled on the shirt, buttoned it up, and studied himself in the mirror. “You watch way too many movies from the eighties.”

  Eventually they had a stack of shirts, jeans, a denim jacket lined with sheepskin, and a pair of boots.

  “I love vintage shopping with you, Dill. You have the body of a seventies rock star. Everything looks good on you.” Mental note: in college, any boyfriends should have Dill’s body. It’s a fun body to dress. Actually, it would also probably be a fun body to—well…anyway, it’s a fun body to dress.

  “I can’t afford all this,” Dill said under his breath.

  Lydia patted his cheek. “Calm down.”

  April rang them up. Thirty dollars for three shirts. Thirty dollars for the jacket. Forty dollars for the boots. Twenty dollars for two pairs of jeans. One hundred twenty dollars total.

  Lydia leaned on the counter. “Okay, April. Here’s the deal. I’d love it if you’d sell us all this for fifty bucks, and I’m prepared to make it worth your while.”

  April gave Lydia a sympathetic head tilt. “Aw, sweetie. I wish I could. Tell you what. I’ll do one hundred, the friend price, because I wish we were best friends.”

  Lydia leaned over the counter and motioned at the laptop. “May I?”

  “Sure.”

  Lydia typed Dollywould into the browser and waited for it to load. She turned the computer toward April.

  “Ever been here?”

  April squinted at the screen. “Yeah…looks familiar. I’m pretty sure I have. Was there an article on here about the best vintage stores in Tennessee?”

  “Yep.”

  April scrolled through. “Okay, yeah, I’ve been here before. That was a great article.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Wait, you wrote that?”

  “That and every other article on Dollywould. I run it.”

  April’s jaw dropped slightly. “No way. Are you serious?”

  “Yep.”

  “What are you—maybe eighteen?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Where were you when I was in high school?”

  “Forrestville, Tennessee, wishing I were you. How do you advertise?”

  “Word of mouth, mostly. I don’t have much of a marketing budget. I’ll run the occasional ad in the Nashville Scene when I’ve had a good month.”

  “How about I prominently feature your store on Dollywould in exchange for you cutting us a break on this?”

  April drummed her fingers on the countertop and thought for a second. “I don’t know.”

  Lydia whipped out her phone and typed while April mulled. She set her phone on the counter, stepped back, and folded her arms with a broad grin. Her phone buzzed and beeped.

  “What’s that? What’d you do?” April asked.

  “Thought I’d give you a taste. Are you on Twitter?”

  “I have an account for the store.”

  “I tweeted to tell my 102,678 followers that I’m currently standing in the best vintage store in the state of Tennessee and that they should come check it out.”

  “Wow. Thanks, I—”

  Lydia raised a finger and picked up her phone. “Hang on. Let’s see what we’re getting. Okay, we’ve got seventy-five favorites, fifty-three retweets. Thanks for the tip, will def check it out…Always trust your taste…Need to make a trip to Nashville, maybe we can meet up and do some shopping…”

  “What if—”

  Lydia raised her finger again. “Oooh, here’s a good one. This is from Sandra Chen-Liebowitz. That name probably doesn’t ring a bell, but she’s an associate features editor at Cosmo. Let’s see what she has to say: Great tip, actually working on Nashville feature as we speak. Thanks! So you maybe made the pages of Cosmo. Convinced?”

  April regarded Lydia for a second and threw
up her hands with a little laugh. “Okay. Okay. You win.”

  “We win.”

  “So, you’re basically the coolest girl in school, I guess?”

  Lydia laughed. Dill and Travis joined her. “Oh my. Yes, I’m the coolest. Now, most popular? Let’s just say that being Internet famous carries little cachet among my classmates.”

  “It kind of carries negative cachet,” Dill said.

  “What he said. Not much high school cachet to be had in being a female who has, you know, vocal opinions about anything.”

  “Well, I’m impressed,” April said.

  “Fantastic. Now, while you’re ringing up my friend, I’ll be figuring out how best to spend three hundred dollars here.”

  “How about you?” April said to Travis. “I’m not sure we have much that fits someone as tall as you, but we might.”

  Travis blushed and looked up with a crooked smile. “Oh, no thanks, ma’am. I mostly wear the same thing every day so I can think about other stuff.”

  April and Lydia shared a look. Lydia shook her head. April’s face registered understanding.

  Lydia had no trouble whatsoever spending her clothing allowance. Before they left, she had Dill take about fifty pictures of her wearing her new outfits in various combinations. And she had him take about twenty more of her and April. She and April exchanged phone numbers and promised to stay in touch.

  They began sweating immediately upon walking outside. It was at least ninety-five degrees. The late-afternoon sun blazed. The cicadas’ hum throbbed like a heartbeat on an ultrasound.

  Lydia motioned for everyone to huddle up. “Let’s get some pictures of all of us together. Last school shopping trip to Nashville.”

  Dill forced a smile. “Come on, dude, you can do better than that,” Lydia said. He tried again. No better.

  “Hey, Lydia, could you take a couple of pictures of me with my staff?”

  Lydia was exuberant over the coup she’d scored for Dill, her own clothing finds, and her stylish older new friend. Still, she feigned great annoyance, for consistency’s sake. “Oh all right. Go on. Fetch thy staff.”

  Travis bounded to the car and grabbed it. He returned and assumed a grim, contemplative stance. “Okay.”

  Lydia took several pictures. Travis changed poses: leaning on his staff, holding the staff at the ready to strike. “Make sure you can see my dragon necklace in them.”

  “Dude. I’m not a beginner at making sure cute accessories feature prominently in photos.”

  When she finished, Travis came up beside her to look at her work, a wide, childlike grin lighting up his face. He smelled of sweat and the musty odor of clothes that had been left too long in the washing machine before going into the dryer.

  “I look good in these,” he murmured. “Like Raynar Northbrook from Bloodfall.”

  Dill craned to take a peek. “Oh, those have Raynar Northbrook written all over them.” His teasing went over Travis’s head.

  Lydia clapped. “Gentlemen. I’m hungry. Let’s go to Panera.”

  “Panera’s too fancy. I want to go to Krystal’s,” Travis said.

  “(A), it’s ‘Krystal,’ singular and nonpossessive. And (b), no.”

  “Come on, you got to pick the music on the way.”

  “There’s a Krystal in Forrestville. There’s no Panera. We didn’t drive all this way to eat at dumb Krystal and get the same diarrhea we could get in Forrestville.”

  “Let’s let Dill decide. He can be the tiebreaker.”

  Dill had been staring into the distance. “I’m…not hungry. I’ll eat at home.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Travis said. “You can still vote.”

  “A vote for Krystal is a vote for walking home,” Lydia said.

  “I vote for Panera then,” Dill said, with a more genuine smile.

  They ended up getting Krystal for Travis.

  Dill had hoped that when he asked if they could make a stop at the prison on the way out of town, after eating, Lydia would say that she had to get home for some reason and couldn’t possibly wait for him to visit his father. But no.

  Riverbend Prison was in a deceptively beautiful, pastoral part of Nashville. Rolling hills and a lush carpet of trees surrounded blocky beige buildings with slit windows.

  “I won’t be too long, y’all. You know I hate it here,” Dill said, getting out of the car.

  Lydia tapped away at her phone. “No worries, dude. I can work on my back-to-school blog post.”

  Travis held up his book.

  “You guys are supposed to tell me how important it is for you to get home,” Dill said.

  “Oh, right,” Lydia said, not looking up. “Okay, Dill, hurry it up in there or, like, I’ll be grounded or get spanked or something.”

  “Yeah, hurry it up, Dill,” Travis said. “I really want to get home and hang out with my cool dad instead of reading my favorite book.”

  Dill gave them an uneasy smile and flipped them the bird. He took a deep breath and walked toward the main building. He went through security and signed in. Guards took him to the visiting area. It didn’t look like the visiting areas on TV. There weren’t clear dividers and telephone handsets. There was a big room full of round tables, each with two or three chairs, and some vending machines. It resembled his school cafeteria, and he was as excited to be there as he would be at his school cafeteria. It was stuffy and just cool enough to remind you that the building had air conditioning, but some budget or moral constraint kept it from being used to make things very comfortable. Several guards kept vigil around the room.

  Dill was the only visitor there. He sat at the table and drummed his fingers. He couldn’t stop bouncing his legs. Just get through this.

  He turned and stood as a door opened and a guard led in Dillard Early Sr.

  Dill’s father was tall and gaunt, rawboned. He had deep-set dark eyes; a handlebar mustache; and long, greasy black hair streaked with gray and tied in a ponytail. Every time Dill saw him, he appeared harder. More cunning. More feral and serpentine. Prison was whittling him down, carving away what little softness and gentleness he had. He was almost exactly ten years older than Dill’s mother, but he looked twenty years older.

  He wore dark-blue denim pants and a light-blue scrub shirt with a number stenciled on the breast and TDOC stenciled on the back.

  His father sauntered up. He had a predatory, wary walk. “Hello, Junior.” Dill hated being called Junior. They stood and faced each other for a second. They weren’t allowed to hug or touch in any way. Dill could smell him across the table. He didn’t smell bad, exactly, but unmistakably human. Primal. Like skin and hair that weren’t washed as often as free people’s.

  They sat down. Dill’s father set his hands on the table. He had MARK tattooed across one set of knuckles and 1618 tattooed across the other. The tattoos were a new development. And not a good one. Not a promising sign to see him moving in the direction of more weirdness.

  Dill tried to sound casual. “Hi, Dad. You got some tattoos, looks like.”

  His father glanced at his hands, as though learning a new piece of information. “Yes, I did. They won’t let me practice my signs ministry in here, so I wear my faith on my skin. They can’t take that from me.”

  Looks like you’re doing fine in here. When his father had gone to prison, everyone supposed he’d have a hard time, considering what his conviction was for. But they underestimated his father’s charisma. Apparently if you can convince people to pick up rattlesnakes and copperheads and drink poison, you can convince people to protect you from what his father called “the Sodomites.”

  They sat and regarded each other for several awkward seconds.

  “So…how are you doing?” Dill asked.

  “I’m living one day at a time, praise Jesus.”

  “Are you…getting enough to eat?” Prison small talk was hard. Not even the weather was a topic of mutual interest.

  “My needs are met. How are you and your mother?”

 
“Surviving. Working hard.”

  His intense eyes glittered with a strange light that made Dill feel dark inside. “I’m glad to hear that. Work hard. Pay off our debts, so I can rebuild my ministry when my time here is done. Perhaps you can join me if you’ve grown mighty in faith by then.”

  Dill squirmed. “Yeah, maybe. Anyway, school starts tomorrow.”

  His father rested his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers as if he were praying. “It’s about that time of year, isn’t it? And how will you spend this year in school? Will you be a soldier for Christ and spread the good news of salvation and its signs to your peers? Will you do the work I cannot?”

  Dill shifted again in his seat and looked away. He didn’t like making eye contact with his father. His father had the kind of eyes that made people do things they knew could hurt them. “I—I mean, I don’t think my classmates really care that much what I have to say.” Perfect. A reminder of how unpopular I am combined with a reminder of how much I disappoint my dad, all rolled into one package. Visiting prison sure is fun.

  His father scooted in, his eyes boring into Dill, a conspiratorial hush to his voice. “Then don’t say. Sing. Lift that voice God’s given you. Use those hands that God blessed with music. Spread the gospel through song. Young people love music.”

  Dill stifled a bitter laugh. “Yeah…but not music about picking up snakes and stuff. That kind of music isn’t that popular.”

  “The Spirit will move in them the way it moved in our congregation when you sang and played. And when I get out, our congregation will have grown tenfold.”

  How about I just try to survive the school year? How about I don’t do anything to add to the ridicule? “Look, Dad, your—our…situation…makes it hard for me to talk to my classmates about stuff like this. They don’t really want to hear it, you know?”

  His father snorted. “So we surrender to Lucifer’s device to ruin our signs ministry? We hand him victory without argument?”

  “No, I—I don’t—” The surrealness of being made to feel unworthy by a prison inmate set in, preventing Dill from finishing his thought.