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The Serpent King

Page 25

by Jeff Zentner


  Dill buried his face in her hair. He breathed in its smell—pear, vanilla, sandalwood—while he gathered his courage. At least send her off with every secret treasure of your heart. Haven’t you learned by now that you’re completely naked? You’ve danced with death. What do you have left to fear? You can survive anything. Serpents. Deadly poison. This.

  “I love you,” he whispered in her ear.

  Lydia hugged him tighter, pressing her tear-stained cheek to his, but said nothing for several moments. She started to say something, but caught herself. And then she stood on her tiptoes, put both hands on the sides of Dill’s face, and pulled him down to her.

  She could taste her tears on Dill’s lips. And she briefly remembered her trip to Nantucket at the end of summer last year and the salt of the ocean on her tongue. That was the taste on her lips at that moment, but like the end of a summer that had lasted her entire life.

  A stillness came over her, a surrender, like she was falling from a great height but would never hit the ground. Like she was drowning and didn’t mind. His trembling hands ran through her hair and stroked her back and neck. And they felt like fire coursing through her.

  And.

  And.

  And.

  After everything, this might be the thing that finally destroys you. But he didn’t care. He wanted to be destroyed this way. He welcomed it. But you still have to let her go. You have to watch her leave.

  They broke the kiss at last, but immediately locked in another ravenous embrace. He had no idea how much time had passed. Hours. Days. Seconds. His hand returned to the back of her head, and he stroked her hair one last time. “You saved me.”

  She put her lips to his ear. “You saved yourself.” She had no voice left. He could barely hear her over the crickets.

  Because he couldn’t stand the torment of prolonging things, he broke their embrace. Then he remembered. He told her to wait and ran into his house, came back out with a CD, and handed it to her. “I recorded some of my songs for you. In case you feel like listening to something different on your drive. The song ‘Lydia’ is on it.”

  She clutched the CD to her heart. They gazed at each other for a second, wiping away tears. And because there was nothing left to say and everything left to say, they kissed one more time.

  “Call me when you get there, okay? So I know you got there safe?” Dill asked, his words catching in his throat.

  She nodded.

  She got in her car. He returned her plaintive wave, stood in the street, and watched her taillights fade and disappear.

  He walked up his steps, sat on his disintegrating stoop, and bowed his head as if in prayer. Through the blur of tears, he caught a glimpse of the church sign. WHEN JESUS COMES INTO A LIFE, HE CHANGES EVERYTHING.

  After a while he opened the door, and started to go inside. But he couldn’t. Only the expanse of the indifferent, infinite starry sky could contain his ferocious, surging hurt.

  She thought she’d done pretty well for herself the night before, not-completely-losing-her-shit-wise. All things considered, she was doing okay—riding a wave of excitement—as she pulled into the truck stop outside of Roanoke, Virginia. While she gassed up, she made dinner plans with Dahlia and Chloe (something low-key and out of the way, since Chloe tried to avoid attention; something that would accommodate Dahlia’s gluten-free diet; something ethnic because Lydia was from Forrestville). She was documenting the trip for her Twitter and Instagram followers, so she took a few pictures while she waited.

  She felt sleepy and went inside to get some strong trucker coffee. The truck stop was a wonderland of Southern kitsch. T-shirts emblazoned with stern eagles in Confederate uniforms and “American by Birth, Southern by the Grace of God.” Aprons that said “Pitmaster” above a crude cartoon of an anthropomorphic pig, barbecuing (presumably) another pig. Tank tops with images of the Southern states as cast-iron skillets. She grabbed a Tennessee one. She took picture after picture.

  Then, the ultimate prize: a porcelain cherub holding a Confederate flag with “Heritage Not, Hate” painted beneath. She laughed, took a picture, texted it to Dill, and then tweeted it to her 187,564 followers with the caption Racists: not so good, with the, commas.

  She had a sudden memory. On their last school shopping trip to Nashville, Dill had pointed out a billboard that said VISIT DELLA TAZZA VINEYARD, THE FINEST WINERY IN MIDDLE TENNESSEE. He had a knack for pointing out things she’d find hilarious.

  “Dahling, fetch my finest NASCAR jacket and airbrushed Confederate flag T-shirt. I’ve a hankering for a glass of fine Tennessee wine,” she’d said.

  And then it hit her. Like, well, a truck. The realization that the one person she most wanted to show the rebel flag cherub to, and laugh about it with, wasn’t there. And wouldn’t be there for most of the other things she’d ever see and do in her life. And with it, the realization that she already missed a life she was never supposed to miss and missed Dill a thousand times more deeply than she ever imagined.

  She crumbled. Right in the middle of the aisle, the heritage-but-not-hate-loving cherubs observing her impassively with their lifeless, alabaster eyes. A good, ugly, makeup-smearing cry, with tears and snot running down her face. And this is why I thought it would be a bad idea to try to listen to your CD while I drove. If you could see me now, Dill. If you could see me now.

  She managed to pull herself together after a minute or two and took her coffee and tank top to the front. The cashier was a careworn woman in her sixties.

  “Now honey,” she said. “Everything all right?”

  Lydia nodded, but on came the faucet again. She shook her head. “I wish I’d told someone before I left that I love him too. That’s all.”

  “Well, honey, even if you didn’t tell him, did you show him?”

  “I hope so,” Lydia said, her voice shuddering and breaking.

  “Then I think he knows. We ladies ain’t so great at keeping things like that hid.” The cashier gave an empathetic half-smile and reached under the counter. She came up with a teddy bear as careworn as her.

  “This is a truck stop, honey, so we’re no stranger to people missing people and people having regrets over stuff they wish they’d said before leaving. You need a hug with Chester here?”

  Lydia reached out and accepted Chester the bear. She hugged him. He smelled like cigarettes and cheap trucker cologne. And why shouldn’t I begin my glamorous new life as a big city girl by crying in a truck stop, surrounded by racist cherubs, while hugging a stinky teddy bear. Chester wasn’t who she wished she were hugging, but he would have to do.

  Dill stood as the guards led his father in. He caught Dill’s eye with his ardent stare, but Dill met it and didn’t look away. His father pulled out a chair roughly and started to sit, but he saw that Dill didn’t intend to sit, so he stood. They looked at each other for what felt to Dill like a long time.

  “So,” his father said. “You must know that I know.” His voice had a viperous calm.

  “I do.”

  “Explain yourself.”

  Dill commanded his voice not to waver, and it didn’t. “I’m going to college. I’m going to have a better life than this. That’s all there is to explain.”

  “You are abandoning your mother.” His father spat the word like it was profane.

  “You’re one to talk.”

  His father’s poisonous calm began to vanish. “No. I did not abandon you and your mother. I was taken from you. You are abandoning us by choice, the way your grandfather abandoned me.”

  “No, I’m not. I almost abandoned you that way. But I didn’t.” Dill could tell from the look that passed over his father’s face that he had broken through, just for a second.

  And then the Pentecostal fire returned. “You flaunt the commandments of God by dishonoring your father and mother in this way. There is a place of eternal torment set aside for those who flaunt God’s laws.”

  “I honored you enough to come tell you face to face. That’s more
honor than you deserve.”

  Dill’s father leaned forward, hands on the table, his eyes boring into Dill. A look of surrender passed across his face. Dill knew his father must have had that look on prior occasions, but he had never seen it before. “This is the doing of the whore, isn’t it? Your little Delilah. Lydia. Your mother told me about her. How she spoke in your ear.”

  Dill felt a swell of white-hot rage; it tasted like iron in his mouth. And then he understood. Your rage is what he wants. Deny him it. Whatever he wants you to be—whomever he wants you to be—deny him it.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dill said quietly. “You have no clue. And I feel sorry for you. I hated you. When I thought I’d become you, I hated you so much. I was less afraid to die than to become you. But now that I know I’ll never be you, I can finally feel sorry for you.” And with that, Dill turned and walked away.

  “You will fail,” his father called after him. “You will fail and fall. Dillard? Dillard?”

  But Dill did not look back.

  Outside, Dr. Blankenship was waiting in the parking lot, the back of his Prius full of purchases from Trader Joe’s.

  “Hey, Dill,” he said as Dill got in. “You ready to go?”

  Dill nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Hey, Dr. Blankenship, while I’m thinking about it, could I trouble you in a couple months to give me a ride to MTSU? I looked into buses, but it’ll be hard to do.”

  “You bet. No trouble whatsoever. I’d be glad to help you get settled in.”

  “That would be amazing. I would appreciate that so much.”

  “We can even swing up to Nashville if you want to come by here to visit your dad.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  The days of summer bled together in a haze of work and more work. Without a single friend left in town, Dill had little use for free time. He worked for Dr. Blankenship during the day and worked nights at his old job at Floyd’s, and gave his mom as much money as he could while saving some for school. He spent what scarce downtime he had writing songs or talking with Lydia. They spoke every day.

  Lydia kept busy at her internship during the day. At night, she worked on the expanded version of Dollywould that Dahlia and Chloe had put up the money to launch. She was bringing in outside writers for the first time and taking on broader issues of interest to young women. It was already getting favorable buzz and snagging high-profile interviews.

  A month or so after Lydia left, Laydee saw one of Dill’s videos in Lydia’s Twitter feed. She retweeted it to her 1.9 million followers. That got things rolling for Dearly in a big way. A few weeks after that, Laydee’s manager called to talk to Dill about Laydee’s recording one of his songs on her next album. In a tone that suggested she was understating things greatly, she told Dill that he’d be able to buy a few textbooks with the royalties.

  Dill sat in his living room, waiting for Dr. Blankenship, with everything he was taking to college surrounding him. Two thrift-store suitcases full of every piece of clothing he owned (including what had come in a box Lydia had sent him from New York), a set of sheets, and a towel. A backpack with his laptop inside. His guitar. His songwriting notebooks. He surveyed his meager possessions with wonder over the unexpected course of his life.

  The night before, he’d had his own solitary goodbye ceremony at Travis’s grave. He left a Krystal burger. He was playing his first coffeehouse gig the next night. It promised to be a full house.

  Dill’s mother, dressed in her maid’s uniform, walked in and looked around, her face grim. “I’ve seen God’s plan for you, and this is not it,” she said.

  “How have you seen God’s plan for me?” He pointedly banished any hint of rancor from his voice, even though he knew he wasn’t going to like her answer. He didn’t want a cloud over his leaving.

  Dill’s mother’s stony aspect softened. “When I held you as a baby and looked into your face, the Spirit revealed it to me. Your place is here. Working hard, living simply. Living in a godly way.”

  Dill ran his fingers through his hair and looked away. “There was a time I would’ve believed that.”

  His mother recoiled. “You don’t anymore?”

  Dill studied the carpet for a moment, fixating on the discolored patch that sometimes caught his eye while he sat playing his guitar. “I have a memory too. When you were in the hospital, in a coma after your wreck. The doctor told me you might die. I held your hand for hours, listening to the machines beeping and breathing for you, and I asked God to heal you and to make my life better someday. And he has. He sent me people who made me feel brave and like I have choices. Now I believe God gives people lots of paths they can take. Not just one.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “And you think this is one of the paths he’s given you?”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. Not as though expressing disagreement—more as though trying to make her ears a moving target for what Dill was saying. So his words wouldn’t make it in. “What you think is God might be Satan appearing as an angel of light.”

  Dill smiled wistfully. “Trust me, the angels I know would have told me if they were Satan.”

  “That’s not funny.” Dill’s mother brushed a stray wisp of hair from her eyes. “You’re different than you used to be.”

  “How was I?”

  “Less prideful.”

  He looked her in the eyes. “What you call pride, I call courage.”

  She folded her arms. “Things are what they are. Doesn’t matter what we call them.” After a hesitant silence, she said, “I also have a memory from when I was in a coma. I remember seeing a beautiful light. It filled me with warmth and love. And I knew that I could follow it to a better place, where I’d kneel at my Savior’s feet and nothing would hurt anymore. But I didn’t. I came back to take care of you. I made the choice not to leave you, and I’ve suffered for that choice. But I don’t regret it.”

  Dill stood and faced his mother. He had been taller than her for a long time, but he felt like he was towering over her. “I don’t expect you to understand. This is the spirit of God moving in me. This is the sign of my faith. I did this to save myself.”

  “We don’t save ourselves,” she said with a tinge of scorn.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t have help.”

  “I did what I could for you, Dillard.” She sounded resigned and broken.

  “I know. But this isn’t the place or the life for me anymore.” He started to tell her how close he came. How lucky she was that he was even still alive. But he couldn’t. Some things she never needed to know.

  Dill’s mother smoothed her blouse, shaking her head.

  “Is there any part of you that’s proud of me?” Dill asked. You already know the answer.

  “The girls at work tell me I ought to be.”

  “Are you?”

  She looked at the ground. “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  Dill knew that he was supposed to feel hurt by that. Instead, he felt more of a residual, weary sadness. A fading bruise. Only the disappointment that her answer was exactly what he expected. No, not exactly. You expected an outright no.

  His mother broke the silence by picking up her keys from beside the lamp. “I need to get to work.” She started out the door.

  “Mama?” Dill said it before he knew what he was going to say next.

  She stopped with one hand on the doorknob, the other pinching the bridge of her nose, her head bowed. She didn’t turn.

  “I love you,” he said to her back.

  She turned slowly. Tears filled her eyes. “I’m afraid of being alone,” she whispered, as though she were afraid that normal speaking would bring down some precarious barricade inside her.

  “I know.” We all are. Dill stepped forward tentatively and hugged her. He hadn’t hugged her in a long time. He could feel the bones of her afflicted back and shoulders. She smelled like knockoff Ivory soap and powdered laundry detergent from a yellow box labeled “Laundry Detergen
t.” She covered her face with her hands and didn’t hug him back.

  When Dill finished hugging her, she put her damp hand on his cheek. “I’ll pray for you, Dillard.” She sounded like she was leaving him to die in some wilderness. She tried to turn and leave before Dill saw the tears begin to stream down her cheeks in force, but she didn’t quite make it in time.

  He sat for a while, gazing at the wall. He plugged in the air conditioner, got out his guitar, and played over the clatter, until Dr. Blankenship pulled up in his Prius and honked.

  Dill unplugged the air conditioner and put his guitar in the case. He slung on his backpack and carried his two suitcases and guitar with a precarious grasp. He walked into the bright morning, feeling lighter and freer than he had ever felt.

  Acknowledgments

  From the bottom of my heart, I wish to thank the following people who made this book possible:

  My amazing agents: Charlie Olsen, Lyndsey Blessing, and Philippa Milnes-Smith. My brilliant editorial team: Emily Easton and Tara Walker. Isabel Warren-Lynch and her talented design staff—Alison Impey for her incredible artistic vision for the book jacket, and Trish Parcell for the amazing interior design. Phoebe Yeh, Samantha Gentry, and everyone at Crown Books for Young Readers, and Barbara Marcus, Judith Haut, John Adamo and his marketing team, and Dominique Cimina and her publicity team at Random House Children’s Books.

  My awesome readers: Joel Karpowitz, Shawn Kessler, Sean Leslie, Heather Shillace, Amy Saville, Jenny Downs, Sherry Berrett, Valerie Goates, Ben Ball, and Dr. Daniel Crosby.

  SWAB.

  The Bev boys: Jeremy Voros, Rob Hale, James Stewart.

  My Guru: Fred Voros.

  My fantastic bosses: Amy Tarkington and Rachel Willis.

 

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