I didn’t come down here telling them how to pray or live.
They took me. With the intense desire to change how I lived my life.
And that’s why, I reminded myself, I will feel nothing when Preston comes for me, and brings all this down right on their heads.
I went right back to singing.
When the door latch clicked I stood, ready for a late lunch. Ready to see Truly, even if I had to pretend like nothing happened this morning. So I stood, and turned. I put on my shoes and buttoned my coat and ran my fingers through my hair. I had to pee and looked forward to a chance to stretch my legs and see the trees and the sky and pretend, if only for a minute, I was back in West Virginia feeling the chill from the last of the melting snow. Hearing the rush of the Blackwater as it passed behind Hellbender Burritos in Davis. I needed to see the green, if only to be reminded that this world was not all grey in its thousands of different shades. I needed it because even though it had only been a day and a half, I’d started to lose hope.
I needed hope if I wanted to survive.
I stepped away from the door as it swung open.
The woman said, “Into the corner. Move.”
She spoke with an uneven cadence and an accent I couldn’t place. It was subtle, but not southern. And it wasn’t Spanish.
“Where’s Truly?”
“Elijah said that you spoke to her with a devil’s tongue, and that she could not be permitted near you. He beat her at breakfast in front of the entire congregation.” She spoke every word forcefully, without hesitation or doubt. “All because of your coldness. Sit down.”
I didn’t see this woman yesterday. I would’ve noticed her. Her skin was fair, perhaps a shade or two darker than mine. Her almond-shaped eyes were brown. Almost green. Almost yellow. Even without makeup, with her hair pulled back into a loose ponytail, I found myself unable to look away. Her lips formed a natural pout, even as she scowled orders at me. She wore a simple grey dress, belted at the waist. Her shoes were plain black flats. She didn’t wear any jewelry, and smelled a little like ginger or clove, which made my mouth water and my stomach growl.
I wanted her to touch me, to push me to the floor. I wanted her to make me sit down.
She swept into the room, pulling the door shut behind her. I planted my feet, waiting to be slapped or shoved. But she folded her arms, holding the apple she’d brought with her just out of reach. A tease.
“Could I please use the bathroom?” I lied. “I really have to go.”
“No, you don’t.” Her reply came immediately. “Truly would’ve allowed it. But she isn’t a strong person, and you knew that. Didn’t you?”
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall in the corner. “So it’s game on?”
She smiled as if suddenly surprised. “Yes, I suppose it is game on. If this is only a game to you, that is.”
“You know it isn’t.” Her comeback threw me, and my thoughts reeled a bit. “You know that I’m being held against my will. Where in the Bible—”
“Yes, maybe I do know. What of it? Your station stays the same whether I know it or not. I come and go, not you. You would trade me for your own salvation, given an opportunity—which I will not provide. You were two short steps away from having Truly drive up to this room and escort you out like a chauffeur. In a way it makes you no better than Hicks. I expected better from a little bluebird like you.” She tapped her blood-red nails against the apple’s firm green skin, drawing my eyes right to it. My mouth watered.
“You must be hungry.” She held the apple out, but made no movement toward me. She wanted me to come to her. She wanted me to submit.
I crossed my arms and looked past her, to the bright afternoon. I decided to let the sunlight nourish me instead.
She took a bite, smiling as she chewed. I could smell the sugar in the white flesh.
When I didn’t say anything, she said, “Turns out I’m not hungry either.”
She set the apple on the floor and stepped on it. Juice sprayed out, the dry plywood soaked it right up. She ground the shape right out of it with her heel. Scent filled the room and I resented my stomach for not sticking to my plan of resistance.
“Game on, bluebird.”
I felt sick, like when adrenaline starts to enter the body. Despite the warmth of the afternoon, I had goose bumps all up and down my arms. Even my hair felt like it’d been standing on end. Somehow I knew that I knew her.
Or knew the feeling.
Like when Princess Jasmine figures out the Prince Ali is really Aladdin.
Bluebird.
I made a fist and bared my teeth. “Stay away from Preston!”
“You do not understand. I’ve waited more than one hundred years for this moment to arrive. I most certainly will not stay away from Preston.”
“You leave him alone.” I closed my eyes. It burned me up inside to picture him running through scenarios only to arrive at this conclusion because he believed it was the only remaining option.
“You have greater concerns, do you not? Hicks wants to baptize you and fuck you. Boggs wants to stone you to death. I am not so certain that you should worry about Preston. If it’s any consolation he has not contacted me yet.”
“Why are you here then?”
“The world really is quite small. Elijah Clay Hicks wanted to be a great and righteous prophet. Like his namesake.”
“And you’re here to help him?”
“Perhaps, if a lie can help. But Hicks is nothing to me. He can not do for me what Preston can.” She smiled. “It must hurt very badly to be away from him for so long.”
Her expression suddenly softened, her words slowed. “I do not need to see either of you suffer. It makes no difference to me. Maybe you think I’m incapable of love? That I am a soulless husk? It’s easy to see why. I can only imagine the things he must have told you about me. Some are true, depending on what he said, exactly. But I loved him, you know. I thought he would be the one to help me free myself.”
She turned to the little window and squinted at the bright sunlight. “Saying that I need a resolution means something different than what you think it means. You can’t begin to understand. Or maybe you can, I don’t know. But I had an agreement. An ugly agreement that caused me more suffering and heartache than you could possibly imagine. No matter how bad it gets for you, you have the luxury of knowing it will one day end. When I made this agreement I was young and I didn’t understand forever could be a real thing. When you are a girl, forever could be a week, if that is how long you have to wait until you can see a lover. As it turns out, in my case, forever meant forever.”
I refused to feel for her. I listened, but only as a means of keeping my head in the game.
“Preston will help me, whether he wants to or not. He’ll help me terminate my agreement. Contract. Covenant.” She rested her palm against her cheek, and closed her eyes. “I can only imagine what my life would be like if he hadn’t met you. Do I believe that I could’ve been happy with Preston? Of course I do. But it hurts too much to think of things that will never be. Like wishing on stars, or pennies in fountains. Or praying.”
She folded her arms across her chest and stared at the floor. For the first time, I wondered who she really was.
“But there can be no negotiation with only one party.”
I waited for her to continue, but her demeanor changed. She regained the anger in her voice. “Whether he likes it or not, Preston has the means and the motivation to make it so. Or he soon will.”
She turned and left, locking the door behind her.
“Leave him alone!” My face felt hot. “Come back here!” My legs weakened, and I slipped to the floor. It hurt my chest to breathe. My heart ran like water down a barn roof. My breath felt hot. Regaining my composure, I stood and pressed my face into the little opening and yelled, “Come back here!”
She took it all from me. In one interaction, I’d lost everything I’d spent a day fighting for. She’d weakened me.
She’d distracted me and tempted me with something I thought they could never take from me. The moment I realized she’d see Preston before I did, I knew that I’d lost. She did what Hicks and a thousand followers couldn’t do.
I slid to the floor and buried my face in my arms. When I let go of the courageous role I’d been playing everything else went with it. With each sob I lost a little dignity. Every time I wiped snot from my nose I pulled down one of the bricks I’d so carefully placed in my wall.
The time for planning and rules passed without me even realizing. My devotion to my inability to be wrong screwed me. I could’ve run this morning, when I had Truly’s trust. I could’ve found a way through the fence. Found a phone. Called for help. Flagged down a car. I spent the afternoon thinking of everything that could’ve been different if I’d have only been more proactive.
Stop it.
One by one my rules came back to me. Just like they had yesterday morning. But they were no different than a prayer. Just words to keep the real fear out of my head. Words to keep my mind from drifting to worst-case scenarios. Words that couldn’t protect me from snakebite any more than they could promise eternal salvation. Once I stopped with the words, the fears rushed back at me.
Preston won’t ever find me.
I’ll die here without ever saying goodbye to him.
More than anything I wanted to believe in some greater good.
Without telling my mom how much I loved her.
And Chloey.
And Ben, Henry, Alex, Jamie, Pap and Gram.
No greater good existed. If nothing else, I learned this before I died.
That when I die, there is no “after.”
That once it’s over, it’s over. Like flipping off a light.
I thought about the punishment they’d threatened me with. In my mind, I saw myself defying them until the very end.
But I won’t feel a thing once it’s over.
The pain will be temporary. But it will end. And if there is an all-powerful force in the universe, and if it’s fair, I won’t be alone. If it’s fair, I’ll see Preston again.
I stopped the thoughts from rushing in after that one. I decided that would be the only one that mattered. That pain, no matter how magnificent, lasted temporarily. They could hold my head under water. They could heave stones at my body. But they couldn’t drown me or stone me infinitely.
Footsteps came up the gravel path to the door.
Time to choose.
I never even moved from the sticky juice of the apple she’d brought. A little temptation to seal her deal. When the door opened I fell back into the dirt. They picked me up off the ground and pulled me toward the three crosses at the far end of the field, dragging me roughly through the gravel and high grass. The revival tent and brush arbor from last night had since been dismantled and packed away.
I fought to get my feet beneath me. “I can walk,” I said, trying to twist from a grasp that felt much stronger than Hicks’s had been.
A set of thick, callused, hands pushed me forward. I stumbled, but did not fall. When I regained my composure I saw two of the bikers from the Nashville show. I saw the scrawl of Corinthians and Romans and Deuteronomy over their necks and forearms and bare heads.
“You…” was all that I could say. I twisted and kicked, but they were too strong.
“Ashby! Stop what you’re doing.” From the far end of the field Hicks appeared, trailed by a small part of his flock. Mostly women and a few children and one or two men, all wearing white baptismal gowns. Truly stood near the back. She didn’t walk out with the rest. Her face looked bruised.
Hicks yelled, “Where’s Boggs? Why isn’t he out here?” and the bikers stopped. Hicks ran through the grass, tucking in his shirt as he went.
“Boggs says you lost focus. Says you stopped playing the game when you started looking for a wife.” When the hands released me they didn’t only let go. They shoved me, forcing me into the ground hard enough to knock the wind from me.
I laid there with my face in the warm grass and got my head together. The first stars appeared in the sky. And Venus. A sight I wanted to share with Preston once again.
Rule number one…
As soon as I got my feet beneath me I ran. And I never looked back.
I put my head down and broke for the ticking gas well in the center of the field, hoping to make it past the large pile of stone where the three tall crosses stood, to the trees beyond. The air smelled faintly of natural gas. A chorus of shouts told me they’d reorganized and redirected their efforts. I heard the heavy footfalls at my heel, telling me this race would be a short one. And that I’d lose.
Expecting to be shoved again, I leaned forward to roll with the momentum, but a jerk pulled me back like a dog at the end of his leash. My feet flew from beneath me. My failure and near miss escalated my emotions. I knew right then and there that my biggest mistake was following the stupid, silly rules I’d invented as a way to prolong the ordeal. Should’ve listened to my pap. He would’ve said to make hay while the sun shined.
A. G. Ashby dragged me toward the crosses as Hicks sprinted across the field. Hounds barked from the other side of the cabins.
Hicks shouted, “Ashby, you have no right. She belongs to me.”
Ashby shouted, “Boggs reckons you’re more interested in sleeping with her than saving her.”
“Go get Boggs,” Hicks barked the order to the twenty people closest to him. “This is my camp.”
“And because of us you don’t have to get your hands dirty,” the other one said with a slight Jersey accident.
A hot wind blew from the river. It brought a new scent with it. It made me uneasy.
“Like tormenting these young girls is such difficult work that you should complain about the difficulty of the work?” Danicka’s voice came from the midst of the group and from the forest at the same time. Even Hicks seemed stunned at the defiant tone.
“You are not welcome here!” Hicks shouted. “We’re through. I don’t owe you a thing.”
The group backed away from the woman in grey. They should’ve run. They didn’t know what I knew. They didn’t know they were about to be tested. Really tested. Hicks knew though. He was the only one who looked scared.
“How dare you rush to judge this girl without a demonstration of your own faith? You hide behind a microphone and exhort your congregation to do His work while you lead a life which requires no test of faith whatsoever. You make and break rules as it pleases you, Reverend Elijah Clay Hicks. You act as if recitation of scripture is enough to get a pass at all this.” Her voice boomed, as if amplified. Her tone, angry.
Danicka moved to the space between Hicks and the bikers, filling it with her presence. Her defense of me filled me with an unforgivable sense of warmth. A calmness. I could see why Preston loved her and found myself able to forgive him for that. Over and over I had to remind myself what she was. As she came forward, a whoosh emerged from the forest, like a soft breeze gently lifting leaves one by one. I could only hear it between my own breaths.
Ashby and his companion yanked me up by my arm and dragged me to the dirt mound. Up to the wooden crosses that sprung from the rich red clay like some kind of sick billboard. The farthest cross had quotes from Deuteronomy about stoning for worshipping other gods. The center had verses from Leviticus and John about stoning for blasphemy and one from Numbers about breaking the Sabbath.
My captor shoved me toward the cross on the left. The one that read, Any witch shall be stoned to death, and only upon their hands shall their blood be. Leviticus 20:27.
I twisted and struggled, but they were too strong. Be patient…
They spun me and pushed me against the cross. My arms were pulled back sharply, sending waves of pain through my neck and shoulders. They meant to bind my elbows together. From this vantage I could see the grass at the edge of the field flutter, as if an invisible hand were passing over it. The grass dipped and sprang back in waves.
Hick
s saw it too, and used Boggs’s absence as an excuse to leave. “Boggs! Come on out here and put an end to this.”
A new scent came in on the breeze. Cucumber. Jamie always talked about it, and Henry did too after last summer. Until now, I’d never experienced anything like it.
“Hicks,” Danicka said. “Demonstrate your faith to these people. Lead them by example.” She picked up a slender, brown serpent and brushed its head against her cheek. She passed it off to a woman standing near her, then bent down to pick up several more. “Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over your enemy. Nothing shall hurt you.”
The first shout of fear came from a woman at the very back of the crowd. A scream when the mass of water moccasins and copperheads moved past her feet. I could see them swarming from the forest. Scales and venom on the move.
“This is the word of your God. These words are not mine. Your God demands this of you. Not me.” With several vipers writhing in each hand, Danicka ranted, looking each parishioner dead in the eye in turn as she spoke. “Do not judge this girl without first demonstrating your own faith. You have forced this test upon yourselves.”
“Leave them!” Hicks yelled. “This woman is testing you with her evil, evil ways. I know her, and know that her soul is as black as the night. She is pure evil and you all need to stay away from her.”
She passed the serpents in her right hand off to the man standing closest to her. Others bent to pick up vipers, as they’d done in services a hundred times. But these snakes weren’t well-fed, and they didn’t come from refrigerated rooms where they were frequently handled.
“It is not my choice to see harm come to you,” Danicka said. “But I would not ask you to follow my words without action and I will let no harm come to this woman without an equal test of faith. Hicks has given me no choice. Hicks has put you into this situation, not God. Certainly not me.”
The Revelations of Preston Black (Murder Ballads and Whiskey Book 3) Page 18