For You, You are my king...
His heart lurched.
She glanced up as if drawn by the weight of his stare. Their gazes met, and her face softened in some crazy recognition as they had when she’d brought him food in that alley. Like outside the diner where he’d spent his youthful hopes and dreams on the vague hope of winning a girl’s heart, once upon an age ago. On the side of the road, covered in blood, broken glass, spearing headlights.
What had Randall said? He was the only hope for Guthrie. Without the carnival, he’d have been thrown into jail years before, rotting in prison, waiting to die there. Waiting for hell.
Come to me...
But Guthrie took a step back, bumped into someone. A woman yelped as his heel struck the toes of her tennis shoe, broke the revelry with her scowl. Why was he here? He didn’t belong with the faithful. He was the outcast.
The loner.
The murderer.
“‘Scuse me.” He pushed, fought against the throng that surged toward the stage.
They moved as one: the faithful. He shoved his way back out, panic rising in his throat. Toward the tent-flap door, each step was like swimming upstream toward the falls. He knew without turning that her eyes bored a hole in his back. Though every ounce of energy pulled, he fought just as hard to get away.
Now, out the door, into the night, into the fresh air and the crazy lights, the zinging of the games, the whiz-bang of the shooting gallery, he raced out of the carnival and up on that hill behind. Away from the music. Away from the call he had no right to heed.
Away.
34
Lilah searched the crowd for Jake, still praying with the family from Thayer.
Donations filled the truck with clothes, food, toys. They didn’t even need to ask. On stage, Raymond sang, his guitar slung across his back as he led the worship. Behind him, the drums continued their steady, shaking beat matching pace with her pulse.
She sagged shoulder to shoulder with her twin sister. Eden, stood firm, though Lilah’s feet and legs ached after hours of standing. She could only imagine how Papaw and Nana were faring.
“I’ll get ‘em some chairs.” Eden read her mind, hustled to unfold a few, and Lilah drew them to the back of the red and yellow tent, away from the speakers.
For once, it was Papaw’s grateful smile she received, as he wrapped a protective hand over Nana’s.
A rush of tears filled her throat as she embraced his paper-thin frame and drank in his scent. Tobacco. Cinnamon, from the mints he always pocketed. How much longer would Papaw’s lucid moments last? Her throat constricted at the thought.
Eden tapped her on the shoulder. “You look pale, sugar. Why don’t you get some air?”
“I’ll be back.” Lilah beat a quick path, pushed open the tent flaps, and charged outside. The humidity, close bodies, the unrelenting heat from the tent structure all mixed in the thud of the deep bass notes.
Outside, all was still, as if after that prayer for the tornado victims, God granted a reprieve from even the slightest breeze.
Rounding the red and yellow striped structure, Lilah eyed the crowds and their reaction to the Revival signs, with thumbs up graphic, tacked up on posts all over the fairgrounds.
A group of college aged men in fraternity shirts ambled by. Three laughed, pushed each other toward the doors, and then turned and headed to the beer garden. One lingered, looked through the door flap, and then ducked inside.
Ray and his worship band continued to out-sing the music drifting from the Ferris wheel and Flying Dutchman.
The Revival change of venue had startled some, intrigued others. In the end, it resulted in the media frenzy that she predicted.
The camera trucks parked at odd angles, their satellites pointed heavenward just outside the chain link fence on the dead-grass lot. Vans emblazoned with news logos. Reporters and cameramen, floodlights, and microphones appeared out of nowhere to tell the same story from many angles. An old fashioned Christian revival held at the hedonistic fairgrounds, days after the largest tornado to hit southern Missouri in fifteen years.
She heard them seeking out the pastor, but knew Jake wouldn’t come out. He was dug in, tighter than a tick, hiding, almost. Camera shy, maybe.
Even now, Tom Steadman pitched his contracting business in front of the microphone cone held out to him. He rocked back on his heels with thumbs hooked in his pockets as he explained the depth and breadth of God’s work here. Most of his comments would probably end up on the cutting room floor. That wasn’t the story those reporters were after.
And still, Jake avoided the spotlight.
Lilah skirted the edges of reporter’s row—each heavily made up reporter illuminated in their camera mounted spotlight, dressed to the nines from the waist up, wearing shorts and flip-flops out of viewing range. Stories of rescue from sparking downed power lines. Pets found. Livestock spared. Not one story of misery in the devastation—just praise and thankfulness, celebration with new friends and their expanding church family.
“And that’s exactly what we see here.” A brunette reporter’s blunt observation interrupted Lilah’s thoughts. Pausing, she listened as the thirty-something reporter spoke in that sing-songy cadence of well-rehearsed news. “A bizarre joining of saints and sinners tonight, where hope’s revived in one place, and then lost at the game tables, in a tiny town called Mammoth. Back to you, Steve.” The spotlight dimmed. She waved a finger in a circle. “Wrap it up, Benjie. Let’s get the heck back to civilization.” Eyes darting up, she met Lilah’s bemused stare. “No offense.”
“Of course not.” Lilah crossed her arms but didn’t budge from her spot.
The news lady scrutinized, up and down. “You with the saints or sinners?”
“Pardon?”
“Bad joke.” She shucked her jacket, accepted an icy bottle of water from her assistant, and drank deep. “Just wondering how late that’s gonna go.” She stepped closer, gaze on the tent at Lilah’s back.
“Could go all night. Never can tell.”
“I got a tip through the wires that Pastor Bill’s son—Jacob?—saved a few folks in Thayer? Do you know anything about that?”
“Pastor Bill?” Lilah blinked. “You mean Hot Springs Ministries Pastor Bill?”
She unearthed a handful of Channel Seven business cards and shoved them at Lilah. “Now, that’s a story I’d love to scoop. Do you know Jacob Gibson? Can you have him call me?”
Lilah took it, ears thudding her heartbeat.
Jacob Gibson.
Jake Gibb.
The sounds and sights of the carnival left streaks of light behind her growing realization.
The reporter hopped into the passenger seat of her van, not waiting for her crew, as if she couldn’t get back to Springfield fast enough.
Her camera man dug into his pocket and drew out a ten dollar bill. “Hope it helps some.”
“Thanks.” She folded the bill neatly around the business cards.
He packed his gear and walked around to the driver’s side door. The news van left the fairgrounds in a trail of dust. The remainder of the reporters and their crews packed up and drove away as well, but still, Lilah remained rooted to the spot.
Pastor Bill was Jake’s father.
It punched. Deep.
Another deception, another lie.
Back inside, money in collection box, she rejoined her family, Nana’s voice trilling her favorite hymn.
Jake stood apart, watching the crowd. The resemblance of the famed Pastor Bill was there in his shape of face, his smile. Now she saw it.
Nana’s hand found its way into hers. Warm, dry, gripping strong. How could such a small woman be filled with so much strength? Lilah sang along, imagining the cabin in the song, wishing she were anywhere but here.
At last, the evening wound down as the faithful left with spirits high, offerings generously gifted, and prayers of thanksgiving lifted.
Lilah took the chance to sit heavy in the folding chair as
the band wrapped up.
Deacons stood with Jake on the edge of the stage, their heads bowed, arms wrapped around each other, some with hands laid, others raised high to heaven, their murmuring voices filled the room with prayers.
She’d never seen so many people, so many hearts softened by the words and music. Like no church service she’d ever witnessed. A shiver ran up her spine. She hugged herself, hands clasped on her upper arms. Though the humid, warm tent no longer surged with people, a few lingered, not wanting their experience to end.
The baskets and bags of collected items for the affected Thayer families overflowed. Food, clothes, toys for the children, all promised for distribution after services tomorrow at the main church. They’d gathered, more than a thousand strong, under this makeshift church and prayed for the lost, the lonely, and the forsaken.
The songs that Raymond and his band played that night were handpicked by Jake, designed in a careful church service of music and light, to go along with the shared testimony of the church members. Every detail, overseen and planned, had gone off without much of a hitch. Jake—as Pastor Gibb—held quite a party. His father taught him well. So why hadn’t he told anybody? What did it matter?
She turned to face where Jake delivered his message under the white hot spotlight. With heart, soul, and reverence—the depth and breadth of his belief in salvation, in renewal, revival of the spirit, of the “do-over” that their Savior allowed, encouraged, even in the wake of nature’s destruction.
His sincerity spoke to the gap in her soul, where love bloomed. But he wasn’t just a pastor. He was Pastor Bill’s son—famed, lauded on radios across the country, the world. Heir to that ministry, a national stage, and once he decided Mammoth was too small for him? What then?
“You ready?” Jake’s voice called her thoughts back to the here and now.
“Sure.” She glanced at her watch. “Wow. Almost midnight. We should put the donations in the truck. “
“In a minute.” He held a hand out, pulled her to stand. “I want to show you something.”
She followed him out into the bright, strung bulbs swaging the midway.
Folks walked about, greeting each other, some riding, others playing games, but unlike the night before, it seemed like a true reunion. Family camaraderie filtered from the Revival and spilled out into the carnival grounds. For one night, perhaps, angels and demons called a truce.
“Did you see Maya? Or Mr. Randall?” Jake asked as he led her by the hand, up the rocky hillside.
“No.” She turned to the moon swept field, the garish carnival circled by a stand of high-reaching old oaks. Leaves glinted with moonlight, rustling in the breeze, chilly on her skin. A brisk cloud dusted the earth in its passing shadow. “Lots of news cameras showed up, though.” She offered, but he ignored her bait.
“I thought they’d come. Maybe they stayed at the back.” Jake trudged around a rocky outcropping to a flat spot at the crest overlooking the fairgrounds. “Guess he figured just offering the location was enough.”
Lilah swallowed the barbs of her discovery, savoring them a moment as Jake spread out his flannel shirt on a flat rock.
Below, laughter, music, and the whoosh of the Sea Dragon ride ebbed in carnival chaos. Up on the hill’s apex, overlooking all of Mammoth, the black-blotch of Thayer to the north—still without power—and Pastor Jake, setting a pallet up on the self-same spot where Wayne O’Neill once planted an unripe kiss on her, at the age of thirteen.
“What are we doing here, Jake?”
“Sit.” He reached a hand, drew her to his side.
“What’s going on?”
“I thought you and I needed a minute alone.” He dipped his gaze to hers, wrapped an arm across, warming her shoulders.
“Why?” She dared, the moonlight flashing in her eyes. “Got a deep, dark secret to share with me, Pastor Gibb?”
He opened, shut his mouth and tilted his head toward her. “What’s bothering you, Lilah?”
“Lots of reporters out there tonight.” She crossed her arms tight around her chest. “I wonder why you didn’t want to talk with them.”
Jake just looked away. “Just, didn’t seem right. I’m not advertising anything. We didn’t call the media.”
“They love a good, juicy story, hmm?” Lilah prodded, even though her guts weighed with guilt. “One was asking lots of questions. About Hot Springs Ministries. About you.”
“What is it you really want to ask me, Lilah?” His gaze questioned, stars sparkling in their inky blackness. “No time like the present. There’s no one else around.”
“You’re wrong about that, Jake.” She bit her lip, fighting the welling laughter. “Look around.”
He darted a glance over his shoulders. Bushes rustled. Low voices murmured, most of them in fast, hushed, worried tones.
“I wanted to give you a birthday present—it is your birthday, and Eden’s. Right?”
She nodded, throat filling with that familiar guilt, and palmed a pebble. “It’s not something we celebrate…so much confusion, guilt, sorrow wrapped up in it.”
He nodded, as if he understood growing up in a house with no birthday cakes or princess parties. Even with Ryan, her birthday slipped by without notice.
Jake cleared his throat and continued. “I didn’t know what you want, or need, so I figured—fireworks. We could share them.”
“Ah, Jake.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, but his back remained ramrod straight.
“I was told...” He used his pastor voice, projecting so all within earshot would hear. “...this was the best spot to watch them.”
“Who told you that?” She tilted her head as he spied the huddled, whispering forms in the bushes. The first bloom of pyrotechnics exploded over the carnival below.
There was a reason that kids came up to this spot to hold hands, kiss, and play that dangerous game of chicken with bodies, hearts.
The darkness bloomed with green, blue, and bright white sparks. The air screamed with rockets, boomed with explosions of light and color, tinged with sulfur and phosphorous smoke. Shadows lengthened. Shrubs danced as a young couple did their best to pull themselves together, shushing each other with hurried whispers.
Jake scrubbed his head, realization reaching his eyes along with a flash of anger, a scattering of humor. “Your sister.”
“Well, she’d know. Spent her share of time up here. She and Marty—Luke’s best friend. Back in the day, they were quite the item. She probably would have married him if he hadn’t died in action...”
The words hung in the air along with a splash of light, a huge circle of exploding white, faded to quick-falling in streaks of orange embers. Trails of phosphorous smoke lingered in the humid Ozark night.
From the thin cover of bushes, Lilah heard a feminine sob.
“Should we say something to those kids?” Jake whispered. “Or just go?”
“Give them a second.” Lilah suggested, wrapping her hand around his, they leaned shoulder to shoulder.
Fireworks boomed, one after another. The show blossomed with searing whistles, and twirling rockets, the firework-induced clouds low enough to brush with their fingers.
“We all make mistakes,” Jake said, after a while. Her hand curled in his. “Maybe that’s why we’re here. To keep those two from making one.”
“A reason for everything, hmm?” Lilah glanced over as a girl’s voice whispered, hushed and hurried in the darkness, heading the direction of the carnival.
Feet beat down the hill, followed steps behind by the lanky teenage boy she recognized as Andy Phelps. The basketball star. Responsibility bloomed, as she’d dangled that carrot for Maya, and ultimately Mr. Randall’s approval to have the Revival here.
“That the last of them?” he whispered.
“One more, other side. We’ll wait them out.”
The fireworks continued as her mind flipped from Jake’s deception, to thoughts of her mother. The tragedy of their beginning wove the fabric o
f her life. Her mother’s death was the yardstick by which every choice she’d ever made had been measured. From her first date, to Eden’s prom, to canoe trips down the river with the senior class and getting caught puffing a cigarette on Emma’s dock. Nana’s disapproving stare and keen eyes missed nothing, promising to forgive, but never willing to forget. Especially after Ryan, and the crescendo of her lasting mistake, she knew Nana’s heart, even if her grandmother never uttered the words out loud. She’d come back too late for forgiveness to matter. She stared into the dark, rustling hedgerow.
“Hey, y’all!” Lilah called out. “We suggest you get home quick! And think twice about coming up here next time, OK?”
“OK.” The feminine voice at last leaked out of the darkness from the opposite side of the hill.
A quick shuffle of feet and scrabbling of stones, the teenagers scuttled down the opposite side of the hill. In the intermittent light from the fireworks, Lilah thought she saw a familiar outline. Charla, Emma’s daughter, and a shadowy boy high-tailed it ahead of her.
“That was nice of you.” Jake squeezed her hand. “Looks like your plan worked. That was the basketball kid, right?”
“And not with his sweetheart.” Lilah shrugged as bright blue sparks bloomed overhead, pungent smoke drifting. “So Andy and Charla escape the Mammoth curse.” At his non-understanding blink she added. “Seems like every kid in this town thinks they have to marry the first person they fall in love with. Look at Emma and Scott. Eden would’ve done it with Marty. She didn’t get the chance.”
“And you.”
A swallow, she nodded. “He was so exciting for a good girl like me. Eden had the spotlight since day one. I figured I’d take the diner over after Eden started popping out kids. But Eden lost her love to the war, her light shut off awhile. Ryan buzzed through town like a man on a mission. He wanted me. Whisked me away. How could I say no? No one had ever looked at me that way, touched that place of longing in my heart. Then, everything changed.” She cleared her throat and turned to him. “Your turn.”
Mammoth Secrets Page 19