Across the Western Sky

by S. C. Armstrong

Unsure of what to say, Hannah nodded and turned toward the street that led to her house. Kate continued on without another look. Well, at least Hannah had tried. But her presence seemed more of a hindrance than a help to Kate.

  Before she even walked a block, though, the roar of a diesel engine disrupted the tranquil air. A black pickup truck with oversized tires revved down the street past her. She recognized that truck. Many days, it flew a large American flag in its bed. On still other occasions, the truck displayed a confederate flag. Such a symbol this deep in Yankee country could never be mistaken as a sign of cultural heritage.

  Hannah watched as the pickup neared Kate. The vehicle slowed as it approached the solitary girl. Discomfort swelled in Hannah’s midsection. She rotated and hurried down the street to catch up with Kate.

  When she moved within earshot, Hannah heard a cackle from the truck’s cab. For her part, Kate kept her head down and barreled forward.

  “So, you never tasted cock before? You should try mine. Might make you go straight,” leered a slow and lewd voice.

  Hannah caught up and stood next to Kate, positioning herself between the high school girl and the truck.

  “Well, who’s this?” asked the driver, grinning at the emergence of another female.

  For the first time, she got a good luck at the two men in the truck. The driver was a large, grimy man who wore a sleeveless shirt and a five o’clock shadow. The man in the passenger seat wore a camo Carhart hat and a beard.

  “Is this your dyke girlfriend?” the driver asked, drawing a snicker from the man sitting shotgun. The driver took out his phone and aimed it at the girls. “Why don’t you kiss each other? We’d love to see a little girl on girl action.”

  “Go away!” said Hannah, attempting to make her voice sound as forceful as possible. Her recipient wasn’t intimidated, though.

  “Ooh. Feisty. You guys going home for a little muff-diving?” He raised his fingers in a V and flicked his tongue through them. “We could follow you. Maybe we could have ourselves a little foursome.”

  Fear shivered down Hannah’s spine. This is daylight, she told herself. They won’t try something now. There are too many people around...somewhere. But the streets were quiet. If there were people, they were safely inside, possibly unaware of the threat that hung over the two girls’ heads. Hannah surveyed their surroundings, searching for an escape route. They could run to one of the houses if need be. The burly build of their potential assailants suggested they wouldn’t catch them in a foot race.

  Kate whipped out her phone. “I’m calling the police if you guys don’t get out of here.” Her voice was much more convincing than Hannah’s.

  The driver raised his hands. “No need for that. But I am disappointed, I was hoping to catch some action.”

  Kate started dialing 911 on her phone.

  “Okay, bitch, whatever. Enjoy each other’s pussies. Damn abominations.” He gunned the engine and drove off, leaving skidmarks on the street.

  Hannah’s fingers tightened into fists. As the truck grew more distant, Hannah imagined hurling a softball at its window shield. If she hit it right, she might shatter the glass.

  When the truck turned right at the next intersection and disappeared from view, Kate put her phone away. The danger now apparently over, Hannah breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Come on,” Kate said, stepping onto the lawn between two people’s properties. “I know a shortcut to my house.”

  Hannah followed. Apparently, she was going to Kate’s house. It was better to be off the streets, especially if the truck driver changed his mind and returned for round two.

  32

  Lines Crossed

  Justin sat in his living room with four other guys who were part of the atheist and secular movement in town. Movement was probably too strong a word, but they had all opposed the building of the Ten Commandments monument. Most were either in college or just out of college, though Greg had also joined their ranks.

  “Any other ideas?” Justin asked.

  They’d been brainstorming potential responses to whoever put up the Ten Commandments posters. This wasn’t a conversation Justin wanted to have with the folks from the Humanist Society leadership board. They wouldn’t have been “creative” enough in their response if they wanted to make one at all. But so far, the proposals from his small group of peers had been less than inspiring.

  “I say we just do the same thing, back,” suggested Chris, a recent college graduate who’d yet to find full-time gainful employment. “We should put Ten Commandments posters on their doors. These guys break their own commandments as much—if not more—than we do.”

  “Yeah, but they’ll just spin it as a justification for why they need Jesus. I’ve actually seen videos of this Christian guy who goes around, proving that people have broken the Ten Commandments and therefore need salvation from Jesus,” replied John, who was about the same age as Justin.

  Chris shrugged. “They’re going to spin anything we do, anyway.”

  “What if write our own ten commandments—like a better version. One where more than half of the commands are actually relevant,” their third member Derek said. “We could post it all over town.”

  “I like it,” Justin said, despite the idea’s distinct lack of bite. “I’m pretty sure some atheists have already worked on projects like this one, so we could use those as a starting point.”

  Greg leaped from his seat and slapped the wall closest to him. “This is bullshit!” he shouted as he made eye contact with each person present. The room descended into silence as Greg stalked out the back door.

  “What’s his problem?” John asked after Greg exited through the sliding glass door to Justin’s balcony style porch.

  Justin stood and shrugged. “I don’t know. Let me go find out.”

  Justin suspected it had something to do with Tom. Greg’s feelings on the loss of his friend were predictably raw and the Ten Commandments poster stunt had torn open those wounds. He found Greg standing on the balcony that overlooked a small wooded area.

  “They crossed a line,” Greg said softly.

  “I know.” Justin stood next to Greg.

  “What they did to me, to Tom, to Curt, to Kate—they crossed a line.” The pitch of his voice rose, intensified by a potent combination of bitterness and anger.

  “You’re right. They did.”

  “And we’re just going to make a better Ten Commandments. What the hell is that supposed to accomplish?”

  “Well, what would you do? I didn’t hear you make any suggestions.”

  Greg eyed Justin. “We need to cross the line, too.”

  “I did expose one of their leader’s porn habit to the entire town,” Justin reminded him.

  Though the last day, Justin had been wrestling with that, wondering if his actions had catalyzed the religious right to pull their own stunt.

  “Yeah, and where did that get us? It’s not like they’re hiding in shame now. The Pastor didn’t even lose his job.”

  “Hey, we have the moral high ground in the town, now. And I’m not talking about from the religious people’s perspective. I’m talking about the people on the fence. If the religious people keep doing what they did today, those people in the middle are going to come over to our side.”

  Greg shook his head, apparently unsatisfied by Justin’s explanation. Justin’s cell phone rang; he glanced down at the caller ID. It was Curt.

  “Hey, what’s up?” he said after swiping right.

  “Someone followed Kate home,” Curt said in breathless fashion. “They didn’t attack her physically, but they said lots of obscene stuff to her.”

  Justin’s brow wrinkled in concern. “When?”

  “Just now.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “I don’t know. I’m on my way over now.”

  Justin sighed. “Alright, let me know how she is.”

  After saying goodbye, Justin slipped the phone back into his pocket.

  “Wh
at happened?” Greg asked.

  Justin relayed the bare-bones information Curt had supplied. Greg clenched his fist. He’d never been the most vociferous advocate for the gay community in Beaumont and often seemed apathetic to Kate’s concerns, as if they had nothing to do with church-state separation struggles or atheism. This time, the information fed his anger.

  “They crossed the line again. We need to cross the line, too.”

  Justin swept a hand through his hair. “And then what? What if they cross the line back, but worse? How far does this go?”

  Though a righteous anger had motivated his own actions only days ago, Justin felt calmer now. Maybe that had something to do with winning the monument struggle.

  “As far as it has to,” Greg said, his eyes full of piss and vinegar.

  Justin dropped a hand on Greg’s shoulder, not unlike what Elizabeth McDonald had done to him after he’d discovered Curt had been jumped by Jake Ankiel.

  “We have to be smart. And we have to be better. We need to use our heads. Isn’t that what atheists are supposed to be good at? Using logic and reason to make decisions?” He slapped Greg lightly on the outside of his head. “Come back in when you’re ready.”

  He left Greg alone to stew. The young man definitely fit the stereotype of the “angry atheist”. But Justin had more faith that Greg would be convinced by reason than their religious counterparts would be. They would not hesitate to do awful things in the name of their God.

  33

  Tougher Skin

  Hannah sat in the rolling pink mesh chair in front of Kate’s cluttered desk, holding a yellow plastic cup with a happy face on it. Kate occupied the edge of her bed with a blue plastic cup from an amusement park. Hannah studied her unanticipated afternoon companion. She would have expected to find unrest in Kate’s face after their unsettling encounter with the men in the black pickup. Kate’s apparent composure made Hannah wonder.

  “Does what happened this afternoon happen a lot?” she asked, breaking their awkward silence.

  “More than it should.” Kate put the cup on a nightstand and then shimmied backward until her back rested against the wooden headboard.

  “How do you deal with it?” Hannah asked.

  Kate shrugged. “Drugs and alcohol.”

  “Oh.” Hannah glanced at the ground.

  “I’m just kidding. You get tougher skin. You force yourself to remember you’re not a pervert or abomination. I’m just a girl attracted to other girls. It’s the way I am. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, no matter what anyone says.”

  Hannah met her eyes. “When did you know?”

  “That I liked girls? I guess I made the connection when girls started talking about their crushes on the playground. We were probably in fourth grade or something like that. People asked me who I liked.” She chuckled. “I said Tom. It was a lie, though. I mean, he fit the part: tall, cute. But I wasn’t into him. Then this light bulb went off. The way they talked about the boys they liked—that’s how I felt about Jenny O’Dell.”

  Jenny O’Dell. Hannah knew the mousy and slender blonde. As far as she was aware of, Jenny O’Dell wasn’t interested in girls. After another interlude of silence, Hannah cleared her throat. “Are you seeing anyone right now?”

  Kate shook her head. “No, there aren’t a lot of options in Beaumont. I’ve talked to some girls online but haven’t worked up the courage to meet any of them in person.”

  Hannah remembered the girls on her softball team that Kate was friends with. “What about Amanda and Holly? Don’t they, you know…” She tussled her hair and glanced at the floor.

  “Like girls, too?” Kate asked, seemingly enjoying Hannah’s discomfort. “Yeah, they do. But do you like all heterosexual guys?”

  “No.” She could think of at least a dozen off the top of her head that repulsed her. Including Greg.

  “Exactly. Holly and Amanda aren’t my type.”

  “What is your type?” Hannah asked, surprising herself with these increasingly personal questions. This was her curiosity at work, again. She’d heard lots of things about gay people, mostly from people in her church; however, she’d never actually talked to a gay person about his or her life before.

  Kate gave her a crooked grin. “Blondes. With long hair. Also with kind of shy and sweet personalities.”

  “Oh,” Hannah said when she realized that, besides Jenny O’Dell, Kate was describing her.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not hitting on you. We don’t hit on every girl with a pulse.”

  Hannah laughed nervously. She’d never considered that a gay woman might be attracted to her. Not that Kate had admitted to that, necessarily.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Kate asked.

  “That seems fair.”

  “Why you and Curt? How did that happen? You guys make no sense on paper. I mean, I know he’s cute and you’re pretty, but it seems like maybe something else is going on.”

  “I don’t know.” Hannah put the cup on one of the few empty spots on the desk. She recalled her first collision with Curt, in the hallway by their lockers. “I guess it was an accident. But he surprised me. I expected him to be different. It seems like he really feels things on a deep level.”

  Kate smiled. “Well, that’s what happens when you get outside your little bubble. You see the world is different than you imagined.”

  “Do you think it’s better or worse?” Hannah asked.

  Kate paused, considering Hannah’s question. “It’s both. Depends on the day, depends on the person.”

  Another silent moment settled over them. Kate spoke next.

  “Why not Jake Ankiel?”

  Hannah narrowed her eyes at Kate. “You know about that?”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “I’m not the only one.”

  If Jane knew, probably a lot of other people knew, too. Jane didn’t exactly keep news like that to herself.

  Hannah shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  She’d never been able to fully articulate her hesitation to give in to Jake’s pursuit, other than the looming interruption of leaving for college.

  Kate grabbed a pillow and held it against her chest. “Hey, you don’t need to explain it to me. The guy is skeezy. It just seems like he’d tick most of your boxes. You want someone religious, right?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Jake did tick most of her boxes: committed Christian, responsible, good-looking. Just not apparently the box that mattered most, whatever that was.

  Kate smiled again. “So, now that you’ve gotten to know us a little, do you still think Curt and I are on our way to hell?”

  Before Hannah could even eke out an indecisive answer, the doorbell echoed through the house.

  “Saved by the bell,” Kate said, moving toward the edge of the bed. “I’ll go answer. You can stay here.”

  “No, I’ll come with you,” Hannah said.

  Obviously, people knew how to find Kate since they’d left the Ten Commandments poster on her door. This might be a surprise visitor. Maybe the guys in the truck had followed them, waiting for a more opportune moment to strike. For those reasons, Hannah figured she should accompany Kate.

  Hannah followed Kate down the stairs. Kate stood to the side of the door and peered through a skinny, rectangular window.

  “Oh, it’s just Curt. And Alexis.”

  Hannah’s heart rate accelerated at the mention of Curt’s name but thumped to a halt when Kate announced Alexis had accompanied him. But she had no time to brace herself as Kate swung the door open.

  “Are you okay?” Curt asked, bursting into the house. He didn’t even seem to notice Hannah.

  Alexis did though. Her eyes locked on Hannah immediately, narrowing into a glower.

  After Kate assured Curt she was fine, his eyes shifted to Hannah.

  “Hannah? What are you doing here?” The question reeked more of surprise than accusation.

  When Hannah remained dumbstruck, Kate spoke for her. “She saw those assholes harassing me and decided t
o throw in her lot with me. Apparently, they think she’s a lesbian now.” Kate flashed Hannah a smile.

  “Who was it?” Curt asked, his eyes still hovering on Hannah. “Did you know them?”

  “I think it’s the Tasker brothers. I don’t know them personally. But they’re the ones that drive around town in that big black pickup, with the flags in the back. I actually applaud them for living up to that redneck stereotype. The consistency is almost impressive.”

  Curt’s expression turned even more serious. “You don’t have to laugh this off, Kate.”

  She smiled sweetly at him. “Sure I do.”

  “I have to go,” Hannah announced abruptly. It was the first thing she’d said since Curt had arrived. She felt superfluous to the conversation and Alexis’ continued glare had made her increasingly uncomfortable. Hannah trudged down the stairs and squeezed herself around Curt, who traced her movements the entire way.

  “Thanks, Hannah,” Kate said, her tone earnest.

  Hannah acknowledged her gratitude with a smile. Curt nodded in Hannah’s direction. She waited a moment to see if he would say anything more but he looked away. As Hannah pulled the door open, Curt continued to debrief Kate. Alexis, however, accompanied Hannah onto the porch.

  “He’s better off without you, you know?” Alexis asked.

  Hannah sucked in her lips, deciding not to touch this question.

  “I think you’d both be better off if you left him alone,” Alexis repeated, in case Hannah hadn’t heard her first rhetorical question.

  Hannah never formulated a reply. She found it difficult when Alexis was probably right. What could Hannah offer Curt in the end? Probably just a lot of needless pain. So Hannah left without another word.

  “He said if I tasted his cock, it might make me straight,” Kate said to Curt, a glimmer in her eye as the two sat in her living room, revisiting the awful experience.

  “Oh, well we know that doesn’t work,” Curt said, going with the joke.

  He still wasn’t comfortable turning this horrific encounter into a laughing matter. But that was Kate’s process, so he respected it.