The Serpent King(23)
“No. We…grew apart, I guess.” A thick silence. “Are you a youth group leader like you were at our church?” Dill asked. “You were my favorite youth group leader.”
She gave a melancholy smile. “No. We don’t get callings because we live so far. How about you? Do you play in the praise band at your new church?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame. You had a mighty spirit for music.”
The shop door opened with a jingle, and Brother McKinnon and his son and daughter came bumping out with their washing machine on a dolly. Dill hurried and grabbed the door. Brother McKinnon thanked him without looking up, wheeled the washer to the back of the van, and stopped, panting and mopping his brow with a bandana. When he made eye contact with Dill, his expression soured.
“Hey, Brother McKinnon,” Dill said, extending his hand, hoping to break the ice. To be honest, this was the reaction he expected from his former coparishioners.
Brother McKinnon was having none of it. “Well, how about this. I’d have thought you’d be too busy spending your thirty pieces of silver to be bumping into us.”
Dill blushed and tried to form a response, but words didn’t come.
Sister McKinnon touched her husband’s arm. “Dan, please—”
He raised his hand. “No, no, I’m inclined to give Junior here a piece of my mind. I’ve wanted to for a long time.”
Oh boy. This’ll be fun. Dill started to turn away to leave. “Sister McKinnon, it was good to see you. I—”
Brother McKinnon grabbed Dill’s arm and squeezed hard, his voice rising, spraying flecks of spit. “Don’t you call her ‘sister.’ You know good and well what you done. And if you don’t care to hear no more about it, well, maybe that’s your conscience. But you made things hard on my family. I spend about every hour of daylight on Sundays just driving to church. Hundreds of dollars in gas. I hope you’re happy.”
Dill wrenched his arm away and stared at the ground. “I’m not happy. I’m sorry.” Passersby on the other side of the street had stopped to gawk at the snakehandler-on-snakehandler violence that was unfolding.
Brother McKinnon gave a sarcastic chuckle. “Oh, you’re sorry. Well, with your sorry and four hundred a month, I can buy gas so I can raise my kids in the true faith. You’re sorry.” He spat at Dill’s feet.
Dill met Brother McKinnon’s caustic gaze, his shame decaying into anger. “Yeah. I’m sorry things are bad for you. But what my dad did was not my fault. He got himself into trouble.”
Brother McKinnon’s voice took on a dangerous hush as he jabbed Dill in the chest with his index finger, punctuating his words. “You keep telling yourself that, Judas. But tell yourself that somewhere else, because the sight of you is making me want to do something I’ll regret.”
Dill said nothing in reply, but he turned and walked away fast, adrenaline coursing through him, making his legs rubbery, sickening him. He scurried up the street, feeling like a cockroach that someone had flushed out of hiding. As he walked, he decided without much consideration that he would renege on his commitment to let himself forget that this would be his last back-to-school dinner. This is what I’ll have left when she’s gone. Spats in front of appliance repair shops with former members of my dad’s church who think I sold my dad to the Romans. He kept his head down and cast furtive glances from side to side, but by then the streets were mostly empty in the rust-colored light.
Dinner was excellent as usual. Good food and friendship washed away the run-in with the McKinnons. But even after the sour of the encounter had faded, forlornness welled up around him. Of course, he always experienced a certain anguish when hanging around with Lydia’s family at their home, by virtue of the contrast with his own family and home. Their light, airy, spacious house, filled with beautiful things and modern appliances, always perfumed with bright, clean white flowers and citrus…compared with his cramped, dark house, filled with decline, stinking of mold, old carpet, and the glue that held everything together. Lydia’s close and loving family, engaged in warm conversation—Lydia an only child by choice…compared with his fractured family, his mother treating him like a child even though she was only eighteen years older than him—Dill an only child because God wouldn’t give his parents any more (their words).
This time while he was there, it was like sitting on a beach enjoying the sun while the tide rose cold around his ankles. This will be gone by this time next year.
It also felt like sitting beside the hospital bed of someone who was having a good day, but who was expected to die. He knew because he had done that before.
The harvest was good that year in Raynar Northbrook’s lands, and they feasted often on the heavy oaken table that sat in his great hall. He called for bread and meat until he was sated and threw the unfinished scraps to the dogs who slept by the fire that roared in his hearth. He was in high spirits.
“I forgot to tell you, Dr. Blankenship, I love your table.” Travis ran his hand over the reclaimed barnwood surface he was helping Dr. Blankenship clear.
“Thanks, Travis. You are a man of excellent taste.”
Travis beamed. He didn’t often get compliments on his taste—one of the inherent hazards of wearing a dragon necklace.