The Serpent King(24)
While Travis helped Dr. Blankenship tidy up, his phone buzzed. I’m bored. Sitting here playing with my dog. What are you doing? Amelia texted.
Travis put a plate in the dishwasher. Just had dinner at a friend’s house. Helping clean up. What’s your dog’s name?
Sounds fun! His name is Pickles.
No way! My best friend’s name is Dill!!!
LOL WHAT???? Someday we should get Dill and Pickles together.
Definitely.
“I’ve been on a Werner Herzog kick lately,” Lydia announced. “And it’s my turn to pick. So this week’s Friday-night movie is Cave of Forgotten Dreams.”
Lydia’s parents retired to their front porch rockers with glasses of wine and books while Travis followed Lydia and Dill to the TV room.
As they watched the documentary about the 32,000-year-old cave paintings in France’s Chauvet cave, interwoven with Herzog’s heavily accented existential musings, Travis couldn’t help but wonder what his father would say if he were there. What’s this fag talking about? Can’t understand a thing that comes out of his mouth. For his part, Travis enjoyed it, as he did anything that carried the whiff of the firelit, ancient, and mysterious.
“So, I’ve been thinking about permanence lately, and how we live our lives without the world ever noticing we’ve come and gone,” Lydia said as the end credits rolled.
“Lots of Christians think the world is only six thousand years old,” Dill said. “So think about that. Those paintings have been there for almost five times longer than that.”
“Kinda makes you wonder what we’ll leave behind,” Travis said. “I want to leave something behind for people to remember me by. The way kings do. Or the cave painting people.” He learned this about himself even as the words left his mouth.
They sat for a moment, contemplating.
“We should leave something behind,” Travis said. “For people to remember us by. Our own version of cave paintings.”
Lydia didn’t have any joke at the ready, which meant she liked the idea. “But not a cave. I don’t want to go crawling around in any caves.”
“The Column,” Travis said, after thinking for a bit. “None of us can draw, but we could write stuff on it that’s important to us.”
“This is good. I smell a blog post in this,” Lydia said. “First things first. Everyone have something they can write? Dill?”
“I have some of my lyrics I can write.”
“Trav?”
“I’ve memorized what Raynar Northbrook had engraved on the marker to his best friend’s tomb. It’s my favorite.”
“Okay. So I’m the only one who needs something. Let me think while I change.” Lydia ran upstairs and returned a few minutes later, having donned a more appropriate outfit for tromping through the woods.
“Okay,” she said. “Permanent markers. Big ones.”
“Walmart,” Travis said. He was rarely the catalyst for their activities, and he was proud.
“Walmart on a Friday night? We’ll get to see all our friends from school!” Dill said.
“Ohhhhh, yes,” Lydia said. “We have been missing out on the Friday-night Walmart hijinks while watching Herzog documentaries. Let’s reassert our social position.”
Starlight filtered through the green canopy of towering oaks and magnolias on Lydia’s street. Sweat trickled down Travis’s back the minute he hit the muggy air. But he didn’t mind. This was as good as Friday nights got.
They pulled into the Walmart parking lot as the moon was rising bright and silver in the sapphire sky. Whooping, giggling, and music came from a clump of parked cars in a corner of the lot as they parked and walked in. Travis left his staff in the car.
“Dilllll-lllll-lldooooo-ooooo-. Chlamydiaaaaaa,” someone shouted.
Lydia shook her head. “This is my life. Getting yelled at in a Walmart parking lot on a Friday night by somebody doing a bad impression of a PG-13 fart-joke-movie comedian.”
“We were just watching a smart documentary, so it’s not really your life,” Travis said.
“I’m starting to think we haven’t been missing out on much with the Walmart parking lot scene,” Dill said.
“Got any cookies, Girl Scout?” someone else shouted.
Lydia never went anywhere without the perfect outfit. She wore a vintage summer camp T-shirt and a pair of khaki hiking shorts and boots from the 1970s.
“I guess I deserved that,” Lydia said.
Do all the losers from your school hang out at Walmart on Friday night? Travis texted Amelia.
Definitely, she texted. It’s like we live in the same town.
I wish. I love my friends but it would be so cool to be able to talk about Bloodfall with you in person.
They bought their markers and drove to the unnamed gravel road that ended in a stand of trees beside the Steerkiller River, which bisected Forrestville. The air smelled like kudzu, mud, cool gravel, and dead fish.
That smell. Suddenly Travis is fourteen. He’s with his mother at Saturday-night worship at the Forrestville Original Church of God. A new family has been attending their small congregation. Crystal and Dillard Early Jr., the wife and son of Dillard Early Sr., the snakehandling Pervert Preacher. The Earlys’ meager congregation has collapsed in their pastor’s absence, and the Original Church is the best they can find in Forrestville to replace it. They’ll get their speaking in tongues and Holy Spirit and laying on of hands to heal the sick. They’ll have to handle their snakes and drink their poison at home if they’re so inclined.