The Serpent King(48)
Dill was aghast. His heart ached like it was trying to beat around a screwdriver. “So lie? I took an oath to tell the truth. I swore on the Bible to tell the truth. All I said was that it wasn’t mine. I didn’t say it was Dad’s. I didn’t testify against him. I testified for myself.”
“I didn’t say to lie,” his mother said quietly, looking away.
Dill grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. “What do you mean?” he whispered. “What did you mean by that? Do you think I could’ve testified truthfully that that sick shit was mine? Do you think—”
She slapped him. “Don’t you curse in this house.”
His face felt singed where her hand hit. Don’t let her see you cry. Don’t let her see you cry. “Is that what you’ve thought this whole time? That I downloaded that crap and got up and lied and let Dad take the blame? That’s what you think of me?” Don’t cry.
Her eyes seared, ferocious and condemning. “I think we’re all sinners. We wouldn’t need Jesus if we weren’t. But the serpents never lied. If your father hadn’t been pure of spirit, he wouldn’t be in jail now—he’d be dead. The serpents would’ve taken him. Or the poison. But you never passed that test. You never took up the serpent. So you ask me, between you and your father, who I think Lucifer ensnared? God has given me that answer. I don’t need to guess.”
Dill couldn’t get enough air. Nausea gripped his stomach. “So what about Kaylie Williams, huh?” he screamed. “What about her? When she testified that Dad got her alone after church one night and wanted to talk about sex with her? Was she lying too? She was eleven years old. Her family moved away because of it. Her brother was my friend.”
“Teaching a member of your flock about sex before she gets herself into trouble is no crime, and that’s why the state never charged your father with anything over it. You and I both know that Kaylie was a fast girl. She needed guidance or she’d have gotten pregnant in high school like—”
“Like who?”
His mother turned to leave. “You helped put your father in prison. If it weren’t for that, he’d still be here. If it weren’t for that, I’d never have had the accident coming home from visiting him there and my back and neck wouldn’t hurt all the time. And then you have the gall to talk about prancing off to college and leaving me with the mess you made. I’m through discussing this with you. You will visit your father. You will give him comfort for what you’ve done. You owe him and you owe me. You’ve got your own debts.”
“This has destroyed my life. Even having to deny that it was mine destroyed my life. It made me look guilty. I’ve lived with this. Nobody will let me forget it.”
His mother glared at him. Grim, unblinking. “You keep forgetting that this life is nothing. The next is the only one that matters. I wish you’d remember that.” And she left.
Dill collapsed onto the sofa, running his fingers through his hair. He wanted to vomit. The tears he had been restraining broke out and poured down his cheeks in a torrent. He screamed. It felt good. He did it again. He punched the sofa. Again. Again. Again. He grabbed the lamp off the table, and cocked his arm as if to throw it and smash it against the wall. Only the realization that he used that lamp for songwriting during long winter nights stopped him. He set it on the table, lay in the middle of the floor in the fetal position, and cried, with the reek of their musty carpet in his nostrils.
By God’s own grace, Dr. Blankenship proved no more punctual than his daughter, which gave Dill a solid twenty minutes to compose himself and wash his face, and for the redness and puffiness to mostly subside from his eyes. He didn’t look great, but he was more “didn’t sleep much last night” than “had a screaming fight with my mother wherein she accused me of being a sexual deviant and putting my own father in prison.”
Dr. Blankenship arrived in the Prius that had replaced the one he gave Lydia. Dill got in. Christmas music blared on the stereo.
“Thanks, Dr. Blankenship. If this is any inconvenience at all, it’s totally okay if we don’t go.”
“Please, call me Denny. Even though I’ve told you that lots of times and you never do. And it’s no inconvenience whatsoever.”
“Don’t be afraid to say so. If it’s even a little bit.”
“No problem at all.”
He didn’t get it.
The leafless branches of the trees surrounding the prison were skeletal against the iron-hued December sky. They looked as barren and lifeless as Dill felt.
Dr. Blankenship dropped off Dill with instructions to call when he finished. Into the prison. Through security. Into the visiting room. Waiting.
Dill tried to smile as his father approached. “Hey, Dad. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas to you.” Dill’s father had more new ink. Tattoos of snakes that spiraled around both of his forearms ended in snake heads in each palm. They covered and wove in and out of several sets of snakebite scars on his arms. The sign of faith wasn’t that the snakes never bit you—it was that as sick as you became, you didn’t die from it.
“You got some more new tattoos.” But at least we never want for an icebreaker as long as you keep getting them.
Dill’s father quickly opened and closed both hands, one finger at a time, making the serpents on his forearms ripple and writhe. “Ecclesiastes tells us there is nothing new under the sun.”