The Serpent King(83)

Lydia reached out and accepted Chester the bear. She hugged him. He smelled like cigarettes and cheap trucker cologne. And why shouldn’t I begin my glamorous new life as a big city girl by crying in a truck stop, surrounded by racist cherubs, while hugging a stinky teddy bear. Chester wasn’t who she wished she were hugging, but he would have to do.





Dill stood as the guards led his father in. He caught Dill’s eye with his ardent stare, but Dill met it and didn’t look away. His father pulled out a chair roughly and started to sit, but he saw that Dill didn’t intend to sit, so he stood. They looked at each other for what felt to Dill like a long time.

“So,” his father said. “You must know that I know.” His voice had a viperous calm.

“I do.”

“Explain yourself.”

Dill commanded his voice not to waver, and it didn’t. “I’m going to college. I’m going to have a better life than this. That’s all there is to explain.”

“You are abandoning your mother.” His father spat the word like it was profane.

“You’re one to talk.”

His father’s poisonous calm began to vanish. “No. I did not abandon you and your mother. I was taken from you. You are abandoning us by choice, the way your grandfather abandoned me.”

“No, I’m not. I almost abandoned you that way. But I didn’t.” Dill could tell from the look that passed over his father’s face that he had broken through, just for a second.

And then the Pentecostal fire returned. “You flaunt the commandments of God by dishonoring your father and mother in this way. There is a place of eternal torment set aside for those who flaunt God’s laws.”

“I honored you enough to come tell you face to face. That’s more honor than you deserve.”

Dill’s father leaned forward, hands on the table, his eyes boring into Dill. A look of surrender passed across his face. Dill knew his father must have had that look on prior occasions, but he had never seen it before. “This is the doing of the whore, isn’t it? Your little Delilah. Lydia. Your mother told me about her. How she spoke in your ear.”

Dill felt a swell of white-hot rage; it tasted like iron in his mouth. And then he understood. Your rage is what he wants. Deny him it. Whatever he wants you to be—whomever he wants you to be—deny him it.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dill said quietly. “You have no clue. And I feel sorry for you. I hated you. When I thought I’d become you, I hated you so much. I was less afraid to die than to become you. But now that I know I’ll never be you, I can finally feel sorry for you.” And with that, Dill turned and walked away.

“You will fail,” his father called after him. “You will fail and fall. Dillard? Dillard?”

But Dill did not look back.




Outside, Dr. Blankenship was waiting in the parking lot, the back of his Prius full of purchases from Trader Joe’s.

“Hey, Dill,” he said as Dill got in. “You ready to go?”

Dill nodded and smiled. “Yeah. Hey, Dr. Blankenship, while I’m thinking about it, could I trouble you in a couple months to give me a ride to MTSU? I looked into buses, but it’ll be hard to do.”

“You bet. No trouble whatsoever. I’d be glad to help you get settled in.”

“That would be amazing. I would appreciate that so much.”

“We can even swing up to Nashville if you want to come by here to visit your dad.”

“No, that’s okay.”




The days of summer bled together in a haze of work and more work. Without a single friend left in town, Dill had little use for free time. He worked for Dr. Blankenship during the day and worked nights at his old job at Floyd’s, and gave his mom as much money as he could while saving some for school. He spent what scarce downtime he had writing songs or talking with Lydia. They spoke every day.

Lydia kept busy at her internship during the day. At night, she worked on the expanded version of Dollywould that Dahlia and Chloe had put up the money to launch. She was bringing in outside writers for the first time and taking on broader issues of interest to young women. It was already getting favorable buzz and snagging high-profile interviews.

A month or so after Lydia left, Laydee saw one of Dill’s videos in Lydia’s Twitter feed. She retweeted it to her 1.9 million followers. That got things rolling for Dearly in a big way. A few weeks after that, Laydee’s manager called to talk to Dill about Laydee’s recording one of his songs on her next album. In a tone that suggested she was understating things greatly, she told Dill that he’d be able to buy a few textbooks with the royalties.




Dill sat in his living room, waiting for Dr. Blankenship, with everything he was taking to college surrounding him. Two thrift-store suitcases full of every piece of clothing he owned (including what had come in a box Lydia had sent him from New York), a set of sheets, and a towel. A backpack with his laptop inside. His guitar. His songwriting notebooks. He surveyed his meager possessions with wonder over the unexpected course of his life.

The night before, he’d had his own solitary goodbye ceremony at Travis’s grave. He left a Krystal burger. He was playing his first coffeehouse gig the next night. It promised to be a full house.