“Shelby’s just my friend,” I said. “She needed help.”
Babb smiled. He had yellow, crooked teeth.
“She didn’t want to go home.”
“How come you went over to your cousin’s trailer?”
“’Cause we didn’t have nowhere else to go,” I said. “It was raining.”
“Y’all were together nearly four hours before she got home.”
“We were riding around. Shelby likes to take the back roads.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Babb just smiled bigger. He put a hand on my shoulder, leaned in, and said, “Keep it in your pants, Hunter. Don’t go throwing away your life on a little ol’ fat girl.”
I didn’t answer. I just crawled out of the cruiser and walked back to my house and the supper my momma had laid out. Field peas, greens, and hamburger steak that had grown cold.
Momma was back on the couch, laughing at something she’d seen on television.
The morning was bright and cold when Shelby removed the skirting around the front porch and crawled under the tin-roof house. She was quiet about it. All she needed was Randy to wake up from a twelve-pack coma and start asking a lot of questions.
The house was old and slat-boarded, nothing but dirt and trash up underneath the floors. Running above her was a mess of old copper pipes and new PVC water lines. So many cracks and breaks in the bottom floor of the house, she could see the light inside bleeding through clear as day. It took her awhile but she soon found where the gas line ran up into the living room and then along the back of the house to the stove. Shelby reached for Hunter’s wrench in her back pocket and turned the screw in the pipe, letting the propane run free.
She listed for a hiss, but didn’t hear a thing.
The rotten egg smell didn’t come to her until she put the wrench back in her pocket.
It took her twice as long to crawl backward into daylight, the back of her jeans and jacket covered in reddish dirt. She dusted herself off best she could and just started walking down the curved road toward what used to be Paris. The old general store was just a heap of boards and broken glass. The post office was an empty cinder-block building where they’d sometimes have a flea market on Saturday, selling old and useless things. Across the street was a volunteer fire station and a few trailers on a muddy, eroded hill.
Shelby kept walking, camo backpack over her shoulder, listening and looking for Hunter’s truck. She figured the house would be good and filled with gas in about an hour, filling those deep, dark places and far corners of that damn drafty old house. Her momma had gone to town. Her brother was already on the bus to school.
She’d left Randy’s cigarettes and lighter right where he liked them. Right by his bed.
Lord of Madison County
by Jimmy Cajoleas
Madison
“Are y’all ready to worship?” says Pastor Jerry. He’s got his eyes shut, one arm raised high to Jesus in some weird half — Nazi salute. Frosted hair slicked back, bald spot barely showing. Graphic T-shirt that says, Lord’s Gym, and has Christ bench-pressing a cross on it. Cargo shorts that he still thinks are cool.
I’m a little ways back in the youth room, chewing on a pen cap. The worship band kicks in; it’s all reverbed guitar and concert lights and the bullshit praise lyrics projected onto a screen behind them. You know, the songs that are the kind of crap you say to your girlfriend but it’s supposed to be about God? You alone are beautiful. You alone are my rock. You alone are my one and only. Oh Jesus, baby!
Out in the crowd of youth-groupers are my customers. The girl with her hands up in the air, giggling, singing louder than anyone? That’s Theresa. Everyone thinks she’s weird, that maybe she’s one of God’s holy fools, but they all agree that she’s on fire with Jesus.
Nah, she just popped a molly.
Don’t get me wrong, Theresa loves Jesus. She says drugs just help the experience. She’s from Seattle, her parents are hippies, it’s a weird thing. But just look at that girl worship!
And the bro with the mullet up front? The one who’s all glassy-eyed for the Lord? That’s Dennis. I smoked him up about fifteen minutes ago.
I could go on. There’s Fran and Baskin and Hillary and Scottie. The youth group is about one hundred strong, and I sell to 30 percent of them.
The praise song ends. The guitars ring out. Pastor Jerry speaks: “The Lord reigns over our city. Can you feel Him all around us? Can you feel Him in this very room? It’s good to feel the presence of the Lord. The peace that passeth all understanding. Do y’all feel the peace of the Lord?”
Well, they’re feeling something, that’s for damn sure.
“Amen,” I say.
Pastor Jerry looks out to me and smiles. “Douglas, will you lead us in a word of prayer?”
It’s funny. Pastor Jerry has no clue about me. In fact, he believes I’m his greatest success story. I’m fully converted, and Pastor Jerry was the one who did it. I bet that asshole gets a holy boner in his cargo shorts every time he thinks of me.
Not to mention all the converts I brought. Once word got out I was dealing at youth group (they leave all the areas inside the church unlocked, so once you’re in, the place is an abandoned labyrinth of dark, closed-off rooms, perfect for private business), all sorts of riffraff started showing up. All of a sudden Pastor Jerry thinks I’m the Apostle Paul to a bunch of stoner kids.
“Sure, Pastor Jerry,” I say. “Let us pray.”
I used to go to school at Parkside Prep, along with every other rich kid in Madison. I was an okay student, I went to class, whatever. My dad was long gone and my mom started dating this guy, Dillon, who was a total pothead. I caught him at it one day while Mom was at her tennis lesson. I threatened to tell her that Dillon’s been selling me weed for months unless he gave me the number for his dealer.
So I went and met the guy, this white dude named Kroner. He had a shaved head and a nasty scar down his cheek, but he was a smooth guy, kind of soft, like everybody else in Madison. And I pitched him. You want an in at Parkside? It’s all rich kids with trust funds. They’ll buy anything to look cool.
He said sure. It was that easy. He said, Sure, but if you fuck this up, if you fuck with my money, I will fucking kill you. I will kill you and your entire family. I will cut your mother’s lips off and staple them to my dick.
And it was hard not to laugh. Just think about stapling something to your dick. That’s the stupidest shit I ever heard of in my life. Kroner was a fucking moron, and he was going to make me rich.
Everything went smooth at Parkside for a while. I was making all kinds of money. I was a hero. I got every kid the high they wanted. Even Kroner was impressed. All was golden until this fat fucker named Bill Widdleton did a line too many and had a seizure in Mrs. Bilson’s art class.
I’d never seen a kid have a seizure before. It was like watching a computer reset. He made this weird stuttering noise first, his chin bobbing up and down like the picture when a DVD skips. In seconds he was flopping on the floor, foaming at the mouth, legs kicking. It was a thing to see.
I shouldn’t have stayed to watch though. I should have run my ass to my locker and dumped everything I had in a toilet. Because the ambulance came, and then the cops arrived with the drug dogs.
Even though my dad flew in for a week to pay off half the county, I got kicked out of school. I got a month in juvie. I got mandatory rehab and parole for a year. Mom took my car so I had to walk thirty minutes just to get home. Every shop and gas station I passed made me hate this bullshit town more and more.