Small Town Sinners (18 page)

It’s a prayer I think up on the spot, but I’m pretty proud of it as it runs through my mind. I wish I had some paper to write it down. I think even Dad would like it, though we haven’t talked—aside from the required niceties—since the lake. We came home that night and cooked up Dad’s fish, each having a little bit. Mom sparkled with conversation about how proud she was of her two fishermen, and she talked so much about the new novel that Mrs. Harrison had loaned her that I’m not sure she even noticed Dad and I hardly saying two words to each other.

Even with my eyes closed, I can feel that tonight during personal prayer everyone is energized. I peek a bit and see that Geoff Parsons has sweat pouring off his brow. I wonder how someone so mean can be so feverish with the holy word.

Suddenly, I hear a loud cackle, and Geoff yells, “Get the devil out of Dean Perkins!”

My eyes snap open and I see that Geoff’s eyes are rolling up into his head, and he’s pointing at Dean, who looks confused as he breaks his own personal prayer language to see what’s going on.

Some people are still chanting and swaying, lost in their connection to God, but others have stopped to watch Geoff, who’s now heading toward Dean, arms outstretched.

“Get the devil out!” he shouts again, as he grabs Dean’s shoulders and starts to shake them.

Dean looks completely bewildered, and I turn to the pulpit to see what Pastor Frist and my father are going to do, how they’ll handle this. They’re both still chanting, still enrapt in their holy connections.

No one’s ever broken personal prayer like this, and Geoff Parsons looks possessed by a spirit. I study his face, sweaty and contorted into an angry mask, eyes still rolling around in his head, showing more white than I care to see. It’s frightening.

And then I look at Dean. He’s surprised, he’s shocked, he’s clearly afraid. I glance back up to my father, who still looks lost in his personal moment. But someone has to do something. Didn’t he hear Geoff yelling?

Then a strong, authoritative voice fills the sanctuary. “Stop it!” Ty shouts. All eyes turn to him as he jumps over a pew to reach Geoff, prying his hands from Dean’s shoulders. He restrains Geoff, who shakes Ty off with a fierce arm swipe, but Ty positions himself protectively in front of Dean, who falls into the pew. He sits there, his breath coming out in short gasps. Starla Joy and I run over to Dean to make sure he’s okay.

I look around and see that everyone has broken their personal prayers, thanks to Ty’s booming voice. They’re all staring. Not at Geoff, but at us: me, Starla Joy, Ty, and Dean.

And in this moment, I don’t care.

“What were you
doing
?” I snap at Geoff Parsons.

He holds his hands up in front of his chest, smiling. “I was just joking around,” he says with a chuckle. “Dean knows it’s all good, right, D?” he flicks a nod at Dean, who glances up for a second and then lets his eyes hit the floor again.

I look up at my father, challenging him to intervene, hoping he won’t tolerate bullying in church.

“Now, boys,” Dad says, as if Dean or Ty had some involvement in this too. “Personal prayer time is sacred. It’s important that we all concentrate and gear up for Hell House together.”

“In other words,” says Pastor Frist. “Leave the outside world outside, and come into this House of God without grievances or even casual jokes.”

“I’m sorry, Pastor Frist, Pastor Byer,” says Geoff, looking contrite. “I was honestly just kidding. You know, trying to get us in the mood for the devil tonight.”

Dad chuckles and puts on his Satan voice. “The devil hates an exorcism!” he booms. People start laughing, and the tension in the room breaks.

How can Dad make this into a joke?
I stare up at him, my eyes burning. I want to shout at him and tell him he’s being unfair, he’s being
cruel.
But I’m afraid he won’t hear me. Dad doesn’t meet my gaze and I let my eyes drop.

I see Ty shake his head and walk out of the sanctuary. He’s the hero of this moment in my eyes, but no one follows.

“Now,” Dad says, clapping his hands together. “Let’s take five and gather back here to watch our opening scene together. Dean, you come with me and we’ll talk about how the props are coming along.”

“Are you okay?” Starla Joy whispers to Dean as people start to disperse.

“I’m fine,” he says, straightening his shirt and heading toward my father. I can see that he’s still visibly shaken though.

I’m hoping they’ll talk, that my dad will give Dean some strength, a lesson from the Bible to hold onto about how jerks are all around, but Christ faced them down and came out a better man because of his trials. I know there are parts of the Bible like that. Dad used to quote Jeremiah 29:11 whenever I had a bad day at school: “ ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’ ”

Starla Joy and I walk out into the hallway together and we head into the ladies’ room, checking under the stalls for feet before we exhale.

“What was that?” she asks.

“I have no idea,” I say. “Geoff seemed possessed! And then it was a joke?”

“He shouldn’t be joking about the devil being present in Dean,” says Starla Joy, turning on the water at the end sink and wetting a paper towel.

“It’s vicious,” I say. “And sacrilegious.”

“What does he have against Dean?” she asks. “We’ve all known Geoff Parsons since we were in the church nursery.”

“They used to be friends,” I say. “Remember? Back in elementary school.”

“Yeah,” says Starla Joy. “What is Geoff’s deal?”

Starla Joy starts reapplying her pink lipstick and I lean on the sink and look at my face in the mirror. My eyes look tired, with puffy bags and dark circles underneath them. I’m having trouble sleeping lately.

“Can I borrow some of that?” I ask Starla Joy, thinking maybe a hint of pink will wake up my dreary face.

“Sure,” she says, handing me the lipstick tube.

I apply a little, but I end up wiping most of it off. Bright makeup always looks clownish on me for some reason. I sigh.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s go see what Gay Marriage is like.”

When we gather in the sanctuary again, everyone has calmed down.

“What did my dad say to you?” I turn to Dean, hoping he’ll tell me that my father imparted some helpful wisdom.

“We talked props,” Dean says. “He wanted to go through the checklist and see when things are getting delivered.”

“Nothing else?” I ask.

“When we were done, he did say something,” Dean says.

“What?” I ask, still hopeful.

“He said that if I had the devil in me, he’d know,” says Dean. “I wasn’t sure what he meant. Like, I couldn’t tell if he was in character as Satan or if he was being Pastor Byer.”

I hold my breath for a second, thinking about what Dean just said. There are moments lately when I don’t recognize my father either.

Ty hasn’t come back. We’re moving into a Hell House rehearsal tonight, so he probably would have left early anyway, but I have a feeling he cut out because he’s upset. My leg bounces up and down. I’m still irritated by Geoff’s outburst, but as we all sit down to watch the opening scene of Hell House, I see that Dean is back to normal. He even looks excited to watch the show. I guess if he’s okay, I’m okay.

Mr. and Mrs. Sikes are the couple in the first scene. They’re the only adults in the production besides my dad as the devil and Pastor Frist as Jesus. They walk down the aisle, and beside them is Jeremy Jackson. Through the whole show, his role as the Demon Tour Guide is to be both a guide for the audience and the devil’s mouthpiece, so Jeremy says things to exacerbate the situation.

Paul Rich plays the officiant in this scene, and as he whispers the traditional marriage vows to the gay couple, it’s Jeremy’s job to overpower Paul’s voice, yelling over the officiant with his own version of the vows. He turns to the Sikeses and says, “Do you promise to fornicate unnaturally with dozens of people in a direct challenge to God’s will, forsaking all that is normal and sealing your fate for a painful and horrific death?” His eyes glow as he recites the lines, and everyone can see that he’ll be one of the favorite tour guides this year—he’s feeling it.

I think about Jeremy in this role that condemns promiscuity—as if he hasn’t had a lapse of his own—but I push the thought out of my mind. This isn’t about Jeremy and Tessa, it’s about two men marrying, which is wrong in a different way.

The actors move from the pulpit up onto the sanctuary stage. On the left is a bedroom scene with red fabric draped over lamps. “We’ve got leopard print sheets coming for the bed,” whispers Dean.

“How do you know what sheets gay people like?” asks Starla Joy.

Dean frowns and says, “I was guessing. I want every scene to have the right atmosphere.”

I think leopard print gets the point across that it’s a wild person’s bedroom, so I see where Dean is coming from. In any case, the props aren’t ready yet so we’re just watching Mr. and Mrs. Sikes hug and run their hands up and down each other’s backs in the left corner of the sanctuary, which to be honest is pretty gross, even though they’re married. They’re old.

On the right side is another part of the set. It’s a hospital stretcher, and after a brief blackout for the actors to change positions, Mrs. Sikes stretches out on the stretcher, moaning in pain. She’s supposed to be dying as she reaches for Mr. Sikes.

It’s hard to think of them as a gay couple while she’s wearing a flowery blouse and khaki shorts, but when we do the real performance, she’ll be in a suit and wearing a fake mustache, just to be clear.

As she lies on the stretcher, the Demon Tour Guide speaks. “This is Adam. He thought his homosexual lifestyle was fun and
fabulous
, but now he’s dying of AIDS.” Mrs. Sikes, playing Adam, writhes on the bed, screaming in agony. This is just a rehearsal, but she’s really getting into it.

A chill passes through me and I turn to look at Dean and Starla Joy, who are both riveted to the scene.

Jeremy finishes his final condemnation of the marriage by saying that the couple has been “believing the born-gay myth” and calling their wedding a “matrimonial abomination.”

“Whoa,” I say, letting out a breath. This script is more intense than usual.

“Yeah,” says Starla Joy, sharing my emotion.

“I think I’ll try to find an old disco ball for the bedroom,” says Dean, his eyes lit up as he turns to us, only props on his mind.

Starla Joy leans in to me and whispers, “You can’t say he’s not dedicated.”

We both laugh and stand up and head into the choir room, where we’ll see the second scene of the show—Domestic Abuse. We crowd along the back wall and when all of us are crammed into the audience space, we watch a drunk husband beating his screaming wife. The way that Graham Andrews and Susan Casper play it out, it’s hard to watch. She’s crying and cowering, while he picks up a chair and throws it down at her. Of course, today he just pantomimes doing that, but Dean says that on performance day we’ll have a chair that’s made to break up into pieces and can easily be put back together for each successive presentation. And since the scenes are played out about twenty times per night, we’ll get our money’s worth out of that prop even though it cost like fifty dollars.

Everyone claps at the end of the domestic violence scene, and we split up into smaller groups so we can rehearse our own parts. We’ll see the rest of the show later.

I’ve gotten good at my lines—and I can conjure up emotion on cue now. Plus, I’m still managing to draw angst into this scene through my thoughts of Tessa. It’s amazing to be in this show, to finally have a movie moment of my own, where all eyes are on me.

I cry real tears during the last run-through, and after I finish my screams and the room goes quiet, I see my father standing in the doorway, beaming.

When I jump off the table to head out, he walks up to me and gives me a hug. “I’m so proud of you, Lacey Anne,” he says.

“Thank you,” I say coldly, brushing his arm off my shoulder as we walk out of the room. I’m still mad at him, and I feel frustration welling up inside of me because I want to hug him back. I want to share this Hell House experience with him fully. I tell myself I’m going to try to talk to him again, that we must have misunderstood each other out on the water. And that he
would
have stepped in to defend Dean today if Ty hadn’t said something first.

But then I see Geoff Parsons in the parking lot. My father gives him a thumbs up and a “Great job tonight, Geoff,” and I feel a rush of anger. I hate seeing my father so buddy-buddy with him—acting like he’s done nothing wrong—and I feel something harden in my heart.

Chapter Twenty-one

Corner of Oldham Road at
11, I text. I don’t know what Ty will think—probably that I’m dying for more kissing, which I am—but really, right now, I need his ear. And I know he’ll be there.

I keep my shoes off until I get outside the house. I’ve never snuck out before, but it’s surprisingly easy. Maybe that’s why it’s easy—my parents have no reason to keep their eyes or ears at attention. I’m a good girl. Or I was anyway.