Reckless: Shades of a Vampire (12 page)

“Let’s bless this food,” David says.

Emma’s father has never even blessed cookies. But David wants to bless the cookie.

“Okay,” Emma says.

“Dear Father, we thank you for letting us breathe on your Earth. We ask you to guide us, to show us the path so that we can serve you. Bless this food. Bless Emma. And bless the good work that her father does, leading his family and his church.

“Amen.”

Emma thinks he forgot to mention the cookie.

Emma takes a bite of one. David takes a sip of his coffee.

“Only on Saturday night,” he says.

“What?”

“Only on Saturday night. Coffee. Only on Saturday night, and not every. It’s the caffeine. God gave us coffee, but God gave us the strength to avoid it. Too much makes me jittery. So only on Saturday night, and not every.”

“I have coffee every day,” Emma says. “Father doesn’t say it’s a bad thing.”

“Nothing God gave us is bad. It’s how we use it.”

“That’s true, I guess,” Emma says. “I don’t have too much. Just mornings. Sometimes in the evening.”

“Only on Saturday night,” David says, sipping from his cup.

Emma understands he is giving a command rather than making a proclamation. She changes the subject.

“Did you drive here?” she asks.

“Yes. In my father’s car. He’s working on the sermon for tomorrow morning and didn’t need it.”

“I see,” Emma says. “I don’t have a car. I’ve never driven.”

“It’s not hard. You just put your foot on the brake. Start the engine, ease your foot off the brake, steer, look where you are going, and ease your foot on the gas. That’s all there is to it.”

“I see.”

“Did you go to school?” Emma says.

“Yes.”

“Oh?”

“I learned from the Bible. It’s the only schooling anybody needs.”

“You didn’t take classes at home?”

“Yes, my father taught me. From the Bible. I learned to read from the Bible. I learned to count from the Bible. I learned about how the world was created from the Bible. I learned to fear God from the Bible.”

“I see. So you didn’t do the state classes?”

“No,” David says.

“Your dress is nice,” David says, changing the subject. “Did you make it?”

“Yes.”

“You sew well.”

“Thank you.”

He takes a bite of a cookie.

“Mmmm. Did you make these?”

“Yes.”

“They are good. Do you make other things this good?”

“I suppose,” Emma says. “I just cook for my mother and father. They’ve never said if it was good. But I suppose.”

“Did you go to school?” David says.

“Yes. At home. My mother taught me. I did the state plan for home schooling, except for science. No science.”

“You’ve read the Bible haven’t you?”

“Of course.”

“That’s all the science you need. That’s all the reading you need. It’s the only book the world needs. If everybody just read the Bible, wouldn’t be any Devil-loving people.

“It’s crazy. Men sleeping with men. Folks pouring poison into themselves. Dancing with each other like they are crazy. Fornicating when they are not married. Stealing from their neighbors. All these crazy ideas they get don’t come from the Bible.”

“You won’t need any more books.
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness
. First Timothy, verse two eleven.”

“I’m sorry?” Emma says, seeking clarification.

“You won’t need any more books.”

“I see,” she says, looking down at the remaining half of her cookie.

David sips the last of his coffee. He puts the cup on the table. He gets quiet, and is looking at his empty cup.

“I’m sorry,” Emma says. “Would you like some more?”

“Yes, I would,” David says, smiling. “A woman’s work is never done.”

“No,” Emma says. “A woman’s work is never done.”

Emma stands up, faces David, and takes the pot of coffee, pouring him a fresh cup.

“Thank you,” he says.

Emma sits back on the couch, on David’s right, and leans back into a settled position looking straight ahead.

“What happened there,” David says, reaching toward the right side of her neck.

Emma bristles, and pulls away.

“Don’t act scared,” David says. “God’s will is a good thing. You can’t fight it. You can’t erase it.

“What happened?”

“I was bitten,” Emma says.

“By what?”

“A rattlesnake.”

“Dickens you say? You were bitten in church? Father didn’t tell me about that.”

“He probably didn’t know,” Emma says. “It was just a mistake.”

“That’s what your father said?”

“Yes. Father said it was just a mistake. He didn’t let go of the snake when I reached for it.”

“Well, praise God it was a mistake. I can’t imagine any sin you would have committed anyway.”

“The Bible suggests everybody sins, doesn’t it?” Emma says.

David is startled.

“Well, the Bible says those walking with God can turn away from sin. Reject it. I’m sure that’s what you do, no? Reject sin.”

“Yes,” Emma says clumsily.

“Do you handle snakes?” Emma asks.

“No,” David says. “Father and I try to keep the serpents out of our church. You bring in one, you bring in more. If people live a pure life in God, they don’t have to confront the serpent. We try to root out evil before it gets that far.”

“I see.”

“Well,” David says, looking out the window at the setting sun. “I guess I better get going. It’s getting dark.

“But Emma, I spec you will do. I’m gonna pray about it. You need to pray about it too. Ask God for the strength to be a good wife. Ask God to let you serve Him.”

Emma doesn’t respond. She knows which “him” David means.

“So I’ll miss the church service in Hengar for the first time ever in the morning and visit your church. Your father feels it is important I see his place of worship. I will pick you up here at 10:15 in the morning. We will go to your father’s church. Sit and listen to the word of God together. Then, I’ll bring you home, and if you so kindly invite me for lunch, we shall do that after.”

David stands up. Emma does too. He extends his hand. She reaches out and grasps his. He squeezes, hard. She keeps hers limp.

“I expect you to pray about this,” David says.

She walks with him to the door.

“Good night, Emma.”

“Night,” she says.

“See you at 10:15 in the morning.”

“Okay.”

Emma thinks about Michael. She considers doing her thing. She touches a hand to a nipple and rubs. An image of David flashes into her mind, and her stomach does a sour churn. 

She rolls over, and goes to sleep.

David picks Emma up for the morning service at Sand Mountain Pentecostal as planned, arriving 10 minutes early to her home. He knocks on the door, and her mother answers, showing him through the door.

“If you don’t mind, David, I will ride with you and Emma to the service,” she says. “Jeremiah left an hour ago.”

“My pleasure, ma’am,” David says.

Emma and her mother ride to the church with David – Emma’s mother in the front seat and Emma in the back. At the church, they sit on the front row in the sanctuary – Emma’s mother on one side of David and Emma on the other, the right. After the service, Emma realizes she doesn’t recall a word her father said, yet David seems to know his sermon by heart.

“The words of King Lemuel. An oracle that his mother taught him: What are you doing, my son? What are you doing, son of my womb? What are you doing, son of my vows? Do not give your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings. It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine, or for rulers to take strong drink, lest they drink and forget what has been decreed and pervert the rights of all the afflicted…

“Proverbs one, verses one through 31. I know it well. And it speaks volumes to us. Your father painted a vivid picture. We are not called to empower women. We are called to serve in the way that God has called.”

“I see,” Emma says, standing outside with David and her mother.

They are waiting to greet her father after the service in the church parking lot once he is through shaking the parishioner’s hands.

“Are you joining us for lunch?” Emma’s mother asks David.

Emma had risen early, and with the help of her mother they made a lunch larger than usual for after the service, expecting David to join them. Her father typically had a big appetite after a sermon, anyway, and expected a big spread. On this day, he expected an even bigger spread for David.

So they had made potato salad moistened and seasoned with Duke Famous Sauce. They had picked fresh chard from the garden to sauté. They had thawed and cooked black-eyed peas from the freezer, to serve it with homemade chow-chow. They had made a fresh loaf of bread. And, they had cut up a whole chicken and brined it in salt water so they could fry when they got back home after church.

And Emma’s father has prepared for the lunch as well, it seems, though in different ways. He has two sermons prepared for the day – one for the sanctuary and the other for David at lunch. Emma's father plans to convert to a snake handler, it seems. Any true believing Pentecostal must handle serpents in the house of God, Jeremiah believes.

At the house, Jeremiah and David sit in the parlor sipping ice tea sweetened with homemade corn syrup while Emma and her mother roll chicken pieces in flour and drop them into a searing hot frying pan filled with an inch-and-a-half of oil. The kitchen windows are open to alleviate the smoke seeping from the pan as they fry the chicken to a crispy brownish-black on the outside. They can’t hear the conversation in the other room amid the sizzling, but it doesn’t matter.

They have a good idea what Jeremiah is up to.

“David, I know you have been called to serve the Lord by following in your father’s footsteps,” Jeremiah says. “He has served well. And you shall do the same. But as a Pentecost, you must embrace the entire Bible, and God clearly calls us to take the serpent in hand.”

“My father has taught me that we should keep evil out of the church,” David says.

“You cannot keep evil out of the church, David. Evil walks in with the people. Taking the serpent by hand is confronting that evil. If it is wrong, why is our mountain one of the purest places on Earth? The sale of alcohol is forbidden. Murderers don’t live here like in the big cities of sin. Look around. We are mostly all one of the same.”

“I’m listening.”

“Don’t listen to me. Listen to the word of God, David.
And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

“I know the scripture,” David says. “Mark sixteen, verses seventeen and eighteen. But, not all recover. Some die, who don’t seem to be sinners. Maybe it is just snake poison that kills them, not evil.”

“Do you question the Bible, David?”

“But you recall, Sir, that not too many years back we lost one of our own, when brethren John “Punkin” Brown died when the timber rattler bit him at the Rock House Holiness Church. Now that man didn’t seem to have any evil in him. People said he was one of the Godliest men they knew.

“And your Emma, she…” David says, before Jeremiah interrupts him.

“Emma did not die, now did she?” Jeremiah says.

“No.”

“So let’s stick to the facts. And you don’t know what Punkin Brown was in to when the lights went out, now do you?”

“No sir, I…”

“God works in mysterious ways,” Jeremiah says, interrupting David again. “We don’t know all the ways. Save that blemish on Emma’s neck, she is as pure as white gold. An angel. She’s just waiting for matrimony, for a man to have her, and take her, and use her according to God’s will.”

“I understand, sir. But there’s also this: snake handling is illegal in the state of Alabama. We teach our people that we must follow the law of the land,” David says.

“Do you now?” Jeremiah says. “That’s what you teach your people? Well it’s the law of the state of Alabama that every young person be schooled properly according to the demands of the Department of Education, too, but your Daddy tells me you got very little book learning beyond the Bible.”

“Yes, sir. That’s right.”

“So maybe you don’t always follow the law exactly as it is.”

“Son, look me into the eyes,” says Jeremiah, leaning toward David, and sharpening his emphasis. “There is but one law. Romans ten, verse four tells us, ‘
For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.
’ It’s time you try to connect with God according to His word, not yours.

“The serpent is the vital organ of Christian integrity, the antithesis of good. One can’t face and slay evil without facing the serpent – the signature of evil on Earth.

“Yes sir,” David says. “I see, sir.”

A hand bell rings from the kitchen.

“Lunch is ready,” Emma’s mother says.

Jeremiah and David walk into the kitchen. Emma hands them plates, signaling them to go through the buffet line first. Jeremiah pauses.

“Let’s bow our heads in a word of prayer.

“God of light in a world of darkness. We gave you thanks for illuminating your word for David. Amen.”

“Well, David. Sounds like you two had a good talk,” Emma’s mother says, as David starts serving his plate.

“Yes. I would say we did.”

“David is coming to the service tonight,” Emma’s father says. “He’s going to see what snake handling is all about.”

David clears his throat.

“Is this right?” Emma says.

“Yes, well, yes,” David says. “I… tonight it is. I’ll pick you up this evening for the service, Emma. We will go together.”

Sunday evening, Emma hears David pulling up in the driveway to pick her up from the service. Her parents have already left for the church. She waits until he knocks on the door.