fucking sky and
I can’t feel the end where my skin used to be and I can never turn back until all is shu-shaaa and I come from space to eat the trees and I must go with the flow toward nothing and everything and always all at once and boy am I fucked up
CHAPTER TWELVE
'This is a gorgeous place, Bill,' Nettie said. Bill watched her eyes as he helped spread the blanket across the warm clover.
They were on a rise of meadow that overlooked a laurel-covered river valley. The gray face of Bear Claw sloped upward from the meadow, the mountain harsh with rocky shadows. The softer outlines of Fool’s Knob and Antler Ridge met the sky on the southern horizon. The surrounding trees wore their new buds like a regal finery of jewelry and lace. A scattering of sparrows erupted from the forest and soared over the grass, their wings tilted at odd angles.
Bill smoothed the blanket with his hand and sat beside Nettie. He smelled dandelions and wild onions, fried chicken and raspberry tarts. He had planned on stopping at the Save-a-Ton and buying one of those ready-to-go deli picnics, but Nettie had insisted on providing the food. And she looked tasty herself, in that lavender blouse and light-colored skirt, a yellow scarf tying her hair back in a dark ponytail, little wispy curls brushing her cheeks.
Now get that stuff out of your mind. Is the devil going to follow you even out here, into the heart of God's country?
Nettie opened the basket and passed him a napkin. 'Bill, what made you ask me out on the spur of the moment?'
Bill avoided her eyes and looked off at the mountains. 'I just wanted to show you this place,' he said, waving his work-roughened hand out toward the woods.
'I love it here. I feel so… free,' she said. 'Close to the Lord. Pure.' She said the last with a small blush.
Bill saw the blush and gulped nervously. He nodded and said, 'I've loved this place since I was a little boy. Used to go up there by that ridge and pick huckleberries.'
He didn't add that he used to bring his high school dates out here to give the Corvette's shock absorbers a workout under the ogling moon. But that had been a different, devil-ridden Bill, before the Light had found him. Those sins had been washed away by the blood of the Lamb. He helped Nettie unpack the food.
'I'll bet you were cute as a boy.'
Now it was Bill's turn to blush. Even his ears tingled. He dropped the bowl of mashed potatoes, tipping over the plastic container of sweet tea. He hated that he was always so clumsy around Nettie.
'Even as a boy, I knew I wanted to live out here one day. Finally I was able to make enough money to buy it.'
'This place is yours?' Her eyes widened.
Bill hoped he didn't sound like he was bragging. 'Well, actually, it's the Lord's, but I get to keep it until He comes back for it. The lot goes over to the base of the mountain and across that ridge there, the one with the stand of oaks, on down into that old growth thicket by the river.'
Nettie picked a buttercup and tucked it behind her ear. 'Wow, Bill, you certainly have an eye for beauty.'
Bill studied her face, wondering if she were fishing for compliments the way some women did. He decided she wasn't insecure about her looks. She couldn't be, not with all the gifts she had been blessed with.
'Well, I've been wanting to settle here one day. Only… ' He gulped again, feeling his big stupid vocal cords locking up on him. He'd never been very good at expressing himself, and now, when the bright sun and the swaying daisies and the velvet green fields demanded poetry, he could only stack words as if they were cinder blocks. '… only, the time's never been right.'
'It's a nice dream, Bill. I hope it comes true. You deserve every good thing in the world.'
Nettie was talking about dreams, and his heart clenched like a fist. He had shared dreams with his first wife, and she had vomited them back in his face every chance she got. She had ridiculed him, laughed at his idiotic plans that she said were a waste of money, snickered at his sexual performance, and taunted him with a string of lovers, from the entire landscaping crew to Sammy Ray Hawkins, making sure to time her trysts so that Bill had a fifty-fifty chance of walking in on her adulterous acrobatics.
Bill had tried hard to forgive her, even asked the Lord to forgive her, too. And he draped her in silk, adorned her with diamonds, wrapped her in gold chains, hoping he could buy her approval and affection. But he only built the wealth of her scorn. And the devil had gained final victory by forcing him to break a vow to God and divorce her.
He wasn't about to risk that pain again. Nettie must have sensed something, because she put her hand on his big forearm. 'Is that the secret you told me about? You owning this?' she said quietly.
'Well, yes,' he said, after he jump-started his tongue. 'But it's not just that. There was something else I wanted to tell you.
'Confession is good for the soul.'
'We've been going out for a while now. And I've enjoyed every minute we've spent together. But I'm afraid I better tell you something before you waste much more time on me.”
Bill watched her wilt. Her eyelids dropped, her dark, delicate eyelashes flickered like the butterflies that were cutting patterns over the grass. She bowed like one of those long-ago English queens, readying herself for execution. She nodded gently, as if praying that the ax-blow be swift and sure.
'I've been married before,” he said, in a rush, wanting it over with. “And I got a divorce. I've sinned in the eyes of the Lord, Nettie.'
She blinked twice. 'Is that your deep, dark secret?'
Bill braced himself for her counterattack, the cruel feminine laughter that would slice like a saber. It didn't come.
'Bill, everybody makes mistakes,' she said. 'And God's heart is bigger than the sky. There's plenty of room up there for forgiveness. That's one of the best things about His love.'
Bill looked up at the high ceiling of the sky with its thin stucco of clouds.
He wiped the sweat from his palms onto the blanket. 'I was afraid you'd think less of me, like I was a hypocrite or something, the way I promote the church and stuff. While I'm eaten up on the inside with black sin.'
And now Nettie was laughing, but it was a laugh of relief instead of ridicule. 'Bill, I've got deep, dark secrets that would put that one to shame. And someday, I might tell you about them. Now, let's eat before the ants figure out we're here.'
The tension that Bill had sensed from the moment they arrived seemed to lift into the March breeze, as if God had waved a soothing hand overhead.
'Too late to fool the ants,' Bill said, blowing one off the back of his hand. It landed in the spilled mashed potatoes. Nettie laughed again, an airy music that was as natural to the meadow as the song of sparrows. Bill grinned at her and lifted the plate of fried chicken. His grin froze as Nettie pulled a bottle of wine from the basket. He looked into her deep, shining, curious, tempting eyes.
'I hope you don't disapprove.' She twisted a corkscrew in with a firm hand. Her face clenched with effort as she popped the cork. 'One of my dark secrets.'
Bill's smile tried to shrink like drying plywood, but he kept it nailed into place. She was pouring the blood of Christ into two clear plastic tumblers.
No, this is white wine. The blood of nothing but dead grapes. Do you mind, Jesus? Of course, You used to drink it. But what if it makes me weak, prone to the devil's whispers? Or is this a test of faith?
But then he was taking the cup from Nettie and bumping it to her raised cup in a toast, and he was swimming in her beautiful eyes and the wine was on his lips and in his throat and then warming a small spot in his belly. He sipped again, nervously, and the warmth spread.
They ate chicken, she a breast, he two legs and a thigh. They had scratch biscuits that were as good as Bill's
