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The Lives of the Apostates

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

CHAPTER 1

I have this fantasy about throwing a brick through the window of the House of Jesus. I want to see it buckle in, want to watch the shards of glass rain down among the aisles of inspirational books and Precious Moments figures. I want to hear the music, like frenzied wind chimes, as the pane falls onto the wooden floor. I want to laugh like a Viking setting fire to a monastery. And then I want to run like hell.

I can't decide whether I would steal anything or not. It seems like I ought to. Destruction for the sake of destruction seems petty, but thievery still has a little romance to it. You can still sympathize with a burglar. But there's nothing at a Christian supply store for me, and I wouldn't want to take something I had no use for.

I would never actually do this, of course. I'd get caught. Kirksville, the town where I go to college, is too small to get away with anything like that. Maybe on graduation night, when everybody's distracted ... But probably not even then.

Still. It might be worth it.

I remember this one time, in my sophomore year, when I was driving through the town square and saw the clerk from the House of Jesus struggling with a package. She's an older woman with roller-tight auburn curls. She had a FedEx package in her hands – a big, monstrous thing. She could barely lift it. I stopped my car and jumped out to help her. The labels said it was full of copies of The Purpose Driven Life.

I hefted that package, and I had this thought: I could take that box of books, these books that were full of pabulum and condescension, and I could run off with them. Throw them into the alley, maybe, or jump back in my car, drive to campus, and abandon them in the basement of Baldwin Hall. Anything to get rid of them, to deprive the House of Jesus of its best seller.

But I didn't do that. I pussed out and carted the box inside, asked the old woman where she wanted the box to go. She pointed me to another stack of Rick Warren books and thanked me for being such a kind young man.

I don't know why, when given the chance, I didn't take it. I could have gotten away with the box, I think – she's an old woman, slow, bad eyes. Then again, I don't know why I have the urge in the first place. I guess it's to prove a point, but I couldn't tell you what that point is.

Anyway, that was a year ago. Right now it's late August. The freshmen will be arriving next weekend in their droves, crowding the streets and the sidewalks, slavering at their first taste of college independence. For the moment, though, Kirksville was quiet. Nobody walked through the steaming summer heat except townies and the few students who stayed over between semesters, like me. The summer had dragged. Nobody to talk to, no parties to attend. Nothing to do but go to work and then come home to an apartment without air conditioning.

I turned onto Scott Street and headed up to a complex of generic buildings – half a dozen of them, so similar that only the address numbers tell them apart. A wooden sign out front read "CHERITON VALLEY". I parked and headed to building 3A.

Before I could get my keys out to unlock the door, I heard heavy metal playing from the television inside. I rubbed my forehead and opened the door. This was a bad omen for the night to come.

The living room, clinical white and covered in a thin lair of dust, held three men. Two of them were sitting; the third jumped up and down in a frenzy.

Mike, my counterpart, sat in a tan armchair staring at the television. Mike was one of the few black guys native to Kirksville. He was a couple of years older than me, 27 or 28. He had a body like a scarecrow: incredibly tall and impossibly thin. "Hey Lou," he said. "You're early."

"I thought I'd come in and get my paperwork done."

I looked at the television and saw two huge, sweaty men in underwear grappling, confirming my suspicions: the heavy metal had been Stone Cold Steve Austin's entrance music.

The boys (I shouldn't call them boys, I should call them mentally-handicapped-adults, but I can't help it) loved pro wrestling. Or at least Donny – who at the moment was screaming, "Un-der-taker! Un-der-taker!" – he loved pro wrestling. He demanded to watch every WWE show we could get on Cheriton's basic cable plan, even the crappy Sunday night show that never had any big name wrestlers on it, and when no show was on, he had eight wrestling tapes that he played again and again.

Jimmy was the other resident of the house. He was an older guy, though I didn't know exactly how old – forties, maybe – with thick glasses and a gray beard we had to keep cut for him. He sat on the couch, staring into space. I don't know that Jimmy liked anything. I'm not sure Jimmy was high-functioning enough to understand joy.

I grimaced at the tape. "Hey, Mike. Can I talk to you for a sec?"

"Sure." Mike didn't stand up so much as he unfolded from the chair, raising up to nearly six and a half feet. We walked out of the white-and-beige living room into the white-and-beige kitchen. "What's up?"

"It's eight o'clock," I said in a whisper. "Why the fuck are they watching wrestling?"

"Donny wanted to watch his Undertaker tape. He wouldn't shut up about it." He looked at the television, then back at me.

"It's almost over, I promise."

I glanced over to see a Hell in a Cell match from the late '90s – the kind where they put a big cage around the ring that looks to be made of spools of aluminum fencing. The Undertaker choke-slammed his opponent, Mankind, through the top of the cage and down to the ring, some twenty feet below. Mankind would lay there for a few minutes, unconscious, with a broken tooth up his nose. Then he would get up again despite the screams of the announcers to stay down. Eventually they'd call in a stretcher, and then he would bust off of that, too. I knew the entire sequence by heart. I'd been forced to watch this tape about twelve times already.

"Jesus Christ," I muttered. "It just gets him all wound up. He's supposed to go to bed in an hour and a half."

"He'll calm down. Seriously, Lou, he would have been more aggravating if I hadn't put it on. Kid loves his Undertaker." The 'kid' was in his thirties, years older than either of us, but, like I said – it's hard not to think of them that way.

"Yeah, yeah. I know. Putting him to bed's going to be hell, but oh well." I shrugged. The boys had given me worse nights. "Anyway. I've got my paperwork."

"Let me know when you get done so I can start mine."

I was essentially a baby-sitter, especially on the midnight shift. I made sure the boys didn't hurt themselves, that they got fed and took their pills, that they got a healthy amount of sleep. Given those responsibilities, the paperwork always struck me as unreasonable.

There was a form for clocking in, another for clocking out, a timetable for meals, a timetable for meds. There was the minor incident form – I had to use that one once, when Donny tripped over an end table and twisted his ankle. There's a major incident form, too, but I never had to use that one. And there were more forms than those, too – reimbursement forms and the like, for when we took the boys out for groceries, things like that.

I filled out my clock-in sheet and initialed the meal timetable. I looked up towards the living room. "They had dinner, Mike?"

"Yessir," he said, his gaze on the TV. "Finest SpaghettiOs in the state of Missouri."

Jimmy briefly stirred at the mention of SpaghettiOs, but once he realized we weren't about to cook anything, he went back into his usual catatonia.

I finished my beginning-of-shift duties and went back into the den. "All yours, chief."

"You have the bridge, Number One," he said, and went to the kitchen to start filling out his sheets. It took him about ten minutes, during which time approximately three minutes and wrestling and seven minutes of commentary flashed by. I heard him close up the paperwork binder and slide it back onto the shelf. He walked back into the living room and waved goodbye to the boys and me. "See you guys on Tuesday."

"Not working tomorrow?" I asked.

"I haven't taken my girl out in a month, man. I'm taking the night off before she stabs me."

"Right on," I said, and immediately hated myself for saying it. It sounded like the kind of thing a lame middle-class white boy would say, and I hate to admit the truth about myself. "Have fun, man."

He opened the door, gave us a last wave, and left.

"Bye Mike!" Donny yelled.

Jimmy said nothing.

* * *

I got Donny to sleep around ten o'clock, much later than he should have been in bed. We argued for an hour over a wrestling move called the Tombstone Piledriver, and whether it belonged to the Undertaker or his 'brother', Kane. (At least I think it was an argument. It's hard to tell with the boys.) In the end we agreed that the move belonged to both of them, but 'Taker used it first.

Usually it wouldn't have mattered much if Donny stayed up, but he was high-functioning enough that the company had gotten him a job at the Ponderosa Steakhouse, so he needed to be up early for that. Unfortunately, that also meant I had no company for the rest of the night. The boredom was the worst part of overnights. The boys weren't scintillating conversationalists, but at least they gave me something to do; once they were in bed, my job consisted of not falling asleep until six AM. Thankfully, we traded overnights every few weeks, so I didn't have to do that all the time.

Mostly I watched TV. I became acquainted with the slow drift from the end of primetime into late-night news and talk shows, which eventually dissolved into the faerie country between two and five AM. I had watched too many infomercials for strange kitchen appliances and seen too many evangelistic pleas from megachurches in my time at Cheriton Valley. At least when the semester started, I could do homework to pass the time.

I sank into the easy chair and flipped the channel over to The Daily Show. Funny, but forgettable – some Bush gaffes, a segment with the bald guy 'on assignment' in South Carolina.

I itched for someone to talk to. At the commercial break I started to look through my phone, trying to think of somebody to call. Names scrolled past: Kyle Favazza, Tony Lacey, Mikayla Plinkett. A whole repository of relationships, sorted by ringtones and thumbnails. People I hadn't talk to in years, people I'd probably never talk to again, but at some point, had been important to me. I couldn't bring myself to delete them.

Hailey Thomas ... Alan Von Alman ...

Lucy Walstead.

A photograph flashed next to the name, a smiling girl with turquoise hair. You might have mistaken it for a wig, but only if you didn't know her.

I sent her a text. Hey. You busy?

About a minute later, I got a reply. Not really. What's up?

I hit the call button and muted the TV. Garbled closed-captions appeared. IT'S A WONDERFUL IDEA, the captions informed me long after Jon Stewart's lips had formed the punchline, EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE IT DOESN'T WORK.

"Hello?" said Lucy, her voice tinny over the phone.

"Hey, kid. How are you?" I asked.

"It's a little late for you to be calling, isn't it?" She yawned. "Don't you have class?"

"Not until next week. Anyway, I'm working tonight."

"Oh, right. Night shift, huh?" Lucy always sounds like she's talking in her sleep: her voice, high and quiet, full of strange lilts and musical notes. "That must be rough."

"I've been doing it for a little while now. Eventually you forget what the sun looks like, and then it's not so bad."

She chuckled. "How's the semester look?"

"Okay, I think." I paused, trying to remember my schedule.

"Mostly major classes ... Logic should be interesting; it's got a good professor. The only one I'm dreading is History of Christian Thought."

"You're taking Christian Thought?" she asked. "Really?"

"Blame the dean. It's a major requirement. Or at least, something from the Abrahamic religions is, and every other class that fits the requirement starts at seven in the morning. It's that Protestant work-ethic for you."

I pictured her nodding on the other end of the line. (The line that doesn't exist anymore because we're using cell phones. Yes, I know. Look, language has some catching up to do.) "Lou Durham in a course on Christian Thought. I never thought I'd see the day." She paused. "That's got to be a short textbook."

We both went silent, and then at once burst into laughter.

"That's terrible," I said, once I had caught my breath. "And you're a terrible person for saying it."

"You laughed."

"I never said I wasn't a terrible person too."

She chuckled. "Well, good luck, I guess. What's the plan? Sit in the back, try not to fall asleep?"

"Miss Walstead, you offend my honor as an academic and a scholar," I said. "I intend to confront these ideas from a position of cautious respect and thoroughly interrogate them as a student of comparative religion ought to approach any system."

"Uh huh."

"... from the back row, while doing the crossword."

"That's my boy." She paused. "The whole history? That's a lot of time to cover in one semester."

"Nah, it's just the first section. I think there's three in all? This one just goes up to the beginning of the Middle Ages ... 600, 700, something like that."

"The Romans, basically. Well, hey, there'll be some neat people in there, at least. Hypatia, maybe? And the Emperor Julian, he's got to have a chapter or two dedicated to him."

"Yeah, I'm really looking forward reading about how the last Pagan emperor fucks up and dies, Lucy. That's going to be a laugh a minute."

"It's better than old men excommunicating each other."

"Root canals fit that description."

I hadn't talked to Lucy in months – not since June, when my parents held the Midsummer sabbat at our house in St. Louis. We had all made it to that one, for once – me, Lucy, her brother Andy, and our friend Dottie – the little tribe of Pagan children who had grown up together in our parents' coven. We almost never all made into town for the sabbats anymore. Mostly that could be blamed on distance – Lucy lived in Madison now, studying Linguistics, and I lived here in Kirksville. Dottie and Andy still lived in St. Louis, but neither of them went to many festivals. Not since they broke up. I guess they both worried they'd die of awkwardness if they had to stand next to each other for an hour.

Lucy wore a white robe at Midsummer, cotton, and when the wind blew I could see the nubs of her breasts push against the fabric. We stood next to each other in circle, like we always have, ever since we were little kids. We held hands and watched my mother and father drawing figures in the salt and the water, invoking the elements and the gods, blessing the wine and the cakes. I can picture every detail: our overgrown yard, drenched in sunlight and greenery, and Lucy's violet hair catching a glimmer of the Sun God's glory.

I can think of my life as a succession of pictures like this, a parade of Lucy Walsteads that stretches back into the darkness of youth. Lucy at eight, dressed in magenta for Beltane, her hair still blonde; Lucy at 14, standing with me at Samhain in a deep emerald dress, the first time she dyed her hair Tinkerbelle green. Lucy at 21, in my parents' yard, tall and violet-haired and beautiful beyond words.

I had watched her grow up, from a little girl to the radiant Valkyrie I saw at Midsummer, and I had grown up with her, starting squat and short, becoming taller and broader and hairier. And I held her hand all the while.

She wore a white robe that day, the last time I held her hand, the last time I'd passed her a chalice and a plate of home-made bread. The last time I had wished that she would never thirst and never hunger, that I had kissed her and tasted the white wine of the Goddess.

"Are you going home for Harvest?" she asked.

"I don't know. Probably. I hadn't really thought about it ..." I heard a noise from the boys' room. "Hey, Luce, hold on a minute."

"Sure. Is something wrong?"

"Not sure. I'll be right back."
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Lives of the Apostates by Eric O. Scott. Copyright © 2012 Eric O. Scott. Excerpted by permission of John Hunt Publishing Ltd..
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