Read Online It Wasn't Always Like This by Joy Preble - Free Book Online Page A

His face turned red, and he squeezed her hand hard, shaking his head and smiling.
    “Both,” he gasped.
    Now Emma was worried she might laugh.
    Her mother shot them both a glare. Emma held her breath, gripping Charlie’s hand as tightly as she could, trying to focus on the sermon.
    “Once again, in our time, Man wants to be God,” Glen Walters told the crowd. “And once again, the Lord will strike us down for it. He already has.”
    He stepped to the very edge of the stage, spreading his arms wide as though he were about to take f light. Emma’s stomach tightened. Why did he think they all needed to be struck down?
    “The Titanic !” Walters hollered. “The greatest ship on earth. Unsinkable, they said. And where is it now, that glorious ocean liner? At the bottom of the ocean, keeping company with the carcasses of Atlantis. All that golden glitter rotting away. And why? Because its creators believed that they were God.” He paused and lowered his voice. “Look among you, brothers and sisters. We shall cast out the sinners in our midst. Together we shall cleanse the community so the Lord won’t have to do it for us. There is no way to heaven but faith. Remember this.”
    The audience rose to its feet and burst into applause.
    Emma didn’t stand. Neither did Charlie. He clung to her hand as tightly as she clung to his. She thought about those poor people on that doomed ocean liner. Was this man saying they deserved to die? That made no sense.
    But the couple on the bench in front of them leaned forward as though pulled toward Walters by an imaginary string.
    “He’s wonderful,” the woman whispered to her husband. “Just wonderful.”
    No, he’s not , Emma felt like saying. Don’t you see he’s just a charlatan?
    AFTER WALTERS F INISHED orating, there were tables of pie and cobbler and sweet lemonade, and almost everyone in town seemed happier and more talkative and more alive than Emma had ever seen. But she told herself that it didn’t matter. Glen Walters and his Church of Light didn’t have anything to do with her or her family. Besides, her parents didn’t look happier. No, judging from the looks on her parents’ faces, they wouldn’t be going back to any of these “tent” revivals—good for business or not.
    TWO DAYS LATER, when Emma was working her evening shift in the Alligator Farm and Museum gift shop—and thinking about Charlie (again and always)—a stranger burst through the door, smiling awkwardly as he almost tripped over the threshold.
    He wasn’t a tourist. He looked at her, for starters, not at the gator f igurines and other cheap merchandize the tourists from up north ran their hands over but seldom bought. He was short and stubby. His face resembled a frog’s—f lat and wide and slightly bug-eyed. And he was sickly-seeming, shaky and coated with a thin f ilm of perspiration. She backed away, even though she knew it was rude.
    “Hello, my name is Kingsley Lloyd.” He held out his squat hand, and when Emma took it—clammy and damp—he shook so hard that her elbow knocked against the counter. “I’m a herpetologist. I’m looking for Mr. O’Neill.”
    Emma tried not to make judgments—that, she’d learned, was def initely bad for business. “He’s in his off ice,” she said, gesturing behind her. In truth, her father was out by the gator house. One they’d named Horace had been acting sluggish the past few days. She wasn’t even sure why she told this lie except that this man wasn’t here to buy anything; that was obvious. But she couldn’t leave him unattended in the store while she went to get her father, could she?
    “You’ll have to wait,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be out in a minute.”
    At that moment, Charlie’s father stormed through the door, his hair disheveled, his face smudgy, puff ing air in his cheeks like he was ready to explode. “Damn gators,” he muttered. “We’ve got all these shows scheduled and all these tickets sold, and now