Read Online Soft Apocalypses by Lucy Snyder - Free Book Online
Authors: Lucy Snyder
Tags: collection
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force for Satan, I could scarcely imagine the threat of AT&T.
On second glance, the cell tower looked ... dead. Kudzu, so darkly green it looked nearly black in the fading evening light, had climbed nearly to its top. The suffocating vines had wound their way through the artificial branches. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my bars. No service.
I stepped back to flag down Alonzo, but he’d already driven out of sight down the highway. My stomach dropped and I swore softly to myself. Wait. My father called me, so he must still have landline service. It would be fine. I wasn’t stranded there in the woods. It would be fine.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and began the quarter-mile hike up the road to the house.
The wretched condition of the front gate made me fear what I’d find at the top of the hill, but the house and yard looked exactly the same as I remembered it: tidy cedar shingles on the roof, fresh-painted sky-blue siding, the broad wrap-around porch, the wide oak stump my father used for splitting pine logs for the stove.
I remembered the rough wood splintering my cheek as my father forced my head down onto the cutting stump, gravel biting into my knees and palms, the Lord’s Prayer shuddering from my lips as I begged my father not to kill me for talking to a boy at the convenience store –
I forced myself to look away and stare at the red hummingbird feeder my mother liked to look out on while she cooked meals.
Her silhouette flickered past the kitchen window, head dark against the yellow kitchen light. That’s how I mostly remembered her: quiet, in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning, a dutiful Christian wife who only spoke when she was spoken to and deferred to her husband in all matters. She was the fifth of ten kids who grew up in a three-room house in the Smoky Mountains, and I guess my father looked like salvation when he stopped at the diner she’d had to waitress in since she was 14.
Food was the truest love she’d ever known, and every meal she made was a humble feast. We never went hungry except for the occasional week my father’s mood swung and he decided God had called on him to starve the Devil out of us.
I could smell ham and biscuits baking in the oven, and my mouth began to water despite the huge chef salad I’d had at the restaurant beside the hotel. I’d resolved to myself that I would be polite in my father’s home, but I would not accept any more of his and my mother’s hospitality than was necessary. They’d shunned me for fifteen years, and I wouldn’t let them treat me like family now. I wouldn’t even eat so much as the proverbial six pomegranate seeds there if I could help it.
I went to the front door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” I heard my mother call.
Moments later, the door opened. My mother was there dressed in one of her home-stitched gingham dresses and her favorite yellow apron decorated in embroidered blue clematis flowers and curling vines.
“Maybelle, we missed you so much!” Not quite meeting my gaze, she grabbed my hand in hers and pulled me into the house. She didn’t try to hug me, but she was never much of a hugger. “Your daddy is in the living room waiting for you.”
“Is Leanna here?”
“She’s taking a nap. Poor thing gets so tired. I need to get back to dinner—can’t let the greens scorch! We’ll have a chance to set a spell and catch up after dinner.”
And with that, she disappeared into the kitchen again. I stood there in the hallway, breathing in ancient house dust, willing my heart to stop hammering. This was a nice place now. A perfectly nice place.
My father’s artwork covered the walls. He made his own frames and cut his own glass to size. He’d started out selling portraits and landscapes at fairs and festivals around the state, and from what I heard he made a good living at it. But by the time I was five, his mind had turned in on itself and after that he only sketched religious figures,
On second glance, the cell tower looked ... dead. Kudzu, so darkly green it looked nearly black in the fading evening light, had climbed nearly to its top. The suffocating vines had wound their way through the artificial branches. I pulled my phone out of my pocket to check my bars. No service.
I stepped back to flag down Alonzo, but he’d already driven out of sight down the highway. My stomach dropped and I swore softly to myself. Wait. My father called me, so he must still have landline service. It would be fine. I wasn’t stranded there in the woods. It would be fine.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, and began the quarter-mile hike up the road to the house.
The wretched condition of the front gate made me fear what I’d find at the top of the hill, but the house and yard looked exactly the same as I remembered it: tidy cedar shingles on the roof, fresh-painted sky-blue siding, the broad wrap-around porch, the wide oak stump my father used for splitting pine logs for the stove.
I remembered the rough wood splintering my cheek as my father forced my head down onto the cutting stump, gravel biting into my knees and palms, the Lord’s Prayer shuddering from my lips as I begged my father not to kill me for talking to a boy at the convenience store –
I forced myself to look away and stare at the red hummingbird feeder my mother liked to look out on while she cooked meals.
Her silhouette flickered past the kitchen window, head dark against the yellow kitchen light. That’s how I mostly remembered her: quiet, in the kitchen, cooking or cleaning, a dutiful Christian wife who only spoke when she was spoken to and deferred to her husband in all matters. She was the fifth of ten kids who grew up in a three-room house in the Smoky Mountains, and I guess my father looked like salvation when he stopped at the diner she’d had to waitress in since she was 14.
Food was the truest love she’d ever known, and every meal she made was a humble feast. We never went hungry except for the occasional week my father’s mood swung and he decided God had called on him to starve the Devil out of us.
I could smell ham and biscuits baking in the oven, and my mouth began to water despite the huge chef salad I’d had at the restaurant beside the hotel. I’d resolved to myself that I would be polite in my father’s home, but I would not accept any more of his and my mother’s hospitality than was necessary. They’d shunned me for fifteen years, and I wouldn’t let them treat me like family now. I wouldn’t even eat so much as the proverbial six pomegranate seeds there if I could help it.
I went to the front door and knocked.
“Just a minute,” I heard my mother call.
Moments later, the door opened. My mother was there dressed in one of her home-stitched gingham dresses and her favorite yellow apron decorated in embroidered blue clematis flowers and curling vines.
“Maybelle, we missed you so much!” Not quite meeting my gaze, she grabbed my hand in hers and pulled me into the house. She didn’t try to hug me, but she was never much of a hugger. “Your daddy is in the living room waiting for you.”
“Is Leanna here?”
“She’s taking a nap. Poor thing gets so tired. I need to get back to dinner—can’t let the greens scorch! We’ll have a chance to set a spell and catch up after dinner.”
And with that, she disappeared into the kitchen again. I stood there in the hallway, breathing in ancient house dust, willing my heart to stop hammering. This was a nice place now. A perfectly nice place.
My father’s artwork covered the walls. He made his own frames and cut his own glass to size. He’d started out selling portraits and landscapes at fairs and festivals around the state, and from what I heard he made a good living at it. But by the time I was five, his mind had turned in on itself and after that he only sketched religious figures,
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