That smell. Suddenly Travis is fourteen. He’s with his mother at Saturday-night worship at the Forrestville Original Church of God. A new family has been attending their small congregation. Crystal and Dillard Early Jr., the wife and son of Dillard Early Sr., the snakehandling Pervert Preacher. The Earlys’ meager congregation has collapsed in their pastor’s absence, and the Original Church is the best they can find in Forrestville to replace it. They’ll get their speaking in tongues and Holy Spirit and laying on of hands to heal the sick. They’ll have to handle their snakes and drink their poison at home if they’re so inclined.
They sit in the back beside Travis and his mom. Neither looks like they’ve slept in months, and they probably haven’t. Dillard doesn’t make eye contact with anyone. He seems to be drawing little comfort from being in God’s house. He looks friendless and forsaken. Travis has had a taste of that. He gets a lot of suspicious looks himself because of his clothes and proven penchant for reading unchristian books.
He also knows something about loss and sleepless nights. His big brother Matt had died in a roadside bomb blast in Afghanistan the year before. Their father had never been especially nice, but he was at his worst when he drank. He started drinking more when Matt died. A lot more. And Travis has changed too. He used to love books and video games about modern soldiers, but now they only remind him of Matt. They remind him of how Matt would email him pictures of him and his buddies sitting on their Humvee, cradling their weapons. Which means his old books and video games remind him of grief and loss and of not living up to Matt’s legacy. So he gets his fix of heroism and combat from fantasy books. He thus manages to escape a world in which big brothers die in faraway places. As soon as his mother figures out how he’s finding solace, she brings him home the first book in the Bloodfall series from a shopping trip to Nashville, a recommendation from a bookstore employee.
Travis catches Dillard’s eye and smiles and waves. Dillard, expressionless, returns the wave. Something tells Travis to speak with him. Travis has always been taught that the feeling to do good is the Holy Spirit speaking, and when you feel that call, you’d better answer. Plus, he’s been feeling a bit lonely himself. One of the consequences of his decampment into the world of fantasy was leaving his meager group of friends—mostly from church—behind.
He slides over to Dillard and offers his hand. Dillard shakes it.
The next time they’re both at youth group, Travis asks Dillard if he wants to go see this cool place his brother showed him before he left for Marine Corps boot camp. It’s a good place to sit and be alone with your thoughts. And Travis doesn’t mention this, but it’s a good place to escape your father when he drinks and watches football, and reminisces about what a great football player your dead brother was, and asks you how you’d like the job of coaching a bunch of African American (but he uses a different word) millionaires and won’t let it go until—to appease him because his belt has been known to come off—you lie and tell him you guess you wouldn’t want that job. And then you hate yourself for being a coward and not saying what you really think. You hate yourself for not being good at sports like your dead brother. You hate yourself for not being as brave as the people you love to read about. And you just want to be somewhere where no one makes you feel that way.
“Travis, you can bring the staff this time,” Lydia said, yanking him back to the present. “This place always creeps me out a little at night.”
“What if a possum or a raccoon sees you with me? Wouldn’t that be embarrassing?”
“Bring the staff before I change my mind.”
“I have my Taser and pepper spray too,” Lydia said. “My mom’s armed me well.”
“What’s your deal?” Dill asked. “You planning on running into like twenty murderers?”
“I’m a vocal woman in the public eye. I take precautions.”
“Maybe Trav and I should start wearing suits and sunglasses when we hang out with you.”
“Are you done?”
“Yeah.”
They picked through the brush at the base of the railroad bridge. By the river, a chorus of whistling frogs joined the clamor of insects. Dill led the way with a flashlight from Lydia’s car.
Lydia swept the ground using the LED from her cell phone. “I’m scared of snakes.”
“If we have a problem with snakes, Dill can handle it,” Travis said. “Get it?”
Dill slapped at a mosquito. “Yeah. I got it.”
The turf grew marshy beneath their feet. Lydia tried taking a couple of pictures with her flash.
“Kinda cool,” she said. “Getting a sort of Ryan McGinley vibe. Either of you want to strip down and run around naked in the dark while I take your picture?”
Dill stepped behind Lydia and peered at the photos. “Not especially.”
“I’d crack your camera lens,” Travis said.
“Oh come on, Travis. You have a beautiful body. Dill, tell Travis he has a beautiful body.”
That line from Freaks and Geeks, one of Lydia’s obsessions, had been a running joke with them ever since Lydia had made Travis and Dill watch every episode in a single day. The joke never failed to slay them.
They reached the large concrete bridge support column that rose out of the ground before the river. They made their way to the side, the mud sucking at their boots, where a small metal ladder covered in chipped green paint hung. To get to the Column—situated in the middle of the river—they had to climb up the ladder on the riverbank column, walk out over the river on the catwalk under the bridge, and climb down another ladder to the Column.
“I’m wondering if I should invoke the ladies-first privilege to avoid having to climb up after you on muddy, gross rungs, or if I want one of you to go first to make sure a giant spider hasn’t made a nest up there.”
“A giant spider like Sha’alar, the Spider Queen,” Travis murmured, loud enough for anyone interested to ask who Sha’alar was. Nobody asked.
“Here.” Dill gripped the ladder, raised a foot, and scraped his boot on the column before stepping on the bottom rung. He did the same with his other boot. “Best of both worlds. Now you won’t get your muddy hands all over what’s left of my body when Shalimar or whatever kills me.”
They climbed up the ladder and squeezed through the tight hole at the top to a catwalk. Travis had to hold his breath.
“We need to remember to bring some butter next time so we can grease up Travis,” Dill said.
Travis laughed, trying to suck in his gut. “Come on guys, give me a yank.”
“Not before you buy a gal dinner,” Lydia said in her best 1940s sexpot voice, flicking ash from an imaginary cigarette.
“If only you walked through holes as easily as you walked into that,” Dill said.
They finally dislodged Travis and continued on the narrow catwalk out to the Column. Travis had to walk hunched over to keep from hitting his head. They got to another hole with a ladder and slipped down it.
“I have an easier time going down the holes than up them,” Travis said.
“Not even touching that one,” Lydia said in the 1940s voice.
“We are thoroughly violating this poor bridge,” Dill said.
“I didn’t mean it that way. God dang, you guys.”
They finally reached the Column, where there was space to spread out. Dill discreetly kicked a condom wrapper into the water below.
“Every time we come here, I try to figure out why this ladder exists,” Dill said.
Lydia rummaged through her bag for her book and their markers. “Right? It’s like ‘Hey, Butch, whyncha climb down and see if the Column is still there.’ ‘Okay, boss. Thumbs-up! The Column is still here!’?”