Page 70 of Never Flinch

“The assistant’s the one who got the bleach shower? And the card with the anthrax in it?”

“Yes.”

“But she’s also continuing?”

“Yes.”

“Looks like you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

“Yes.”

“Sorry you took the job?”

“It’s stressful, but I look at it as a growth opportunity.”

“Take care of them, Hollyberry. And yourself.”

“That’s the plan. And don’t call me that.”

“Just kind of slipped out.” She hears a grin in his voice.

“I call poop on that. Talk to John by all means and give him my best.”

“I will.”

“Now go on and tell me what’s on your mind. I know you want to.”

He thinks about it, then says, “Later, Gator.” And ends the call.

Holly gets dressed, folds her pajamas neatly into her suitcase, and goes to the door to look at a whole lot of Iowa. It’s at times like this, early in the morning on a beautiful spring day, that she really wants a cigarette.

Her phone rings. It’s Corrie, asking her if she’s ready to go to Davenport.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Holly says.

2

Chris wakes from a terrible nightmare. In it he’s back in the third row of the Macbride. The woman onstage—magnetic, beautiful, and dangerous—is asking all the men in the audience to put their hands up.Pretend I’m the teacher you crushed on in the sixth grade, she tells them, and for Chris that was Miss Yarborough. He was homeschooled, of course; all the kids from Real Christ Holy were homeschooled (the public schools being tools of the deep state), but Miss Yarborough came to give lessons in math and geography. Golden hair, blue eyes, long smooth legs.

In the dream, McKay tells those men who’ve had an abortion to keep their hands up. There’s laughter at this absurd idea and all the men put their hands down. All but Chris. His hand won’t come down. It’s frozen, sticking straight up. Straight up and thousands of people are looking at him. Someone shouts,Where’s your sister?Someone else murmurs,Our secret.He knows that voice. He turns, hand still upraised and frozen, and sees Mama as she was near the end, so pale and thin. She shouts for everyone in the Macbride to hear:You are you and she is she!

That’s when he pulls himself out of the dream and finds himself sprawled on the filthy squashed-flat rug of his motel room. The sheet and the threadbare blanket are tangled around him, and he can barely unfist his fingers enough to let them go.

You are you and she is she.

He gets up, staggers into the bathroom, and splashes cold water on his face. He thinks that makes it better, fixes it, but then his stomach clenches and he doesn’t even have time to make a half-turn to the toilet, just vomits last night’s Taco Bell steak quesadilla into the basin.

Our secret.

For awhile it was.

He stands where he is, sure he’s going to retch a second time, but his diaphragm loosens. He runs water into the basin, then mops up the chunky residue with a washcloth, which he throws into the tub—splat.

At times like this, in the aftermath of his frequent nightmares, he’sboth. He thinks of the hand hanging down from the upper bunk and he’s both.Never died, never diedusually works, but after the nightmares, in the socket of the night, such words have no power. At times like this he can’t deny the fact that Christine will forever be seven, hair growing brittle in her narrow underground home, and the best he can do is to inhabit his sister’s ghost.

He can hear Daddy talking to Mama.I forbid it. Would you be Eve? Would you listen to the serpent instead of your husband and eat from the Tree of Knowledge?

That day his mother was where she almost never went, in Daddy’s barn. Where he invented the things that had made them… well, not rich, not when they gave most of the money from Daddy’s patents to the church, but well-to-do.Never brag, their mother had told thetwins.All we have comes from God. Your father is just a conduit. That means he just passes it along.

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