Page 72 of Never Flinch

And do you still have male urges, Christopher?Eyes averted, Deacon Andy pointed vaguely in the direction of Chris’s crotch.

Thinking of Deanna Lane, his spelling and math partner—he said he did, at least when he was Chris. And with Deanna, and later with Miss Yarborough, he was always Chris; he was only Chrissy with his mother, because the one time his father had seen him in a dress and in the wig his mother had bought for him… that one time was enough.

Our secret, our secret.

“When you are Christine, it comforts your mother, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And it comfortsyou.”

“Yes.”

“You’re not afraid you’ll die like she did.”

“No, because she’s alive.”

“When you’re Christine—”

“Chrissy.”

“When you’re Chrissy, youareChrissy.”

“Yes.”

“When you’re Chris, youareChris.”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe in God, Chris?”

“Yes.”

“Have you taken Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

“Yes.”

“Very well. You may continue to be Christine—Chrissy—but only with your mother. Can you do that?”

“Yes.” And oh, the relief.

Later, much later, he would come to understand the concept. Which did not, in the view of Real Christ Holy, exist. Nor in his own view. To Chris (and to Chrissy), they were perfectly sane. There was, however,possession, which could be demonic but also benign. Although Fallowes never said so, Chris came to believe that Deacon Andy had decided Chris might have been possessed by the spirit of his dead sister. How old was he then? Nine? Ten?

It was five or six years later when Deacon Andy—after consulting with the church elders, Pastor Jim, and his father—began talking to Chris about Katherine “Kate” McKay.

Never did Fallowes mention to any of them that he was discussing the baby-killing woman with Chris’s sister as well as Chris himself.

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Chris leaves the bathroom and regards the two suitcases at the foot of the bed, one pink and one blue. He opens the pink one. On top are two wigs, one black and one blond (the red one was discarded in Reno). She dresses in skinny jeans and a boatneck shirt. She puts on the blond wig. Today it will be Chrissy who travels to McKay’s next stop.

Chris is a doer tortured by jumbled thoughts and nightmares. Chrissy is a thinker who has more clarity. She is perfectly aware that Andy Fallowes, possibly along with Pastor Jim, see this divided person as a God-given tool to put an end to the Murder Queen. Both personae, Chris and Chrissy, will claim they acted on their own, that the church had nothing to do with it. They will, in the vulgar but applicable phrase, dummy up.

Fallowes and Pastor Jim see Kate McKay as a terrible influence working against God’s law, not only when it comes to abortion but about the acceptance of homosexuality and her insistence on limiting the Second Amendment (stranglingthe Second Amendment). Most of all, they worry about McKay’s influence on various state legislatures. McKay understands that all real change is local, and that makes her a poison seeping into the body politic.

Unlike Chris, Chrissy knows how Fallowes sees them: as pawns.

Does it matter? No. What matters is that the McKay woman wants to arrogate the power of God to earthly creatures who have no understanding of God’s plan.

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