*Here we meet Gunnar, and his family, girlfriend, etc. Some people may find some content triggering, so be warned there is strong religious theming ahead and mentions of abuse and sex*
★★★
It was Sunday morning over Appalachia, and though the sun was up, it was barely visible through the thick clouds that had drifted down from the mountains. There was a reason they called these the Smoky Mountains, the clouds were often so thick they resembled smoke. Spring hadn't started yet, but the trees were already putting forth tentative buds and even a few leaves. Crocus, daffodils, and a few tulip varieties were peeking up from flower beds to welcome the season.
Jody Jacobs stood on his front porch with a cup of coffee, looking around the yard at the early signs of better weather. Jody was a preacher, first and foremost, but he was also a biker. He lived a kind of double life but some of his biker friends, including his younger brother Caleb's family, attended the pentecostal church that Jody both owned and preached at. While Jody was relaxing, his wife Cathy was making sure the boys and Dana were awake and ready. Their attendance at church was not negotiable unless there was a serious illness, and they feared him too much to protest. People who knew Jody from church would call him stern but a loving father. Those that knew him personally would never use the term 'loving father' or husband for that matter.
Jody turned in his heel and went back in the screen door into the living room. "Are you all ready? It's time to go, I'm going to be late."
"Yes dear," Cathy replied with a slight smile.
Of the three children Gunnar was the oldest, he would be eighteen in a couple of weeks and as far as he was concerned it couldn't come fast. He silently gave thanks that the church was a casual one, and suit and tie were not required. He looked slightly amused at his sister, just one year younger than he, Dana, who had only sneaked back in two hours ago and looked like death warmed over. She flaunted the rules shamelessly because she was daddy's princess and rarely got into trouble. It was he and his younger brother, Bryan, that felt their father's wrath. Gunnar hoped that after his birthday it would stop. But realistically he knew the only thing that would stop the abuse was him moving out into his own place.
Jody looked over Dana with a frown, "Dana, that skirt is too short. I suppose it has to do for today, we don't have time to change but throw it away when you get home."
Gunnar saw Bryan tense the moment Jody spoke to their sister. Something inside him perked up as well. For the past year he had been getting bolder, more protective, restless. He didn't know what it was, maybe all these years with Jody had him ready to snap.
★
The sun that should have been pouring through the trees on the small country church was dimmed to a dim silvery light by the low hanging, milky clouds and fog that rose from the creek in back of the church, it was as if the two combined to create a thick cloak that obscured everything from view. Gunnar and Bryan stood watching the cars make their way in, emerging from the thick murk as if from one of the horror movies they watched with their cousins because they weren't allowed to watch them at home. Most popular media wasn't allowed in their home, Jody believed it brought in evil ideas and spirits.
The air was so sticky that Jody opened the big front doors to let in some fresh air as people stood around the parking lot talking, despite the rumbling thunder in the distance that was accompanied by dim flashes of lightning. The congregation was an odd mix of bikers in their finest leathers, farmers in their cleanest overalls with starched button down shirts, stereotypical southern church ladies in their best dresses, and a few people in slacks and polos, or suits. In any other setting, it would be hard to imagine these people would ever associate with one another.
Gunnar and Bryan took their usual seats along the wall where the older people and other kids sat to avoid being caught up in the chaos that was the congregation when Jody really got them going. From here, Gunnar could see the wooden box that was perched on a long folding table beside the podium. Already he could hear the rustling inside.
The snakes were growing restless. Despite the laws against it, Jody's was a snake handling church. The snakes were primarily copperheads and western diamondbacks found in wood piles, under sheds, and in brush around North Carolina and Virginia. The congregation didn't know, or at least pretended to not know, the snakes were de-fanged. Meaning they were harmless. They frequently bit the people handling them,
and when no one died, it seemed to strengthen the belief that the church was anointed and sent the congregation into a frenzy each time the snakes were lobbed into the seats.
Moments before Jody opened his bible to start, Dana joined them. She already looked bored as she took her seat beside Bryan. Gunnar glanced at his sister, his eyebrow going up a little. Just behind her left ear was a decent sized hickey.
"Nice," Gunnar scoffed. "Where did you get that?"
Dana arranged her auburn hair to cover the hickey and smirked at her older brother. "Jealous?"
He rolled his eyes but didn't look her way. Sometimes he wondered if she was trying to make him jealous. "Not one bit. I ain't gotta get marked up to prove I got laid. Wait till dad sees that."
Bryan snickered in between them, but Dana ignored him, turning her glare towards her brother. "Whatever, Mister Perfect. High talk for someone who ain't getting any."
Knowing she hated his girlfriend, Gunnar turned to meet her glassy eyes. "Oh honey, I get plenty. Amy gives me all I can handle."
Before she could answer, people filed into the church and began to take their seats. Jody took his place at the homemade podium and opened the large leather bound bible. Gunnar glanced to his right, where there was another long folding table covered in a cheap, plastic, red checkered tablecloth from the local dollar store. At this table was seated Cathy, the choir leader, and a young boy who passed out water and snacks. Cathy gave him a big smile of encouragement that seemed to spur him on.
The sermon itself started as normally, Jody read through scriptures he had marked and the notes he'd made about them. The initial sermon was about brother's turning on each other, but it switched gears abruptly to Jody screaming about whores and adulterers so loudly that the rafters rang with his voice.
The reverberation of his father's voice startled Gunnar, who'd almost fallen asleep, awake with a jolt of fear. People in the main seats started to jump to their feet and holler back, holding their hands up as if to catch the words behind hurled at them.
The energy sent Jody into a frenzy, he was practically foaming at the corners of his mouth. He whipped off his coat and tossed it on the floor beside him. Wiping sweat from his brow with a bandana, Jody took a drink from a red solo cup under his podium. Everyone knew it wasn't water, it was pure homemade moonshine- the other family secret and probably the worst kept. "Whew, brothers and sisters! I feel a good preaching coming on today! The spirit is moving in me right now!"
Gunnar and his brother stood up, out of habit, they knew it was expected, they did it every Sunday and had done it every Sunday since they were born. But they never fully caught on to the fervor that swept the room.
"It's our job!" Jody roared, holding the podium so tight his knuckles were white. "It is our job to protect our wives, daughters, sister's, and kids. We have to protect them from outside influences. The devil's influence is everywhere. It's in music, books, movies, the news even! Listen to what teachers are teaching your kids in the classroom. The schools that our tax dollars pay for are teaching your kids how to have sex and get rid of the babies! The problem is we have started moving further and further from God. The kids and women are running these houses. That is not what God intended. Men, I urge you to take back control of your home in any way possible! Throw out the music, the video games, the books, the movies that the devil has planted in your homes."
Jody preached fundamentalist ideas that were horribly outdated but somehow persisted in Appalachia and the south. Women, he believed, were only here to serve their husbands, seen and not heard. They had no rights as far as he was concerned, and neither did children. His message of discipline and loving correction were all just prettier words for domestic violence. His wife of sixteen years, Cathy, refused to see herself as a victim. She had silently been hiding her bruises for years. Her sister, Janet, knew about it. She had taken her to the hospital twice. Once just before Jody went to Vietnam, when he had beaten the hell out of her for what he perceived was cheating. In reality she had only been conversing with a male friend.
There was more to the sermon, but it was little more than unintelligible yelling from Jody that was met with more unintelligible yelling from his audience. He tore off his tie and threw it on top of his jacket. The congregationthrew off their coats, sweaters, and hats to wave around over their heads. As his sermon reached new heights, Cathy and the others moved away from the table, narrowly missing being hit by a flying water bottle. Without warning he turned and kicked the table away.
"Brother Jody!" Someone yelled across the church."The spirit is moving among us this morning."
"Something is moving in here," Gunnar whispered to Dana. "But it ain't God."
She stifled a giggle, but when she glanced up at him, he could see the mirth in her eyes. Her lips tightened into a pucker to stop the laughter. She nodded in agreement but quickly turned to pretend to read the Bible in her hands. Her father scared her when he was this loud so she couldn't focus on anything in the book; she focused, instead, on tuning him out and sinking into her imaginary world.
"It's time!" Jody ranted, his voice starting to sound rough from the screaming. Sweat slipped down his face and dropped onto his light blue button down shirt, he slowly pulled off his belt and folded it. "It's time to beat the devil out of your home, the church, your family! It's the only hope we have! We have to fight him the way he fights us!"
The kids in the church scooted closer to one another, eyes wide in fear as the preacher made his way around the church, slamming the belt down on the podium, chairs, pews, and all inanimate objects in his path as if he'd become possessed. His voice raised above the sound of the whacks and people stomping and making strange yodeling sounds that they called 'tongues'. "Just like my daddy did me and his daddy before him, we have to stop being weak! Stop cowing down to this new age society! Beat the devil out of your home!"
The kids looked around fearfully at their parents as they praised and agreed. Gunnar wondered how many of them lived like they did, in fear of their parents for fear of being beaten. How many of them were left to deal with all serious issues on their own because their parents believed that God would fix everything or it would make them look bad in the church if their child wasn't perfect. He noticed that some of the women cringed as well. It was obvious they were also traumatized. How his father could not see it, was beyond him.
The raging continued in spite of the discomfort of others. Finally, soaked in sweat and panting as if he'd just run several miles, Jody paused and took a drink from the red solo cup under the podium. His face twitched slightly from the alcohol's burn. Jody stopped, placing his hand on the box next to him, where the snakes waited.
"Who all is ready to test their faith?" Jody spoke quieter now, his eyes searching the room. "Do you believe your faith is strong enough to take up serpents?"
There was a loud round of cheers as the congregation agreed with him, growing excited at what was to come. Gunnar looked around the room with a sigh, there was no one standing between him and the door. Beside him, Bryan shifted uncomfortably. He was scared of the snakes, de-fanged or not. Scared to the point of nightmares sometimes.
When Jody reached for the lid of the box, Gunnar grabbed his hand. "Come on, let's go outside."
He looked up at him with wide green eyes. "Dad will have a fit if we walk out. We'll get in trouble."
"I'll take the heat," Gunnar whispered. He gave him a soft smile. Sometimes he got between his father and siblings when things got heated, he'd taken more than a few beatings because of it. "Come on. He might not even notice."
It was true that they had done it before, and gotten away with it. Bryan followed him down the aisle and quickly out the back door. The fog had lifted around the church but the clouds persisted and thunder rumbled in the distance. Gunnar dropped the tailgate on Jody's truck and used it for a bench.
"I hate those fucking snakes." He chuckled. "I know you do."
He nodded quickly, "Ever since Dana put that one in my bed a while back."
"She did what?" Gunnar's smile faded. "When?"
"It was just a black snake." Bryan swung his feet. "But I didn't know that. She said it was a rattlesnake. Daddy said I was only afraid of it cause I'm not filled with the spirit."
"That's bull." Gunnar scoffed. "I don't know if I can stand living with him for another month."
"More like four years for me," Bryan glanced at the church door sadly. Inside, people were screaming in prayer as the snakes were passed around. He went back to looking at his shoes, his overgrown blonde hair falling forward. It wasn't as long as Gunnar's, who was able to wear his in a decent braid. It was one thing Jody didn't care about, his own hair was past his shoulder blades.
"Hey, when Amy and me move out," Gunnar pushed his hair back. "You can come live with us."
"Y'all getting married?" Bryan looked up with wide eyes.
"Not right off, but soon. We're going to get an apartment." He chuckled. "Mama ain't gonna like that. She don't like Amy."
Neither Jody nor Cathy liked Amy. Her father was a retired Air Force captain, he was a decade older than her mom, who had come back to America from Puerto Rico with him. Amy was their only child and she was spoiled beyond belief. Gunnar had harbored a crush on her since they met in sixth grade, he'd asked her out the following year and they had become a couple, secretly at first. She didn't attend church, and she dressed exactly opposite of how Jody allowed Dana. Nowadays, Cathy and Jody knew but they imposed strict rules on them dating in hopes that Amy would give up but it was the same as telling her she couldn't have something and that made her more determined to have it.
"Sounds like they're getting riled up in there." Bryan shook his head. Something seemed off about the noise though. It no longer sounded like praise and the usual gibberish. It sounded like panic.
"You reckon one of the snakes got somebody?" Gunnar looked back over his shoulder at the closed door.
The door swung open, Caleb was dragging a lifeless man by his arms. Jody followed with his bible in hand and a hissing rattlesnake in the other.
"He didn't believe! His faith was too weak to take up serpents!" Jody yelled, flanked by other members as he followed Caleb, who was putting the man in his truck.
Caleb closed the door on his old king cab and looked back at Jody. "You threw a rattlesnake at someone who didn't even know there was gonna be snakes. He's been bit, I'm taking him to the hospital."
"I think you should let us lay hands on him!" Jody shook his head, but Caleb ignored his brother as he left the parking lot of the church.
Jody stormed back inside, bringing the service to close. He didn't notice Bryan and Gunnar had been outside the whole time. And he didn't speak for the entire ride home. His mind was a jumbled mess. If this man divulged what had happened, Jody was in deep trouble. Snake handling in churches was forbidden in these parts. The wildlife agency would charge him for having wildlife without license, and there would be charges related to assault and endangerment as well.
As soon as they arrived home, Gunnar took just enough time to change before he left. Bryan did the same, and went across the black top road to visit his cousins. Dana decided it was time for a nap.
"I don't understand how he got in there." Jody stood looking out the window over the kitchen sink. He looked around when he heard the kids moving through the living room and scowled. "Y'all be back before six. You hear? We got evening service. Don't make me come looking."
There was a muttered response as they went out. Jody turned back to Cathy. "Like I said, I don't know how he got in here."
"Who?" Cathy didn't look up from making her and Jody a sandwich.
"Satan." Jody said matter of factly. "He's doing it again. He's trying to take my church from me, and send us off the path. Don't you see? That guy was Satan, he was sent to the church to ruin me."
She'd grown used to her husband ranting and raving about Satan and his plots to get him. He believed he was truly at war with him. Since Jody had come back from Vietnam when he was twenty years old, with a fairly serious wound that got him discharged from the army he had been 'off'. He didn't talk about the war much, but it had led him into being a police officer and then the chief of Police for about eight years before his PTSD had driven him over the edge and into the church. He had become a leader in a matter of months with a following that grew alarmingly fast given the dangerous message he preached.
"Maybe so. What are you going to do about it?" Cathy placed a plate on the table and a bag of chips.
"Pray the cops don't come snooping around." Jody finally sat down to eat. But he didn't taste the food.
★
Happy to be out of the house, Gunnar drove his old truck along the country roads. The truck was a gift from his grandpa, after an altercation over Cathy's car left Gunnar with a busted lip and several bruises, and Cathy with a black eye. It started when Cathy told Gunnar he could use her car without consulting Jody first and even though it was her car bought and paid for with her own money earned working at the family store, Jody still had final say over any and all decisions made in the house. Jody's father thought that was total bullshit and he'd given Gunnar the truck to annoy Jody. It had been effective at that.
★
Amy lived in a nice home a few streets over in a nice neighborhood that had cropped up several years back on a piece of land that used to be a cattle farm. Pleasant Hill, North Carolina was an interesting mix of neighborhood and farm land coinciding peacefully in the rolling hills just outside Cherokee. Gunnar drove up the gravel driveway to the house, which was shielded from the road by big oaks. She was watching for him on the porch.
Her face lit up when she saw him. "Hey! How was the service?"
As he hugged her it crossed his mind to say awful, but he just shrugged. "Same old, I guess. You miss me?"
"Every second I'm away from you!" She giggled as they walked along the back yard, down a slope to the woods. There was a creek back here that they were headed to.
The rain had passed, the sun came out brightly. Gunnar sat down by a tree, resting against it with a sigh. Amy stretched out between his legs, resting on his chest. Her big doe eyes looked up at him innocently, but he knew good and well she wasn't innocent. She hadn't been his first, but he had been her first lover though. About six months into the relationship and it was a regular thing since. They kissed lightly, almost chastely. It was at these times he felt relaxed.
"I love you," she quipped. She had been the first to say it in the relationship. Amy was passionate about things she loved, almost to the point of obsession. She was possessive, jealous with an awful temper. She'd been suspended from school twice in the last year for fighting girls agreed perceived as a threat to her relationship with Gunnar.
"You know I love you," he said with an almost sleepy vibe. She need not have worried about anything. Gunnar was loyal to a fault.
She nodded, her expression becoming serious as she scanned his face. "Yeah, I love you too. Is something wrong?"
He shook his head and chuckled. "Not really. I don't know why you put up with me and my family."
"Cause.." she giggled and ran her hand asking his thigh. It made him blush and she liked it. "You're cute."
"You know, I can't wait till we can get a place of our own." Gunnar looked towards the sky where the sun filtered down on his face.
"You really want to move out don't you? Me too." Amy looked at him, her bouncy caramel curls, almost the same shade as her skin, caught the breeze and fluttered into her face. He brushed it aside and leaned in to kiss her. This time she gripped his shirt and pulled him closer, both of them sinking into soft leaves beneath them.
When he pulled away from her to fix his clothing, his vision was slightly blurred. The last few times they had been together had been different. He had an overwhelming urge to bite her, but he was afraid she'd freak out. Amy seemed to like going slow and tender. It always felt like something was coiling inside him like a spring and even when he'd finished, it didn't satisfy whatever it was.
As they walked back towards the house, holding hands, Amy looked up at him. "Will you take me to the mall this afternoon? I really want the new sneakers that were released yesterday. All the girls will have them tomorrow."
Gunnar chuckled lightly. "You know I can't, I gotta get home for the evening service. How about after school tomorrow?"
Her face changed suddenly, her good mood gone. "Who cares about the evening service? You said you don't even like it!"
"I don't but if you plan on seeing me anytime soon again, I can't make dad too mad." Gunnar tried to explain. This wasn't the first time she'd had this tantrum over something, and a few times he'd given in to her with disastrous results. His plan had been to lay as low as possible till his birthday, then bolt.
She broke away, "Fine then! Go suck up to him and forget about me."
When she saw he wasn't going to give in she stormed inside and slammed the door. Gunnar sighed. He was beginning to second guess moving out with her, he hoped she'd grow up by then because he for one wasn't going to put up with her tantrums. She'd call and apologize later, he knew the routine, but for now it was useless to try and reason with her so he headed to the truck.
★This story is going to be a little bit of a slow burn, but leave me a review let me know what you think! Thanks.★