Total pages in book: 128
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122097 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 610(@200wpm)___ 488(@250wpm)___ 407(@300wpm)
“Worse how? What was he sayin’?”
“Oh, Collin. It was…” She blows out a breath. “Fire and brimstone, ya know? Like… Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God kinda shit. Really angry. Real dark. Still, people didn’t know how to approach it, ya know? He’s the fuckin’ preacher, right? What can one do?”
“Yeah, OK.”
“But then Bishop and Revenant started to complain about it and… well, things got ugly.”
The three towns of Disciple, Bishop, and Revenant are all tied together through the Revival. Disciple has the tent and we play the part of God, or whatever, because this whole thing is kind of a living carnival. A sideshow of epic proportions.
And if you have a God, of course you have to have a Devil. That’s Revenant. Revenant plays the part of debauchery. A real Babylon kind of place. Bars, and neon signs, and bikers. Really rowdy kind of stuff. Plus some pagan stores and stuff like that. Nothin’ illegal, of course. It’s all a show.
Bishop is the path of redemption through traditional ways. It’s a Colonial town and it has a historical district in the old downtown where people live like they did back in the day. Horse and buggy, butter churns, spinning wheels, and raising livestock. All that kind of shit.
We got a thing going up here in the hills of West Virginia. Like a theme park, except the people of Disciple, Revenant, and Bishop all live inside of it. We all play a part. And we’re all tied together. The tent revival really brings them in. It’s legend. And without it, Revenant would just be… well, a place you really didn’t want to be. Same with Bishop. People would come and see the buggies going down the road and all that, but really, the three towns need each other to make it all work.
All our lives are tied together through this carnival we produce like a three-legged stool. And if one leg goes wonky, it takes the whole thing down.
“All right.” I nod at Lowyn. “I guess that’s reasonable.”
“Right. So. Well, they fired him. That’s why your family moved.”
“Really.”
“Yep.”
“Huh. All this time I thought they just wanted to get rid of that house.”
“Well…” She’s cringing.
“There’s more?”
“Yep, there’s more.”
“OK, Lowyn, just spit it out. Tell me. What the hell is going on?”
She looks out the window for a moment, then takes a breath and looks back at me. “So… they needed to sell the house, right?”
“As one does when they move.”
“And I offered to buy it because… well, maybe this is stupid, but I spent a lot of time in that house, ya know? It felt like… like it was part mine already.”
“Makes sense.”
“So I make the offer, your daddy accepts, and they’re packin’ up to move.”
“Keep going.”
“So on the day before we close on the house I’m over there helping out. And I say to your mama, ‘Would you like me to pack up Collin’s room?’” Lowyn’s shoulders shrug up and she blushes. “I did like your things, Collin. I did want to explore it all, OK? I admit that. But then your daddy says, ‘Just put it all in the trash, Lowyn. That’s where it belongs.’”
I look away. Get lost lookin’ out the window. Trying to process this. Not sure how to feel. I mean, I haven’t talked to them in eight years. I have no idea what Olive even looks like these days. My mama hasn’t called me on my birthday, or sent me so much as a card at Christmas. And those last few conversations I had with my daddy on the phone—well, he made it perfectly clear that I was trash to him, so I’m not even surprised that he wanted to throw me out altogether.
“I’m sorry, Collin. It hit me that way too. So I told them to leave it and I’d take care of it.”
“And you just left it.” I look over at her and she nods. “The exact way it was when I took off.”
She nods again. “There are memories in that room. Memories they had no right to throw away.” Now she straightens her back and lifts her chin up in a defiant posture. “And to be honest, some of those memories were mine. They didn’t have any right to do that. And then… well, I didn’t know what to do with that room. So I just closed the door and went along with my business. Then time passed. I redecorated everything and remodeled around it. I didn’t need the space. I don’t sleep in your bed, Collin. I’m not staring at your posters on the wall, pining away about something that never happened, OK? I sleep upstairs. I turned the bonus room into a master suite. It’s real nice. You should come see it.”
There is no way to stop my laugh and just like that, all the melancholy that was filling up this Jeep dissipates. “Did you just invite me into your bedroom, Lowyn McBride?”