Dark River Road Read Online Free Page B

her say that to Rainey, but he’d not even acted like he’d cared.
    Reverend Hale shouted about salvation and lost souls, pounded his fist on the pulpit and turned red in the face. “The wages of sin is death. Woe be unto those who heed not the call of the Lord to redemption, brothers and sisters. They will surely face the lake of eternal fire, cursed to unspeakable torments for days without end. Who among you will answer the call of the Lord to commit your life to Him? Is it you?” He stabbed a finger toward the congregation and Chantry heard someone gasp. “You, brother? You, sister? Or do you want to feel the flames of Hell sear your entire body  . . . ”
    Sweat beaded on the reverend’s face, made it glisten. He wiped his fleshy jowls with a snow white handkerchief, stepped from behind the pulpit as if about to leap down among the sinners. Chantry stared in fascination. Hale had the kind of eyebrows that went all the way across his brow, bushy like caterpillars, and his eyes were so dark a brown they were almost black. His nose was thin, jutting from between the brows like an axe blade. He wasn’t particularly tall but gave an impression of height when he was up on that dais, looking like one of God’s avenging angels out to wrest sinners from the very hands of the devil.
    Now he seemed to look straight at Chantry when he boomed, “Beware the pitfalls of envy, lust, and avarice, for those are Satan’s tools. Seek humility and peace, not pride and strife.”
    Chantry squirmed, pulled Mikey closer to him and looked away from the reverend. His head pounded, throbbed with the verbal assault and uneasy feelings of guilt. He knew about lust. He knew about envy. Peace was unfamiliar but it sounded like something he’d want. Maybe he’d have to get humility first to qualify for peace.
    Finally church was over and the ending hymn sung, and Chantry got up and carried Mikey so he wouldn’t have to try to walk down the crowded aisle of people busting to get out the doors first. Mostly grownups stood and talked in little groups, but kids cooped up for an hour only wanted to get outside.
    Cinda and her best friend Mariah nearly bumped into him in the aisle. Mariah giggled, and Cinda gave him a look from the side of her eyes like she wanted to say something. His stomach got tight. He nodded at her.
    “Hey Cinda.”
    “Hey Chantry.” She looked at Mikey in his arms. “Your little brother looks heavy.”
    “He’s not. He’s—still little.” God, it felt so awkward, walking beside her like this and talking about anything but what he really wanted to talk about. He wanted to ask her to go to the Dairy Queen with him. He wanted to ask her just to talk to him for a while, stand where he could just look at her and think how pretty she was with her hair all loose around her face and her lips pink and shiny with some kind of slick stuff girls used.
    “See you later,” Cinda said then, and she and Mariah kept going down the aisle. She left a lingering scent of something sweet and flowery in her wake that made him feel all weird.
    He must have squeezed Mikey too tight because he made a little squeaky sound and patted his arm. “Put me down. I can walk, Chantry.”
    “No. I’ll carry you outside and then you can walk.”
    Chantry stopped on the outside steps and set Mikey down, a hand on his shoulder to keep him balanced while they waited on Mama. She’d stopped to talk to Donny Ray Caldwell’s mother about the next start of school. Mama taught sixth through ninth grades, but not all at the same time. The school was pretty big for a country school, with nearly four hundred pupils registered. Donny had been in Mama’s class last year and would be again this year when he repeated eighth grade. His birthday fell too late for him to be in Chantry’s class, but he was only a few months from fifteen and big for his age. Donny Ray and Chantry hung out sometimes, but not often. It wasn’t that they didn’t like each