LET GO AND LET

Gabe turned off on the old logging road and it tightened up and pines flicked the side of the El Camino and brushed their arms hanging from the windows and the air cooled around them.

Why in the hell would you let Jesus control you, Harlan said.

You talkin about that shit the preacher was sayin, Gabe said.

Yeah.

Aint figgered it out, Gabe said. Shit, I hate when Jolee tell me what to do. Why I want Jesus tell me what to do?

Member that girl Halee Wilkens I went out with, Harlan said.

When you ever gone out with a girl, Gabe said.

Naw she was the girl who’s mama dated Buck Belue member, Harlan said.

If I had an inch to my dick for every girl’s mama who dated Buck Belue, I’d be hung like a nigger, Gabe said.

You got to member Halee, Harlan said. She had that thick ass and big ol tittles and blond hair down middle of her back she wear in braids. Had a damn tattoo bove her ass that two racing flags and below it say, You Go Boy.

Aw shit, Gabe said, laughing. Gabe had heard Harlan’s story before. Harlan told it nearly every time he got drunk. Harlan was a great liar and Gabe kept waiting for the story to change. But it never did. Gabe thought the story got sadder. Or Harlan got sadder as he told it. He’d never seen his brother so sad as when he told the story and when he finished the story he didn’t talk much after that.

Harlan rolled his eyes and drank his beer.

Halee was a wild ass woman and then she start goin to church with her daddy, Harlan said. Her daddy weren’t right. He work for the city and spend all his time readin the Bible and aint done much of anything else. Don’t reckon he and the missus even stay together. They had separate beds and everythin. Member they aint had a tee vee and all the furniture in the house was handmade, like the old man hammered it together and they get all their clothes from other church folk.

That where Halee get that tattoo, Gabe said. Some other chuch folk?

She get that way before she get whacked in the ass with Jesus.

Sound like she been whacked in the ass by moren Jesus, Gabe said.

You gone let me finish?

Gabe belched.

Halee got to wheres she aint let me touch her much as I used to and I ask her why and she say she worried bout me.

Aint blame her a goddamn bit, Gabe said.

She say, Harlan are you saved. I and like what in the hell. Saved from what. And she said, Don’t you be like that. You know what I mean. And I tell her, no I aint known what you mean. She tell me she been havin nightmares about me bein in hell and that no mount of prayin change it. It jus get worse and the nightmares more frequent and real to wheres she aint want to sleep at night.

What’d you do, Gabe said.

I told her I’d do anything she wanted me to do. Hell, I aint fucked her in two months. I missed it somethin fierce. So she make me go to church. And I went with her and her daddy and it was goddamn awful. They make me go down the aisle and tell the deacon I want to speak with Pastor Bobby and Pastor Bobby say, Son you come to me to ask for forgiveness from the Almighty? And I aint known what to say. I jus start cryin. Just goddamn overcome.

You shitin me, Gabe said.

I aint, Harlan said.

Why aint you never told me this, Gabe said. You told me this fuckin story a hunnert times an you never tell me this.

It’s embarassin, that’s why, Harlan said. I just fell damn apart in front this man I never met in my life and he talkin bout savin me and roundin me an some other boys up and gettin us baptized in Cathead Creek.

Jesus Chrise, Gabe said.

I know you aint got to make it worse, Harlan said.

What the hell you do?

I did it, Harlan said. All of it. Pastor Bobby bring us down there and we walk waist deep in the water and he say words bout us bein on the wrong road and how we gone get on right road now and how we gone let Chrise into our hearts. He damn near drowned me. Had bruises on side of my head for days where he palmed me and shoved me under.

Gabe laughed.

And I’ll be goddamned if Halee give me shit, Harlan said. She froze up like a Dilly Bar. Broke it off with her and damned if Glynn County aint strung her up for murder three months later.

She kill her daddy? Gabe said.

Naw, some youngin, Harlan said. She worked daycare center at church and she left some girl in the church van one day when it was over a hunnert damn degrees. Cooked her to fuckin death.