The Sheltering: A Novel

PART THREE����������������������������������������������

PART THREE 71 AROUND THE TIME ALAN WAS TRUDGING through “Judgment Swamp” and embracing the thisness of his life, Lucy Redding’s father caught her masturbating . Actually, not caught. Walked in on her. In truth, she doubted he’d seen a thing. He was like that these days. Zombie-dad, Lucy’s sister Katie called him, stumbling glassy-eyed through the kitchen, brain mummified by the two hour commute to Tampa. I-4 to the Lee Roy Selmon Expressway on into MacDill Air Force Base where he did things she wasn’t sure she wanted to think about. That was her father, Luther Redding. Alan was Alan Holman, and the more she thought about it, the more Lucy was able to convince herself that he was her boyfriend, and not just some random guy who was more or less ordered by the court to attend youth group. Alan had spent three months at the Canebrake Wilderness School for At-Risk Youth. This after Pre-Trial Intervention. Which came after the arraignment. Which came after the arrest. Which came, of course, after the fire. A green Dumpster loaded with cardboard that had somehow floated onto the roof of the Kissimmee Baptist Church. He had told her all about it that Wednesday night in June when he arrived at the “Soldiers for Christ” end of school cook-out in the company of a small Asian man who, it turned out, happened to be a Buddhist monk at the Dhammaram Temple just up Highway 11 in Deleon Springs. Alan’s mother had—as his grandmother put it—lit out for parts unknown just before Alan was released. But apparently she had once been a fateful devotee of the Temple and it had fallen to Brother Vin to oversee Alan’s transition back into the world. Which involved Brother Vin dropping Alan off at the nearest church he could find. Lucy learned all of this sitting on the swings on the playground behind the church. It was after ten and the cook-out had broken up over an hour ago. The fellowship hall was clean and the parking lot empty, but Lucy had a reputation for sticking around the church after hours, doing whatever useful thing she could, and knew her mom wouldn’t question her so long as she came home on the near side of midnight. So she and Alan sat in the swings and let their shoes drag in the sand. 72 It was a warm night, strangely dark, the moon having not yet risen. But she could see Alan’s face if she leaned close enough, and there was something in the soft hum of his voice that had her leaning in a way she never really had before, not successfully, at least. Lucy had finished her first year at Jacksonville Bible Institute as chaste as expected. After that had been three weeks working as a counselor at an evangelical summer camp in Michigan where she had fallen for a boy from Taylor University. She must have been too obvious in her affections though, because one night as they circled the mirrored lake with its canoes and roped-and-buoyed swimming area—one night when Lucy was convinced he was going to kiss her— he had led her to an outcropping of rocks where he had bent toward her and gave her not his mouth but a copy of Thomas à Kempis’ The Imitation of Christ. When she started to cry he had hugged her, thinking her ashamed. But what poured through her was anger, anger not at the boy—she could see him now, stoop-shouldered and self-righteous and wholly unworthy—but at herself for having fallen for him. She’d kept her distance for the next three days and on the last day, when he reached again to hug her, felt herself go limp. The anger—and some shame, she had to admit it had become tinged with shame—lasted until a delay at the Detroit airport kept her at the gate for three hours and she actually started to read the à Kempis. She had barely finished the sentence this is the highest wisdom: through contempt of the world to aspire to the kingdom of heaven before she realized what a great favor the boy had done her, how her own barreling emotions had led her not to carnal pleasure but something far greater: the possibility...