States on her fingers, trying to think of the sixth flag. “Roller coasters big as mountains,” he’d said. “Hold on.” She heard muffled talking, then he came back. “Justine, is everything okay?”
“Just dandy,” she said, and he was off again, filling the distance between them with empty words. It was a presumptuous question after all these years: Is everything okay? Where to begin? She knew he’d meant: Why now? Just like she knew that if he’d really wanted her to visit, she wouldn’t have had to go to such lengths to find him. She should have called her oldest sister, who was spending the summer on the Holiness Camp Meeting circuit with her new preacher husband.
Six Flags, like the basketball team she’d wanted to join last year, was “of the world.” Justine could hear Lula already: “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Justine was only fifteen, but she held no illusions—nor intentions—of abiding forever. Maybe Six Flags would be less hurtful than the truth that she needed to get away from here. And that her father was the there.
She had imagined the night for weeks after Russell Gibson had first spoken to her on her class trip to Sequoyah’s Cabin. When she’d seen him working on a water leak outside the stone house covering the cabin that day, she recognized him. Her cousin John Joseph played music with him. She knew he was twentysomething, Choctaw, already back from the war. He had his shirt off and a rolled red bandana holding walnut-colored hair out of his eyes. When he saw her looking, he grinned and dropped his shovel for a pick mattock that he buried in the red earth.
She slipped away and let him write a phone number on her wrist, not telling him they didn’t have a phone. She liked that he wasn’t much taller than her but had wisps of a mustache. She thought the homemade outline of the Hulk tattooed on his forearm was cool and pictured them going to a drive-in movie in Fort Smith. Or maybe he would lean on the hood of his car and sing her a song: sinful, surely, but nothing she couldn’t pray her way out of. Every bit of that had been the work of a girl’s imagination, nothing else. They hadn’t gone to a movie, and he didn’t even bring a guitar.
She had her first moment of regret when she looked back at their little house, porch light glowing on the hill, but then he let her start the car. She revved the engine and laughed. Freedom had been waiting just on the other side of her bedroom window! He used his thigh to push her to the middle of the seat and took the wheel. He passed her his cigarette and rubbed her leg when he wasn’t shifting gears. Time and place swirled together as he turned onto a two-track road that disappeared into Little Locust Creek. He pushed the emergency brake, and before he cut the lights, she could see where the two-track, broken by the black water, picked back up on the other side of the creek.
She thought she should have fought him, thought maybe she’d unknowingly agreed to what happened. Her mind kept mixing up the jumble of memories from that night, but it returned again and again to Proverbs 5, a favorite of church deacons. She suspected she caused the whole thing.
She told herself that if she could forget the terrible night ever happened, it would be so. She didn’t sleep for days. Numbers replaced her thoughts. She found her father. When her body grew too tired to keep up her mind’s tormented vigil, she dreamed of roller coasters.
3.
Lula came red-eyed out of the bedroom. Her voice nearly a whisper, she said that if Justine wanted to see her father, it was her choice. “It seems you’re old enough, Justine, that your salvation is your own burden.” Then, her voice sharper: “And if you want to ride a roller coaster in your first act as a spiritual adult, so be it.” All Justine had to do was make it out of Wednesday night service.
People in town called them Holy Rollers, but the congregation of Beulah Springs Holiness Church referred to themselves as the Saints, the hardy few called to travel Isaiah’s Holiness Highway. They set themselves apart from the world with their Spirit-filled meetings, faith healing, prophetic visions, and modest dress. Though even wedding rings were forbidden as outward adornment, they believed once married, always married: Lula’s solitude was a sentence of belief and circumstance. They believed Stomp Dances were of the devil, that God healed what was meant to be healed, and children obeyed. Justine learned early that life was made up of occasional threads of joy woven through a tapestry of unceasing trials and tribulations. Life was spiritual warfare, and Six Flags would be no exception.
Justine sat where she always sat, in the back pew with her cousin John Joseph. His father was Lula’s brother, Justine’s Uncle Thorpe, but first and foremost he was their pastor. John Joseph’s black hair was stuck behind one ear in a greasy clump. He had his father’s square jaw and his mom’s gray eyes, which made him a hit with girls in town, girls who didn’t go to a Holiness church or wear slicked-back buns and skirts down to their ankles. Like Justine, he was old enough to be an adult in the eyes of God and their church, and like Justine he hadn’t prayed through, no matter what terrors his soul faced in this world and after. “Jesus wept” had been their favorite Bible verse for as long as she could remember. She always thought it was because it was the shortest and easiest to recite on demand, but lately she’d found herself wondering why the words were so sudden and set apart.
Justine’s eyes welled up, so she kept them on her lap while Uncle Thorpe finished his sermon with a story about a teenager who had died in a car wreck on his way home from a concert. The teenager had been raised Holiness and knew better. Uncle Thorpe walked around the simple wooden pulpit, rested an elbow on it, and looked at Justine. He wiped his eyes with his handkerchief. One brylcreemed strand of hair had fallen onto his forehead, like some kind of Native Superman. Justine imagined herself melting to nothing on the floor and sliding away.
Up there in front of the whole ragtag congregation filled mostly with poor whites, mixed-bloods—nearly half of whom were Uncle Thorpe’s kids—and a few full-bloods like her granny, Uncle Thorpe spoke to her: “The pleasures of this world may seem great. They are supposed to, for if we are not tested, like Jesus in the wilderness,” he shouted, raising his voice until it cracked, “how can we find our salvation?” Tears fell down his face. “Justine, God’s talking to my heart. You could die on that roller coaster.”
Not just a roller coaster, she thought. Big Bend.
The Saints began to whisper to God to intercede in her sinful plans. Uncle Thorpe took a long time wiping his eyes. He blew his nose and opened his arms wide, palms to the sky, and said, “Saints, we’re going to start up altar call.” From a raised platform behind the pulpit, the four-piece band lurched into “Consider the Lilies.”
“If you hear the Lord talking to you today,” Uncle Thorpe shouted over the music, “even if the voice is small, Saints”—his own voice grew quiet—“maybe it’s doubt nagging from the back of your mind. Maybe it’s sorrow or quiet longing tucked away in your heart. Maybe it’s fear for your children. Maybe it’s been too long since you’ve prayed through. Or maybe you never have.” He held his eyes on John Joseph, who never stopped digging dirt from his fingernails with his pocketknife. Then Uncle Thorpe turned his eyes back to Justine. “Come, children. Jesus is waiting. The only way to him is to bow your head and ask him into your heart. It doesn’t matter how you got here or what you’ve done. You will know a new day, children. I love you, but only God can turn this car around.”
Lula moved toward the altar first, and then other Saints streamed to the front. Some knelt before the altar in prayer, waving wadded-up handkerchiefs to the sky. Some stood, placing their hands on the shoulders or backs of the others. Their murmuring and crying pushed at Justine, but she stayed firmly planted in her seat, rubbing the scar between her left thumb and pointer finger.
After a time, three deacons started down the aisle toward her. She’d been weepy since she sat down, but she quickly wiped her eyes. Uncle Thorpe pushed himself
