Spelldown by Karon Luddy Page B

can’t abide Teeny and Crawdad being so trashy when they get drunk.
    Scooby-dooby-do, scoo-dooby-dooby
. Now Teeny’s giggling and dancing all by herself, and Crawdad’s over by the campfire eating flaming marshmallows. I look over toward Billy Ray’s tent. Not a speck of light. I get my flashlight and crawl out and scoot through the weeds until I see three empty liquor bottles tossed aside. I pick one up and sniff it. Southern Comfort. Smells like orange juice and kerosene mixed together. Fried fish, hushpuppies, and Orange Crush churn inside my belly. I sit on a log by the campfire.
    I look across the blazing campfire and see that Teeny has gotten Crawdad to dance with her. Mostly they’re staggering around, holding each other up. Watching them makes meremember the Harrisons sashaying around the dinner table, singing love songs and kissing each other.
    It’s the liquor that makes all of them act like jackasses. Every time Daddy says or does something stupid or hateful, Mama says it’s just the liquor talking. But when liquor gets inside of Daddy, it doesn’t just talk; it sings, cries, stumbles, cusses, spends the house payment, and takes out loans at Liberty Finance without Mama’s signature. Mama says you have to give the devil his due—that he always shows up when he smells weakness. Why can’t the goddamn devil leave my daddy alone? The worst part is, I’m not even supposed to pray about it, because Mama says it’s wrong to pray for anything specific. According to her, there are only four things I should say to God in my prayers:
I need you. Please forgive me. Show me the way. Thanks for everything
.
    I belch once and taste the half-digested fish and hushpuppies. I belch again and a tiny bit of puke rises into my throat. I rest awhile with my head between my legs, listening to my heart beat. When I lift my head, Daddy’s standing there looking at me, his face slack, his eyes empty. “What’s wrong, Chipmu-unk?” His words are slurred.
    “I’m not your goddamn chipmunk!” flies out of my mouth. Every cell in my body feels like firecrackers popping. I want to jump up and slap his stupid face, but I sit there breathing deeply, trying not to scream again.
    “She’s all right, Mr. Bridges,” Billy Rays says, kneeling beside me. I look up into his calm eyes. He wipes my tearsaway with his bandana, then stands up. “How about you, Mr. Bridges? Are you okay?”
    Daddy doesn’t answer, just staggers toward his tent and crawls inside.
    A while later I’m inside my tent, curled up beside Noah and Joshua, exhausted and numb to the bone, but every time my eyes close, I see myself yelling at my daddy. When I do things like that, it’s like someone else is doing them and I’m just observing. It’s like I’m
not the one
who bites my fingernails or pulls my hair out of the crown of my head—it’s a tired little girl inside of me who’s worn out from worrying about tomorrow and the next day and the day after that, and she’s angry as hell.
    To keep myself from feeling doomy, I start pondering miracles. Mama says I should never question them, but I need to know the particulars—like how in the world Jesus turned water into wine at that wedding at Canaan. I close my eyes and try to imagine the whole thing in my mind, but I can’t get a picture to come into my head. Instead, I get this deep, rooty kind of feeling as if I’m a sycamore tree overlooking the wedding. There’s a breeze blowing and birds chirping and brassy bells jingling. I stay in this tree trance for a while, until it dawns on me how Jesus turned water into wine. When no one was looking, he cut his finger and let a few drops of his blood fall into the big stone jugs that were already filled with water. It was a damn cinch.
    Figuring it out gives me a victorious feeling, like spellinga difficult word. I’ve pondered that miracle for years—not only the wine part, but also why Jesus talked sassy-like to his mama that day, calling