Page 1 of Deacon

CHAPTER ONE

FREYA

BEFORE

“What’s the worst profanity there is?”

I’m newly eighteen, plus one month—too old not to know about this kind of thing, but nobody talks to me in a house of men who don’t notice me any more than they take note of the flies on the wall. That’s why I’m asking the one person I can trust with sensitive questions—my only good stepbrother, Bittern.

He’s sitting on the stoop, like always. There’s an unlit cigarette hanging from his lip. His colorless hair falls in his russet eyes. I need to take the buzzer and give him a haircut soon.

“Why do you want to know that, Frey?” he drawls.

He talks real slow since the accident. I don’t know why that is. The doctor said there wasn’t anything wrong with him except a few broken ribs, and those healed a while back.

“I just do,” I say.

Bittern flicks his lighter absently, on then off again.

“Cunt, probably,” he says.

I’ve heard that around but only on the periphery of my understanding.

“What does it mean?” I squint up at him.

The sun filters around his head. Overhead, the far-reaching arms of the oak trees are dappled with late afternoon sun. Everyone is gone at work except for Bittern—he can’t work at the factory anymore. They won’t take him on account of his slowness around the machines.

“It’s like pussy,” he says. “You should know this by now.”

I frown. “Are you sure there’s not another? What about…cock? That’s bad. Or fuck?”

He shakes his head. “No, I reckon cunt is the worst one.”

“Why?”

It’s his turn to frown. “Hell if I know, Frey. It just is.”

He gets up, and the screen door flaps shut. It doesn’t latch. Instead, it just flaps on the hinges. Aiden, my stepfather, has slammed it too many times. I keep quiet on the porch for a while. The reason I wanted to know is because I’m becoming aware of an uncomfortable fact.

There appears to be a disadvantage to being a girl. Not the kind I understand, where Aiden rages on about how he didn’t want to be left with his dead wife’s daughter who’s not even his blood. Or where I get stuck at the back of the line. Or get the plate with the least food.

No, this is an awareness of the structure of everything.

The worst word Bittern knows is a name for a part of my body. Maybe that means something, maybe it doesn’t.

I stare into the woods, to where the trees open and show the goldenrod clearing below, for a long time. Then, I get up, because I have to start dinner. Hungry stomachs wait for nothing, not even groundbreaking revelations.

It’s seven when the table is set. There’s breakfast for dinner—sausage, sweet boiled apples, gravy, biscuits. I lay everything out and go to the porch to see if I can hear Aiden’s truck.

They must have snuck in while I had the radio on. Ryland, my oldest living stepbrother, stands in the yard, talking on his phone.Walking around the side of the house, head down, is my stepfather, Aiden.

He’s a brutal man in his mid-forties. His wavy dark hair is crisp with the same sweat that eats away at his collar every day in the factory. All up and down his arms and neck are tattoos he got for a bag of pills and a bottle of moonshine.

He pauses when he sees me and fixes those cold eyes on my face.

“Dinner?” he says.

I nod. “Breakfast. It’s set out on the table.”

---