Page 2 of Abandoned on His Mountain

That wordhumbled,though. That’s new. And it worries me.

The road narrows, the woods around getting thicker and more menacing. The road turns from pavement to gravel, then from gravel to mostly mud, but the truck handles the winding road upward into the mountains like a train on a track. There’s no stopping this, and the preacher on the radio thunders his agreement.

I shiver as we wind into the dense forest. That’s the thing about North Carolina. There are big cities, quaint towns and farmland but there are also mountains and back woods that reek of Deliverance.

It’s a terrible movie. But Burt Reynolds turned my insides to warm custard and had me writing outMrs. Marin Reynoldsin the back pages of my notebook for a year. It was the only show I could pull in the night I snuck into the attic with five extension cords and some tin foil and managed to get the thirty-year-old Magnavox to find a station.

Otherwise, no TV for me. Not unless it’s ordained by Grandpa. And, don’t even mention a cell phone. That’s two weeks of penance right there.

As we round a hairpin turn doing fifty the back of the truck slides and I yelp grabbing at the door handle. The inertia throws my burning cheek against the cool glass as Grandpa pumps the brakes and calls for Jesus to take the wheel.

He seems to make an exception to his every rule when it comes to Carrie Underwood.

Panic rises in my center, coiling around like a snake. “It was a modeling agent meeting. Something special for the last year of high school, Grandpa. Sort of like an internship.” Wow, that’s a reach but I’m desperate. “Nobody touched me, I didn’t touch nobody else. I didn’tsin.I don’t needcleansing.” I hold up the tattered printout of the email string Stacey gave me with the details. “See? Modeling. Nottempting the holy into damnation.”

Grandpa snatches the printout from my hand, balls it up, pushing the button to lower the window then releases it into the night like a paper snowball. The freezing wind blows his silver hair around as he flashes me alook, the furrows in his brow so deep they could pinch pennies. “Youare the sin, child. Your earthly form is the sin.”

Hearing that isn’t new. I am the apple that tempted Adam. The fire that burns men. I’ve heard it all so many, many times.

He takes a right, then a sharp left onto an unmarked washboard road. Mud spatters onto the side windows, and in the headlights I see a cabin ahead. No, not a cabin. Ashack.Moss clings to the roof, and the window to the left of the front door is flapping in the wind, covered with clear plastic secured by duct tape around a crooked frame.

All the protests die on my tongue when Grandpa skids to a stop, throwing the truck into park and flies out of his door without a word. He’s hella spry for eighty-five when he’s fired up that’s for sure.

I spring from my side, heels tottering on the gravel of the little driveway. He drops open the tailgate with a thud. And my heart sinks into the squishy ground along with my shoes.

He’s throwing out red bags and cardboard boxes. A kerosene stove; Preppers’ Warehouse MREs; iodine tablets. A blanket, a pair of red rubber boots. Jugs of water. A battery-powered lantern.

Suddenly, the plan starts to come into focus.No, no, no!

“You can’t be serious? You’re not going to leave me out here.” I toggle my head to the right, then to the left. It’s not just isolated here, it’s apocalyptic.

I nearly face plant into a puddle as I stumble trip reaching for his arm, but he shoves me away. “Best thing for you, my girl. If you end up like your mother…I’ll never forgive myself.” He says then turns away.

“Grandpa. I’ll be good. I have mid-terms coming up. What about school?”

He slams the tailgate closed without reply. The diesel engine still rumbling tells me he’s not staying. The mist filled air cools my face and after a pause, he turns to me in the red taillight glow and makes an X with his fingers as I tug the thick jacket around me. “If you survive this winter, you’ll be saved. I prayed and that’s what the Lord told me. You are eighteen, but you arenotgrown. You will find your humility here. With Jesus.”

“And if I don’t survive?” I ask as my airway constricts, the scent of the diesel mixing with the freshness of the mountain forest.

“Then your sin will die with you.”

Sin. Impurity. Temptation. Evil.

I press a fist to my chest, my heart frozen, unworthy of beating.

Never in all my life did I think wearing a little make-up, reading some fashion magazines and going to a modeling agency interview would put me here. Grandpa might be crazy, but I never imagined he’d abandon me.

“When will you be back?”

No answer. Not a word. He hops back in the truck, slamming the door. Wet gravel and mud spray from the tires onto my face, my hair, my jacket and legs as he guns the engine.

I stand dumbstruck until the sound of the engine is swallowed up by the nighttime wilderness. The only upside I can think of is I don’t have to listen to that radio preacher roaring about sin anymore more.

It’s rightfreezingup here and a hoot owl somewhere in the trees agrees with me.

Grandpa loves listening to the weather man almost as much as he loves listening to the preacher. He said yesterday there was a storm coming in set to head over the mountains then into Sherman where we live. Then, he dragged me outside and told me to stack the wood in his truck bed in obsessively neat cords along the side of the five-car garage.

All the fireplaces in his house are gas. But, you know, you can never be too prepared for the Rapture.

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