Serialization Sunday: Hoodoo – Chapter 38
Every Sunday, Fiction365 presents a new chapter in a previously unpublished novel. Our first serialized novel, the taut thriller City of Human Remains, can be found in full here.
Our current novel, Hoodoo, tells a story of visionaries, heretics and lunatics in Utah, centered on the life of Alice Lott, a twelve-year-old girl who believes that God wants her to have an affair with her junior high school counselor.
Find earlier chapters in Hoodoo here.
Chapter 38
We were out of Salt Lake City and on the freeway, black road stretching out in front and behind us forever, this night would go on and on, it was Hell, Outer Darkness, everything I did coming back on itself, every road curving back to this road, pushing me back to this place, this night, this blacktop, over and over.
“What were you doing with him?”
It was the first thing Mike had said since we got in the car.
“Nothing,” I said, the word echoing around in my head, repeating like the white lines in our headlights, nothing, nothing, nothing. We’d gone all the way to Las Vegas for exactly nothing, all the way there to turn around our big fat nothing and come back home, back to this same stretch of road.
“What do you mean, nothing?”
I looked out the window at the night moving past our windows.
“He didn’t try to hurt you, did he? Did he hurt your ankle?”
I almost laughed at that, but I didn’t want to get started again, I might never stop.
“No, I just tripped.”
After a while I looked over at Mike. “Mike – do you pray?”
Mike shot a look over at me and chewed on his lips. I guess he decided it was best to humor me.
“Yeah, sometimes.”
“Does God answer your prayers?”
“I guess so. Just, sometimes the answer is ‘no,’ you know?”
“I mean, does God ever tell you what to do?”
Mike blew his breath out through his teeth and shook his head.
“I wish.”
I wanted to tell him to be glad He doesn’t. I tried to imagine what my life would have been like if I’d never had any idea of God except as some guy with a beard who was Everything Good, who was there to protect me and keep me safe as long as I did what my Sunday School teachers told me, if I never knew about this other road, this shadow place that turned in on itself, led me every time back to this night, this road trip into forever. But I was kidding myself. It wasn’t God, it was Bobby. Only a few hours ago I’d been ready to marry him, ready to spend the rest of my life with him, and my heart kicked at me, remembering his face back at the dorm, his eyes looking over at me, asking for something I couldn’t give.
“So, what’s the deal with Dad?”
Mike bit down on a yawn, shaking his head.
“I dunno. Something to do with money, with the business. He said Virg was the one that really knew how to handle money. Things kinda went screwy after he left, I guess.”
“So, did he do it? Embezzle somebody?”
Mike half-shrugged one shoulder, slouched against the driver’s side door. After a few minutes he straightened up, and pulled over to the side of the road.
He turned to me.
“Wanna practice driving?”
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Founder of the Portuguese Artists Colony in San Francisco, Caitlin Myer regularly reads her work at Why There Are Words, Quiet Lightning, and other established reading salons in California. Her one woman show on Simone de Beauvoir was produced in Seattle.
Read more stories by Caitlin Myer
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