TITLE: Snapshots: Son of The Preacher Man
AUTHOR: Kita
RATING: NC-17
PAIRING: JM, with JM/VK & JM/KD, JM/DB implied
AUTHOR NOTES: Takes place in an AU verse known as Cracktrailer. For further information, you might want to explore Glitter.


Snapshots: Son of The Preacher Man


Jimmy was six the first time someone other than kin saw the marks. Her name was Ms.Stodgis, and she was the new teacher’s aide. 

(‘Ms’. means she’s prolly a whore, Jimmy’s dad said, and Uncle Ben said yea, but a fancy uptown one, and they both laughed.)

Jimmy liked Ms. Stodgis ‘cause she smelled sorta like sugar cookies. Jimmy couldn’t remember much about his mom, but the smell of cookies always made his chest hurt.

He was walking a little funny, ‘cause his dad was drunk when he beat him the night before, and he’d let the belt slip off his back a few times, so the backs of Jimmy’s legs were sore and bruised too.

Ms Stodgis got a pinched look around her eyes and asked Jimmy to stay in from recess. Asked to see his back. And Jimmy was raised better than to disobey a grown up, so he lifted his t-shirt up and heard her gasp like she’d been stung by a whole nest of hornets. It was right then he knew he’d done something wrong.

There was an awful lot of gasping after that, and some hurried phone calls to a place called Protective Services. A very nice black lady came to the school that afternoon, and gave Jimmy a lollipop. She asked him all kindsa questions, and Jimmy ain’t never saw a real black lady close up, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a lollypop, so he didn’t remember to lie when she asked him how those marks got there.

 “Thou shalt beat thy son with a rod and he shall not die,” he told her, gesturing with the lolly just like his daddy did with his bible at the pulpit on Sundays, “thou shalt beat him and deliver his soul from unto Hell. That’s Proverbs 23:13 and 14.” 

Grown ups always liked it when Jimmy quoted the Lord’s Book word for word, so he was kind of confused when she just looked sad.

 “Daddy’s don’t have the right to do that to their children anymore,” she said, and then Jimmy was real confused because everybody knew there was one God and one Father and they were above all and through all and in all and who could argue with God?

“Lady,” Jimmy said, “I got the devil in me, see, and Daddy just wants me to get into Heaven.”

But that just made her look sadder, and scribble some stuff down on a yellow note pad. “I think we need to get you someplace safe,” she said. “Would you like that?”

Jimmy bit into the lollipop and pretended to think about it.

But Deputy Sheriff Kane kicked in the door before Jimmy could answer, and his face was redder than summer apples, and he had his hand on his gun hip. He called the black lady nasty names, and he said something to Ms. Stodgis Jimmy didn’t understand, but it made her cry like she was the one who’d got hit.

Then Jimmy was in the back of the police car and there was a shotgun behind his head and a wall made of wire between him and the front, and the seat smelled like piss and chew when Jimmy scrunched down into it.

Deputy Sheriff Kane leaned over into the back window and asked Jimmy real quietly if he wanted to go to jail, and Jimmy said “sir, no sir.”

‘Cause Deputy Sheriff Kane had two guns, and Jimmy’d seen the holes a shotgun could make in the side of Old Man Tony’s trailer, and he’d seen deer strapped to car racks after the hunters had got ‘em, and Jimmy might’ve only been six, and he might’ve had the devil in him, but he knew for damn sure he didn’t wanna get shot.

Deputy Sheriff Kane smiled, and Jimmy thought he looked a bit like a snake just then. He told Jimmy he was a good ol’ boy, ruffled Jimmy’s hair, and even let him play with the sirens while they rode back to Jimmy’s house in the police car.

That night, Jimmy’s dad beat him some more for causing trouble, but he was careful to stay away from Jimmy’s legs after that.

Mrs. Stodgis never did come back.

**

In second grade, Jimmy was on the playground with Kelly, playing cops n’ robbers using the popsicle sticks from the school lunch for guns. It was only May, but it was hotter outside than okra frying in the goddamn pan, and Kelly kept sticking his head under the water fountain. When he shook the water off, the drops were blue and gold around the sun in his hair, and Jimmy decided he looked like a big dog inside a rainbow.

Jimmy ran a hand over his own hair, shaved so close to the skin that his scalp showed through in places. Kelly had shaved it for him the week before, using his dad’s safety razor. Jimmy’s hair grew like weeds, and stuck out like bushes, and everyone said he was startin’ to look like a girl. Besides, this was cooler. He managed to only cut Jimmy in two spots, and it didn’t bleed much at all.

Bobby’d been giving Jimmy shit about the buzz cut the whole damn week. Bobby was two grades higher and five years older on account of him having been left back so many times, and Jimmy mostly had been ignoring him.

“See, ya’ll? I told you he don’t fight back none. Hey, Jimmy, I hear your mama done killed herself cause she couldn’t stand you and your daddy no more!”

Jimmy don’t remember much after that. He remembers Kelly’s hands on him, and how they slid off just as easy as water when he pulled away.

He remembers wasps in his head, and everything turning red in front of his eyes, like when the God of Israel turned the waters in Egypt to blood. And he remembers something that sounded like Uncle Ben’s nutcracker breaking open walnuts.

Next thing Jimmy knew he was on top of Bobby, only Bobby’s nose didn’t look right and two of his teeth were laying a few feet away. Jimmy’s fist hurt all the way up his arm, and there were little jolts of lightning coming out of his elbow. He stood up, looked Bobby over again  and said “a virtuous woman prepares the gates of Heaven for her family, Proverbs 31:10,” Then he spit in Bobby’s  face.

When the teachers came over to pull Jimmy away, it took three of them. Everyone on the playground was staring, and Kelly’s mouth was on the goddamn floor, and Jimmy had never felt so strong. Like Goliath and General Lee and Superman all rolled into one.

That night, when his daddy laid into him with the belt for causing trouble, Jimmy thought about what it felt like to beat that boy. And had to bite his tongue to keep from asking if this felt that good for his dad too.

**

Jimmy can’t remember a time before he knew Kelly. He knows there musta been a time, just like there was a time before his mama died, a time when the three of them had money and his dad wasn’t always so angry. But that’s all in the Before, and Jimmy doesn’t much think about things he can’t get back. He’d much rather think about things he can get.

His first real memory of Kelly is teaching him how to cuss. He thinks they were probably eight.

“Mr. Harold is a son of a cock-fucking whore!” Kelly said.

Mr. Harold was the latest in a long line of school disciplinarians who didn’t take kindly to the fires Kelly liked to set in the bathroom garbage pails. Kelly had spent the better part of the day cleaning the graffiti off of the bathroom walls with a toothbrush.

Jimmy rolled his eyes. “Ya can’t fuck a cock, dumbass.”

“Yea? Who says?” Cause even then, Kelly had to be hit with a two by four to learn anything.

“Everyone knows that. This is a cock,” Jimmy said, grabbing his through his jeans. “It does the fucking.”

Kelly narrowed his eyes, took a bite of his cheese sandwich, handed half to James. “Yea?”

James tore the half sandwich in half again, stuck one piece in his pocket and started to eat the rest. “Yea,” he said with his mouth full. “Cunts get fucked. That’s what girls got down there. S’how babies get made.”

Kelly screwed his face up. “That’s disgusting!” he said.

Jimmy nodded sagely. “So anyway, Mr. Harold is a cunt-fucking whore.”

Kelly laughed, and Jimmy thought it sounded a lot like carousel music.

Kelly’s laugh still sounds something like joy, and he’s still stubborn as a plough mule, and he still gives Jimmy half of every sandwich. It makes Jimmy feel like a stray tom sometimes, the one you give scraps to ‘cause it’s real pretty to look at, but you’re too scared to invite it inside proper.

But some nights, Jimmy lays with his head in Kelly’s lap, and they make up dirty limericks and they count the stars until they’re too high to rhyme or keep track anymore. And Kelly pets Jimmy’s head, rubs it against the growth of nearly stubble-short hair, so Jimmy feels it all the way down to his toes.

And Jimmy thinks maybe it’s not such a bad arrangement after all.

**

The town’s flags were all half-mast and Jimmy got a half day out of school when Sgt. Robert “Bobby” Henderson came home in a box one January. Kelly was sad, cause the guy was a Marine, and Kelly wanted to be one too. He was already practicing Special Ops stuff; he’d moved on to blowing up garbage cans now, and he was the only kid in the fourth grade who knew how to make Molitov Cocktails using only the shit under his mom’s sink.

He told Jimmy that Bobby was some kind of big war hero, and that he died killing commies somewhere. Jimmy just nodded, ‘cause he read enough to know there really weren’t any more commies, and honestly, he didn’t see the big deal, anyway. It’s not like people didn’t die every fucking day, and they never got any flags or parades or half days off of school in their honor. Least ol’ Bobby got to see the world first.

Jimmy’s dad officiated at the funeral, and he used the word ‘hero’ a lot too. They also heard the words ‘friendly fire’ whispered over and over again in the crowd, and Kelly finally asked his mom what it meant. Jimmy always liked Kelly’s mom, she smelled like oranges.

“Well,” she said, all slow and careful, like she was getting ready to tell a secret and didn’t know if she really ought, “everyone has guns over there, right? And there’s people you’re supposed to shoot at, and then there’s people you’re not.”

Kelly nodded.

“Only sometimes,” his mom said, “people get mixed up, and friendly fire is when you get hurt by someone who’s supposed to be on your side.”

Kelly looked confused. But Jimmy understood friendly fire just fine; way he figured, when you got right down to it, it wasn’t all that much different than life right here.

**

“Gonna git the Holy Spirit this Sunday boy, one way or the other,” Viggo told him, and Jimmy just nodded. He feared Jesus all right, but Jimmy ain’t never felt the Holy Spirit, not even when the whole church was writhing around on the floor babbling in tongues, not even when that traveling preacher guy brought in snakes.

But that Sunday, sure enough, his daddy called him up to the front of the church, and Jimmy feared his daddy way more than Jesus anyway, so he let his eyes roll back in his head and he spread his arms and he started a’ talkin.

When he opened ‘em five minutes later, everyone was staring, just the same as when he beat the shit out of Bobby three years ago, and even his daddy looked impressed. He clapped Jimmy on the back and told him he done good. Jimmy smiled, wide and white and real.

Later on, Kelly came up to him with his head kinda bowed, and man, that was weird, ‘cause most of the other kids did that when they walked up to Jimmy, but Kelly damn sure never did. It made Jimmy nervous, so he swatted Kelly hard on the shoulder.

“The fuck’s your problem?”

“Man, that was…you’re like touched by the Holy Spirit, Jimmy.”

Jimmy laughed. “Naw, shit, I was afraid you’d recognize it. I just recited the spelling quiz backwards five times and threw in a couple dozen Jesuses.”

Kelly’s eyes went wide, and then he laughed too, and said what he always did, “Yer brain is too big for that ugly head.” And Jimmy hit him again, harder, and then things were back to normal.

That night Vig gave Jimmy the first swig of Southern Comfort he didn’t have to steal.

“Proud of you, boy. Gonna make a Christian outta you, yet,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” Jimmy said, and he drank enough til he couldn’t quite feel his feet. His dad helped him to bed, even pulled the covers up over him.

Tomorrow he’d get beat again for something, but that one spring night, Jimmy fell asleep reciting his spelling list, and thinking to himself praise Jesus.

**

Jimmy was eleven when Uncle Ben got outta prison the first time. Only he called it ‘the joint’ and Jimmy wondered if that meant that everyone there smoked dope every day like Kelly’s dad. Turns out he wasn’t far off, ‘cause Ben gave Jimmy his first hand rolled cigarette, ‘cept it sure didn’t taste like any Marlboro he’d ever swiped off Vig, and when he was done smoking it, his head felt like it was made of helium balloons.

Ben laughed a lot when Jimmy stumbled around, told Jimmy he was gonna make a man out of him. And Jimmy always liked Uncle Ben, ‘cause before he went away he told Jimmy he’d teach him to hot wire cars. Plus, Ben knew cuss words Jimmy ain’t never even heard of, so Jimmy climbed in the bed of his pick up and fell asleep, and when he woke up they were at  some old broke down bar on the other end of town.

Ben had more dollar bills in his wallet than Jimmy’d ever seen, even in the collection box on a Sunday, and soon Jimmy was standing in front of a very fat woman who smelled like a combination of Vig’s mattress and the whiskey Ben had been swigging all day.

And she and Ben were laughing and whispering and then she was pulling Jimmy’s pants down and sticking her hand in his –

“Shit!” he said, and he wanted to scramble away but then she put her mouth there and Ben was nodding a lot and telling him just to “relax” and Jimmy’s head was still really floaty and it didn’t feel bad exactly, just kinda weird, and after ten minutes or so there was this feeling up his back like ants dancing, only they were very happy ants, and Jimmy felt his eyes roll back and thought maybe this was getting the Holy Spirit.

“Think that’s as good as the boy’s got,” she said after a fashion, and she seemed kinda disappointed. Ben just laughed and bent her over, and then he was putting his dick up in her, right there in front of God and Jimmy and everybody.

Jimmy knew what fucking was, sure, but it’d all been remote and pretty academic 'til now, just words he’d taught Kelly and pictures in books that Orli snuck outta the library where his mom worked. This was sweat and grunting, and his Uncle Ben looking like one of the hogs rutting in the fields, and it smelled funny and Jimmy wasn’t high anymore, he was just...red faced and shifty and he really wanted to leave.

He didn’t. He just stood there and pretended not to watch, and did his times tables in his head, all the way up to twelve.

When Uncle Ben was done he gave the fat lady more money, clapped Jimmy on the back and said, serious like he was in church, “Now you’re a man”.

Except the only men Jimmy had ever really known were his father and now Uncle Ben, and Jimmy thought: maybe he’d just rather not.

**


Sabbath was always the hottest day of the week, and Jimmy figured the Lord planned it that way cause he knew Jimmy had to wear a tie to church. Usually had to keep it on all day too, cause the bible says Honor the Seventh Day, and three dollar clip-on Wal-mart ties must mean honor to the Lord. But today, Vig had a funeral to officiate, someone old and from the other side of town, which meant that Jimmy had the day to himself.

He tore that tie off on the way to Kelly’s house, but Kelly wasn’t there. Jimmy found him out behind the old barn, his pants around his knees and Missy Sue kneeling in front of him with his dick in her mouth.

Before Jimmy could say boo, she looked up and smiled at him and said, “there’s room for one more if you know what to do, James.”  And damned if she didn’t lift up her skirt, and her ass was pale and unmarked, round as peaches.

And Jimmy surely wasn’t gonna admit he’d never done that before; he figured if the dumb cows could do it he could damn well figure it out. Missy Sue was very accommodating, all wet and slick and wiggly, and he heard himself gasp when he slid inside.

Kelly’s cock was in her mouth, but his eyes were on Jimmy, and watching Kelly while his face turned sunrise red and his mouth went tight seemed like the most natural thing in the world.

When Jimmy came it was still Kelly he was looking at, even though Kelly had his tongue down Missy Sue’s throat. But when he was done, he leaned over her real slow to kiss Jimmy instead, and his mouth was hard and rough and not at all like a girl’s, and Jimmy could taste her (musky and a bit like lemons) and Kelly (salty and heavy, sliding down like pancake syrup) and Missy Sue laughed for a bit, then stopped.

Kelly was too busy licking Jimmy all the way down to notice when she up and left, and Jimmy was far too busy getting off on it to care.

They didn’t talk about it at all afterward, but the next day at lunch, Kelly brought two sweet oranges, and Jimmy decided this was setting up to be the best fucking week he’d ever had.

'Til Missy Sue showed up at the table, all  freshly curled hair and womanly rage. Her hands were on her hips, and Kelly turned pink, darted his eyes around like the crazy town drunk, and looked anywhere but at her.

“I can’t believe the two of you! So rude! Didn’t anyone ever teach you how to treat a lady?” Her voice made James’ teeth rub together.

Kelly mumbled a quick apology, and handed her his orange. She smiled wide enough that Jimmy could see both dimples.

She looked right at him then. “What about you, James?”

Jimmy looked down at his first orange of the season, then back up at her. Started to peel the orange slowly, and watched her watch him do it.

“Ya know, Missy Sue”, he said, ”if you’d justa gotten oranges from every boy you ever spread for, you’d have a whole fuckin’ orchard by now.”

Her face crumpled before she turned away, but Kelly laughed and Jimmy could taste it, and inside of it every Sunday from now on, in the back of his throat.

It was the sweetest orange Jimmy’d ever had.

**

The fireflies were thick in summer. Quiet and bright, swarms of them, like living fog, like dreams. The younger kids liked to catch them and crush them in their fists. They’d rub the little bodies against their shirts, make themselves glow in the dark for as long as the chemical reaction lasted. It never lasted long.

Jimmy caught a few of them once, put them in a jar. But he forgot to punch holes in it, and they died before he woke up the next morning. Jimmy might have cried; he was very small.

Weird how he remembered that, laying here now between Dave and Kelly, watching the bugs dance through the smoke of the joint in his hand.

Jimmy didn’t really get Dave, didn’t get why he wanted to hang here, with him and Kelly and the other guys, when Dave had a house with a proper door and plumbing that always worked, and a dad who called him ‘sport’. Sure as hell didn’t get why Dave made grateful sounding noises whenever Jimmy bent him over the hood of his shiny car and fucked him hard enough to dent the metal.

So Jimmy stayed quiet, smoking, while Dave and Kelly talked. They chattered on about bullshit, like what they wanted do after high school, and how their girlfriends made them nuts, and Jimmy felt the way he always did when the three of them hung out together, like that kid in the Twilight Zone who was the only one left on earth.

‘Cause Jimmy wasn’t fucking going anywhere after high school, and he knew it, and odds were Kelly wasn’t either unless you count prison for arson. Dave knew all this, when he wasn’t high, and when Dave wasn’t around, Kelly knew it too. And Dave’s girlfriend had enormous tits and a smile whiter than girls on billboard ads, and Jimmy had decided a long time ago that Dave’s definition of nuts was drastically different than anything he’d ever be able to ken.

But every man’s gotta have a dream, or some shit. Kelly wanted out, and Dave wanted in, and Jimmy just wanted some fucking peace and quiet.

Next year, Dave would graduate, get married, and move away. And no matter how many joints, or how many fucks Dave got from over here, no one from this side of town was gonna get invited to that wedding. Which was all right, in the end, ‘cause Jimmy always thought that Kelly looked like a goddamn Wop in a suit.

So Jimmy spent another summer laying between them like some kind of imaginary bridge, listening to them dream out loud. He watched the fireflies dance, and wondered how long they’d stay this time.

**

The second stranger who saw the scars on Jimmy’s back was Vincent. It was down at the swimming hole, the summer before Senior year, but the look on Vince’s face made Jimmy snap right back to first grade.

Kelly caught it and shook his head hard in Vince’s direction. Vince popped his mouth shut, but he didn’t look away. He reached inside his brown paper sack instead, and offered up half his peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

And Jimmy reckoned, well, at least it wasn’t a lollipop. Took the sandwich, and tried to eat it slowly, while Vince watched him the whole damn time with eyes bigger than Harvest moons.

He’d seen Vince around a bit, seen him kiss on other boys, seen him get beat. Which served him right really, ‘cause you shouldn’t  wear your queer on your sleeve unless you were a head taller than everyone else, like Kel and Nick, or just a scary motherfucker, like Jimmy. Handing over half your lunch to someone you’d never met before wasn’t necessarily the brightest thing either, come to think of it.

Which was when Jimmy noticed that Vince’s smile was the closest thing he’d seen to beautiful since he saw that painting of Jesus and His Mother in a library book. Something about it had made Jimmy wanna laugh and cry at the same time. So he tore the page out and put it in his box under the bed, where he locked up everything he wanted to keep safe, like the friends forever blood oath he took with Kel, and the stash of dope Nick gave him in exchange for letting him copy off Jimmy’s algebra test.

And later, when Jimmy took Vince back behind the swamp, pressed the baby soft, white skin of his back up against a tree, and kissed him so hard he heard Vince’s breath in his own mouth, he felt that same thing like when he’d looked at that picture. He was dizzy with it, and it made his chest hurt worse than the smell of sugar cookies ever did.

And he wanted to grab Vince like he did everything else, wanted to take and take and make something this pretty and this rare his, to lock it away where he could always find it. Something inside whispered like prairie grass, said it would be finer if Vince just decided to stick around on his own. But Jimmy didn’t know how to do that, had never learned how to keep things gently.

The next day at school, those same boys cornered Vince at the locker, and Jimmy watched from a distance while Vince did his best to defend himself. His best sucked.

“Hey,” Jimmy said, all casual like, and the biggest one turned around. Ducked his head a bit.

“Hey, Jimmy, how’s it-”

-and just as casual Jimmy grabbed his neck, bashed the back of his head into the locker five times. Watched him slide down the wall like a broken doll. His friends were gone before he even hit the floor.

And Vince took a breath that Jimmy could hear, and he looked at Jimmy like he was Superman, a dragonslayer.

A god.

And Jimmy knew right then that he’d found something he’d get to keep.


-End



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