Play With Fire

Play With Fire by Dana Stabenow Page A

Book: Play With Fire by Dana Stabenow Read Free Book Online
Authors: Dana Stabenow
Ads: Link
handed it to her. "Go ahead. Read it." He didn't add, "I dare you," but it was there in his voice.
    Giving him a curious look, Kate took the Bible and started reading Genesis, chapter 19, verse 1.
    By the time she came to verse 38 and the end of the chapter, all the hair on the back of her head was standing straight up. She closed the book and looked at Bobby.
    "Jesus Christ," she said.
    "Not for another thirty-eight books and six hundred and fifty pages,"
    Bobby said. "That's the problem, or part of it."
    "He offered up his two virgin daughters to the angry mob so they wouldn't tear him and his visitors up?"
    "What a guy."
    "And then after he escapes the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and all the other men are dead, his daughters get him drunk so he'll sleep with them and make them pregnant?"
    "What a guy," Bobby repeated. "Did you notice how it calls him 'righteous'?"
    "I noticed."
    He examined her expression, not without satisfaction. "You look a little pale around the gills, Shugak."
    "I feel a little pale around the gills. Twelve pages into one of the most influential books ever written and you've got the advocation of gang rape and incest. No wonder those people are screwed up."
    "Screwed up doesn't even come close," Bobby said.
    She looked at him thoughtfully. His lips were drawn into a thin line and his eyes were angry. "What's with you and the holy rollers?
    You've been on the prod since Matthew Seabolt showed up here."
    His jaw clenched. Moving on instinct with quick, quiet moves Dinah set up her camera on a tripod to roil on a close-up of Bobby's face. He didn't seem to notice. The sun poured a clear golden light into the clearing, a breeze whispered through the trees, leaves rustled, a bird sang. Another golden-crowned sparrow, Kate noted; spring is here, here is spring. The sweet, three-note call was the sign of Alaskan spring, the precursor of summer, the call to renewal and reproduction and rebirth, the signal for the sun to come up and stay up, the signal that the long winter was over for another year and the next far enough away to forget, at least for a little while.
    "There was a girl," Bobby finally said into the stillness. "In high school. She got pregnant." He paused. This wasn't easy for him and it showed. They waited in silence.
    "This was southwestern Tennessee, you understand," he said, looking first at Kate, then at Dinah, "Tina Turner country. There was a church on every corner and a Bible next to every bed and a tent revival down to the fair grounds at least once every month during the summer." His mouth quirked in what was almost a smile. "Those were fun. Always some old guy up at the front of the tent, sweating and praying and praising the Lord.
    The singing was the best part, it practically took the roof off. I figure I was saved once a year every year until I was thirteen." He paused.
    "What happened?" The question was softly spoken and from Dinah.
    "I grew up, and grew away from it." He shook his head. "It all seemed so--I don't know, so goddam unlikely, I guess. That God would give us sex and forbid us to enjoy it. That God would make us smart enough to figure out ways to prevent conception and forbid us to use them. That the world was really only five thousand years old when I'd found fossils in an abandoned quarry older than that. Little inconsistencies like those. And then I started reading history, and it seemed like everywhere blood was spilled, there was religion, causing it, and the more religion, the more blood. I'd ask why, and the answer was always the same. It was God's will. It was just never a good enough reason for me."
    "So," Dinah said, "you don't believe in God."
    He looked irritated. "Of course I believe." He waved a hand, encompassing the Kanuyaq River valley and the distant Quilak Mountains.
    "Who could look at that and not believe?" He paused, and tried for a laugh. "It's just that nowadays I put my faith in rock and roll. I mean, let's face it, the lyrics to Imagine

Similar Books

My Prince

Anna Martin

Oppressed

Kira Saito

IM10 August Heat (2008)

Andrea Camilleri

Bare It All

Lori Foster

Death Angel's Shadow

Karl Edward Wagner