You Don't Know About Me by Brian Meehl Read Free Book Online Page A

of damnation in Mom.
    She sank into a chair and hid her face. I waited for her to spill.
    Between sobs, she confessed how the devil had tricked her into falling in love with Richard Allbright. At first, everything had been good, with him coming to Christ and all, but then Satan attacked them with his carnal weapons and tempted them in the way of the flesh. They succumbed, and “plowed wickedness” is how she put it. After that, God punished them by making my father stray from his walk with Christ. She said he went back to his old ways of worshipping idols. When I asked her what that meant, she said he backslid to worshipping Mark Twain: instead of seeking God’s approval he was seeking Twain’s approval from the grave.
    â€œBut that was his job,” I said.
    Her head jerked up; she wiped a hand across her cheek. “How do you know that?”
    â€œNever mind how I know. You haven’t finished.”
    She went on. “It wasn’t only a job for him; it was idolatry. He whored after graven images, from Twain’s anti-Christian books to worthless souvenirs.”
    She told me that after Richard refused to turn back to Christ, she prayed day and night. She asked God if she should marry a false believer, an idol worshipper, and the father of her child. God didn’t answer. Then, a few months before I was born, she did a providence check. Her finger fell on the parable of the talents. The message from God was clear. Just as the nobleman gave each of his servants a coin to invest while he was away, God had given her a seed to grow and prosper. And because Richard was more likethe servant who took his coin and hid it in a napkin, and did nothing with it, the Lord was going to take my father’s coin away from him and give it to her alone. The coin was me.
    She gazed up at me, her eyes swimming with tears and the Spirit. “My child already had a father, the Heavenly Father.”
    â€œI wanted a real father!” I yelled. “And all this time I had one! Who gave you the right to kill him when he wasn’t dead?”
    Her eyes went blank, cold. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Because I know when no father is better than a bad one.”
    I was too locked on rage to imagine what she meant. She told me we needed to pray. Praying was the last thing I wanted to do, especially to a God who resurrected my father only to kill him. I finally threw it in her face. “He’s dead!”
    She fixed on me for a moment. The hum of the fridge sounded loud as a train. “How do you know that?”
    I yanked the DVD from my pocket. “ ’Cause he let me watch!”
    Something flashed in her eyes that shivered through me. I swear I saw relief. It made my insides boil. I had to get out of there before I did something I’d regret forever.
    When I got to the door I was even dead to anger. I felt as cold and dead as Richard Allbright. I turned and raised his Bible. “You and God got it right.
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
I can,” I said, “I’ve seen it.”
    *    *    *
    I went to the only place I could think of. The high school.
    I sat in the top row of bleachers and watched the football team practice. There were some other kids in the bleachers. None of them bothered me, even though I’m sure I looked Jesus-junkie weird sitting there with a big black Bible. They probably didn’t mess with me because I must’ve looked like a mass murderer the moment before he yanks out a semiautomatic and opens fire.
    After I got back to thinking halfway straight, I tried to figure out my next move. By the time the football team left the field and the sun dropped over downtown, I had a plan.
I’d go to Bible camp so I didn’t kill my mother.
I’d try to solve the first riddle in my father’s treasure hunt.
After that, there was no plan.
    At dinner we ate leftovers