Dog on the Cross by Aaron Gwyn

impressed upon, like thumbprints in candle wax. Whatever she was or felt, he knew it before she spoke, and there was a softness about her, as if seen constantly through a smeared pane of glass.
    He tried to tell her how she tormented him. He’d tried at camp meeting and church camp and at dinner on the grounds. One afternoon—it was the summer he turned fourteen—while out in the parking lot waiting for their families, he decided he would explain how he needed to be left alone.
    â€œAmy,” he said, leaning against the trunk of his mother’s car.
    She turned to face him, and he began playing with the zipper on his Bible case.
    â€œWhat do you think we are to each other?”
    â€œWe?”
    â€œMe and you.”
    She smiled, squinted her nose. “What’d you mean?”
    â€œLike—”
    â€œLike a couple?”
    He nodded.
    â€œI don’t know,” she said. “What do you think?”
    â€œAbout us?” he stalled.
    â€œMm-hmm.”
    â€œBeing a couple?”
    â€œRight.”
    He dropped his eyes to his feet and stood a few seconds, neither of them saying a word. When he looked at her again, she had leaned back her head, the sun lighting the transparent hair along her neck and cheeks.
    He zipped his Bible shut, told her he had no idea.
    I N HIS SPIRIT, he knew he shouldn’t be entertaining such conversation. His mother said Amy was sweet and dedicated now but, like any woman, could one day turn loose and follow the path of sin. They’d talk about it when he was helping her fix dinner. His father had left a few years before. Since then, it was just he and Charlotte.
    He could remember sitting on the kitchen step stool after church, chopping vegetables for stew: celery and carrot slices stacked alongside the cutting board like coins.
    â€œGabriel,” his mother was telling him, “you need to watch that sort of girl. I’ve seen them ruin men. Completely
ruin
them.”
    He kept chopping.
    â€œYour uncle Richard married a woman who seemed nice. After six months, none of us could be around her.”
    He quit chopping and looked up. “Aunt Connie?”
    â€œNo,” she said. “This was his first marriage. This was Donna.” Charlotte took the cutting board away from him and scraped celery into the pot. Frowning, she gave it back.
    â€œI didn’t know Uncle Richard was married before Connie.”
    â€œIt wasn’t good for him,” she said. “When Richard got saved, we all decided not to talk about it. There’s no need to bring up the past once it’s under the blood.”
    â€œHow long were they together?”
    â€œOnce it’s under the blood it does not even exist.”
    â€œHow long?” he asked.
    â€œThree years,” his mother told him, stirring the pot. “It nearly drove him to the madhouse.”
    He reached over, got several more carrots out of the bag, and started cutting.
    â€œShe’d come to the house in short shorts, whining around in that voice. Your uncle Keith and I tried to say something, but he wouldn’t listen.”
    â€œHow come?”
    Charlotte stopped stirring and looked at him over the rims of her glasses. She taught English at a Christian high school, had cautioned her son about using incorrect grammar.
    â€œWhy not?” he said.
    Gabriel’s mother picked up the wooden spoon resting on a paper towel beside the stove. The spoon was wet and the towel clung to it. She snatched the towel away, smoothed it, and set it back on the counter.
    â€œIt was because of lust,” she said. “I hate to say so, but it is only the truth. Your uncle Richard was afflicted by demons of lust.” She walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door, stooped. “We couldn’t have been more thankful when he divorced her and got his deliverance.”
    The boy thought he knew his uncle Richard; he used to pull Gabriel’s wagon behind his