“I don’t evenwantto change. I like who I am. I love my life at the Rocking C. Just send me back and I will never bother you again.”
“I can’t let you throw yourself away like that, son. This is spiritual suicide. Don’t you understand? I cannot let you destroy yourself. I am your father and I can’t.”
“I’m gay, Dad.”
He spoke over me. “Jesus answered, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me—’” He gripped my hand. “I’m begging you. Accept Jesus as your savior again, son.”
“No.”
“Get on our knees, Rockne.”
“No.”
“Get. On. Your. Knees.”
“No.”
Crack.
Hand to my burning cheek, I glared at him. “No.”
That wasn’t the first time he’d hit me. Far from it. But that night there was something inside me telling me I didn’t have a choice anymore.
This wasn’t right.
Fatherwasn’t right.
“No, Dad. Hit me all you want. But, no.”
Crack.
His rough hand gripped the back of my T-shirt as he flung me to my knees by the side of the bed. He held me down by my shoulders, hard enough to make me groan in pain.
“Jesus,” he began, “I beg you, strip the pride from this sinner.”
“No.” I shouted the word.
Thud.This time, the blow was to the back of my head—a sharp rap on my skull with four of my father’s meaty fingers that sounded very loud inside my brain. I knew my dad didn’t think of it as hitting. He wouldn’t see it as abuse. Just a little wake up call. Tomorrow he was going to feel awful.
“We come to you as sinners...”
“No!”
Thud.Meaty fingers.
Ow. But now I’m a little dizzy, and it almost feels good to fight. To feel... something.
“Jesus, our Savior, even as your eye is on the sparrow...”
That word.Sparrow.
Gorrión.
“I sing—” As the first notes poured from my mouth. My father froze midcrest “—because I’m happy.”
Father didn’t know that Sky was my sparrow.
He was still talking about Satan and faith and how God is the Elf on the Shelf or...
