Escape

Part 1

When I was nine, I nearly drowned. It wouldn't be the last time.

Dad and I walked down our sloping front lawn to the lake with our fishing gear. We usually fished in the afternoons. The nearest town was an hour away, so we mostly lived off the land. Dad would go hunting and work around the farm. Dad took me with him sometimes, because he said that it was important for me to learn independence, to live on my own without relying on the corrupt sinners that lived in town, making profits for themselves and working for their own glory, instead of God's.

That day, as Dad was preaching, I asked him about the people in town, and why they were so bad. Why did they work for themselves, and not for God? Dad also worked, doing odd jobs for the other people who lived on the mountain side. The girls in town had pretty dresses and listened to music and watched television. Did God really think that was a sin?

"Them townies, they ain't doing the Lord's work," he tried to explain. But I'd pulled one of the feathered lures from the tackle box, and held it up to my hair. "There was a girl walking past the church, and she had a feather like this in her hair, and it was real pretty. She was singing this song. I think that it went..." I tried to hum a few bars, eyes closed, pretending that I had been the girl in the denim skirt with the feather braided in her hair and the bejeweled headphones sparkling in her ears.

The next thing I knew, my hand and cheek stung where Dad had slapped the lure away. It skittered over the dock and disappeared into the dark water of the lake. "Devil, you be gone from this child now! You take your temptation away from her!" he shouted, grabbing  me by the shoulders and throwing me into the cold water of the lake.

I tried to scream, but my mouth filled with icy water. Dad's big, strong hands, always so protective, held me under. I fought in the darkness until he finally let me up again. I gasped for air, but before I could beg Dad to let me up, he had pushed me down again.

Over and over again he held me under, praying the entire time. Finally, he hauled me out and let me lay on the dock, struggling for air. When he tried to pat my back to beat the last of the water from my lungs, I pulled away, rolling across the sun warmed boards and crawling away on shaky limbs. I looked out at him from behind a curtain of wet blond hair, huddled and shaking against one of the dock posts.

"I had to do it, baby," he said, pleading. "I don't want the Devil to get my baby girl."