Hold Fast - Olivia Rigal Page 0,3

see, because they won’t look. I’ve tried to tell them, but they won’t listen. And anyway, they always say, it’s nowt t’do wi’ me and mine.

That’s what they said the first time I ran, when they brought me right back to my mother and her vile holy man.

“Whoever spares the rod hates the child, but the one who loves their children is careful to discipline them,” Father Emmanuel explained. “As it says in The Lord’s Word, ‘train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old he will not depart from it.’”

He pretended that it tore him apart to punish me, but there was a sick glee in his eyes as Brother Lucas beat me bloody and bruised with a length of broom handle. For my own good, of course. To train me up in the way I should go. So I would not depart from the way.

I was sixteen then, so much younger and more innocent, but he was right. By the time it was over, I knew I would never forget the lesson. I’d learned that I couldn’t count on anyone but myself.

And then the second time I ran… The truck’s jostling over deep ruts and brutal potholes covers my involuntary shudder at the memory.

And where would I run to, anyway? My father’s dead. The very night he died, my mother drove home from the hospital to get me and brought us here. She wouldn’t even wait for the funeral. We had to leave his sins behind, and like Lot’s wife, no looking back could be permitted.

Dad was an only child, and my grandparents were gone long before he died. And Sean. I’d run to you, if I knew where you were. The only two men I’ve ever loved, the only two men I could run to… and they’re both beyond my reach.

The deep logging trails give way to graveled dirt roads barely wide enough for the heavy logging trucks to take their loads of tree trunks to the paper mills, and finally to smooth paved roads.

“So you admit you’re a liar,” Nathan taunts. The logging roads are too rough for conversation - too rough for anything but holding on for dear life to anything solid – and I’d hoped that the boy would have forgotten this in the jostling.

Nathan was picked to escort my mother and me to the market because he’s strong enough to help us put up the booth, but also because he’s smart enough to watch everything we do, and dedicated enough to report even the slightest hint of sin. Even worse, he knows it. His father’s flattery and brainwashing have turned an intelligent and curious young boy into a vicious miniature of his father, zealous in sniffing out wrongdoing in others, and he would love nothing more than to demonstrate he’s earned his master’s trust by having something juicy to report.

“Now, Brother Nathan!” My mother’s protest is too weak to be taken as a serious reprimand, but that’s hardly unexpected. She fawns over the small monster. Mom, would you have treated your own sons that way if you’d been able to give Father Emmanuel any? Or would you have hated them and ground them under your heel like you did with me? I know the answer, of course. Anything from that twisted man would be a gift from Heaven, in her eyes.

So long as it was a boy, of course.

Not for the first time, I find myself envying my little sisters-that-never-were. Those ‘useless girls’ never had to live like this.

I shrug off Nathan’s taunt, keeping my eyes on the road. I’m memorizing every detail of it. One day I will be running away down this road. One day, I’ll be a free woman. One day.

The thought makes me generous toward the little boy who will probably never know anything about life outside the compound.

“What do you say when you’re really hungry?” I ask him. He sees the world in black and white, so let’s see if I can introduce the concept of a third color: gray.

“That I could eat a horse,” he says. His expression shows that the question surprises him but he plays along anyway. “But what does it have to do with you lying?”

“Do you sincerely and honestly believe you could actually eat an entire horse? All by yourself?” I ignore his question and continue with my own.

While he ponders the question, I park in our assigned market space and turn off the ignition. Mom gets