Rurally Screwed by Jessie Knadler

Author:Jessie Knadler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

Mmm. Yes. But that could also be from low blood sugar.

On the inside of the pamphlet was a color photograph of a woman I shall refer to as Anna Bundance. She was dressed in loose-fitting slacks, a sleeveless shell top and a minimum of tasteful gold jewelry. Her teeth were a dazzling shade of white and she had a confection of hair held aloft by an invisible web of hair spritzer. She looked hysterically happy. I scanned her bio. Anna Bundance was a phenomenon in the Christian world. She’d written multiple books specializing in Christian women’s issues. Her base of operations was something called Open Arms Open Hearts—which I took to mean a sprawling mega church—somewhere outside Atlanta. For fun, she taught Christian aerobics. It was Anna Bundance’s trademarked Bible study group, complete with DVDs and workbooks, that I was being asked to join.

I wondered if it was the time to embark upon my serious spiritual quest. Declining such an invitation, multiple invitations, was probably the biggest violation of the country code of all. Besides, religion had become somewhat of a tender topic between Jake and me. I know this because I’d asked him about it one night while we sat in the gazebo eating his handmade fettuccine tossed with morels and wild asparagus foraged by Mel.

“Are you okay with the idea that I may…” I groped for the nicest way to say “die an unbeliever.” “May never play for the Christian team?”

“I know where I’m going when I die,” Jake said slowly, reaching across the table to daub a bit of cream from the corner of my mouth with his thumb. “I hope you go there with me.”

Such a comment from anyone other than my husband probably wouldn’t have sat well, but from Jake, it made me wonder what exactly was so great about my beliefs, or lack thereof. All I knew is that I wanted to be better. I wanted to live in a better way. I wasn’t even sure what that meant exactly, but through him I might be able to figure it out. As Shakespeare put it in Othello, Jake had a lightness that sometimes made me feel dark.

I closed the pamphlet.

“Jessie K!” Jake’s voice echoed from the backyard, interrupting the memory. “C’mon! We gotta lay more pipe!”

By late afternoon, after many more hours of awkward shovel-dancing, we fit the trench with two long pipes, one for water and one for electric. We then refilled the entire trench with dirt, tamped it down with the skid steer and planted the whole thing over with grass seed. With the last remaining hours of daylight, we hooked up a new water hydrant a foot from the front door of the barn.

“I give you—water!” I cried as I pulled the lever of the hydrant to release a cold spray that splashed all over my overalls and boots. I washed the grime from my face and hands. I felt dog-tired yet invigorated from having helped build something with my own hands.

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