Ben (The Sherwood)

“All done,” I declared then cleared my throat. “Why don’t I just put the pizza in the oven.”

I went to the freezer and grabbed one pepperoni pizza then put it on the pan. I sat the oven for four hundred and waited on it to heat up.

“I love it out here,” Disa said. “Instead of a movie, could we sit on the back porch and talk?” She asked.

“Sure,” I replied as I shoved the pan in the oven. I left the patio door slightly ajar, so I could hear Asia when she woke. I followed Disa through the doors to the covered part of the patio.

Since, coming home this afternoon, I had followed Jen’s advice, giving Asia a few minutes to sooth herself before grabbing her right up. When Asia was hungry or needed a diaper change she didn’t stop crying. Then she needed me.

It was hard. I even had to stop Seth from going after her immediately. It had worked but nighttime would be the true test.

We sat in the chairs that faced the woods. Disa stared over the lands that belonged to my grandfather and now Elijah and Jenny. “I used to run through these woods with Danni,” she told me.

“Me too,” I teased her.

She shook her head at me. “You don’t know how lucky you were growing up like you did,” Disa said.

At times, we didn’t feel so lucky having Rachel and Simon Hatfield for parents. At times, it was tough being their child, but outsiders didn’t know what we knew. Mom had her hands full. Dad was strict and by strict, I mean he used his belt on us because that is what his father did to him, so he saw nothing wrong with it.

I turned and looked through the glass doors at my daughter asleep in the chair. My daughter would have time-outs like Matt did for Justin. I don’t think I could ever raise my hand against Asia as punishment.

Dad did what he thought was best. His punishments were doled out in the middle of the night when he got home from work. He woke us from a sound sleep, whooped our ass and sent us back to bed where Matt consoled us.

My brother Matt was a good father because he had years of experience fathering his younger brothers. He was a good man. I looked up to Matt. One day, I wanted to be half the man that he was which is why it sucked that Layla had done to him what she did.

“Where are you?” Disa asked.

I turned and smiled at her. “Thinking about Matt. What a good man he is. What a good brother he was to all of us.”

She smiled at me. “How is he doing since Layla left?” She asked. Of all the people who asked about Matt, she wasn’t doing it because she was being nosy. Disa was genuinely concerned about my brother.

I shook my head at her. “I don’t know.” Then I gazed out into the woods. “You know Matt. He keeps it all to himself. He’s broken, Disa. I know that much, not that he would tell us that in so many words.”

She smiled at me, but it wasn’t a happy smile. She was sad for Matt. For Justin too. “I still can’t believe that she left him,” she whispered as if the woods had ears and someone might hear her.

“I know. We’re all in shock.”

Disa sighed. “I wonder why people do half the things that they do.”

She talked about her parents. God fearing people, she often called them. They didn’t sound like good Christians to me. They were mean and spiteful. They had cut themselves off from most of the town.

They lived in a compound on the outskirts of Sherwood where others who participated in their church lived. No one outside of their religion knew what went on inside the fenced in walls of that compound.

“Their beliefs are deeply rooted in the fact that only they are saved,” Disa told me.

I nodded unsure of what to say so feeling it was safer to say nothing at all. Sure, I believed in a God that existed somewhere. In the clouds above? Not really. I believed in Jesus Christ as the Savior. I didn’t give religion much thought after that.

I lived my life believing that someday it would be more important to me than a passing thought. Right now, or at least before Asia was born I was more important than anything else. I was trying to curb my selfish ways.

“Why did you leave them, Disa?” I asked.

“My father wanted me to marry, Elder Ron,” she explained. “A man in his thirties. I was only twenty-one.” Her voice was soft and held that far away tone that told me she was sad, thinking about it.

“What happened?” I knew that something had prompted her departure from the compound.

“I left. I told my father no. You don’t tell your parents or an elder no.” She sighed. “I stopped wearing the ugly, ankle length skirts that I always had to wear to be modest. Got a job at Ike’s and was exiled from Babylon First Church of God and from my parent’s lives. As I walked out of the compound, they struck me from their lives, their hearts and their minds.”

I chewed on my lower lip knowing that what she was saying was not good. “What does that mean?” I asked unsure that I should have asked that question because it brought a rush of pain to Disa’s face.