Free Have A Little Faith In Me by Brad Vance

now.
    “What kind of music?”
    He looked her in the eye.  An anger came over him, fueled by an adolescent hormonal surge but caused by much, much more than that.  By a sense that he’d been betrayed, denied a whole world, all his life.  That all this wondrous stuff would have been denied him the rest of his life, too, if his family had their way.
    “All kinds,” he said defiantly.  “Every kind of music in the world.”
     
    Faith shut herself in her little walk-in closet, and prayed on it.  Prayed for guidance on what to do next.
    On one hand, there were the positives.  Norman’s schoolwork was still exemplary, but then, the public school curriculum was hardly challenging.  He was finally making friends and socializing with others.  He was being exposed to the musical education she’d always known in the back of her mind that he would need.  Just…not yet.  And not this way.
    On the other hand.  That hair!  That attitude!  And she’d looked up the song he’d been playing, “Black Hole Sun.”  She’d read about the music video for it.  Special effects that made good decent people’s faces twist up horribly, as if there was something wrong inside them.  A tornado, or black hole, or whatever, that sucked them all up to their deaths, as if they deserved it.  A clean bright shiny world portrayed as a sort of hell for anyone who didn’t belong. 
    Faith had played the country music circuit, as part of an all-girl band in the 1950s and 60s.  She had drank and caroused and, yes, given in to lust.  But she had found Jesus Christ, her Redeemer, and she’d put all that behind her.  And she had no regrets.  Well, few.  But when she did, she always thought about what was most important.
    What was most important for Norman, too, more important than his mind, his music, his friendships.  And that was his immortal soul, which was in jeopardy, right now, this minute.
    And once she realized that, her next decision was easy.
     
    Reverend McCoy shook his head as the three of them sat at the kitchen table, he and Faith on one side and Norman on the other.  As if Norman was on trial, even though the verdict of this hearing was pre-ordained. 
    “I knew this day would come.  The Devil has been waiting for you, son.  Fifteen years, he’s waited.  And now he’s found you at last.”
    Norman had heard about the Devil all his life.  When someone erred, the Devil was involved.  He was casually mentioned in conversation as if he wasn’t exactly the next door neighbor, but lived no further away than the second house down, a member of the community.
    Now he wondered if there was such a person after all.  If the Devil was responsible for all bad things, how could he have anything to do with music, which was so obviously wonderful?  If the Devil had brought him to these discoveries, if this was the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge…
    “You’re not to hang out with that black boy anymore,” the Reverend pronounced.
    Norman’s fury rose.  “Why did you call him that?”
    “What?” Norman, Sr. said, his eyes wide, hardly able to believe the back talk coming out of his own son.
    “The black boy.  Why didn’t you just call him the boy?”
    His father slammed his hand down on the table.  “That is enough.  What you need is a penance. And I know just the thing.”
     
    The quiet in the megachurch was oppressive.  Norman’s father had shut the doors behind him and locked him in for the night.  He stood there with his bucket, his can of Comet, and his toothbrush.
    “Scrubbing that altar clean should take seven nights,” the Reverend said.  “If you do it right.”  He nodded at his own wisdom at picking such a Biblical number.  “You serve the Lord for seven nights and I guarantee your soul will be cleansed, too, of all this…disobedience.”
    He’d never been lonely in his life, until now.  Until he’d had a friend who’d been taken away from him, he’d never known what he was