Lord of the Flies contained the information Kelsey Lou was looking for. She wasn’t sure what to do with it now, though. Her visit to Mrs. Hogg on the way home had revealed the unimaginable: Her sister’s sudden bleeding had not been a period, but an abortion. Kelsey Lou stared at the book in her hands, trying not to imagine what a world ruled by immature boys with abandonment issues meant for human survival. She seemed to read but was really having a wild, transformative experience that went beyond any printed words on a page.

“Girl her age didn’t consent to gettin’ pregnant,” Mrs. Hogg had reasoned during the visit that Susan, the bookstore’s friendly ghost, had instructed her to pursue. Mrs. Hogg was the wife of a man Kelsey Lou thought she trusted. Her head went on spinning, night and day, trying to make sense of what had not made sense from the moment Karly Lynn had walked into her bedroom with the news. 

What does it mean to trust anyone in this town?

“So I didn’t reckon her consent was necessary for endin’ it neither,” Mrs. Hogg said matter-of-factly. “Ain’t right puttin’ a decision like that on a young girl ain’t never had a say in the cause of the problem to begin with.”

“You think two wrongs make a right?” Kelsey Lou demanded, horrified and confused.

“You don’t really believe it was wrong, do you?” Mrs. Hogg asked genuinely. “You think that sister of yours would, in any version of this universe, be better off risking her life, without adequate medical care, to birth some sicko predator’s baby before 7th grade is through? Having to raise that child under her God-awful mother’s thumb, no freedom of her own a day in her life, never ever? And that’s if she lives. You know plain well since the feds destroyed the healthcare system, our bad hospitals only got worse.

“We was ranked 50th in the nation in maternal mortality when that happened, Miss Farmer. 49th in domestic violence. Only thing Arkansas ranked highest in was rape – we were #2 in the country for that – and #1 in the highest increases in HIV cases. That ain’t one I got no plant for, so you needs to make sure little sister get to a doctor sooner rather than later to test.

“These days, ain’t nobody knows what we’re ranked in nothin’, ‘cause ain’t nobody in government care to measure that information no more. Alls we know for certain is our girls are dyin’ enough, I gotta grow a whole dedicated garden to keepin’ you’ns alive. I’m sorry, Miss Farmer. I truly am. I want a better world for you than the one you’s born into. And whether you agree with my ways of creating that world right now, or you disagree, don’t change the fact I’m doin’ all I can to make reality a little brighter for you and your sister. She’s got a future now, same as she did before. And a job, if she’ll keep at it.”

Kelsey Lou didn’t know what to say. She just wanted to punch something. Why were they all trapped in a place so stripped of love? Had there ever been love in the Ozarks? Had someone moved into town and sucked all the goodness out of this place like a vampire? Had people ever really cared for one another? Cared for children? Cared about anything but their labor?

She could see the caring in Mrs. Hogg’s eyes, and she felt her own guts twisting with confusion deep inside. How could a woman care so much and choose murder at the same time? 

But then, did she?

If Karly Lynn had died giving birth to a child she never consented to being forced to carry in the first place – death is a common outcome, every girl in town well knew, and the doctors ain’t even allowed to save you when you’re septic – then did Mrs. Hogg just save a life, rather than end one?

Everything she’d learned at church about abortion felt so conflicting now. Is it still baby-killing if an abortion actually saves a life? Wasn’t Karly Lynn a baby who deserved a chance at life, too? What if the people who had banned abortion put half as much effort into making sure children weren’t being quietly abused and impregnated by the very same deacon who taught them abortion is wrong at Sunday school?

How many more Mrs. Hoggs exist that Kelsey Lou just doesn’t know about and can’t reach yet? What more holy, fresh reality could they create together?

These questions raced through Kelsey Lou – not just her mind, but through her body – as she recalled yesterday’s conversation with Mrs. Hogg. Her toes squirmed like they were ready to run, while her legs froze stiff beside the library bookcase. Her breathing was shallow. Noticing this fact was even harder to do than remembering to take a good breath.

“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read,” the Mark Twain quote taped onto the end of the library bookcase read.

Kelsey Lou held a tucked-away, folded paper listing doctors’ offices in her left hand; the Lord of the Flies in her right. She’d brought home plenty of reading material from the bookstore last night, but what could checking out just one more book hurt?

She had been yearning for this excuse to return to the library; to see the librarian again, who was not on duty today but who had disrupted all Kelsey Lou’s thoughts the afternoon before. She found herself even willing to read an extra book so she could sound smart, in case the pretty librarian asked about Lord of the Flies later on.

Making her way toward the circulation desk, Kelsey Lou passed by a shelf labeled “Feminism” and rolled her eyes. How many problems for girls in the Ozarks had Feminism fixed? How many more had it created? If she didn’t already have enough to be angry about, Kelsey Lou would be angry that Feminism – or maybe just Feminists? – had let her down so deeply.

It was the promises that hurt the most. The promises of liberation while capitulating to fascism. The promises of “equality” which Kelsey Lou saw extended to Hillary Clinton, but not to the girls whose necks she’d stood on, right here in Arkansas, to get onto that fancy pedestal where she’d smiled smugly, trusting no one would ever fact-check that her “19 wonderful years in Arkansas” had not been so wonderful for the families her husband allowed to be poisoned, and deprived of healthcare, and charged extra for needing to buy a used car when their beater broke down, back when he was Governor. 

What kind of Feminism poisons half a state’s drinking water? What kind of Feminism makes it harder for women to get to work and feed their children? Clinton’s kind of Feminism did. That’s all Kelsey Lou needed to know about it.

Kelsey Lou’s lip snarled in disgust. She didn’t have words yet for the society she wanted, but if Clinton’s way was Feminism, Kelsey Lou wanted no part of it. She wanted something more like – what would she call it? Emancipation? Autonomy? Self-determination? Liberation? All accurate words for the greatest dream of an Ozarks Hillbilly.

She’d been reasonable, checking out only Lord of the Flies in light of all the unread books already waiting to be loved in a pile back home. A walk over the hill to the Dickson Street Bookshop wouldn’t take long, she thought. Maybe James would be there?

How could Kelsey Lou think about a boy at a time like this? Thinking about romance means thinking about more than just surviving; and how would she have the energy for that, when just surviving was already demanding every last ounce of will?

But she did. Every step toward the bookstore was a prayer: 

May the place we live in become healthy, so our house feels like home and our home is a safe and wonderful place to be.

May we all be liberated from the barriers holding us back from really shining in the world at our brightest and best capacity.

May we stop expecting one another to be anything other than happy and healthy, on our own terms about our own bodies.

And if there is hope for romance in this life for someone like me, may we be true and kind, loyal and healthy, gracious and growing, and committed to being ourselves even as we grow alongside one another.

She could have just called or texted him. But then Ma might find their log. Kelsey Lou had no delusions of knowing privacy before 18. Showing up in person left no written record. This gave anything good the best possible chance to take root and bloom, in soil such as the Ozarks.

The doorbell chimed as she opened the door and stepped into the wisdom, love, and tenacity the Dickson Street Bookshop smelled like. James was at the counter, wiping down the cash register with rubbing alcohol. He gave a cheerful smile that flashed genuine excitement. Then, as promised, he immediately resumed full focus on his task so as not to make the bookstore experience feel weird for Kelsey Lou.

If Junior had an exact opposite, James was that. How did he get to be like this? She wondered. Treating her with respect? Like a whole human equal? That’s – that’s not how any boys around here are taught to be. It’s not how they are. They don’t – they can’t – how could –?

Kelsey Lou realized she was still standing in the doorway, as awkward as a deer in the Sherwin Williams parking lot. Motivated by confusion, she rushed back down the corridor of books just to get out of his sight. Not that he was looking anyway. His number 7 was disinfected and spotless. He was moving on to cleaning up the number 8 key now.

In the maternal health section, there were a surprising number of books of great relevance. Kelsey Lou could spend some of her hard-earned cash on them – but knowing now that Karly Lynn ain’t even pregnant anymore, well, what’s the point? 

What was the point? 

Helping her little sister find herself amidst the chaos. That is the point of this book. Kelsey Lou moseyed on over to the autobiographies section, then. Maybe someone else had written a book that would help her through this new situation, rather than focusing on the old one? Maybe the only real point in life is to help folks cope with whatever reality is, and not dwell too much on what it isn’t, except to imagine what it could be, if we was to make reality better for one another?

She was browsing, judging books by their covers, when Susan’s voice asked from the other side of the stacks, “You gotten to Maya Angelou yet?”

“No?” Kelsey Lou answered. 

“Skip every distraction in this store, grab yourself a copy of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings to read once yourself and then share with your sister; and then go get some dinner with that young man already. He’s off in twelve minutes, and you’re both hungry,” Susan said through the books.

Kelsey Lou took a deep breath and tried not to squeal. Oh, what was this feeling? Not only did James seem to be Junior’s opposite – so were Kelsey Lou’s feelings about him! Her throat tensed up with eagerness, and her body jumped with uncontainable excitement. She couldn’t look like this in front of him, though. So dysregulated, improper. She would have to compose herself. 

Oh, how could she compose herself? How could she approach him and contain her excitem—No. Stop. Breathe. Remember who you are. Remember where you are. Excitement is a feeling. The feeling is brought on by desire. Desire is brought on by deprivation. We live in a constant state of deprivation. If we make choices about which boys, which men, are good enough to be in a relationship with us based on how excited we feel, we end up just like our mommas. Just like our sisters. We end up dead in a delivery room when we let ourselves feel excitement about boys. Calm yourself.

Ain’t nobody want the consequences of dating the wrong man in Arkansas. Dating is a life or death situation, and Kelsey Lou was lucky enough to know that without bein’ pregnant first. 

Grief washed over her like the greatest relationship of her life had just happened and died already, in one cosmic minute, there in the autobiographies. Pain radiated through her chest: the loss of relational vulnerability she’d never had the psychological safety to feel first, before willfully giving her joy up for adoption to a family of wiser choices, while she still could.

Approaching the counter with a free-from-the-cage bird-poet singing of a Stamps, Arkansas history now in her hands, Kelsey Lou smiled timidly as James pretended to still be busy sanitizing the cleanest cash register in all of the Ozarks. He wanted to be respectful, polite. But in his efforts, it seemed obvious he was just as giddily nervous to talk with Kelsey Lou as she had been feeling back in the stacks.

He had hardly slept all night, afraid of the professional boundary he’d had the audacity to cross. He gave a girl his phone number. How presumptuous! What would she think? Would he be fired? Had he upset her? How many times and places must this young woman have gone, just looking for a book, or trying to enjoy a meal, where a man had imposed himself and infringed on her much-deserved, unfettered access to public life? How embarrassing. He didn’t want to be that man.

Was he the kind of man who makes women feel creeped out? James didn’t know. He now felt afraid of the possibility. But Kelsey Lou wasn’t scowling, so maybe she didn’t hate him for being male and clueless? He felt clueless. Maybe he was doing something right, though? If so, he should probably confirm that, and then keep doing what’s working.

“I’ve still got your number,” she said. “And I’d like to use it, I think. But since I was in town anyway today, and I – it’s been kind of a rough day, so I’m not even sure what I’m thinking right now. But I needed this book, and you happen to be here, and I don’t really like using my phone too much anyway ‘cause my Ma is a real piece of work who cain’t never mind her own damn business. So, uh, hi.”

James smiled and felt much-appreciated relief. 

“Hi,” he said back.

“You wanna have some food up on the square when you’re off?” Kelsey Lou asked. 

“I’m 4 minutes from the end of my shift, actually,” James answered.

“Is that a yes? Or?” Kelsey Lou wondered aloud. For all the folks she’d ever met, she still never understood why sometimes when she asks a yes or no question, she’ll be given an answer that doesn’t answer the question at all. It wasn’t just one person. It was lots of folks. In four minutes, James could go running out the door, never interested in seeing Kelsey Lou again. He could be heading to dinner with his family. He could have other plans. Being off in four minutes says nothing at all about his interest in having food on the square after work.

“Yes,” he confirmed.

Okay. It’s a date. Kelsey Lou was going on a date, for the first time since before the 8th grade. She paid her $7 for the used book and told James she’d be waiting outside whenever he’s ready. 

---

A scruffy-looking man who smelled quite off approached Kelsey Lou just outside the door. 

“Excuse me,” he said, “but would you happen to have five dollars to spare?”

“Excuse me?” Kelsey Lou asked. She wondered how far she’d get if she went begging for handouts instead of working, as she’d been doing a good while now. The only thing keeping her from telling the man to get a job was sensing how much the words would sound like her Ma, and some instinct inside her just didn’t want to hear that nag of a woman speak.

“It’ll be the best investment you could make: I’m gonna use this five dollars to go buy me a big-ass beer and an appetizer, all for $5 ‘cause it’s Happy Hour. Gonna get feelin’ real good. And then, I’m gonna go piss on a cop’s shoe.”

Kelsey Lou’s eyebrows and jaw raced in opposite directions.

“He’s gonna arrest me for it,” the man explained, “and then I’ll get free housing and meals for the next couple months until they kick me out again.”

“I thought jail was a pretty terrible place to be?” Kelsey Lou asked, confused.

“For some folks. But they don’t treat me bad there none,” he said. “I help ‘em keep their numbers lookin’ good, so they like me.”

“Their numbers?” Kelsey Lou had so many more questions than this man’s answers were answerin’.

“The cops, they gotta arrest so many people, so often. And they know they’re more likely to arrest Black folks and Latinos and the Marshallese around here, so they have to go out of their way to find White men they can arrest, too, to make their numbers look like they ain’t profilin’ no one over their skin color.”

Kelsey Lou’s excitement about her impending date deflated like a hot air balloon struck by a well-trained arrow.

“Is this your opinion, or –?” she inquired.

“It’s an arrangement,” he answered. “They know they do it. They’ve told me they do it. Sergeant told me himself they gotta arrest so many White folks every month just to make sure no one catches them profilin’ the rest. So when he told me this, I asked ‘em if they’d be interested in makin’ a deal. And they said sure, but I’m responsible for findin’ my own ways into jail on my own. So, the cops ain’t gonna buy me the beer that’s gonna send me back, but they all know me, and I know them, and we’ve got a good arrangement worked out where I help them by just bein’ a White man without a hope in the world, and they help me by keepin’ me in food and shelter another month.”

“And the Black folks they arrest,” Kelsey Lou just had to ask, “how comfortable is jail for them?”

The man let out a hard, pained sound, wincing as he said, “I’m just real glad I ain’t them is all I know.”

The bookstore bell chimed as James opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight. He was unnerved by the unexpected sight of this 30’s-something man standing so close to Kelsey Lou, as if expecting something from her.

“Are you ready to go?” James asked, suddenly imagining – fearfully – being compelled by the social mandates of masculinity to engage in a fist fight, defending Kelsey Lou from this unknown creep. He did not wish to fight. He did not wish for men to be creeps. He was not sure which of the things he did wish for might come true instead, like a peaceful dinner and a pleasant walk around the square. Kelsey Lou seemed like the type who could probably hit a man just fine without his help, anyway. Why not let her handle that?

“I am,” she replied with a nod. 

“I’m sorry,” she said to the man. “If I’m gonna spend five dollars on helping you, it’s gonna be for a James Baldwin book you can take with you to read in jail. You’ll have to get your beer money from someone else, I’m afraid.”

The man nodded and backed off, giving a follow-up nod to James, as though handing off the young woman to her rightful handler whose toes he hadn’t meant to step on by approaching her. It was a kind of head nod that made James feel uncomfortable in ways he had never been given words to describe. He felt like he was regarded as part of something he didn’t mean to get caught up in, like a mafia—but instead of drugs or money, the property exchanged between these men was women; the value of currency, measured by their willful compliance with being owned and controlled. 

Is there a way to be a man that isn’t some gross, weird mafia feeling? James often wondered. So far, Arkansas had given few indications that such a masculinity was possible. But the masculinity he was expected to wear – pressured by parents, by teachers, by peers, by laws enforcing only two binary sexes and ways of embodying them – just felt so unnatural to him.

The man who collaborated with police did not take Kelsey Lou up on the offer for a James Baldwin book. He knew everything he needed to know. What could James Baldwin add? The man grunted impotently as Kelsey Lou walked off with James toward the food trucks up the street.

---

“I’m, uh,” James stammered awkwardly, trying not to instantly spill his confession that he had never been on a date before. “I’m not sure what to say to you, or how to ask good questions to find out about you, because I don’t want to seem rude or invasive.”

Kelsey Lou wondered what planet this boy came from. Are there more of him? Had a whole spaceship of aliens who look like human boys come down from the heavens to offer hope for all humanity? Would all decent people who happen to be attracted to men no longer be doomed to remain single forever?

“Why did you want me to have your number?” she asked. A sensible starting point.

“Boyish,” James answered without hesitation. “It’s not every day someone my own age comes through buying queer, trans, Arkansas-made poetry.”

“And that appealed to you because –?” Kelsey Lou wanted to know.

“I guess you just, uh, seem like my kind of people,” he replied.

“You think I’m queer? Or trans?” she asked with a sudden startle. “I mean, I know I’m pure Ozarks, born and raised for sure. But, uh, just because I read a book doesn’t mean I’m, uh –”

Her voice trailed off into her own anxiety, as James’ worst fears seemed to be coming true. Oh, what a first conversation for a first date. This was not good at all, they both thought.

“I don’t know what to think about you yet,” James finally defended. “I don’t have enough information. So that’s why I asked you to give me more information about yourself – if you want to. So I can find out if you’re really my kind of people, or just someone who buys good books.”

Kelsey Lou nodded. She didn’t mind at all giving James information from which to decide whether they were compatible, in whatever relationship form they might consider. But now an uneasy knot of tension felt wrapped around her sternum. It was the trans thing. The queer thing. She didn’t want to think about it. She didn’t want to be one of those people. She didn’t want to be like them. She didn’t want to have to fight even harder than she already was, for everything, for survival. She didn’t want to be hated. 

The two intelligent, good-hearted young’ns ordered their food and sat down to a picnic table where they figured out, quite quickly, other things to talk about. The differences between the schools they went to. The number of languages their parents allowed them to learn: James – English, Cherokee, and Spanish; Kelsey Lou – English and Spanish, but Ma pulled her out of French class as punishment for a bad grade in Algebra. The overwhelming sense of isolation they both felt, surrounded by grownups whose only purpose in life seemed to be keeping young people from becoming anything more interesting than underpaid laborers and breeding stock for more child laborers. The loneliness these facts caused them. The daydreams that fueled their hope for what life after 18 could be.

Neither had ambitions of university, because they both knew they couldn’t afford it. Getting a PhD was a fantasy James yearned for day and night, but there was just no way to get one, and he knew it. A gold toilet would be more affordable and accessible to him than an education.

“What would you get a PhD in though?” Kelsey Lou asked, stepping back to the food truck to hand over the buzzer and collect their meal. The french fries were thick, soft, and not too crispy, just how Kelsey Lou liked them. The lamb gyro smelled divine.

“There’s just so many things to choose from,” James blushed. “But if I had to spend three years studying one thing that deep, it would be, like,” he paused, looking for the words, “HIV has this way of working inside the body where it convinces the immune system that it’s actually part of the immune system. So when the body starts to get sick, the immune system actually helps the HIV make more of itself. The body thinks the HIV is helping it, when it’s really killing the whole host. But the immune system is so confused, it basically votes for more HIV.

“And that’s what I see happening with our grownups. They keep making decisions about how to make us ‘great,’ while all I see them doing is replicating sickness and making us suffer. They won’t listen to us when we tell them they’re hurting us. They just keep making more of the illness and telling us it’s for our own good. So I think maybe we have something to learn from how HIV treatment works, and how we can apply that model in the social sciences for psychology interventions that will help people more accurately recognize which parts of our communities are really healthy, and which parts are a virus pretending to care, pretending to be pro-life while they literally keep killing people and destroying life itself.”

James was obviously passionate. The way he wanted to make life healthy for everyone was a breath of fresh air amidst the typically suffocating Arkansas pressure chamber. Kelsey Lou felt the swelling of joy in the pit of her stomach and suddenly understood the meaning of “butterflies” in this context she hadn’t yet known before. What if a whole spaceship had landed, she wondered again, and the country were suddenly overtaken by people who cared this deeply?

Or, if the alien spaceship didn’t bring people with it, but rather energy? If all the humans were hit with a blast of some compassionate, empathic, courageous energy and suddenly found the will to look deep inside themselves, identify the beliefs they held causing harm to others, and stop allowing those beliefs to grip them with fear any longer?

Oh, Ma would have a real crisis if she turned away from hatred as a way of life now. She’d have to face her own self-betrayal. She’d have to face how her own parents trained her to devalue her own life and abilities. She’d have to face how many decisions she’s made that dehumanize herself and the people she believes she loves.

She’d have to confess she doesn’t even know what love is, or if she’s ever really had it. She’d prolly ask herself if she’s even deserving of it. And the way she’s lived so far, it would take years for her to come around to believing that answer is “yes.” As little grace as she’s shown others, how could she have any grace for herself? How could she accept grace from them? Oh, the shame. The deep, drowning cesspool of shame she’s allowed herself to exist in for all these years. Hers is the kind of life Jesus and Krishna both promise to liberate folks from. But Ma would have to want liberation from her life of church-prescribed sin, first. 

Ma would have to ask herself whether she genuinely wants to do the relationship repair work, the inner healing, and the behavior-changing required of showing real love to anyone. And that’s all just to minimally get ready to begin rebuilding her whole sense of self, her identity. 

Mimicking the behaviors modeled at church, without questioning, is far easier. That doesn’t come with any of the messy, personal, hard questions along the way. It just also doesn’t produce good fruits. This is what had stopped Kelsey Lou from goin’ to church no more. The folks in the church were producing rotten fruits. 

The fruits we produce is what Jesus said we’d be known by; what we’d be judged by. Whether folks scream outside a clinic against abortion, or ban children from expressing their gender honestly, or impregnate a 12 year old, or make their kid drop out of French because punishment is the only way of life they know – those were the fruits growin’ around here. They left Kelsey Lou, her sister, James, Junior – everyone, really – hungry for fresher fruits of the spirit; hungry for a community without worms and rot inside.

“You think we could accomplish that?” Kelsey Lou asked, tenuously willing to trust love one more time like Maya Angelou insisted she do, and praying “love” wouldn’t zap her again like a finger in a light socket. “You think we can get folks to stop thinking they’re doing God’s work by abusing us?”

“I think there are solutions,” James said. “And I think there are plenty of folks, like the Cherokee, who’ve been coming up with solutions longer than we’ve been alive, and they’re really smart. So, yeah, I think if we worked together with the right teams of people who really do care about the values the Sunday Morning Church crowd pretends to care about, we could make the Ozarks a better place worth bein’. We could overcome what capitalism has done to us, and remember who we are. Our great great grandparents grew up here, Kelsey Lou. They imagined a better future for us than the one your Ma voted for. I think our grandfolks deserve to see us enjoy that better future; to see us create that better future together.”

Simply radiant and straight from the holler. Real talk was flowin’, and Kelsey Lou was as enamored as she’d ever been. This was better than a Tanya Tucker song. Kelsey Lou was in love. Maybe in love with a boy, but at least in love with his ideas and the blazing fire of justice and decency inside that motivated them. 

James went on, talking enthusiastically about his studies of psychology thus far. Meme theory, deindividuation, cognitive dissonance, and confirmation bias were all new words Kelsey Lou drank up like a dried-out aloe vera.

Kelsey Lou had never heard a real romantic story in Ozarks vernacular English before. But here James was, tellin’ one of possibility, collaboration, and mutual interests that’d lead any sensible person to daydream about a lifetime of BBQ chicken-eatin’ on aluminum foil plates in rockin’ chairs as the rain pitter-patters on the porch, 50 years from now; the kids all happy to come around and glad to see them; their schools safe; their peers healthy; the earth healed; everyone living in balance and peace. James told this story of unintended, quintessential romance in their native tongue with all the heartfelt honesty of a young possum in a winter hen house. 

Suddenly, Captain Picard had himself some real competition.