Beneath The Whispering Pines

By Nathan O’Discin

Nathan O’Discin is a freshman novelist, having written numerous blogs cataloging various events of his life. Beneath the Whispering Pines retells the story of O'Discin's childhood through the eyes of Elijah, a cunning wayward youth who encounters many challenges as he experiences the world that lays beyond his small West Virginia farm. Elijah must overcome numerous tests of his faith and strict upbringing, being thrust into a cryptic foster care system that challenges him to find solace and salvation in new homes, well removed from the safety of the lush pine groves he used to roam back home. A colorful cast of characters help grow and nurture Elijah, encouraging him to escape his religious biases, and just maybe, himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9798765241516

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ISBN: 979-8-7652-4150-9 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-4151-6 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date:   04/25/2023

Contents

Masks to Hide Your Chagrin: Prologue

Confessions of My Affinity

Heaven’s Atrophy

Ronceverte Requiem

After Burn

Just a Prepneck and a Church Boy

Open Arms

Savage Sinners

Revoked

Leagues of Delinquents

Heaven’s Palisade

Great Escape

Regency of a Father

Affinity’s Requiem

A First Supper

Diamond Hearts

Reunion

The Harriett Sessions: Act I

Weeping Trees of Justice

The Harriett Sessions: Act II

White Roses

Paper Wings

Puppy Love

The Comeback Kid

Harriett Sessions: Act III

The Songs We Sing

Whispering Pines

Christmas 2003

Phoenix State of Mind

South Fayette Redneck

Fallen Angels

The Harriett Sessions: Act IV

Darkness Within

Freeform

Heaven’s Vigor

A Home on This Side of Heaven

Masks to Hide Your Chagrin:

Prologue

My Moma left us in the summer of 1998, she never seemed to have any issue with Papa, and I never saw them have a fight or even a disagreement. Yet she just left us all right there at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds, she hopped up in an old blue truck with some guy she called Stretch. Waiving to us like she was on some kind of voyage to a better place, yelling out the busted windows of that beat up truck, telling us our uncle was going to come and swoop us up from the fairgrounds later in the evening and get us back to the farm.

I grasped my kid brother Mark’s 3-year-old hand, sticky from maple cotton candy some old man had given him. We both stood there like a litter of lost puppies, just watching her drive on away, plum confused as to where it was she was going. She never came back; she was gone.

We never ventured far outside our farming community of Gates, West Virginia, much less be gone without a parent around to wrangle us all along. My two older brothers took liberation in her leaving and ventured off at the fair, they were used to it though, as they were allowed to walk the roads of our Mennonite community while Mark and I were restricted to playing in the yard, occasionally venturing into the oat and alfalfa fields adjacent to it.

I closed my eyes real hard and prayed to the Lord that he keep me and my kid brother safe, and deliver us back to the farm safely. Outside of our community was worldly and wicked, we were told, and there we were, all alone in it.

As time passed, Papa would tell us stories about Moma. She had started thieving and lying and cheating and breaking every law the Lord wrote in the Bible. Papa would tell me all about her sins as we went on walks on the farm counting the livestock and checking the fencing. He had a lot on his shoulders, alone raising eight youngins, as well as the farm and being speaker of the church for our community. Day by day, we somehow we made it without Moma.

By 1999, Moma sinned again and filed for divorce. Papa said divorce is a worldly thing, that marriage was a never ending promise to the Lord. Often times we were betrothed to a girl, an arrangement the church made for us youngins to keep the community alive and to keep us from worldly temptation.

Once in a blue moon, Papa would take us out to Kentucky to listen to a bluegrass jubilee. He’d use this time to witness to other Christians that were of wordly denominations, like the Methodists. He’d try to make them see things our way and bring them in to have a closer relationship with the Lord.

I could count on one hand how many actually joined our community, but I did enjoy learning new songs to sing in church as music brought me joy as much as it did the Lord. Some days we’d go to the stockyards and pick up some new blood to bring on the farm. That’s where Papa met Brother Allen, Kailin’s Papa.

Kailin was short, loud and obnoxious, but my Papa and hers had made some backhand deal about what-have-you’s and it was arranged that she was going to be my wife-to-be. We both knew it, and that was just how it was going to be. Kailin was well versed in the worldly ways of sinners, though. I would catch her thieving pencils in class and promoting contraband – items that were disallowed in the community because they didn’t bring the Lord joy; like makeup and filthy Cosmopolitan magazines. I was never sure how she managed to get these things, but she sure did manage.

One time she took scissors from the school house and plum chopped her hair off at her jawline just to spite Brother Allen. She said he used to let her cut her hair all the time before coming to Gates, and she wasn’t going to stop now. Sister Aileen, our teacher, jerked Kailin out of her desk and marched her straight out of the school house; gobs of blonde hair littered the floors marking a straight path to where they went off to.

In 2000, our small school house in Gap Mills closed under what the locals called consolidation, as the state made efforts to pick up the slack on the education system. We could either go to the Christian Academy in Ronceverte, or join the other kids of Monroe County in a new school they built in Union, the main town in the county. Papa tried to secure some seats at the Christian academy, but something or other happened and we all ended up in the school in Union, which offered a Bible study class we could take to keep learning the scripture. It was only then that I was grateful that Moma had left us that day at the fair, as we were sure alone in the world in public schools every day.

Sometime after that, out of the blue one day, Moma just showed up at the farm acting like nothing had happened after almost three years since running off with that Stretch guy. She was different, her hair was curly and blonde, a Virginia Slim hanging out her mouth, colored pink by her lipstick. She blared rock music as loud as she could in some car they called a Thunderbird, and wore sunglasses that kept her eyes hid from my laser-hot gaze.

Come give me a hug, Eli! She reached out to me with her arms. I bypassed the opportunity and tucked my hands tightly under my armpits. Don’t be like that, son. I had to leave and go find y’all a better life.

"This life is fine," I stammered at her. I had no idea why she had come back, but I wanted her to leave.

Now don’t be like that! There’s more out there for us. No stupid farm your Daddy wants to have, no dumb church.

"Why did you come back?" I growled at her, a fire lit in my belly, angry she had turned up and didn’t just stay gone. After a couple hours prancing around, she left again to only Lord knows where. She was free and living a delicious life in the world now, living in that place everyone called Ronceverte, in the next county over.

I was mindful not to participate in welcoming her back, as although I was the seventh of the eight kids and shouldn’t had much of anything by ways of a future in Gates, I had managed to be the smartest son and knew the most about the Lord’s teachings. I would never hesitate to wallow in the mud with a sick yew or pig or castrate some steers, neither. Papa knew this, and was intent on me taking over the farm and as speaker of the church someday, neither of which was a secret to the community nor my older brothers, Luke and Jonah, who acted more as bullies than as brothers to me.

No sooner Moma had wandered in with the autumn chill, Sister Tabitha’s husband passed away. By law of the community, a widow could remarry, but not Papa who was only divorced. I am not sure how, but Papa managed to get enough support to marry her anyways.

Tabitha was frumpy, plain and about as interesting as a hay bale. Her weight had gotten away from her over the years, and she now started looking like a toad. Her eye glasses were clunky and hideous, like giant discs perched on her bulbous head. Papa was handsome in his youth, and Moma beautiful, even with her fake blonde hair. I don’t know what Papa seen in Tabitha, but surely he had settled down and not up.

Papa was tired by now, thin and distant. The sun had aged him over the years working the farm. His dirty blonde hair would look almost a faint of brown in the dim of night, but still had its shine in the sun, turning a platinum blonde by the sun come July, just like my hair would.

We always attended church three times a week. I had started cracking my bible every night before bed and forced myself to read a chapter, even if it didn’t make any sense in my twelve-year-old head. I reckoned the Lord would deliver his message to me when he was ready to. During sermon, I sat up in the front pew and took notes in my Bible, Kailin sitting next to me.

Elijah! She’d screech in church, echoing off the thin walls of the ancient building. Stop it! She knew I hated losing focus in church and she’d act out just to spite.

"Be quiet! I’d snap at her in a whispered tone, waiting on Papa to stop rambling on his latest tangent at the altar. Be quiet."

She’d look at me half amused by my innocence while deviant thoughts fluttered around in her thick head, her cheeks blushed and her blue eyes piercing into me as if visual assault was now her ulterior motive. "You’re lame."

Stop, I’d quip at her again. Have to f-f-f-focus on the scripture! I would stutter, then look up and see that Papa had stopped sermon and was glaring at me cold.

Kailin stepped up her ornery habits after Tabitha started sitting with us on the front pew of the church, as if to show off in front of her. When we went to Kentucky for the bluegrass jubilee that Spring, we roasted in an old circus tent crowded up on some folding chairs, everyone’s leg thumping along to the banjos and guitars, singing the Lord’s praise.

Not Kailin.

She smirked and smited everyone in the tent to pass the time, then ventured off to do something more interesting, like listen to her CD player, which was contraband. If music didn’t bring the Lord joy, it was not allowed.

Kailin would sneak her CD player around on the farm and make me listen to some rock music she liked, and ended up stashing it the barn loft when she was almost caught listening to it by Papa.

I spent much of my free time in a pine grove tucked away from the farm against the mountains of the Blue Ridge. I started stashing Kailin’s things there, believing them to be safer out yonder beyond the pastures. The pine grove was surrounded by a thicket of hawthorn, making it a great place to hide myself as well as contraband. I took the CD player from the barn and stashed it away with some books I enjoyed reading. They weren’t the good book, but they made sense to me in my 12-year-old head.

By 2002, the contraband included the Sony Walkman, some Pokémon Cards half tucked into a tattered copy of Harry Potter that Kailin had found left behind on the school bus one day, as well as a small assortment of CDs.

When alone in the pine grove, along with just me and my thoughts, I would open the Walkman and pop out the goopy acrid batteries inside, then violently rub them against the granite stones and roll them around in my hands. Popping them back into the Walkman, I would watch LeeAnn Rimes spin in the tiny window on the device. This CD was my favorite, not only because LeeAnn looked much like Kailin, but her voice was soothing and hopeful.

My manual recharge of the spent batteries would last a song or two. I’d dance goofily around the grove to the music, pinching the left headphone cord in my hand to fix a growing short in the wire. In those moments, I lived in exile and I lived worldly.

At least, I did for a few minutes—before I detected peering eyes and quickly tossed all the contraband back under the rocks as crunching leaves and popping twigs confirmed my suspicion that I had been followed into my hiding spot.

What are you doing, Eli? A young voice peeped, just as Mark emerged from the hawthorn thickets.

Uh…Just, st-st-stacking these rocks, I stuttered, struggling to think of a rational explanation for my strange behavior. "What are you doing out here, Mark??"

Bored, he wantonly shrugged.

W-w-well, I stammered. G-go find your own place to play. I am playing here.

He examined me from my blonde hair to my tattered jeans and dirty bare feet from trotting in the dirt under the pines. Then he looked over at the rock pile, suspiciously. Do you have Pokémon in them rocks? He pointed his little 7-year-old finger at them.

What? N-no! I scolded. W-w-why would I have those?! You know them are the devil! I snapped my head back at him.

"Liar! I seen your Charizard! In your backpack!"

I glared at the kid, unsure what else to say. Well, it wasn’t mine!

It was!! He screamed at me now. I saw you trade your lunch money for it with Travis and he has –he has ALL the cards!!

I shook my head. Nope!

Mark stopped yelling and then just marched up to me as if to tell me a secret, pulling something from his pocket, hands clasped. I leaned into his stand and looked down at his hand as he slowly peeked it open.

"Holographic Blastoise! I exclaimed and then snatched the card from him. Whoa!" I held the card up in the air as if to see it better against the sun. He watched my excitement in total amusement as I clasped the card with both hands reading over the stats printed on the card as if I were actually going to play the battle card game.

"So, do you keep them in there?" He asked again, pointing to the rock rubble.

I looked back at him, then at the card, and then at the rubble. My heart started to pound out of my chest at the risk I was about to take in him knowing about the contraband.

"Swear. You can’t say anything, I swallow hard. Top secret, Mark."

"Top secret, he nodded. I want to see!" He rushed over to the hoard of items then stopped dead in his tracks as if he had just seen a ghost.

What?

"Harry Potter!? He finally exclaimed, ripping the book from the rubble. This is witchcraft!! Eli!!!" He clasped his small hands over his face as if to withhold a scream, dropping the book back into the rocks.

"Y-y-you swore. You can’t say anything," I reminded him.

What’s in the CD player? Where did you get it? He began to field questions after collecting himself, making me more uncomfortable with my decision to share in him the horde. I pull all the Pokémon cards out of the book, ignoring his question.

I have 147 now, I explained to him. "Well, assuming I can have this Blastoise."

He hunched over the cards and started to go through them. Yulp. I knew that Charizard was yours. This is the one I seen, alright.

I pulled the cards back from him, "you can’t tell anyone about this stuff. Any of it."

He nodded again. Swear.

Th-th-they’re just paper, I explained to him as well as to myself. "Ink and paper. Like school books. They mean nothing, really."

He nodded, then looked at the Walkman and then at me. You know those are forbidden, Eli. Only music that pleases—

"—Only music that pleases the Lord," I finished for him.

Mark looked at the horde and pulled a sleeve of CDs from the rubble.

Uhm, I blushed. It’s fine.

"Then why hide it?" He quipped, knowing I was lying through my teeth.

L-l-listen, Mark, I just like to listen to music out here while looking at my cards. The music is allowed, I elude, pulling the CD sleeve from his hands. An’ it’s about supper time, noways. We have to head back to the house soon.

Yeah, let’s go, Mark agreed, and then started to stack the rocks back into their places with me.

Yeah, I nodded. I quickly helped collect all the contraband and crammed it back under the rocks and then whisked the kid away from my hiding spot, I looked over my shoulder back at the rock monolith making a mental note to relocate all the contraband soon so it’s never discovered by Papa.

Confessions of My Affinity

Every Morning at 5 A.M., the quiet of the farmhouse would be drown out by the sounds of gospel music on Papa’s radio and the morning chores commence. In the darkness, I hunt down old jeans and slip on my muck boots to feed cattle before school, but not before heading to the barns to feed a couple scores of goats and sheep by bottle. I’d be hopping up on the school bus around 7 o’clock and be off to class by 8 o’clock.

As I scurry the halls packed full of students at school, I hunt for Kailin. I take my seat in the classroom only to see her already seated.

Here, she mumbles to me as she pulls out her science book from beneath her desk.

I look down at her hands, Oh. Batteries. Thank you! The last pair has been dead for like three weeks, I tuck them in my pocket as if we had just completed an illegal drug deal. How she managed to always get her hands on contraband was a curiosity I always had but never bothered to ask her.

"Are you losers doing drugs?" A voice rings out from behind us both.

Shut up, Ian, I say, snapping back around in my seat as if to forbid a rebuttal from him.

"Queer, he blurts at me. Who gets excited over batteries? You weird fucks need to go back to your Amish school… Batteries for what? Probably for your vibrator," he laughs at his own joke.

I usually prayed for the Lord to forgive Ian, but sometimes I secretly wished he’d just take him home early so I could be rid of his agitation altogether. The worst part about starting public schools was the bullies, Ian being the worst of them all.

Queer bait, Ian randomly insults me again, as if it’d strike a nerve on a second try.

I shake off the obsessive commentary and lift the science book out of my desk’s book hold, only to find that there are two science books inside. I lean under the desk to examine the situation to find that some student had abandoned their book on top of mine. I lift the orphaned book up to my desk and pry it open, the book flipping to page 321. I immediately glare at a magazine page stuffed inside the book.

Ooooh, Kailin lets out a groan of lust, looking over at my desk. "Marky Mark. He is so-so-so hot. Like, oh my god."

I snap the spare science book closed and discard it under the desk and bring out my book, prying it open instead. I pretended to read on about atoms, while my brain processes this Marky Mark photo and how his body contrasted with his white underwear, and how perfect he looked in the photo. In church we always learned about malevolent evil; our dark passengers that tempt us to sin. I had always suffered from jealousy and vengefulness, but a new evil was lurking deep inside my skull, the insidious compulsion to get butterflies in my stomach when looking at men. I knew what it meant, but I was determined to choose the Lord over worldly pleasure, to choose the light over my darkest of impulses. I wasn’t ready to admit my sexuality, hoping instead to just ignore it. I had never met a gay in the flesh before, so I wasn’t really sure I was actually one, noway.

Today, for some reason, my stomach sank and I suddenly found myself fighting a smile on my face, as if to blush about the image ingrained in my head. I spent the rest of science class thinking about this Marky Mark. By end of period, I mulled over how to lift Marky Mark’s photo from the other science book without getting caught. He was naturally a fit to exist in the rock monolith with Pokémon, Harry Potter, Britney Spears and LeeAnn Rimes.

I decided swapping science books was the only way to carry out the execution of this operation, my notes for class be damned. As the bell rang I swiftly swapped the books unnoticed. The rest of the day all I could think about was the lifted book in my backpack, my mind stirring between guilt and excitement.

As soon as I am off the bus, I rush into the house and flip open the book back to page 321. Without looking at it, I stuff the photo under my shirt and scurry off for the fence line and down into the pines beyond. At the rocks, I pull the magazine page from under my shirt and gaze at it. My newest contraband was now an image of… a man. I pull at my groin for a moment in total euphoria, ripping my suspenders off and dropping my drawers in some premeditated act. I somehow just instinctively knew how and what to do.

In a matter of moments, it’s over. I look at the image and the lust burns to ashes of contempt and guilt. I extend my gaze to the sky as if to finally see the Lord peering down at me in total dismay, but instead an orange-scattered sunlit sky looms overhead, the pines tassel back and forth in a quiet breeze. Nothing but the birds chirps in the distance, unbothered by my sin.

"I’m n-n-n not gay," I say aloud, just expecting the Lord—or anyone, to agree with me.

I look down at the photo as the butterflies flutter yon ways, revealing the vile taste of disgust in my mouth. I judge the picture not fit for the hoard. Not only that, the entire hoarded needed moving since my brother Mark had been enlightened to its existence. I begin to panic on where to hide everything, and especially this Marky Mark picture.

I decide that with no place else, the only option is to put the contraband under a new set of rocks, so I search for a rock in the woods too heavy for my brother to lift. I find a stone close by and roll it into the pine grove then I lay Marky Mark on the ground and begin carefully rolling it over on him, making a new hoard.

I stop just as the rock starts to crunch the paper and I look it over once more. I pick it up off the ground, the disgust boiling in my mouth again. I prepare myself to crumple it up and destroy the image but waves of lust linger in my veins in between the seething ire of guilt. My hands begin to shake and my lower lip quivers. I can’t risk him being smashed by the larger rock so I turn to the old hoard and slide Marky Mark into the collection between cracks in the rock mass. I will just destroy him tomorrow, I tell myself.

Over dinner, my mind continues to wander. I can’t process why Marky Mark makes me excited and feel so alive. It was like I had found the purest of drugs. I ponder if it’s sexual attraction or just me being a deviant and the devil playing on my out-of-control hoarding of sin. I start to fret that I am becoming just like Moma and my siblings, and that I will be led astray from the gospels like them. I think about Ian and how he is always lusting over Kailin in science class, wondering if I would feel the same if Marky Mark was in my class, or why I didn’t lust like this over Kailin, also.

I mean, she is very pretty.

She has prim eyes and dresses nice. There was one time she put on makeup and it gave me butterflies. That meant I couldn’t be a gay, because I found pretty qualities in a female. At least, I think that’s how that works.

The rest of the evening I watch the clock as if expecting it to do something unusual. At 9 o’clock, I retreat to my bedroom ahead of the mandatory curfew and climb into bed, but I can’t shake Marky Mark from my head. I lose control of my mind and body and find myself indulging in the image in my head, guilt flooding in each and every time. I knew I was crossing a line, each and every time, but I couldn’t help it. I lay there in my bed as tears start to wallow in my eyes. Not only was I now reading witchcraft novels, collecting images of demonic creatures, and listening to music that only brought me pleasure, but now I was also an abomination enjoying the nakedness of other men. I would tell myself the next day would be different, but only if I prayed and meant it. I would tell the Lord that I had sinned and deceived my parents, but—

—Why are you crying? Mark asks me from within the envelope of the darkness in our room, somehow having observed me feeling sorry for myself.

I’m not, I choke back the tears.

"Yes you are, he affirms. You okay?"

I roll over with a groan, ignoring my elusive brother and just look out the window at the moonlit pasture out yonder, the pine trees poking out just above the forest canopy in the far distance. The sin that lay out there boils in my mind. These thoughts are turning into actions, I think to myself. If god so hated gays, why was I falling into it? I was the best child, the favorite, the most knowledgeable of the sons. Why me?

Eli, Mark’s voice whispers. God always loves you.

I shake my head. I am not always so sure, I confide in him.

Yes huh, he assures me with a whimper of confidence. We’re going to be a happy family again! Tabby is nice to us! Plus, I think Maggie and Hope are super nice too! Mark had been

Reviews for Beneath The Whispering Pines

[Sly Deskins · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Appalachian-esque writing style is difficult to follow in the first chapter or so, but quickly transforms into a beautifully written LGBT-in-rural-America novel that is both heartbreaking and heartwarming.