Chapter 1 #2
This man is right about many religious traditions in the South.
And those traditions tend to permeate the culture here.
This is the land of creationism and banned books and prayer before Friday night football games.
This is the land of abstinence as the official sex education stance.
This is the land of dressing to the nines for Sunday morning church and gathering around pot roasts for Sunday lunch.
This is the land of pastors being the only guests worthy of busting out the good china.
This is the land of “everyone knows that’s my regular pew. ”
This is the land I inherited. And it is not quaint.
“I may know that better than anyone,” I finally say. Not sadly. Just as the fact it is.
The intense curiosity that blazes across his face threatens to scorch me. I clear my throat. “So how long have you been at this? That contraption”—I gesture toward the harness-like straps that hold his camera and camera bag—“makes me think this isn’t your first rodeo.”
The eye crinkles appear again, even as his mouth barely twitches. Why am I so intrigued that his real amusement is so quiet?
“I’ve been doing this a good seven years,” he says, the faintest trace of fatigue lacing the words. “I have an online channel and some other outlets where I publish investigative documentaries about injustice in the Evangelical South.”
I slap a hand over my mouth, and his body tenses like it’s on high alert. Oh my word. Oh my word. Is he …
“Are you Danny Reeves?”
A quick succession of blinks is the only outward sign of how startled he is. “Yes.”
I stumble back a pace. He leans forward with an outstretched hand, as if he might steady me, but stops short, his hand squeezing into a fist and slowly sinking back by his side.
I can only stare at the man behind the documentaries I have devoured one by one over the past year.
His online channel, UNsweet Tea, does indeed investigate the injustices that can so easily flourish in our sweet Southern culture.
He apparently made his first documentary when he was only seventeen: a deep-dive exploration of how high school science classes are taught (or rather, not taught) here in the middle of the Evangelical south—AKA the Bible Belt.
Each of his videos—whether on a local church’s banishment of an LGBTQIA+ couple, or church-organized protests against the removal of a Confederate statue—gets millions of views.
When my whole world was crashing down around me, Danny Reeves’s videos showed me I could be bigger than where and how I was raised. Right behind therapy and my friends, UNsweet Tea is one of the major reasons I’m still standing on two feet today.
And this is him. The man who had those ideas. Found the stories. Captured them. Gave them to me.
I suddenly have no idea what I could possibly say to him. How I could convey what his work has meant to me. So I go with a more simplistic observation: “You’ve never shown your face in your documentaries.”
He’s always behind the camera, even when conducting interviews.
But I suddenly realize why I recognized that charming voice he tried to use with me earlier—it’s his interview voice.
How often has that voice filled my head while I curled around my laptop, crying over the nuance and care with which he handles even the most ideologically charged topics?
But it’s not his real voice. His real voice is like whiskey—smooth and burning.
It’s that voice he uses now when he husks, “You’ve seen them?”
A disbelieving laugh sneaks out of me. “I haven’t just seen them. I’ve … lived with them. For Pete’s sake, I wrote a paper on Plight of the Evangelical Preacher.”
He brings a hand up to tuck his shoulder-length hair behind his ear but seems to remember he’s wearing a beanie when his long fingers graze the soft material. “You’re in college?”
“This is my last semester. At …” I hesitate, shifting my eyes downward to collect myself for a beat.
What will this progressive, brilliant man think of me when he hears where I’ve secured my higher education?
But I return his unwavering gaze and steel my shoulders when I pronounce, “At Hilltop University.”
He’ll obviously know the university. Hilltop’s reputation is well established throughout this area and the South as a whole. Forty-five minutes west of Chattanooga, Hilltop is an ultraconservative religious university with some of the most backward policies and practices around.
I can still find it hard to be gracious with myself for being affiliated with such an intolerant institution.
Even now, I mentally repeat a positive affirmation from therapy to keep the embarrassment at bay, especially since Danny is without the full picture of who I was in my first semester versus who I am in my final semester.
Danny doesn’t move an inch for a long moment, but then he drags a knuckle across his bottom lip again as he studies me. Is that what he does when he’s wrestling to put thoughts together? Did he drag knuckles across that lip at his computer when he created the videos that changed my life?
“You know my name,” he finally says. “I don’t know your name.”
I wasn’t expecting that. Why do I feel a blush creeping across my face? “Christina Edmondson.”
“Christina,” he echoes in a whisper, almost to himself. My cheeks burn hotter, and his gaze snags on whatever he sees there. He audibly swallows. “So that’s why there can’t be any footage of you at a pagan festival. Because you’re a student at Hilltop.”
“Yes.”
“You’d be penalized. Maybe even expelled.”
“Yes.”
He inhales deeply and releases it, eyes never leaving my face.
“What if I could promise you that I would not release any of this footage until after you graduate? June, at the very earliest. It will probably take me that long to edit it together anyway. I’ll even sign something to that effect, if you need more than my word. ”
I gape at him. “Why do you want to keep me in this documentary so badly?”
His big, deep eyes finally shift away from me. “Your face,” he says to the ground. “Your face when you cut that cord …”
He trails off, eyes unfocused, as if visualizing the scene—and the raw sincerity in his voice zips across my skin like an electric charge.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He snaps his eyes back to mine. “Okay?”
“You can use the footage, as long as it comes out in June or later. No paperwork necessary. I believe you.” And isn’t that rare, for me to believe someone at their word? This man is practically a stranger.
Although … is he? I know his work, don’t I?
He exhales shakily in relief, eyes crinkling with his quiet smile. I experience a sharp and sudden urge to press my thumb into those crinkles, to feel that smile.
The next words fly out of my mouth: “What would an interview be like?”
“I have about a hundred questions I want to ask you,” he says quietly, almost to himself. He visibly shakes it off, pulling on that affable front. “But I would keep it to just a few, no more than ten minutes.”
“Can I get a preview of the questions?”
He considers. “I’ll ask what you thought of the cord-cutting ritual …”
“Mmm, no fewer than four types of magic, you know.”
His lips twitch. “What you were thinking about when you cut that cord.”
“That’s a sacred secret.”
“If you’ve ever been to a pagan event before—”
“Hard no.”
“Why you went in the first place …”
“Because I can.”
His easy charisma evaporates as the burning man consumes him. “Because you can?”
I square my shoulders. “Yes.”
“Do you do everything that you can?”
I flick my eyes to the camera hanging deadly from his harness. The interview hasn’t technically started yet, but it seems his curiosity is getting the best of him. And I like it so much more than the congenial man he tries to emulate.
“No, I don’t do everything that I technically can. But I do have a list.”
“A list?”
I nod. “Attending a pagan festival is on it.”
His furrowed brow only heightens his intensity. “What kind of list is this, Christina?”
I really hope he doesn’t notice how much my name in his darkly simmering voice sends a shiver down my body. “It’s a list of things I was told my whole life that I should not do. Could not do. But I can do them. So I’m doing them.”
Now his big eyes widen and spark. “Can I see this list?”
I hesitate. The list is as deeply personal as any list can be, and I’m more than a little surprised that I’m not instantly saying no, that I’m apparently considering showing it to this documentarian with his camera.
When I open my mouth, still unsure of what I will say, dozens of howls pierce the dark sky.
Danny squeezes his eyes shut as if trying to draw the strength to endure, and I can’t help but laugh. His eyes fly open at the sound.
“Maybe,” he begins, raising his voice and leaning into me so I might hear him over the howling, “we can go elsewhere for our interview?”
I’m swallowed up by big, deep eyes hovering only inches above. “You still want to interview me?”
The corners of his mouth quirk up a fraction. “Christina, I’ve never wanted to interview anyone more in my life.”
And now I’ve come full circle: My heart rate is just as high at the end of this conversation as it was at the beginning.
But if I’m going to agree to an interview, I’m sure as hell going to do whatever it takes to get past the easy charm.
I want to see where that understated smile might lead.
I want to see just how intensely he can burn.
So I smile up at him, and I say the two words that any born-and-bred Southerner who finds themself in the middle of nowhere Tennessee at nine o’clock at night would expect: “Waffle House?”