Read The Preacher's Daughter for Free Online

don't always express the views of staff and management, do they?"
    "Indeed they do not," Fred Kindle opened the paper again, snapping it as he did. He peered over the top of it and narrowed his eyes at his daughter.
    "We'll be back late this afternoon, Fred." Eric put a hand on Naomi's back and steered her towards the door, saying good-bye to her mother as he did.
    Outside he looked at her quizzically. "What on earth did you say to your father that got him so worked up."
    "I failed to denounce a political party, which as we all know is the eleventh commandment," she said sarcastically. "He is such an ass..."
    "Hey!" He said the word sharply. "I was in complete sympathy with you until you said that. That's disrespectful, Naomi, and I'd better not hear you talk about your father like that again."
    She stopped, suddenly furious. "He's disrespectful!" she countered.
    "He's your father," Eric said in a decisive tone.
    "I don't care!"
    "Well you'd better start caring unless you want to spend more time standing than sitting!"
    Naomi's face went red with embarrassment. She'd been trying since last night - unsuccessfully - to forget the spankings he'd given her. And now to be threatened with more?
    Folding her arms across her chest, she stalked towards he church.
    "So this is how its going to be?" she asked over her shoulder. "Are you just going to beat me for everything I do wrong?"
    "No. Not everything." He had caught up with her after just a couple of strides. "But you will be accountable, Naomi. Someone needs to look after you."
    She laughed at the irony. In L.A. she'd often cried herself to sleep with the secret need to have someone care enough to take care of her, to stop her from her chain of self-destructive behaviors. Now she had someone in her life committed to doing just that, and she wasn't sure she wanted it.
    Naomi didn't tell him that, though. She didn't want to think about what had happened in L.A. anymore. If she just put it out of her mind then maybe it would all fade, like a bad dream. And she knew telling the Rev. Eric Feagans where he could put his oversight would earn her another trip over his knee. And she did not want that.
    "What are we doing today?" she asked, trying to change the subject.
    "Well, you're going to help me pack the bus. It's your first job as camp counselor."
    "Camp counselor. Me?" It still amazed her that he trusted her around other young people, especially given what she suspected was a negative picture painted by her father.
    "Stop worrying. You'll be great."
    She sighed, not sure whether to be encouraged by his confidence or intimidated by his expectations.
    The old school bus was backed up to the church storage shed, and she helped him load inner tubes, boxes of bottled water, soda and sunscreen into the back.
    Then he instructed her to sit behind him and check off the list of names and addresses until every one of the campers had been picked up.
    Eric introduced Naomi to each camper as they climbed onto the bus. Each one either smiled or offered a disinterested greeting typical of teens who didn't think it was cool to get excited about anyone or anything.
    Naomi felt herself relax a bit more as each teen climbed on the bus. They weren't the uptight little Jesus freaks she had feared they'd be. Most of them were surprisingly normal. A couple of the kids even had pierced lips or noses.
    Eric drove as they chatted and giggled in the row of seats behind them, and Naomi was struck again by how different he was from her father. When she was younger the Rev. Fred Kindle sometimes tried to organize day trips for youth in the battered church bus. He confiscated radios, cassette players - any musical devices the kids had and turned the scratchy bus radio to a Christian music station and tried to get the kids to sing along with whatever cheesy song the station was playing.
    It was if her father saw something inherently evil in being young; perhaps he remembered how difficult it was to ignore a world