Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

  “I keep telling you not to hide that mop back there. Can’t nobody get at it.”

  “I always get at it. Ain’t everybody as clumsy as you.”

  Elisha let fall the stiff gray mop and rushed at John, catching him off balance and lifting him from the floor. With both arms tightening around John’s waist he tried to cut John’s breath, watching him meanwhile with a smile that, as John struggled and squirmed, became a set, ferocious grimace. With both hands John pushed and pounded against the shoulders and biceps of Elisha, and tried to thrust with his knees against Elisha’s belly. Usually such a battle was soon over, since Elisha was so much bigger and stronger and as a wrestler so much more skilled; but tonight John was filled with a determination not to be conquered, or at least to make the conquest dear. With all the strength that was in him he fought against Elisha, and he was filled with a strength that was almost hatred. He kicked, pounded, twisted, pushed, using his lack of size to confound and exasperate Elisha, whose damp fists, joined at the small of John’s back, soon slipped. It was a deadlock; he could not tighten his hold, John could not break it. And so they turned, battling in the narrow room, and the odor of Elisha’s sweat was heavy in John’s nostrils. He saw the veins rise on Elisha’s forehead and in his neck; his breath became jagged and harsh, and the grimace on his face became more cruel; and John, watching these manifestations of his power, was filled with a wild delight. They stumbled against the folding-chairs, and Elisha’s foot slipped and his hold broke. They stared at each other, half grinning. John slumped to the floor, holding his head between his hands.

  “I didn’t hurt you none, did I?” Elisha asked.

  John looked up. “Me? No, I just want to catch my breath.”

  Elisha went to the sink, and splashed cold water on his face and neck. “I reckon you going to let me work now,” he said.

  “It wasn’t me that stopped you in the first place.” He stood up. He found that his legs were trembling. He looked at Elisha, who was drying himself on the towel. “You teach me wrestling one time, okay?”

  “No, boy,” Elisha said, laughing, “I don’t want to wrestle with you. You too strong for me.” And he began to run hot water into the great pail.

  John walked past him to the front and picked up his broom. In a moment Elisha followed and began mopping near the door. John had finished sweeping, and he now mounted to the pulpit to dust the three thronelike chairs, purple, with white linen squares for the headpieces and for the massive arms. It dominated all, the pulpit: a wooden platform raised above the congregation, with a high stand in the center for the Bible, before which the preacher stood. There faced the congregation, flowing downward from this height, the scarlet altar cloth that bore the golden cross and the legend: JESUS SAVES. The pulpit was holy. None could stand so high unless God’s seal was on him.

  He dusted the piano and sat down on the piano stool to wait until Elisha had finished mopping one side of the church and he could replace the chairs. Suddenly Elisha said, without looking at him:

  “Boy, ain’t it time you was thinking about your soul?”

  “I guess so,” John said with a quietness that terrified him.

  “I know it looks hard,” said Elisha, “from the outside, especially when you young. But you believe me, boy, you can’t find no greater joy than you find in the service of the Lord.”

  John said nothing. He touched a black key on the piano and it made a dull sound, like a distant drum.

  “You got to remember,” Elisha said, turning now to look at him, “that you think about it with a carnal mind. You still got Adam’s mind, boy, and you keep thinking about your friends, you want to do what they do, and you want to go to the movies, and I bet you think about girls, don’t you, Johnny? Sure you do,” he said, half smiling, finding his answer in John’s face, “and you don’t want to give up all that. But when the Lord saves you He burns out all that old Adam, He gives you a new mind and a new heart, and then you don’t find no pleasure in the world, you get all your joy in walking and talking with Jesus every day.”

  He stared in a dull paralysis of terror at the body of Elisha. He saw him standing—had Elisha forgotten?—beside Ella Mae before the altar while Father James rebuked him for the evil that lived in the flesh. He looked into Elisha’s face, full of questions he would never ask. And Elisha’s face told him nothing.

  “People say it’s hard,” said Elisha, bending again to his mop, “but, let me tell you, it ain’t as hard as living in this wicked world and all the sadness of the world where there ain’t no pleasure nohow, and then dying and going to Hell. Ain’t nothing as hard as that.” And he looked back at John. “You see how the Devil tricks people into losing their souls?”

  “Yes,” said John at last, sounding almost angry, unable to bear his thoughts, unable to bear the silence in which Elisha looked at him.

  Elisha grinned. “They got girls in the school I go to”—he was finished with one side of the church and he motioned to John to replace the chairs—“and they nice girls, but their minds ain’t on the Lord, and I try to tell them the time to repent ain’t tomorrow, it’s today. They think ain’t no sense to worrying now, they can sneak into Heaven on their deathbed. But I tell them, honey, ain’t everybody lies down to die—people going all the time, just like that, today you see them and tomorrow you don’t. Boy, they don’t know what to make of old Elisha because he don’t go to the movies, and he don’t dance, and he don’t play cards, and he don’t go with them behind the stairs.” He paused and stared at John, who watched him helplessly, not knowing what to say. “And boy, some of them is real nice girls, I mean beautiful girls, and when you got so much power that they don’t tempt you then you know you saved sure enough. I just look at them and I tell them Jesus saved me one day, and I’m going to go all the way with Him. Ain’t no woman, no, nor no man neither going to make me change my mind.” He paused again, and smiled and dropped his eyes. “That Sunday,” he said, “that Sunday, you remember?—when Father got up in the pulpit and called me and Ella Mae down because he thought we was about to commit sin—well, boy, I don’t want to tell no lie, I was mighty hot against the old man that Sunday. But I thought about it, and the Lord made me to see that he was right. Me and Ella Mae, we didn’t have nothing on our minds at all, but look like the Devil is just everywhere—sometime the Devil he put his hand on you and look like you just can’t breathe. Look like you just a-burning up, and you got to do something, and you can’t do nothing; I been on my knees many a time, weeping and wrestling before the Lord—crying, Johnny—and calling on Jesus’ name. That’s the only name that’s got power over Satan. That’s the way it’s been with me sometime, and I’m saved. What you think it’s going to be like for you, boy?” He looked at John, who, head down, was putting the chairs in order. “Do you want to be saved, Johnny?”

  “I don’t know,” John said.

  “Will you try him? Just fall on your knees one day and ask him to help you to pray?”

  John turned away, and looked out over the church, which now seemed like a vast, high field, ready for the harvest. He thought of a First Sunday, a Communion Sunday not long ago when the saints, dressed all in white, ate flat, unsalted Jewish bread, which was the body of the Lord, and drank red grape juice, which was His blood. And when they rose from the table, prepared especially for this day, they separated, the men on the one side, and the women on the other, and two basins were filled with water so that they could wash each other’s feet, as Christ had commanded His disciples to do. They knelt before each other, woman before woman, and man before man, and washed and dried each other’s feet. Brother Elisha had knelt before John’s father. When the service was over they had kissed each other with a holy kiss. John turned again and looked at Elisha.

  Elisha looked at him and smiled. “You think about what I said, boy.”

  When they were finished Elisha sat down at the piano and played to himself. John sat on a chair in the front row and watched him.

  “Don�
�t look like nobody’s coming tonight,” he said after a long while. Elisha did not arrest his playing of a mournful song: “Oh, Lord, have mercy on me.”

  “They’ll be here,” said Elisha.

  And as he spoke there was a knocking on the door. Elisha stopped playing. John went to the door, where two sisters stood, Sister McCandless and Sister Price.

  “Praise the Lord, son,” they said.

  “Praise the Lord,” said John.

  They entered, heads bowed and hands folded before them around their Bibles. They wore the black cloth coats that they wore all week and they had old felt hats on their heads. John felt a chill as they passed him, and he closed the door.

  Elisha stood up, and they cried again: “Praise the Lord!” Then the two women knelt for a moment before their seats to pray. This was also passionate ritual. Each entering saint, before he could take part in the service, must commune for a moment alone with the Lord. John watched the praying women. Elisha sat again at the piano and picked up his mournful song. The women rose, Sister Price first, and then Sister McCandless, and looked around the church.

  “Is we the first?” asked Sister Price. Her voice was mild, her skin was copper. She was younger than Sister McCandless by several years, a single woman who had never, as she testified, known a man.

  “No, Sister Price,” smiled Brother Elisha, “Brother Johnny here was the first. Him and me cleaned up this evening.”

  “Brother Johnny is mighty faithful,” said Sister McCandless. “The Lord’s going to work with him in a mighty way, you mark my words.”

  There were times—whenever, in fact, the Lord had shown His favor by working through her—when whatever Sister McCandless said sounded like a threat. Tonight she was still very much under the influence of the sermon she had preached the night before. She was an enormous woman, one of the biggest and blackest God had ever made, and He had blessed her with a mighty voice with which to sing and preach, and she was going out soon into the field. For many years the Lord had pressed Sister McCandless to get up, as she said, and move; but she had been of timid disposition and feared to set herself above others. Not until He laid her low, before this very altar, had she dared to rise and preach the gospel. But now she had buckled on her traveling shoes. She would cry aloud and spare not, and lift up her voice like a trumpet in Zion.

  “Yes,” said Sister Price, with her gentle smile, “He says that he that is faithful in little things shall be made chief over many.”

  John smiled back at her, a smile that, despite the shy gratitude it was meant to convey, did not escape being ironic, or even malicious. But Sister Price did not see this, which deepened John’s hidden scorn.

  “Ain’t but you two who cleaned the church?” asked Sister McCandless with an unnerving smile—the smile of the prophet who sees the secrets hidden in the hearts of men.

  “Lord, Sister McCandless,” said Elisha, “look like it ain’t never but us two. I don’t know what the other young folks does on Saturday nights, but they don’t come nowhere near here.”

  Neither did Elisha usually come anywhere near the church on Saturday evenings; but as the pastor’s nephew he was entitled to certain freedoms; in him it was a virtue that he came at all.

  “It sure is time we had a revival among our young folks,” said Sister McCandless. “They cooling off something terrible. The Lord ain’t going to bless no church what lets its young people get so lax, no sir. He said, because you ain’t neither hot or cold I’m going to spit you outen my mouth. That’s the Word.” And she looked around sternly, and Sister Price nodded.

  “And Brother Johnny here ain’t even saved yet,” said Elisha. “Look like the saved young people would be ashamed to let him be more faithful in the house of God than they are.”

  “He said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” said Sister Price with a triumphant smile.

  “Indeed, He did,” agreed Sister McCandless. “This boy going to make it to the Kingdom before any of them, you wait and see.”

  “Amen,” said Brother Elisha, and he smiled at John.

  “Is Father going to come and be with us tonight?” asked Sister McCandless after a moment.

  Elisha frowned and thrust out his lower lip. “I don’t reckon so, sister,” he said. “I believe he going to try to stay home tonight and preserve his strength for the morning service. The Lord’s been speaking to him in visions and dreams and he ain’t got much sleep lately.”

  “Yes,” said Sister McCandless, “that sure is a praying man. I tell you, it ain’t every shepherd tarries before the Lord for his flock like Father James does.”

  “Indeed, that is the truth,” said Sister Price, with animation. “The Lord sure done blessed us with a good shepherd.”

  “He mighty hard sometimes,” said Sister McCandless, “but the Word is hard. The way of holiness ain’t no joke.”

  “He done made me to know that,” said Brother Elisha with a smile.

  Sister McCandless stared at him. Then she laughed. “Lord,” she cried, “I bet you can say so!”

  “And I loved him for that,” said Sister Price. “It ain’t every pastor going to set down his own nephew—in front of the whole church, too. And Elisha hadn’t committed no big fault.”

  “Ain’t no such thing,” said Sister McCandless, “as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain’t going to rest till he’s in the room. You is in the Word or you ain’t—ain’t no halfway with God.”

  “You reckon we ought to start?” asked Sister Price doubtfully, after a pause. “Don’t look to me like nobody else is coming.”

  “Now, don’t you sit there,” laughed Sister McCandless, “and be of little faith like that. I just believe the Lord’s going to give us a great service tonight.” She turned to John. “Ain’t your daddy coming out tonight?”

  “Yes’m,” John replied, “he said he was coming.”

  “There!” said Sister McCandless. “And your mama—is she coming out, too?”

  “I don’t know,” John said. “She mighty tired.”

  “She ain’t so tired she can’t come out and pray a little while,” said Sister McCandless.

  For a moment John hated her, and he stared at her fat, black profile in anger. Sister Price said:

  “But I declare, it’s a wonder how that woman works like she does, and keeps those children looking so neat and clean and all, and gets out to the house of God almost every night. Can’t be nothing but the Lord that bears her up.”

  “I reckon we might have a little song,” said Sister McCandless, “just to warm things up. I sure hate to walk in a church where folks is just sitting and talking. Look like it takes all my spirit away.”

  “Amen,” said Sister Price.

  Elisha began a song: “This may be my last time,” and they began to sing:

  “This may be the last time I pray with you,

  This may be my last time, I don’t know.”

  As they sang, they clapped their hands, and John saw that Sister McCandless looked about her for a tambourine. He rose and mounted the pulpit steps, and took from the small opening at the bottom of the pulpit three tambourines. He gave one to Sister McCandless, who nodded and smiled, not breaking her rhythm, and he put the rest on a chair near Sister Price.

  “This may be the last time I sing with you

  This may be my last time, I don’t know.”

  He watched them, singing with them—because otherwise they would force him to sing—and trying not to hear the words that he forced outward from his throat. And he thought to clap his hands, but he could not; they remained tightly folded in his lap. If he did not sing they would be upon him, but his heart told him that he had no right to sing or to rejoice.

  “Oh, this

  May be my last time

  This

  May be my last time

  Oh, this

  May be my last time …”

  And he watched Elisha, who was a young man in the Lord; wh
o, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, had been given power over death and Hell. The Lord had lifted him up, and turned him around, and set his feet on the shining way. What were the thoughts of Elisha when night came, and he was alone where no eye could see, and no tongue bear witness, save only the trumpetlike tongue of God? Were his thoughts, his bed, his body foul? What were his dreams?

  “This may be my last time,

  I don’t know.”

  Behind him the door opened and the wintry air rushed in. He turned to see, entering the door, his father, his mother, and his aunt. It was only the presence of his aunt that shocked him, for she had never entered this church before: she seemed to have been summoned to witness a bloody act. It was in all her aspect, quiet with a dreadful quietness, as she moved down the aisle behind his mother and knelt for a moment beside his mother and father to pray. John knew that it was the hand of the Lord that had led her to this place, and his heart grew cold. The Lord was riding on the wind tonight. What might that wind have spoken before the morning came?

  PART TWO

  The Prayers of the Saints

  And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

  ONE

  Florence’s Prayer

  Light and life to all He brings,

  Risen with healing in His wings!

  FLORENCE RAISED HER voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing:

  “It’s me, it’s me, it’s me, oh, Lord.

  Standing in the need of prayer.”

  Gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last be humbled. She did not look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a moment, the congregation and the piano joined her:

  “Not my father, not my mother,