Sunday's Silence: A Novel

by Gina nahai

  Anne Pelton saw Adam’s reaction and became agitated herself. Wanting to prove he had nothing to fear, she opened the snake box, slipped her fingers under the copperhead’s mouth, and gently pulled it up. She tapped the snake on the head, as if in greeting, then laid it back down.

  She had miscalculated Adam’s willingness to get close, and now, she realized, it was too late to win him back.

  She saw that he was leaving, and she followed him to the door. She knew he would never return to see her again, and she felt sorry she had scared him off. Just before he left, she put her hand on his arm and stopped him.

  “Your mother came into Sam’s church one day with her new husband,” she said.

  She wanted to give him this—her last memory of Clare— whether he wanted it or not. It was like a keepsake she had guarded for too long, a duty she felt she should discharge.

  “Sam was married to Peg then, who had a wooden leg, just like Clare’s husband, except Peg used to take her leg off and leave it under her bed at night where she slept. I remember thinking how ironic that both your mother and Sam had run all their lives, only to end up married to people who could barely walk.

  “She sat down and let Sam preach the whole afternoon. She’d been gone for a few years by then, and now she looked old and not at all pretty like she used to. Sam walked by her a few times, but he didn’t attack her at all or even look at her in a special way. When the service was done, she stood up, and I saw that she was crying.”

  Suddenly, Adam knew how the story would end.

  “He hadn’t attacked Clare at all, you see,” Anne said. “He hadn’t said a word about her the whole time she was there. That’s what killed her: that Little Sam, who never could look away from her, didn’t recognize her enough to attack.”

  He STOPPED asking questions.

  It was a mistake, he knew—-the kind of mistake he would live to regret, the kind that had cost him in the past, every time he had believed in his mother, or Rose, or all the seeming certainties of a life where, in the end, no one could be trusted. Maybe that’s why he had been able to live dangerously for so long, why he had never sought the certainties of a conventional existence, why he was so drawn to Blue who gave herself so willingly to the unknown, who embraced death so easily, yielded to Adam so entirely.

  Or maybe it wasn’t the thrill of the unknown at all. Maybe it was her hands that were so small and frail and helpless sometimes, her smile that reminded him of all the lost children he had ever seen wandering the world, the impression he had that he was her last and only hope.

  He called Chicago to say he would be staying in Knoxville for a while longer. He said he was still working on Sam’s story, that he would write it in due time, that he would call again when he was ready. The silence at the other end might have meant he had already lost his job, but he did not stop to wonder. He wanted Blue more than anything he had ever wanted in life and he was willing to risk his job, give up the principles he had so far lived by, just to be near her, to turn a corner at night and know he would see her, waiting for him, her hands reaching toward him.

  He didn’t want to think that those might be a killer’s hands, the hands of a woman who betrayed her husband and her God and all the laws of her church and her people. He didn’t want to think that she belonged to another man, that Adam was crossing boundaries he had never imagined he would cross. Isiah Frank raised a sarcastic eyebrow at him every time Adam went by, and the old ladies at Nate’s whispered to one another whenever he walked in for coffee, and Mrs. Roscoe bristled when he ran into her on the street, but all that, in the end, was irrelevant.

  In mid-September Isiah Frank counted the weeks Adam had been a guest and handed him an invoice.

  “Thirty-one days,” he said, smiling triumphantly.

  They had met on the staircase. Adam took the piece of paper from him and kept walking down. Isiah watched him descend the steps.

  “Interesting town,” he called when Adam had almost reached the door. “Grows on you like kudzu.”

  Adam hesitated, then started to leave again.

  “The only trouble is,” Isiah dug, “the kudzu can cover a whole lot. Even corpses.”

  He HAD DINNER at Lucille’s, walked back to the boardinghouse and tried to start the story he should have finished weeks ago. He sat with his tape recorder, dictating a line or two, stopped the machine and erased what he had said. He couldn’t find the right beginning, couldn’t remove himself from the story enough to see it for what it was. Around nine Isiah Frank came in and opened his window, mumbled that the smoke from Adam’s cigarettes was giving the cat asthma so he might as well choke the rest of the neighborhood instead. He was wearing a gray cashmere robe and flannel pants, red leather slippers and a red ascot with tiny yellow and grey squares. He stared at Adam’s tape recorder as if expecting an invitation.

  “If you’re going to mention me,” he finally said, “make sure you say I was well-dressed.”

  She came in at ten o’clock. Adam heard the front door open and close, held his breath and waited until she had landed on his floor. When he could no longer contain his restlessness, he went to the top of the stairs and took her face in his hands, slid his fingers into her hair and kissed her. Back in the room he saw her reflection in the tall glass of the half-open window, closed the door behind her and pulled her dress off an inch at a time. She leaned against the dark wood, her hands locked behind her, her body trembling in his grip. He kissed her neck, inhaled the scent of unknown borders and unquelled longings on her skin. She was all he wanted, he thought, all he would ever want.

  She DIDN’T go home to her husband that night.

  She stayed with Adam until noon the next day, slept in his bed and moved around his room as if she had lived there all her life. Intrigued, Adam let the hours pass but did not ask the question: he liked watching her up close, trying to unravel her mystery, find out for himself the reasons for her acts.

  At noon she put on her dress and tied her hair back in a loose knot.

  “It’s Friday,” she told him. “I’m going to church.”

  He stood still and let her feel the impact of her own words. She already knew what he wanted to tell her—that her time in the church was over, regardless of how much she wanted to belong and how hard she could fight a snake. She had been banned once and clawed her way back after her daughter’s death, and maybe she wanted to do it again, to show the believers she had been stronger than Sam and still immune to harm, but it was too late because too many of them distrusted her and blamed her for Sam’s death.

  “What if they don’t want you there?” Adam asked.

  They walked to the train station on Central and Jackson Streets. She was going to ride a train down to Chattanooga, meet Anne Pelton at an evening service conducted by a man named Jimmy Ray Weston who had been Little Sam’s disciple. The service would take up half the night, and afterward, she would ride home with Anne or stay at a church member’s home.

  On the street, Blue stayed close to Adam and seemed oblivious to the stares of passersby and to the station’s small staff.

  When the train arrived she reached over and kissed the side of Adam’s face, put her arms around him and let her head rest for an instant on his chest. He felt the tremor in her bones then, sensed the fear—of the snakes, of the believers, of losing her way in the unknown—throb like a current under her skin. She was going back for the wrong reasons, he thought. The church members would sense her desperation and turn on her with a fury.

  He wouldn’t let her go alone.

  He climbed on the train, took her hand and lifted her easily on board. It was a cargo train headed south, the kind Adam had ridden in his youth, when he had helped transport the tobacco crop he would sell on the open market. When the train started rolling, he lit a cigarette and watched the earth slide past him on the sides of the tracks, closed his eyes and imagined he was leaving Knoxville for good. He liked the illusion of departure, he thought—the seeming possibility of no r
eturn.

  The True House of Prayer in Jesus’ Name was a gray cinder block structure built in the middle of a lot cleared of trees and shrubbery but left unpaved. By the time Adam and Blue arrived, the service had started and the worshipers were gathered inside. From far away Adam could hear the sound of their music and singing, feel the reverberations of feet stomping the ground and hands clapping together in unison.

  A hand-painted sign on the side of the highway read worship WITH US ON YOUR WAY TO MEET THE LORD. A Second sign, carved in the shape of a cross, hung above the door leading into the church and proclaimed come along with us on our way to eternity. It marked the beginning of a narrow dirt road that veered off the side of highway and into the woods, eventually leading to a space where cars were parked. Beyond that were three rows of wooden tables used for after-services meals, then the building itself.

  Inside the church the floor was bare but clean, and light poured in from small rectangular windows carved high into the walls. A dozen pews were lined up on either side of the room, providing separate seating for men and women. An area in the back was reserved for children too young to stay on their mothers’ laps during the long service. A kerosene heater provided warmth.

  Directly across from the door, the pulpit was made of wood boards nailed together and painted white. It was mounted on a platform raised ten inches off the floor and also built of wood. A black cross was painted on the front of the pulpit, a second, larger one on the wall behind it.

  Someone had brought in a microphone, but left it unplugged for lack of electrical wiring. Tubs of water had been laid against the far-right wall for those worshipers who indulged in washing one another’s feet: It was a way for the believers to bond, for every man to retain his humility among the others.

  On the pulpit were a jar of olive oil, two kerosene torches, and some Coke bottles filled with oil and stuffed with rags. In another bottle was a green, viscous matter Adam guessed was battery fluid.

  In the midst of the singing, children as young as two and three ran up and down the aisles and climbed over the pews. Two teenage boys were clanging cymbals on the right side of the pulpit. Anne Pelton was dancing around with a tambourine in her hand, singing “Jesus Turned the Water Into Wine.” Her arms were raised above her head, and her eyes were closed as her body swayed to the music.

  Bob Reynolds’s young bride, who looked pregnant, was smiling, as if in a state of grace. Across from her a thirtyish woman in a long gray dress stood mesmerized by an invisible sign. She was ghost-pale, her face thin as a razor, her hands skinny as chicken feet. She was the kind of woman who was used to tragedy and sought it out where she could, Adam thought— the kind who wouldn’t know what to do with a bit of good fortune. She must have arrived at church early that day, remained by the door and kissed everyone who came in, wanting to suck out of them the joy they had brought, to instill in them the same sense of dread and foreboding she lived with all the time.

  She was the first to notice Blue. Her eyes narrowed for a moment, searching her face and then Adam’s. Suddenly animated, she turned to a bald man who had hung an electric bass around his neck but left it unplugged, and motioned toward Blue with her head. Then all at once everyone was turning to the door. The music began to level off, and mouths went limp in midsong. Even the children realized something was wrong and stopped their play.

  Blue stood in the doorway with her revealing dress and her bare arms, looking nothing like the Holiness woman she had once pretended to be, and the very fact that she had dared come back was so overwhelming, barely anyone noticed her lover next to her.

  Near the pulpit a tall man with stringy hair and bony legs stood up from his seat and cleared his throat. He had a bible in his right hand, a jar of olive oil in the other, and he came toward Blue as if to warn that she had ventured onto dangerous ground—as if he were motivated by concern for her and not by the desire to punish. From the way he was taking the initiative, Adam guessed this man must be the pastor of the church, or at least a deacon.

  “Sister Blue!” the man said, and the very sound of his voice carried a thousand accusations he did not need to articulate.

  Blue stood with her back straight and her arms at her sides. She looked serious but undisturbed, unafraid in a way that could have either disarmed or incited the man.

  “Jimmy Ray,” she said quietly.

  They stared each other down—the pastor taller than Blue, his eyes and face laden with the conviction of his own power.

  Just then Paul Kane, the newly appointed pastor of the Highway Tabernacle Church of God, appeared from the sidelines and took Adam’s hand.

  “Welcome,” he said in a voice too loud to have been casual. “Welcome!”

  One of the first people Adam had interviewed when he’d arrived in Knoxville, Paul Kane was younger and more open than most of his fellow preachers. He had taken Adam into his home and answered all his questions with as much sincerity as he could muster. He had told Adam about Blue’s invulnerability to harm, sworn the woman would never be bit. All he had asked in return was that Adam write a story that was fair and accurate.

  Pastor Jimmy Ray Weston studied Paul Kane and understood the meaning of his act. For a moment he considered the wisdom of standing his ground against another minister from the same faith. Paul Kane was slapping Adam’s back as if they were old friends, and guiding him to a seat. Jimmy Ray Weston decided it was not a good time to fight.

  Blue walked through the center aisle and sat in the front row on the women’s side. Behind her Anne Pelton began singing “Amazing Grace.” For a while hers was the lone voice in the church. Then others joined in, and instruments followed.

  “Amazing Grace” flowed into a second, then a third song. Around eight o’clock the pastor signaled for the music to stop and invited anyone who wished to testify to step forth. There were a few minutes of nervous quiet—hands rubbing together and bodies shifting in the seats and children looking up from their play to see who would go to the pulpit first. Then an enormous man with a potbelly and very short legs stood up and began speaking. His name was E. Preston Pope, he said, and he had been visited by angels all week. They had told him he must testify in church and cleanse his soul, though he did not know just yet what purpose his testimony would serve. He was the grandson of a believer called “John the Baptist”—a handler known for his habit of standing in church with his arms outstretched in imitation of Christ. Rolling his eyes back in his head and leaning against a wall, John the Baptist had allowed women believers to touch him, thereby guiding the Holy Spirit our of his own body and into theirs. The women, E. Preston Pope now recounted, fainted onto the floor in ecstasy.

  After him Paul Kane stood up to testify, and then a middle-aged woman with a scarred face and a strong stutter spoke of how she had been cured of “bad dreams and evil wishes” at the hands of a preacher in Georgia and how the preacher, himself a paraplegic who had been healed by Sam Jenkins in his youth, had promised to rid her of her speech impediment next. Her testimony was punctuated by cries of “Hear her, Lord” and “Help her, sweet Jesus” from the congregation.

  They had been conducting their services in this manner from the start, Adam thought—since before Little Sam had picked up his first snake and maybe even before the Church of God had found its name. Still, he was struck by how different it was to be here, witnessing it all, as a grown man.

  He had been terrified of these people in his childhood, resentful of Rose who had introduced him to her friends as “the child of my daughter’s sins.” Often he had sat through entire services with his fists hidden in his pockets and his head filled with visions of attacking the people who called his mother names. He had tried to imagine ways of destroying the entire congregation, hoped the snakes would kill everyone, that the

  Coke bottles with kerosene would explode in their hands and burn the church down.

  At the orphanage he had believed every derogatory remark anyone had made about holiness people, and memorized al
l the arguments against snake handling. The handlers, Mr. Harris said, were outlaws determined to spoil civic order, charlatans and circus performers who took advantage of the mountaineers’ simplicity. The snakes they picked up had been defanged before they were brought to church; or they were milked of their poison; or rendered numb, and therefore unable to attack, by the loud music and the body temperature of the believers.

  The poison used during services, Harris insisted, was diluted with water until it posed no danger; or it was not poison at all; or it had become so much a part of the believers’ diet, their bodies had built immunity against it. It’s true the believers stuck their face into the open flame of blowtorches, but they were careful to stay in the “cool spot” of the fire—the few millimeters of blue light where the flame was actually cold. When they put their hands into raging furnaces, they kept them away from the heat. When they picked up red-hot logs, they knew which areas to avoid.

  Adam knew all of Harris’s arguments, had heard them repeated countless times in the press. For years he had tried to believe the outsiders’ logic. He had studied every bit of science he could find on snakes and their behavior, read accounts of religious sects and their practices in other parts of the world. But he knew—because he had seen his grandmother catch them, because he had slept with them lurking under his bed in the train car, carried them with Rose and her friends into church—he knew the believers did not defang or milk their serpents. Often, in fact, they handled snakes brought to church by hecklers and nonbelievers intent on revealing the handlers’ tricks.

  He knew also that snakes were deaf, and therefore could not respond to the loud music; that they did not behave differently because of a handler’s body temperature.

  He knew that the human body does not build immunity to poison, but in fact becomes more susceptible with repeated exposure.