Saving Grace

by Lee Smith

  Bobby Gayheart led us in prayer, his huge arms outstretched. I knew about him not only because he was Lily’s uncle but because he had preached it all to us before—how he had been a famous football star in high school, and then took to liquor and bad women and fighting, until he killed a man with a broken wine bottle and got sent off to the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Tennessee, where he had not repented but continued on in his evil ways, fighting and whatnot, I forget, and then on a visit to his sister Leanne he had learned how his own little niece Lily had been brought back to life by God and he had pondered that, and on his next visit he had witnessed Daddy subdue a cottonmouth in the signs, and had given over to God on the spot.

  “I was a sinner,” Bobby Gayheart used to say, “but I was not a fool.”

  Bobby prayed for us all, and asked God to come down on the meeting and touch us every one. He talked about how far the different people had traveled to be there, and blessed their vehicles, and blessed God for bringing them safely. Then he told how God had worked in his own life, saving him from sin and giving him a good woman and a little son to boot. Bobby’s wife Abby, holding one baby in her lap and big with yet another child, sat in front of me but over to the side some, so I could watch her while he was preaching, and I was struck by how she followed him with her eyes, hanging on every word. It was easy to see how much she loved him. Bobby stomped back and forth across the platform, preaching into a hand mike and getting everybody worked up so that when the music started again, people were jumping up everywhere to clap and sway and dance. “I am a pilgrim and a stranger,” we sang, “traveling through this wearisome land.” Patsy’s voice rang out above the rest. Lorene Bishop was already up and dancing in the aisle. Before I knew it, I found myself standing and clapping with the rest. The breeze touched my face and lifted my bangs, and it was somehow different, all different, being outside like that. Patsy and I rocked from side to side in rhythm, like backup singers.

  It was during the singing that Daddy made his appearance at the side of the stage, along with Lamar, both of them wearing white shirts though Daddy had on a tie too, which I knew he would fling off at a certain point in his preaching. He always did that. My heart started going double time at the sight of Lamar, who gave Daddy a hand up on the stage at the end of the singing. Daddy took the microphone from Bobby, and a current swept through the crowd. This was the man they had all heard about, the man that many of them had driven so far to see. Daddy prayed a long prayer during which my attention wandered, and I spent the time peeping out from under my bangs and trying to see where Lamar had got to. But I couldn’t find him, nor Mama either. A woman I had never seen before read out the Scripture for Daddy that night, a dark-haired woman from some other church. She read from John 20, “And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book: But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through His name.” Daddy nodded as she read, as if she was confirming something he’d suspected all along.

  “Oh my beloved,” Daddy began, “what more do you need to know? For it says here in the Bible plain as day that Jesus himself has worked the signs—Jesus himself! my beloved—risked life and limb before His time, to take up the serpent and convince all them that was there to follow after Him and accept the gift of Life Everlasting, amen. And now He offers it to you tonight, beloved, His most precious gift of life eternal in the Spirit is right here available to each and every one of you tonight, just as it was back in them old Scripture days. For I say unto you tonight, beloved, the Spirit is as real right here and now on the banks of the Little Dove River as it ever was on the shores of Galilee.” Daddy went on preaching while people yelled out “Amen!” and “Tell it!” By the time Daddy took up a timber rattler, the whole crowd was jumping and hollering “Move on him, Lord!” and such as that. Daddy laid the serpent across the pulpit and went on preaching, stopping to drink occasionally from the mason jar of water and strychnine on the pulpit.

  By the time he had done preaching and the music had started up again, the Spirit had filled the whole crowd as it does when all are in joy and accord. All were on fire with the Holy Ghost in such a way that we were truly one in the Spirit, and you could see a smile and tears on every face. Even sour old Rupert Ball was nodding his head in time to the beat and grinning from ear to ear. Many were smiling and chuckling. Young mothers were trotting their babies on their knees, and old folks were tapping their feet. And I have to say, I felt the Spirit running through me like a grass fire. I guess Patsy Manier felt it too, for suddenly she was gone, up there at the front taking a copperhead from Ruth Duty, crying and laughing at the same time. Ruth jiggled all over as she danced.

  Now the space at the front was full of so many that I couldn’t even see who all was up there, it was such a crowd. The holy wind sprang up again and blew around and touched us every one, them up at the front with the serpents, us at the back, and everybody was full of the spirit for about twenty minutes until it moved off right fast and then everybody started jamming the serpents back in their boxes and straightening their clothes and touching their hair. I felt all self-conscious, like I had been caught with my clothes off.

  But there were many, many to baptize that night, and Daddy led them down to the river straightaway, and the sound of their singing floated up the hill to Lamar and me where we lay in Daddy’s car.

  For Lamar had appeared at my elbow the minute the service was over, and put his hand on my arm, and I went with him. Yes, I did. I’ll admit it. I was swept along, carried away in the general fever of that night. I did not feel I was doing wrong either, even then. I did not think about that. I did not think at all. Yet I remember that moment so clear. I will always remember it. I remember laying there on the backseat of Daddy’s car, listening to them sing. I remember how those little knobs on the scratchy seat covers bit into my back, and how I looked up past Lamar’s dark head to the tops of the trees, green and feathery against the enormous black night which waited there beyond our circle of light.

  * * *

  I FINALLY ENDED up sleeping on a pallet next to Billie, over in the woods by Carlton Duty’s truck. The Dutys themselves were nowhere to be seen, nor was Lamar, who had left after he took me to find Billie. Robbie Knott and Rhonda Rose were not far off, though, laying on a blanket together whispering. I was jealous of them. I knew they would get married and live together always, and own a brick house, and have children. I was afraid that I would not have any of these things. Abby Gayheart sat holding her baby on a lawn chair nearby. The baby looked blue in the moonlight flickering through the trees. There was so much noise that I thought I would never get to sleep—you could hear folks praying and singing and testifying and hollering out all over the field and in the woods. Many of them would stay up all night long, too filled with God to sleep. But I was worn-out, and I believe I was asleep before my head ever touched the balled-up sweater I was using for a pillow.

  I woke to find myself sitting bolt upright on my pallet surrounded by white faces, some of them people I didn’t even know. Carlton Duty knelt beside me on the ground with one arm around me, holding a flashlight in his other hand. Billie’s scared face was the first thing I focused in on. “Sissy!” she screamed, and then burst into tears. She flung herself facedown on her pallet, sobbing. I looked over at Carlton Duty.

  “What is going on?” I asked. My heart was beating real fast and my mouth was dry and my head felt hot, like I might have a fever.

  “You have been possessed of the Spirit, Sissy,” Carlton Duty told me gravely, his good homely face as honest as all get-out in the light from the flashlight he held. “You have been sitting up in your sleep, and praising God and prophesying.”

  “Oh I have not,” I said, for this was the last thing I wanted or expected to hear. I did not, I did not want to be like Daddy and Mama, I did not.

  But, “Sis
sy, we do not always have a choice in these things.” Carlton Duty spoke quietly and with absolute authority. “The Lord goes where He chooses, and visits those He loves.”

  “I don’t—I don’t want—” I was trying to tell Carlton that I did not want to be chosen or loved either one, but I was too sleepy to speak, and fell into a profound slumber that would last until ten a.m. the next day, later than I had ever slept in my whole life. When I woke up I felt sore all over, but especially my legs, as if I had been running a great long way. Actually I felt awful. It was what I imagined a hangover would feel like. If this is how it feels to be visited by God, I thought, count me out. Plus a lot of people looked at me funny as I made my way to the toilet and then into the church washroom, where I splashed water on my face and combed my hair, making a new ponytail. I did not want those people to look at me funny. I did not want to be visited by Jesus in the night. I did not want to be visited by Jesus at all, and was terrified that He might return. “Don’t come back,” I whispered to Him that morning in the washroom of the Jesus Name Church. “Just leave me alone,” I prayed, for I was scared to death.

  The worst part of it was, nobody wanted to tell me what I had said when I sat up and spoke in the night. At first, Carlton Duty just shook his head and would not answer, even when I pestered him. I pestered him for a while.

  “Come on!” I was getting upset. “I’m the one that said it, ain’t I? I reckon I’ve got a right to know.”

  Carlton sighed a deep sigh and looked at me. “You was talking about the wind,” he said, “and then about the Devil.”

  I was amazed. “I was?” I couldn’t remember any of this. “What did I say about the Devil?”

  “You was talking in tongues, Sissy,” Carlton said gently. “Couldn’t nobody really tell.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was talk in tongues.

  “Could you tell anything I said?” I asked him.

  Carlton hesitated, then took off his glasses and cleaned them and put them back on before he looked at me. “You said, ‘The bite is coming.’ ”

  “I said that? ‘The bite is coming’?” I felt like we were talking about somebody else, as I had no memory of this at all.

  Carlton nodded slowly. “ ‘The bite is coming,’ you said.” He looked over toward the platform area, where folks were gathering for the morning meeting. “Well,” he said heavily, “I guess it’s time to get on over there.” He trudged off like a man going to do a hard job, and I followed, puzzling. What bite? I wondered. Who would get it? Was it Daddy? Something shot through me, from the top of my head to my feet. I don’t have anything to do with this, just forget it, I was screaming inside. Just forget the whole thing. But a part of me kept wondering, Is it Daddy?

  * * *

  THINGS WENT WRONG that Sunday morning from the first.

  For one thing, a lot more people showed up, all of them strangers and some of them drunk, and they made such a racket at the back of the open meeting that it was hard to preach or pray or conduct services. At one point some of them fell to fighting amongst themselves, and had to be separated. Plus it was real hot for June. The sun beat down on our heads. People kept coming and going, starting cars, driving up and down the road. Somebody even had a car radio on real loud for a while. Mama was not present, and so I was worried about her, and couldn’t keep my mind on what was happening. I couldn’t imagine why she hadn’t come, unless she was sick. It was the only thing I could think of. I was sure Lamar would have gone back to get her as he promised, but if she was sick, then why hadn’t he told me? I’d go home and take care of her. I’d fix her some tea and brush her hair. I was thinking this while I watched Lamar, who was up there now with the others on the platform playing the guitar, which he was really good at. He could have played music for a living if he’d wanted to. He could have gone to Nashville. He could have done any number of things. But what would he do? What did he want to do? I didn’t even know that. I didn’t know anything about him. I was feeling faint and fidgety there in the sun. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see one of the sheriff’s men, chewing tobacco and spitting to the side. Sun flashed off the gun at his belt.

  It was not a good day to work the signs. But Daddy was not likely to be put off, not with so many folks gathered and the reporters present. And as expected, it was not long before some men made their way up to the front with a dynamite box that turned out to hold a mess of copperheads, which Daddy lifted high, praising God. One of them twisted out of his upraised hands and flew into the air, causing a wild scramble of people who turned over their chairs and pushed toward the back. But Daddy leaned down and plucked the serpent up off the floor, and the man that had brought in the dynamite box fell to his knees, and the meeting was on in earnest, though it still felt wrong. I was watching Daddy close when he straightened back up, and I saw his expression change in a way that showed he had received a bite. Usually when this happened he would go right on, and you could hardly tell it. For a while, this was the case. But about fifteen minutes later, he paused in what he was saying and his face turned white and he sank against the pulpit and closed his eyes. Doyle ran forward with the dynamite box for the copperheads. The reporters rushed forward too, clicking their cameras. Daddy lurched to the side.

  When all the shouting and carrying on was over, Daddy was hauled off to the hospital by the police, despite him rallying enough to swear he would refuse medical treatment of any kind, so they might as well just go ahead and take him to jail and be done with it. By then he seemed mighty strong for someone who had just been hurt in the signs, and all remarked on this, and called it a victory for the Lord. The last I saw of Daddy that day, he was sitting in the backseat of a deputy’s car behind that little grill they’ve got, waving his fist as they drove him away.

  It was only then that I noticed a knot of people around the Dutys’ truck over there in the trees where Billie and me had spent the night. I went to see what was happening. The first thing I saw was Carlton in the back of the pickup, crying like a baby. The next thing I saw was a whole bunch of men lifting Ruth and placing her in the truck bed on her back. Her right arm and hand were swollen to twice their normal size, and her eyes were closed, and she was gasping for breath. She looked like she was dying. Her flowered skirt was hiked up so that you could see her rolled-down hose and the big blue veiny globs of fat just above her knees. Ruth would be so embarrassed, I thought, to have herself displayed thisaway.

  “Gracie! Billie! Get in here!” It was Doyle Stacy hollering at us, and he was at the wheel of the Dutys’ truck, and so we jumped in it and he drove us over to their house, where folks were already gathered when we got there. They carried Ruth in and put her on the couch, and folks crowded up close to lay their hands on her, falling to their knees on the carpet all around. Everybody was praying out loud at once, but I could hear Doyle’s voice from time to time above the rest. “Almighty God, send down your healing power on this sweet lady, touch her right now Lord, and make her whole again, oh Lord we ain’t telling you what to do or not to do, bless Heaven, but we beseech you to use your awful power to give her back to us for yet a while, dear God, for yet a while—” Doyle clasped his hands behind his back while he prayed. His whole shirt was wet with sweat. It was real hot in there. I leaned up against a big footstool that Ruby Manier was sitting on, and prayed as best I could, but all I could think of to say right then was, “Jesus Christ, don’t do this, Lord Jesus, please don’t do this.” I said it over and over. For a while it looked like Ruth would not make it, but sometime in the late afternoon she started moving restlessly and then opened her eyes and smiled weakly at Carlton, who had never left her side. He cried like a baby, out of joy.

  We all got up then, and praised God, and ate some cheeseburgers which the Gayhearts had brought over from the new drive-in on the bypass. Nothing ever tasted as good to me as those cheeseburgers when I knew Ruth would live! I ate two of them. Then Don Roy Privette gave Billie and
me a ride home, since he was going our way, and it was sunset when he dropped us at the bottom of the hill.

  The car was not there, so I figured that Lamar must have gone off in it to see about Daddy. It was the longest walk up that hill. The sun was setting behind our backs, throwing long shadows out in front of us, and the soft June air smelled mysterious and sweet. We stopped to rest by the creek and splashed water on our faces to cool off. It seemed to me like months since we had left here for the Homecoming, yet it had been only the day before. The water of Scrabble Creek made a bitter taste in my mouth. “Let’s go,” I said to Billie, but she pulled on my sleeve, holding back.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I started to get mad, for I was dog tired, but she just shook her head with the funniest look on her face. I looked at Billie, and then I looked up the hill at our house, and then I knew something was wrong, knew it as clear as if somebody had whispered it in my ear.

  It was the gift of discernment which came to me then though I did not want it, any more than I had wanted the gift of prophecy. I climbed the hill with a heavy heart, dragging Billie along. Everything looked strange to me that evening—the white quartz rock, the old black kettle, the chairs on the porch—all with wild purple shadows splayed out behind them.

  “You stay here,” I told Billie, and put her in a rocker on the porch.

  The front door was standing wide open.