by Lee Smith
But I did not feel that I deserved to sleep in that bed, or stay with the Thoroughgoods.
“Let me help you,” I said on the first day. “I’d be glad to clean, or do whatever you want me to do around here.”
“Well—” Mrs. Thoroughgood narrowed her eyes at me. “Clara comes in every day to clean, and I know you wouldn’t want to take her job away from her, now would you?”
“Nome,” I said. But then I started crying again. It was crazy how much I cried the first few days I stayed with the Thoroughgoods, when I had never cried once about my mother during all those months previous, not even at her funeral, nor when we left Ruth and Carlton and Billie Jean on Scrabble Creek.
Mrs. Thoroughgood kept looking at me. “I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Your job will be to amuse the children after day camp.” This did not sound like much of a job to me. “And you can help me clear away at dinner,” she added. “Clara is gone by then.”
I nodded, feeling better. It would have to do.
The Thoroughgoods’ two girls, Amanda and Melissa, were little brats in spite of them having such a nice mother. They had everything they wanted, and no chores. Whenever they changed clothes, they dropped their dirty things down on the floor, where they stayed until Clara picked them up. I couldn’t get over this, nor how many clothes they had. “They a mess,” is what Clara said. Clara didn’t like them, but she didn’t like me much either. I heard her telling Mrs. Thoroughgood that they ought to have me checked for head lice, which hurt my feelings. Mrs. Thoroughgood never said anything about it, though.
Things soon fell into a routine. I’d get up every morning when Clara knocked on my door, and have a delicious breakfast which was always ready when I got downstairs, and then Mrs. Thoroughgood would take me with her on her errands all over town. She was teaching me to drive, and after a week, I was at the wheel.
“A woman needs to know how to drive,” Mrs. Thoroughgood told me. “It is an imperative.” She was very definite about this, and about other things as well. She had plenty of opinions, which I wasn’t used to, and asked me a lot of questions. “I know you believe in Hell,” she’d say, “but don’t you believe in Heaven too? What’s your concept of Heaven?” or “What is your earliest memory?” or “Don’t you have any brothers and sisters? Tell me about your brothers and sisters,” or “What’s it like to have a father like yours?” I didn’t say much. For I always felt like no matter how down I got on Daddy myself, I didn’t want other people to get down on him. I felt like I had to protect him. Luckily, Mr. Thoroughgood just let me alone, for the most part. He was usually gone on business, and drank a lot when he was home. “Now, who are you again?” he asked me two or three times before he got me straight.
After I learned to drive, I got to drive Mrs. Thoroughgood everywhere. I’d wait for her in the car, reading a magazine. One day while she was in the beauty salon and I was doing this, I was startled to hear a voice say, “Well, hello there,” right at my ear. I jumped a mile.
“Oh, sorry,” the voice said.
I put the magazine down on the seat and turned around to find that it was the cutest boy, wearing khaki pants and a green knit shirt. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I scare easy.”
“Is that a fact?” The boy kept looking in the window at me. He had dark hair parted on the side, and very white, even teeth. For some reason, I was particularly taken with his teeth. He looked exactly like any of the boys in my magazine. “I’ve heard all about you,” he said.
“From who?” I was astonished.
“Oh, everybody in town knows about you,” he said. “Everybody always knows about Carol Thoroughgood’s projects. But I’ve heard about you from Amanda too. I’m Amanda’s swimming teacher.”
So I am a project, I thought. “What do you think of Amanda?” I said.
“She’s kind of spoiled.” He was staring at me through the open window. I dropped my eyes, and felt my face turn red.
Mrs. Thoroughgood came back right then, with her hair too fixed-looking. “Well,” she said uncertainly, squinting at us in the sunlight. She put a hand to her head.
The boy said, “I was just making the acquaintance of—”
“Gracie Shepherd,” I said.
“Gracie Shepherd,” he said easily. “And I’d love to come by and take her to the movie sometime.”
“Why, Sammy!” Mrs. Thoroughgood seemed very surprised. “I think that would be lovely!” Only, I could tell that she didn’t really think it, from the look on her face as I drove us home. Still, when Sammy called up on the telephone and asked me to go to the movie that coming weekend, she didn’t say I couldn’t go. She didn’t say anything, though she pressed her red lips tight together.
I probably would have gotten to be too much for Mrs. Thoroughgood if I had stayed there any longer, I can see this now. People such as her think they want to help you, but then they don’t know what to do with you after you start to get up on your own. I was beginning to notice this too. They like you a lot better when you’re down-and-out.
But in any case, Daddy showed up on that rainy Saturday morning, the very day I was supposed to have the date with Sammy. Mrs. Thoroughgood was out at a meeting—she went to meetings all the time—and I was letting the girls watch TV instead of reading to them out loud as I was supposed to. They appreciated this, and never mentioned it to their mother, though they told on me for other things, such as sneaking one of Mr. Thoroughgood’s cigarettes from time to time. They sat in front of the TV like little zombie statues, which gave me a chance to work on the jigsaw puzzle that was always set up on a Chinese table in the family room. I loved the Chinese table, I loved the family room, and I especially loved the jigsaw puzzle, which I was very good at. Mrs. Thoroughgood had showed me how to start with the pieces with straight sides to form the outline, and I took it from there. Since I had been at their house, I had done three whole puzzles. Number four was an ocean full of sailboats with bright sails and high, puffy clouds overhead. The water was the hardest part, with so many blue pieces, but the sky would be hard too. I was doing the water first. I had just filled up one corner of the puzzle when I heard Clara’s voice saying, “No sir, now, you can’t just—”
I kept right on fitting the pieces of water in place.
“What’s going on?” Amanda asked. “Who’s out there?”
“Nobody,” I said. “Who’s that?”
“That’s the bad guy, dummy,” Amanda said. “Now he’s going to shoot the sheriff. Watch this.”
“Grace!” he yelled. “Grace!”
I heard him in the hall, but I did not get up, I sat right there doing the puzzle and thinking about what I would wear that night for my date with Sammy Walker, my blue sundress or my yellow blouse and the madras plaid Bermuda shorts. All these clothes were new. “Grace!” he thundered. The bad guy galloped away. The little girls were screaming. Out in the hall, Clara was on the phone. I put three blue pieces of water together to make one giant piece. Then I turned it upside down and saw where it would fit. This is when Daddy turned the Chinese table over on the rug, scattering the puzzle pieces everywhere, and pulled me to my feet. “I’m talking to you, Grace,” he said in that quiet voice which was even worse than the loud one. “Come on now.”
“Good-bye, Amanda, good-bye, Melissa,” I said. They were crying in Clara’s arms. I knew that they would both grow up to be pretty and rich and happy, not because of anything that they would ever have to do. “Law, law,” Clara said. I went upstairs and took the flowered pillowcase off one of my pillows and put my things in it, including the blue dress and the yellow blouse, but not the Bermuda shorts, which I would not be able to wear anymore. Then I came down the fancy staircase one step at a time, dragging the pillowcase. Daddy stood at the foot of the stairs looking too big and too rough for that house, wearing a shiny blue suit which did not fit good. “Get a move on, honey,” he said.
I reach
ed the bottom of the stairs.
“I never knowed you was staying over here among nigger lovers,” Daddy said. “I’m just as sorry about it as I can be.” Then he swung the pillowcase up over his shoulder and pulled me out into the rain.
* * *
I WAS NEVER to learn what happened to Daddy while he was in jail, but something did. He was wilder and moodier after that. About a day later after we left Chattanooga, as he was driving along smoking a cigarette, he hollered out, “Oh, Jesus! Sweet Jesus!” and ground the cigarette out into his own cheek while the truck jerked all over the road. We ended up in the other lane, but luckily there was nothing coming. Daddy got a terrible sore on his cheek which lasted for weeks and looked awful. Once he yelled at a lady in a parking lot for wearing gold jewelry, and another time he dumped a rack of potato chips on the floor of a Zippy Mart because a boy gave him back the wrong change. In meeting, he’d take up any serpent, anytime. He got bit repeatedly, and did not seem to mind or even notice. He was never hurt. At a camp meeting in Crab Orchard, Tennessee, a crown of flames sat on his head, and yet another time, a dancing green light shone in the trees by a river where he was baptizing. All these months have run together in my mind, since we traveled from one place to another, all over the South. We were traveling with three coolers full of serpents in the back of the truck, plus several boxes. In Coldwater, Tennessee, Daddy healed a woman that was about to die from internal bleeding, and drove the demons out of a poor young man that crawled into church on his hands and knees, speaking nonsense. After his healing, he walked out the door like a man, talking like anybody else. I was there. I saw these things. I read the Bible out loud for Daddy at each location. I did not offer to drive the truck, though. I did not mention that I could drive. I did not want to displease Daddy, for he was a real power in those days, and I could not have gone against him.
But Daddy did not seem to appreciate or even realize what all I did for him. He never said thank you. He took my help for granted, though others remarked to him in my presence how lucky he was to have such a nice big girl. Daddy’s attitude hurt my feelings, even though I knew he had more important things on his mind, such as saving souls. It was not for me to call the shots. I told myself that Daddy was giving me as much attention as he could, as much as I deserved. I knew I did not deserve much, due to what I had done. I was sure everything was my fault. I often dreamed that I was being swept along down a great flooded river, and I’d feel that it was really true even when I woke up, like the earth was moving, turning to water beneath my feet. Still, Daddy and I did okay, I reckon, until we got back to Tennessee and Daddy got hooked up with Carlean.
He met her at church, which was where he met all of them. In Piney Ridge, it was the Hi-Way Tabernacle of God, though there wasn’t any highway anywhere around that I could see. Somebody said they were going to build the highway through there, but then did not. Anyway, that was the name of the church. In looks it resembled so many others where we had preached in the past months, a little white frame building set up on cinder blocks, very plain, up a dirt road on a muddy lot beside an abandoned coal tipple. A slag heap on the mountain above it smelled like rotten eggs. It was some kind of an independent church with a mournful pastor named Travis Word. It used to have two pastors, but the other one, who was Travis Word’s brother-in-law, had died. I believe Daddy saw this situation as an opportunity, and planned to seize it. Travis Word gave me the creeps. He was big and tall and looked like Abraham Lincoln. He could scare people into Christ, it was said. When we showed up in Piney Ridge, Travis Word seemed glad to see us at first, for his church had been declining, as there were a lot of people put off by his gloomy ways, while Daddy was ever one to get folks jacked up, laughing and shouting in the Spirit, full of joy. Daddy could bring them in. It was a church that used to follow the signs, but had not done so in years. This is something that comes and goes among congregations, depending upon who the preacher is, and how long he stays with them. Anyway, there were those that appeared to be just waiting for Daddy to show up. They all jumped out of the woodwork when we came.
One of these was Carlean Combs.
Carlean Combs was a tall redheaded woman as big as a man, as big as Daddy himself, with a jutting nose and a jutting chin and dark eyes set too close together. She looked like a witch. She had a big hard white body, and the longest legs. Her breasts jutted straight out, pointy as ice cream cones. At first I thought this was because of the bras she wore, but later when we lived with her I saw her breasts all the time and they were like that. They were really like that. Everything about Carlean was big except for her mouth, small and narrow as a slit in her face.
She showed up on the fourth or fifth night of the revival. Word had got out by then, so the church house was packed. Daddy had had me read from Peter Number Two as he called it, about false prophets and modern times. Daddy said he felt that he had been called to Piney Ridge for a special purpose, to bring the people back to the old-time religion and the old-time ways.
“Now I know there is churches down the road here that’s got padded seats and wall-to-wall carpet,” he said. “They’ve got colored windows and Lawrence Welk music and kitchens in the basement, Lord, Lord. They have got all these things, my beloved, but they ain’t got the Lord Jesus Christ in their hearts tonight. No sir! And I’ll tell you why not. Because the Lord don’t need all them fancy things, that’s why not. Why looky here, beloved, Hebrews tells us flat-out that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Yesterday, today, and forever! Now, don’t that tell you something? Don’t that tell you something important? Why, them old-timey people, they didn’t have nothing like folks has today in their church houses. They didn’t have nice rostrums nor gold crosses on the altar of God, nor fancy new cars to carry them to church. No sir. Them old-timey people, if they didn’t have no way to get there, they’d walk miles down the muddy road. Miles, beloved, a-carrying the old lanterns in their hands, a-singing the old songs, with the knowledge and love of God in their hearts. And when they got to the church house, my beloved, why, it’d be the same thing. They’d fall on their knees where they was at, and pray till their hearts was full, praise God, full of that old-timey Spirit that Jesus loves. Now, I know that this old-timey Spirit has gone away from you-uns over here, but we’re fixing to get it back. Well, we’re a-going to get it back, praise Jesus! Praise Jesus, beloved—”
This was the first time I saw Carlean Combs, who kept working her way slowly forward through the crowded little church house, shouldering people aside. I noticed that whenever anybody turned and saw who it was, they would step back mighty fast to let her pass. She never took her squinty eyes off Daddy. When she finally got to the front, everybody was singing and dancing and clapping, and Daddy held a little copperhead in each hand. Two or three other men were dancing and handling in addition to Daddy, and the hot air in there was just crackling as the Spirit moved among them. I stood over by the wall watching, though I could not keep my feet still, the music was so good in that church.
Carlean—of course I didn’t know her name yet—danced up into the cleared space at the front of the church. She was wearing a tight aqua-and-white-striped top, and aqua pants that looked like they’d been glued on her. Her hair was pinned up on top of her head.
It was easy to tell she had not been saved.
Everybody was singing “Jesus on the Main Line.” Carlean moved her whole body as she danced forward. She didn’t look at anybody but Daddy. A heavy woman to the right of her began shrieking out in tongues and sank to the floor, and several came forward to help her, but Carlean just stepped to the side, closer to Daddy, and kept on dancing. Her body rippled all over in rhythm. Then she let her head fall back, like a rag doll. In the light from the dangling bulb, her white neck and chest were slick and shining with sweat. It made me feel funny to see her neck exposed that way. It was like her throat had been cut.
I kept watching her. By then, Daddy was watching her too. Sud
denly she let out a big whoop and reached up and started pulling bobby pins out of her hair and throwing them down on the floor. Her heavy hair flew out around her face, bouncing down her back in rhythm as she danced. Now she was right in front of Daddy, not yelling anymore but kind of whimpering, and I couldn’t see her face, all I could see was that hair, which was like a live thing, as real and as alive as the copperhead she took from Daddy’s hand and wrapped around her white wrist like a bracelet. I could see its markings real plain, and its triangular head, which darted back and forth in rhythm as she danced. The copperhead appeared to be jived up too.
Now the Spirit spread all over the room as visible as paint, so that even the skinny little guitar player cast his instrument down and ran forward to grab up a serpent. Daddy lit a kerosene rag stuck in a Pepsi bottle and held the flame to his face. People were screaming. Several women in the back fainted dead away and had to be carried out. So a lot was going on as you might imagine, but at some point during this meeting I glanced over to find the Reverend Travis Word staring at me steadily with a look I could not fathom. He stood near the opposite wall, right across the church house from me, comforting a pudgy woman who was clinging to him and crying, but he looked across her gray head at my face. I realized that he was younger than I’d thought, and not scary, just stiff and serious, the kind of preacher that could never bust loose like Daddy no matter how much he might wish to. It made you wonder how in the world he’d ever gotten called to be a preacher in the first place. When Travis Word saw me looking at him, he looked down and then away.
The Spirit moved off then, which left everybody praying at once, Daddy up at the front in a big gang of the newly saved, Carlean Combs among them. I looked back as I was going out the door, to see Daddy with his arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross, his shirt front and neck and face blackened by the fire, in wild contrast to his white hair.