by Aaron Gwyn
He reached over, got several more carrots out of the bag, and started cutting.
“She’d come to the house in short shorts, whining around in that voice. Your uncle Keith and I tried to say something, but he wouldn’t listen.”
“How come?”
Charlotte stopped stirring and looked at him over the rims of her glasses. She taught English at a Christian high school, had cautioned her son about using incorrect grammar.
“Why not?” he said.
Gabriel’s mother picked up the wooden spoon resting on a paper towel beside the stove. The spoon was wet and the towel clung to it. She snatched the towel away, smoothed it, and set it back on the counter.
“It was because of lust,” she said. “I hate to say so, but it is only the truth. Your uncle Richard was afflicted by demons of lust.” She walked over to the refrigerator, opened the door, stooped. “We couldn’t have been more thankful when he divorced her and got his deliverance.”
The boy thought he knew his uncle Richard; he used to pull Gabriel’s wagon behind his lawn mower when Gabriel was small. He had a difficult time thinking his uncle had been afflicted by anything.
Turning on the stool, he looked at his mother. Her head was stuck inside the refrigerator, one arm braced against the door, fog rolling out from between her legs. He cut a slice of carrot, put it in his mouth and crunched.
“Gabriel,” her voice echoed.
“Yes?”
“Don’t spoil your supper.”
IT WAS EARLY that summer, around the middle of June, that the Reverend Bobby Hassler announced their church would be starting revival. They hadn’t had one in years, and he’d decided to bring in an evangelist, named Leslie Snodgrass, who was only fifteen. Hassler told them he would set the church aflame.
By that time, it’d become bad with Gabriel. He was sinning twice a day, and even when he’d ask forgiveness he knew it was useless. He told God it was too large for him, like the apostle’s thorn. He copied out the passage in red ink, taped it to the mirror above his dresser: My grace is sufficient for thee, my strength is made perfect in weakness. Some nights when the moon was coming through his window, he’d lie in bed, scanning the words till he fell asleep.
The first night of revival, he was so tired he could hardly hold open his eyes. He’d been dreading the services, knew they only meant more time around Amy. When he walked into church that evening, he went and sat on the opposite side of the building but could not keep his eyes from creeping across the sanctuary, watching the smooth spot behind the girl’s ear where her skin turned to hair. It took effort to shake his attention from it when the evangelist began to speak.
Leslie Snodgrass was short and pale, and his eyes were sunken into their sockets. He had the look of one who didn’t spend time around others, and Gabriel caught himself questioning whether he’d undergone the same trials or whether he’d already overcome them. The evangelist’s grandmother, with whom the boy lived, sat on the front pew with a tape recorder, pressing its red button whenever Snodgrass began to speak. She was a small, elderly woman, but she had a muscular look about her, and Gabriel’s mother said she was a blessing because she reminded them of the way women used to be in the church—wise and sturdy, unshakable in the faith. For a reason Gabriel did not understand, Delores Snodgrass frightened him.
Snodgrass began that night by reading a verse in Hebrews, having everyone stand to acknowledge the Word. His voice did not sound small and shrill like they’d expected. It sounded much older, deep and firm, a little sad.
“For if,” Snodgrass began to read, “we sin willfully after we have received knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?”
With that, he bowed his head and started to lead them in prayer. Before Gabriel closed his eyes, he glanced across the room, noticing for the first time how small Amy looked. He could have picked her off the ground and held her.
Snodgrass finished praying, asked them to be seated, and started to preach. The first thing he said was that his sermon was not addressed to sinners in the audience. A revival, he told them, wasn’t for sinners.
“Revival,” he said, “is for those who have one time been awake and then, through carelessness and temptation and a lack of attention, have fallen back asleep. It isn’t for those who’ve never been awake. Revival is for the backslider.”
He went on like that, his voice becoming louder and more commanding as he went. After he’d been at it for fifteen minutes, preaching about falling away from the Spirit and the special punishments reserved for those who’d blasphemed, people began growing excited. Gabriel could see it moving among them like a wave, folks becoming agitated, shifting in their seats. And the longer Snodgrass spoke, the louder the elders shouted, the more Gabriel felt a pain growing deep in his stomach. His eyes started to ache, and by the end of the sermon he wanted to crawl between the pew cushions.
When Snodgrass gave the altar call, asking all of them to come in and rededicate their lives, Gabriel went up and knelt beside Thomas Campbell. He told God he was sorry for his sin and reprobation. He asked him to rebaptize him in the Spirit, to give him the strength to withstand the trial he was under. He prayed so fiercely that sweat beaded his forehead and neck; so long that when he looked up he and Hassler were the only ones left.
Directly, the pastor rose, went to the podium, and dismissed service. People stood, walked over, and began crowding around the evangelist, telling him how much they’d enjoyed his preaching, how strongly they could feel the anointing. Gabriel saw that his mother was waiting in line to talk with Snodgrass too, so he threaded his way down the aisle, went back to the foyer. He wanted to keep the burning of God’s Spirit inside him.
He walked outside and sat at the bottom of the handicapped ramp. The night was warm and the noise of cicadas swelled in the field across the fence. He sat listening to them, hugging his knees to his chest.
In a few minutes they stopped, and he heard gravel crunch. Turning, he saw Amy coming toward him across the parking lot. She walked up, stood beside him.
“Isn’t he good?” she said.
“Who?”
“The preacher.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said, “he is good.”
She stood for a while on one foot. Then the other.
“Do you mind if I sit?” she asked.
Gabriel looked at the ground, hoping she’d go away, but she did not. She squatted and sat next to him.
He didn’t know what else to say, so they sat in silence. A few people came out, got in their cars, and left, but most were still inside. Gabriel was debating going back in, finding an empty room, when he felt Amy’s hip brush up against his.
It was the first time a girl had sat so close, and it felt like electricity moving down his throat, into his stomach and hips. Part of him wanted to get away, save himself for the Lord and His Spirit, but the other part was on fire.
Gabriel was unsure how long he stayed like that, hip to hip with Amy on the ramp, never even glancing to his side. He sat thinking about how if they were man and wife, he’d undress her slowly at night, brush her hair like a china doll. He thought how they could lie in bed, reading aloud the Scriptures, that when they coupled it would be an act of worship.
The door opened. He turned and saw that Snodgrass had come out onto the porch. He looked over, noticed the two of them, turned and walked back inside.
“He’s so good,” Amy whispered. “I hope he stays longer than a week.”
Later that night, Gabriel stood in the center of his room with dress pants shucked around his ankles, her voice going through his head
like something hot and sharp.
THE NEXT WEEK, service for Gabriel was excruciating. Night after night, he’d sit listening to Snodgrass preach, watching folk crowd the altars to receive their blessing. The Spirit continued dealing with him, beckoning him to repentance, and he’d often kneel at his seat, asking God to spare his life and soul, the smell of his own sweat rising from the pew.
There was a darkness, he said, that covered you in the midst of sin. The deeper one goes, the cloudier it becomes, like walking through a world of ash. You begin to hate yourself, despising the weakness of the flesh, its wants and desires. Soon when the voices come to torment, you start wishing to be dead.
Gabriel was always unsure why he did not then repent, why he didn’t make certain his salvation. Perhaps it was because he did not want to embarrass himself in front of the congregation. They’d known him as a somber young man, serious about his faith; to confess that he’d been living with sin would have made him look a fraud. Perhaps, and he said he was more ashamed to admit so, it was on account of his desire for Amy. He knew that the further he moved from God, the closer he would come to her.
Lying in bed after service was worse. It was there, among the quiet of the house, that the Spirit would work hardest. His family had been known for visions, through his mother’s line down. She had related many of these revelations, how his great-grandmother once fistfought the Devil when he came to her in the figure of a lion.
Being far from sanctified, Gabriel did not see the actual images that his forebears had. But in his mind the portrait of Hell was vivid, as if thrown against a screen. He saw endless dark beneath caverns of rock, torment of nail and tooth and flame.
One night, he became so frightened he walked down the hall to his mother’s room and climbed into her bed. She allowed her son to get close, put her arm around him.
“Gabriel,” she said, “are you okay?”
“I don’t think so,” he told her.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
They lay there, listening to the crickets outside the window, a green light coming in, moonshine off the leaves.
“Do you know what?” she finally asked.
“What?”
“Sounds as if the Lord might be speaking to you.”
He did not respond. Only he moved closer, burying his face in the pit of her arm.
IT HAD BEEN near the end of revival, and still, said Gabriel, God was pouring out His blessing: salvations and healings and baptisms in the Holy Ghost. Word of Snodgrass had spread, and quite a few had driven in from out of state. The sanctuary was full, and across the back Reverend Hassler had placed folding chairs, some along the walls. Gabriel had sat watching the people shout and sing, his jaw tight and his teeth clenched, choking down the Spirit.
He remembered the evangelist stepping to the pulpit that night, reading a passage from Acts, then having them stand to anoint the Word. His message was Saul on the way to Damascus, how, before an apostle, he’d been a persecutor of the Church. Snodgrass said that there were many sitting in congregations throughout the country who weren’t any better, some a good deal worse.
“There are those,” he told them, “who call themselves ‘Christians.’ They go through the motions. Many hold office in the Church: deacons, elders, ministers of music. To see them walk down the street you would not know the difference; they look spotless from outside—whitened sepulchers. But, as Jesus said of the Pharisees, inside are the bones of dead men.”
Gabriel had listened to him, thinking about the gift Snodgrass had been given, how it must feel to be free from sin. When he looked over to where Amy sat beside her parents, he noticed she had her head tilted and her eyes trained, concentrating fully on the preacher’s words.
“What’s to happen to these half-Christians,” Snodgrass was asking, “to these lukewarm children of God?”
Some in the congregation moaned. Elders shook their heads.
“According to my Bible, there cannot be a lukewarm Christian. According to my Bible, Jesus said he’d have us hot or cold, and were we lukewarm he’d spew us from His mouth.”
Some shouted amens. Others began to clap.
For the next half hour he told the horrors of a believer separated from his God, how his tribulation is doubled because he’d at one time seen the truth. He told how each of his moments is spent fearing the justice of the Lord, mourning the loss of His divine company, but his pride will keep him from returning. Finally, he told of the place reserved for this man, alongside the Devil and his angels.
The longer Gabriel sat, the more he’d known his sin was not worth it; there was nothing worth spending an instant in Hell. Sitting there, he’d decided however great the temptation, he would leave his sin behind. He would resist the wiles of the Devil with the very violence of righteous indignation. Even if he had to cut his privates and fling them to the dogs, it would be better than the pain he had lived through. Or the pain to which he was going.
Still, he did not understand how it was that night that had compelled him and not another. It was not the guilt, for that was always present. It was not exactly fear or longing, nor was it the power of the evangelist’s words. It was, it seemed, an assurance that grew inside, letting him know when he left his seat he would be forever released. He felt deliverance hovering, buzzing near the crown of his head, and by the time Snodgrass gave the altar call, so badly did he desire redemption, his hands were shaking, his legs and feet. He was ready to make repentance, and he did not care who looked on.
Snodgrass had them grow quiet, lower their heads in prayer, his voice going out over them like a warm breath.
“Every head is bowed,” he told them. “Every eye is closed. Christians are praying. As I said the first night, I’m not talking to sinners. If there are those of you sitting here who’ve never known Christ, you’re welcome to come and receive Him. But tonight, this call is for the backslider.
“Brother and Sister, you’ve lost your way. Satan has steered you from the path, stolen your heart from the Shepherd. Where you thought you’d find happiness and satisfaction was only heartache, despair. How long will you wander, with your own heart in rebellion against you? How long will you resist the pull of the Holy Spirit, the gentle tugging at your heartstrings? You don’t need me to say Hell awaits you; you’re half in it already.
“I’ll ask as Christ did Saul that day, knocked flat of his back and blinded by the light of Heaven: ‘Why do you persecute me? Isn’t it hard to kick against the pricks?’”
That’s when the evangelist asked if there were any who had once known Christ, who would like to make their way back to Him.
“I want you to raise your hand,” he said. “Do not be ashamed. Jesus said, ‘Whosoever is ashamed of me on Earth, of him shall I be ashamed before my Father in Heaven.’”
He might have said more after that; he might have said nothing. All Gabriel knew was when Snodgrass asked that question, he’d stood from his seat, walked the aisle, and knelt at the altar. Before his palms hit wood, he felt deliverance seize him.
In a few minutes, there were hands all about him, voices. They cried out to God for his salvation, anointed his head with oil, rebuked the powers of Satan. One man whom he’d never seen put out his arm, hugging Gabriel almost beneath him, telling all the devils of Hell that he was God’s by the power of the Almighty Spirit.
They prayed for a long time. He wept until no weeping was in him, and when he stood, a fire was burning in his heart as never before. He walked back to his seat feeling light, as if he might crumble into air.
AS CHURCH WAS DISMISSED, Hassler reminded them that the women had brought dishes. They were to meet in the fellowship hall, those who could. Many of the elders came and hugged Gabriel, said he would be in their thoughts.
He went back to the hall, sat with his mother while she talked to friends. There was only tea to drink and he was very thirsty, so after a while he went out to the foyer to get a sip from the fountain. Amy wa
s standing there, the very look of holiness on her face.
They went out the front door, down the steps, around the side of the building. Someone had ran an extension cord into the trees, hung a bug zapper from the limb of a black oak. The lamp sparked and crackled as they walked, blue light tracing Amy’s outline against the darkness.
When they reached the propane tank sitting at the edge of the property, Amy turned to face him.
“Gabriel,” she said.
“Yes.”
“What’s it like for you?”
An insect hit the lamp, snapped against it. He felt stars blazing high above him.
“What’s what like?”
“The Spirit?”
Gabriel thought about her question. “I don’t know,” he told her. “It burns.”
“For me it’s like something making me calm.”
He didn’t know what she meant.
“It’s like there’s a warm feeling, making it so I’m relaxed.” She placed her hands on her stomach, smiled. “I feel it right here.”
Gabriel saw how her face shone blue in the light of the bug lamp, her hair and eyebrows like blue suede. He wanted very badly to leave, the voice inside telling him so, but he pushed it down, moved closer, and then the voice grew quiet, went dead altogether. The two of them stood breathing the other’s breath, and then Amy brushed his cheek with her nose. Her lips came near and his mouth went to hers, tiny fingernails scraping his hands. Straightaway, he felt the glory go out of him, replaced by the death of the world. He wanted to weep, seeing the glory go.
Amy shifted her weight, began to put her arms around his neck. But that, he would tell them, was when his deliverance had risen up. He shut his eyes, pushed her away, and kicked her in the stomach. He did not think about it. He just closed his eyes and kicked.
When he opened them, the girl was on the ground with her legs stretched in front of her, as if ready to play jacks. Her dress was hiked around her knees, her braid flipped over her shoulder, hanging into her lap.