Gently he shook her shoulder and began whispering in her ear, “Latha, honey, it’s me. I’ve come to take you home. Wake up, sweetheart, and let’s get on back home.”
Instantly she was awake, and in her eyes was that look he had so often seen: that big-eyed look that was not astonishment nor startlement but a kind of hesitant surprise as if she were just waiting to see what the world was going to do to her, knowing it was going to do something and even wanting it to do something, and watching big-eyed to see what it would be.
Latha, on her porch among the lightning bugs, listening to her hero tell this story, realized, This is where I came in. She knew and remembered most of the rest of it now; how her friend Jessica Toliver had awakened too. How Every had tried to find a dress to put on Latha to cover her nakedness, and had settled for a blanket. How Jessica had asked him to take her too. How he had refused. Remembering this, Latha found herself wondering what might ever have become of Jessica. If the roommate who had replaced Latha couldn’t hum, it must have been awfully bleak and lonely for her.
Latha remembered all the things that this man had done to get her out of the asylum, down off the roof and into his car, she remembered the way he had covered all his tracks, although at the time she hadn’t understood what he was doing. At the time she had no idea who he was, and she was still incapable of speech except for the spontaneous utterance of “Free” when the car was finally on the road.
The road came back to her, how they had made their way across Arkansas to Memphis and on toward Nashville. She remembered being aware that they were not going in the direction of Stay More and now Every explained that he knew Stay More would be the first place the authorities would think to look for a woman escaped from the asylum and a man escaped from a military prison. He had considered taking her to a big city where no one knew either of them, perhaps even New York, but by the time he reached Nashville he was out of gas and nearly out of money and Nashville struck him as a big enough town to hide in, so he had checked into that cheap hotel and got himself a job washing dishes at a nearby café which allowed him to start bringing her some fine eats, and one evening he even took her to the pitcher show, the first one she’d ever seen. But he was still worried that the only word she could say was “free,” and he wondered if she would ever be able to talk to him. Although they slept together, and he was very desirous of her, as he put it, he decided that he should make no effort to have sex with her until she got better.
“Now this is the part that’s hardest for me to tell,” Every said. “Do you remember what you done early one morning to wake me up?”
She remembered, but it hadn’t been done to wake him up. Nodding her head, she smiled and said, “I meant it as a gift for you rescuing me. I didn’t know who you were. I didn’t know you were Every.”
“But had you ever done that for any other man?”
She shook her head.
“You did it like you’d had a lot of experience,” he said.
“Friends of mine at the asylum used to talk about it. They had different names for it. I used to try to imagine what it would feel like. But I had never done it before. Or since.”
“What’s the next thing you remember after that?”
“It got hard again, and you put it inside me. No, I was on top, and I kissed you a lot.”
“And—?”
“That’s all I remember.”
“You don’t remember passing out? You don’t remember going into a coma?”
She shook her head. She was not going to tell him that going over the mountain usually threw her into a faint.
He described in detail how she had swooned, and all the things he had tried to revive her, and how panicky he had become, thinking he’d killed her, She showed no signs of life, although he had the presence of mind to feel for her pulse, which was racing wildly. He thought maybe the best thing would be to fetch a doctor but if he did that they might hospitalize her and find out who she was. He was in such an agony of distress that he began looking wildly around the room, as if he could find some talisman to restore her. He felt so helpless that he was unconsciously searching for something outside himself, just as the drowning man looks for a board to clutch. By some accident of destiny, his glance fell upon the Gideon Bible on the bedstand. He picked it up, this drowning man’s board, and on the very first page he saw written, For Help in a Time of Need, Read: James 1:6, 7; Psalm 91; Ephesians vi: 10–18, etc. He found every one, and read them aloud, but it wasn’t much help. He was left, however, with a strong suspicion that God had something to do with this, and the only thing that would help would be to take the case directly to Him.
The problem was that Every had never been religious. For that matter Stay More was not a religious town. All the Ingledews had been atheists. There was no church as such in Stay More. Latha’s mother had sometimes gone to church with relatives in Demijohn. Every’s folks had been Baptists and had prayed and read the Bible but never gone to church, because there wasn’t one. The chaplain at Fort Leavenworth had told Every practically the whole life story of Jesus, without results.
But Every was desperate to try anything that might revive Latha. He knelt on the floor beside the bed and clasped his hands and lifted his voice loudly heavenward, at first asking God if He could hear him okay, but retracting that on the grounds that asking it might mean that he didn’t believe God could hear him and he knew God could hear him so he hoped God would listen careful while he begged to recover Latha from her swoon. He asked loudly, “Lord, what do I have to do for You to get her out of that trance?”
But he got no answer, nor any sign of Latha waking. He continued, “Lord, if You will just let her wake up, if You will just make her well, Lord, why, I will just dedicate my whole life to You. Is that too much to ask of You? Wouldn’t You rather have a big strong man doing good works for You than keep a pore innocent girl in a trance?”
He paused and listened but heard no response to that offer, so he continued with fierce intensity, “I swear it to You, God! I put my hand on this here Bible and give You my solemn oath that if You will make this girl well, if You will even show me some token that You intend to make her well, I will get up right this minute and devote every minute of the rest of my life to Your service. Is that a deal? Answer me, God! Prove to me You can do it! ANSWER ME!”
And behold, the Lord God answered him, telling him to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in order to be saved, instructing him to find a minister of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, to repent unto him, to confess, and to be received into baptism. Every continued kneeling just a moment more, amazed that God had actually spoken to him, then he sprang up and threw on his clothes and dashed down to the desk and asked the clerk, “Where can I find the nearest preacher?”
“At this time of morning?” the clerk said.
“I don’t care,” he said. “I got to see a preacher.”
“Well, what kind did you have in mind? Baptist, Methodist, Church of Christ, Presbyterian…?”
“Any kind, so long as he preaches the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
“Well, I guess the nearest that I know of would be Brother Shirley Norvil, lives a couple of streets over, but he aint gonna be none too happy being woke up at this time of mornin.”
“Just give me his address,” he said.
The clerk wrote it down for him, saying, “Big white house right next to the church. You can’t miss it.”
He ran out, and, forgetting he had a car, ran all the way over—four blocks—to the preacher’s house. He banged on the door. He waited, and banged louder. Five minutes went by before the door was opened and an old man in his nightshirt said, “Oh well, I always get up at six o’clock of a Sunday mornin anyway.”
“Are you Brother Norvil?” he asked him.
“That’s right.”
“Can you baptize me?”
“Be glad to, son,” he said. “Come to the services at ten thirty this mornin, and we’ll take care of you.”
“Well, the plumbin is busted in the baptistry, and my plumber said he’d try to get around to it before ten thirty.”
“Couldn’t you just sprinkle some tap water on me?”
The preacher looked at him in shock and said, “Son, if you aim to be saved, you’ve got to be totally immersed.”
Impatiently he said, “Well, couldn’t we just use your bathtub or something?”
The preacher chuckled and said, “Well, I don’t see why not. There’s nothing in Scripture against bathtubs.” He held the door open and said, “I never seen anybody so eager to be baptized, but come right on in and we’ll shore do it.”
The preacher led him into the house and upstairs to the bathroom. A woman appeared and looked at them. “Go back to bed, Ma,” the preacher said, “I’m just a-fixin to baptize this young feller.” The woman stared at them for another moment, then went away.
The tub took a long time to fill.
He asked the preacher, “Do you want me to take off my clothes?”
“No, generally we just baptize ’em clothes and all. That’s part of the ceremony.”
“All right,” he said, and climbed into the tub.
“Now,” said the preacher, “have you repented your sins?”
“I have.”
“Do you believe with all of your heart that Jesus Christ is the Son of the Living God?”
“I do.”
“Now bear in mind that you’ve got to be completely under, every inch of you, so when I dunk you you’ll have to kind of scrooch down so your knees won’t stick out. Okay? Here we go. I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost!”
Under he went.
Latha, listening to Every tell this story and covering her mouth to keep from laughing, reflected that at the very same instant that Every received holy baptism, she was waking up from her faint—and also waking up from her long fugue and regaining most of her memory. She recalled that she had sat up, thinking it didn’t look like D Ward at all. And then she had seen a man’s jacket hanging in the closet, and, feeling a mild ache in her vagina, had clapped herself on the brow and thought, Oh my gosh, I’ve prostituted myself! Quickly she had begun dressing, thinking, I’ve got to get out of here, fast.
“Well, son, stay and have a cup of coffee with me, and dry your clothes and we’ll talk about problems of the spirit.”
“Thank you, but I’ve got to go. Do I owe you anything for the baptizin?”
“‘Course not. But you owe it to yourself to come to church this mornin.”
“Might see you later then. Thanks. Bye.” He dashed out of the house. His soaked trousers impeded his running.
Latha had turned a corner going one way as Every rounded the corner by the hotel. He missed her.
When he found the room empty he ran back to the street and got into his car and roared up and down the streets of Nashville for two hours. All he got for it was a ticket for speeding.
“It is God’s punishment on me,” he said. “He kept His promise and made her well, at least she couldn’t have got up and gone off unless He’d brought her out of that trance.”
At ten thirty he went to Brother Norvil’s church and devoutly prayed and worshiped.
He stayed at the hotel for another week, hoping she’d come back.
Then he enrolled himself at Lipscomb, a good Bible College that Brother Norvil recommended.
Chapter thirty-seven
More than once I heard Gramps tell that story about how he was baptized in a bathtub, and in time I heard enough stories about his years at David Lipscomb College to make a book about him, but this is Gran’s book, not his. Just as readers who want the story of Nail Chism and Viridis Monday should read Latha’s The Choiring of the Trees, those who want to know Every’s life story and the years at David Lipscomb should read And God Saw Every, which Latha is still working on. All I want to say here is how remarkable it was that he was in a college just a few miles away from where she was living and working all those years at Lombardy Alley, so close that the Fates should have crossed their paths, but never did.
Gran—I mean Latha—was left spellbound by the story he told her of his rescue of her. Great Day in the Morning! she thought: My hero. I’ve got a hero. It’s like a fairy tale. She wanted to kiss him right then and there. But she also wanted to explain to him what he had mistaken as her “coma.”
She told Every that he had probably forgotten but the previous three times he had carried her over the mountain she had fainted. He hadn’t noticed the first time because he had gone to sleep right afterwards, and he hadn’t notice the second time, down at the gristmill’s meadow, because he’d got in a fight with Raymond, and he’d left her tied to that tree after raping her, which got her over the mountain anyway. “It’s not really a ‘trance.’ I just get so carried off when the big moment comes at the end that I just swoon clean away, as if it were too much for a body to bear.”
Every frowned. “That happened…with Dolph?”
“Yes. Once.”
He pondered with a long face for a while before speaking. “Well,” he said, “that was just God’s way of telling you that He didn’t approve of what you were doing.”
“No, Every,” she said. “It was just my way of telling me that I approved of it so much I couldn’t stand it.”
He accused her of hurting him. She said she was just trying to help him understand. He quoted Scripture to her. The Bible was full of injunctions against the flesh. When this little sermon was over, she excused herself, saying she wanted to run over to Dawny’s house to find out if he was okay. He usually showed up at this time of day. It was in fact the closest house to Latha’s, and she did not need a lantern to light her way. Rosie and Frank were unwelcoming. Rosie said they had caught Dawny out in a whopping lie, telling them that there was a bunking party the previous night at Latha’s place, with all the neighborhood kids in attendance, when in fact Dawny had just gone there alone. Rosie had learned from the mothers of some of the other kids who were supposedly there that their children had not attended any bunking party.
Frank had given Dawny the real what-for, and practically mopped the floor with him until he was black and blue. Latha sobbed, but realized she had already had her cry for the day and it was after supper now anyway. She went back to her own house, thinking of persuading Every to kidnap Dawny and take her and the boy on the road with him. But she realized she could never leave Stay More again.
There was only one thing that would take her mind off her grief, and she didn’t know if she could persuade Every, holy man that he was, to take her over the mountain after all these years. Maybe he couldn’t even do it. But she reminded him of that first night they’d spent together, all those years before. She heard him sigh in the memory of the pleasure of it. But he caught himself, saying he hadn’t known at the time that they were committing fornication, which is strictly forbidden by the Bible. She said she didn’t believe it was fornication, because they’d been in a kind of common-law wedlock ever since that night, and they had had a child together, a beautiful girl named Sonora. Every said still and all he didn’t think they had any moral right to commit fornication again, not tonight anyhow. She challenged him to ask his Lord. She said since he claimed to be able to talk with the Lord he ought to get the Lord’s opinion of whether they were fornicating or not. He protested that he’d need privacy and meditation to get in touch with the Lord. She offered him the use of her bedroom. Or her outhouse. He decided he’d just take a stroll down by the creek, and he walked off the porch. She called after him to be careful he didn’t step on her cantaloupes. Then she was alone, alone with herself for the first time in many hours, and she was glad of it because aloneness was her natural element, she had been comfortable with it ever since Tennessee; there was a great effort to talking so much all of a sudden. Those bugs and frogs out there in the grass and trees were as talkative as all get out.
But the lightning bugs never made a sound; just light. The lightning bugs didn’t talk; they were just there.
“I’m here, Lord,” she heard herself saying, and wondered why. Then she heard herself asking, “Are You there, Lord?” She even waited, and tried to feel, if not hear, any answer. There was none, no wonder. But still she felt as close to prayer as she had ever come. It was as if, having been talking so much all day, she had to continue, had to keep talking although there was nobody to listen, save the Lord, if He could, if He was, if He did, and she doubted it. “Listen,” she said, “I don’t believe he can really hear You, but if he can, tell him a thing or two, will You? Remind him he married me, oh, twenty-eight years ago, wasn’t it? Were You in on that one? Then straighten him out. Tell him we’ve got just as much right as any of Your other creatures. Tell him he doesn’t need to be such a Bible fanatic. You don’t really think it would be fornication for us, do You? He says You preach love and mercy. Get it across to him that he misunderstood something important about that time in that Nashville hotel room. You didn’t fix me up because of that ‘covenant’ with him, did You? Then open his eyes. I can stick with him forever if all he wants to do is preach Your love and mercy. But if he wants to stuff us with all this ‘sin-and-salvation’ clamjamfry, why then I’d have to turn him away once again, and then where would I be? Where would he be? If You actually want him to devote himself entirely to You, then that’s that, and I hope You can use him more than I could. But I just wish You’d give him to me. Now, do I have to say ‘Amen,’ or will You just accept—”
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