Dear Cheryl,
I believe that we need to think about
He crumpled the paper and threw it into the trash can.
Dear Cheryl,
I must say that I find you attractive in a way that
Trash can again. There were other things he needed to be doing. Mrs. Blount had called three times in the last three days asking him to come see her. He hadn't been up to the hospital in ... what, four days?
Dear Cheryl,
I have fallen deeply in love with you. This is a simple truth. I'm sorry to say it but I have. I know I will be sorry for writing this to you but my heart has been captured beyond my earthly control. I wish I could keep from writing you this letter. Sometimes I imagine us together alone. Sometimes I imagine that your eyes are so close to mine that our noses must gently touch, and then our lips, moist and quivering. I want to take care of you in every way you can be taken care of. Would but that I could be that close to you if for no more than thirty minutes in this feeble, sinful life of mine. I want to touch you, taste you, hold your beating heart to mine.
He pushed the paper aside, put his head down on his wrists. He was going to need every ounce of clean physical strength in his body to fight this sin. And in order to write this letter he might have to first rid himself of the dirty animal energy rising up in him. He couldn't go home and do it right now because the kids were just getting up, but if he didn't do something quick then he was going to end up writing an awful letter. He would have to commit a short-lasting sin—in order to stop a big, long-lasting one.
Mrs. clark was so glad she was in the Lord's house. The Lord's house was safe. The preacher, God's messenger, was now in his place. Things were in order. She had heard the preacher slide his desk chair back. Then after a goodly pause, she heard him leave. She heard the bathroom door open and close. Maybe if she didn't put much weight on her foot. She tried to stand. Yes. There was a way she could sort of put weight on the heel of her foot and the cane at the same time so as to avoid that sharp pain. He might have written a letter for her to type, or some notes for the bulletin.
In the bathroom, Crenshaw sat on the commode. There was a faint lingering person smell. Was that himself? He put his face in his hands. He'd have to go back in there and finish that letter so that... "Dear God," he said. "Oh, dear God." This was a crisis. This was a visit from the Devil himself, and ... That's it! God was calling him to preach a sermon on temptation.
Mrs. clark approached Preacher Crenshaw's desk, walking haltingly with her cane. She saw that he had written a letter. Well, good. She dropped a wad of warm Kleenexes from his desk into the trash can, picked up the letter, read it, placed it back on his desk, and hurried as best she could back to her office. This was very, very troubling. This was a crisis. Did all this have something to do with Jesus being around, Himself?
Just after sunset, Bud Thornton moved the drop-light from behind the carburetor to in front of it.
He'd dropped his wrench and it hadn't made it all the way to the ground. Lilly, his wife, called him in to supper. He was hungry. He'd find the wrench later, when he came back out. And when he did come back out, his hunger relieved, the night air cooling the hot day, the evening sky not yet black, all that together would sit pleasantly on his work. / Train, down at Train's Place, was talking to Luke: "Listen, Luke, there's more for you to do around here than sit on your ass on that drank crate. I've said it before and I'll say it again: It takes more than a performer to keep a traveling show on the road. Who's gone put up the goddamn tent? Now, go on out there and stack them tires like I told you yesterday."
AN ACCIDENT
Noontime on Saturday, Jack Umstead sat alone on the bench at Train's Place, drinking a Blatz. He was thinking he might have to get Mrs. Clark to get that letter she told him about so he could take a picture of it, mail it in to the preacher, asking for some kind of big money payment. He could certainly believe that the preacher meant his own Cheryl right there across the road.
Blake Redding came out and sat down on the bench with him.
Trouble yawned.
"Do you know anybody else named Cheryl Daniels?" he asked Blake.
"Girl lives over there. Johnny Daniels's daughter."
"Anybody else?"
"Her mama. She's both their—she's the daughter of both of them."
"I mean you know anybody else named Cheryl Daniels?"
"Oh. I thought you meant was she anybody else's daughter." Blake bent over and started tying his shoe.
"Do you know anybody else named Cheryl Daniels?"
"Nope."
Behind the pendergrass Auto Shop, Leland and Terry were digging for fishing worms with a hoe. Stephen stood by, watching.
The hoe blade was sharpened until it shined—sharp as a razor. Swish-chunk—Leland hoed up a clump of black dirt. Terry picked it up and shook it, checked it for worms. These boys were doing something very hard to do, something that took planning that was beyond Stephen. They were digging up fishing worms. Then they would walk all the way to the church pond by themselves—and go fishing. Stephen was unable to imagine himself in such a free life.
Leland and Terry were working well together—hoe up dirt, shake the dirt, can the worm, hoe up dirt, no worm, hoe up dirt, no worm, hoe up dirt, can the worm, hoe up dirt—when a half-worm dropped and landed wriggling. Terry reached for it just as the hoe commenced its powerful arc downward, razor edge glinting in the sun, the blade cutting down so fast it made a swish sound, a sound like a burning rag pulled through the air. Chunk. Terry drew his hand back as if he'd touched fire, stopped his hand in midair. The thumb swung back and forth, dangling—a greatly enlarged worm, bunched into a little sausage, running blood all over itself. A bloodworm.
Terry's scream, threaded with something wild, bounced off the tin back of the auto repair shop as he ran toward his house, toward his mama and daddy.
It was a Saturday, the day Johnny Daniels was home drinking because it was by God the end of the week and he deserved a little relaxation and relief from his business of bringing in money to support a wife and daughter and a boy who got on his nerves awful bad sometimes because he couldn't learn things as quick as—my God Almighty, what the hell was that god-awful screaming about? Got-damn. Somebody—it was Terry—was into wasps or got bit by something, something still holding on. Wasps, probably.
Stephen and leland—both walking—followed Terry, who, holding his thumb to his shirt, disappeared around the back corner of the auto shop. Stephen looked at the hoe propped on Leland's shoulder—like a soldier carries a rifle. Leland stopped, held out the hoe, dropped it. "I gotta go get a drink of water," he said.
Stephen wondered if maybe he had to go get a drink of water, too. But the chopped thumb pulled him toward the Daniels's house and when he rounded the corner, he saw Mr. Daniels cross the road, walk kind of wobbly to meet Terry, ask him something, and before Terry could answer, hit him with his open hand in the butt hard enough to propel Terry forward toward their house. Terry had placed the thumb back and was holding it there. Maybe it would stick back and hold. Maybe the blood would work like glue and fasten the thumb back the way it had been—with nothing to show but a thin red line.
Terry went straight inside, probably to tell his mother sitting in her big chair in the dark living room. She was probably sewing something and listening to the radio, her eyes squinting in her cigarette smoke.
Stephen thought about Terry, the way he was, always kind of back inside himself, as if looking out from inside something, maybe like a rabbit looking from inside a rabbit box, afraid to come out, not like Leland at all, Leland who went ahead and did whatever he wanted to do to whoever he wanted to do it to, no matter what. Then Stephen heard, inside the house, Mr. Daniels holler and Mrs. Daniels scream. And in a sweat, in a heat suddenly covering his head and ears, Stephen almost became Terry afraid inside his own house, and he wanted somebody to go in there and get him out and take him to the hospital. He started home, to tell his mother.
> Somebody called loud from the bench over at Train's Place: "What happened?" It was Mr. Blake. Mr. Blake and the gypsy man had stood up from the bench.
"Terry cut his thumb just about off. It's hanging by a little piece of skin."
They crossed the road, walked up the steps, and knocked on the Daniels's door. Stephen looked both ways like his mama had taught him, then followed them. He felt like the two men might be able to do a good job of making everything all right. They were happy beer drinkers. They could take Terry to the hospital, where they might could fix it back.
Then Cheryl rode up on her bicycle, leaned it against the steps, said something to the gypsy man, and hurried into the house.
In a few minutes, Mr. Blake drove his black car into the narrow front yard while Stephen and other bystanders watched. The Daniels family appeared and started down the steps, pretty high steps, except for Cheryl, who stood back in the doorway. Terry had stopped crying and his right hand was wrapped in a bloody pillowcase. He looked whiter, and a little more yellow, than he usually did.
From across the road came Leland—led by the elbow by Mrs. Pendergrass.
Mr. Daniels was holding Terry's elbow as they started down the high front-porch steps. Mr. Daniels saw Leland, stopped, lost his balance, caught it. "What happened, Leland?" he said.
"I didn't do nothing," said Leland. And then he pointed. "Stephen done it," he said.
Heads turned. The gypsy man, closest to Stephen, stepped back to give the world room enough to look on him, and then the attention of all the people swung back to Terry, up on the steps.
Terry raised his unwrapped hand and pointed. "Stephen done it," he said.
Stephen turned, looked both ways, ran across the road and behind Train's Place, where he had never been before, and on toward home. He looked down at the road shoulder, rocks, dirt, and grass flying under him, his chest tightening, and finally, in the kitchen, he told his mother what had happened, all of it, as fast as he could, crying, trying to get his breath.
"Come in here with me," she said.
He followed her to the bathroom, where she opened the medicine cabinet and got out the bottle of asthma pills, shook one out, and gave it to him with water from the flowered glass that stayed in the bathroom, then led him to the front door, knelt down, put her hands on his shoulders, and told him that there were times in life when you had to do the right thing, no matter what. He had to go back down there by himself, to look both ways when he crossed the road, and tell those people the truth. All those people. Jesus would go with him. She stood and pushed him on out the door.
In the yard, he stopped walking, sat down on the ground, and started crying. His mother walked out to him, knelt down again, helped him up, placed her hands on his shoulders. "You got to do the right thing," she said. "You can't let people tell a story about you and you not do nothing. Jesus'll be with you. And God, too. Now go on like I told you. This is what Jesus and God is for. Look both ways before you cross the road."
Stephen felt as if he were walking toward a firestorm. And then he saw an empty Daniels's porch and yard except for Cheryl sitting on the steps and the gypsy man standing there talking to her. Good. He would tell them the truth. That wouldn't be hard.
The gypsy man stood with his back to Stephen, and Cheryl was sitting on the top step with her arms wrapped around her bent knees. As Stephen walked up, the gypsy man turned to leave, then knelt with his hands on his knees, looked Stephen in the face. "What you want, Budrow?"
"Mama told me to come down here and tell the truth."
"Well, what's the truth?"
"I didn't do it."
"You didn't?"
"No sir."
"Well, who you going to tell?"
"You and Cheryl."
"It's okay," said Cheryl. "Come on over here and sit down for a minute, Stephen. Me and Mr. Jones was just talking about things."
"I think I'll amble on back over to Train's Place," said the gypsy man. "I'm getting a little thirsty."
On the steps, Cheryl listened to Stephen, to his story, and then said, "I knew you didn't do it. Let's see if we can find a four-leaf clover for Terry. If we find one maybe they can save his thumb." The way she rose and then settled in a patch of green clover by the steps seemed to Stephen almost as smooth as an angel.
Stephen sat facing her. They talked about the difference between a boy's and girl's bicycle, and then just after Cheryl found a big four-leaf clover she told Stephen that before the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, they called up the Japanese and warned them so that the Japanese could get all the little children out of town. She said America had a telephone wire that ran all the way under the Pacific Ocean.
He wondered what "Pacific" meant.
"Now some day when you grow up," said Cheryl, "you'll fall in love like me and you and your sweetheart will look for four-leaf clovers together."
"There's just one girl for me."
"That's right. And I'll tell you a secret if you won't tell anybody. You promise not to tell anybody—not even your mama?"
"Yes ma'am." Stephen felt the color from the asthma pill spreading through his blood.
"I found that person for me. He's that man right over there in the yellow shirt. Delbert. He's the man of my life and we're going to get married and he's going to take me to New York City. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. I hope you find somebody just like I have, but don't you tell anybody now. It'll happen to you someday too, and I hope you're as lucky as I am. But if you tell anybody my mama and daddy would get real real mad and there ain't no telling what they would do."
"Does your daddy ever hit your mama sometimes?"
"Yes." Cheryl spread the clover, looking. "But he buys her pretty things, too. And he's got a job now. Now, do you promise you won't tell what I just told you about me and Delbert?"
"Yes ma'am."
"You don't have to say 'ma'am' to me, Stephen. And listen. He's the most gentle and the most experienced person I've ever met. He knows so much about the world."
That night, Stephen listened as his mother read from Aunt Margaret's Bible Stories:
But God pitied Adam and Eve, and us too, and He promised them that the Seed—that is, the Son—of the woman should bruise the serpent's head, and set them and their children free. Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, set us free when He died on the cross and then rose again and now we belong to Him, and not to the Devil. Only we must try and ask Him to help us not to do wrong like Eve did, or we shall die from the power of the enemy.
PART 3
Just as I Am
SALVATION
By late Wednesday afternoon, Mrs. Clark had typed the church bulletin, filed several committee reports, rested, and read from her Bible—Psalms. At suppertime she ate a ham sandwich brought over by Mrs. Weams, drank a cup of tomato juice, took her two capsules and the brown pills, and freshened up in the bathroom before people started coming to prayer meeting about a half-hour early, at around seven. In the sanctuary, Stephen sat on the third pew, inside seat, where he leaned his head into the corner made by the meeting of the seat back and the end of the pew. Soon the hymns would bounce off the wood in that corner, ringing with hard sounds from a place where angels sang. His mama sat beside him. She was dressed for prayer meeting—the same as for church. His father sat in the church foyer with the ushers, though he hardly ever ushered. The ushers wore coats and ties, except sometimes on a Wednesday night one or two wore a shirt without a tie. But the collar would be buttoned. The ushers handed out bulletins and took up offering in wooden plates with soft fuzzy bottoms. Sometimes he got to drop in a nickel or a dime. At offering time, four of them marched down the middle aisle, two and two, and picked up offering plates from a table. Then while Mrs. Tyndall played songs on the piano, they took up offering, moving from front to back, one along each wall and two up the middle aisle. But Stephen's daddy usually just sat back where you came in. He took up offering once or twice a year—Mr. Jaywright and Mr. Simpson t
ook it up just about every Sunday—but Stephen looked for his daddy anyway. The word "usher" had a kind of magic to it.
For Harvey, there was something embarrassingly emotional displayed by preachers, something that made him ashamed of most any sermon he heard. But he could no more stay away from church than he could stay away from food. If he didn't come to church he would get talked about and his mama and papa would hear about it and would want to know why he was forgetting God, and that would be one of the worst possible things that could happen to them. His mama and papa's pew was fifth row, left side. One of their shames was that their youngest, Steve, didn't come to church anymore. As a little boy, he'd sung solos in church. They didn't know what had happened. His papa had said something to Steve about it, but that hadn't made any difference yet.
Mrs. clark hobbled into the auditorium. She'd gotten word from Clara Stott on the phone that Seth Templeton and "some more people" were upset about her staying in the church for a few days. She'd decided her nervousness also had something to do with this awful thing about the preacher and the Daniels girl all mixed in with her talks with Jesus Himself who had come maybe to straighten all that out. All these events had come together, connected, but Jesus had wanted it to be private so she'd better not tell.
She did have to admit that she was about ready to get on back home.
She felt a touch on her shoulder. Jordan Sellers escorted her to her seat. She showed him her ankle. She had used two ankle wraps instead of one so that the swelling would be clearly visible.
WHERE TROUBLE SLEEPS Page 13