by Sam Halpern
Fred snorted. “Your folks just like LD’s and Lonnie’s.”
“No, they’re not,” I said. “Mom and Dad don’t care if I visit somebody’s church.”
“How come it is then you can’t come? You ain’t never gone t’ church at th’ First Christian with LD and Lonnie and me.”
It was true. Boy, was Mom going to get upset when I asked her. Maybe Dad too. I would have to really work to get a yes out of them. “When’s it start?”
“Thursday at eight. If it don’t rain. Hit’ll be called off if’n hit rains. Samuel, we just got t’ go!” he said, getting up and adjusting his Levi’s.
“I’ll ask, but I’m pretty sure Mom and Dad will say no.”
“Shoot,” he sighed, getting up. “First time we get a chance t’ use your bike t’ really go somewheres, and we can’t do hit.” Then he slipped through the hole in the backyard fence and left, kicking little sprays of dust with his bare feet.
I waited until after supper to ask Dad. He was reading his newspaper and smoking his pipe.
“Dad, Fred said there was gonna be a revival.”
“Eh,” he grunted, and didn’t look up from his reading.
“He said there was goin’ t’ be a revival soon.”
“Who did?”
“Fred.”
“Did, huh?”
Nothing happened. He just kept reading with the smoke from his pipe billowing around his head. “Fred wants me t’ go with him to th’ revival.”
“Does, huh?”
“Uh-huh. Can I go?”
“Oh, I don’t think so this time,” he said, moving the paper closer and frowning.
“LD and Lonnie’s folks won’t let them go either since it idn’t First Christian. Fred says we’re just like th’ Millers and Howards.”
“Huh!” Dad said, and looked at me over his paper.
“I said . . .”
“I heard you. Samuel, I don’t let you go to the Christian Church because I don’t want a lot of pressure put on you to convert. Now, that’s different than Lonnie and LD’s thing.”
I nodded and started toward the door to the kitchen. “Fred says that’s why Lonnie and LD’s folks won’t let them go either. They don’t want them t’ be Holinesses.”
Dad’s newspaper come down and his body jerked up. “You wait right there! That’s ridiculous,” he said, pointing his pipe stem at me. “They’re Gentiles. We’re Jews. There’s a difference,” and he put the pipe back in his mouth, ruffled his paper, and began to read again.
I thought about what to say next. If he got real mad, I’d never get to go, but if I stopped now, I wudn’t going anyway. “I can’t see any difference,” I said. “Nobody wants t’ take a chance on anybody convertin’. I think Fred’s right.”
Dad stiffened. He knew I was conniving. Still, there wudn’t much difference between what we thought from the Howards and Millers. It turned out Dad was thinking the same thing.
“You really wanta go?”
“Yes, sir,” I answered.
“You got any idea what they’re gonna do? I don’t want you handling snakes! If they’re gonna be foolin’ around with rattlers you’re absolutely not goin’! Understand?”
“Does that mean I can go if they don’t handle snakes?”
“That means I’ll think about it again when you find out what’s happening there. And, if Mom says yes.”
The next morning, I went over to Fred’s. “They ain’t gonna be handlin’ snakes, are they?” I asked, as we wandered through the strawberry patch eating what had been missed at the last picking. “Dad told me I couldn’t go for sure if they handled rattlers.”
Fred straightened up and stuck his thumb in his Levi’s. “Aw, naw, hun’ney,” he said, popping a handful of berries in his mouth. “These here are Holy Rollers. I don’t go t’ no revivals that handles snakes. These folks rolls and talks in tongues.”
I had heard a lot about tongue talking at school, but wudn’t quite sure what happened. “What’s tongue talkin’ like, Fred?”
“Why, hun’ney, don’t you know what it is talkin’ in tongues?” and he grinned.
“Huh-uh.”
Fred’s grin got bigger. “Well you can see when we get there. Figure you’ll get t’ go?”
I jammed my hands in the pockets of my Levi’s. “Don’t know. Helps they won’t be handlin’ snakes. Dad ain’t hot on it, but I think he’ll go along if Mom will.”
Fred slipped the stem of a big red strawberry between his toes and jerked upward with his foot. The strawberry flew up in the air and he caught it, plucked off its little green seat, and popped it in his mouth. “Just like Lonnie and LD,” he said.
I shook my head. “If I tell you tomorra, is that time enough?”
“I reckon. Long as I know in time t’ slick my hair down. We got t’ leave by 7:30.”
When Mom heard about it that night, you’d have thought the Holinesses were going to cut my throat.
“A tent revival! Holy Rollers! One of those wild-eyed, arm-waving, screaming preachers! People rolling around, babbling like idiots! No! Absolutely not! It’s bad enough that you run around God knows where with those crazy friends of yours! The next thing you know, you’ll be going to church meetings on Sundays, marrying some shiksa, eating traif . . . ham, bacon, making moonshine with Bess Clark! No! You’re a Jew. Enough already!”
By the time Mom finished yelling, Dad was laughing so hard his neck veins were bulging and Mom, who had been drying dishes, was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with an iron skillet in her hand that had been waving all over the place. Naomi was at the sink, and I could tell by her face that she was dying to laugh, but holding back. I wanted to laugh too, but I knew if I did wudn’t no way I was going to the revival.
Finally, Dad wiped his eyes and said, “M’dom, it’s just a tent revival. In the last twenty-five years there’ve been hundreds around us. Nobody’s going to convert him. So far these people have been very careful with us when it comes to religion. Samuel knows who he is. Let’s let him see what’s goin’ on out there, get an understanding of the world that surrounds him.”
Mom seemed kind of confused because she put the skillet in the pots and pans cabinet instead of hanging it on a hook where she always did. She had closed the door to the cabinet when it hit her what she’d done and she took the skillet out and hung it up. Then she shook her head at Dad and laughed. “You’d let him go anywhere.”
“Now, you know better than that,” he answered, and laughed too.
The night of the revival, I started chores early. By the time Dad got in from the field I was finishing up and my hands were killing me from squeezing tits too fast.
“Gettin’ done early t’night, huh?” Dad said, leaning against the main post to the stock chute and scratching his back.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“Wanta be there from the start, eh?” He chuckled.
“Yes, sir.”
“Ought to see quite a show. Alfred said Mort Thomas was gonna be there.”
When Dad mentioned Mort Thomas, I almost jumped off the milking stool. I had only seen Mort a few times, and when I did, he didn’t do nothing. You had to get him riled before he’d do anything and Mort always tried to stay calm.
“Alfred said th’ preacher tonight’s a real Holiness disciple. If anything can rile anybody, it oughta be a real Holiness preacher. What time you go?”
“I got t’ pick up Fred at 7:30,” I answered. “The tent’s down at Mr. Raney’s.”
Dad ricocheted off the stock chute. “Bert Raney? Bert’s one of those people that tease Mort. If that preacher don’t rile Mort, Bert will.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, then said, “Samuel, if anything happens, you got sense enough t’ get out of that tent, don’t you?”
I said I did, but what I didn’t say was that if Mort started doing it I wudn’t about to leave without seeing at least some.
“You stay close to old Fred,” said Dad. “He’s got a head full
of common sense. You do like he does. Fred Cody’s not goin’ t’ get into anything he can’t get out of.”
The clock said ten minutes after seven as I pushed down the last biscuit and honey and ran out to my bike. I pedaled hard, and when I got to the Mulligans’, Fred was waiting by the road. He was so excited he was jiggling.
“Let’s go, hun’ney, we’re late,” he yelled, and jumped on back as I turned around.
It was a hard pull back to the main road because I was already tired, so I turned pedaling over to Fred from there. He took off, being fresh, and all I had to do was sit on back and let the wind fly though my hair and listen to the tires sing. In a few minutes, we come over a rise and there, about a mile away, we could see the tent lit up with people walking in and out in the twilight and the sounds of “Shall We Gather at the River” as we coasted down through pockets of warm and cool air, and went boiling into the gap that Mr. Raney had cut in his road wire fence.
The tent looked like the pictures I had seen of circuses, with a pole up the middle and shorter poles around the sides so people could set out toward the edges. It must have been awful old because the canvas was full of little tears and some of the seams was split. You could see lantern light shine through in lots of places.
When we pulled up, Fred was off the bike in a hurry. “Come on, hun’ney,” he said. “Th’ preachin’s gonna start soon. Come on!”
Inside was maybe a hundred people. Only half of them had chairs and the rest were standing. Most of those were in the back near the opening, and it didn’t look like we were going to see anything until Fred began wriggling between people. The preacher saw us and said, “Let them young’uns up front.” It was a great spot. We could see everything. The only bad part was a fat lady behind us that kept farting. Right in the middle of “Old Rugged Cross” she let a whopper. Finally, the singing was over and the preacher started. He was a big man in a brown suit and he had a white handkerchief in his hand that he kept wiping his forehead with. He wiped it a lot too, because it was hot in the tent, and all crammed together like we were it was sweltering. Nobody seemed to notice though because we were all listening. The preacher talked slow at first and I could tell he was warming up like Fred had told me he would. Then he speeded up some. A lot of the time he was looking right at me, and his eyes were big and I began to feel a little shaky. It was like he was reaching inside me and moving stuff around.
“Jesus wept! And when you read the Gospel it ain’t hard t’ see why. Each of us knows what he said when he was alive, yet we keep on doin’ what we’re doin’ like it don’t mean nothin’ ’cept in church. But that ain’t what he asked of us; he asked that we do right like he taught us t’ do right all the time. How many of us are gonna go home t’night, right after this meetin’, and start doin’ th’ same things we been doin’ before we came here?”
He stopped talking and looked around and I guessed nobody thought it was a question. When he started again it was like that made him mad because he come at us like a mean bull. He talked about living like Jesus said. He didn’t want us to live any lies, he wanted truth!
“You can’t go ’round keepin’ th’ truth inside you and lyin’ on th’ outside. That’s sin! Sin just as sure as tellin’ it!” he shouted at us.
I thought about the crazy man and us knowing and not saying nothing while bad stuff was happening to peoples’ stock. I looked over at Fred and I could tell he was a little shook up by what the preacher said too and figured it was probably that.
But the preacher never let up and I could hear a few folks talking out loud and then all of a sudden Fred punched me in the ribs and I looked to where he was nodding. There, across the open space in front of the preacher, stood Mort Thomas and right next to him was Bert Raney. Bert was saying lots of “Amens” and “Yes, Lords.”
The preacher was getting to going good now, and more people was talking. The loudest voice of all come from the fat lady behind us. It got higher and higher and louder and louder. Suddenly, she grabbed Fred and me by our shoulders, throwed us aside, and staggered into the little clearing, where she fell down jabbering like a fool.
Nearly everybody was talking now, especially Bert Raney, and several were using words that didn’t make any sense and falling down, knocking over chairs, and praising Jesus.
All at once, there was this high-pitched scream like a blue jay, and Mort Thomas fell in a heap. He started twitching and quivering all over. Then the quivers turned to jerks, and he began slobbering at the mouth. The more he jerked, the more everybody went crazy, calling and babbling in tongues and flailing their arms and legs with the preacher going strong.
Then somebody hit the center post. I saw it tilt and so did Fred and he grabbed my arm.
“Hun’ney, let’s get outta here,” he said, but the way out was blocked with people falling and flailing all over the place. Just then, the center post was hit again and slowly tipped sideways. Fred headed for the only canvas we could reach, flopped down on his belly, and tried to squeeze under. He wudn’t making much headway until I grabbed the edge and yanked. We were at a seam and it ripped and gave enough room to get through. We got out just as the center post went down. Folks was crashing and yelling, then the sides began to give way, and people started crawling out of everywhere like cockroaches from a breadbox.
Fred and me jumped on the bike and I took off, him hanging on behind. We started laughing so hard, I thought we’d die. It was so bad that a couple miles down the road we had to stop. We were still laughing when I dropped Fred at the Mulligans’ and headed home.
While I was pedaling, I got to thinking about the revival. What the preacher said about the truth was right and I knew it and we were lying like mad about the crazy man. I wondered what God was going to do to us unless we told. The strangest thing though was the preacher’s eyes and the way I couldn’t get away from them and the jiggling feeling they made inside me. The revival was really different from what went on in shul. Everything we did was kind of mournful. The Holiness people had a lot more fun than we did, but they were really scary about all the fire in hell and how if you didn’t do what the preacher said, you were gonna burn in it. That really got to me. I figured I’d had enough of Holinesses. I was just gonna be a Jew.
19
I was wore out by the time I got to our gate and couldn’t wait to go to bed. As I pedaled up the lane, I got the feeling something was wrong. All the lights were on, and I could make out Bess Clark’s pickup in the barn lot.
When I pulled into the yard, a wave of people come out to greet me. Mom and Naomi kept saying, “Thank God! Thank God!” but nobody would say what they were thanking him for. The third or fourth time I asked, Bess Clark answered.
“We had a little excitement t’night . . . matter of fact, your pa and me was ’bout t’ come lookin’ for you.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Come on in, and we’ll talk about it,” said Dad.
We went in the kitchen and the men sat down at the table while Mom and Naomi started making coffee and putting baked stuff on the table. Dad leaned toward me. “Samuel, did you and Fred have any trouble tonight?”
I thought about how the meeting ended and told what had happened. Soon, everybody in the house was laughing, especially Bess Clark, who doubled up when I got to the part about Mort’s fit and the tent falling.
“Any other problems?” Dad asked, when things calmed down. “Did you and Fred see anything strange on th’ way home?”
“No, sir. Wudn’t anything strange that we saw. Why?”
“Just after you left, Mr. Clark found the carcass of one of his bucks,” said Dad. “It was in the field next to Shackelford’s and had been hacked up like the other one.”
“Its male organs and eyes?” I asked, trying to keep my voice calm.
“Yeah, tongue too, this time. It was a pretty bad sight,” said Dad.
“Hit was a awful sight!” said Bess.
There was a rap on the kitchen door, and I heard Mr. MacW
erter say hello to Naomi.
“Hello, Morse,” Mr. Mac said as he come to the table. He was wearing a slicker which I thought was odd because it wudn’t raining.
“I got t’ worryin’ after you checked for Samuel at our house and decided t’ come over. Good t’ see he’s home,” and he put his arm around my neck and squeezed and something hard pressed against my head. He opened the slicker to sit down and pulled the longest barreled pistol I ever saw out of his belt and laid it on the table. “What all’s happened?” he asked.
“Another sheep killin’, George,” Dad answered. “By th’ time Bess got here, it was pretty dark. We grabbed our guns and lanterns and picked up Ed and his dogs, but by th’ time we got there it was pitch black. The sheep had been dead for about a day as best we could tell, but th’ dogs were goin’ crazy. They cut right through Shackelford’s place, then seemed t’ lose th’ scent at Cuyper Creek. Whatever or whoever did th’ killing knows how t’ fool a dog.”
“Movin’ toward th’ river, wudn’t he,” said Mr. Mac.
“Oh yeah,” said Bess. “Ain’t no doubt ’bout that. Headin’ toward them cliffs. He’s got t’ get outta that stream someplace, though, and that’s when we’re gonna find where he went.”
“Better do it t’morrow early or th’ trail’s gonna be cold,” said Mr. Mac. “Only thing you’re gonna have left t’ follow that long after th’ killin’ is some tracks. Unless you had a bloodhound. Ordinary dog won’t pick up a human scent after two days.”
“Sheriff’s bringin’ three of them tomorrow,” said Dad.
“Sheriff’s goin’ out with ye?” said Mr. Mac, and his eyes lit up.
“Sheriff, Morse, Ed, me, ’n’ Rags,” said Bess. “Wanta join us, George?”
“Hell yes! Whoever’s doin’ this is closer t’ me than he is t’ Rags! What time?”
“Just before dawn,” said Dad. “Meet here at th’ house.”