Wheezing and bilious, I stumble outside and sit on the porch. It’s still raining. The magnolia tree sheds. Gloria comes out and smokes in the other rocking-chair. She looks bleary and ragged, but seems remarkably calm for someone who is about to relinquish a dream and enter what could so easily be a nightmare.
I ask her to tell me about the house. She says it was built by W. F. Thomison, M.D., who was the chief physician for the Dayton Coal and Iron Company and also the attending physician at William Jennings Bryan’s death. The house used to sit where the street now is, but was put on rollers and dragged by mule to its present position in the late 1890s to make way for boom-time traffic. It was easier to move a house in those days because there was no plumbing or wiring to deal with. In fact, according to Gloria, a man would sometimes, at the request of his wife, move his house several times ‘until the light came through the kitchen window just so.’
When she returns inside, I go and look at a plaque by the front door. To my astonishment it tells me that the house was indeed built by W. F. Thomison, but adds an almost spooky detail. He built it for his wife, Ella Darwin.
The word ‘wow’ comes to mind and I waste the rest of the day trying to track down some relatives. Eventually I find a Darwin down in the local library. Her name is Henrietta and she’s married to local historian Seth Tallent. Both are in their seventies and are funny and charming. Henrietta trots off home and returns with a family tree.
Seth says, ‘I’ll bet you didn’t expect to find some country clodhopper on the family chart, did you?’
The chart, however, proves inconclusive. It all begins with a William Darwin coming over from England a couple of hundred years ago, but it’s impossible to see if he was related to my branch before he left.
Later, back in New York, I put in some more work on this, encountering, among others, a Darwin popcorn farmer down in Alabama, but in the end conclude, alas, that the connection cannot be proved, much to my sorrow and even more, I suspect, to the sorrow of the popcorn farmer.
CHAPTER TEN
Heyall Is a Lake of Fah
When I return from my fruitless genealogical quest, I find that Gloria has another dinner date. After her husband left, her friendship with the man who owned the ranch on the hill deepened. Lester, a doctor, was also going through a divorce and they comforted each other. It was he who gave her the cut-off scrubs. He has also given her two horses. After a while Lester, a doctor, met a woman named Ruth-Anne and they all became friends. Tonight they’re going out for their last dinner. Ruth-Anne arrives in a red Jaguar. She’s a pretty woman with short hair and a pleasant shy quality. Gloria squirts out two generous beakers of wine and they get in the car to drive the forty-five minutes to Chattanooga to meet Lester, whose surgery is there.
I head back out to Ayola’s. An incredibly sad song is playing. A man sings and a little girl interjects with questions like, ‘Que pasa, Papa?’ Eventually it ends with the father saying ‘Adios, chiquita.’ I look out the window and see that the cops are feeding across the highway at Long John Silver’s tonight. Leaving the restaurant I encounter a large woman. On her neck is a hickey that got infected. It’s not a pretty sight and the two burritos and the iced tea ($7.95) lunge into my throat. I manage to contain them and start cruising around town, killing time until Gloria returns. There’s a defeated-looking strip mall right behind the restaurant so I tool over there and give it the once-over.
Two porky ten-year-old girls throw a little bouncing ball around the parking lot. Behind them is a shop entitled Get-It-N-Go: Video & Tanning. I remember that when this contraction of ‘and’ into ‘n’ first began in England my father, disapproving pedant that he is, would walk into a ‘Fish ‘N’ Chip’ shop to demand ‘two orders of fish ENNNN chips, please.’ Not far away is Kwik Kash Title Pawn. Then there’s Mountain Air Natural Foods, which contains no food whatsoever, only a sparse scattering of vitamins on shelves. Discount Outlet can be discounted: it’s gone. Godzilla plays at a tiny, shabby modern theatre, the name of which has dropped off, leaving only the word ‘inema.’ Next door is the Gem Shop—Diamonds, Gold, Engravin (no g). In the window is another sign, ‘Pearls in June. Sale 30 per cent off. Remember Dad’s Day, Sunday JUN E21.’ How or why the E got moved fifteen inches to the right to join 21 is a mystery. Then there’s Dollar General Store, Ekerd Drugs, and Shop-Rite.
I enter Shop-Rite. Actually, it’s not a bad shop. Amazingly, the shelves have little signs listing the content of the fruit above. It’s a lost cause, but you have to admire the plucky optimism of the gesture. I buy some apples from under a sign that states, ‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ Very lofty. All I’m looking for is some fibre to help shunt the burritos through before they shape up into something nasty and hurt me on the way out.
In the checkout line ahead of me is a stringy thirty-year-old redneck in clean overalls, no shirt, a baseball hat and worn-down work boots. I check his neck and it is indeed red, a ruddy, brick red. He’s carrying a jumbo-size bottle of Coke and orders a tin of Skoal chewing tobacco. Now he dumps about a hundred pennies, nickels and dimes (no quarters) onto the counter.
‘Should be a few dollars thar,’ he says, grinning in embarrassment.
The checkout girl politely picks up the coins one by one, counting them as the rest of us wait patiently in line. I notice that the redneck’s hands are shaking violently. I wear a pouch around my waist in which I’m carrying $500 in cash, a camera that cost me $1,500, and a wallet containing two credit cards good for $30,000 apiece.
I look away almost in shame and study some tabloids on a nearby stand. ‘Bible Predicts 2nd Great Depression,’ says one of them.
The redneck’s trembling hands pick up some change and he departs with his nutrition. I pay for my apples and follow him out. He gets into a rusting pickup and drives away.
Suddenly I feel depressed. I came down here in part, I must confess, to poke fun at just such hillbillies as this, but I didn’t take into account the reality of rural poverty. I remember the man on the bus. ‘The only drawback to living in the country is you get less opportunity.’ Yes, and there’s something claustrophobic and scary about this. Where do you go out here in the boonies when the well runs dry? Furthermore, compounding the problem of maintaining a snide, superior tone, everyone’s been so damned nice to me. For seventy-five years people have been coming down here to mock, from Mencken to me, and all day long I’ve been running around asking questions and everyone’s been ‘just as nice as all get out,’ which means as open and friendly as you could wish.
I must locate a cliché soon or I’m in trouble.
I drive alongside the railroad track, along a street of shabby one-storey wooden houses with cluttered porches. At the end of the road, where the town is starting to thin out, I see, to my amazement, a sign:
‘Tent Revival 7:00’
Around the bend, a marquee with a blue-striped roof is pitched on the grass beside a small, plain brick church. Parked alongside the church is an ancient bus painted mauve. It’s evening but the rain has stopped and the air is thick and humid. The sides of the tent are open to let what little breeze there is blow through, so I blow in with it.
A preacher in his early fifties, dressed in narrow black pants, a white shirt and black tie is up on a small raised platform at the front. There’s a pair of guitars up there and an electric piano to one side, but no one’s at them. The preacher’s shouting at twenty or thirty po’ white folk. He yells and jumps on and off the little stage and pumps his arms, and then he quietens down and speaks soothingly, temptingly, stretching out the words. He can switch from one style to the other in a second and it’s a fine performance.
‘God wants to give you a new life, new way, new worrrrld. Old Devil say, well you don’t know, you might wanna come back, I’ll take you. But if you ever git in the King’s Highway, if you ever git set free …’
‘Tha’s right.’
‘Set free, set free …’
‘Yeah, Preacher.’
‘Se
t free! Set free!’ He reaches a pitch and now lowers his voice to a croon. ‘Set freeee, set free …’ He wipes his sweating brow and takes a breath. ‘They got a lot of po’ black people around here, there’s a lot of po’ black folks in this nation, jes like there’s a lot of po’ white folks. Well, I’ll tell ya, I betcha tonight we could go to every black folk, every black person in Rhea County, say, “You’re po’, ya up against it, ya havin’ a hard time, ain’tcha friend? How about being my slaaaave? How about going back in under slavery? How about goin’ back, let me ruuuule over you and make your decisions. You jes give up your freedom and be my slave.” You won’t find a one that’ud say, “Oh, that’ud be good, take me back.” No, no, no! You know why? Ooooh, that taste of freedom! That taste of freedom!’
‘Amen!’
‘That’s right, yessir, brother.’
‘God wants to set you free tonight, set you freeee. Been saved twenty-three years ain’t never tasted another drop of alcohol.’
‘How long is that, brother?’
‘Been saved twennnnty-three years, ain’t never smoked a joint of dope.’
‘Amen.’
‘Been saved twenty-three years, ain’t been out with no other woman.’
‘Praise the Lord.’
‘Been saved twennnnty-three years, ain’t never been in another dive or honky-tonk. Been saved twenty-three years, ain’t robbed and stolen or cheated. I made a lot of mistakes. I been misled, I’ve got stubborn, I’ve tripped up, I’ve disobeyed, but I ain’t never liked it.’
‘That’s right, brother.’
‘Oh, no, what I like is, I like bein’ saaaaved, bein’ a chiiiild of God, bein’ borned again. That new worrrrld, that new life … Oh, tonight I feel so happy, can’t explain it.’
But he tries. He tries to explain it in terms of what it would be like trying to describe the world to a blind man. While he’s doing that (because I know where that’s leading) I look around. There are no black people here. In the row across from me are three fat women draped in long dresses, a trio of featureless profiles, heads dumped in a tutu of fat; hard, depressed eyes and set mouths but neither jaws nor necks. The men are thinner, thinned out by labour perhaps, and wear jeans and plaid shirts. They are of all ages and, to my surprise, are more vocal than the women. There are some kids too, eyes exhausted in the heat, pensive, a little wary, as if they know that pretty soon the preacher’s going to do a one-eighty on the King’s Highway and start screaming about the terrors of hell.
Looking over my shoulder, I see a man at the back with a Bible clutched against his chest like a child clutches a teddy-bear. He’s a clean-cut, unimpressive little fellow with round-rim glasses and a moustache. Thirty years old, sandy red receding hair, white shirt, tie. He projects none of the raw growl of the preacher but has a sanctimonious, proprietary air to him, so I go over and ask him if he thinks it would be okay for me to take some photos. The answer is no, but I discover he’s the pastor of the church, one Leland Frazier. Turns out the preacher up on stage is a jail preacher. Leland asks me where I come from and I tell him England. I ask what a jail preacher is doing here. He’s about to reply when the preacher starts shouting and sobbing so loud we can’t hear each other.
‘And Jesus says, “Except you be born again, you cannot seeeeeee!!!”’ he yells. ‘I was blind but now I see! I see the hand of God in ever’thing!’
A young woman walks in from the rear of the tent and starts to play the electric piano, which now accompanies the preacher as he hollers on. As if obeying a signal, a number of men walk down to the front of the stage and prostrate themselves. It’s funny because they’re all wearing sneakers and the soles stand up behind them bright and geometric like toy ducks at worship behind their masters.
‘He’s doin’ a revival for us,’ Leland says.
‘Ah,’ I say, trying not to smile at the sneakers.
The preacher’s yells swoop down into a tone of soothing seduction, a voice one might use while stroking a child’s head at bedtime. ‘They’re comin’ to the Lord Jesus tonight. Tha’s enough. He’ll take care … He’ll take care of it. “I need a new life, Preacher, pray for me.” That’s enough, come to God, he’ll take care of it. “Help me, Preacher, I got so backslidden in my heart, ain’t nothin’ there but coldness and indifference.” So down, so out, so discouraged, so defeated, so doomed and down! Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, salvation is at hand! Come to Jesus, he’ll take care of it …’
And now the electric pianist begins to bang out the tune for ‘Amazing Grace,’ and everyone starts to sing. It’s a song I happen to like, a sweet sound from my own past in the little schoolhouse in the English countryside, and I’m almost getting teary-eyed when Leland comes in from the side with a sly, knowing expression on his face.
‘So, it’s no coincidence that you happened to stop by here tonight I don’t think, do you?’
‘Maybe not,’ I say, thinking of how in need I was of a good solid cliché for the book. And Leland drops right into the scheme, still looking up at me sideways like a salesman sniffing out a weakness to slink in on.
‘Are you saved? Do you know what that means?’
‘Er, saved?’
‘Yeah. Goin’ to heaven instead of heyall.’
‘I don’t know, like I say, I’m from England, we think about things a little differently.’
‘I understand that, I understand that, but God thinks the same way. He thinks the same over here as he does over thar, do you know that? Old-time preachers used to preach the same way over thar as we do over here. I read after ’em, they’s from England, used to be some great preachers, but they’re slidden away, farther and farther from God, over in England.’
‘In England?’ I ask, the patriotic nerve (more or less dead) brought to life for a second as I think of the comparative crime statistics, particularly those for murder.
‘We are over here too. America’s goin’ farther and farther away from God.’
‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘seems like everybody’s religious.’
‘Not saved.’
‘How do you get saved then?’
‘Through the Lord Jesus Christ. See the Bible here tells us that it’s not by good works that we’ve done … See a lot of people says, “I’ve been pretty good. You know, I ain’t never killed nobody [interesting definition of ‘good’], you know, I ain’t never been a really bad thief,” but God says, “For by grace are ye saved through faith and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works lest any man should boast.” See it’s not in works, it’s not in how good that you are.’
‘So what does “by grace” mean?’
‘Grace … Grace is this. God sayeth “For God so loved the world that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.” He don’t want nobody to go to heyall. It’s a gift, see, it’s something He’ll give to you that you don’t deserve, you don’t earn it. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” That means you. You’ve sinned.’
Me? My God, yes. If he only knew. I cannot confess the worst of it, not even here. I’ve stolen, cheated, lied, fornicated, and written scripts for Hollywood, and that’s not the half of it. I am to sin what the L.L. Bean catalogue is to rugged outerwear.
‘Me?’ I ask. ‘How do you know?’
‘You’ve sinned,’ he assures me.
Not wishing to get into a discussion on this, I try to change the focus.
‘So, do you believe in a literal hell?’
‘Yes I do, it’s right in this Bible. Let me read to you about a man that went thar. Would you like to hear a story about a man that actually went thar?’
Oh, dear.
‘Look, it’s in red letters,’ he says, pointing to a passage in the much-clutched book which is indeed in red. ‘That means the Lord Jesus actually spoke these words out of his mouth [where else would he speak them from, his arse?] and they penned it down as he spoke it.’
There follows a story about a rich tightwad in purple and a beg
gar named Lazarus who gets his sores licked by dogs but doesn’t get much joy from the rich guy. One goes up, the other down. Lazarus appears to get Abraham’s bosom, but for the tightwad it’s strictly behemoths and flames.
‘If you go to hell, you never get out again?’ I ask.
‘Out of heyall?’ he asks, not understanding my odd pronunciation of the word.
‘Yeah.’
‘There’ll be a day and that’s called the Great White Throne Jerdgement Day. What happens is God’s going to take those that were put into heyall. They’re gonna be brought out of heyall and jerdged according to what they’ve done and then they’re going to be cast back into heyall. Let me show you this …’ He’s at the Bible again. I try to head him off from another endless and incomprehensible story.
‘Wait just a second!’ I protest. ‘You mean you get thrown in, then you get taken out, and then you get thrown back in again!?’
‘Into a lake of fah. Let’s step right over here, mebbe you can hear a little bit better. Okay, now listen to this. Just …’
‘No, you listen to me,’ I insist, willing to debate on any level if it’s not going to come back to endless quotes from a 2,000-year-old self-contradictory book of dubious origin translated into an archaic language I barely understand and stuffed with statements like ‘And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.’ ‘Let me tell you where I have a hard time with Christianity. It’s this whole idea of hell. It’s so cruel, it’s so final, I can’t imagine a God who had a big heart [let’s keep it simple] condemning anyone to that forever.’
This doesn’t stop him for a second; he has another parable at hand, Folksy Parable No. 7, fit for a retard and ready to go:
‘Okay, now listen to this. Have you got a son?’
‘I’ve got a stepson and a daughter, yeah.’
‘Okay. Let me asked you this. What if your son was with you here? Let’s say that jes all of a sudden here come a car come down through here, jes slidin’ sideways an’ layin’ over in that ditch over thar and turned over an’ …’ To cut a long story short, after much crawling around and heroics, my son, who has been reduced to the age of six, gets burned to death and the driver of the car lives.
Trials of the Monkey Page 12