by Lynn Pruett
He leaned down into the car. I tried to peer through his reflecting shades but all I could see was Stelle’s lips distended and enlarged on them. I burst out laughing.
“Good heavens, Paul Dodd. Are you going to come or not? I’m making my list,” said Stelle.
“A list of what?”
“Men who might like a ride to the revival.”
I covered my mouth but it did no good. Laughter spilled out bright and brassy as a trumpet solo. Paul Dodd looked at me. I felt his gaze, coming through the lips even though I could not see his eyes, and deep down inside me, I remembered our slow-dance dance at Bigbees, and something dangerous turned over.
“Thanks, Mrs. Peterson. But I’ve got more vehicles than I know what to do with. Besides, if word gets out that I’m at the revival, all hell will break out over the rest of the county.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“As long as you’re on our side, sheriff.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted and walked to his car.
Stelle drove slowly up to the house. “Pshew. Did you see the big dent one of those rocks made in his car door?” She nosed the car as close to the porch as she could before braking. “I’m so proud of you.” Stelle leaned across the car and took my face between her soft hands. “So proud.” She kissed me gently on the forehead.
I paused on the porch and looked out over the valley, which spread like one gold sheet from the foot of the purple mountains to the edge of the plateau. Gilded clouds billowed white, and rosy streams of light fell from them like curtains. What would I wear to church on Sunday?
CONNIE BOHANNON
Connie was eating a hot fudge sundae in the porch swing. She saw Stelle kiss Jessamine, and thought, Oh, my God! What was wrong with her family? She was too shocked to say anything to Jessamine, who walked by looking dreamy. A jealous surge lifted inside Connie, but she fought it down.
She slurped the sweet white liquid in the bottom of her bowl. Maybe she should join the church and steal the collection plate. There had to be a lot of money in that business, considering how fine and large the Petersons’ house was. It had a two-story glass wall looking over a lake. It must have cost a mint. Maybe she could be a church secretary. Naw, it would take too long, snitching a little here, a little there. Besides, she’d never learned to type. There had to be more to getting rich off Jesus than rolling on the floor and feeling the money rain down. If that’s all there was to it, there’d be a church on every corner. Actually, on Main and Court in Maridoches, churches did hog three corners. She looked longingly in the direction of the drive-in theater where she and Darryl had spent so many nights of love. Spots of light filtered through the million trees separating her from it. Friday night in Maridoches. Here she was thinking of going to church. Pitiful.
HATTIE BOHANNON
She pushed the door open and walked gently into the bright room. Darla lay under a sheet on the top bunk, her dark hair a nest of sweat. Hattie had brought shampoo, a bucket of water, Darla’s gold towel. The girl had refused to get out of bed for nearly two weeks, despite Connie’s cajoling and Hattie’s threats.
“Darla, I’m here to wash your hair,” said Hattie. “Please sit up.”
Darla did not move so Hattie rolled the sheet down and touched her daughter’s shoulder. She took a brush and began to stroke the girl’s hair. “I’m not my best self these days,” she said. “Receiving your father’s ashes, ending it with Paul, constant surveillance from the church, the drought, Connie being attacked. I’m going under. I went over to the Church of the Holy Resurrection and threw rocks at their lighted cross.”
Darla tossed her head and sat up. “Did you break any?”
“Dozens.”
“That’s cool, Mama.”
“Cool?” said Hattie. “I threw rocks at the minister too. Missed him, though.”
“You missed on purpose. That’s even cooler,” said Darla. “What’s with the bucket?”
“I’m going to wash your hair.” Hattie lifted the bucket to the top bunk then climbed up the end rail. Darla dipped her hair into the water as Hattie cupped up handfuls to wet her whole scalp. She thought how pretty Darla was, with her slim features, fine narrow nose, deep blue eyes, and ridges of cheekbone. “I went after him because Paul Dodd wouldn’t support me against the lies. I am not a madam. I despise prostitution. I don’t want it here and Paul Dodd told me it was gone. Don’t choose a man that adds to your burdens.”
“I don’t know that I want a man,” Darla said.
“That’s an option,” Hattie said. “I’m sorry I’m not a good nurse. It’s why Oakley had to go to the VA. I couldn’t nurse him and raise you girls.”
Darla sat up and shook her head, spraying Hattie and the room with water. The bucket spilled, soaking the bed and splashing onto the floor.
“What’s wrong with you?” Hattie said, and regretted it.
Darla covered her eyes, her knees pulled up to her face. “I don’t want to go in the Army!” she cried out.
“You don’t have to,” said Hattie.
“Yes, I do. I joined up the night before the protest. I’m supposed to be there the end of July.”
Hattie mopped up the floor with the towel. The Army could not have another one of her family. “You can’t go. I won’t let you. I am sorry. I will send you to Canada or someplace. It is impossible.” She put the towel in the bucket and carried them into the bathroom. She filled the bucket again and took a fresh towel and sheets back into the bedroom. “You’ll have to change the sheets,” she said.
To her surprise, Darla tossed the covers to the floor and stripped the bed. She tucked in the clean sheets and lay back down. “Will you still wash my hair?”
Again Hattie climbed up the end rail and placed the bucket on the bed. She laid the towel under Darla’s wet head and lathered her hands with shampoo. It smelled of almonds, and this improved her mood. She worked the lather hard into Darla’s rat’s nest, massaged her head, then rinsed her fingers in the bucket.
“You’ve missed weeks of school,” Hattie said. “I doubt you will graduate.”
“Oh, who cares?” said Darla.
“The Army cares,” said Hattie.
Slowly Darla raised up, her hair a white sculpture of foam. She looked girlish, an ad for shampoo and luscious hair. “If I don’t graduate this year—”
Hattie broke in. “I will go in to school next fall and talk to Jake Hiler and see that you run on his cross-country team. After all, there is Title IX.”
“Oh, Mama,” Darla said, “that is so great! That is the best.” She jumped down from the bed and danced around the room. “Yay! Yay! Yay!”
“Rinse your own head—okay?— but come to my room. I have something I want you to do,” Hattie said as she walked down the hall. The light in her bedroom was warm and soft. The urn looked out of place, something she’d never choose, Oakley either, she realized. He needed something green from the 1950s. She sighed and lifted the urn and recoiled when she heard it rattle. That always unnerved her. Ashes contained bone. It was time to plan the memorial service, time to end this marriage. High under her sternum, there were little flutterings, as she thought, I am an unmarried woman. How strange those words, how defining. Was it freedom or fear that made her nerves flutter? Like the whoosh down the roller coaster—you went because you had faith in the machine, but still that taste of imminent death coated your mouth. This is what it felt like. Unmarried woman.
Darla came in, her face clear and eager, her wet hair pressed to her head.
“I’d like to have a memorial service for Oakley and I’d like you to be in charge. I want you to build a bonfire out of the wood from his tobacco barn.” In Hattie’s eyes were tears and in her throat a lump was lodged.
“Yes, Mama,” said Darla. “I can do that.”
JESSAMINE BOHANNON
Jessamine stood at the back of the church in the white baptismal robe. She hadn’t invited her mother to see her join. She wanted this day to be her own triumph. Under h
er robe, she was sweating. Finally the music started. After the march down the aisle to “Let Us Walk Together,” Jessamine paused to loosen her sandals. Barefoot, she followed the carpeted slope at the front of the church to the lip of the baptismal pool. The silvery-blue water shimmered, then stilled. It was more than water, it was the clear coating of God’s love.
Reverend Peterson entered the pool from the side reserved for church members. She glimpsed his white veiny feet below his own white robe and had a moment of recoil. She took a deep breath, then eased down into the warm bath. The water had a thick viscosity. She thought, If love has a physical body, this is it. Reverend Peterson took her hand. He chanted the Covenant of Membership.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, praise Jesus.” Tears rolled down her face. She took her eyes from Reverend Peterson’s face, which was wreathed in light from the candelabras, and looked out at the smiling congregation, singing for her grace.
Holding her firmly around the waist, Reverend Peterson pushed her head underwater. The sudden violence of the baptism scared her. She churned against the water’s resistance as she climbed the stairs. Stelle Peterson and Gert dried her with rough towels before wrapping her in a white robe. The people who left their pews to give blessings seemed of a single heart that opened to embrace her. She wiped her eyes to catch the picture of the happiest moment of her life.
Afterwards, a lightness radiated in her chest. Instead of going home where everything was practical and tense, she sped up a winding mountain road, passing black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace swaying like hands. The car zipped higher. It rode perfectly on the grade through the pines. She flew, faster and faster to the top of the bald mountain where the sky was open.
As she rounded the last curve, a siren shrieked behind her. Red beams swept through her car. When she pushed on the brakes, she was surprised how far the VW slid. The sudden stillness gave her vertigo. She wondered how fast she’d been going.
In the side-view mirror she watched Sheriff Paul Dodd walk down the middle of the road. His approach seemed slowed by the amber haze. He walked hard on his heels. She watched as his head evaporated above the mirror, as his boots and knees disappeared, as his thighs advanced toward her car, as he stopped suddenly, giving her a postcard-picture of his crotch.
She stepped out of the VW, her white cotton dress dry and light in the dusty breeze. She shook her hair out of her eyes. She felt the thick red sand lap her toes as she raised her face to his. They kissed. Jessamine felt, in the eerie color of the sun, what was normal—green grass and blue skies—change to more comfortable tones: dusty rose and orange and golden-brown, the subtler shades of feelings, unexplainable, colors not found in children’s drawings.
Paul Dodd grabbed her up against his chest, where his heart was beating at a frenzied pace. He buried his tongue between her lips. A simultaneous tremor passed between them. What she felt was almost as powerful as God had been this morning in the font, this shaky feeling that gilded everything she saw. Paul’s rough hands squeezed her bottom. She drew back to breathe. He sought her mouth again, this time with less passion, with the curiosity of exploring a new place. She, too, relaxed as he lifted her skirt and ran his rough hands on her thighs. She began to explore inside his shirt and cupped his round biceps, his tough hard shoulder muscles. Then he slipped a finger inside the stretch band of her white underwear, inside her thigh. She drew back but then took his mouth in hers and let her hands run down his body and push open his leather belt.
Afterwards, she felt limp and giddy. All her senses had been filled and overfilled and she no longer had a mind and a reason for things. Everything in the universe had changed, and nothing was important anymore. They hadn’t spoken a word. She watched Paul rearrange himself back into his pants and could tell her gaze embarrassed him.
He choked on the dust, or pretended to.
Jessamine noticed concrete things: his hand bruised above the third knuckle, the pulsing light on the patrol car, the dry field behind them, the warmth of the VW’s door against her legs.
Paul Dodd looked over her head, not at her, even though she searched for his eyes. “Let’s go on a picnic,” he said. “I got sandwiches.”
This sounded sensible. She nodded, then swung down into the road, raising dust that settled on her toes and ankles. She ducked into the VW and took out her purse and her church bulletin. For a minute she hesitated. Should she leave the car here on the shoulder of the road?
He was watching her, she could see in the side-view mirror, looking without shame at her bent over rear end clothed in white, at the small beads of sweat running down her hard calves, streaking their powder of red dust. Just for fun, she wiggled her butt, but his expression didn’t change. She reached back and straightened her underwear, running a finger around the elastic leg band, pulling it straight and smooth. Still his face merely framed his eyes, a wooden mask with two peepholes of moving blue. There was nothing in the car of value. When she turned around, he was wearing reflector sunglasses.
HATTIE BOHANNON
Gert Geurin marched into the truck stop, flew past the EMPLOYEES ONLY sign, and strode into Hattie’s office. Hattie raised her head from a blissful sleep. Her eyes were ringed with purple, the corners of her mouth drawn tight.
Gert announced, “Miz Bohannon, Jessamine joined the church this morning, and you were not there to share in the most joyous occasion of her young life.”
Hattie never figured she’d witness Jessamine’s most joyous occasions. “She did what?” Surely she’d heard Gert incorrectly. “They just let her join?”
“Before you join, you get baptized when the Holy Ghost speaks to you.”
Hattie wanted to ask how you knew when the Holy Ghost spoke to you and especially how this miracle had happened to Jessamine, who seemed a very unlikely candidate for divine dialogue.
“I was blessed today to see Jessamine join. I seen the rapture on her face as she came streaming out of the font, the cleansing water pouring from her eyes. She looked so fragile in that little white gown. You could almost see angel wings on her back. Blondes make beautiful church members.”
Hattie’s head hurt more than ever. It dawned on her that she had missed her chance to get the business back on track. If Hattie had gone to the church, they would have taken her in with open arms if it was with the aim of supporting her daughter’s choice to join.
“Jessamine never said a word to me about the church.”
“Miz Bohannon, this is a miracle day. I am happy to know she has beat back the devil and will be the kind of daughter you deserve.”
“Why, thank you, Gert,” said Hattie.
Gert smiled and bowed her head, then raised it and marched out, humming a tune of celebration.
Hattie felt something new creep into her bones. A wisp of air had uncovered the long-dying embers of a fire and, for a second, blew the coals into a yellow flame.
Still at her desk, reworking numbers that showed the profit line was barely skirting red, Hattie nursed her seventh cup of decaf coffee of the day. It was already after 11 P.M., and she wanted desperately to sleep. The door opened and in stepped Jessamine, whispering over her shoulder. She was wearing a blue sleeveless dress that made her look younger than her years. Her hair hung down, uncombed. It reminded Hattie of dried weeds.
Biting her lower lip, Jessamine shuffled up to the desk. “Mama, I have something important to tell you.”
“I know, I know. Gert told me.”
Jessamine froze. Gert had spied on them? She imagined Gert following her for some reason, a new group to join or a job in the chorus, Gert driving like crazy on cruise control up those winding turns and coming up suddenly on Paul’s car with the light flashing, and then getting out to see what was wrong, her high heels sinking up to her ankles in the red sandy road, which prevented her from yahooing before she got to the scene because she’d hate to fall in the red sand and soil her green chiffon dress and matching lime heels. And then, when she did make it to the patrol car, wh
ite gloved fingers scratching at Paul’s car for balance while Jessamine’s own fingernails were searing marks of passion into his back.
Jessamine gripped around for the extra chair. She sank into it, her face the same ashen-gray as the vinyl upholstery.
“You don’t have to be ashamed, Jessamine. There’ve been church members in our family before. If you’d told me I would have gone with you to see you become a member.” Hattie thought, With my pockets full of stones.
“What else did Gert say?”
“If I wasn’t off duty I wouldn’t waste my breath.” Hattie swirled her coffee. “She said your face glowed. Tears streamed down your face. You were wearing a beautiful white dress. You looked young, fragile.” What else? She didn’t pay any attention to Gert’s gilt descriptions. “Jessamine, are you ill?”
“Yes, Mama. I’ve had a long day, and if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go home and go to bed.” She blushed bright red. There was a cough in the hallway, throaty, low, and familiar. Jessamine blushed again. She slid out the door and pulled Paul Dodd into the office. His face was expressionless.
Hattie glared at Jessamine. She had no interest in making up with Paul Dodd. Why couldn’t he just leave her alone? Here he was using her daughter to get in to see her. “Jessamine, Darla and I have been planning your father’s memorial service. I am too tired to discuss anything else tonight.”
The long happy sound that issued into the room came from Paul Dodd, which surprised Hattie, as if he was the one under pressure. She watched his shoulders relax and his face soften into friendliness. Maybe Jessamine had set him up too.
“Have a good evening, ladies,” he said, and tipped his hat as he left the room.
“Well, good night!” Jessamine called after him and frowned.
THE LADIES OF THE CHURCH OF THE HOLY RESURRECTION
What bothered the ladies most about the Bohannon girl’s presence during service was where their husbands’ eyes and minds would be. They knew their husbands well. The summer sermons, with all the focus on lust, kept the men stirred up. So the ladies went as a committee to Reverend Peterson and expressed their fervent desire: that he pray for rain, that he pick sermons about water, the parting of the Red Sea, Moses in the bullrushes, Noah and the Great Flood. It was what Maridoches needed, now that the harlot had been saved.