The Truest Pleasure

by Robert Morgan

  “Thank you, Jesus,” we all said.

  “Now hug each other closer,” the preacher said.

  It was the most wonderful feeling as we all drawed each other to us.

  “Hell itself cannot stand against love,” Preacher McKinney said.

  I was aware somebody had put a hand on my breast and squeezed it. But in the packed-together crowd I couldn’t see who it was and I didn’t much care. We was so close everybody was touching somebody. We swayed as one body when the preacher prayed.

  “This is what people was made for,” Preacher McKinney said. “We was put here to share in the joy of Christ’s love, and to know Him through love.”

  I don’t know when I first noticed the smell of smoke. The scent of coal oil burning in the lanterns had been there from the beginning. And there was the scent of pine needles heated by the lanterns. But suddenly I caught the odor of smoke. At first I thought it was just a lantern, or the smell of pipe smoke on one of the men. But it was a dusty papery smoke. Everybody looked around at the same time and saw the hair of smoke pouring through the arbor, and heard the crackling.

  It was such a shock it took us a few seconds to respond. People unlocked their arms and begun twisting and struggling to get up. Some helped each other and some crowded toward the door. “It’s a fire!” Tildy screamed.

  In a daze we all begun pushing toward the door. It was purely dark outside, but I could see the fire glow on the trees.

  “Where is the spring?” Joe said.

  “It’s way up on the hill,” Emmett MacBane said.

  “Closest water is the branch,” his brother Tilden said.

  “Anybody got a bucket?” Pa said.

  “It’s the baptism of fire,” a voice shouted out in the woods, and there was laughter.

  “Where’s the bucket of drinking water?” Emmett said. It appeared somebody had stole the bucket and dipper from the stump in front of the brush arbor. But it was too late anyway. The pine brush on the walls and roof of the arbor had caught like tinder. The fire soaked right through the walls almost as soon as we got out. There wasn’t much we could do but stand there watching the arbor drown in flames. Within a minute fire had reached into the frame and opened the walls. We could see the benches burning, and the pulpit and altar. There wasn’t a thing we could do except gasp as the roof started falling a piece at a time.

  “We will build it back,” Emmett said.

  “We will build it back even bigger,” Tilden said.

  “The Lord’s work will not be stopped,” the preacher shouted to the darkness. The fire lit the trees far into the woods, but blinded by the flames I couldn’t see a thing.

  I don’t remember much about the ride back down the river road. After the heat of the service, and the rage of the fire, the cool air felt good at first. But I soon begun to shiver in the dark and wish I had a coat. Joe lit the lantern but it didn’t help much against the night chill. We creaked and rattled along the rough road under the stars. I brushed pieces of sawdust and shavings off my dress and out of my hair.

  “You had a true baptism, Ginny,” Lily said to me. “I could tell it. I could tell you was in the Spirit.”

  But now that we was out in the dark I didn’t want to talk about the service. It felt wrong to talk about it.

  When we got to the house it must have been past midnight. We had left Lily at her place up near the ford. Florrie and Locke had gone to bed and there wasn’t even a lamp on in the living room. The katydids was so loud in the trees around the place it was hard to believe the house was there at all.

  While Joe unhitched the horse and led him to the stable, Pa gathered kindling and cobs to start a fire. Because it was so clear, the night had got cold. I shivered and suddenly felt awful hungry. “Make the fire in the stove,” I said. “Build a fire in the stove and I will fix some biscuits and coffee.”

  “I’m mighty hungry for cornbread and butter,” Pa said.

  “Then I’ll make some cornbread,” I said. I got meal and buttermilk and salt and soda and mixed them up in a batter by the time Joe come in. Pa had the cob fire roaring in the stove and the kitchen started to warm up. I poured the batter into a pan and put it in the oven. The water for the coffee begun to boil.

  “He’s the best I’ve ever seen since Elmira,” Pa said. “He’s as good as his daddy was.”

  “He’s as good as Lilburn is,” Joe said, “and I always said L-L-Lilburn could outpreach and outshout anybody in Dark Corner.”

  I wondered what they was going to say about my part in the service. Now that we was back home I felt even less like talking about it. It didn’t seem right to discuss what had happened, not because what went on in the brush arbor was shameful, but because it was too sacred to talk about.

  I put a cake of butter on the table and we had hot cornbread and butter and cool molasses and coffee with cream in it. The butter tasted better than ice cream on the hot bread. And the strong coffee matched the buttery sweetness of the molasses.

  “The MacB-B-Banes will build another brush arbor,” Joe said.

  “They should build a rock church,” Pa said. “Except then it would get just like all the other churches.”

  “They could meet in somebody’s house,” I said.

  “It’s not the s-s-s-same if you gather in somebody’s parlor,” Joe said. “You need a sp-sp-special dedicated place.”

  I saw what he meant, for I didn’t even want to talk about the service, and what happened to me, now that we was among ordinary things. I wasn’t ashamed. But it wouldn’t be the same to have a service right in the living room. It would be hard to give yourself to such a meeting. Maybe I was a little embarrassed. I flicked another crumb of sawdust off my dress.

  “Why it’s two o’clock in the morning,” somebody said. It was Florrie standing in the doorway in her nightgown, frowning.

  “Do you want some cornbread and molasses?” I said.

  “I just got up to see who was making all the fuss,” Florrie said.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Everybody always said I was the most high-strung of the Peace children, but the hardest working. Sometimes I work because I can’t stand not to be doing something, because I don’t know where to look or where to put my hands. Other times I’ll get so interested in a job I can’t think of anything else. It will be like I forget I am me, and just think of the job, of what my hands is doing. That’s when I feel the best, when I don’t even think about myself, but about what needs to be done. I guess that’s when I’m most at myself, when I don’t even worry about it.

  People say I got the “Italian” look from the Peaces and the Richardses. It’s true I have Pa’s black eyes and hair. But I got Mama’s fair skin and height. People talk that way all the time, like they know why people look the way they do. But I don’t think we know much about why people are what they are. Some children don’t take after their parents at all. And I sure can’t see traits going back several generations, to Italian, a trace of Italian, blood, or Indian blood, all the way to South Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and back to New Jersey and Wales even before that. I think we are just like God made us and we don’t ever know much about our ancestors or what they did.

  They always said I had a way of my own, and that much I’ll agree to. I never did want to be anybody else. Some said it was because Mama died when I was young, and I never had anyone to bring me up but my sister Florrie. There was nobody else to show how a girl ought to be. Some said it was because I fought with Florrie from the time I was a youngun and didn’t have a chance to learn manners. Others said it was after Pa took me to the meetings that I got mixed up and nervous. And still others said it was because I read too many books that I acted quair.

  But from the time I was just a little girl I always did pitch in if there was somebody sick. I visited the shut-ins and took plates of chicken to the bereaved. Even as a girl I went to poundings for somebody that had their house burnt and took a pound of coffee or of sugar, or a piece of ham meat. I wasn’t more t
han fifteen when I helped wash and lay out a corpse. It was old Miss MacDowell up on Rock Creek that dropped dead while she was rendering lard. I helped put her on the cooling board and clean her up and even washed her hair.

  People liked to say I was a worse bookworm than Pa and I reckon that was true too. Even as a girl I subscribed to the Moody Monthly and American Magazine. Pa took the Toledo paper and I read that too. And we got this magazine from Ohio called The Telescope that I went through every page of. I liked to read early in the morning before daylight. I’d get up and make coffee and read in the kitchen when the house was still quiet. That was the time I liked best, for it was cool in summer and too early to milk the cows. And in winter I’d get the fire going in the stove and have coffee and read before daylight, before Joe and Locke, my brothers, got up. Florrie never did wake up till she had to.

  People always liked to have Florrie around, because she was fun and told jokes. But the truth is she was a little silly, always talky and boy crazy. I hate to say it, but a lot of women and girls appeared to me just plain shallow. They didn’t have a thing on their minds but gossip. And Florrie always was a little lustful. She married early and liked to say that I was becoming an old maid. I never tried to discuss with her about men, but, like I say, she let me know several times she had gone with David before they got married. I couldn’t help but wonder where they had done it, for both our house and the Latham house was always full of people. I guess I was really a little jealous of her.

  From age fourteen on I had gone to picnics with young folks from school and walked home from time to time with a boy after church. That’s the way we did things back then. A boy was interested, he walked you home after meeting. But I had only one beau before I met Tom. He was the schoolteacher for a term, named Simcox. He was from Asheville, and like all teachers back then he boarded around the community. That was part of his pay. When he boarded with us him and me got to talking. We talked way into the night after I washed the dishes. He had read more books than anybody I ever met, and he knowed all about Egypt. Everybody else had gone to bed, and we set there talking while the fire died down. The talking got slower and it was getting cold in the room.

  Finally he stood up like he was going to bed. I stood too, and he looked at me. He pulled me to him and kissed me, not a deep kiss but just a meeting of lips. I didn’t know what to think, but it felt good. I didn’t want him to stop, but he pulled away like he had done something wrong. And he wasn’t looking when he stepped back right into the churn. I had set the milk by the fire to clabber. He tried to catch his balance but the churn tripped him. Down he went and the churn tipped over and sour milk poured over the hearth and over him. Some even splashed in the fireplace and hissed and smelled like scorched sour milk will.

  Pa and Locke come to the door to see what was the matter.

  “The churn tipped over,” I said to Pa. I wanted to laugh, but I didn’t. Pa and Locke went on back to bed.

  I looked at Mr. Simcox like I was about to bust out giggling. But he wasn’t laughing at all. His face was all red and looked sweaty. I think him and me could have made a go of it if he had been able to laugh then, when he was getting up and wiping off the sour milk. I liked him a lot. But he took it too serious, and we never did get closer after that. Oh, we walked up to the spring at twilight and back several times. And we set by the fire talking about every kind of thing you could think of. But we never did relight the spark. He had got too embarrassed. Some men don’t ever forgive you if you see them in a pickle. Locke teased me something terrible for months, saying, “When is Mrs. Simcox going to have supper ready?” and “Is the learned Mr. Simcox going to join us?” When the school term was over Mr. Simcox went back to Asheville and I never saw him again.

  I thought I was too tall for the boys to like me. I put up my long black hair as was the fashion then, and wore my white blouses. I reckon I read too much.

  Pa was always an easy mark for peddlers. They would come through in those days with packs on their backs, or in buggies. Most was recent comers to America that spoke with accents. Pa loved to talk, and welcomed them for dinner, sometimes for the night. And he nearly always bought something. He said I was too suspicious of strangers, especially ones selling something.

  One of them was Ahmed, from Palestine, who had arrived in Greenville only a year or two before. On his first trip through the mountains he carried everything in his pack, a few pieces of cloth, needles, thread, thimbles, small vases of brass and pewter. His English was barely understandable, but his patience and cheer was endless. I was breaking beans on the porch the first time Ahmed arrived.

  He walked into the yard sweating and out of breath, but he took off his pack and begun showing his wares. He brought out one piece of silk or linen after another, and holding them to the light would say, “Is a nice, madam, no?” He kept repeating the words and showing the scarves and strings of lace, while I went on breaking beans. Finally he reached into the bottom of the pack and brought out an afghan with apricot and gold and green workings on it. “And now for the woman of taste,” he said.

  He asked ten dollars for it. I offered five.

  “Madam, I have wife and many chindren in the old country who must come to ’is country.” He spread the afghan over a chair. “For such work it would be a sin to take less than nine dollars,” he said. I offered him five again and kept snapping beans.

  “Is impossible,” he said. “You want me to starve, and all my little chindren?” He folded the afghan and placed it on the pack.

  When Pa returned from the field at dinnertime Ahmed and I was still talking on the porch. He had dropped his price to seven dollars, but I refused to give any. I think it was the work of stringing beans that made me so firm, for I did want the afghan.

  Pa introduced hisself and invited Mr. Ahmed to stay for dinner. They set on the porch and talked while I fixed bread and taters and roastnears to go with the beans. The peddler brought out his wallet and showed Pa a picture of his wife and children, brothers and sisters. When he made enough money, he said, he was going to have his own store in Greenville and “sell nothing but the best.” In fact, even now he sold “nothing but the best.”

  Before he eat, Mr. Ahmed brought out a little book and read from it, after Pa said grace. Pa asked if that was the Bible.

  “Yes, yes, the words of the prophet.”

  “Do you believe in Jesus in your religion?” I said. I knew it wasn’t exactly the thing to say, but I wanted to know.

  “Yes, yes, he also was a great prophet.”

  “Then you do believe in the Lord?”

  “Yes, yes, in the great lord, Allah.” Mr. Ahmed went for the cornbread and new beans and taters. But he would not touch the buttermilk, asking instead for water. The roastnears he eat with special relish. Afterwards he spread the afghan on the cedar chest in the living room. “And for you, kind lady, only six dollars and a half,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “But is worth ten. How can I live?” he said.

  “Ginny can be stubborn,” Pa said. “Here, I’ll give you six and a half.”

  “No, you won’t,” I said. “Five dollars is all it’s worth.”

  But Pa got the money from the leather purse he kept in his closet and paid Mr. Ahmed in silver dollars and one half-dollar. “Ginny’s a good girl, but stubborn,” he said to the peddler.

  The first time I met Tom Powell it must have been at church. Most people like to claim they fell in love when they first saw each other. I reckon that’s the way they remember it, because that’s the way they think it should have been. But I have to be honest. The first time I saw Tom I was just curious.

  What I recall seeing first was the big blond mustache Tom had. It was at the church picnic, and in sunlight his mustache shined like crystal. I thought, That man is built awful strong, and his mustache makes him seem even bigger. He wasn’t much taller than me, but he looked stout, like he was used to lifting logs and splitting rails, which I found out was true.r />
  They had put watermelons in the spring to cool, and then after dinner, and after they had sung hymns in the hot church for hours, Pa and Joe and other deacons sliced the melons. It was late August and the watermelons was so ripe they split with a crack when you touched a knife into them. I offered a piece to Tom, and thought, How is he going to eat through that big drooping mustache? I handed him a fine slice, and I was curious.

  “Thank you,” he said and took the dripping melon. It was the nineties and he had on a flat straw boater hat and one of those suits with narrow lapels and a shirt collar tall enough to choke a body. He even had a cane which he hung over his left arm.

  I was busy passing slices to everybody, old folks and younguns, but I wanted to keep my eye on the new feller to see if he got his mustache wet. I handed a special piece with no seeds to the song leader, and I cut another slice for Preacher Jolly.

  When I turned back around I didn’t see Tom at first. He had got under the shade of one of the big oak trees. And he had took out his pocketknife and was calmly cutting little pieces and putting them in his mouth. He wasn’t getting a drop of juice on his suit or mustache. That was my first lesson in how careful he was. Didn’t anything hurry him. And he had found the best spot in the shade while most folks was busy talking and sweating in the sun and little kids spit black seeds on each other.

  “Howdy,” I said.

  “How do,” he said. “I’m Tom Powell.”

  “Where you from?” I said.

  “I work over at the Lewis place,” he said. You could tell he wasn’t used to wearing fine clothes. His face was sunburned and his hands was rough. In the collar and cuffs he looked stiff as a man in the pillory. I felt sorry for him, knowing he was ill at ease. I had never felt sorry before for a man like that.