“It’s the air in snow that makes the ground fertile,” Pa said.
“Air ain’t no fertilizer,” Tom said.
“After a snowy winter crops is bigger,” Pa said.
There was a preacher from Memphis that come in September and put up a tent in Joe’s pasture. He was a Greek everybody said. It’s true his hair was dark and curly. His name was Preacher Stratis and he stayed with Joe and Lily while he was running the meeting. He was a faith healer, and Joe said he had healed people of cancer and dropsy. Folks had come to him on crutches and left running and shouting. He had healed women of goiters.
“You ain’t going in your condition,” Tom said.
I was sick at my stomach and stayed home, but didn’t tell Tom that was why. I guess he thought I was minding his warning.
It was a hot evening in fodder-pulling time. After supper I set on the porch breaking beans, and Jewel helped. I wanted to break a bushel before bedtime and put them under a damp cloth overnight to can in the morning. Pa had gone to the service. Across the hill you could hear the music from the tent meeting. There was the sounds of a tambourine and cymbals, and voices singing. Suddenly a shout cut through the air. It was like somebody calling from the center of the sky.
“What heathens,” Tom said. He was standing by the door. I had not noticed him there.
“What is heathens?” Jewel said.
“Heathens is people that don’t have self-respect,” Tom said.
“Be careful you don’t mock the Spirit,” I said, and kept breaking beans.
“That ain’t the Spirit,” Tom said. “That is Devil worship.”
I didn’t say any more. I didn’t want to upset my stomach and have to throw up again.
But the next night I was feeling better. After cleaning up the supper dishes I went to the bedroom to put on fresh clothes. I washed my face at the basin and put my hair in a bun. And then I slipped on my shiny white blouse that I hadn’t wore in almost a year. And I put on my black skirt that had buttons down the side. It was the last time I’d be able to wear it for months.
Pa was already gone. He had eat supper with Joe and Lily and the preacher from Memphis.
When I come out of the bedroom Tom was setting on the porch with Moody in his lap. He looked surprised to see me in the good clothes. “You ain’t in no condition . . . ,” he said. His face turned redder than before. He had been pulling fodder and was sunburned on his face and arms.
“I am in fine condition,” I said.
Tom put Moody on the floor and stood up. I think it was partly the surprise that made him so mad. He stomped across the porch and hollered, “You fool!”
“The Bible warns about calling others fools,” I said.
“You ain’t going,” he said. He grabbed at my arm and I jerked away. He had never touched me before when he was mad. I was suddenly afraid. He stood in my way to the steps. I could smell the sweat of work on him. His face had broke out in new sweat.
“Let me pass,” I said.
“You will mark the baby,” he said. “The baby won’t have a bit of sense.”
“The other children have plenty of sense,” I said. I could hear the music starting across the hill. The beat of the tambourine and cymbals rung through the evening air. And there was voices raising a hymn. I felt so dried out and in need of music and fellowship. I was heavy with boredom and needed emptying out. It had been a long time since I had worshipped and fellowshipped in the Spirit. It was a need, a craving. Ordinary things, and knowledge from books wasn’t enough. It was a spiritual hunger. I think Tom could tell the dullness I felt.
“You ain’t going,” he said. He stood right in front of me. He had never looked at me hard in the face like that before. It come to me he thought he was dealing with a drunkard. He was trying to keep a drunk from her bottle.
“Leave me alone,” I said.
“I’d be happy to,” he said, “except for the baby.”
“The baby is fine,” I said.
“The baby will be marked by your crazy doings,” he said.
I felt like I did when I faced the mad dog. I had to think what to do. I started to go around him and he grabbed my wrist.
“Leave me alone,” I said, and flung his hand away.
“Mommy!” Moody hollered.
“You’re scaring the children,” I said.
“I ain’t doing nothing,” Tom said.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Mommy’s just going to camp meeting.”
Jewel was standing by the door holding Muir. Suddenly I saw what to do. I spun around and opened the door and walked right through the living room and kitchen to the back door. I heard Tom behind, but he didn’t touch me. I opened the door and went down the steps and kept going out the trail to the springhouse.
The door slammed behind and there was this explosion that went out level with my ears, stretching the air toward the pasture. I looked around and Tom stood at the steps holding Pa’s shotgun pointed up. Smoke floated above the end of the barrel.
“Put that thing up,” I said.
“You ain’t going,” he said. He stepped forward. “Stay home, Ginny,” he said quietly.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
Bats was swooping between hemlocks and the house. They whispered in the air like bullets and tight strings. Tom had gone farther than he ever had before. I wondered how much farther would he go. I don’t think he knowed hisself.
“Put that thing up,” I said.
I turned around and started down the path. I didn’t have any choice but to show I meant to go where I had started. Another explosion rung past my ears and echoed off the springhouse and pasture hill, and finally off the mountains. I smelled burnt gunpowder. I turned around to face Tom. “You’re crazy,” I said.
He was taking more shells out of his pocket and putting them in the double-barreled gun. He was so mad his hands shook.
“Shoot me if you want to,” I said, and started down the path again. With every step I could feel something hit me in the back. I imagined the tickle of little pebbles or sand on my spine.
When I got to the fence I could hear the music again from the camp meeting. There was shouting above the singing, and I could hear the preacher’s voice fast as an auctioneer’s.
Tom shot the gun again behind me, and then again. I listened for the sound of pellets, but didn’t hear any. There was crickets in the pasture, and katydids in the trees across the branch. All the way across the pasture I listened to the singing from the tent and the katydids that answered it. And then Tom’s gun boomed again. Even after I got to the meeting I heard him fire several times. It sounded like a war going on across the hill.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
March 4, 1907
Dear Locke,
I’ve been meaning to write to you for weeks to thank you for the fan and the little Chinese doll for Jewel. It made Christmas truly special to have something under the tree sent all the way from the Orient. Jewel has played with the doll every day since and I have hung the fan by the mirror in the bedroom so I can see the designs on both the back and front.
I had planned to write you in January, but I caught a cold in my chest and had to stay in bed more than a week, but I’ve wanted to write you for some time because I think it’s easier to talk in a letter than face to face. Don’t you think? Everybody has gone to bed here and I’m setting up by the window with just one lamp and can see the full moon over the snow. You wouldn’t recognize the world out there. It looks like something you might dream of, with the Cicero Mountain going up to the stars and the moon high above everything, but down on the river too. Looking out over the river valley tonight you feel already dead and in eternity.
But, Locke, what I wanted to ask you in this letter was about Mama. Even though you are younger than me you was closest to her of any of us. She always said you was just like a Johns and not a Peace. She said you took after our uncle the doctor.
I have been thinking lately about Mama and wondering w
hy she was so set against the revivals, and why it made her so mad for Pa to attend. Tom feels the same way, and if I could understand Mama’s feelings I might understand Tom and know what to do.
Locke, you have come to a bad way when you quarrel day after day with a spouse. You don’t know this yet because you’re not married, but you will find it out. It wears you down and wearies the spirit to live day after day with somebody that disapproves of you. I don’t think the Lord meant marriages to be that way.
Now the thing is I’m not bothered that Tom don’t read books and talk a lot and lead in prayer at church. He has his way and I can see that. But he can’t accept me going to the Pentecostal services, no more than Mama could accept Pa’s going to the Holiness revivals. And I’m trying to study out what to say to him.
Do you remember what Mama had to say about the subject? I know she claimed to be a Hardshell. She was brought up in the Old Regular church at Upward and that’s what she was in her heart. Even when dying that’s what she claimed, pointing up toward heaven at the last minute as she passed away. And I was proud of that. Except I never really knowed what she meant. As I got older I understood it less. The Old Regulars don’t approve of music instruments in church, and they believe in predestination. They think once you are baptized you’re sure to go to heaven. They sing hymns in their mournful way. I remember when Mama took us to church at Upward the preacher preached in this dry harsh voice for three hours. And the service seemed like a funeral in August heat with wasps buzzing around. Mama wanted to be buried out there. She is laying in the ground at Upward right now.
Do you recall what she said to Pa about the Holiness revivals, Locke? Was she afraid Pa would go to hell if he wasn’t baptized in the Hardshell church? Was she afraid of any display of joy? Because her papa drunk so much and her brother drunk so much, was she afraid of any sort of intoxication? Or did she dislike the people that organized the brush arbor revivals?
I have trouble remembering what she said. All I can recall is her anger. And when her and Pa quarreled I felt awful and sorry for myself the way children do when grownups fuss. There was a bad feeling in the house. We would all act cheerful if visitors come and set on the porch talking, but still feel sick inside.
What I don’t understand is why something of joy, a service of praise, can make people angry. Are they afraid of going out of control, going crazy? I can ask you these things, Locke, because you are far away, and because you must have studied about them. I know you tend to joke about things, but I think you’re serious inside. That’s why it don’t bother me if you study strange things and consider all kinds of new thoughts. Because I believe you will always come back to the truth. I know you don’t like the brush arbor meetings, but they don’t seem to make you angry. Do you know why people like Tom feel so threatened?
I’m taking this up two days later because the baby woke me and I had to get him. Let’s see if I can find my thread of thought.
Remember the Sunday we all dressed to go to the home-coming at Cedar Springs? Mama and Florrie had packed chicken and taters and a jug of lemonade in a basket. We had all put on our Sunday clothes and was climbing into the wagon when Mama asked who was leading the singing. And Pa said it was Ben MacBane.
And just like that Mama said she wasn’t going, and climbed down. I felt sick all day knowing Mama was that angry at us.
There was another time in the fall right at molasses-making when we had been cutting cane and pressing it in the mill. Pa was going to sell some to the Lewises. This traveling preacher come by that had been holding services down at Chestnut Springs and was on his way to Buncombe. Pa give him a gallon of sorghum and invited him to stay for dinner. Mama was so mad she went to the house without a word. And she didn’t speak at the dinner table either. She even banged the bowls and plates on the table.
I’m asking you, Locke, because you always took Mama’s side on things. So I think you may have some idea how Mama felt.
When you get married, Locke, you will find it’s mostly a matter of work. I don’t mean there’s no joy, for there is. There’s great pleasure in loving, just like the poets said. But what keeps you going day after day through spurts and quirks, fits of temper and irritations, is the steady work. I don’t know of anything else that would get you through it.
Now I know that Pa had him another woman that he met at a service near Mountain Page. Don’t pretend you don’t know about it, and are shocked that I have heard. I have knowed a long time we have a half-brother over that way. But it was after Mama and Pa had been quarreling a long time that that woman had a youngun, and that wasn’t the reason Mama hated him for going to the services. I reckon it was just a happen.
But Tom has no cause to think I go to services to see another man. I’ve never once liked Holiness preachers and men that way.
It’s taking me forever to write this letter. It’s already the longest letter I ever wrote. A whole week has passed now before I was able to get back to it.
Locke, I want you to think about what I’m saying and see if you can help me out. I just know there’s something useful about Mama’s feelings that you know and I have forgot.
Now what I think I can say to you in writing that I can’t in person is how I feel when I go to meeting. I don’t know if people are alike or not, and I don’t know if people ever really understand each other. But I still think we’re all akin inside, at the place where we feel things and know things. And I think we have to help each other out; otherwise there’s no hope at all.
I’m the kind of person that has to do things with enthusiasm, or I get dragged down in a terrible study and confusion. I have to be doing, planning, or I get to feeling nothing is right.
When I’m not doing something I care about I feel everything is lost and drifting toward doom. I just can’t help it. Would you say this is my fault? Would you say I just need more willpower to meet obstacles? Sometimes it seems beyond my control to take things in hand and cheer myself up. But before I was married I somehow did get through by rushing from one project to another. Remember when I ordered all the books on herbs and planted the garden by the house in a circle of rocks? I was near beside myself to know their names and uses, leaf patterns and places the plants had come from. I wanted to study what they call the signs or signatures of herbs, like the leaf shape showing they was heart medicine or a big root showing they could make men potent. The curiosity lifted me up above the weakness of my life.
And then there was the time I got interested in sewing. I never had took to making clothes as other girls do. People said I didn’t take care of myself, because I didn’t have anybody to teach me. But one time I just fell in love with making white blouses. I never had had any fine clothes. But that time I must have made a dozen blouses, each one with a different pattern of lace and ruffles, some with mother-of-pearl buttons. I made ivory-colored blouses, and sparkling silk blouses, white as snow.
When my interest in something fades it’s like my temperature drops, and I am normal again. I’m not hardly aware when it happens, until one day I realize I’m going about my work and not feeling the sweetness and pain of a passion. But it is the time just before I fell in love with something that I look back on with such feeling. It is a kind of homesickness. I try to recall the time just before I discovered herbs and white blouses. It is the rush of discovery I try to remember and relive.
I’m asking you because you have studied doctoring and books on the mind. Do you understand this? Why when I was intense and in love with the study of herbs and growing and drying them for tinctures and concoctions, was I calm and happy? I was so happy I even wept for the ignorance that led to the joy of learning.
Then comes periods when nothing makes sense. It is like nothing I do fits with anything. Everybody is going about their lives and don’t seem to realize how awful things have got. I see nothing but desolation because nobody cares for me. Pa and Joe and Florrie are all going ahead with things. You have your work and friends. That’s when I see I don’t h
ave any friends. I have gone so long without caring for anyone they have forgot me.
When I’m confused I feel too weak to work. And nothing seems worth the effort. The next moment, the next hour, is like some mountain to scale. I can’t see where to put my foot for the next step. When you feel bad it’s like you are blinded and can’t see where to go. Knowledge won’t help, and no book will help you.
That’s when I need the fellowship of the Spirit. That’s when only the meetings can make me feel better.
Does this make sense to you, Locke?
I found that by thinking of others I could help get myself through. By helping out, or giving to someone that needed it, I could make myself feel better. When the Short younguns all had smallpox I sent dinner every day for near two weeks. And I did washing to help Shirley MacBane and her husband that had dropsy.
But the thing that lifted me most out of the dumps and blues and vapors, more than work or new discoveries, or charities, was the revivals. Once Pa took me to the first one it was like I had found a new part of myself. When I spoke in tongues or danced and shouted it was like a force greater than me lifted and filled me. I was freed from the tangles and shambles of life. There is no other way to describe the feeling of being cleansed through and through when the Spirit takes hold. You are carried away, lifted up, and something greater than you has you in its grip.
And afterwards you feel this great love of ordinary things.
What I feel after a service is greater than any pleasure I ever had watching the stars at night, or sunset over the valley, or the first greens in spring on the ridge across the river, or reading any book. Only thing that even comes close to the joy of Holiness is the joy of loving, and I’ve come to think they are really much the same. I don’t know how the pleasure of the flesh could be so similar to the pleasure of the Spirit. But it is.
I’m not sure what I’m asking you to do, Locke. I’m not asking you to explain me to myself, and I’m not asking you to talk with Florrie and certainly not to talk to Tom when you are home. He wouldn’t understand.
The Truest Pleasure Page 21