Althea galloped away from them on her tin-can stilts. When she got to the end of the sidewalk, she turned and said over her shoulder, “If you don’t know, I ain’t tellin’ you, Randall Mackey.”
Just then Miss Frieda came storming up the walk toward them. Her fists were balled up at the end of her big, stiff arms, and her shorts went swish, swish, swish as she came closer.
T.J.’s eyes widened. “Uh-oh,” he said. “What’d I do now?”
But Miss Frieda swished right past T.J. and Randall. She nearly knocked Althea plumb off her stilts. She stomped up the steps without even looking at Jaybird and banged on the Gilleys’ screen door.
Mrs. Gilley came to the door wiping her hands on a dish towel. Before she could say anything, Miss Frieda said, “That gol-dern church has got some kinda nerve.”
“What you talking about?” Mrs. Gilley held the screen door open and motioned Miss Frieda inside.
Randall raced over to the side of the house and crouched under the open window to listen. Jaybird and T.J. joined him, crawling behind the shrubbery on their hands and knees. Randall motioned for them to keep quiet, but Althea was making so much noise with her clanging tin cans that Randall could catch only bits and pieces of what Miss Frieda was telling Mrs. Gilley.
“ … them social workers from Spartanburg came down and …”
“ … must think she don’t have to be licensed like everybody else …”
“ … ought to take that child away from her …”
Every now and then Mrs. Gilley would say, “Well, I never,” or “Don’t that just take the cake?”
“I’m telling you, Lottie,” Miss Frieda said, “that woman thinks she don’t have to do things like the rest of us just ’cause she’s a preacher’s wife. She’s got them folks up in Spartanburg letting her rule the roost and making everybody think she’s got the keys to the Pearly Gates.”
Mrs. Gilley muttered some indignant words of sympathy, and then Miss Frieda’s hollering came right out the window clear as anything.
“Maybe them folks up there need to learn that the bucket always brings up what’s in the well,” she said.
Randall looked at Jaybird and T.J. What did that mean, he wondered. Jaybird cupped his hand over his mouth to stifle a giggle.
The boys had been so busy trying to hear Miss Frieda that they hadn’t noticed that Althea had disappeared. Suddenly those tin cans clomped down the porch steps.
“Miss Frieda said she’s going right to the top,” Althea called out.
“What’s that mean?” Randall asked, brushing dirt off his knees.
“It means she’s calling the FBI to take Mrs. Jennings to prison for kidnapping Moses.” Althea hopped off her tin cans and began swinging them over her head by the strings. Randall had to duck as the cans whipped around.
Jaybird and T.J. crawled out from behind the shrubbery.
“Yeah, right, Althea,” Jaybird said. “Like anybody believes you.”
“And when the FBI finds Moses’ mama, she’s going to prison, too,” Althea said. “’Cause it’s against the law to leave your baby in a box.”
“How’re they gonna find his mama?” Randall asked.
“Miss Frieda’s gonna keep lookin’, but she’s got to hurry up ’cause she’s gonna die.” The tin cans made a whirring sound as Althea swung them around and around over her head.
Jaybird jumped up and grabbed for the strings, pulling the cans down with a clang. “What you talking about?” he said.
Althea yanked the tin cans away from Jaybird and began to swing them back and forth, closer and closer to Jaybird with each swing.
“Miss Frieda’s gonna find that baby’s mama if it kills her, and the way she’s been feeling lately, it’s liable to. And then Mrs. Jennings will get to keep that baby over Miss Frieda’s dead body.”
Althea swung the cans harder. “And,” she said, pushing her chin up and glaring over at Randall, “she said Moses belongs with his own kind instead of over there with them highfalutin do-gooders at that church.” She stopped swinging the cans and pranced off toward the house. When she got to the porch steps, she stopped and said, “I heard her with my very own two ears.” Then she disappeared into the house, dragging the clanging cans along behind her.
Jaybird and T.J. were laughing and carrying on, but Randall didn’t think what Althea said was so funny. Randall was feeling his worry get bigger and bigger. Everything was turning into a big, scary mess—and all he had to do was say, “I know who left the baby in the cardboard box on the front steps of the Rock of Ages Baptist Church.”
But he couldn’t.
10
“I know y’all will want to join me in congratulating Miss Maddie Shadd on her fine, fine performance in the Junior Bible Drill last night.” Preacher Ron smiled down at the beaming girl. She pushed her shiny red hair behind her ears and waved a gloved hand at the congregation. Everyone clapped. Someone called out,”Thatta girl, Maddie!”
Randall looked back at the Gilleys. Althea was slumped so far down in the pew that only the top of her head was showing.
Preacher Ron nodded at Maddie. “Why don’t you recite those verses about the sluggard?” he said, then turned to the congregation and added, “That was the final question that made Miss Maddie here our Junior Bible Drill champion.”
Maddie jabbed the toe of her shiny white shoe into the floor and did a little curtsy, holding her long, yellow skirt out like butterfly wings. Then she stood up straight and stiff, lifted her chin in the air, and called out, “‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.’”
She paused while folks clapped. Then she cleared her throat and added, “Proverbs 6, verse 6.”
From the back of the church came loud, thunking noises. Everyone turned to look at Mrs. Gilley glaring down at Althea.
Maddie smoothed her hair again and recited, “‘As vinegar to the tooth, and as smoke to the eyes—’”
Althea jumped up and pumped her fist in the air. “‘Teeth’!” she hollered. “‘As vinegar to the teeth.’”
She grinned at the congregation, then added, “Ha!” before sitting down again.
Randall felt a twinge of excitement. Church was usually so boring it was fun having something out of the ordinary happen. All around him, folks were whispering and shaking their heads and wagging their fingers at Althea. Randall’s father chuckled, and Mrs. Mackey poked him.
After Preacher Ron gave Maddie her shiny gold Junior Bible Drill medal, he told her she was now the official helper for Baby Moses.
Mrs. Jennings smiled and bounced Moses on her lap.
Then Preacher Ron motioned for Maddie to sit down and he began to preach.
“I call today’s sermon ‘CHILDREN Are Our TREASURED Gifts.’”
He was using his preaching way of talking, hollering out the important words and saying the others real low and soft so everybody had to lean forward a little to hear.
“I know because the BIBLE tells us so in the Book of Psalms, chapter 127, verse 3,” he said.
“In fact,” Preacher Ron continued, “did y‘all know that the word ‘HILDREN’ appears in the Bible FOUR HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-TWO TIMES?”
He pounded his fist on the pulpit with each word, then paused.
Randall wondered if Preacher Ron had actually counted all those words in the Bible.
“THAT is how important children are to this church,” he went on.
A couple of folks hollered out, “Amen.”
“Their souls are precious to us,” Preacher Ron said softly. “They are the FUTURE of this church.”
“Yes, brother,” someone called from the back of the church.
“And so I say to you that we must stand firm and accept our role as FAMILY to a child who was given to us by a troubled soul.”
Uh-oh. Randall felt that worry knot tumbling around inside him. He squeezed his eyes shut and recited to himself, “Don’t talk about Moses. Don’t talk about Moses.”
But Preach
er Ron did talk about Moses. On and on and on. And then suddenly he was talking about troublemakers.
“We must AVOID the troublemakers,” he said. “The Second Book of Thessalonians tells us so.”
Mrs. Jennings nodded and called out, “That’s right.”
Then Preacher Ron started pounding the pulpit loud and hard and saying how troublemakers were trying to take Moses away from this church family.
And that’s when Mrs. Gilley yanked Jaybird and Althea up by their collars, and marched right up the aisle and out the door.
Later that day, Randall and Jaybird lay on the blue tarp under the Gilleys’ porch. Randall rested his head on his hands and stared up at the damp, mildewed boards above them.
“Do you think your mama really means it?” he asked Jaybird.
“Uh-huh.” Jaybird tossed a wadded-up candy wrapper from hand to hand. “She says she ain’t never stepping so much as a big toe in that church again. She says Preacher Ron is trying to poison our minds with lies about Miss Frieda.”
“This sure is a mess.”
“Yeah,” Jaybird said, “all ’cause of one stupid baby.”
“Yeah.”
“I wish that baby’s mama would come and take him home,” Jaybird said.
“Yeah.” Randall nodded. “I wish she would, too.”
That night, Randall crawled up under the covers with his sketchbook and flashlight. He drew a bird, but it looked funny, so he scribbled over it. He started drawing a house, but it was boring, so he erased it. Then he began to draw himself. He was good at drawing himself because he had practiced a lot, staring in the mirror as he outlined his mousy brown hair hanging down over his ears and his nose that was too big for his face. When he got to his mouth, he drew it open, like he was talking. Like maybe he was telling his secret. Then he drew a big circle coming out of his mouth, and in the circle he wrote: LAVONIA SHIRLEY.
It felt so good to write those words that he traced over the letters two more times. Then he took a black marker and scribbled over them. Back and forth, back and forth, until all that was left was a big black blob.
He turned off the flashlight and lay back on his pillow. He closed his eyes and whispered his prayers. After asking for all his usual stuff, Randall asked for grits and gumption.
But when he opened his eyes, he still felt like some kind of low-lying, liver-bellied buzzard bait.
11
Randall wanted everything to go back to the way it used to be. He wanted everybody to stop taking sides and arguing and acting downright hateful. He wanted the Gilleys to sit in the sixth row on the left side at church. And he wanted his mom to sit on Mrs. Gilley’s front porch and drink iced tea and talk about kids and husbands and the best place to buy ground beef.
But no matter how hard Randall wished for it, he couldn’t make it happen. Everybody kept arguing, the Gilleys stopped coming to church, and his mom didn’t visit Mrs. Gilley anymore.
“I don’t have to sit there and listen to her and Miss Frieda talk ugly about my church,” Mrs. Mackey told Randall.
Sometimes she would come over to the Gilleys’ to tell Randall to go home for supper. She would nod at Mrs. Gilley and say, “Evening, Lottie.”
“Evening, Iris,” Mrs. Gilley would say from her rocking chair on the porch.
“Time for supper, Randall,” Mrs. Mackey would say, then turn and head back up the sidewalk.
Randall would look at Jaybird, and Jaybird would shrug. And Randall would feel awful. He missed the friendly chatter between their mothers. But more than that, he missed the Gilleys in church.
“I’m glad we ain’t going there no more,” Althea said. “I hate that church.”
“You better stop saying that, Althea,” Jaybird said. “It’s bad luck to say that.”
“I don’t care.”
“Lightning’s gonna come down and zap you right on the head.”
“So?” Althea said. “I do hate that church.” She poked her tongue out of the corner of her mouth while she colored her fingernails with a purple marker.
“How come?” Randall said.
“’Cause everybody at that church is stupid,” Althea said. “Especially Maddie Shadd.”
“You’re just mad ’cause you lost that Bible drill,” Jaybird said.
“I am not.”
“You are too.” Jaybird poked Randall. “I guess she ain’t as smart as she thought she was, huh, Randall?”
Althea lunged at Jaybird and swiped her marker across the front of his T-shirt, leaving a squiggly purple line. Jaybird yanked the marker away from her and tossed it up on the roof of the house.
“Everybody knows what the longest chapter in the Bible is,” Jaybird said.
Althea chose another marker and began coloring her fingernails again. Orange.
“Psalm 119,” she said.
“Too late, dumbo,” Jaybird said. “You should have said that in the Bible drill.”
“So, who cares?” Althea said. “Not me.”
Randall drew in the dirt with a stick. A cat. A bicycle. A wheelbarrow.
“Church is boring without you,” Randall said to Jaybird.
“Yeah,” Jaybird said. “And we gotta ride all the way over to Duncan Springs with a bunch of people I don’t even know to go to a church that ain’t even got an organ.”
“Yeah,” Althea said. Then she jumped in the middle of Randall’s dirt drawings and shuffled her feet around, sending dust swirling in the air around them.
That Sunday, Randall sat in church and drew a flock of geese flying in a V shape across the page of his notebook. Preacher Ron preached and the Celebration Choir sang and folks hollered out “Amen” and “Praise be.” Randall just kept on drawing, even when Smokey Dobbins got dunked in the baptismal pool and came up sputtering and coughing and carrying on.
Every now and then, he looked back at the sixth row on the left, but the Gilleys weren’t there. He watched a fly settle on the shoulder of the lady in front of him. He counted how many times Arthur Bennings blew his nose. He tapped his pencil in time to the hymns. Then he glanced out the window, and his heart dropped clear down to his stomach.
He sat up straight and craned his neck to see better. Maybe he was just imagining things.
Nope. He wasn’t. A woman sat on the curb across the street from the church. A woman wearing a floppy straw hat.
Randall jerked his head around to see if anybody else was looking at the woman in the hat. No one was. Everyone else was singing or yawning or whispering to their squirming kids.
Randall felt his heart bumping inside him. He looked out the window again.
The woman stood up and stared over at the church. For a minute, Randall thought she was looking right at him. He looked away. He joined in the singing. “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, the beautiful, the beautiful river …”
When he looked out the window again, the lady in the straw hat was gone.
12
Randall and Jaybird each held a handle of the laundry basket as they headed toward Thomas and Sons Insurance Agency. Althea trotted along behind them.
“Let’s see if we can take Queenie somewhere,” she said.
“Like where?” Randall said.
“To the Winn-Dixie to buy Hershey bars with almonds. That’s what she likes.”
“Okay.”
It was past suppertime, and the insurance agency was closed. Randall, Jaybird, and Althea headed around back to the alley. The back door was propped open with a milk crate. Just as they got there, Mr. Avery came out carrying a wastebasket.
“Well, hey there,” he said. “What y’all doing?”
“We brought your laundry,” Randall said.
Mr. Avery shuffled over to a nearby Dumpster and emptied the wastebasket. His baggy pants hung down so low they dragged on the ground as he walked.
“I appreciate that. You thank your mama for me, Randall,” he said. “Let’s go in. I bet Queenie would like to see y’all.”
When they stepped inside t
he back door of the office, they could hear Queenie singing down in the Averys’ basement apartment.
“She’ll be comin’ round the mountain when she comes …” Loud. The same verse over and over again.
When they came into the apartment, she stopped.
“I’ve been looking for that,” she said, pointing to the laundry basket.
“Look who’s here to see you, Queenie,” Mr. Avery said. “Your favorite friends.”
“They took that from me.” She jabbed a finger at the laundry basket. “My mother gave me that.”
“That’s our laundry,” Mr. Avery said. “Ain’t that nice?”
“Well, I don’t know why they keep taking it when I told them to stop.”
Althea slapped her hands over her mouth and hunched her shoulders up, trying to stifle a giggle.
Queenie picked at the tiny balls of lint on the sleeve of her sweater. Randall wondered how she could stand wearing a sweater in the summer, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“We’ll take Queenie to get Hershey bars,” Althea said.
Queenie stopped picking at the lint and looked up. “I’ll go,” she said, and hurried into the bedroom.
She came out with her purse.
“You have to wear shoes,” Althea said, pointing at Queenie’s feet.
Queenie leaned over and looked down at her sagging black socks. Then she straightened up and frowned at Althea.
“Who told you that?” she said.
Althea looked at Mr. Avery.
“Hang on, now, Queenie,” he said. “Don’t run out of here yet.”
He disappeared into the bedroom and came back with a pair of beat-up moccasins. He put them on the floor in front of Queenie. She slipped her feet into them and said, “Thank you, mister.”
Mr. Avery tucked two dollars in her hand and kissed her on the forehead.
“Bring me a candy bar, okay?” he said.
Queenie pushed him away and hurried out the door.
On the way home from the Winn-Dixie, Althea and Queenie sang. Every now and then Queenie would stop and take a bite of her candy bar.
Taking Care of Moses Page 5