Preacher McKinney’s best sermon was not the one where I first spoke in tongues and done the holy dance and received the baptism of fire. I was so stirred by that first service I wasn’t hardly aware of the sermon anyway. I looked into his eyes and the Spirit swept me away, as it had to. What happened to me then was meant from the beginning of time. That night Preacher McKinney was the true vessel of the Word, and I was there to receive it.
Preacher McKinney’s best sermon that I remember, the one that showed me what a sermon could be, was preached a few weeks later in daylight. It was preached in the afternoon in the little church up on Mount Olivet. It was the funeral service for one of the Tankersleys who had gone to Preacher McKinney’s revival and lost her letter in the Green River Church. That’s why the service was held up on Mount Olivet instead of Green River. All of us Holiness people had lost their letter in the Green River Baptist Church.
It was the brightest summer day you ever saw. The trees was green and the mountainsides was green, and the weeds along the road was green. Pa and me and Joe and Lily had took the wagon up the mountain. All kinds of birdsong sweetened the air. The world was lush and sharp. It didn’t seem like no day for a funeral. The light was so bright it stung your eyes. June bugs circled and buzzed over the grass. The cemetery on the hill above the church was fresh mowed and looked like a garden of stones and shrubbery.
Preacher McKinney stood calm and cool in the pulpit after everybody was seated. His manner was different from what I had seen at the revival. There was a great peacefulness and poise in him. “Let us pray,” he said. I bowed my head and listened, for I felt the strength in his quietness.
“Lord, we are here to celebrate life and salvation,” Preacher McKinney prayed. “We do not need to mourn the passing of Sister Tankersley, for we know she has gone to a better world, to a long-sought rest. If we mourned we would only mourn for ourselves, for we miss her presence and her inspiration. We will miss her example and her kindness.”
When the prayer was over we sung “Work, for the Night Is Coming.” It was a slow, simple, sad song that had a strange firmness and comfort. The notes seemed to give voice to the day itself, to the cool little church, to the weeds and woods outside in the sunlight. Out the window I could see a white cloud hanging over the mountain.
Work, for the night is coming. Work through the morning hours.
Work while the dew is sparkling. Work ’mid springing flowers.
Work while the day grows brighter, under the glowing sun.
Work, for the night is coming, when man’s work is done.
As soon as the song was over I heard a cardinal in the woods outside. And when Preacher McKinney started talking he didn’t holler like he did at revival services. He stood perfectly still and spoke in a voice so quiet I had to listen close at first.
“We are here to celebrate the goodness of our sister,” he said. “We are here to take comfort in her strength and example. We are here to strengthen each other with our fellowship and with our song.”
Preacher McKinney said our lives in this world didn’t have to be lived in misery and aloneness. He said our lives might be hard, but they was not too hard as long as they had meaning, as long as we could see far enough ahead, toward the plan of salvation. Preacher McKinney was so calm and slow he seemed like a different preacher entirely. He said it was our labor that was our wisdom. It was our struggle that was our satisfaction in this world.
Preacher McKinney talked about how we should forgive seven times seventy and help our neighbors. It was the simplest message there was, and yet it was the one hardest to follow. He said in all the New Testament there is only one new commandment: Love each other even as I have loved you.
“Can you feel the hand of Sister Tankersley leading us into the sunlight and into the day and across the threshold to the rest of your life?” Preacher McKinney said. “In the heart of a Christian it is always eternal morning. I am not here to mourn and I am not here to accuse and threaten. You are all the children of the Savior, and you are all my brothers and sisters.”
When Preacher McKinney stopped I had to remember where I was. I was not swept away, but set firm and alert on the bench. The air in the church was cool and rare as on a mountaintop. There was sniffles and crying in the church. But they was tears of joy.
MUCH AS I admired preachers it scared me when Muir said he was going to preach the Sunday after Homecoming. It scared me and it thrilled me too, for there was nothing I wanted a son of mine to be more than a minister of the gospel. I was afraid I had put it in his head to preach, and that he was doing it to please me more than answering a call of his own. He was tall as a man, and he was strong as a man, but he was still just a boy too. A mama has power over her children she may not always be aware of.
Before Muir was born I starved myself and I laid in bed for weeks to keep him alive. The doctor had said he would die inside me if I moved. I laid still and lived on milk and biscuits. I knowed he was a marked baby, he was a chosen baby. I knowed he was a baby with a destiny. He was born with a mission, and being born with his tongue tied down was not going to stop him. In some way I did not understand he was a vessel of the Word.
It was hard to know how much to encourage Muir and how much to caution him. For I knowed a preacher has to go where he hears the call, and he has to follow his conscience. But I was his mama also. His daddy was dead, and it was my job to try to guide him.
Muir always was the serious one of my children. He took it after Tom and me both, for Tom was dedicated to his work in a solemn and sober way, and I was dedicated to worship, to living in the Spirit. I worried about Muir and I loved him. I wanted him not to make my mistakes. He was the age I was when I first went to Holiness meetings.
“You’ve got to follow the voice you hear in your heart,” I said to Muir. I could see how he was studying and troubled. He was one to anguish hisself.
“I feel the call in my blood,” Muir said.
I worried when Preacher Liner told Muir he could fill the pulpit the Sunday after Homecoming. The preacher had asked me if I wanted him to invite Muir to preach. I wondered if he thought inviting Muir to preach was a favor to me.
“You must follow the guidance of the Spirit,” I said to Preacher Liner. But I didn’t know what the right thing was. If Muir tried preaching when he wasn’t ready, it could turn him away from the calling later. If he waited till he was older it could be too late.
“I will preach on the Transfiguration,” Muir said. I could tell how he was pondering and worrying about the sermon he’d agreed to preach. His cheeks was flushed and he swung his arms when he talked. I couldn’t think of a thing to do to help him. If he was going to be a minister the Lord would have to lead him.
When the Sunday finally come that Muir was supposed to preach, I was more nervous than he was. But I couldn’t let it show. I tried to be cheerful and confident, like it was all the most natural thing for my younger son to preach his first sermon. But I was twisted in knots and my lips was dry as I set down in church. My dress got wet under my armpits. I tried to smile and it felt like my lips was crawling sideways.
“Lord, let your will be done,” I prayed silent. “Be with Muir in this hour of trial. If it is your will for him to preach, show him the way.”
But it was like Muir never had a chance that day. When he was flustered, when he got mad, it was like he couldn’t decide what to do with hisself. He never could remember nothing when he got excited. He’d rush on ahead of hisself and then forget where he was, forget what he was saying. I thought my heart was going to stop or tear out of my chest as I watched him fumble in the pulpit.
AFTER THE TERRIBLE day when Muir tried to preach, he wouldn’t say nothing about it. He stayed out of the house most of the time. He stayed in the woods and in the fields. He stayed in the attic on rainy days looking through Pa’s old books and magazines. And even when he was setting at the dinner table or by the fire he wouldn’t say much. Me and Fay tried to talk to him. And even Mood
y tried to be cheerful to him. Moody could be as friendly and considerate as you please if he wanted to.
But Muir lived in his own head, in his own disappointment. He had always lived in his own head with his daydreams. You never did know exactly what he was thinking.
We was setting by the fireplace a few days after that awful Sunday. It was beginning to turn cool, with fall coming on, and the fire felt good.
“Every preacher learns by practice,” I said to Muir.
He was scratching on a piece of paper, making pictures of buildings, the way he liked to do. He didn’t answer at all, just kept doodling with the pencil.
“You can’t be a preacher until you’re twenty-one,” Fay said, “until you get a license.”
“How do you know?” Muir said without looking up.
“It takes a lot of practice to learn to do anything right,” I said.
“You can practice on us,” Moody said to Muir. “You can try out your sermons on us and if we laugh you’ll know they ain’t working.”
Muir looked at Moody and then back at the sheet of paper without answering. Muir’s shoulders was so wide they looked like they was busting out of his shirt.
“What Muir does is up to him,” I said.
“I never seen a preacher that was younger than twenty,” Fay said.
“A preacher has to make you want to listen to him,” Moody said.
“You tell us all about it,” Muir said to Moody.
Moody had the stub of an old cigar between his fingers. He lit it with a stick from the fire and blowed smoke toward Muir. “I’m just telling you what I think,” he said.
Ever since his daddy died Moody had been mad. But sometimes he would be sorry after he’d done something wrong and would feel ashamed of hisself and try to make up for what he’d done. I know he was embarrassed about what he had done at the church.
But it seemed like either Moody or Muir had to be mad, one or the other. They couldn’t both be happy at the same time.
“We know what you think,” Muir said to Moody.
“If you want to preach, then go ahead and preach,” Moody said. “Don’t let a little teasing stop you. I’ll even help you.”
“How will you help?” Muir said.
“I’ll buy you a new Bible,” Moody said.
“Don’t need a new Bible,” Muir said. He looked down at the drawing he had made. It was a building with a steeple on it.
“Moody is just trying to be friendly,” I said.
“You need a better suit of clothes,” Moody said. “I’ll help you buy another suit of clothes.”
“I could make you a suit,” I said, “if you was to get some good cloth.”
Muir gripped the arms of the chair he set in. He looked at his drawing and he looked at me. I seen how anguished he was and troubled in his mind. I seen how hurt he was by people laughing at him.
“Muir will preach again when he is ready,” I said in the calmest way I could. “Muir will know what he is meant to do.”
“Everybody can stand a little help,” Moody said and blowed smoke toward the fireplace.
Muir jumped to his feet, and the book and paper in his lap fell to the floor. He picked up the drawing and throwed it into the fire. His face was white as cotton. “You don’t know nothing!” he hollered at Moody.
Moody was took by surprise. “I know enough to stay away from pulpits,” he said.
“Don’t none of you know nothing,” Muir said and stomped the floor. His face was crumbling every which way and there was a tear in his eye as he headed to the door.
Three
Muir
I WAS SO embarrassed by the mess I’d made of preaching that I didn’t go back to church for almost a year. I couldn’t stand to see the people that had watched me make such a fool of myself. I stayed out in the woods most of the time and trapped and fished and hunted for ginseng. I didn’t even want to work around the house, where Moody would tease me about my efforts at preaching.
“GINNY SAYS YOU’RE planning on building something?” my aunt Florrie said. It was the next summer and she had come over early that morning to help Mama make strawberry preserves. She was washing pint jars at the counter and Mama was drying them.
“Muir’s thinking of building a castle,” my sister Fay said. The strawberries cooking on the stove filled the kitchen with their smells.
Fay always wanted to tease me because she was my little sister and thought I didn’t pay enough attention to her. She was skinny as a cornstalk, and she liked to mock me for looking at pictures of castles in magazines and books. She would find pages where I had drawed house plans and make fun of them.
“Muir has ambition,” Aunt Florrie said. U. G. was her son, but she’d always treated me and Fay and Moody and our dead sister, Jewel, like we was her younguns. Florrie had a quick wit and a quick temper. She was wiry and dark and nervous as a sparrow.
“I have ambition to get away from here,” I said. It was hard to explain how I wanted to build something and to get away from Green River at the same time. I wanted to build a great house out of timber and stone, and I wanted to escape to Canada or the North Woods too.
“I like a man with big plans,” Aunt Florrie said.
“Did you ever meet a man you didn’t like?” Mama said. Mama and Aunt Florrie liked to tease each other when they worked together. I reckon it was something they’d done since they was girls.
Moody had come in late the night before, long after I’d gone to sleep. He had been down to Chestnut Springs, where he went to drink liquor, and that morning when he got up he looked trembly and hungover. When he was hungover he couldn’t stand for people to talk around him, and Mama and Aunt Florrie as usual was talking up a storm. Moody set down at the kitchen table, and then he jumped up and grabbed the milk bucket off the counter and banged it on his way out. He almost never would do the milking, but I reckon he seen it was an excuse to get out of the house.
“He’ll feel better after he has some hair of the dog,” Aunt Florrie said. Aunt Florrie liked to drink herself and you often smelled liquor on her breath. But I’d never seen her hungover.
“What does that mean, ‘hair of the dog’?” Fay said.
“Hair of the dog that bit you,” Aunt Florrie said. The jars rumbled in the dishpan as she worked a bottle brush around the mouth of a soapy jar like she was brushing teeth.
“Muir, go out and help your brother at the barn,” Mama said. Mama was worried about Moody because he had seemed angrier and more hungover than usual.
“And then you can come back and tell us about your plans to go to Alaska,” Aunt Florrie said.
I got up from the table and started for the door. “I’ll make sure Moody ain’t trying to milk the horse instead of the cow,” I said.
“Or milk the chickens,” Aunt Florrie said.
“Do they build castles in Alaska?” Fay said as I reached for the screen door.
“Only in the air,” Aunt Florrie said.
I could smell the strawberries cooking all the way out to the shed. The scent was right for the late May morning. Dew was so heavy it made the grass white.
I HEARD MOODY’S voice soon as I got beyond the shed. It was about a hundred yards to the old log barn, but I could hear him cussing and fussing. Something banged on the barn wall so loud I knowed it must be the milking stool flung against the boards. I slowed down. Been a long time since Moody had done the milking, though when we was boys after Daddy died he’d done most of the milking, until I got big enough.
“Goddamn bitch!” Moody hollered. I come around the corner of the barn in time to see him hurl the milk bucket against the barn wall. A flame of milk leaped out of the bucket and hit the wall, busting into drops.
“Hey,” I said. Moody was tall as me, but lanky and bony.
“Old bitch kicked me,” Moody said.
I picked up the milk bucket and brushed the dirt off the sides. Straw had stuck to the wetness around the rim.
“You wasted the milk,”
I said.
“I’ll waste her,” Moody said. He had that yellow look in the eye like a dog that don’t bark but means to bite you. Once Moody started getting mad it was hard for him to stop.
“I’ll do the rest of the milking,” I said. I looked around for the stool and found it in the weeds where it had bounced from the barn wall.
“This she-devil kicked me,” Moody said. He looked down the hallway of the barn like he was searching for something. I could see what had happened. The cow had sensed he was hungover and mad and hadn’t let down her milk. Maybe she was scared, or maybe she just wasn’t used to his touch. And because she hadn’t let down her milk Moody had got madder and pulled too hard at her tits. If the one milking is nervous, the cow gets nervous. A cow has to be calm to let down her milk.
“Let her quiet down,” I said. “I’ll finish the milking.”
“Nobody kicks me and gets away with it,” Moody said.
“A cow don’t know what she’s doing,” I said.
“She kicked me,” Moody said. “She knowed what she was doing.” He looked in a stall and he looked in the harness room. Morning-sun-lit cobwebs hung from the beams in the hallway.
I touched the flank of the cow and felt her skin quiver under the tips of my fingers. She was tense and nervous from all the hollering. I patted her warm hide. It would take a while to calm her down before I could finish the milking. I would talk to her and give her more crushing and cottonseed meal. The sun made the red hairs on her back sparkle.
I put the stool down beside the cow and was about to set the bucket down when Moody come out of the feed room carrying a short piece of two-by-four that I used to prop open the loft door when we throwed hay or corn into the loft from the wagon.
“What are you doing with that?” I said.
“That cow kicked me,” Moody said.
“Put that thing down,” I said.
“Out of my way,” Moody growled. He held the wood like it was a two-handed sword.
“Are you crazy?” I said.
“Don’t call me crazy,” Moody said and swung the two-by-four at me. I jumped back out of his reach.
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