Moody shook his head like he still couldn’t believe I was there, that I had not been arrested. He had abandoned me, and here I was free as a buzzard.
“Where is the liquor?” Moody said.
“I’ll tell you when you pay me,” I said.
Moody must have drunk the rest of his liquor, for I didn’t see any bottle. “You old son of a bitch,” he kept saying, and went to sleep before we got to the Green River Road.
Nine
Muir
IN THE MORNING when I woke up and limped out to the kitchen, Mama looked at me hard, and I felt little as a worm. She looked at me and she looked back at her Bible. “I won’t ask where you’uns went last night,” she said.
I felt like I’d been beat with a stick, and I felt like I hadn’t had a wink of sleep in a week. I wasn’t used to being out that late at night, and my ankle was sore like it had been sprained again. I couldn’t walk without favoring it.
“You’d have done better to walk to your traps,” Mama said.
I poured myself a cup of coffee. I didn’t want Mama to know what I’d done. But I figured she had a pretty good idea where we’d been.
“You don’t look fit to go to church,” Mama said.
“I’m going to church,” I said.
“Won’t do you no good if you go to sleep during the sermon,” Mama said.
“Ain’t going to sleep,” I said.
“Never thought I’d see both my boys laying out in Chestnut Springs on a Saturday night,” Mama said.
“I’ll go to church,” I said.
“Just going to church is not enough,” Mama said. “Your heart has to be open.”
I was going to say something silly about cutting open my heart with a knife, but I didn’t. No use to make myself even more ashamed.
IT WAS STILL partly dark, but as I passed the shed I could see the mud that had splashed up on the car. Creek mud stuck to the wheels and fenders like dried manure, and dust and trash was stuck to the sides that got wet with creek water.
It was warm and smelly in the cow stall. I looked down into the bucket as I started milking the Jersey named Alice. The smell of the manure and the heat of the cow stopped my head from spinning. I leaned against the cow’s side and listened to the rumbling of the belly as I milked. “Oooooo,” it said in there under the warm hide.
I’D NEVER LIKED to go to Green River Church any more than other boys did. I liked the hymn singing and I liked the excitement of a good sermon, like everybody does. But most of Preacher Liner’s sermons was long and hard and downright sad. Most days you set in church while he rambled on and on about how sinful everybody was and how miserable everybody would be at Judgment Day.
The main reason I didn’t like to go to Green River Church was I’d made such a fool of myself trying to preach there. I’d told everybody I wanted to be a preacher, but when I got up there behind the pulpit I couldn’t do nothing but sweat and stammer.
Another reason I didn’t like Green River Church was the way they’d treated Mama years ago, when she used to attend the Pentecostal Holiness meetings in tents and brush arbors. Before I was born they had a vote at the church and turned her out of the membership. They turned out Uncle Joe and Aunt Lily, and they turned out Grandpa too, and he was the one that give land for the church and had built it in the first place. Who belonged to a church more than the one who give the land and built the church house with his own hands? I wished he had built a bigger church and made it out of rock. A real church ought to be made out of rock.
Mama and Grandpa had kept going to church like nothing had happened, kept paying their tithes like they’d never been throwed out. Eventually the whole thing blowed over and everybody seemed to forget it. And then when I was about seven years old there was another Pentecostal Holiness preacher come through and held meetings in a brush arbor up toward Mount Olivet. Soon as Mama started going to the revival there, the deacons of the church held another meeting and they churched her again. And again she didn’t pay them any mind and kept right on going to services same as before.
MAMA TOOK ME to one of those meetings in the brush arbor, and I was scared because I didn’t know what was going to happen. I knowed it was the kind of meeting a lot of people didn’t approve of and that the pastor warned people against. It was scary walking up the road to Mount Olivet in the dark and turning down the trail into the holler where the brush arbor was. There was lanterns hanging on posts, and horses tied to trees. A bucket of water with a dipper set on a bench.
The brush arbor was a kind of shed made of poles with pine and cedar limbs nailed to the frame. In the lantern light the pine needles gleamed like copper and glass.
The benches in the brush arbor was just boards laid on stumps and blocks of wood. Sawdust had been sprinkled on the ground, and the smell of pine rosin sweetened the air. I set down by Mama on a bench and fished my knife out of my pocket.
“Don’t get out your knife in church,” Mama said.
“This ain’t church,” I said.
“It’s the same as church,” Mama said.
When the preacher stood up in front of the benches he looked like the tallest man I’d ever seen. His name was Preacher Allison, and he was supposed to be a timber man and a Melungeon from over in Tennessee. He had dark skin and black hair, and eyes that darted around.
“When the Spirit moves, it can move a whole population,” Preacher Allison said.
“Amen,” somebody hollered behind us.
“When the Spirit moves, it can move a whole valley,” the preacher said. “For when the Spirit comes it can change the earth and sky like the weather.”
“Amen,” somebody hollered again.
“When a great revival lights up a valley you can’t walk into the place without being touched by the holiness,” the preacher said. “A sinner can feel the stirring of the Spirit and conviction as soon as he enters the community. The ground is charged and the air is charged with the spark of the Spirit. And you can feel the joy in the sweet wind over the creek, and in the sunlight on a cornfield and in the wind at night. The water that comes out of the spring in the rock is blessed, and the path you walk to the orchard is blessed.”
Preacher Allison didn’t wave his arms or walk around the front of the brush arbor. He leaned over us and talked in a quiet steady voice, and it give me the chills. It was the quietness that was scary. I couldn’t stand to look at his eyes that was dark and close together as holes at the end of a double-barreled shotgun. I looked away from his face, and then I looked back at his stare in the lantern light.
“You have forgot the joy, and you have forgot the presence of the Savior,” Preacher Allison said. “For the Lord said, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world.’ And I can feel him right here and right now. Can you feel him? Can you feel his presence? He ain’t way off yonder somewhere with the rich people and the powerful people in Washington. No sir. He is right here with you and with you and with you.” The preacher pointed at people on one side and then people on the other side. I shivered when he pointed at me.
“Glory,” Mama said, and raised her hands on either side of her head. “Glory hallelujah!”
“The sister feels the presence,” Preacher Allison said.
I looked at Mama and then I looked away. I’d never seen her act like that. Her eyes was on the preacher and she looked like she’d seen the most wonderful thing. I couldn’t see nothing where she was looking but the ugly old preacher. But Mama looked so pleased with what she seen. She rose up and screamed, “Thank you, Jesus, thank you for your blessings!”
The preacher kept looking at Mama, and Mama started talking in a stream. But I couldn’t tell what she was saying. It was the strangest talk I’d ever heard, and I knowed it must be speaking in tongues. I’d heard all my life about the gift of tongues. It was what Daddy hated most about the Pentecostal Holiness services. It sounded so awful. The words that come out, the sounds that come out, was like the teeth of a saw in my ears. I put my ha
nds over my ears and looked away. But I could still hear the things Mama was saying.
I looked down at the sawdust, and then I looked at Mama and looked away again. Mama kept talking and I couldn’t understand nothing she said. I seen I had to get out of that place. Women was hollering, “Bless you, Ginny!” and men was saying, “Thank you, Jesus,” and “Bless the sister in Christ.” I couldn’t stand the preacher’s stare, and I couldn’t stand what Mama was saying. It was like she was saying, “Gobble, gobble, gobble.”
I reached into my pocket and got my knife out. I opened up the blade and held it in the lantern light. But I didn’t know what I meant to do with the knife. I pointed the blade at the preacher, and I pointed it at the lantern beside the preacher’s head like it was a gun. I don’t think anybody even noticed me or the knife. They was looking at the preacher, and they was looking at Mama. I run between Mama and the pulpit and pointed the knife at Preacher Allison. The knife was my protection against the scariness, but it didn’t do no good. And then I run on out into the night.
I must have been sweating in the brush arbor, for when I stood under the trees looking back at the people in the lantern light, I found I was wet like I’d come out of the creek. I shuddered in the cool night air and jerked, I was so scared. I heard Mama shouting, and then I seen her do a kind of dance in front of the preacher. And she fell down on the sawdust. She rolled on the sawdust like she was having a fit. She rolled on the ground the way a horse will wallow in the dust. I didn’t want to look no more. I put my face against the bark of a tree and cried.
I never went back to the brush arbor with Mama. And I never forgot the way her face looked when she was speaking in tongues, and the way she quivered and shivered when she stepped toward the preacher. She didn’t act like Mama at all, but like something terrible had come out of the air. I couldn’t stand to look at her for days after the meeting. I hung my head at the table and walked past her in the kitchen.
After a week Preacher Allison closed the meeting and moved on to another revival in Pickens, South Carolina. And Mama went back to church, same as before.
IT WAS SO busy in the house as Fay and Mama got dressed for church, I had to find a place to get ready myself. After straining the milk and carrying it out to the springhouse, I got a cake of soap from the shelf on the back porch and headed toward the river. I had to favor my right foot and walk slow because my head was still spinning a little. But I gulped the fresh air of the winter morning and walked over stubble and weeds to the riverbank.
At the stream I slipped off my clothes and hung them on the limbs of a birch. A crawfish backed away when I stepped into the shallows. I had humiliated myself, and I needed to be cleansed. I felt only scorn for myself. The water was so cold it burned like turpentine and made my ankle ache. Only thing to do was jump right into the cold water. Clutching the soap, I rushed into the pool and slapped water on my back like I was trying to put out a fire. I slapped my skin and attacked myself with soap. The water bit and stung and made my bones numb. I slapped the soap under my arms and on the back of my neck and rubbed between my legs. Then I dropped into the water up to my neck. Needles stuck into my skin and gouged every pore. I jumped up like I was shot out of a barrel and run to the bank.
Ain’t nothing better than the feel of drying off in the sun after a plunge in the cold river. The air and sunlight seemed like a gift of comfort after the pain of the water. Where your skin has gone numb it wakes up with goose bumps and itching. As I slipped my clothes on, they felt like fur and goose down after the crushed ice and broke glass of the river water.
At the house I put on my one suit. A lot of men wore overalls to church. But it showed more respect to wear my suit. And I hoped to see Annie. I didn’t want Annie to see me in overalls on a Sunday morning.
Moody woke up while I was getting dressed in front of the mirror in the bedroom. His face was gray like he was sick. “Where you going in your trick pants?” he said.
“Where do you think, on a Sunday morning?” I said.
“Going to hear the preacher mumble and grumble?” Moody said.
“Might be,” I said.
I put on my brown tie that made the suit look a little like a uniform.
“You ain’t going to hear no sermon,” Moody said. “You’re just going to see that Richards girl.”
“Could be,” I said.
I WAS PLANNING to drive Mama and Fay to church in the Model T, but while I was waiting for Fay to finish primping in front of the mirror in the kitchen, and while Mama was reading her Bible by the fireplace, I heard the car start. It sputtered and barked and then went tut-tut-tut-tut. I run out the door, but by the time I got to the shed Moody was already driving through the gate and up the hill toward the spring. I knowed he was going after the cans I’d left by the creek. I was sorry I’d told him where they was.
I slammed the door as I come back inside.
“Won’t hurt us to walk,” Mama said and closed her Bible.
“Now I’ll get my shoes dirty,” Fay said.
“Hope he has a wreck,” I said.
“That’s no spirit to take to church,” Mama said. “Preaching won’t do you no good if you feel like that.”
I’d wanted Annie to see me driving the car. Thought I might ask if she wanted to go for a drive that afternoon. I didn’t know what I’d planned to do, but I wanted the car just in case.
“Let’s go,” Mama said.
“At least we used to have a buggy,” Fay said.
“We have always walked to church,” Mama said.
PREACHER LINER WAS a loud preacher. He had a harsh voice with a rattle and slap at the top of it. When his voice rose to a high pitch you felt like you had been smacked. He preached long sermons that had a lot of pressure in them. He preached like he was pushing the air tight and close around your head. I was already ashamed of myself. I figured his sermon would make me more ashamed.
I hoped Annie Richards would look around. I wanted to see the pure perfect skin of her cheek. I wanted to see if she had an earring on her delicate little ear. Even though she was only fourteen, she sometimes wore earrings. Her hair had a sparkle to it even in the dim light.
“You may think you can hide your ugly sin in a new car or a fine buggy,” Preacher Liner shouted. “You may think you can outrun your sin on a fast horse, or by climbing to a mountaintop in rain or snow. You may think you can hide your sin behind good deeds and charity and helping others. You may think you can hide your sin behind a smile, behind hard work or money, behind a fine house and a new barn. You may even think you can hide your sin in church, setting up front and listening to a sermon. Well, I’m here to tell you the Lord has found you out. Your sin is black and foul. Your sin is stinking in the nostrils of heaven. You couldn’t hide such sin in the deepest well; you couldn’t hide your sin at the bottom of a coal mine or under the ocean. The Lord sees your heart and sees your sin like it was laid out on a table in front of a courtroom.”
I looked at Annie and she turned her head to the right. She didn’t turn far enough to see me watching her. But I seen the gray of her eye and the faint redness of her cheek. Her features was sharp and delicate at the same time. She knowed I was looking at her. She knowed I always looked at her when I went to church.
“You may think you can hide your sin at the back of your mind under a new hat,” Preacher Liner said. “You think you can hide your filthy heart under new clothes and fine jewelry. You think you can hide your sin behind a fine singing voice or a musical talent. You may think you can run to the end of the world and get away from the Lord’s work.”
The preacher paused and glared at us.
“Well, I’m here to tell you the Lord has found you out. The Lord has looked into your polluted heart and found you out. The Lord knows your vice and your corruption. The Lord knows your every move and weaselly evasion. The Lord will cut you off like the diseased branch of a tree. The Lord will smite you like the wicked of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord will whip you out o
f the temple as he drove the money changers out of the synagogue. The Lord will cast you into the outer darkness with his fallen angels and wipe your name from the book of life.”
Annie was too young to be courting, but sometimes her papa, Hank, would let her walk home from church with a boy. She was already the most popular girl in the community, even though she was just fourteen and beginning to show her womanly shape. Sometimes she would flirt, and sometimes she would just ignore you. She was the only girl I knowed that would act like she didn’t even see you or hear you if she didn’t feel like talking. Just the fact that Annie was in the church, and that I could see her, give the church a sparkle and a glow.
“When you come to the end of the way,” Preacher Liner said, “when you come down to the threshold of death, what will you have to say for yourself? Will the Lord look into your heart and see the cancer of sin growing there? Will your sin be wrote across your forehead when you stand before the Judgment? Will the Lord say, Cast him into outer darkness, I never knew him? Will your sin weigh you down as you try to rise at the Second Coming?
“My friends, many of you setting here in church will never see death. For the end of time is near, and the Second Coming is near. And the day will come not too far off when the Lord will bust through the eastern sky with all his host of angels and call for his own. And the saved will be lifted up, and them washed in the blood will be lifted up, and them that has repented will be took up to heaven. And the rest will be left on this cold earth.”
Preacher Liner paused and wiped his brow. He’d been preaching so loud the church still rung with the sound of his voice. The air was stirred up by the awful words. The air had shadows and needles in it. I looked at Annie but she didn’t turn around. The sight of her was the only sweet thing in the church. The color of her hair was the only soothing thing in sight. I didn’t want to think about what the preacher was saying. I felt little as a cockroach. I didn’t want to think about what I’d done the night before. All I wanted to think about was Annie.
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