A Land More Kind Than Home

by Wiley Cash

  When I got about halfway across the field, I stopped and looked back and saw that Joe Bill hadn’t even moved yet. I waved my hand for him to follow me, but he smiled and shook his head and I knew that he’d been lying about coming with me. I thought about going back, but I didn’t want Joe Bill calling me a chicken again, even if he was one himself. And then I thought about Stump being in there with Mama and I looked out over the grass at the back of the church and I saw that air conditioner vibrating in the window, and I figured I’d already come too far to think about turning around.

  I looked back at Joe Bill again and he whispered something, but he was too far away for me to hear what he said. He put his hands around his eyes and looked at me like he was trying to block out the sunlight. I turned around and walked toward the church, and soon I was close enough to make out the song they were playing, and I knew it was “Have Thine Own Way, Lord.” Sometimes Mama sang that song to me and Stump before we went to bed at night, and the words popped into my head like I was lying in bed and singing right along with her, but instead I was out there in that field behind the church, hunkered down and walking low to the ground with that song singing itself in my head.

  A LITTLE BIT OF ROOF HUNG OFF THE BACK OF THE CHURCH, BUT IT didn’t offer hardly any shade at all, and by the time I made it to the church I could feel the sun burning through my shirt. I looked at my shadow where the sun threw it up on the concrete wall in front of me, and I thought about how easy it would be for Mama or Mr. Gene Thompson or Miss Lyle or somebody else to come around the corner of the church any second and catch me spying. I imagined seeing their silhouettes move against the wall while they crept up beside me. I could almost feel somebody tapping me on the shoulder, and I tried to think about what I’d say to somebody if they found me back there.

  The air conditioner hung in the window just about eye level with me, and when I stood by it I heard that it was rumbling so loud that I wouldn’t be able to hear somebody sneaking up on me. It was so loud that I couldn’t hardly hear the music coming from inside the church. When I got closer I felt the heat coming out of it, and that hot air poured down into my shirt collar and blew back my hair like I was riding in my daddy’s truck with the windows rolled down.

  I stood there in the sun with the hot air blowing on me, and I looked up and down the right side of the air conditioner until I saw a tiny crack up toward the top of the window between the concrete and the plywood where a little bit of light was coming through from inside the church. I looked around for another crack that might be lower, but I couldn’t find one, so I stood on my tiptoes and reached up and grabbed ahold of the old, rotten window ledge and pulled myself up just a little so I could see in. The music inside the church came through the wall and pounded against my knees.

  I raised myself up just as high as I could, but before I could even look inside I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I let go of the ledge and dropped down to the ground and stepped back, and as soon as I did I saw another silhouette thrown up against the wall right beside mine. I turned around and started to run toward the woods, but before I could even get going my nose smashed right into Joe Bill’s chest and he grabbed my shoulders to keep me from knocking him down. His eyes were wide open, and he was looking right at me. He put one hand over my mouth like he was afraid I might holler out, and then he put his finger to his lips.

  “Shhhh,” he said. We stood there looking at each other for a minute, and then he moved his hand off my mouth so I could talk. “Did I scare you?” he whispered. He smiled like he thought it was funny.

  “Dang it, Joe Bill,” I said. I pushed him as hard as I could to get him out of my face.

  “You better hush,” he said, just loud enough so that I could hear him over the air conditioner and the music pounding on the other side of the wall. “Did you get to see anything yet?”

  “I ain’t had the chance to look,” I whispered. I pointed up to where light from inside the church was showing through the crack between the board and the wall, and then I watched Joe Bill cup his hands around his eyes and peer through it for a minute. He looked back at me.

  “They’re just singing,” he whispered.

  “Let me see,” I said.

  “Go over to the other side and look for another crack,” he said. “This one’s too high for you.” I tugged on his shirt and tried to pull him away, but he wouldn’t move, so I ducked under the air conditioner and found another crack to look through. It wasn’t quite as high as the one I’d been looking through before, but I still had to get up on my tiptoes and prop my arms up on the window ledge so I could see in. I got both my elbows up on the ledge and braced my knees against the wall, and then I cupped my hands around my eyes just like I’d seen Joe Bill do.

  I could see right into the church; it almost felt like I was inside there, standing right down front on the little stage and looking into the people’s faces out in the audience. They were all singing just like Joe Bill said they were, but the guitar and the drums had stopped going and the only sound was the singing voices and somebody I couldn’t see banging away on the piano. It was a whole lot darker in there than I’d thought it’d be, especially with the sun so bright behind me, and I couldn’t see too far past the first couple of rows. I looked around and tried to catch a sight of Mama and Stump, but it was just a small crack that I was looking through and I couldn’t quite see everything inside there.

  Everybody inside was standing up from their folding chairs and clapping their hands to the music. Some of them swayed back and forth and sang with their eyes closed. That air conditioner rattled and rumbled right up against my head so loud that I couldn’t hardly hear nothing else for it, and that hot air poured onto my face and blew into my hair, and it seemed like I could feel that hot air getting pumped out of the church and right onto me and Joe Bill.

  It didn’t take long for my shoulders and my elbows to get good and sore from holding up my weight, and I dropped down to the ground to give them a rest. I ran my fingertips over my elbows and used my fingernails to pick off the flecks of dried paint and pieces of old wood that had gotten stuck on my skin. Joe Bill ducked under the air conditioner and came over to my side.

  “This is boring,” he whispered. “All they’re doing is singing. I think we should leave.”

  “Then go on back to the river,” I said, but I hoped he wouldn’t because I didn’t want him leaving me up there all alone. He watched me pick at the dried paint on my elbows, and then he looked back across the field toward the trees.

  “I just think we should get going,” he said. “They’ll be letting out here soon.”

  “But I haven’t even seen Stump yet,” I told him. “That’s the whole reason we came up here.”

  “I’m just thinking that we shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

  “Now who’s acting like a chicken?” I asked. Joe Bill stood there for a second, and then he ducked under to the other side of the air conditioner. I turned back to the window and got up on my tiptoes again and raised myself up with my elbows and cupped my hands around my eyes to peer in through that crack.

  Not a single one of the people inside had sat down yet, and somebody was still banging away on that piano even though it looked like they’d all stopped singing. Just about every one of them had their eyes closed, and some of them had their hands up over their heads like they were waving big at somebody who might be too far away to see them.

  All of a sudden, Pastor Chambliss flew right past my eyes and then disappeared, and the way he was moving looked like he might’ve been dancing or skipping or hopping down in front of the church. A second later he flew by again, and then he came back and stood right in front of me. I could see him good. He stayed there with his back to me and Joe Bill, and he just stared at all those people where they swayed back and forth with their eyes closed and their hands waving way up over their heads, their fists opening and closing like they were trying to reach up and grab something out of the sky.

  Pas
tor Chambliss had his hair buzzed so short that you couldn’t hardly notice the little bald spot right there in the back, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it myself if he hadn’t been sweating and the light hadn’t caught it. He looked like somebody who’d been in the army to me, even though he was probably too old to be a soldier now. The back of his blue dress shirt was dark with sweat, and the shirtsleeve on his left arm was rolled up past his elbow, but he had that right one buttoned tight at his wrist, and I knew why—his right hand was scary to look at: bright pink and wrinkled up. He kept that right sleeve rolled down tight, but he couldn’t keep his hand hidden; everybody in the church had seen it, and most of them had probably got so used to it that they never even thought about it anymore. But I’d thought about that hand all weekend long because I’d seen it out in the bright sunlight two days before, and I saw the whole arm it was attached to too, and I’d seen where that pink skin ran up to his shoulder and covered his chest like chewing gum does when you blow a bubble and it pops and spreads itself out across your cheeks.

  ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE, AFTER THE SCHOOL BUS HAD DROPPED ME off at the top of the road, I’d found Mama and Stump sitting on the porch steps like they were waiting on me. They were both holding small wooden boxes that looked like cages with handles on them, and when I got close enough to hear what she was telling Stump I heard the handle squeaking where Mama swung her box back and forth in front of her. She looked up and smiled when she saw me.

  “There you are,” she said. “How was school?”

  “What are y’all doing out here?” I asked.

  “Waiting on you,” she said.

  “What for?”

  “Because I figured you might want to go out and catch a few salamanders for y’all’s room.” I dropped my book bag by her feet on the bottom step, and I looked at the wooden box where she held it in front of her. She held it out to me, and I took it by the handle.

  “You serious?” I asked.

  “Well,” she said, “y’all been wanting some, and I figured you might as well have them if you can take care of them. We’ll have to find something to put them in, but this’ll do for now. I’ll take your book bag inside, and you can go on down to the creek if you promise to keep that shirt and those pants clean.”

  “I will,” I said. I looked at the box in my hand. “Where did you get these?”

  “From a friend,” she said. “He’s letting me borrow them just so y’all can use them. But we can’t keep them, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  She picked up my book bag and stood up from the steps and turned to go into the house, but she stopped and looked back at me and Stump. “See if you can catch five salamanders,” she said. “I think that would be plenty for us to have. So see if you can catch five.” I looked at Stump like I couldn’t believe what she’d just said, and I swung my cage by its handle and bumped it against his like I was making a toast.

  “You ready?” I asked. He jumped up from the porch, and we started across the yard toward the creek at the bottom of the hill.

  But we didn’t catch any salamanders. We couldn’t even find a single one. It was probably the only time I’d ever gone off looking for salamanders that I couldn’t find them, and when we walked back up the hill toward the house all we had in those little boxes was a few sticks and some blades of grass that reminded me of the terrarium we had in my classroom at school.

  My pants were soaked up past my knees and I carried my shoes with my socks stuffed down inside. I was afraid that Mama was going to be mad at me for getting so dirty, especially after I’d told her I wouldn’t. Stump had left his shoes on while he was walking through the creek, and I could hear water sloshing around in them and they squeaked when he walked. I knew Mama wasn’t going to like that either.

  We came up alongside the house, and I stopped beside the rain barrel. It sat up off the ground on some concrete blocks, and the gutter ran down into it from the roof. I squatted down and turned the spigot. I heard bubbles come up inside the barrel when the spigot opened and the water started pouring out.

  “Wash off your hands,” I said to Stump. “We’d better wash our shoes too. Mama’s going to be mad if we bring all this mud in the house.”

  He sat his box down in the grass by the rain barrel, and he held his hands under the water and rubbed them together to get the dirt off.

  “Stick your shoes under there too,” I said. He picked up one of his shoes and held it under the water, and I found a stick and used it to scratch the mud off the sides of his shoe. Then he held the other one under there and I did the same thing. Stump turned off the spigot, and when he did we heard them inside the house. I looked up at the window where Mama and Daddy’s bedroom was, and me and Stump stayed kneeled down there in the grass and listened to them. They were making the same noises that we heard them make in the morning sometimes when they didn’t know we were awake yet.

  Stump stood up straight and looked up at the window, and he turned his head like he was trying to hear them better. He tossed his shoes onto the ground behind him and walked up closer to the house.

  “One of them’s going to look out that window and see you,” I whispered. “If they do, they’ll come outside here and wear us out for spying on them.”

  I turned the spigot back on and put my shoe under the water and scratched some more of the mud off the bottom with that stick. Stump walked right up against the house and reached up his hands to the window ledge like he was thinking about pulling himself up to look in.

  “You’d better stop it,” I whispered louder, and I reached out that stick and poked him on the back of his leg. He looked back toward me and stepped away from the window, and then he put his hands flat on top of the rain barrel and grabbed on to the gutter and pulled himself up. I turned the spigot off, and I heard that big bubble inside there float up to the top again.

  “Stump,” I said, “you’d better get down. That ain’t going to hold you,” but he acted like he couldn’t even hear me. “You’d better get down,” I said again.

  When I stood up, I could feel the mud and wet grass squishing between my toes, and I could hear Mama and Daddy’s bed squeaking inside their room. Stump put his hands on the window ledge and stood on his tiptoes on top of the rain barrel and tried to look in there. I saw the concrete blocks under the rain barrel move just a little, and then it leaned a little to the side like it might tip over. I put my hands on the sides of it to try and keep it from falling, and I felt the water in there roll around from side to side.

  “Stump,” I whispered. I reached out and tugged at his leg, but he just stayed up on his tiptoes and tried to see in the window like he didn’t feel me pulling on him. “It ain’t going to hold you,” I said. I tugged at his leg again, and when I did all that muddy water on his feet made him lose his balance. His feet went out from under him, and he fell on his butt on top of the rain barrel. It ripped loose from the gutter and tipped toward the yard, and Stump slipped and fell up against the house and landed on top of those concrete blocks. The rain barrel turned over in the grass with its top busted off. Water poured out onto the ground and ran down through the yard, and Stump just laid there on his back on top of those concrete blocks.

  I heard Mama’s voice through the open bedroom window. “What was that?” she said.

  “I don’t know,” a man said. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I knew it wasn’t Daddy’s. “I’m going to go see,” the voice said. “You stay right here.” I heard the bed squeak like somebody was standing up. “You stay right here,” the voice said again. I knew whoever’s voice I heard was coming out to find us. I looked down at Stump.

  “Get up,” I said to Stump, but he wouldn’t move. I kneeled down and tried to stand the rain barrel upright, but my feet kept slipping in the wet grass and it was too heavy to move. Stump just laid there with his eyes closed like the wind had got knocked out of him, and then he reached around behind him like he’d hurt his back. I heard the bedroom door open.

 
; “Get up, Stump,” I said, but he just laid there and looked over my shoulder at the window above me like he couldn’t move. “They’re coming out here,” I whispered. I reached down and tried to pull him up by his hand. “Get up,” I said again.

  I heard the screen door slam shut around front, and I turned and hightailed it toward the woods beside the house. I ran until I didn’t think anyone could see me, and then I stopped and laid down flat on my stomach behind some tree roots and looked back toward the yard. I could see the rain barrel where I’d pushed it back up, and I could see where the gutter had gotten bent and broken, but I couldn’t see Stump at all because he hadn’t stood up yet.

  I laid on my stomach in the woods and waited on whoever I’d heard to come around the corner of the house and find Stump, and then I remembered that my shoes were still up there and I knew they were going to find them and tell Mama and she’d wear me out because I should’ve never let Stump climb up there because we shouldn’t have been spying. But I forgot about all that when I saw Pastor Chambliss. I only saw his face at first because he peeked around the corner like he’d been hiding from somebody and was checking the side of the house to make sure it was safe to come out. He stood there peeking around the corner at the rain barrel, and then he walked into the side yard and I could see him good. All he had on was a dirty old pair of blue jeans that he had to hold at the waist because he wasn’t wearing a belt. He’d pulled his boots on over his blue jeans, and he stopped walking and bent over and pushed his jeans down over the tops of his boots. When he bent down, I saw the inside of his right arm and how bright pink and shiny it was. When he stood up straight, I saw that the pink, wrinkled skin covered his chest and ran up his neck too. He looked out toward the woods beside the house, and I got as flat as I could on the ground behind those roots so he wouldn’t see me. He walked over to the rain barrel and stopped, and then he just stood there looking down at Stump like he was surprised to see him laying there. Pastor Chambliss bent down and sat the rain barrel up straight. Then he fixed the top where it had come loose. He pounded on it with his fist and shut it tight. I heard the screen door slam, and then I heard Mama’s voice come around the house from the front porch.