She dominated my thoughts when I was awake, and in time I began seeing her in my progressively worsening dreams—real dreams, not made-up visions—dreams of limbs brushing limbs, and lips whispering into lips in a parody of holy prayer. Then I began manipulating my thoughts to ensure that my dreams would include her. At my lowest, I dreamt about her without benefit of sleep.
By age thirteen, when I began to use my hands, I knew I was bound for hell.
I couldn’t turn to my parents, so one Sunday I went to the restroom to speak with Brother Morrisohn.
He said, “Have you prayed over the matter?”
“Yes,” I answered, “but the Lord hasn’t answered yet.”
He smiled, showing those incredible teeth. “Maybe He has and you just don’t understand His answer. I’m sure He’s leaving it up to you.”
“Leaving it up to me?”
We stood inside the combination men’s washroom and lounge his money had built. Four stand-up stalls and four sit-down stalls lined one wall. A row of sinks lined another. In the center of the room, five plush chairs formed a semicircle around a floor-model color television. We were between services, so a football game was airing. Otherwise, the television would have picked up the closed-circuit feed and broadcast the service to the Faithful who found it necessary to be near the facilities. These days Brother Morrisohn, pushing close to his promised four score, attended most services by way of this floor-model television. His Bible, hymnal, and gold-tipped cane rested in one of the chairs.
“I don’t care what anyone tells you, God gets upset when we turn to Him for everything. Sometimes we’ve got to take responsibility. Elwyn, it’s your mind and your hand, and you must learn to control them. Otherwise, why don’t you just blame God for every sin you commit? God made you kill. God made you steal. God made you play with yourself.”
Brother Morrisohn was so close I could smell his cologne. His teeth made a ticking sound each time his jaw moved. Suddenly, he began to tremble and coughed a reddish glob into his hands. He moved quickly to the faucet and washed it down, sighing, “Age. Old age.” Then he turned off the faucet and looked down at me with an embarrassed smile.
I said to him, “What about the dreams?”
“Dreams?”
“The nasty dreams about … Peachie.”
“God controls the dreams,” Brother Morrisohn explained. “They’re not your fault.”
“Okay.”
“Control your hands.”
“I will.”
Brother Morrisohn was himself again. In his black suit and tie, he stood tall and handsome. All signs of weakness had vanished. Old age would not get the victory. God would get the victory.
He mused, “Peachie Gregory, huh?” The old saint pointed with his chin to the television. “That was Peachie last Sunday backing up Sister McGowan’s boy, wasn’t it? She’s a talented girl. She and that Barry McGowan make a great team. He can really sing.”
Now Barry was not my favorite brother in the Lord. Barry was a show-off, and he had flirted with Peachie in the past even though he was much too old for her. He was a high school senior. But now I smiled because soon he would be out of the way. “Barry just got a scholarship to Bible College,” I announced.
“Good for him. He’s truly blessed. But that Peachie is a cute girl, isn’t she?” Brother Morrisohn chuckled mischievously. “If you’re dreaming about her, Elwyn, by all means enjoy the dreams.”
I handed him his cane. He patted me on the head.
He was a great saint.
Praise be to God, as I grew in age, I grew in wisdom and in grace. With His righteous sword I was able to control my carnal side.
While she lived often in my waking thoughts, it was only occasionally that I dreamt about Peachie anymore, and even less frequently were the dreams indecent. Awake, I marveled at how through the Grace of God I was able to control my mind and my hand.
At sixteen, I counted Peachie as my best friend and sister in the Lord. We both served as youth ministers. Together, we went out into the field to witness to lost souls. As a pianist, she demonstrated a style that reflected her classical training. Disdaining my own classical training (we both had Sister McGowan for piano teacher), I relied on my ear to interpret music. Thus, on first and third Sundays of every month, she was minister of music for the stately adult choir; on second and fourth Sundays, I played for the more upbeat youth choir. As different as our tastes were, we emulated each other’s style. I’d steal a chord change from her. She’d borrow one of my riffs. We practiced together often.
By the Grace of God, genuine affection, however guarded, had replaced the envy and lust I felt for Peachie as a child.
Thus, when Brother Morrisohn passed in the late summer of ’79, it was my best friend Peachie whom I called for support.
“They want me to play,” I said.
“You should. He was very close to you.”
“But my style may not be appropriate. When I get emotional, my music becomes too raucous.”
“Do you think it really matters?”
I tried to read Peachie’s words. For the past few weeks she had grown cranky and I had chastised her more than once for her sarcasm, which bordered on meanness.
“Yes,” I said. “I think it matters. It’s the funeral of a man I loved dearly.”
“Well don’t look to me to bail you out. Play what’s in the book.”
“I hate playing that way.”
“Then play like you know how to play. Play for the widow. Play for Brother Morrisohn. Play like you have thirty fingers.”
“Okay. I just hope the choir can keep up.”
“We can,” Peachie assured.
Then we talked about what songs I would play and in what order and some other mundane things, and then somehow Peachie ended up saying, “Don’t worry, Elwyn. The Lord will see that you do fine. And I’ll be there watching you too.”
“Bless His name,” I said.
“Glory be to God,” she said.
So it was a funeral, but you wouldn’t know it from my playing.
Keep up, choir, I thought. I’m syncopating. Keep up!
I played for the stout old ladies of the Missionary Society, who sat as Brother Morrisohn’s next of kin because at seventy-eight he had outlived most of his near relations. All that was left were his wife Elaine and a daughter from his first marriage, Beverly, who was a few years older than her stepmother. In their black dresses and big, black church hats with silk ribbons tied into bows, the twenty or so women of the Missionary Society took up the first two rows. My grandmother stood among them, raising holy hands. Back in the old days, when the church was just getting started, Brother Morrisohn and my grandmother, my mother’s mother, had founded the group, which later became the fulcrum of the church’s social activity.
Sister Elaine Morrisohn, his fair-skinned widow, sat weeping among her dark sisters. She was the youngest member of the Missionary Society and that was mostly because she had been his wife. It was rumored that Sister Morrisohn had lived a life of singular wickedness before meeting and marrying Brother Morrisohn.
Beverly Morrisohn, his daughter, was not in attendance—although I had spotted her briefly at the final night of his wake. She wasn’t much to look at, a round-faced woman with her hair done up in an ugly bun. A nonbeliever, Beverly had worn pants to her own father’s wake. No wonder she and Sister Morrisohn hadn’t been on speaking terms for longer than the sixteen years I had been alive.
I played to comfort his widow.
Watch out, ushers, I’m going to make them shake today. I’m going to make them faint. Watch out!
I played so that they would remember Brother Morrisohn, benefactor and friend—Brother Morrisohn, the great saint, who had put the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters on the map.
My fingers burned over the keys. Remember him for the pews and the stained glass windows! Remember him for the nursery!
Remember him for the piano he bought me!
Now
the tilting hats of the women of the Missionary Society were my target. I aimed my cannon, fired. Musical shrapnel exploded in the air. They jerked back and forth, euphoric. They raised their sodden handkerchiefs toward heaven and praised the Holy Spirit, but it was I who lured them into shouts of dominant seventh—Hear That Old-Time Gospel Roar Like a Lion! It was I who made them slap their ample breasts through black lace.
Remember Brother Morrisohn. Remember!
The choir was swaying like grass in a measured breeze as I caught the eye of Peachie Gregory, my secret love, singing lead soprano. Though I seldom dreamt about her anymore, I would marry her one day. Peachie winked at me and then hammered the air with her fist. It was a signal. Play like you know how to play!
I did. I hit notes that were loud. I hit notes that didn’t fit. Then I pulled the musical rug out from under them. No piano. No piano—except a strident chord on the third beat of each measure backed by whatever bass cluster I pounded with my left hand.
Peachie gave me a thumbs-up. I had them really going now.
Laying into that final chorus like I had thirty fingers, I joined them again. I was playing for Peachie now. She kept hammering the air. I kept touching glory on the keys. The celestial echo reverberated. The whole church moved in organized frenzy—the Holy Spirit moving throughout the earth.
I was so good that day. Even Peachie had to admit it.
Was that my sin? Pride?
At graveside, I hurled a white rose into the hole. The flower of my remembrance slid off the smooth surface of the casket and disappeared into the space between the casket and the red and black walls of earth. Suddenly, the widow collapsed beside me. I caught hold of her before she hit the ground. My skinny arms and the meaty black arms of the Missionary Society steadied Sister Morrisohn on her feet again. She was not a heavy woman. She smelled of blossoms sweeter than the rose in her hand.
“I don’t want him to go,” she wailed.
“The Lord taketh the best, sister,” my grandmother said. “He lived way beyond his threescore and ten.”
“Amen” and “Yes, Lord” went up from the assemblage.
“His life was a blessing to all,” said Pastor, just beyond the circle of Missionary Society women that surrounded Sister Morrisohn. “Yes, but I don’t want him to go,” wailed the widow.
My grandmother, that great old-time saint, had one arm across the widow’s back, massaging her. “Throw the rose, child,” my grandmother urged.
My own arm had somehow gotten trapped around the widow’s waist and I couldn’t snake it out of there without causing a disturbance as my grandmother’s bell of a stomach had pressed the hand flat against Sister Morrisohn’s ribs. Peachie Gregory watched it all from the other side of the hole.
“Throw the rose.”
Sister Morrisohn clutched the flower to her chest. “Can I see him one more time?”
“You shouldn’t, child,” replied my grandmother.
Sister Morrisohn said, “Please,” and the August wind blew aside her veil revealing her ears, each of which was twice pierced—before she had accepted the Lord, of course. “Please.”
My grandmother finally gave in and pulled away, muttering to herself, “Lord, Lord.” She crunched through the gravel in her flat-soled funeral slippers to Pastor and commanded him in a loud conspiratorial whisper to open the casket one more time.
“Amen” and “Yes, Lord” went up from the assemblage again.
When the groundskeeper, a burly man with a patch over one eye, leaned in to pull the levers that raised the coffin up from the hole, Sister Morrisohn took my hand and walked me over to the edge of the shiny box in which Brother Morrisohn lay.
His hair was neatly parted. His lips were fixed in a taut line. He had an expression on his face like a man dreaming about childhood. Sister Morrisohn fixed her husband’s dead fingers around the white rose. When she stepped back from the box, I stepped with her.
“Tha’s all?” said the man with the patch over his eye. A hand in a dirty work glove rested against the controls. “Y’all finish?”
“Yes,” said my grandmother. “You may lower it again.”
The man snorted, “Church folk.” As he set to work lowering the casket, he mouthed what may have been obscene words but we couldn’t hear him for the singing:
We are marching to Zion, beautiful, beautiful Zion,
We are marching upward to Zion, that beautiful city of God
I ushered Sister Morrisohn into the hearse already loaded with sisters from the Missionary Society. The widow squeezed my hand. “Thank you, Elwyn. He really cared about you. Your music meant so much to him.”
“Thank you. I’m glad.”
I remained by the door of the hearse because Sister Morrisohn yet held my hand. Should I tell her that Peachie Gregory was waiting for me, that we had planned to stop off at Char-Hut to finish our grieving over french fries and milkshakes? How does one break away from the recently bereaved?
I averted my eyes and in a sudden move wrenched my hand from her grasp. When I dared look again, the hand that had held mine was brushing at tears.
“Don’t forget about me, Elwyn.”
Strange music began to play in my head. Was my light-headedness a result of her flowery perfume? The memory of the shape and feel of her waist? God forgive me, I silently prayed, this is Brother Morrisohn’s widow. Brother Morrisohn, a man I loved.
“I won’t forget you,” I said.
When I got to my car, where Peachie awaited, I was breathing as though I’d just run a great distance.
“The church is going to be a sadder place without Brother Morrisohn,” I said as we drove to Char-Hut.
“Poorer,” Peachie answered distantly. Her forehead was beaded in perspiration despite the wind from the open window that animated her long braids. It was hot and my old Mazda didn’t have air-conditioning. “No more free rides for the Faithful. The candyman is gone.”
“At any rate,” I said, “I think we presented him a great tribute.”
“Especially your playing, Brother Elwyn. It brought tears.”
I ignored her sarcasm. “He was a great saint. He’ll be missed. I for one am going to miss him.”
“You and the widow both.”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Peachie continued to stare out her window. “I said nothing.”
She was not telling the truth—she had indeed said something, a something that unabashedly implied impropriety: You and the widow both. I may have been in love with Peachie, but I was not going to suffer her insolence. I had never been anything but a gentleman with any of the sisters at the church, Peachie and Sister Morrisohn included. How dare she intimate such a vile idea! Such a rude side of Peachie I had never encountered.
Was she jealous?
Just as I was about to chastise her for her un-Christlike behavior, my Mazda stalled.
“This old car,” she grumbled.
“God will give us grace,” I said, cranking the engine to no avail as the vehicle rolled to a stop in the middle of traffic. Other cars began blowing their horns, whizzing around us.
I got out. Peachie crawled into the driver’s seat. I popped the hood and jiggled the wire connecting the alternator to the battery. Peachie clicked the ignition at regular intervals. When her click matched my jiggle, the frayed end of the wire sparked in my hand and the engine came to life. I closed the hood and got back into the car, rubbing my hands. “That takes care of that.”
Peachie stared out the open window again. “I’m not hungry. Take me home.”
“Peachie—”
“Please, just take me home.”
I passed to the center lane to make a U-turn. The traffic light caught me. I floored the clutch and the gas pedals so that the car wouldn’t stall while we waited for the green. “You could at least tell me what I did to upset you.”
“Who said you upset me? I have serious things on my mind.” Serious things I had little doubt. She was jealous.
�
��Ever since you got into the car, you’ve been answering me curtly or ignoring me altogether. I thought we were friends.” The light changed.
I made the U-turn. “See there,” I said, “you can’t even look at me.”
“Says who?” She turned on me with angry eyes.
“Are you jealous of Sister Morrisohn?”
“Jealous of the fragile widow?”
“Are you jealous?”
“Now you’re being silly.” Peachie laughed. “Wait. Are you in love with Sister Morrisohn? You certainly seemed concerned about her at the funeral. And what—do you think she’s in love with you? She’s only about ten times your age.”
“You don’t have to be so mean to me. I just thought that maybe you felt threatened.”
Peachie stared at me with eyes that mocked. “And what—how can I feel threatened? Do you think, my dear brother in the Lord, that I possess any feelings for you other than the sincerest and purest friendship?” If she had been standing, Peachie’s hands would have been akimbo. “Did I forget to share with you that Barry McGowan has written to me several times from Bible College?”
“Barry McGowan?” Why didn’t he just leave her alone? He was too old for her. “What does Barry have to do with this?”
“He graduates in December. He’s building a church up there in Lakeland. He already has the land and everything. He wants me to direct the choir.” Then she added with finality: “He wants me to marry him.”
“What? Well you won’t,” I said. “At least you won’t marry him now. You still have school to finish. And your mom and dad—”
“They’re all for it. They love Barry. I can finish school up in Lakeland, and then go to Bible College.”
“But they’ll just let you go like that? You’re so young.”
“Lots of sisters get married young,” she said, as though I should know this, and well I should, having played at many of their weddings. But Peachie didn’t have to go that way. She was virtuous, I was sure. “Don’t worry, Elwyn, Barry can take care of me. He’s a great man of God.”
I had trouble focusing on the road. “This is so sudden.”
“I’ve been thinking about it for four months.”
“Four months! You never told me. We’re best friends. You tell me everything.”
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