Steal Away Home

by Billy Coffey

  “Mike says I’m to babysit.”

  “Go talk to him.”

  “I ain’t no Country Kitchen,” I say. “Talking to the manager ain’t my place, ’less it’s after he says something to me.”

  “Better make it your place. You want your chance, you gotta make it known. Could be that’s what Mikey’s waiting on.”

  Fordyce lets two strikes get by him before flying out to Knoblauch in left. That leaves our catcher with an oh-for-four tonight and Caldwell punching my rib with his elbow. Our guys head back out onto the field for the bottom of the seventh, which may take a few extra minutes to get started since it’s stretch time.

  “Twenty-nine,” Caldwell says. “Not getting any younger, Hillbilly. This here’s a young man’s game.” He stands and moves off to visit Ethan at the bat rack, turns and gives me a wink. “But hey, least you’re not as old as Country. Am I right?”

  Stretch

  -1-

  Things were never the same once Micky started with her church. What made it worse was so often the house held Dad and me alone. I’d get back from the Auto World around five, Dad would arrive soon after from the school. Mom still worked nights, leaving us to fend for supper on our own and leaving no one to cover for me when I took my trips to the hill. Not that there needed to be. On those evenings when I did manage to arrive early, I often found only the oak waiting. I’d sit there an hour, sometimes two, before Micky eased her way from the pines. Always looking tired but beautiful, always smiling even though I hardly did. Not even seeing her could lift my spirits. Not even talking. I was made more miserable by the fact that she was not miserable at all.

  It was all about the church by then. Every little thing. How they’d fixed up that old barn to make it a proper place of worship and how all the Shanties were pulling together. All the money Earl was taking in and how it was getting spread around so nobody went without. Always sitting down beside me with a peck on the cheek and an I missed you today, Owen that I found difficult to believe, because if she missed me so bad then why were we apart so often? Why did the girl I loved feel such a stranger?

  The only time Micky would fall silent was when I talked of college. Never a word to that. She would only look off toward the ridges or to a darkening sky and ask me what I loved. I said the same every time—It’s you I love, and what we’ll soon have.

  And I believed it, and I was a fool for believing so.

  But what are any of us but fools, always chasing but never finding? And what are any of us but lost when we cling even to broken dreams, because we have nothing else?

  -2-

  That first Sunday after graduation—that’s when even the lies I told myself seemed to hold no more. That was the day Micky returned to Reverend Sebolt’s church, this time bringing a few of her Fellowship along. The day I believe I lost her for good.

  The funny thing is, I doubt it would have happened had my father been handing out the bulletins at the front door. Dad would have put a stop to it before it started. But it had since come to Reverend Sebolt’s attention that his daughter, Stephanie, and Jeffrey Davis were turning into something serious, enough that even the reverend’s wife, Abigail, was beginning to speak of a future wedding. Folk in the Appalachians tend to fall in love once and early. It wasn’t uncommon in Camden to have a wife you met in grade school or a husband who was once your homecoming date. That would be Jeffrey Davis and Stephanie Sebolt. I did not go to their wedding, though I received an invitation forwarded to me by Mom. My answer was a polite no. Mom knew why. After Micky, I swore I’d never go back to Camden again.

  Whether by Stephanie’s prodding or his own desire, Reverend Sebolt decided Jeffrey should begin manning the front door every Sunday morning. My father was happy for the break, having been stuck having to listen to the sermon from the chair inside the church foyer for years. And Jeffrey, he was happy for easy work that consisted of merely smiling, offering everyone a good morning, and handing over a Sunday bulletin.

  That’s why it was Jeffrey rather than my father waiting at the doors when Micky and the first of her flock paid their visit. It’s also why they were not turned away but let right on inside with nothing more than a flash of surprise. The way Jeffrey told me later, “I didn’t think nothing was gone happen. I mean, it’s just church, you know?”

  Jeffrey didn’t even bat an eye at the rest of them, Todd Foster and Earl and both Harper boys. He never even stopped to wonder why Todd had his arms full of dandelions cut fresh from the wastes of the Shantytown fields.

  Most of the work had been completed by the time I showed. A dandelion waited at every place in every pew from the back of the sanctuary all the way to the front, including the pulpit, the organ, and where the choir would stand. The Shantytown delegation sat in a phalanx at the back, Micky serving as its center. In her new white dress she looked like a cloud surrounded by dust. My mouth went dry at the sight of her.

  Her eyes flitted to the others streaming inside, some from the back where Jeffrey stood pale and trembling as though he had begun only now to sense trouble. Others entered from smaller doors that led to the Sunday school rooms. From these came Jeffrey’s parents, Rupert and Irma, who took one look at the Shanties gathered and all but made the sign of the cross. Then Mom and Dad, she freezing in place until he took hold of her elbow and steered them both to where I sat. Dad’s only words to me were “You know anything about this?” I shook my head and wondered if Micky had seen that, if she was staring.

  Sheriff Townsend and Louise. Abigail Sebolt and Mayor Henry. Bubba Clements. Travis, who stared at Micky and all of a sudden seemed genuinely happy to be at church that day because something funny might happen. Stephanie entered and sat at the organ. She stared at the dandelion waiting for her like it was a spider and then struggled through the first bars of “Shall We Gather at the River.”

  The murmur that had groaned through the crowd at the sight of Micky became a buzz. Some smiled as they twirled weeds in their fingers. Others tossed their dandelions on the floor to be trampled. A few of the more righteously indignant tossed theirs in Micky’s direction, which garnered no response other than one of the Harpers leaping from his place as if seeing those flowers as foul balls to be grabbed. I watched Earl gently pull the big twin back into a sitting position. Micky’s eyes were shut. I wondered if she was scared or praying.

  Reverend Sebolt entered last. Preachers must develop a kind of sixth sense regarding their Sunday-morning flock, because he stuttered his steps a little as soon as he breached the doorway. His smile puckered and then flashed to life once more, gaze darting. He strode up the steps to the pulpit and laid down his Bible. His hand moved. A dandelion twirled in his fingers.

  The service proceeded with an abundance of caution. Stephanie stretched the last notes of the opening song. The prayer seemed designed to mention every need and want—the reverend grinding out the innings no less than me, until he could no longer.

  “Does anyone have any announcements?”

  You could hear necks turning, skin rustling against linen suit coats and cotton dresses. I kept my eyes forward to the wooden cross hung above the baptismal pool, those two straight pieces of wood resembling a moving figure by the sunlight cutting through the stained glass. Dad faced forward as well. As did Mom, until Micky spoke.

  Her voice came so soft that it barely cleared the back of the room—“Hello, Reverend”—before gathering up. “I don’t know if I’m the sort can give an announcement, seeing as how this is only the second time I been here. But when I walked up there a while back you said I had a home here now, so I thought I could maybe speak. For only a minute.”

  Reverend Sebolt rubbed his lips. He looked an imposing man up there above the rest of us, gray-haired and wise. Dad cleared his throat from the front pew. I could not decide if that was meant as a signal.

  The preacher lifted his own dandelion. “Michaela Dullahan, I believe you have already attempted to make a report this morning, though I cannot reckon its meaning
. I am happy to see you here again—and those you’ve brought along. I am happy as well to hear of all your doings out in Shantytown, however strange some of them may be. I’ll let you talk, child. But this is the house of the Lord. It is a holy place and a holy time, not one for hubris.”

  “I don’t reckon I know what that word means, but I ain’t come to start no trouble. I only want to talk is all.”

  A soft ripple of laughter rolled through part of the crowd. A dandelion lay on the gray carpet at my feet. I gathered it in my hand as Micky went on.

  “Guess about everybody’s heard what we been doing down in the Pines. Maybe you’re thinking what’s got into me. I can say I really don’t understand it all myself. Things is happening.” She chuckled. “I even got my pitcher in the paper. That ain’t never happened to a Dullahan before. ’Less it was a mug shot.”

  When Micky spoke again it was clearer and more direct, as though she was no longer trying to speak over and around all those bodies but to them. I used the reverend’s face as a kind of weather vane and concluded she had stepped out into the center aisle.

  “It was me caused the trouble in Brutal Simpson’s field. I won’t get into all the wheres and how-comes of it, I’ll only say that when you’re a girl like me, life can sometimes get to slipping away from you. Well, it slipped so far from me that I wound up standing in front of a train. I was on the wrong path, I guess. But I was saved.”

  My fingers closed upon the flower in my hand.

  “And I was gived something.” Her voice sounded closer, no more than a couple pews back. “I don’t know why. Surely I didn’t deserve such a thing. I got a vision is what you might call it, though that don’t do what I seen justice. Things like that ain’t supposed to happen to no Shantytown girl. No Dullahan girl ’specially. Ain’t that right, Daddy?”

  Earl said in his gravest tone, “You right, child.”

  “But it happened.” Her shadow fell across a square of carpet in the aisle to Dad’s right. “And that thing changed me whole from the inside out. Made me new. What sort of thing you think could do that, Reverend Sebolt?”

  The preacher didn’t say.

  “I don’t know either,” Micky told him, “other than a miracle. That’s what I call it. Because I got shown all the errors of my ways. I seen what we truly are and all the beauty that makes us. But you know what I seen more than anything else?”

  She let that hang over us so long that Louise Townsend actually said, “What?”

  “Love. Purest, fiercest love you ever imagined. Love that never ends.”

  Reverend said, “That’s fine now, Michaela.”

  “I ain’t done yet, if you please. I’m coming to the good part. That love changed me. It made me see all the living I ever done was backward. My whole life was one mistake after another because I didn’t know that love.”

  Every face pointed Micky’s way. Only mine and my father’s remained unmoved.

  “I know what y’all think a me, if you ever thought a me at all. You’d be right to say I ain’t nothing but another Dullahan from Shantytown. You’d be right saying all us Shanties struggle. We always have. But you know why? It’s ’cause we always been looking someplace else for that love we need. I didn’t even know it before, but we were. Like you all are.”

  She came forward past where I sat.

  “What is it you love? That’s all I’m asking.” It was as if she looked at every face there, studied every soul. “Any you ever asked yourself that? I never did, and I suffered for it. Because if it ain’t that single thing I found on them train tracks, the thing that’ll always love you back regardless, then you ain’t never gone be at peace. You’ll always be looking and always end up hurt.”

  She studied the cross hung over the baptismal pool. “I don’t know what to call that love by. I reckon you could say it’s God or Jesus or any these names you got hanging on the walls I can’t pronounce. They’re good enough because it’s all that love we’re able to hold, but I’m telling you it’s more than some word or name. More than we can ever know on this side of life. You can’t be chasing after things that don’t matter. They’re all empty. I know. I chased them too. And I just don’t want anybody here suffering the same as me. I know it don’t sound right saying this, ’specially here, but my momma always told me a church is a place of truth. That’s why I gotta say the truth. This here’s supposed to be a place of sinners and whores, and you know why that is? Because that’s all we are deep down.”

  Irma Davis shouted, “Heavens,” as if the Spirit had laid hold of her.

  The Reverend Alan Sebolt flared. “That is quite enough, young lady. Jeffrey, you come show Michaela out or to her seat, I don’t care which.”

  But Jeffrey didn’t move. All he knew was to say good morning and hand you a bulletin. My father never covered with him how to get a demon out of their midst. Besides, I guess Jeffrey knew Micky could whup him in a blink.

  Micky turned to the preacher and asked, “What do you love, Reverend? Them words you say, or the One you’re supposed to speak for?” And then to Stephanie, “What truth you find for yourself, or only the sort somebody finds for you?” To Jeffrey she asked whether he loved the short life he thought was his or the eternal one this life pointed toward. She said to my mother, “We have so much love to give, but only because we’re loved first.”

  On she went, passing person to person, tailoring each entreaty and question as though she knew their deepest wants. Many of them found they could no longer look at their accuser at all. My father was spared, and me, though in my case it could be said whatever wisdom Micky felt led to offer had been given me at the hill.

  “I tried telling y’all this, though I don’t think I been too good at it. But the Shantie folk know. It’s easier for poor folk to hear the truth of things. They ain’t got as much to lose. We got a new church out there called the Fellowship of the Lost, since that’s what we was. And I want to invite y’all. Don’t matter to us who you are, you’re welcome. I guess I’ll be the one to preach. You’ll hear much of what I told you today.”

  Micky cleared her throat to make a final push.

  “Those dandelions you got is our mark. We wear ’em to show even the weeds of this world is loved beyond measure. I guess I come here to tell y’all that too. We might be poor and got nothing. But what we carry inside is something the world can’t take away, and that about makes us as rich as a body can be. It’s a reminder, these dandelions.” She stroked the one pinned to her dress. “It tells us we ain’t gone be pushed down by Camden folk no more. There’s too many a us workin’ for y’all and gettin’ treated bad. Gettin’ ignored. It ain’t right. So I’d like you each to have a dandelion too, if only to remember that. Remember you ain’t no better than anybody else and we’re all loved. And I want y’all to know you’re always welcome down in the Pines. Can be an expensive venture,” Micky said, “starting a church. We won’t ask for your money—”

  “Love offerings will be gladly accepted,” said Earl.

  “—but maybe if you’re led to do so, what tithe you aimed to put in the plate here could be put to better use. You just save that money, give it over to me or Earl. Give them dandelions you got to the preacher maybe. I guess that’s it.”

  She gave an awkward curtsy to the reverend. She didn’t return to her seat. Instead, the first members of the Fellowship of the Lost met her in back where Jeffrey stood and left en masse. I relaxed my hand. The dandelion inside was crushed, my palm stained yellow.

  I will give Reverend Sebolt credit. From there onward he made certain our Sunday service deviated not once from the usual. He barely flinched when the plates were passed and brought forward to the altar. Those silver trays sat there for all to see, holding piles of white envelopes with First Baptist Church on the front. Some checks poking out here, some cash there. And a whole lot of flowers and stems.

  -3-

  It is a subtle thing yet very present if you know to look for it, how this space between the top and
bottom of the seventh is made longer by a mere matter of an extra warm-up pitch and one more grounder rolled to short, or how the ump behind the plate lingers a bit longer while talking to the ball boy. Fans inch their way down the aisles with little hurry. Their hands carry fresh nachos, one last cold beer, a tub of popcorn to see them through the ninth and the trip home. Kids jockey for new positions in the vacant seats nearest the dugouts. It’s as if they know time is growing short to catch that stray foul ball or snag a broken bat some player may find in his heart to relinquish. A baseball game is a beating heart. And as with all things that live, the beauty lies not in the beats themselves but those small moments between. It is a pitcher toeing the rubber as he gets the sign; the batter gently rocking; a catcher digging heels into the dirt over which he squats, ready to move right or left to receive the pitch. These are the moments that set baseball apart, the small gaps in which nothing happens yet everything takes place, when you are given time to reflect and remember.

  -4-

  It took an event as extraordinary as that morning at church to grant my family something we had never before experienced: a silent dinner. Only the plinking of glasses and the scrape of silverware over plates rose above the soft whir of the fan. I studied the clock and convinced myself those hands moved, there were still sixty seconds to every minute and eventually I would be excused to get on with my day. Dad took small sips of his tea and stared toward the backyard and freedom. Mom looked at nothing at all. Were it not for Dad’s prayer and the amen spoken in unison, one would have thought we were a collection of strangers thrown together by happenstance.

  But that was what we were, strangers, and had been for years. I had no doubts my parents loved me and each other. We kept to our assigned roles—Dad the provider, Mom the supporter, me the dutiful son. I suppose that’s what a family is. People all over Camden looked upon us with respect. Those Crosses are a good family, they would say, Mayor Henry and the Davises, the sheriff and our preacher. They look after one another.