Where Southern Cross the Dog

by Allen Whitley

  “Evenin’,” she murmured, and turned back toward the front.

  The seated parishioners, led enthusiastically by a woman who stood on a platform at the front of the church, swayed back and forth, clapping their hands and praising the Lord. The crowd continued to swell, and Travis was pushed forward several feet while others squeezed into the building.

  Eventually, the woman on the platform stopped chanting and clapping, and the parishioners followed her lead. She then read several passages of scripture, pausing only for the frequent calls of “Amen” from her rapt audience.

  Travis noticed the woman next to him was quite vocal. Soon, he got caught up in the moment and uttered an “Amen” himself. Nobody seemed to mind.

  The temperature in the building had climbed considerably since Travis had arrived. With the oil lamps lighting the interior, the crowd, and the night’s late-summer heat, Travis felt beads of sweat begin to gather on his forehead and the familiar sensation of his damp shirt beginning to stick to his back. He looked around at the people dressed in proper worshipping attire, dresses and suits, and couldn’t imagine how they could bear the heat. But then he remembered many of them worked all day under a burning sun.

  After the Scriptures were read, the woman asked, “Does anyone want, I mean need, to testify tonight? Who needs to testify?”

  Several hands went up.

  “Come on up,” she said. “One at a time, y’all.”

  Some began with a hymn and others just stood on the platform and started talking. Travis could barely hear the meeker ones. And some made more gyrations than noise.

  One young man of about twelve got up and slowly walked to the front of the church. Travis could barely see him until he mounted the platform. A hush fell over the crowd.

  “I got the Lord the day my momma died,” he said with a bowed head.

  “Oh, Jesus,” a woman moaned.

  “The Lord, he come to me when the first load of dirt hit the top of her coffin,” the boy said. “I could feel him come inside me, touch my heart, and tell me it was time to become a man. I said, ‘A man, Jesus?’” The boy was rocking side to side. “And He said, ‘That’s right, a man.’ I said, ‘I ain’t ready.’ And He said, ‘Don’t matter. It’s gonna be all right ’cause I’m walking right beside you.’”

  “Praise that baby,” another woman said.

  “And He walks with me every day and sleeps with me every night.”

  “Every night,” someone said.

  “And now I’m okay ’cause I got Jesus with me.” The boy stepped down from the platform, and people clapped and patted him on the back. A woman who had kept shouting out during his testimony grabbed him and hugged him like she’d never see him again. He smiled, but with a pained expression on his face.

  Travis felt the testimonies exciting the crowd. Everyone was moving, swaying, chanting, and Amening more and more.

  An older man tried to testify, but he fell to one knee before he could get a word out and had to be led from the platform.

  After the testimonies, a collection basket went around, the woman leading the service asking for “buffaloes” and “brownies.” Songs and prayers continued while she encouraged the attendees to give a bit more, and then a bit more again. The collection was completed only when she pronounced herself satisfied with the amount.

  Finally, after the collection, the woman took a seat on the platform. There was silence for a few moments. Once or twice someone cried out, “Jesus is in me,” or “Praise the Lord.” The woman in front of Travis shouted both.

  Several minutes passed and everyone was in deep reflection, praying and shouting when necessary. Travis bowed his head, peeking every once in a while to see what was happening.

  Then, shouts and screams rang out as a man who had been sitting in a chair on the platform stood and walked to the center. He looked over the congregation, raised his arms toward heaven, and shouted, “Amen, Jesus. Amen.”

  Travis jumped when several people around him immediately shouted out in response. The entire congregation began clapping rhythmically, in unison. Obviously, everyone had been waiting for this, and Travis smiled when the man gave himself over to the crowd’s enthusiasm. This was what Travis had come for.

  “My name is Reverend Taylor,” the man said. “Reverend Taylor,” he reiterated again for emphasis, raising his voice.

  “Tell us, Reverend,” a voice said from the crowd.

  “Tell it all,” another followed.

  “Oh, I will brother,” he said. “I will.”

  Another shout came from someone near the front.

  The reverend looked out over the crowd. “I see a lot of ladies here tonight. That’s good. But does that mean your men don’t need saving?”

  Some laughs were heard from the audience.

  “Or maybe they’ve already been saved?”

  Reverend Taylor took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. “It’s warm tonight.”

  More Amens.

  “But— not as hot as the Devil’s house,” he said.

  “Oh no!” someone said.

  “Not that hot,” added another voice.

  “But tonight, we’re gonna cool it down,” the reverend said, “because this is the Lord’s house. And there isn’t any place for the Devil in the Lord’s house.”

  The crowd shouted in unison.

  “Where is the Lord? Where is Jesus?” he said.

  “Come to us, Jesus,” a woman said.

  “Can you find him?”

  “Is he here?” He pointed to his head. “Here?” He pointed to his heart. “Here?” He pointed to a chair. Then a lamp, then outside. Then he swirled his arm over his head. “Where is Jesus?” Reverend Taylor paced across the platform, back and forth. “Where is He? Where is my Jesus?” Finally, he stopped. He turned, faced the crowd, and slowly raised his eyes.

  “Did you find Him, Reverend?” a voice said.

  “Oh, I found Him, all right,” the preacher answered.

  “Where was He?”

  “He’s everywhere. Here, here, here, here,” he said, jumping up and down on the platform. Then Reverend Taylor moved around the room, pointing at adults, babies, chairs, the platform itself. “He’s over here and there.” He squeezed between people, touched them on their heads, and even went outside the building for a moment. His frantic motions whipped the crowd into a frenzy. They shouted and clapped and yelled, “He’s here,” as they pointed at themselves or their friends.

  The reverend returned to the platform. He was breathing heavily. “Jesus is everywhere, my friends. He is everything.”

  Hallelujahs and Amens sounded all through the room.

  The reverend took a sip of water and looked out over the congregation.

  Travis noticed that although it was hot in the room, the reverend had not removed his coat. In fact, he still looked quite composed.

  The crowd in its excitement had pushed farther into the room, though Travis had thought that impossible. The aisles were packed, the benches full, and Travis was holding himself stiffly to keep from pushing on the woman in front of him. Two people had already fainted and been carried out, overcome by “getting the Holy Ghost,” though it looked like they had merely succumbed to the heat.

  Now Reverend Taylor changed his demeanor, turning to the crowd and almost whispering, “And where is the Devil?”

  “Oh no,” someone said.

  “Is he with Jesus?”

  “No. Never,” said the crowd.

  “Is he outside?”

  Travis noticed the crowd was tentative.

  “Is he there?” the reverend asked, pointing to a baby who’d been sleeping by the platform.

  “Oh no, not a baby,” said a woman seated near the child.

  “Is he here?” he said, pointing at himself. “And is he out there?” He pointed into the audience.

  Only a few affirmatives came from the audience.

  “You bet he is. He’s in my heart, and he’s in your heart.
But he’s not everywhere, oh no. He’s not in the babies, and he’s not in the animals. He’s not in a mule, and he’s not in a pig. The Devil’s only in us.”

  The crowd pondered this while the reverend paced.

  “So, if the Devil’s in us and the Lord is everywhere, well then, what can we do? To the Devil?”

  “Get him out,” someone said.

  “Oh yeah,” the reverend said. “Oh yeah. Who said that? Who said that?” he asked, walking into the throng toward the part of the room from which the voice had risen.

  A hand went up on one of the benches.

  “You stand up, sinner.”

  A man stood up.

  “Did y’all hear that? Did y’all hear that?”

  Amens rang out.

  “We’re going to run that Devil off, because Jesus is everywhere and the Devil is hiding. He’s hiding in our hearts and the Lord knows it. Like finding a weevil in the cotton, the Lord knows where to look for the Devil. And when the Lord finds him, oh the Devil’s gonna pay.”

  “Gonna pay,” the crowd echoed.

  Travis could feel the reverend leading his flock just where he wanted them to go. The crowd was excited, almost wild, clapping, shouting out, praising the Lord. This was what they all had come for—to be infused with the power of the Lord—and the reverend knew just how to do it. He took them down, then up, then back down again. Now, he was building to the peak.

  “He’s gonna pay,” the reverend said, swinging his arm down like he was chopping a chicken’s head off.

  The church members responded with their own condemnations of the Devil. They moved and sang and shouted, pushing the people toward the front of the congregation closer and closer to the platform.

  “And how are we gonna make him pay?” the reverend said, moving back and forth across the platform, inciting the crowd into a religious fervor. “I’ll tell you how, brothers and sisters. We’re gonna sing, and we’re gonna pray. That’s how we’ll pay that old Devil back.”

  Travis watched, fascinated. He glanced toward the front and noticed a woman wearing a long-sleeved dress, who earlier in the service had been seated in the first row, now standing as she clapped, sang, and prayed along with the reverend. Suddenly, she slumped forward, her body splaying out onto the platform as she lost consciousness. Her arm struck an oil lamp and sent it careening across the platform. The lamp’s oil splashed across the wooden structure, onto some curtains, and instantly set everything in its path ablaze, the dry wood serving to spread the flames to the walls of the rickety building.

  The reverend’s back had been turned when the lamp fell, and the singing and clapping made it difficult to hear any of the commotion. In the moment before the reverend turned around, the fire was already burning out of control.

  From where he stood, Travis could do nothing but watch it unfold.

  Realizing it would be futile to attempt to extinguish the fire, the reverend tended immediately to several children who were sleeping near the platform, making sure their mothers picked them up and headed away from the flames. Next, Reverend Taylor turned his attention to the woman who had fallen. Two people were trying to help, but they weren’t moving her away from the flames. In two steps the preacher reached her side, took her by the feet, and began to drag her away. But his progress was halted by the mass of people trying to flee.

  The singing that moments earlier had filled the air had turned to screams. Smoke filled the room. The windows, really cutouts in the walls that looked like windows, were jammed with bodies scrambling to get out. Travis had been pushed away from a window into the middle of the room, carried along by those around him. The woman he had stood next to through most of the service was behind him now. Travis could hear her cries.

  “Oh hurry, hurry, we’ve got to get out,” she said. “I don’t want to burn. Only people in hell burn.”

  Even in all the turmoil, Travis thought, she’s still preoccupied with the sermon.

  The crowd moved toward the door slowly, more and more people coughing and choking around him. When the man behind him started to cough, Travis found himself scared.

  He turned to watch the blaze momentarily. The entire front portion of the building was now on fire.

  No longer near a window, there was only one way out, and the mass of people surged toward it. Travis felt the woman behind him pushing him forward. By the time he realized she was falling, it was too late. She clutched his shirt on the way down, and her weight and the awkwardness of his position in the crowd also dragged Travis down.

  They fell together, and as the people around them tried to make room for their tangled bodies, they began to topple in a domino-like reaction. The panic intensified as the smoke in the air thickened.

  Travis lay near the bottom of a pile, and the woman who had pulled him down was actually now underneath him. He tried to rise, but the weight of others was too much. He lodged an elbow and a knee between him and the floor to protect the unconscious woman under him. People continued to fall, but now farther away from where Travis was trapped. He tried again to push himself up but could not budge those above him.

  Then, he felt another body fall on top of him, this one with such force that it pushed Travis away from the woman he was protecting. He landed on his left side, and an arm from the massive body came down across the side of Travis’s windpipe, restricting his breathing. Travis couldn’t see the man’s face because he was slightly behind him, but he assumed the man had passed out. He tried to move the arm off his neck, tried to breathe, but he couldn’t budge it. Travis tried not to panic. Then he realized the man was not unconscious but was in fact holding his arm tight against Travis’s throat.

  Unable to move, the smoke and heat overwhelming him, Travis began to gasp. The man on top of him moved his arm slightly, and Travis took a deeper breath, though he still could not move his head. Travis felt isolated and removed from the madness, like he was floating. Then he felt the man’s mouth right next to his ear.

  “Your daddy and all his friends wastin’ their time,” the man hissed, “trying to find out who killed all them niggers. So what if some poor white trash did it. He may go to jail, he may not. Nobody cares ’cept the white folks. He’ll always be nothing, nobody, like the rest of us. And people will forget about those killings quick as they happened.”

  Travis moved his head to get some air, but the man on top of him forced his arm down harder. Travis relaxed.

  “The man they ought be looking after is Vidla,” the man continued. “Lot a people say he ain’t doing right. But no nigger gonna say anything against a white man.”

  Travis felt the man’s arm relax. Then he pushed up, off of Travis’s shoulder, and got to his feet.

  Several people who had been entangled with Travis also moved, and finally he was able to kneel. He looked up, but all he saw was the man’s back before he disappeared into the smoke.

  Finally, the fallen bodies started to clear. Someone lifted Travis to his feet. The woman who had fallen with Travis was already gone. He and a few remaining congregants stumbled outside and stood watching with everyone else while the flames engulfed the building.

  Outside, family and friends reunited after having been separated in the panic, tears of joy and cries of praise spreading to all. A chorus of “Amen” and “Praise the Lord” rose amid the scattered coughs when it became clear that everyone had managed to escape the conflagration.

  After a while, Reverend Taylor tried to refocus his flock, leading them in a short walk to a field about forty yards from the church. “Come on now,” he said, urging gently. “Come to me.”

  “The Lord told us something tonight,” the preacher said to his congregation gathered in the field. “He let us live to pray, and He let us live to take His word to others. To be His missionaries. To be His light.”

  “So, I want you—no, I need you to rise up tonight and spread His word—to your friends, your family, your neighbors, and your community. Remember where Jesus lives, and don’t forget th
at the Devil is always lurking, waiting for you to forget that Jesus is in your heart. Now go and do His work.”

  The reverend’s helpers began to take up the final collection of the evening. Travis watched from the edge of the group. The crowd, holding hands and praying as the flames leaped up behind them, created a picture that looked to Travis like heaven at the gates of hell. From heaven to hell—all on a small slice of Mississippi Delta. It was a revival no one would forget.

  As Travis stood watching, the words that echoed in his mind were not those of the reverend but those of a man who had truly testified.

  CHAPTER 26

  Judge, don’t ask me no questions.

  —John T. Smith

  SAM TACKETT SAT WITH HIS HANDS FOLDED IN FRONT of him and waited for Judge Bertram Long to begin.

  “The first order of business is the schedule,” the judge said. “We will only be in court today and Wednesday of this week. I have a federal case that I’m presiding over, and I must prepare for it on Tuesday with the federal prosecutor, and then I’m in Oxford Thursday and Friday. I’ll return on Monday of next week to finish the trial. I apologize for the unconventional format, gentlemen, but it can’t be helped.”

  Tackett stood and was recognized. “Your honor,” he said, “this is most unusual, changing the days and times we meet. This is a murder trial, your honor, and altering the daily schedule is disruptive to the jury. I fear they won’t be able to render a proper verdict with all these shifts in time.”

  “I know what kind of trial it is, Mr. Tackett. And I believe the jury can remember what’s going on, even if we don’t meet every day. This is not a complicated matter, and until you’re sitting up here, and I’m down there, Mr. Tackett, we’re doing this my way.”

  In reality, Tackett didn’t care, but he tried to put on a good show for the jury, to demonstrate he was watching out for them. At least that’s what he hoped they were thinking.

  Judge Long turned to the jury. “Over the next few days, we will not be on a regular schedule. I will allow you to return home at night, but you must not discuss the trial or anything that goes on in the courtroom with anyone. Not your friends, not your wives, not your neighbors. No one. Is that understood?”