Fiery Rivers

by Daefyd Williams

He glanced over at Devon holding his head in his hands. “Brothers an’ sisters, there’s a demon of oppression hangin’ around this child, tormentin’ him. Devon, come up here, son.” He stretched out his hand and motioned for Devon to come to him.

  “He’s talkin’ to me!” Devon thought, panicking. He got up slowly and walked the few steps to Brother Peatry.

  “Brother an’ Sister Hensley, I needjou to come up here an’ lay hands along mine so we can rebuke this demon away from this child an’ send him packin’ back to hell where he belongs. Bring me the olive oil, Brother Hensley.”

  Adam got up from a metal chair beneath the picture of Jesus, reached inside the pulpit and handed the bottle of olive oil to him. He and Marie, who had been sitting beside him, walked off the dais and stood beside Brother Peatry.

  Brother Peatry screwed the cap off the bottle and inverted it onto the middle finger of his right hand. He made the mark of a cross on Devon’s forehead with the oil. “Now, Brother an’ Sister Hensley, lay your hands on top o’ mine an’ let’s call on Jesus to loose this child from this demon that’s oppressin’ ‘im. You other brothers an’ sisters, I want y’all to pray with us where you’re settin’.”

  He placed both of his hands on top of Devon’s head. Marie and Adam laid their hands on top of his. “Alright, let’s pray.” He closed his eyes and the congregation did likewise. “Heavenly Father, we beseech thee to hear our humble prayer an’ cast this foul demon that’s oppressin’ this child back to the dark dungeon where he belongs. Let him have no more dominion over this child, an’ let him walk free from all oppression the rest of his days. In JESUS’ name!” He pressed his palms down onto Devon’s head. “I command thee, Satan, to let this child LOOSE! Thank you, Jesus! And we praise your holy name. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Adam and Marie and the congregation.

  Brother Peatry opened his eyes and placed his hands on Devon’s shoulders. He looked into his eyes. “How do ya feel, son?”

  The burden that had been pressing upon Devon’s heart was gone. “Purty good,” he said, half smiling.

  “Purty good? Why, son, that demon ain’t gonna pester you no more. Jesus done answered our prayers. You’re gonna feel great from now on. You just don’t know it yet. Say hallelujah, son.”

  “Huh—hallelujah.”

  “That’s right, son. Praise be the Son o’ God for settin’ you free. Everybody, let’s say Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus! Sister Hensley, will you lead us in sangin’ ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’?”

  Marie turned and faced the congregation and began to sing.

  When she was done, there were shouts of “Amen! Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!” from the congregation and a great outpouring of Spirit descended upon the little pink church. Sister Agnes, a three-hundred-pound woman, stepped into the aisle in front of the heater, raised her arms in praise toward heaven, closed her eyes and swayed back and forth, her ample buttocks coming within inches of brushing against Devon’s face, who had sat back down beside the heater and was observing the proceedings with interest. Her prodigious rump jutted away from her body at such a sharp angle, he wondered if it were possible for him to sit atop those mounds and lean back as though he were sitting in an easy chair. Brother Peatry snatched up a tambourine from the altar, which was a two-by-eight piece of pine atop a rectangular plywood box that ran along the front edge of the dais, and started singing “Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down,” the congregation joining in.

  Everyone except the sinners was standing, communing with God, arms upraised to receive His blessings. Brother Silas picked up a guitar which had been leaning against the pulpit and began strumming it. Uncle Rufus, standing across from Devon in front of the first pew, began speaking in tongues, tears streaming down his face. Everyone continued to sing.

  Adam went from person to person, hugging him or her while he cried. Marie danced in the Spirit in front of the pulpit, her arms upraised and her eyes closed tightly as she moved, her feet synchronized with the words that the Holy Ghost was saying to God: “Shah noe lah dee, die suh lok moe, shah noe lah dee, die suh lok moe, show noe muh bie, bee sun doe nee.” Devon wondered why his father had never hugged him or Del.

  Brother Peatry sang louder and the congregants went into a frenzy, dancing in front of their pews, crying, wailing, unleashing their emotions in the outpouring of God’s blessing.

  Brother Peatry stopped singing, and the congregants erupted in a paroxysm of joy, exclaiming: “Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus! Praise be his holy name! Yes, Lord!”

  When the service was concluded, two souls, Keith and Dorie, had been saved, and Sister Agnes had been filled with the Holy Ghost and spoken in tongues for the first time.

  Since it was February, it was cold on the way home in the car. The heater in Adam’s 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air station wagon had always been niggardly with its heat, but now the only ones who benefited from its feeble warmth were those sitting in the front seat—Adam, Marie, Gloryann, and Denny. Del and Devon lay lengthwise across the back seat, Devon against the back of the seat with Del in front, trying to keep warm. Devon’s arm was wrapped around Del’s chest. Del had his hands in his pockets. They shivered together and tried unsuccessfully to sleep.

  “Ya know, Mother,” Adam said, “we need to find a place halfway between Frigidaire and Snyderville. This is just too hard on the young’uns.”

  “Where you thinkin’ ‘bout?” Marie asked.

  “Dayton, prob’ly,” he replied. “That’d be a lot closer to Frigidaire for me an’ only about a half ar from the church.”

  “It would be easier if we moved closer,” Marie agreed. “When do ya wanta start lookin’?”

  “We prob’ly should start lookin’ right away, so we can git moved before the school year begins in the fall.”

  “OK, whatever you think will be easiest for you.”

  “God’s tellin’ me it’s the right thing to do.”

  “OK, then. We’ll start lookin’.”

  All the children had fallen asleep by the time the car pulled into the driveway. Adam and Marie carried Gloryann and Denny into the house, and then Adam returned to shake the boys awake.

  “C’mon, boys, time to git up an’ go into the house,” he said, as he shook Devon’s shoulder.

  “Huh?” Devon mumbled.

  “Time to git up. We’re home.”

  “Kay,” he said, as he opened his eyes and then closed them.

  “Devon, Del, git up. We’re home.” He shook their shoulders more forcefully, and the boys slowly sat up. “Git in the house now. We’re home.”

  The boys managed to drag their sleep-numbed bodies into the house and into the west bedroom, where Adam had recently dismantled the bunk beds and converted them into twin beds. He had also placed the pink Naugahyde rocking chair in their room along the south wall, beneath Del’s handmade poster which read: “Franklin Wildcats, Undeafted Football Champs, 1960.” Devon did not tell Del that he had misspelled the word “undefeated.”

  “Take your clothes off now, an’ git into your peejays,” Adam instructed them.

  “OK, Daddy,” Del said.

  “Kay,” Devon mumbled. He lay down on his bed as soon as Adam left the room, not even removing his shoes.

  “Dev,” Del stated, “if you don’t git undressed, Daddy’ll whup you.”

  Devon instantly opened his eyes. “Oh-kay,” he said begrudgingly, “you’re right.” He began unbuttoning his shirt.

  In the middle of the night, while everyone was cultivating his or her own dream garden, the pink Naugahyde rocking chair along the south wall began to rock on its own. The creaking awakened both boys, causing the hairs on the back of Del’s neck to rise, and the icy hand to plunge into the deep recesses of Devon’s stomach.

  “You doin’ that?” Devon whispered, wide-eyed.

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin,” Del replied. “I’m just layin’ here, like you.”

  The rocking stopped after thirty seconds.

 
; “Wha’djou think caused that?” Devon whispered apprehensively.

  “I doeknow,” Del said. “The wind, maybe.”

  “Yeah, maybe the wind,” Devon agreed, although neither boy could hear the whisper of a wind outside the windows.

  After thirty minutes, the boys fell back to sleep, and the rocking chair remained mute the rest of the night.

  The next morning, as the boys were eating their cereal before catching the bus, Marie asked, as she placed a plate of toast on the table, “Didjou hear that angel rockin’ the chair last night?”

  “Angel?” Del repeated.

  “Yeah, it woke me an’ your daddy up too. We reckon it was your guardian angel, watchin’ over you an’ keepin’ ya safe while you slept.”

  “Oh,” Del said.

  Devon said nothing. He did not like thinking that an angel had been in their bedroom. “What if it was the demon, comin’ to ‘press on me again?” he mused. He thought about the demon and the angel all day at school, which made it difficult to concentrate on what Mrs. Dillon said.

  On Saturday, March eighteenth, Curtis, the boy with whom Devon had sung the carol at the Christmas pageant, had a birthday party. He had befriended Devon after the pageant so that now he no longer had to spend recess and lunch alone. It was a typical birthday party for fifth graders until Mrs. Smith started playing 45 rpm records and encouraging the children to dance. Devon was terrified, the icy fist plunging into his stomach instantaneously as soon as the music began and the children commenced awkwardly to dance. He felt like running away because he knew that dancing was a sin and that he would go to hell if he stayed. Instead of fleeing, however, he surreptitiously slipped beneath the dining room table, where he was hidden by the heavy white tablecloth, which draped off the table almost to the floor. As Pat Boone sang “Moody River,” Devon could see the black and brown shoes of the children shuffling along the floor. He remained hidden there in his fortress of solitude, like Superman, watching the feet until the music stopped and the children began to go home. He heard his mother’s voice. He climbed from beneath the table at the furthest end from her.

  “Devon, what are you doin’ down there?”

  “Nothin’. I . . . uh . . . dropped somethin’.”

  “Well, come on. Let’s git a move on. We got church tonight. Thank you, Miss Smith, for invitin’ him.”

  “Why, you’re more than welcome, Mrs. Hensley. It was a pleasure to have him.”

  “Bye then.”

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Hensley.”

  On the way home, Devon remained quiet about the sinning he had witnessed. He was afraid of being whipped for allowing himself to be in the presence of such sinning. “I shoulda just walked out instead o’ crawlin’ under the table,” he thought. “I shoulda just walked out.” He had been awestruck at such a blatant disregard for the commandments of God. He wondered about his classmates, who would actually risk being cast into the lake of fire forever for dancing with each other.

  The next weekend, Adam and Marie took the boys to Grampa Harris’s trailer to stay with him for spring break to provide company for him and a respite for them from the revival they were having at church. The boys were excited about not having to go to church every night.

  Grampa was in his sixties and between his second and third wives and, consequently, briefly living alone in a single-wide trailer at the rear of his property on the eastern edge of a swale at the foot of a knoll where he was having a backhoe dig out a pond for the pleasure of his grandchildren. He was five feet, eleven inches tall, bespectacled, had salt-and-pepper hair which he parted on the left, was paunchy, and always wore bib overalls. He was perpetually gruff and curmudgeonly, and the boys were slightly afraid of him. He was Marie’s father. She was his only daughter among nine offspring.

  On the first morning of their stay with him, he awakened them at seven in the morning. They had slept on a small sofa bed in the living room. They had hoped to sleep in on their vacation. Not with Grampa.

  “Rise an’ shine, boys,” he said, as he pulled the blanket off them. “We got us some berry pickin’ to do today.”

  “What kind o’ berries?” Del asked, as he rubbed his eyes.

  “Why, strawberries, o’ course. What other kind o’ berries you know grows in the sprang?”

  “None, I reckon,” Del replied.

  “Damn right, none. Now you an’ Flathead go git yourselves warshed up an’ I’ll fry us up a good breakfast.”

  For some unfathomable reason, he always called Devon “Flathead,” which Devon never understood and he never explained. He tacitly understood that this was his name when he was around Grampa. Devon’s wariness of Grampa probably ran deeper than Del’s because he had been told from an early age by his mother that when he was three years old and still sleeping with his parents, Grampa had threatened to “stomp him through the floor” if he didn’t stop sleeping with them. Devon apparently believed him, for he never slept with them again.

  They ate fried eggs, bacon, and Wonder bread toast with butter and grape jelly for breakfast. It did not occur to them to tell him that they liked cereal for breakfast, and it would not have mattered because he had none in the cupboard. He had eaten fried eggs and bacon almost every morning of his life. The idea that they might like something different for breakfast never occurred to him.

  The strawberries grew in a meadow on the south-facing knoll, at the foot of which the backhoe had begun its morning ritual of bellowing and pawing and penetrating the earth and then dumping its booty into a dump truck waiting patiently at the eastern flank of the ever-deepening gorge it was carving out of the earth.

  “When do ya think ya might hit some water?” Grampa yelled at the backhoe operator.

  “Ah, we’re prob’ly gonna haf to go another fifteen or twenty feet,” he shouted back. “Another week or so, I guess.”

  “Keep at ‘er, then,” Grampa commanded.

  “Yes, sir,” the operator said, trundling the backhoe towards the dump truck with a heavy load of black earth in its maw.

  Each of the boys was carrying a Crisco can in his hand that Grampa had given him before they left the trailer.

  “Now, young’uns, this is what ya do,” Grampa said, stooping and pushing the leaves of a strawberry plant to one side, “You wanta pick the biggest, reddest berries that you see on the plant. Leave the green’uns alone. They ain’t ripe yit. Y’unnerstan’?”

  Del shook his head. “Yessir.”

  “Uh huh,” Devon grunted.

  “Well, let’s git at ‘er then. Let’s see how much we kin git picked ‘fore it gits too hot.”

  By “we,” he meant Devon and Del. He perceived his job to be overseer, directing the boys to where he thought the best plants were and pulling up the weeds that hid them. The boys stooped, squatted, and kneeled all morning, and their Crisco cans slowly filled with bright red berries. By noon, their hands were stained with berry juice, the knees of their pants were black with dirt, and they were sweating.

  “Well, boys, I reckon it’s about time for dinner, don’tchou?” Grampa asked.

  Devon and Del both shook their heads yes. The only respite Grampa had allowed them all morning was to take a drink from a Mason jar full of water that he had placed in the refrigerator to cool overnight and had lodged in the branches of a young crab apple tree at the foot of the knoll, for them to use whenever they got thirsty. As the morning progressed, both boys seemed to get thirstier and thirstier.

  As they walked slowly down the knoll clutching their Crisco cans, Grampa said, “You boys go on to the trailer an’ warsh up for dinner. I’m gonna talk to these boys for a spell.”

  “OK, Grampa,” Del said. He and Devon walked on to the trailer and Grampa walked over to where the backhoe operator and the dump truck driver were sitting on the ground near the backhoe and eating sandwiches.

  Del and Devon placed their cans on the kitchen counter and went to the bathroom to pee and wash their hands. “I didden think he was ever gonna let us stop,
” Del said.

  “Me neither,” Devon agreed. “Ya think he’s gonna make us pick after dinner?”

  “I hope not,” Del said. “This is s’pose to be spring break.”

  “Me too.”

  Grampa came in and prepared fried bologna sandwiches with Velveeta cheese, pickles, and lettuce between two slices of mayonnaise-slathered Wonder bread, and then placed a big bag of Mike-sells potato chips and a container of store-bought potato salad in the middle of the table. “Come an’ git it, boys. Turn that TV off now.” The boys had been watching cartoons on Grampa’s small TV in the living room, a rare treat for them.

  “OK, Grampa,” Del said.

  When they were done, Grampa washed his plate, fork, and knife in the kitchen sink using a sponge and hot water, no soap. He rinsed it under the water and placed it in the drainer. “Now you young’uns warsh yours just like I done an’ then you kin go out an’ play the rest o’ the afternoon till supper time while I learn them boys how I want my pond dug.”

  Relief washed over both boys like a soothing wave. He was letting them play! They hurriedly cleaned their plates, silverware, and glasses.

  “When you come back, we’ll clean them berries an’ eat ‘em for dessert atter supper.”

  “OK, Grampa,” Del said over his shoulder, as he and Devon rushed out the door.

  They walked back to the strawberry field, over the knoll, and down the north side until they came to a ravine through which gurgled a creek. They began turning over rocks in the creek and looking under them to see what creatures lay in hiding. Devon found a dark brown salamander about four inches long and managed to capture it. He held it trapped in his cupped hands. “Hey, Del, come an’ see what I found!”

  “Wha’djou find?” he asked as he approached Devon.

  “A lizard!” he said excitedly.

  “There ain’t no lizards in Ohio,” Del said. “Lemme see ‘im.”

  Devon made a small window in his cupped hands by slightly moving his thumbs apart. Del peeked inside.

  “That ain’t no lizard. It’s a salamander.”