by Darrel Bird
looks as the evening wore on. She kept looking at him as if he had something growing out of his head. Generally, he was stoned on Saturday evening, and she didn’t know what to make of it, him sitting there sober! They went to bed early, and Darren slept deeply the whole night.
The next morning, Sunday, he was up early, sitting at the table and drinking coffee when his wife walked sleepily into the kitchen. She started making toast.
“Get the kids ready. This morning we are going over to that there church where James and his wife go.”
I didn’t know that myself, thought Darren, but as soon as he said it, he knew it was what he wanted to do.
“We don’t have much to wear to a church,” his wife answered as she turned and gave him a startled look.
“Well crap, get’em in what they do got! We’re goin’!” Darren answered back.
His wife took her toast and disappeared toward the bedrooms. He could hear her waking the kids in a loud, clear voice that Darren thought could shatter glass.
They all managed that morning to get bathed and dressed in the best clothes they had, including Darren. He had a pair of jeans that had only a couple of spots on them, and a halfway decent shirt.
They all trooped out to the beat-up four-door Olds, all seven of them piling into the car, slamming doors. He turned the ignition key, wondering if the beast was going to cooperate.
He surveyed the gas gauge. “Less than a quarter of a tank! Frappin’ gas guzzler!” he grumbled. They had to drive clear across town to an outlying village to get to ‘that there church.’
He turned the ignition, and after a few growls and groans, she fired up. He threw her into reverse and backed out onto the street. For the first time in years, he mumbled a prayer to God, just in case he was real, that they would have enough gas to get them back home.
They arrived at the little church. It sat a few feet off the main drag in the small suburb. He parked the car along the curb, and they all piled out. The kids looked bewildered at the place, and Darren felt no small amount of apprehension himself as he led his surprised family toward the door. It took all he had in him to open the door of that church house. He had no idea what to expect, and was afraid of what he would find.
He saw James puttering around up front with the songbooks, and he looked up in surprise as he saw Darren standing inside the door, the rest of the family waiting behind him on the steps of the church. James walked quickly back to Darren, shaking his hand vigorously as he pulled him on into the church.
Darren’s wife timidly followed him in with the baby in her arms and the kids in tow, not knowing exactly what to do. He knew his wife and kids were uncomfortable, but so was he. Now he wondered what in the world he was doing there.
James’s wife, the pastor, saw them and walked quickly back. She shook their hands and greeted them warmly. Soon other folks started shaking their hands as well. Darren had never seen so much handshaking in all his life. He felt like he had been handling a bilge pump on a leaky boat by the time they got through.
The kids all stood in a clump, looking scared out of their wits. His little girl was clinging to her mama’s dress like crazy, and the three older boys looked like they might turn and run at any moment. The baby was the only one who didn’t seem nervous. He calmly sucked on his bottle. He didn’t care where he was.
The folks seemed friendly enough. After a few minutes everybody calmed down and settled into the hard seats. The little church was a poor and humble place. On the wall behind the pulpit was a cross made of two-by-fours. The worn old pulpit stood out a few feet in front of it. There were two benches about four feet long standing on each side of the pulpit, and he wondered what those were. He later found out they were called altars.
James went around handing out tattered songbooks, and the pastor began the service. She officially welcomed Darren and his family. Then a young woman who Darren later learned was James’s daughter, cut loose on an old upright piano. Her fingers flew over the keys as if they were red-hot, and that gal could play! They ripped into a song or three, and the service moved along at a pretty good pace that bright Sunday morning. Then the pastor launched into a sermon. The sermon didn’t mean much to Darren. He couldn’t understand what she was talking about -- something about somebody named Joshua and some wall falling down.
What Darren noticed most of all about the service and the people was that they talked of God as if they lived next door to Him, and it was the most natural thing in the world. That fascinated Darren. He had never heard people speak in that manner.
After the service, just about the whole church walked to the back before Darren and his family could get out the door, and the handshaking started all over again. Darren and his wife both had to pump like mad. As soon as one hand pumped yours three or four times, another hand was there to continue the pumping, like the whole bunch of them was striking pay dirt. Crap, even the kids’r in the pumping business, he thought, as he shook one hand after the other.
However, among all the emotions flooding through him, he had a warm, hopeful feeling. Moreover, all the folks urged them to, “Come back tonight at six o’clock. We’re starting a revival.”
Crap, they don’t need much revived over what they already are, he thought as he mumbled that he “might be able to make it. Who was he kidding? As if I had a full schedule! I just might be able to fill it in if I was careful and timed it just right, Darren thought wryly.
They finally got to the car after the last wave and headed home. The family was silent most the way back to the house. When he could stand it no longer, he asked his wife, “What did you think of that?”
“I dunno,” she answered. That was typical of her when she was taking her wait-and-see attitude toward something. Darren thought, that darned woman won’t ever come out-and-out and tell you what she thinks!
They spent a quiet Sunday afternoon sitting around the living room watching TV, while the kids played outside. Suddenly his wife got up, walked right over to him, and gave him a peck on the lips. Darren didn’t know what to make of it, but he liked it.
As 4:30 rolled around, he looked at his wife and said, “You wanna go back to that there church?”
His wife gave him a startled look. “If we’re going I have to get the kids ready.”
“Well get’em ready, fer craps sake!” His wife got up and started calling kids as if she was an auctioneer selling prized heifers. About 5:30 they all piled into the car, slamming the doors. Bam! Bam! Bam! And bam! And they were off to “that there church.”
Darren pulled in at about the same spot along the curb. They got to the church door, and naturally the hand pumping started all over again. They seated themselves along a pew as more people were pouring in; the seats were filling up fast. He noticed a woman standing looking around for a place to sit, so he got up and offered his seat to her.
He walked back and stood leaning against the back wall of the church with five or six other men. The place had filled up, and there wasn’t an empty seat to be had.
Then the pastor’s daughter sat down at that piano again, swept her fingers across the whole range of keys from low notes to high, and the whole place cut loose with singing and clapping. She worked the keys of that upright with a vengeance, singing, “I don’t know what you came to do, but I came to praise tha Lord.” A woman stood next to the piano rattling some kind of a thing-a-ma-jig with little silver tinkle’s on it, and he wondered what it was. Hands were shooting up and waving like the feet of dying cockroaches at a Black Flag convention.
As the service progressed, people would break out with some strange language occasionally, and that place really got jumping. Along about that time, a man fell out of his seat and started crawling on his back like a snake. It was the weirdest darn thing Darren had ever witnessed in all
his born days.
Somebody yelled, “Don’t let him get out the door!” Two old boys weighing in at about 275 apiece jumped astraddle that sucker and pinned him to the floor. About six or eight people gathered around him and started praying in that strange language. Occasionally Darren could hear someone speaking plain English, and they were calling on God to “Deliver him.”
After about ten minutes they let him up and he headed for the altar benches. Three or four people went with him and clung on to him, weeping and waving their hands in the air. The rest were clapping and singing at the top of their lungs.
Darren was starting to have misgivings about coming back to “that there church.” About the time they were doing all the praying in the strange language, he was thinking, Crap, I gotta get outta here! He took a step toward the door.
About the time he got his second step in, a young woman just fell across the aisle in front of him. She hit that hard wooden floor like a sack of cement. He stopped because he thought the woman had had a heart attack or something. He looked around, expecting someone to light atop her and do CPR, but nobody paid any attention at all. They all just went on with their singing and clapping and