Exactly at seven o’clock Brother Micah drove up in a car with a rusted fender and a rear window mended with cardboard, and everyone surged forward, calling out greetings. These were the friendliest people, Opal thought, almost with disdain. Even the children darted forward crying hello and their mothers made no effort to restrain them.
Brother Micah was a tall, strapping young man with a sunburned face and strangely long blond hair and fine green eyes, set rather close together. Opal stared at him. She had hardly an eye for the woman and the two men and the boy of about fourteen who climbed out of his car, Brother Micah so drew her attention. He was tall—at least six feet three or four. And those green eyes! And that surprising hair, which reached to his shoulders! Opal felt herself smiling, grinning, with a kind of confused alarm. Brother Micah Tannebaum. A self-ordained preacher. A healer. A worker of miracles. Here in this impoverished Mt. Lambeth, in this old whitewashed church with the clumsy steeple and the homemade sign Brother Micah had probably done himself—Mt. Lambeth Tabernacle of Jesus Christ Risen—proud black letters shakily outlined in gold.
“Bless you, brother! Bless you, sister!”
So the greetings went. Everyone was joyful, eager, perhaps a little tense. Brother Micah’s eyes glittered and he did not hesitate to embrace everyone who came near, and to shake hands with those who held themselves off shyly, like Opal and Nathan. “Bless you, son!” he cried. “I know you’ve traveled a long distance to come here tonight!”
There was a family resemblance among Brother Micah and the people who had ridden with him. The woman’s hair was straw-colored; the elder of the men—who carried a wooden box, lidded—had Brother Micah’s strong, square jaw; the other, carrying a guitar and a harmonica, could have been a younger, slighter twin of his; and the fourteen-year-old, clutching a ukulele, had Brother Micah’s close-set green eyes and his broad, sloping shoulders. They all appeared to be radiantly happy. Who are these people, Opal Vickery thought suddenly, and why am I here? She blamed her husband, she blamed Ashton; and, most of all, Elsa.
Brother Micah opened the church door, which was unlocked, and his congregation began to crowd in after him.
“Is something wrong, Nathan?” Opal asked, seeing that the boy looked frightened.
He murmured something she could not hear.
“Yes? What is it?” she said, stooping.
“I’m afraid,” the child whimpered.
“Nathan, afraid? Why are you afraid?”
He shivered.
She bent over him, brushing his warm forehead with her lips. “Silly little mouse, what’s there to be afraid of? Your grandma’s with you, isn’t she? What’s there to be afraid of?”
Yet her own voice was rather shaky.
“God—” the boy whispered.
“Yes? What?”
“God is in there—”
“What?”
“God is in there: I’m afraid,” he said with a twitch of his head.
Opal stared at him, shocked. “Well—Yes—I mean—I mean, shouldn’t He be? I mean—It’s a church, there will be a prayer meeting—”
“God is in there,” Nathan said, staring past her at the doorway. His lips had gone white.
“Yes,” Opal said nervously, helplessly, “but—But—God loves you, doesn’t He—loves all of us—I mean—”
The boy was staring at the doorway, unhearing.
“Nathan, aren’t you silly!” Opal cried, and pulled him along.
For what else could she do, having come so far?
THE SERVICE WAS informal, noisy, even a little rowdy. Brother Micah spoke briefly, in a loud and euphoric voice, and led the first of the songs—“What a Friend I Have In Jesus”—while the guitarist played his instrument and the fourteen-year-old strummed feverishly at his, and then Brother Micah addressed them all again, in a slightly more subdued voice, and read from the Bible, and Opal tried to make herself relax—these were good country people, after all, good Christians like herself, why should she be so nervous, so apprehensive? Yet it seemed that everyone was apprehensive. At least keyed-up. Tense. Their singing voices were loud and brash, almost defiant. Nasal, flat, twanging—almost an underlying note of hysteria. Or was she imagining it? She sang with the others, softly, and was pleased to see that Nathan tried to sing as well, or was at least mouthing the words.
She was both amused and relieved when they sang a song Nathan’s Sunday-school class had learned:
The wise man built his house upon the rock
the wise man built his house upon the rock
the wise man built his house upon the rock
and the house on the rock stood firm—
The foolish man built his house upon the sand
the foolish man built his house upon the sand
the foolish man built his house upon the sand
and the house came tumbling down!
Perhaps it was the heat lightning that illuminated the darkening sky from time to time, as if punctuating the congregation’s fervor, or perhaps it was the crowdedness in the church—the odor of bodies, the damp heat. But the atmosphere grew more and more charged; the voices shriller. Opal’s gaze was drawn from Brother Micah’s glowing face to the wooden box that had been placed on a chair at the front of the room. She had the idea that everyone was looking at it; staring at it. The singing grew louder, people on all sides were clapping, a few were so moved by the percussive rhythms that they could not remain in one place but had to dance about in short hopping exhilarated steps, bringing the palms of their hands squarely and flatly together.
Brother Micah called out to them in a thunderous voice, both hands raised. His face appeared to be luminous, as if lit from within. “Brothers and Sisters in Christ! Brothers and Sisters and Children beloved of Christ! How happy Jesus Christ is tonight, seeing you all here! Hearing you! Not a one of you that’s a stranger to Him! Not a one! Not the oldest or the very, very youngest! Or the babe in the womb! Not a one of us that’s not His brother, or His sister, or His own beloved child! How very, very happy—” Opal shrank from his loud, brash voice, not knowing what to think, how to respond. He was so noisy. And all around her men and women were calling out, half-singing, still clapping their hands, radiant and perspiring with joy. Someone was playing the harmonica softly. Brother Micah held his Bible high above his head and, eyes shut tight, began to recite in a heavily rhythmic, chanting voice. A number of people joined him, crying out snatches of words Opal half-recognized, words she did recognize, but voices overlapped, crossed, warred with one another. The harmonica’s notes were eerie and shrill like the voices, sliding from one pitch to another, never quite predictable, and then the guitar joined in, and the ukulele, and more clapping, and even foot-stamping; and above the din Brother Micah’s strong, triumphant voice raged: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel . . . he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised . . . This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears. This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears! O my Brothers and Sisters in Christ, O my dear ones, my beloved ones, my children—
He snapped his long hair out of his eyes in a whiplike motion.
A short, stocky red-faced man at Opal’s left began suddenly to scream. “Christ is in this place! Christ is in this place!” and others joined in, their voices rising, wailing. Opal’s eyes jerked in their sockets. She could not control the panic that rose in her, swiftly up from the pit of her belly, into her constricted throat, into her dry mouth. Her heart beat violently. About her men and women were shouting, shrieking, weeping. Opal had attended revival meetings in the past, she had even helped Reverend Sisley arrange for visiting preachers to come to the Marsena Baptist Church, where they sometimes pitched their canvas tents in a nearby field, and she had been moved, many times, she had been genuinely moved to co
me forward for Christ, and to weep painful, astonishing tears, yet something was different tonight: something was different: she could not comprehend what it was.
“Christ is in this place!”
A young mother standing just in front of Opal took up the cry, her head thrown back, her mouth stretched open; her entire body began to tremble, the head and torso most violently, almost convulsively. Someone took her baby out of her arms—she surrendered him without opening her eyes, without missing a beat of her harsh, agonized, ecstatic cry. Christ is in this place! Christ is in this place! Others began shaking spasmodically. The singing was no longer singing but a wordless, pounding, thunderous chant. An elderly woman cried out in tongues: a high, staccato, rapid gibberish: this too Opal had witnessed before, but she had never been so close to it, she had never really heard it until now. Her heart lunged, her throat closed up tight. So much noise! Such an intensity of bodies, faces, voices! And their clapping! Their stamping! The floorboards trembled, the very walls and ceiling of the building trembled—what if something happened, Opal thought wildly, what if the church was shaken from its foundations and the roof suddenly buckled? What if everyone pitched forward at once, drawn to Brother Micah by his trumpetlike voice, his radiant face? She and Nathan would be trampled, would be lost—She and her child—
It was madness, Opal thought, for her to have come here: to have risked so much.
It was madness for her to remain, gripping the boy’s hand so hard, so desperately hard: but she dared not release him.
It was madness—
And then the man with the guitar, hollow-cheeked, his face glistening with sweat, threw the guitar aside and went to the box and thumped on it with his fist. And another came forward, another man, his body twitching, his face contorted into a mask of incredulous surprise and delight—and he too pounded on the box with both fists. A collective groan arose; there was one single, gigantic heartbeat that meant to fly out of its shackles, out of its imprisonment; Opal screamed aloud, a choked, stifled cry like a gull’s, a cry of sheer terror. What if—? What if—? It could not be, it must not be; and yet—What if the heartbeat burst from its imprisonment in the human body, locked in there behind the embracing ribs? What if—? “Oh Jesus, Jesus,” she whispered, “please don’t let it happen, please, please don’t come to us, not now, not us, please, please!”
People were pushing forward, crowding blindly forward. But not all: not everyone. (Even in her panic Opal saw that there were others like herself who held back; she saw with sickening gratitude that neither of the Bells was eager to come forward, though Carlson’s expression was of remarkable interest—as though he were an incidental witness, a passerby gawking into a flaming house; and Amanda was swaying groggily from side to side, her lips slack, her eyes unfocused.) Above the cacophonous din Brother Micah was shouting. Warning: only those to whom the Holy Ghost spoke directly, only those into whom the Holy Ghost had now descended, should come forward.
“The others of us here tonight must obey the Scripture and not tempt Christ! Do you hear—not tempt Christ!”
He held his arms wide, appealing to them all.
The lid of the box was unfastened and the guitarist gave it a heave—tossed it to one side. And then, barehanded, his shirt sleeve rolled up to his elbow, he reached into the box and gave a cry and yanked out a snake. Opal stared, speechless. A snake, was it a snake?—a snake? It appeared to be a copperhead.
On all sides people were moaning, near to weeping with excitement; with a kind of baffled, torturous pleasure.
“Only if the Holy Ghost has descended! Only if the Spirit is upon you!” Brother Micah cried. “Come forward, come forward! My Brothers and Sisters in Christ! In the Holy Spirit! But if God does not call you forward tonight remain where you are—do you hear—remain where you are! Do not tempt Christ! Do not tempt Christ by tempting the Devil, do you hear? It shall come to pass as God has promised,” he said, his voice lifting and falling in a queer, forlorn wail, “as God has promised, my Brothers and Sisters, that God will pour out His spirit upon all flesh: and our sons and daughters shall prophesy, and our young men shall see visions, and our old men dream dreams—do you hear, do you hear? It shall come to pass! And God will show wonders in heaven above, and signs in the earth beneath—it shall come to pass! Here! Tonight! Now! Among us now!”
Not knowing what she did, Opal reached out, grasping at someone’s arm; she came near to fainting. At the front of the crowded, hot room a man was holding a snake high above his head and its tail twitched convulsively, flicking against his hair. She stared, she saw, yet she could not absorb the sight. A snake. Snakes. Poisonous snakes. The box contained snakes and she had known it all along, a part of her had known all along: snakes: serpents. They shall take up serpents. A part of her had known all along.
Now Brother Micah was clutching a thick, fat snake—was it a water moccasin?—urging it to coil about his neck. Stupefied, rather sluggish, its head turned from side to side and its eyes were dull. Opal wondered, a water moccasin? Slumped heavily about Brother Micah’s neck? Its dark scales glimmering against the man’s white shirt, its entire length dazed?—a water moccasin? She stared, she saw, yet she could not quite believe. The scene before her was impossible.
“They wouldn’t have water moccasins here, not water moccasins and copperheads, not deadly snakes: no. Not here. No,” she whispered. “Not poisonous snakes . . .”
The interior of the little church shook with cries and shouts and moans and pleas and harsh, hard, childlike challenges. Let the Devil do his best, went the cry. Let the Devil try us!
The elderly woman in the knitted cap reached into the box and drew out a twisting, whipping, golden-hued snake. She held it firmly in both hands and raised it toward her face, her eyes now shut, her frail little body quivering violently.
Opal stared. Was the woman going to kiss the snake? Kiss the snake? A copperhead, it was: no mistake: a copperhead. Was she going to—Someone reared up in front of Opal and she could not see. A terrible wave of dizziness rose in her, her eyesight blotched, yet she remained on her feet—rooted to that spot as if unable to move. “But they wouldn’t have poisonous snakes,” she said. “Not poisonous . . .”
Now Brother Micah was crooning, swaying dreamily from side to side. He held the enormous snake in place around his shoulders, one hand grasping its tail, the other its ugly flat head. It was as if he were gripping an old, familiar enemy, an affectionate rival. His expression was beatific.
“Come, Devil,” he said, “do your best! Do your best! Strike—and your venom will be overcome by Christ’s love! Strike—and you will be overcome! Those who believe shall be saved, and those who believe not shall be damned. The Lord God of Hosts is with us tonight. The Lord God of Hosts has descended into His witnesses and they shall overcome the Devil and his poison and all his works . . .”
There were cries of “Amen!” And again, “Amen, Amen!”
A song was begun, spontaneously; garbled at first and then with fierce, militant clarity—
He’s got the whole world
in his hand
He’s got the whole world
in his hand
He’s got the whole world
in his hand
He’s got the whole world in his hand!
Brother Micah gave the snake to another man, who accepted it gratefully, though he staggered under its weight. The woman in the knitted cap was crooning to her snake as if it were a baby; and another woman, middle-aged, her plump face streaming with tears, was trying to embrace her, trying to embrace her and the snake both. Mother and daughter, they appeared to be. The young boy who had been playing the ukulele had let it fall and was now caressing a squirming olive-brown snake held by another person, a woman with a flushed, ecstatic face. Opal stared as the boy stroked the snake with both hands, more and more desperately, and, as if not knowing what he did, he began to tug at the creature, trying to get it out of the woman’s grip.
He’s got the litt
le children
in his hand
He’s got the little children
in his hand
He’s got the little children—
Opal gagged; a pool of something black and foul had gathered at the back of her mouth.
Brother Micah stooped to pick up a child, and it looked as if the child was holding a snake—yes, one of the copperheads. The thing gave a crazy lunge and struck against the child’s face, its tail flicking agitatedly. The child, gripped tight in the crook of Brother Micah’s right arm, had a queer, pinched, waxen face, and his eyes were nearly all whites, as if they had rolled partway back in his head.
Nathanael—?
When Opal saw that the child was hers she could not even scream, she could not even move—something descended upon her, crude and flatly black as the underside of a shovel, striking against her head.
She fainted dead away.
VII
And so it happened that the Spirit of the Lord descended into the child Nathanael Vickery when he was, to all outward appearances, no more than five years of age; and from that time onward, for nearly three decades, the Holy Spirit did reside within him, flesh of his flesh, close as a splinter beneath a fingernail. Nathanael’s eye glared dark with the molten heat of the Lord, plunged deep in time as a bird diving starkly and cleanly into the sea, leaving the surface affrighted but rippleless, undisturbed.
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