But listen to me. There’s Satan again, making me bellyache about doing the Lord’s work. You just have to take His precious name and go about your business with a smile and a cheerful countenance, like the Bible says. And it helps to have a buddy like Earnest Sauls.
Anyway, we were making our rounds last Wednesday like always. We were both in a happy mood, praising the Lord and feeling like we were doing big things for Him. Earnest is real good with the sick ones. They see him bust through the door with that big old grin on his face and looking like he could take on the Army, and it’s like they kind of soak up some of that power. One old fellow we had been visiting regular since we started our work had made the choice to accept Jesus Christ as his Personal Saviour. I don’t have to tell you, it’s times like that, makes it worth the effort for us. That man has gone on now, but it gives me a good feeling knowing that we got to him in time. Like I said, we’re doing big things for Christ.
Now the next one on the list that day was Mrs. Eagles, room four twenty-four. We had run out of the pamphlets that we give, both “The Choice Is Yours” and “Whole Again.” One of the nurses had wanted what we had on us, so I sent Earnest back out to my Barracuda to get some more. Well, wait a minute. I mean I asked Ernest to go get some more. You don’t send Earnest Sauls nowhere he don’t want to go. I gave him my keys and told him it was a case of each of the pamphlets in the boot. He said he hoped nobody he knew saw him with his hind end stuck out the trunk of a Plymouth. Earnest is a Ford man.
Now I want to tell you, that was one bad off lady. I am here to tell you she didn’t look like she weighed more than a minute, and what they were pumping in her and out of her, I couldn’t tell you. That woman had tubes everywhere they could find to stick one. And I got more hair on my head than she had, so you can see how bad off she was with that. But you can’t look surprised when you’re doing this kind of witnessing. You just keep a loving smile on your face and trust the Lord to help you do and say the right thing.
“Mrs. Eagles,” I said, “how are you getting along today?”
She didn’t say a word to me, just kind of groaned and stared at me with them eyes. They looked like somebody had beat her up, them eyes. Every breath that come out of her went, “Huh?” in her eyes, like somebody was asking her what she had said. Every breath was a question. You got to understand how bad off she was, because that just makes what come after harder to believe. I asked her if she belonged to any church and she swallowed real hard like she was trying to get down a pine cone.
“Presbyterian,” she finally said, so low that if she hadn’t been sick I’d have thought she was ashamed of it.
Now all this time I was wondering if it was any use. I figured she’d just had one of them treatments and was on some high-powered painkillers. You see, they have got to make these choices theirselves. It’s too late if you try when they’re half dead like the Catholics do. Well, I jumped in anyway.
“Mrs. Eagles,” I said, “I want to tell you about Jesus Christ and his healing powers and how Him and us can whip Satan to win back your health.” Good old Earnest come back with the literature, and I was sure glad to see him. He had both cases of pamphlets under one arm like they weren’t nothing. I asked him and Mrs. Eagles if we could have a word of prayer. I prayed what I always pray for these poor folks, that the Lord will show me the way and make my words and actions what He’d have them to be. Mrs. Eagles was choking and gagging all this time, so I don’t know if she heard a word of the prayer. After I finished praying, she leaned over the edge of the bed and coughed up something. After that, she eased off a little and looked towards me and smiled real weak and watery, a real loving smile just the same.
Well, I thought the Lord was working overtime that day. I thought it was going fine. Then I heard this Yankee voice behind me, and I wish I could say it just like it sounded.
“May I help you?” it said. I turned around and laid eyes on them two for the first time. Well, my first thinking was how nice they looked. They were dressed up, ties and everything. I figured they might be brothers. They looked as normal as any two men I have ever seen, equal to and better than some in my own church. I was ready to like both of them. You just would not have thought it was a thing in the world wrong with neither one of them. Now it’s a hard lesson in that for you.
“May I help you,” he says again and looks at me like I had just come from a hog fight. I didn’t bother telling him that I got two used car lots, and Earnest holds a Seven-Eleven franchise. And think about that question he asked me. May I help you? Who could have helped who?
I said hey and told him who I was, introduced Earnest, and said we were from Calvary Church of God. I stuck out my hand. He shook it, and my hand smelled right frenchy the rest of that day. I told him we just wanted to have a word of prayer and a talk with Mrs. Eagles. I told him it wouldn’t take but a minute or two. Earnest, I thank the Lord for him every day, jumps right in there.
“Ya’ll boys ain’t from around here, are you?” asks Earnest.
“No,” says the friend. “We just arrived this morning from New York,” didn’t come from New York, you see, “arrived,” thank you very much, “and would like to be alone with Mrs. Eagles.” Then he gives Earnest a look that I believe was more than friendly.
Now right along about here I started thinking something wasn’t exactly right, but I just laid it off to them being Yankees. Later on it hit me. All this time the son wasn’t saying a word. I felt kind of sorry for him because you could tell it hurt him to see his mama like she was. He’d look at me and then his mama, and I thought he was going to bust. I believe if it had just been me and him he might have been glad I was there.
Oh, but that other one, he was real busy taking care of everybody. He looks me right in the eye, talks to me like he’s talking to a colored man. Something in that one’s eyes could just pin you down.
“As you can see, Mrs. Eagles is a very sick lady,” he says. Now hadn’t I been able to see that myself? “Her own minister has been around this morning and read Scriptures,” I wish you could have heard the way he said Scriptures, and I can just hear the lukewarm prayer that Presbyterian slobbered over her.. “We would really appreciate it if you would leave us alone.”
Well, I thought to myself, it’s in the Bible, “the fools despise wisdom and instruction.”
Now right here is where a lot of people would have given up. But, I looked over at Earnest and saw him look at that one and then look back at me like as to say, “Well you know you can go one better than that,” and I thought, this one is for you, bud. I mean there was Earnest, just as strong and good and trusting as they come, and there was that one looking back at Earnest, so I told that one I’d be glad to go, but I was going to leave a pamphlet with Mrs. Eagles, and I said he ought to have a look at it, too. I gave him “The Choice Is Yours.” He took it from me, but he didn’t look at it long enough to read the title and said for me to take it back.
I was about to get down to some serious soul-saving, but Mrs. Eagles started choking and gagging worse than ever, and the doctors and nurses come running, and we all had to leave.
Earnest and me started on down the hall to finish off our visiting, but Earnest had got real quiet. Before we come to the next one on the list, Earnest turned to me, and don’t think nothing funny till I finish telling you this. He looked me full in the face, and it was like he was staring at the sunset.
“I’m mighty proud to be doing this for you,” he said, and put his hand on my shoulder. The power in that hand on my shoulder, well, it must be something like that when the Lord lays His hands on you. I said yeah, that we’d been through it, hadn’t we, and we went on in Mr. Raymond Bests’ room, cancer in the throat.
When we come out of Mr. Bests’ room we saw them two in the hall outside Mrs. Eagles’ room. The doctors must have left them with real bad news because the son was leaned up against the wall with his head hung down, and he was crying. The other one was standing in front of him just talking, I th
ought. Then right there in front of me and Earnest, who thinks everybody is by and large good, that friend picked up Mrs. Eagles’ son’s chin in the tips of his fingers and kissed him full on the mouth. Well, right then the truth hit me for sure.
“Earnest, take a look and see Satan working full tilt,” I said.
Earnest turned three colors of white and headed for the elevator. Something filled me up. The Lord’s anger flew in me and give me strength then and there, and I knew I had to reach Mrs. Eagles one way or the other. You might say the Lord was testing me to see if I was the Christian I claimed to be. I took Earnest on home because seeing them two finished him off for that day. Sometimes Earnest just can’t believe the world. I can. I knew this one was up to me alone.
I COULDN’T SLEEP THAT NIGHT without them two filling my dreams. I dreamed it was me in the bed with lung cancer, instead of Mrs. Eagles. I was tied down with tubes on my arms and legs and was being fed with a tube down my throat, and them two were out in the hall trying to decide whether to take all the tubes away or not.
The thought of Mrs. Eagles’ last days being watched over by them sons of Satan was more than I wanted on my conscience.
I spoke to Reverend Pate about all this, and him and me decided that the Lord had laid this one on me for a reason. We prayed, and Reverend Pate gave me a little book that dealt straight out with Mrs. Eagles’ problem.
WELL, LAST FRIDAY I GOT OFF work early, threw that book and my Bible in the front seat of my Barracuda and headed out for the hospital.
When I went into Mrs. Eagles’ room, I saw just how far Satan will go. She was sitting up in the bed and looked like a May morning, color back in her cheeks, and her eyes looked like they knew what they were seeing. Somebody had tied a pretty kerchief on her head. Just like a different woman from that Wednesday before.
And whose work was all this? Sure not the Lord’s. Now a week before that woman couldn’t raise her head off the pillow, but she had them two there beside her keeping the Word of God well away. Satan wanted to make sure she kept on being looked after by his own. He’s the one to give the credit for the improvement. Are you getting clearer on how he works now?
She looked up at me, and I could see she remembered me from the last time. I jumped right in before she could say a word.
“Mrs. Eagles,” I said, “you were right bad off when I come by the last time, but I wanted to come back and give you this little book. It’s called Satan’s Handmaidens, and it’s about people like your son and his friend and the Lord’s view of their sin. I believe if you read this and pray on it, you’ll see what’s the very reason you’re sick in the first place. I believe, like I believe in the Lord, that your health problems are God’s way of punishing you and your family. With the Lord’s help, you can beat Satan and turn your health around, permanent.”
She took that little book out of my hand and stared at it, didn’t open it, just stared at the cover, like not really seeing it, you know. She looked up at me after a minute, and great big tears come up in her eyes and didn’t fall, you know, just filled up her eyes and kind of floated there. She looked at the book and didn’t look at it, looked at me but wasn’t seeing me. Then she did see me all of a sudden. Her tears come down like I never seen anybody’s, and I believe it was right at that moment she was saved. Yes, I’ve seen this thing many a time and know it when I see it.
“Oh God, Mister. Do you know what to do? What can I do? What can I do to make it right?”
“Home free!” I says to myself. Then, I bore down. “Pray to the Lord God your Savior, Mrs. Eagles. Pray to Him who gave you life. Let the Lord have it. Give Him your son; give Him your cancer. Give it all to the Lord Great God Jehovah.”
“Pray for me. You pray for me,” she said and grabbed hold to both of my hands so tight and held on and wouldn’t let go, like I was in this world, and she was slipping into the next, and the only thing between her and Satan was me. I was the only thing. So I held on, and I prayed.
“Lord, You have seen the suffering of Mrs. Eagles. Lord, You have heard her cries of pain. You have watched her nights of torment and sorrow. Lord, You have known Mrs. Eagles’ burden of sickness, the sickness in her, and You have known a bigger sickness, a sickness of sin in her son. Lord, Mrs. Eagles is calling out to You now. She knows her part in this, Lord, and knows her punishment was just. But Lord, she’s ready to turn all that around, Lord. She’s ready for You to take over her life, Lord. She’s ready to give her life over and let You use it. Use her life, Lord. Use her life to save her son. Get to her through her suffering, Lord. Get to her son through her life, Lord, and when that’s done, give her life back to her whole and new. When she takes out that cancer in her son, You take the one in her, Lord. She knows You can do it, Lord. She belongs to You. In Jesus’s name I pray and believe. Amen.”
We both sat there for a minute and didn’t say a word. I felt like I had run a race. She looked tired, too.
“Amen,” she says. “But, God, I’ve got to tell you. My chest is killing me.”
I said, “Mrs. Eagles, that’s just Satan closing up shop.”
“You are the first one that could do something,” she says.
NOW WHAT HAPPENED with me and Mrs. Eagles just shows you. Satan is working in this world. But we got to work harder than him. That’s all the Lord asks of you. I saw in the Daily Times this morning where Mrs. Eagles passed away. She didn’t never see that boy again, I don’t imagine, but she died a Christian. You might think that’s it, that Satan has quit on this one. Well, I know better, and the Lord hasn’t let her off yet. I know where the funeral is. Her son wouldn’t stay away from his own mama’s funeral, would he? Earnest says he wants to go with me for the boy. You got to stay one step ahead of Satan all the time, you see. You just got to.
NOBODY’S CHILD
David Groff
PAUL LIKED ANNIE BECAUSE SHE WAS SO ANNOYING. The night Jeremy was born, over eight years ago, Annie’s husband Ted was away in Miami and Annie had gone into labor on the East 77th Street subway platform. She had insisted on waiting for the next train. Paul had to prod her forcibly up the stairs and into a taxi. Just as they pulled up to St. Vincent’s, her water broke; once she caught her breath, Annie squealed with delight at Paul’s wet gabardine pants. In the four years since Annie’s divorce, she saw Paul or phoned him nearly every day. Often Annie would surprise him late at night by ringing his doorbell, with or without Jeremy beside her, full of indignation or joy over a man, a movie, or a taxi driver. Against his better judgment Paul had found he was as comfortable with Annie as he could be with anyone. She had lost weight recently and had just cut her curly hair so that it barely grazed her shoulders.
Tonight she was, as usual, disgusted with him. “Paul, without a doubt the stupidest thing you’ve ever done was to dump Everett. In the last ten years you’ve had more boys than I’ve had menstrual cramps, and the only one who wasn’t a loser was Everett. If there were a law against being an asshole you’d be serving a life sentence.”
Paul looked around to see if anyone had overheard her, but the coffee shop was nearly empty: Three tables away a man held his infant son in his lap, feeding him a bottle and reading the Wall Street Journal. “Everett is ordinary, sweetheart,” Paul said, without moving his teeth. “He’s a bartender. He sniffles. How can you take out a mortgage with a man who sniffles? How can you love somebody with a wet mustache?”
Sometimes Paul could deflect Annie’s pastoral letter by being funny. Annie did not laugh. She pressed her tea bag into her spoon and watched it drip into her cup. “Did you listen to him?”
“Of course I listened to him.”
“That night at dinner you sat there and tore up matchbooks and looked like you wanted to vaporize him,” Annie said. “Is that how you listen?”
“Well if the guy had said anything interesting beyond the wholesale price of Miller Lite—”
“You ought to get him some nose spray and invite him to the ballet. He seemed so sturdy.”
“How’s Jeremy?”
“Don’t change the subject. Jeremy hates Cub Scouts. He’s started throwing up whenever Ted comes over to take him out.”
“The boy has taste,” Paul said, lighting one of Annie’s cigarettes.
“You ought to come over and read to him. Jeremy likes you. And if you’re not serious with Everett”—Paul could hear one of Annie’s ideas rearing its head—“you ought to take out a personal ad.” Annie stared directly at him, appraising. “Thoughtful, balding, dissolute librarian, 34, seeks true love, no strings. I’ll screen out the disco bunnies and the leather queens. Why was it exactly that you dumped Everett?”
“Jesus, Annie, we had five dates! What are you, the Justice Department? Why must you make a Broadway musical out of my personal life? I’m perfectly capable … I can run my own romances, thank you.”
“Yeah, like the romance with the guy from the Five Towns who had four daughters and a wife and a grandson? You ran that superbly.”
Paul stubbed out his cigarette. “That was six years ago. I was young then.”
“Or the kid who was kept by the psychiatrist on 72nd Street? That was January!”
“Well at least I didn’t sleep with a stewardess in my wife’s own apartment, like adorable Ted.” Paul knew that comment would close this portion of the conversation.
Annie cocked her head and looked at him through only one eye. She took a deep, tragic breath. “Well, okay, if you’re going to be neurotic about it.” Grandly she pulled her cigarettes off the table, shrugged her purse onto her shoulder, straightened her bra strap, and stood up. “I know when my good advice isn’t wanted.” She swept out of the coffee shop, all flounced skirt, purse, and wild hair. Even after ten years Paul could never quite tell when she was kidding.
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