What I Really Think of You

by M. E. Kerr

  “Not those pink things?” my mother said.

  “Those pink things,” Seal said. “But I’ve been teaching her about makeup, and quelle change! The only thing is, she says s-h-i-blank every other word—or crappy—and she’s not too believable as a witness. Her eyes blink madly whenever she talks about the healing.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about Diane-Young,” my mother chirped. “The Cheeks are so delighted she’s going on the Winning Rally! You’ll get her into shape. You and Dickie are doing wonders with her.”

  “How’d Dickie get in on the act?” I asked. It was news to me.

  “He wants to help”—Seal shrugged—“so he’s helping.”

  “Why not?” my mother said. “Nothing going on with the Methodists, and he’s an enthusiastic young man. The more the merrier, I say.”

  “Anyway,”—my mother began one of her old familiar refrains—“ACE’s aim is to form a coalition with local churches, all working together, with the same goal, to spread the Lord’s—”

  Et cetera, et cetera, while I watched Seal comb her long blond hair and pull down her sweater after. I smelled her perfume. I remembered nights Bud would come back from dates with her, that same smell was on his clothes.

  As soon as Seal left my mother’s office, my mother whispered across at me, “I think they’ve got a thing going on.”

  “Dickie Cloward’s my age,” I said. That was getting to be my own old familiar refrain.

  “I always said a girl like Seal isn’t going to wait around forever.”

  “You don’t have to whisper, Mom, there’s no one here but us chickens.”

  “Let that be a lesson to Bud.”

  “If Bud wanted her back, all he’d have to do would be show up. That thing would be pffft.”

  “I wonder,” my mother said.

  I was beginning to wonder myself. I found myself looking past my mother, out the picture window, where Seal was walking down the path from our house. The wind was blowing her hair, and she was taking these long steps as though she was in a big hurry.

  I watched her until she was out of sight.

  My mother began gathering up her papers. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about your hat, darling.” I was planning to wear a derby to The Last Dance, with two ears of corn attached to it, representing Virgo’s harvest. “I’m going to fix it for you right after lunch,” my mother said.

  “Thanks, Mom. I love you, sir.”

  She laughed. “I love you, too,” she said. “I just wish your father and I could go to that thing tonight.”

  “So do I. Then I wouldn’t have to make a speech.”

  “Your father’s right, I guess. It’s fine if we go to the Cheeks’ dinner, but we’d be too big a distraction at St. Luke’s.” She went across the room and picked up Blanche. “It wouldn’t be fair to The Ladies’ Association. Remember how your father got mobbed at Rotary’s Las Vegas night?”

  She held the cat up to her face and let out a long sigh. “Seems like can’t go wins out over can go about ten to one these days,” she said. “Blanche, here, gets out more than I do.”

  At lunch Donald sawed a piece of rare roast beef and announced that the Lord was suggesting to my father that ACE ought to take the Winning Rally to England.

  “Guy included?” my mother said.

  Donald said, “It wouldn’t make much sense to go over there without our star attraction.”

  “I wonder where our star attraction is?” my mother said, glancing at her watch.

  “He’s probably signing autographs,” Donald said. “He’ll be along. … I remember reading about Billy Graham’s first crusade beyond America. It was in 1954.”

  “I don’t like ACE going over there,” my mother said.

  “Anyway,” Donald went on, “Billy got himself invited to Windsor Castle for tea with the Queen.” Donald swallowed a chunk of roast beef and chuckled, anticipating the story he was determined to tell.

  “What happened was”—another chuckle, another chunk of beef—“Billy strolled in and grabbed this fellow’s hand—fellow was in tails, white gloves—and Billy said, ‘Honored to meet you, sir.’ Well, this fellow turned out to be the butler. He just wanted to take Billy’s hat.”

  My mother wasn’t that amused. She said, “Where are we going to get the money to go to England?”

  “We’ll raise it,” Donald said. “We’ll get it back over there. There’s a whole new resource to tap over there. … The Lord will provide.”

  “Is the Lord suggesting this or are you suggesting this?” my mother said.

  “The Lord made the motion and I seconded it,” said Donald.

  I said, “All in favor say aye. … Nay.”

  “Nay,” my mother said. “When and where do we stop? I read where Billy Graham’s hardly ever home. Television is one thing, traipsing all over the globe is another thing.”

  “What do you think, Jesse?” Donald asked.

  “I already said nay. Enough is enough.”

  “Is enough,” my mother said. “Amen.”

  Donald’s mouth was open and he was ready to say something, when Mrs. Davison came into the dining room.

  She said the Seaville Police were on the phone. “Well, what do they want?” Donald said, and a hunk of roast beef fell off his fork. My mother was on her feet.

  By two that afternoon, network news was reporting my father’s kidnaping. The Cheeks canceled their dinner party. We all waited for the police to contact Bobby John Ringer, to get more details of what happened after the memorial service.

  All we knew was that my father’s kidnaper would announce his demands sometime that evening, returning my father safely when they were met.

  We had extra police added to our security force, and Donald was busy on one of our phones seeing what assets he could transfer to cash.

  There was nothing to do but wait, and my mother and I sat together in my father’s study.

  We prayed, we tried to play a game of backgammon, we listened to the radio announcements.

  Finally my mother just broke down and cried, and talked about the old days, not just our days under the tent, but when she was a child, out on the evangelical trail with my grandfather, Reverend Jesse Cannon.

  “I wasn’t very different from that poor little girl you were taking to the dance tonight.”

  “Opal.”

  “Only my daddy wouldn’t have let me go.”

  “I don’t think her daddy was too thrilled about her going.”

  “Mine wouldn’t have let me. Did you call her, honey?”

  “She said she’d been praying for Daddy. Her and her mother.”

  “Did she know any more about what took place down there?”

  “I told you, Mom. She doesn’t know any more than we do.”

  “They’re so emotional sometimes, those people. Emotional, resentful deep down, oh, I don’t blame them.”

  “It might not have even been one of them.”

  “I used to hate it when anyone from a better class came to our services.”

  “I know. Me too.”

  “Like they were sightseeing. … I couldn’t even go to dances at school—my daddy would hit the ceiling if you said ‘dance’ to him. … The first time I ever danced was on my wedding night. I stepped all over your father’s shiny new shoes. … Maybe this is a sign, Jesse.”

  “It’s a sign of the times.”

  “I don’t mean a sign of the times. I mean a sign from the Lord.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “You don’t believe He sends signs.” It wasn’t a question.

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I said.

  “Anymore? You never did know, darling. That’s why it never tugged at you the way it did at Bud. Even when you were little boys, you were as different as day and night. Bud was a terror. I never knew what he’d do next—even when his little legs first started walking, they walked toward trouble. … You were my good boy.”

  “Little Goody
Two-shoes,” I said.

  “You weren’t a Goody Two-shoes, but you weren’t the little devil Bud was. Bud was always hiding from your father over something he did. He always dreaded your father coming home, finding out. Remember how he used to just skip out before dinner because he knew he was in for it?”

  “Yeah. I remember.”

  “Your father’d say let him go hungry. Later on I’d sneak some dinner up to him, unbeknownst to your father.”

  “I don’t know how unbeknownst it was to him.”

  My mother gave a sad little chuckle. “Maybe it wasn’t so unbeknownst. Your father saw himself in Bud.”

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

  “Oh, I know you think he loves Bud more, it isn’t that. He just knows Bud better. Bud’s familiar. He’s going through what your father went through, what his father went through, what my father went through. The anger, the doubting, everything you go through when the Lord is testing you.”

  “I guess I never felt He was testing me.”

  “You never really let Him into your life to find out.”

  “Oh, Mom.”

  “Well? You don’t seem to require very much help. You seem to have your passions under control. You don’t feel the temptations, the pull between good and bad. You don’t think the Lord sends signs. You don’t think what’s happening right now to your father could be a sign to us.”

  “I think we’ve been talking so much about money every single Sunday, we’ve put ideas into someone’s head.”

  “And I think,” my mother said, “the Lord is telling us to pull back!”

  Donald Divine walked into my father’s study then.

  “Well, we know who our kidnaper is now,” he said. “He’s Bobby John Ringer.”

  That night on CBS, NBC, and ABC, a photograph was shown of Bobby John.

  For some reason he was holding up a small, three-legged footstool, probably something he’d made himself, because he had this proud grin on his face, and he was holding it with one hand, pointing at it with the other.

  It was one of those blurred, candid shots that didn’t blow up well, and didn’t tell you anything but what you saw: this very tall, lean fellow in dark pants, and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the wind blowing his black hair up from the top of his head.

  The newsmen were doing their usual bit, playing it up big, taking every little thread of information concerning Bobby John and trying to spin it into something. They were waiting for a tape to come of Bobby John’s telephone conversation with the Seaville police.

  They were describing Bobby John as “a loner,” “not very prepossessing,” one newsman said he was reported to have “a curious shuffling walk, and an odd vacuous smile.” Another newsman described him as “nondescript” and “separated from the mainstream by his religious fanaticism.”

  “It’s easy to see,” one commentator said, “why a socially isolated young man with almost archaic religious beliefs—a loser, in other words—might resent the powerful, successful, magnetic TV evangelist, Dr. Guy Pegler—champion of winners!”

  Just before the seven-o’clock newscasts were ending, Bobby John’s voice came crackling across the airwaves:

  “Dr. Pegler is safe. All I’m asking for is equal time to correct a situation. D. Y., I’d like you to be with me. She knows who she is. D. Y., we’re both in this thing together. … We both want to get something off our chests so’s we don’t bear false witness no more. Anymore.

  “I’m not blaming Dr. Pegler or It’s Up to You, because it was all my idea, with Satan helping. There’s a twenty-four hour Soaking at The Helping Hand Tabernacle tonight. That’s as good a time as any to get this thing cleared up.

  “I’ll be there by ten o’clock and Dr. Pegler will be with me. D. Y., honeybunch, after this is all over I want you to be my wife. I’m asking you that on network TV. If you’ll have me.

  “Come to the Soaking in The Hollow at The Helping Hand Tabernacle. This sinner will be there. … And thank you, Jesus. …I hope I’ve got a good 10-2. 10-10.”

  Thirteen

  OPAL RINGER

  RIGHT AFTER WE HEARD Bobby John on the seven o’clock news, Daddy came in his van to take Mum, me, and the sandwiches we made for the Soaking to The Hand.

  “Well,” Daddy said, “he’s done it this time! This time he’s really done it up good!”

  “Faking that thing was weighing on his brain just like a tumor,” Mum said.

  “What brain’s that, I’d like to know,” said Daddy. “He’s the new overnight sensation’s what he is, got himself a worldwide reputation now, in a class with Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and John Hinckley. On the news driving over here, I heard he was a dangerous religious fanatic!”

  “That’s the killer!” Mum said.

  “I said to Jesus coming over, Well he’s Your boy now, if You still want him. I wash my hands of him.”

  “I don’t and Jesus don’t.”

  “Jesus don’t wash His hands of anybody, is the only reason he don’t wash His hands of Bobby John.”

  I swear Jesus made that summer night Himself, too. Driving along between them in the front seat of the van, I never saw so many stars show themselves before the sky got dark, while the sun was still going down, and in the warm evening air, all the sweet smells of things coming to blossom.

  Late that afternoon when word came it was only Bobby John holding Guy Pegler, I still had the hope like some soft tiny baby bird’s feather rustling around in the wind we’d go to that dumb dance, thought Jesse might call back, say, Well, it’s only your brother, so no sense spoiling everything we looked forward to, Opal.

  While I looked out the window of the van at the town, I knew that town so well, tears started leaking out of my eyes.

  “Hush, now, honey,” Mum said, “you’ll get your pretty yellow dress all salty tears.”

  “I never thought I’d be wearing this thing just to a Soaking,” I said.

  “How are the Peglers taking it?” Daddy said.

  “They’re not coming to The Hand,” I said. “They’re going to let the police handle it. Jesse’s staying home with his mother.”

  “I said how are they taking it, not what are they doing?”

  “They’re just taking it,” I said. (Jesse? I told him, I’m real disappointed about the dance, real disappointed. Yeah, he said back. Well, Opal, we can’t stay on the phone now.)

  “They shouldn’t come to The Hand, they’re right about that. Police got roadblocks up, traffic’s thicker than Hell’s crowds with Satan’s sightseers.”

  “Are our own people getting through?” Mum said.

  “They’re there, most of them by now, with the cameras and the newsmen. I said we’ll have no cameras in the church, that was my first thought, but Brother Dudley said let them set up, won’t hurt the unsaved to see the saved one little bit, won’t hurt anyone to see a real church and not a nightclub act.”

  “Still no word from Bobby John?” Mum said.

  “Nothing you didn’t hear on the TV. Says he’s coming, bringing Guy Pegler with him. Well, the police are waiting. So’s his girl friend.”

  “D. Y.’s there?” I said.

  “Seems she’s changed herself into a girl from whatever she was before.”

  “She was always a girl, Royal. That’s what got Bobby John into all this trouble.”

  “Well she’s there, with her daddy, and more police.”

  “What got Bobby John into all this trouble was he was trying to help The Hand,” I said. “You don’t know anything.”

  “I know The Hand could do without his help,” Daddy said.

  When we got down into The Hollow, the police stopped the van to check it out, then let us on though.

  Brother Dudley was conducting the service. Daddy’d told him we were all just going on with the Soaking, never mind Bobby John’s crazy schemes. Daddy went in the back door of The Hand, while Mum and I took the sandwiches down to the basement.


  We could hear them upstairs, stamping their feet and shouting though Brother Dudley’s words, and the organ playing softly, playing my favorite:

  Take the Savior here below

  With you everywhere you go.

  He will keep the joy bells ringing in your heart …

  Joy—bells, ringing in your heart.

  “Well,” Mum said when we got finished putting out paper plates and napkins, “we’d better go on up, honey. Whatever will happen will happen.”

  She gave me a hug. “You look so pretty in that dress, honey.”

  “Thanks to Bobby John it don’t matter what I look like in any dress,” I said. “He’s just like Daddy, only thinks about himself.”

  “Who’re you thinking about but your own self, Opal Ringer?”

  “He could have picked another time is all I’m saying.”

  “People don’t pick the time they go off their rocker, honey,” said Mum. “Bobby John isn’t in his right mind. … That won’t be the last Last Dance, anyway.”

  “For me it is,” I said. “I’m back in the same old rut.”

  She put her arm around me and we walked toward the stairs. “Don’t be worrying about ruts, sweetheart,” she said. “When The Rapture comes—”

  I didn’t even let her finish. “That dumb thing isn’t ever coming! We just always say it’s coming when we can’t take what’s already here!”

  But Mum was going right on anyway, “… the door will open in heaven and the first voice will be as a trumpet talking, saying, Come up hither. …”

  There is a time to everything, I’ve known that to be true.

  A time to be born, and a time to die, as the Bible tells it; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down … which is what happened to Bobby John’s car that night, with Guy Pegler in it.

  Sometimes I get to wondering what that night would have been like if that hadn’t happened to his car, and if he had made it to The Hand. But wondering that way, I’ve learned, doesn’t mean anything, because the meaning in everything is in what really happened, not in what might have happened.

  What really happened was the police found them broken down, three miles from The Hollow, on Tanning Hide Road. They took Bobby John in; they took Guy Pegler home.