A Far Piece to Canaan (15 page)

“I'm sorry,” I said, “I didn't mean to be trespassing. I lived in this neighborhood many years ago and I have fond memories of this church.”

The old man stared into my eyes, unblinking and suspicious, and came forward to within a couple of feet. “When you lives heah?”

“Over sixty years ago.”

The wrinkled head raised but his eyes never left mine. “Yo daddy a croppah or lan'lawd?”

“Cropper.”

“Who you crops on?”

“The landlord's name was Berman. Farm was about a mile past the Dry Branch Road.”

The thumbless hand rubbed the white stubble chin with its knuckles. “Don't know no Berman. I crops all time ovah 'round Spears. Who you is?”

I extended my hand. “My name is Samuel Zelinsky. My father was Morris Zelinsky. Did you know anybody who lived down toward the river?”

The unblinking eyes under the baseball cap continued to stare and ignored my hand. Then, slowly, he raised his own hand and we squeezed a handshake since he was thumbless. I could feel calluses. He was still doing rough work at an age when most men just slept through the day, if they existed at all.

“I's Ruggles White. Whatchu doin' heah at our choich this time of th' mawnin'?”

“If I told you that I was just looking for where I came from, would you believe it?”

The old man smiled, exhibiting a mouth that still had a lot of teeth. “Yeah. You old. Lookin' all you and me is good fo'. Too old fo' mischief. I come t'day t' see my mama. She back there,” and he pointed the absent thumb toward a graveyard. “What you knows 'bout this choich?”

“Sometimes on Sundays I would stand on the edge of the road and listen to the singing. It was beautiful. I was just a boy, but I loved it. Couldn't go in, of course.”

The baseball cap nodded up and down. “Yeah, we could sing it out. Whatchu like best?”

“‘Go Down, Moses.' You had a man whose voice was so deep it sounded like faraway thunder.
Go down Mo-o-oses,
” I began and we continued together. “
Wa-a-ay down in Egypt's la-a-an'. Tell old Pha-ar-o-o-oh . . . let my people goooo
.”

We both started laughing.

“That Collis Yates. He had a ches' on him big as a barrel. Man, he could sing it out. Lawd himself prob'ly like listenin' t' Collis. He gone now. They all gone. Ain't no peoples come here no mo'. Everybody go to de new choich in Lexington. This here property bein' sold. Dey gone even move de graves. Ain't right.” He tilted his head and lifted his saggy eyebrows. “You finds anybody you huntin' fo'?”

I shook my head. “I've checked a lot of mailboxes . . . about ready to quit.” Then I reeled out a dozen or so names to see if he knew them. He shook his head until I mentioned Bert Raney.

“Mistuh Raney! Yeah, I knows him. He own that farm 'cross d' road. He full o' mischief, but I likes him. He dead now. He own right over deah,” and he pointed.

Bert Raney's old place!
I knew precisely where I was now. I could feel my skin tingle. A hundred feet beyond that fence I had forged one of my earliest links with Christianity.

I said my thanks and goodbyes, then crossed the road, climbed the fence, and walked to a mystical spot. I reached up and clutched the air. Sixty-odd years previously, my hand could have been wrapped around a tent pole. It was about this time of the year. What a day that was . . .

J
ust after the Fourth of July, Fred come over all excited. There was going be a revival near Harper's Corner.

“Hit's gonna be great. We just got t' go, hun'ney!” he said, sitting down on our front lawn and checking his slightly stubbed toe.

“What's so special about this one?” I asked. “There's always revivals goin' on.”

“Hit's Holiness! Th' Reverend Joe Don Baker's gonna be th' preacher!”

Fred could tell that I didn't know the name and was disappointed. “He's the one on radio . . . WLEX . . . don't y'all never listen t' WLEX?”

“Sure we do. We get all our market reports on WLEX.”

“Well, th' Reverend Baker comes on on Sundays. I'm surprised you ain't heard of him. He's gonna to be there in person! Everybody's goin'.”

It sounded like fun. “You, me, Lonnie, and LD?”

Fred shook his head. “Oh no, they ain't Holiness. Lordy no! LD's pa'd beat th' stuffin's out of him if he went t' anything but First Christian. Lonnie's ma won't go neither.”

“Don't your folks care if you go?”

“Naw,” Fred answered, picking at a callus on his heel. “Mama said she figured she'd rather have me in church than anyplace else. Figure you can go?”

That was going to be hard. When we first moved in, a preacher had come over to see Mom and Dad about Naomi and me going to the regular church meetings and Dad had told him that when we come of age we could go if we wanted, but not until then. “I don't know,” I answered slowly. “Prob'ly not.”

Fred snorted. “Your folks just like LD's and Lonnie's.”

“No, they're not,” I said. “Mom and Dad don't care if I visit somebody's church.”

“How come it is then you can't come? You ain't never gone t' church at th' First Christian with LD and Lonnie and me.”

It was true. Boy, was Mom going to get upset when I asked her. Maybe Dad too. I would have to really work to get a yes out of them. “When's it start?”

“Thursday at eight. If it don't rain. Hit'll be called off if'n hit rains. Samuel, we just got t' go!” he said, getting up and adjusting his Levi's.

“I'll ask, but I'm pretty sure Mom and Dad will say no.”

“Shoot,” he sighed, getting up. “First time we get a chance t' use your bike t' really go somewheres, and we can't do hit.” Then he slipped through the hole in the backyard fence and left, kicking little sprays of dust with his bare feet.

I waited until after supper to ask Dad. He was reading his newspaper and smoking his pipe.

“Dad, Fred said there was gonna be a revival.”

“Eh,” he grunted, and didn't look up from his reading.

“He said there was goin' t' be a revival soon.”

“Who did?”

“Fred.”

“Did, huh?”

Nothing happened. He just kept reading with the smoke from his pipe billowing around his head. “Fred wants me t' go with him to th' revival.”

“Does, huh?”

“Uh-huh. Can I go?”

“Oh, I don't think so this time,” he said, moving the paper closer and frowning.

“LD and Lonnie's folks won't let them go either since it idn't First Christian. Fred says we're just like th' Millers and Howards.”

“Huh!” Dad said, and looked at me over his paper.

“I said . . .”

“I heard you. Samuel, I don't let you go to the Christian Church because I don't want a lot of pressure put on you to convert. Now, that's different than Lonnie and LD's thing.”

I nodded and started toward the door to the kitchen. “Fred says that's why Lonnie and LD's folks won't let them go either. They don't want them t' be Holinesses.”

Dad's newspaper come down and his body jerked up. “You wait right there! That's ridiculous,” he said, pointing his pipe stem at me. “They're Gentiles. We're Jews. There's a difference,” and he put the pipe back in his mouth, ruffled his paper, and began to read again.

I thought about what to say next. If he got real mad, I'd never get to go, but if I stopped now, I wudn't going anyway. “I can't see any difference,” I said. “Nobody wants t' take a chance on anybody convertin'. I think Fred's right.”

Dad stiffened. He knew I was conniving. Still, there wudn't much difference between what we thought from the Howards and Millers. It turned out Dad was thinking the same thing.

“You really wanta go?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“You got any idea what they're gonna do? I don't want you handling snakes! If they're gonna be foolin' around with rattlers you're absolutely not goin'! Understand?”

“Does that mean I can go if they don't handle snakes?”

“That means I'll think about it again when you find out what's happening there.
And,
if Mom says yes.”

The next morning, I went over to Fred's. “They ain't gonna be handlin' snakes, are they?” I asked, as we wandered through the strawberry patch eating what had been missed at the last picking. “Dad told me I couldn't go for sure if they handled rattlers.”

Fred straightened up and stuck his thumb in his Levi's. “Aw, naw, hun'ney,” he said, popping a handful of berries in his mouth. “These here are Holy Rollers. I don't go t' no revivals that handles snakes. These folks rolls and talks in tongues.”

I had heard a lot about tongue talking at school, but wudn't quite sure what happened. “What's tongue talkin' like, Fred?”

“Why, hun'ney, don't you know what it is talkin' in tongues?” and he grinned.

“Huh-uh.”

Fred's grin got bigger. “Well you can see when we get there. Figure you'll get t' go?”

I jammed my hands in the pockets of my Levi's. “Don't know. Helps they won't be handlin' snakes. Dad ain't hot on it, but I think he'll go along if Mom will.”

Fred slipped the stem of a big red strawberry between his toes and jerked upward with his foot. The strawberry flew up in the air and he caught it, plucked off its little green seat, and popped it in his mouth. “Just like Lonnie and LD,” he said.

I shook my head. “If I tell you tomorra, is that time enough?”

“I reckon. Long as I know in time t' slick my hair down. We got t' leave by 7:30.”

When Mom heard about it that night, you'd have thought the Holinesses were going to cut my throat.

“A tent revival! Holy Rollers! One of those wild-eyed, arm-waving, screaming preachers! People rolling around, babbling like idiots! No! Absolutely not! It's bad enough that you run around God knows where with those crazy friends of yours! The next thing you know, you'll be going to church meetings on Sundays, marrying some shiksa, eating
traif
. . . ham, bacon, making moonshine with Bess Clark! No! You're a Jew. Enough already!”

By the time Mom finished yelling, Dad was laughing so hard his neck veins were bulging and Mom, who had been drying dishes, was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor with an iron skillet in her hand that had been waving all over the place. Naomi was at the sink, and I could tell by her face that she was dying to laugh, but holding back. I wanted to laugh too, but I knew if I did wudn't no way I was going to the revival.

Finally, Dad wiped his eyes and said, “M'dom, it's just a tent revival. In the last twenty-five years there've been hundreds around us. Nobody's going to convert him. So far these people have been very careful with us when it comes to religion. Samuel knows who he is. Let's let him see what's goin' on out there, get an understanding of the world that surrounds him.”

Mom seemed kind of confused because she put the skillet in the pots and pans cabinet instead of hanging it on a hook where she always did. She had closed the door to the cabinet when it hit her what she'd done and she took the skillet out and hung it up. Then she shook her head at Dad and laughed. “You'd let him go anywhere.”

“Now, you know better than that,” he answered, and laughed too.

The night of the revival, I started chores early. By the time Dad got in from the field I was finishing up and my hands were killing me from squeezing tits too fast.

“Gettin' done early t'night, huh?” Dad said, leaning against the main post to the stock chute and scratching his back.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“Wanta be there from the start, eh?” He chuckled.

“Yes, sir.”

“Ought to see quite a show. Alfred said Mort Thomas was gonna be there.”

When Dad mentioned Mort Thomas, I almost jumped off the milking stool. I had only seen Mort a few times, and when I did, he didn't do nothing. You had to get him riled before he'd do anything and Mort always tried to stay calm.

“Alfred said th' preacher tonight's a real Holiness disciple. If anything can rile anybody, it oughta be a real Holiness preacher. What time you go?”

“I got t' pick up Fred at 7:30,” I answered. “The tent's down at Mr. Raney's.”

Dad ricocheted off the stock chute. “Bert Raney? Bert's one of those people that tease Mort. If that preacher don't rile Mort, Bert will.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, then said, “Samuel, if anything happens, you got sense enough t' get out of that tent, don't you?”

I said I did, but what I didn't say was that if Mort started doing it I wudn't about to leave without seeing at least some.

“You stay close to old Fred,” said Dad. “He's got a head full of common sense. You do like he does. Fred Cody's not goin' t' get into anything he can't get out of.”

The clock said ten minutes after seven as I pushed down the last biscuit and honey and ran out to my bike. I pedaled hard, and when I got to the Mulligans', Fred was waiting by the road. He was so excited he was jiggling.

“Let's go, hun'ney, we're late,” he yelled, and jumped on back as I turned around.

It was a hard pull back to the main road because I was already tired, so I turned pedaling over to Fred from there. He took off, being fresh, and all I had to do was sit on back and let the wind fly though my hair and listen to the tires sing. In a few minutes, we come over a rise and there, about a mile away, we could see the tent lit up with people walking in and out in the twilight and the sounds of “Shall We Gather at the River” as we coasted down through pockets of warm and cool air, and went boiling into the gap that Mr. Raney had cut in his road wire fence.