Blood Kin (12 page)

“So we got rules in this here Jesus church. In His name we got
rules
to keep this a holy place! First rule being no sluts!”

There was a scattering of
amens
.

“Second rule being no blasphemers, no drunkards, no adulterers!” This time the amens were more numerous and spirited.

“In this here church there’ll be no dancing, smoking, chewing, or drinking.”

“Praise God!”

“We dont need no beer, tobacca, or swearing.”

“Praise Jesus!”

“We’re the lucky ones — we’re
inside
the sanctuary of our Lord Jesus’s loving arms! They tell us in the
Book of Revelation
, they tell us outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. But once you’re inside the church you’re safe from all that. In fact you can take the church wherever you go, because this church, it aint just a building, it aint no single place, this here church is a state of mind!”

“Oh yes, Jesus! Praise be his name!”

“And I’ll tell you something else. We dont need no
store bought
medicine — that’s for fools!”

A man stood up in the back and shouted, “Took some of that last winter when I was sick and didn’t do me a
bit
of good!”

“If you take medicine for your ills it’s a sure sign you aint got no faith!” the preacher shouted. The man, looking embarrassed, sat down. The preacher started walking back and forth at the front of the church like he was nervous, like he could hardly contain himself. “If you’re sick, take it to Doctor Jesus! If you’re troubled, take it to Doctor Jesus!

“There are some things we weren’t
meant
to understand! That’s why we’ve got
faith!
If you got
faith
you dont
need
to understand!”

An old woman stood up and raised her arms, walking in circles and shaking her hips, shouting, “Looky here, I got faith. I got faith!”

“Thank you, Sister, I know you do! I know you do. And I know some of you come a long way to be here tonight. But I think some of you came expecting salvation to come
easy
.”

“Not us, preacher!” someone shouted from the back. “Aint nothing good come easy!”

“Amen, Brother, amen. Aint that the
truth?
It aint like it weren’t no hardship for Our Lord Jesus Christ! It weren’t no easy ride for him! No sir! You ever get the spikes nailed through your hands you tell
me
how easy it was!”

The preacher was walking up and down the center aisle, crouched low, prowling like a thief sneaking up on a chicken coop, and laying his feet down so that his shoes just slapped against the floor, and with each shoe slap he made a
Huh
sound, like he’d just been punched in the gut. “Sometimes we fail. Huh. Sometimes we sin. Huh.” It seemed the silliest thing, but the folks in the congregation couldn’t keep their eyes off him.

“I tell you there aint no rewards on this earth. Huh. I dont care how much you own. Huh. There aint no rewards. Huh. No sir! Huh.” Then he got down even lower and darker looking if that was possible. He was walking so low it was like an animal in a dark coat prowling up and down the aisle. “Every step we take is a step toward death! Huh! Ever crawl of a tiny little baby is a crawling toward death! Huh!”

“Oh, Jesus, it’s true!” a lady in the front row wailed. “Every step we take!”

“But Jesus, he gives us his con-so-lation!” The preacher had stood up and was half-shouting, half-singing. “He takes us in his-o-so-loving arms! Sing with me now, would you? A little bit of ‘Bright Morning Stars.’”

The preacher started singing then, and Sadie had to admit he had a pretty fine singing voice, cept maybe a little low and growly for her taste. But he sang like that’s what he lived for, and everybody else, including Sadie, stood up then and joined him, repeating the lines he sang after he sang them.

Bright morning stars are rising

Bright morning stars are rising

Day is a breaking in my soul

Where are our dear mothers

Where are our dear mothers

Day is a breaking in my soul

They have gone to heaven a shouting

They have gone to heaven a shouting

Day is a breaking in my soul

And that last part, he shouted it more than he sang it, his head thrown back like he was shouting straight up at Jesus or God or whoever it was might be living up there, letting them know he was coming. Or
warning
them he was coming because Sadie figured that whenever he got up there there’d be Hell to pay.

He shouted those lines with all his voice would give him. He shouted like he was trying to make the deaf angels hear him, until his voice cracked and he had to preach hoarse for a while. His voice got rough and raw, and then it got all mournful sounding, like he was being tortured by demons.

And all the folk in the church were clapping and shouting and stomping like they’d all gone crazy, like they’d shouted out their minds, their eyes closed and their mouths open so wide it was like their jaws were broken.

This went on for a long time until the preacher just stopped it all of a sudden. Grinning, and mopping his forehead with an old gray hanky, he raised his hand and said, “Enough! That’s enough now!” And the rest of them, they just stopped like they’d just been turned off. “Lordy, dont it feel good,” he said.

“Amen, amen,” they all said.

“But it takes a lot out of you, man my age.” There was scattered, soft laughter. “Well, then, anybody here needing healing? I
know
I do!” He laughed. “But anybody else?”

He said that last part so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, but the people responded, several walking up the center aisle slowly, mostly women, making a line. One by one he took them in hand, pulling them into a firm embrace, and then laying his hands on their shoulders, then their faces, then other parts of their bodies.

None of them announced what was wrong with them, and the preacher didn’t tell. But almost everybody in the hollow over the age of twelve had some kind of ailment, some injury — rheumatism and arthritis in the older folks, crippled limbs or wounds or at least a couple of unpopped Bible cysts in the ones younger. Pain was living up here in the mountains.

All during this he spoke softly to them, occasionally raising his face to the ceiling to croon aloud “Glory be to God!” and “Praise be!” then tilting his head back towards them, sometimes touching forehead to forehead, whispering to them like he was their boyfriend or something, rubbing their backs, then looking up to the ceiling again and shouting “By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God — !” And their bodies would jump and wiggle like they were throwing some kind of fit.

Now and then somebody’d fall to the floor after he said something to them, like they’d been overcome, couldn’t control themselves. All of them women, the ones falling. And when they fell, it was like it was catching, because other women out in the congregation started falling too, so pretty soon there were so many women lying on the floor of that church Sadie was afraid they were going to get stepped on, because the other people still standing up were all dancing around and shouting, she guessed celebrating that these folks were going to get healed.

“Behold the words of Micah!” the preacher shouted. “‘They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth.’”

She didn’t understand — were all these women like the preacher’s girlfriends or something, or like Jesus’s girlfriends? Because they acted that way. They acted like they loved the very dust he stepped on.

The preacher was bent over one young woman now, praying loudly and speaking so fast Sadie couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. He put one hand on the woman’s head and the other practically between her legs. She snapped and moaned. “Jesus, let me not help her as a man helps a woman, but as your instrument, oh Lord Sweet Jesus!” Then he turned his head and Sadie swore he was looking straight back into her eyes.

No one else seemed to be watching the preacher. The women were hopping up and down in their plain seed sack dresses. The men in their dull white shirts and overalls were hollering and waving their heads around with their eyes closed. All of them were stamping their feet and clapping their hands. Somebody brought out a tambourine, and then another, and another still. Like it was a miracle like that story about Jesus and the loaves and the fishes, the miracle of the multiplying tambourines! Somebody was banging on a beat-up guitar. A bunch of people were beating on their pews, slapping their chests and their thighs and making nonsense sounds come out of their wide open mouths.

They were like a bunch of wild people with their lips loose, tongues flapping, eyes rolling. Sadie’s ears were splitting from the shrieks that surrounded her like she was in the middle of some kind of whirlwind.

“Oh how I love Jesus!” The preacher was standing again and shouting, waving the little Bible around in the air. “Oh I dearly love him so!”

A couple of tall, skinny men were dancing wildly.
No
, Sadie reminded herself,
these people dont dance
. So those were two skinny men wildly worshipping, their four feet moving as if they were on fire, faster than what she thought feet could move, like four independent animals in their hard leather shells moving like their little animal brains had exploded.

One of the men bent backwards so that his back was practically floating above the floor, his shoulders pumping like he had motors in them.

The preacher ran over to the man and all around him, pointing. “See how the power of the Holy Ghost gets on him! See how this man can move when it’s the Lord holding onto them legs!”

The man straightened up as if the preacher’s voice had electrocuted him. Eyes shut, hands waving, the man started walking slowly backwards in circles. He did it so deliberately, so rhythmically; it was like a dance, but in reverse.
It was a Jesus dance!
Sadie thought, and made herself laugh.

Then the fellow’s spine jerked suddenly, snapping like a whip and he fell to the floor. She stopped laughing. Was the preacher making this happen?

“See! See what Jesus can do?” the preacher shouted. He ran to the poor man on the floor and started dancing around him. Other men joined him in the circle, bodies jerking wildly as if an electrical jolt was passing from one dancer to the next.

Other members of the congregation, both men and women, moved around the group, making circles around circles, gyrating, jerking, and praising the Lord. They turned into a mass of straining faces, their hands raised and shaking.

She stood up, not wanting to be the only one still sitting, not wanting to be singled out, but she couldn’t see any way she could ever make herself move like they did.

Sadie froze watching as the congregation slowed down and member after member dropped to the floor or onto the benches — pale, worn-out, quivering — the preacher started pacing with his head thrown back, staring at the ceiling. “What’s that Lord? Oh, I know we can do better. If we cant do better I’m not doing my job, and Lord if I cant do better you should take me now. I am in your hands, Lord, in your hands! I have no will except whatever will you would give me. I have no life except whatever life you care to bless me with!”

One old woman who’d never sat down, who’d just kept going and going even when much younger folk had collapsed — began to scream and bark and lurch. She suddenly went stiff, grabbed her chest and fell to the floor. Sadie leaned forward, sure the woman had had a heart attack, but no one else seemed at all concerned.

The preacher pranced over her body a few times shouting “Take these, our pitiful garments of flesh! God is good! God is great!” He ran up and down beside her. Sadie was sure he was going to step on her. But the old woman didn’t move at all. Maybe she was already dead, and it didn’t matter what terrible things folks did to her body now. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! John 5:25! ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.’” The preacher held out his hand and one of the men handed him a bottle with some oil in it. The preacher crouched over the old woman and took an oily finger and drew a cross on her forehead. Still she didn’t move. Somebody had to do something! And then mercifully two big men went up to the front and carried the old woman outside.

Then all the folks looked like they’d been poured out on the floor, their faces all white but for the shadow around the pits of their eyes. Some of them had a hard time figuring out where they’d been sitting, wandering up and down the aisle and whispering, the preacher glaring at them the whole time until somebody took pity and made a space for them. Several men were still standing, weeping on each other’s shoulders.

Several of the members sitting in the front pews still wiggled around as if they were in the grips of a great emotion or simply out of their minds in pain. They folded up their bodies, mouths stretched out like their faces had frozen at the extremes of some scream, flesh sweating so badly Sadie wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d actually started sweating blood.

The preacher didn’t say anything for a while, just walked around as if he was taking the measure of his flock, deciding who was wanting and who had even a little chance of pleasing him in this life. He had a sour expression, like he’d just eaten a bad piece of fruit but wasn’t about to give anybody the satisfaction of throwing it up. Sadie slunk in her pew, sure that if he even looked at her she’d start bawling and not be able to stop.

“As much as I love these hills I cant deny it’s a hard life, harder than most I reckon. You pay for living here with your blood and your kin’s blood. And if you got a last name of Gibson, or Collins, or half a dozen other’n well I dont need to tell you folks life can be harder still. There’s people in this here county would as soon spit as smile on you and your kind. Same as the rest of the country I reckon. They dont know us. They dont care what happens to us.”