Caleb's Wars (15 page)

"Like me?" Pop looked like he was trying to hold back a smile. "If you say so."

"He did indeed," Uncle Hiram said warmly.

"The angel was a Negro?" Ma asked.

Uncle Hiram nodded. "Dressed in a blue work shirt and overalls."

A warm, tingly feeling was creeping up my backbone, and I felt lightheaded again. But then I remembered: it was just a dream. Anything was possible in a dream.

"What happened next?" Ma asked.

"He sit down 'side me and took out a little bottle from his bib pocket. Then he opened it and poured out some oil onto my hands and begun to rub it into my fingers and knuckles. It smelled so sweet, it put that ol' jasmine and honeysuckle to shame! And soon as he begun to work it in, my hands started gettin' warm. It felt right good. Seem like it lasted a long time. I don't recollect anything after that, but when I woke up, my hands was healed!"

He held up both hands and turned them one way and another, like he had to prove to himself it was true.

I looked over at Pop, wondering what he was thinking. He was in the same place, arms still folded, looking at Uncle Hiram the way you might look at a two-headed mule.

Ma broke the silence. "Uncle Hiram, we're so happy for you. A miracle! Right here in Toad Hop. Oh"—she went to him and took his hands in hers—"I can hardly believe it!"

"Me either, honey," he told her. "I thought I was gonna have to wait until I come to glory to get back my hands like they use to be. But now..." He got to his feet. "I got to go outside, get myself together. I know y'all don't want to watch a old man bawl like a baby."

"This calls for a celebration," Ma said. "Aunt Lou, why don't you come in the kitchen and help me get some cake and coffee together?"

Uncle Hiram went past Pop onto the porch, and Ma and Aunt Lou went into the kitchen. That left Pop and me. I kept my eyes down, but I knew his were fixed on me.

"So," Pop began. "You prayed for him and his hands got 'healed' while he was takin' his nap?"

"I guess so—I mean, yes, sir."

"And you believe
God
healed him?
Because
you prayed?" Pop asked the questions like he was trying to get things straight in his own mind.

I had to be careful now, or we'd get into a fight, and I didn't want that. "All I know is that I prayed for him after work, and what he just told us. That's all. I'm—surprised, too."

"You believe God healed him
because
you prayed?"

How many more times was Pop going to ask me that?

"I told you. I prayed for him and now his hands are all right. I don't know if God healed him because I prayed. Maybe God was going to do it anyway. I don't know."

Ma came back into the room, a tray in her hands. "Frank, let Uncle Hiram know we've got some pound cake and coffee ready."

I was off the hook, at least for a while. But after he finished his cake, Uncle Hiram said, "Ain't every day God give one o' his children the gift of healin', like he done with Brother Caleb here."

Brother
Caleb? That was a title reserved for the older men of the church.

"—and they's plenty o' folks what needs healin' even more'n I did." Uncle Hiram held up his hands yet again, staring at them like he'd never seen them before. "We got to tell 'em, get 'em over here so's Caleb can pray for 'em."

"Hold on, now," Pop told him. "Slow down a bit. Just because y'all think that Caleb might of had somethin' to do with all this ain't no reason to start up a sideshow in town."

"Frank!" Ma exclaimed.

Pop's eyebrows went up the way they did when he was irritated. "I don't mean no disrespect, Uncle Hiram, but once word get out that my boy is a so-called healer, we gonna have a circus on our hands. That ain't gonna happen if I can stop it."

I felt irritated. Why didn't Pop ask me what
I
wanted to do?

Uncle Hiram looked hurt. "You don't wanna deny folks they healin' if God really
has
done picked Caleb to be his chosen vessel, does you, Frank?"

"I don't know about all that. But I do know that Caleb ain't gonna be billed in town as no miracle worker."

"Wait a minute," I said. "Nobody's saying that."

Pop ignored me. "It ain't fair to him or anyone else. Even if they is some connection between him prayin' for you and what happen to your hands, ain't no guarantee it would happen again."

"But no one will ever know unless Caleb is allowed to try," Ma retorted.

Pop ignored her, too. "I won't have you sayin' that Caleb prayed for you," he told Uncle Hiram. "Of course you got to tell everyone about your hands—"

"Nothin' could keep him quiet 'bout that!" Aunt Lou exclaimed.

"—but please leave Caleb out of it," Pop finished.

"Isn't that for Caleb to decide?" Ma said.

"Ma's right," I declared.

Pop looked at me. "Not while you livin' under my roof. I ain't gonna have no religious craziness here with you at the center."

"I hears you," Uncle Hiram told Pop. "I don't agree with you, Frank, but I hears you. Ain't nobody gonna find out from me how the Lord done answered Caleb's prayer."

Once Uncle Hiram and Aunt Lou had left, I wanted to get off by myself before I blew up at Pop. Yeah, part of me was glad he spoke up. I was scared by the idea of folks knowing that God had answered my prayer for Uncle Hiram. I could imagine a line of people in the yard—the blind, the deaf, the crippled—trying to grab on to me, begging me to pray and heal them. I didn't want to be responsible for getting folks healed ... or blamed if they didn't get better.

But I was mad, too. Pop could have asked me about it instead of taking over like it was his duty—his
right
—to run my life.

Pop took up a newspaper. Ma tidied the kitchen, and I sat and stewed.

Just when I was ready to go to my room, Ma came back and sat down by me. "Today wasn't the first time God spoke to Caleb," she said to Pop.

I didn't want to open this up again. "Ma!"

"Your father
has
to know. It started the day he got baptized, Frank."

Pop put down his paper. "What did?"

"God
spoke
to Caleb that day. Three times. Tell him, son."

I kept quiet. The minute I said another word, the fight would begin.

"You heard your ma." Pop sounded resigned. "Let's hear the whole story so we can get it over with."

So much for what
I
wanted. "Ma's right. When I was under the water, God called my name and said, 'Behold my servant.' Then he said the same thing two more times when I was in the bedroom, changing clothes."

"
God
talked to you."

"Yes, sir."

"And you believe that, Lucy?"

"I do, Frank."

"And you both believe that because Caleb prayed for Hiram, God healed his hands."

We said we did.

"But
you
don't," Ma said to Pop. She had made this
her
fight now.

"No, sugar, I don't."

"But you can't deny that Uncle Hiram's hands are...
different
from what they were." Ma was choosing her words carefully.

"They are different. I allow that."

"But how do you
explain
it?"

"I can't," Pop admitted. "But they's lots o' things in this world I can't explain—can't
nobody
explain. The man's hands is better—that's the important thing."

"So you don't believe in the power of prayer? That God answers prayer and heals because people pray?"

I wanted to say
Pop doesn't even believe in God
but knew better.

I expected some kind of wisecrack, but Pop answered seriously. "Y'all might not believe me, but I give this a lot o' thought over the years, and in all honesty, I can't say that I do. I allow that prayer can help some folks
feel
better about things. Some folks need to believe they's a God in heaven who can help 'em, who might...
do
things for 'em. But life done taught me one thing, and the sooner Caleb learns it the better: a man got to do for
hisself
if he want anything in this world. And that's doubly true for the Negro man."

Ma was upset, I could tell, but she didn't raise her voice. "What about Negro women?"

"It ain't as important for women. They got men to look after 'em. That's the way it suppose to be. If a woman want to pray, ain't no harm in it."

Ma shook her head wearily.

Pop paused, like he was considering what to say next. "Probably ain't no harm in a man prayin', either. Long as he don't depend on the idea about a God doin' for him what he got to do for hisself."

"Then I suppose you think I'm wasting time praying for Randall!"

"Not if it give you strength to keep goin'."

"I don't care about my
strength.
I care about my
son!
I care about him coming home safely. I care about him not being killed!" Ma's voice got louder and louder. "And let me tell you something else, Frank Brown. As sure as I know anything, I know there's a God, and he's in heaven, and he hears our prayers. He spoke to Caleb the day he was baptized, and his Spirit moved Caleb to pray for Uncle Hiram, and he heard Caleb's prayer, and that's why that man is healed. If none of that's true, then I don't want to go on living in this world!"

Never in my life had I heard Ma talk to Pop like that. Pop looked shocked. Love for Ma surged through me, and I looked at her with new respect.

"Sugar, I didn't mean to upset you," said Pop. "But you and Caleb got to realize—"

"The thing I realize right now is how sorry I am for you. Life must be so hard when you don't have anything to believe in."

For once, Pop didn't have an answer, and I saw my chance. "You didn't explain what you think happened when I got baptized."

"Looks like I already done said too much. We best let it go."

I wasn't about to. "No. Tell me, Pop! I have lots of questions and no answers. Explain it to me so I can understand."

"All right, then." He took a deep breath. "You thought you heard from God 'cause o' your need to make yourself look important."

"That's unfair!" Ma exclaimed.

"Hold on, now. I ain't sayin' you done it on purpose, Caleb. But the mind is a funny thing. Maybe they was somethin' deep inside you, feelin' bad for all the messes you been makin' these past years, and to help you feel better, it gave you somethin' to hold on to. Somethin' to ... believe in."

"No, Pop. He
did
speak to me. I heard him."

"The mind can make us see things that ain't really there, hear voices nobody else can hear, believe unbelievable things, too. If you could go back in time and ask Ol' Nat Turner if he saw it rain black blood back in eighteen thirty-one, he tell you yes. Sister Johnson swear on a stack o' Bibles that Jesus show himself to her in a vision one day while she was boilin' laundry. Remember that, Lucy? Nobody can say she didn't see Jesus, but where her proof?"

"We can't expect that kind of proof," Ma answered sadly. She had calmed down now and looked bone tired.

Pop didn't argue that point. "If Caleb say that God spoke to him, I can't deny he believe it. If y'all believe that Uncle Hiram is healed 'cause God work a miracle, so be it. Like I said, the important thing is that the man's hands is normal now. What's it matter how it happened?"

"And what about what God said to Caleb? What does that mean?"

"How should I know? Nobody said nothin' to
me,
remember?"

"So you still don't believe?"

"No, sugar. They's been times when I wished I could, but I can't."

For the first time I could ever remember, I felt sorry for Pop.

Ma said nothing more.

Pop got up. "We see things different, Lucy, and that's all they is to it. Maybe it would be better if we all agreed about this stuff, but I don't see that happening."

Ma got up, too. She rubbed her hand over my head the way she used to do when I was little. "I love you, son," she said. "And I'm proud of you."

Then she went to bed, and Pop said he was going to sit on the porch. He said I was welcome to sit with him while he smoked his pipe, but I stayed inside. I had to be alone.

In the darkness of my room I tried to pray, but no words would come. I went back over everything that had happened that day, trying to remember the words I'd said when I prayed for Uncle Hiram. I couldn't. Then the questions came again, questions with no answers.

I
COULDN'T SLEEP
, so I pulled on clothes and went out the window. It didn't take much to rouse Nathan, and soon we were at the creek. I told him everything, beginning with praying for Uncle Hiram. I
had
to tell someone—someone who wasn't Pop, who didn't believe anything, or Ma, who believed everything.

I half expected Nathan to make a bunch of smart comments, but he didn't.

"Remember the day we got baptized and I accused you of hiding in my house and playing that joke on me?" I asked him.

"Yeah, but I didn't pay you much mind, 'cause I thought
you
was messin' with
me.
"

"I kind of wish that's all it was."

"It be a lot simpler all around if it wasn't the Lord God who decided to call you out. So what happens now?"

"I wish I knew!"

"You gonna share your secret with anybody else? I know someone who'd be right curious about it."

"Henry?"

"Yeah. And maybe his daddy'll let him be friends again, now that you gone and become such a holy man."

"Don't say that! I'm just the same as always."

It was too dark to see Nathan's face clearly, but I could sense him looking at me.

"No, you ain't, Caleb."

"What?"

"You ain't the same. If God been talkin' to you, workin' a healing through you—you ain't the same."

"Be serious! You don't believe all that stuff."

"I am bein' serious. Wish I could say it's just a bunch of ... you know, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I can't figure a better explanation. And..."

"And what?"

"And 'cause
you
believe everything you just told me."