Days of Little Texas (2 page)

I’m never sure what’s going to come out of my mouth during a service. Tonight, to get my courage up, I start the easiest way I know how. At the beginning. My life before joining up with the Church of the Hand. First, to help the words come, I close my eyes and remember.

Covington, Georgia.

We live in a trailer next door to the Oxnard Chemical Company. I can only remember the world ever smelling like one thing: Magic Markers. I don’t know if I’m five or six years old.

“We don’t keep up with birthdays much around here, little man,” Daddy says.

He’s big, always sweating, has hair the color of nighttime. “Half Cherokee,” Daddy tells people.

Today we’re working under the trailer. There’s cobwebs and mud dauber nests and creepy places only a snake would
like. Daddy is doing something with the long tubes of light that are shining under the bottom of the trailer.

“Walmart sunshine,” he says, and laughs. “That’s what makes the plants to grow.”

Daddy’s plants have pointed green leaves and are shaped like a hand with long fingers. “Don’t ever tell anybody about these plants,” he says, saying
shhhh
to his finger. “They’re magic plants, Ronald Earl.”

But I know he’s told some folks about the magic plants. I’ve seen them come at night to buy them. Men with cuts on their faces. Laughing boys with tattoos on their big arms. Skinny, quiet girls. Daddy keeps me in the trailer when he’s doing business. But I watch from the windows. I’m always watching.

Momma is short and heavy with skin the color of cracker crumbs and hair that blows in the breeze like feathers. She mostly sleeps a lot and listens to country music.

Momma calls me “my little accident.” Like I’m a car wreck. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and there is nobody else to play with. I can’t wait to start going to school, on account of watching the school bus go by. All those kids inside. I think it will be fun.

Sometimes my great-aunt, Miss Wanda Joy King, comes around.

“Women would kill for your complexion,” she always says to me. “It’s your father’s Indian mixed with your mother’s Swedish. Your mother is Swedish. Did you know that, Ronald Earl?”

“Church Lady!” Daddy calls her when she leaves. He won’t let Miss Wanda Joy take us to services. “More hair than brains,” he says.

After we’re done under the trailer, Daddy pushes me in my swing in the yard.

“Don’t be a pussy, Ronald Earl,” he says. I know being a pussy is not a good thing, on account of the look on his face. “All you have to do is let go of the chains, and you will fly. You’ll like it.” He pushes me higher and higher, but I can’t never let go. I start crying. Daddy cusses, calls me a pussy again, and stops pushing.

Our yard is nearly high as me in weeds. You never can tell what you might find. Pieces of cars, a Coca-Cola sign, cinder blocks, a sling blade. One morning there is a fat man with a beard lying in throw-up right next to my seesaw.

Our dog, Rusty, will just as soon bite your hand off as lick it, Daddy says. Sometimes men fight in the middle of the night in the gravel drive. Rusty barks and barks.

Tonight we drive the truck to another man’s place where Daddy says the man is clearing land for a footer. I don’t know what a footer is. There is hickory firewood stacked between two trees in the headlights. The ends of the logs are all in circles. Daddy says to hurry before anybody sees. I tote as much as I can carry, and we pitch it in till the truck is full.

Another night I wake up, and a red light is moving on the walls. I get up to look out the window, and Daddy is there. A man even bigger than Daddy and wearing a uniform is pushing
Daddy’s head into the sheriff’s car. Another man with a long pole puts something on Rusty’s neck and hauls him away. I go outside and see that the secret door to Daddy’s magic plants is open. His plants have all been cut down.

Daddy is gone a long time, and finally he’s just
gone
.

Miss Wanda Joy comes around. I’m sitting on the floor in the living room eating the marshmallow parts of the Lucky Charms straight out of the box.

“Where is your mother?” Miss Wanda Joy says.

I take her big hand and we head to the back, and I show her Momma laying in bed in her pink nightgown. Miss Wanda Joy jerks her up and calls her things and tells her Bible things. Momma goes back to sleeping, and Miss Wanda Joy goes away again.

A tall man comes to visit Momma. He stays awhile, laughing in her room. More men come. Not all of them laugh, but they keep coming.

Momma sleeps with the radio on. One day when I wake up, I don’t hear music coming out of her room. I open the door and she’s not there. I eat two bananas and a spotty apple clean to the core. The Lucky Charms box is full of camel flies.

It’s so quiet everywhere.

I watch for Momma. I walk up and down the trailer, looking out all the windows. I don’t like going in the bathroom anymore, the way it is now. I go in the bushes instead. Miss Wanda Joy catches me and tells me she’s going to jerk a knot in my tail. But she doesn’t after she takes me inside and sees.

Then she calls the sheriff. He comes over, and she tells him some things. They’re sitting in the living room talking quiet. But I can hear what they’re saying.

“But where
is
she?” Miss Wanda Joy says over and over. “His father’s in prison. I’m his only other living relative. How could she have just gone away?”

Miss Wanda Joy stays the night. The next morning she cleans and cleans, and I help.

The next day the sheriff comes again.

“They found her ten miles from here, Miss King,” he says. “With a man in his house.”

“A man?”

“Old boy was running a meth lab,” the sheriff says. “I don’t think your niece intended to abandon the child. There was a fire….”

“What are you saying?” Miss Wanda Joy says.

“I’m saying … there was a fire. And no one got out.”

Miss Wanda Joy beats her fist on the kitchen table. She beats it so hard, the legs are jumping. “That little
fool
. The stupid little fool.”

The sheriff says he’s sorry and leaves.

Miss Wanda Joy gets up from the table. “Get your things, Ronald Earl,” she says.

“Where’s Momma?” I say.

“You’re coming to live with me,” Miss Wanda Joy says.

She gets my clothes and lets me bring some of my other things in a box she gives me. It’s a box that some shoes came in.

I know without even looking, most of the women in the congregation are already crying. Now it’s time to tell them. Tell them about the day of my anointing.

The day I found my name.

San Angelo, Texas.

Now I’m ten years old, sitting at a picnic table with Sugar Tom and Certain Certain.

I can see a sun-blinded lake, bass boats racing by a gray wooden dock. We’re here to bring the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to the World-Famous Lake Nasworthy Lamblast and Chili Cook-off.

I’ve spent the morning earning my keep, helping Certain Certain, running errands, setting up folding chairs, hauling water. This is the first chance I’ve had to sit down all day.

“You know why Lake Nasworthy is world famous?” Sugar
Tom is saying. He taps a skinny paperback book laying on the table with a bony finger. “I’ve read about it right here in
Stories of the Strange
. In the 1960s a boy jumped off that very dock and came up covered in water moccasins.”

A chill runs all through me.

“Sounds like a damn fool,” Certain Certain says. “Jump in Lake Nastywater. You ever seen water so brown?”

“Matthew, chapter five, verse twenty-two,” Sugar Tom says. He’s talking about the verse in the Bible that says you will go to hell for calling someone a fool. He takes a mouthful of chili.
“Lord
, that is good. But I swan it’s incinerating my gullet!”

“Exodus, chapter twenty, verse seven,” Certain Certain says. “‘Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.’”

These two have done this long as I can remember— battled back and forth with holy scripture.

Sugar Tom gulps sweet tea. A mariachi band is booming over the loudspeakers. There’s hot food, folks are dancing, and even the air smells like something you want to bite.

But later in the evening when Sugar Tom begins his sermon, a huge storm comes up. Long thunder bumpers roll in off the lake, one after another. Even Miss Wanda Joy’s hair can’t stand up to the squall.

Right in the middle of the sermon, one of the tent poles comes loose, and me and Certain Certain rush over to fix it. We struggle with the pole while the canvas flaps around our
ears, making a snapping sound. I’m too little to do much of anything but hang on tight and watch the sky flash. That’s when I see the boy.

He’s a couple years older than me, standing a few yards away. His long hair is sticking straight up all over his head, like seeds on a dandelion. It’s the strangest sight I’ve ever seen.

The boy is grinning, saying over and over, “Look at this! Look at this!”

But everybody is paying too much attention to Sugar Tom and the storm. It’s like that boy is there just for
me
. My skin prickles all over watching his crazy smile and floating hair. I can feel it; something awful is about to happen.

My whole world goes white. A white so pure it’s what I figure it would be like staring into the face of the Lord. My eyes are knocked clean back in my head. The same instant there comes an almighty
boom
, and everything disappears.

When I come back into myself, my ears are clapping like bells and I’m not in the tent anymore. I’m sitting outside in the rain feeling cold, muddy water leaking into my pants. The colors of the trees on the shore look
reversed
.

Sugar Tom has stopped speaking—everything stands still for a heartbeat or two, then somebody screams.

But where is Certain Certain? I can’t see him anywhere. Then I see his legs wrapped in a piece of tent. I crawl over and pull the canvas loose.

Certain Certain is sprawled facedown in a mud puddle. I
tug hard and roll him over. His hair is stained with red clay. His eyes are closed, and his chest isn’t rising.

People are hollering and praying all over. They push up a circle around me, almost like they are too scared to touch him.

I start to cry.

I go down on my knees next to Certain Certain and lay my hands on his chest. Instantly his whole body jumps. It’s not really much more than a twitch, but to me it feels like he hopped six inches off the ground.

“Oh, my sweet Jesus,” a woman says behind me.

“Praise the Lord!” somebody else hollers.

“It’s a miracle,” a man says. “Blessed, merciful Lord.”

Certain Certain shakes all over and starts to sit up. His eyeballs flutter, then he tries getting to his feet. Some of the men catch him up under his arms when he falls.

“Somebody call an ambulance!” a man hollers out.

“Already on the way from Fort Sam,” somebody else answers.

“He
died
,” a woman says. “That man was stone dead. I
seen
it. This boy”—she points at me—“he laid
hands
on him and brought him back. I seen it, plain as day.” She jerks my arm up so hard, the rest of me follows. “You
healed
him,” the woman says. “You
resurrected
him.”

“I saw it, too!” somebody else yells.

“That’s the gospel truth.”

People are talking all over. There’s little moans here and
there, and some of the folks begin weeping outright, praising Jesus or kneeling in prayer, right there in the mud.

What happens next is like a dream. There I am, wet to the skin, muddy, scared to pieces, and everybody is clapping me on the back like I’m a hero. They tug me up to the front, where Sugar Tom is standing.

“Pastor Tom!” one of the men hollers. “This boy has performed a
miracle
.”

A bunch of other folks yell “Yes” and “Amen.” Next thing I know, I feel hands all over me, rubbing my wet hair, patting my back, hoisting me up on the stage.

I look at Sugar Tom, with my eyes saying,
What am I supposed to do?
There’s a microphone on the pulpit. Sugar Tom turns it on and sticks it in my hand. He smiles at me, saying, “Just open your heart, son.”

The congregation claps and hollers for me to speak. I can see Miss Wanda Joy standing in the corner, eyes digging holes in my face.

I look out across the crowd and see Certain Certain sitting on a folding chair. I lock eyes with him. And he smiles. Then he nods and says something that looks like
“Yes.
”

That’s all I need.

Ten years old, and the Holy Ghost comes up inside me for the very first time. I can feel it burning the soles of my feet, plowing its way up and filling every empty space. At first the feeling is frightening, and I’m light-headed, like I’m leaving my body behind.

I don’t remember one single solitary word of what I say. But they are still clapping and hollering an hour later.

Little Ronald Earl Pettway, of Covington, Georgia. Born in Texas.

Little Texas.