Days of Little Texas (25 page)

When I wake up there is a knock at my door. The last little bits of a dream about Lucy melt away. The knock comes again.

My head clears, and I remember about Sugar Tom and the plan I made with Lucy. My heart tightens. I haul on my pants and go to the door.

“Well, good morning,” Miss Wanda Joy says. “It’s about time.”

Her eyes are dark, exhausted, but lit up all the same. She is wearing a long black dress and holding a New Testament with a blue cover.

“Today’s the big day, Little Texas.”

“Yes’m.”

“Well, we have much to do, so please come along.”

I pull on my shirt and shoes and follow her down. Miss Wanda Joy stops me on the stairs, takes out a pocket comb, licks the palm of her hand, and smooths my cowlick back. She has been doing this long as I can remember. She does it two or three times before she’s satisfied. I notice her hands are trembling.

“Is everything all right?” I say. “You look tired.”

“I’m fine. Everything is ready. After breakfast I want you to spend a quiet day indoors before the congregation arrives.”

“Have you heard anything from Certain Certain about Sugar Tom?”

“No. And I don’t expect to for a while. He has a long road ahead of him. We need to dedicate tonight’s service to him.”

I think long and hard before I ask my next question.

“Did Certain Certain tell you about what we saw in the dirt all around Sugar Tom’s chair?”

“The cloven hooves? I know about that. What did you expect him to do?”

“Satan, you mean?”

“We’re taking his sting away. Our faith is too strong, our mission too righteous. He knows that. All he can do now is childishly act up.”

“What happened to Sugar Tom wasn’t childish.”

Miss Wanda Joy takes my face in her hands, eyes burning direct into mine. She doesn’t say anything, just stares,
squeezing harder and harder till I can feel a tear track down my cheek.

“Tonight we are going to fight one of the Lord’s battles, Little Texas. Tonight we are His warriors. Should we put down our swords and leave the field to the enemy without a fight? Romans, chapter sixteen, verse twenty. ‘And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.’”

She lets my face go. I can still feel the imprint of her big fingers. She touches the cover of her little Bible to the tear on my cheek and scrapes it away.

“Let’s go downstairs,” she says. “They’re waiting for us.”

At the breakfast table Faye Barlow asks about Sugar Tom and looks at me with a secret hurt all over her face. I know what she really wants to say:
I warned you. Didn’t I warn you?

“With the Lord’s help and our prayers, I’m sure Sugar Tom will make a complete recovery,” Tee Barlow says. He has us bow our heads and says an extra-long grace.

“Well, thank you, Tee,” Miss Wanda Joy says when we open our eyes again. “So how is the weather report?”

“Couldn’t be better. High sixties to low seventies when the sermon is scheduled to begin. Not much humidity, a
bit of a breeze coming off the lake. We won’t need the tent.”

Miss Wanda Joy has made out some notes for me, and I spend a little time pretending to go over them, then wander around the house, slipping into the den to watch TV when Faye Barlow is not around. The day creeps by but also moves too quick. It’s not that it lasts so long, but that I can feel each drip of its passing.

I head back upstairs to read after lunch. Usually on the day of a service I spend a lot of time talking with Certain Certain and playing chess with Sugar Tom. It feels awful lonesome not having them around. But it’s worse than that. Without them I feel like I’m going into battle without my armor. I pray our plan will work.
If it doesn’t…

Don’t think like that
.

I fall asleep late in the afternoon and dream of that same farmhouse that is all white on the inside, and I’m walking through it.

Black sludge starts streaming down the walls. It spills over my feet, starts climbing up my ankles, then my shins, getting deeper and deeper. I can’t find the way back out….

I force myself awake. It’s still daylight, and somebody is tapping on the door. I sit at the little table with my book to look like I’ve been reading all along and tell the person to come in. It’s Faye Barlow. I feel my jaw tighten.

“I’ve been feeling so guilty and sad, Ronald Earl,” she says.
“Knowing things aren’t right between us.” She comes across the room holding a big plastic bag draped over one arm. It looks to be a suit of dark clothes. “I brought you something for the service.” I guess I’m looking at her kind of nervous, because she turns around and says, “Don’t worry. I’ll hide my eyes while you try them on.”

I slip into the suit. The pants are just right; nothing is bunched up or loose. It’s the first time in years I’ve had a suit on that is truly my size.

“It fits perfect,” I manage to say, holding my arms out to check the sleeves. “Thank you.”

“You look
wonderful
,” Faye says, turning around. “So handsome. I want you to keep it.” She fiddles with the shoulders, then knocks some lint off my back.

“Is it… Mr. Barlow’s?”

She walks over to the chair but doesn’t come any closer. “It belonged to a cousin of mine, a boy named Bradley. He moved here when his mother, my first cousin, was sick, and there was really nowhere else for him to go. He lived with us nearly a year. Such a beautiful singing voice!”

I can feel some pain in her voice, and I let her go on.

“He—Bradley—he had an accident over in Morgan County. A drunk driver. Bradley was in the passenger seat, and he—he was killed.”

“Oh. Lord. I’m sorry,” I say, feeling uncomfortable. All of a sudden the suit feels a little tight.

“It—it was just so sad. He was
such
a beautiful boy in so
many ways. I’ll miss him always. The last time we ever decorated for Christmas, it was Bradley who did it.”

I put my hand on the material, running my fingers across the neat stitching, trying not to think about it. That this was a suit worn by a person who is
dead
. I slip the coat off and lay it on the bed.

“Well,” Faye says. “I just wanted you to have that.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“Tee said to remind you, he will be leaving about four o’clock.”

“That early?”

“He’s going to start ferrying people over at four-thirty. He wants you to be on the island to receive them as they come over.”

“Wait—you said ‘he.’ Aren’t you coming?”

Faye gives me a pleading look.

“I’m sorry, Little Texas—Ronald Earl—I’ve decided I can’t be there. Not after dark. I would walk a hundred miles to hear you speak—anywhere but on that island.”

“I understand.”

“Please—please don’t feel mad. And don’t mind me. My husband—he’s embarrassed enough as it is.”

“It’s all right. Thank you again for the—for the suit.”

We eat an early dinner, and my heart feels like a pebbly stone is stuck behind it. And every time it beats against the stone, I can feel it, every little pit and pockmark.

I give my black shoes a quick shine, then say a long prayer
holding on to my Bible, kneeling in front of the bed, eyes shut. I read once that this is not how the early Christians prayed. They prayed standing up, looking up at heaven, with their hands in the air.

“They must have been an optimistic bunch,” Sugar Tom has always liked to say.
Sugar Tom …

I’m not putting myself up there with our Lord and Savior, but I can’t help thinking—when Miss Wanda Joy comes to fetch me—how they found Jesus in the garden and led Him away. Him knowing all along what was coming.

We head down to the dock, with me toting the prayer box instead of Certain Certain. Miss Wanda Joy has on a long blue dress I’ve never seen before; she must have just gotten it in town. I’m surprised. She is smiling, eyes like bubbles of shiny ink.

“You ready?” Tee Barlow calls.

Miss Wanda Joy grins.

“‘And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’”

“Amen, sister,” Tee Barlow says.

Three of the volunteers are waiting on us when we get down to the dock. We all shake hands. The men are quiet. They all have hairy arms and look strong. It makes me feel a little better knowing men like this will be there with us.

Tee Barlow waves us into the pontoon boat. It’s a little strange being in a boat dressed in a suit. I have to stand up
the whole way to make sure I don’t mess up my pants. We swing out into the water, and as the boat slowly passes under the skeleton of the trestle, I can feel the long shadows of the iron crosspieces ripple over my shoulders.

I touch the little piece of brick in my pocket.

Lucy—are you with me?

Tee Barlow steers the boat up to the dock on the far side, and the men scramble out. I help Miss Wanda Joy step out, and we meet several other volunteer folks on our walk up the hill. They clap me on the back, offering best wishes and prayers. Miss Wanda Joy swishes through them like a queen.

It’s funny how this part of being a preacher is something I’ve never gotten used to, being amongst people telling you how great you are. I don’t feel great. I feel… small. Not young. Just small.

The clearing is already clotted with hundreds of folding chairs lined up in ranks. On the far side of the columns is a
tall metal tree full of lights that look like silvery pots of fire. The shadows of the pillars run almost to the water’s edge.

Somebody has stretched a banner across the old second-story railing with letters at least two foot tall, done up in paint so red it reminds me of blood.

“Perfect,” Miss Wanda Joy says to Tee Barlow.

“We aim to please,” he says, swelling fit to bust. “Praise His name.” He says something to the workers, then heads down the hill to start ferrying the congregation folks over.

I follow Miss Wanda Joy up on the stage. A little room has been fixed up there with raw pine lumber hung with green curtains so we can sit in private before the service. The stage
is built of pressure-treated two-by-sixes, green and splintery, giving off a funny smell. I can see the sawdust in the grass.

I open the prayer box up, take out the King James, and spread it open to First Corinthians. With no Sugar Tom here, it’ll be left to Miss Wanda Joy to get the crowd roused up, and she can’t do it the way he can—so I know she’ll lean extra heavy on the scriptures.

We sit down together in the dark of the little curtained room, looking at each other, and Miss Wanda Joy’s foot goes to tapping.

“You know how special it would be if Daddy King could only be here to see you tonight?” she says, smiling. “This kind of service was his meat. I remember one time—it was during the riots in Birmingham—we set up the tent in Hoover, near the worst of where it was going on. I was just a girl then. A year removed from mother’s heart attack. Lost, alone, still grieving, though I didn’t even know what that was then. I
clung
to that man—he was so strong. You should have seen him standing there, jaw like a stone, turned to face that crowd. We didn’t know what to expect—there was talk among some that they would come and set fire to the tent, burn us out.”

She lifts her head and looks at me. “Those churches that were bombed—you simply don’t know what it was like, Little Texas. The
atmosphere
. I heard a man beg Daddy King to cancel the service. He just stared at the man until he slunk away. And I knew—I
knew
, looking at that face—everything would
be all right. He was that kind of man. Nobody would
dare
try anything with him around. And they didn’t. And I have never worried about it since.”

I wonder if this is her way of saying I’m not turning out to be the kind of man Daddy King was. Always testing, always pushing. Or maybe:
Here’s your chance to show me
.

Through the curtain flap I spy the first load of worshippers pulling up at the dock. It looks like a good-sized party, most dressed in white or light colors, at least a dozen or more.
It is officially too late
. Fear or no fear, I can feel the hum starting up behind my eyes, can feel the white inside of my head start to build.

It takes a good while to get the tabernacle full. Tee Barlow makes the runs as fast as he can, but there are still more and more of them coming. From the hill I can see the Barlow pasture dotted all over with cars and folks streaming down to the dock. I like seeing them come. Maybe if we fill this place to brimming, that will be enough. What can it do to five hundred people?

The light is sinking now. I reach into my pocket to feel for Lucy’s brick.

I stand up, horrified. These pants have long, bunchy pockets where things can fall out if you don’t pay attention or cross your legs too much. I kneel down, looking all over this end of the stage. There is nowhere I can see that it might have fallen through.

“What’s wrong?” Miss Wanda Joy says.

“Nothing. It’s nothing,” I say, going through my pockets again.

“Did you lose something? Your notes?”

“No!
”

Where could I have dropped it? I swear I’ll go over every inch of this ground if I have to….

Every seat is already filled, and still they are coming. The congregation has bulged out around the edges of the old plantation house. At least 150 people are standing.

I see Tee Barlow tie off the pontoon boat and start up the hill. The only thing left of the daylight is a purple-orange glow on the horizon as the night settles on us. I look straight up, but I can’t see the stars much, on account of the blazing lights.

Miss Wanda Joy quits tapping and gets to her feet.
“It’s time
.”

The crowd almost instantly settles down the minute she swoops around the curtain, eyeballs firing. She marches up to the pulpit, looks down at the words in the book. Scans the congregation.

“Welcome, welcome to all of you here today. I thank you so much for coming to our first revival meeting here at Vanderloo Plantation. I want to recognize Mr. Tee Barlow for everything he has done to make this happen.”

She starts clapping, and the crowd does, too, kicking their feet on the back legs of the chairs in front of them. Tee stands and waves his arm, looking pretend shy.

“Little Texas!” someone hollers in the back.

“Bring on Little Texas!” A woman this time.

Miss Wanda Joy holds her arms up for quiet.

“Reading,” she says, touching the tip of her finger to her tongue and flipping pages, “from First Corinthians. ‘For Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel: not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of none effect.’”

She reads for a while longer, with the people getting more and more restless. “We come three hours!” I hear somebody say. Miss Wanda Joy finally snaps the book shut and looks up.

“And now, the person you’ve all been waiting for, the miracle of the healing age, the wonder born of the blood of the Lamb,
Little Texas!
”

A great rolling roar sweeps over the stage, exploding from more throats than I’ve ever spoke in front of before. Foot stomping, hand clapping, whistling, chair banging, shouting; I can feel it not just in my ears, but in my whole body. Like being dipped into a vat of pure liquid love.

It’s time. My time.