Days of Little Texas (26 page)

My eyes sweep the crowd, looking for any flash of blue. All I see are the people standing and clapping, cheering, banging the chairs in front of them.

I roll my head a couple of times, arms raising, just like they don’t weigh a thing anymore, till I’m holding them up to heaven. Listening to the screams, I feel it starting in my chest, and it runs out to the tips of my arms like righteous electricity. My eyes close, and the Spirit begins to pour in.

Gradual as anything, they start to settle back down in their chairs, looking at me. Here and there an “Amen!” breaks out. I swing my head, watching them, catching an eye, seeing
their faces change. They don’t understand that I’m not in control of it. They don’t understand there is no switch I can turn on or off.

“We love you, Little Texas!” somebody hollers.

I hear coughs, murmurs, people whispering questions to each other. I stand there, waiting for a word, waiting for some kind of sign. I close my eyes.

Please, dear Lord, help me
.

“Tonight,” I say, on account of I know I have to say something, but the word barely comes out of my mouth.

I cough to clear my throat and start again, eyes still closed, but voice a little bit louder.

“Tonight.”

I watch the dark behind my eyelids. At first it’s nothing but black, not a spot of white, but then—then I see it; I see a
name
floating against the black. A name glowing so white-hot a rip starts to open up in the blackness behind it, and the white begins to pour through.

“Tonight.” A third time, feeling a little bit stronger, holding on to the sound of my voice. I focus on the name, bearing down, and the tear in the black gets wider and wider, till the white starts to flood out all over, filling my head with light.

“Tonight
.” Feeling the white burn its way through my chest, my arms, lifting them up. And the words begin to spill out of me to overflowing, loud and certain, building into that familiar, unstoppable rhythm. I open my eyes and—

“Tonight
. I wonder how many of you can remember,
ah!
How many can remember a man from the book of
Daniel, ah!
His name was
Shadrach, ah!
and he had two friends,
ah!
Meshach and Abed-nego,
ah!
and they refused,
ah!
I say they
refused, ah!
to fall down and worship the idols,
ah!
of old King Nebuchadnezzar,
ah!
And Nebuchadnezzar,
ah!
he had them
bound, ah!
by his strongest warriors,
ah!
and cast into the fiery
furnace, ah!
But when Nebuchadnezzar went to
open
the furnace,
ah!
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego,
ah!
they all came tumbling out from the fires,
ah!
Not one hair of their heads was singed,
ah! And
old King Nebuchadnezzar,
ah! he
fell to his
knees, ah!
and said, ‘Blessed be the God of Shadrach’!”

The people are on their feet, clapping, raising their hands, cheering, praying, saying “Praise Jesus!” and “Amen,
amen
” over and over, screaming my name.

My hands are floating. My feet are moving. I’m scooting back and forth ’cross the stage with a bubbling, churning energy that nearly lifts me off the earth. I don’t know what I’m saying now on this dark night in the middle of this old, burnt-out plantation on Devil Hill, but it’s gushing out of me like a waterfall: cities on fire, plagues of flies and toadfrogs, rivers of blood.

I can feel my head tilting back as I speak, everything quiet in me even though I know they are making a racket, everything slowing down till I can ’most see every thought in the air around me, see my words streaming into their bodies, changing them, making them to love me. Me. This is what keeps me doing this, I realize, letting go like this, taking my
most secret insides and turning them inside out for the entire world to see.

“Little Texas, Little Texas, Little Texas!
”

And I know whatever is on this island,
it
can’t do a thing, I know it doesn’t
dare
to do a thing—I’ve swollen up a hundred times my usual size. I could step right out in the water and wade to the other side without hardly getting my knees wet. It wouldn’t
dare
—it’s too afraid of
me
. Too afraid of the gift I’ve been given by Him.

“Come
on
,” I want to say, beating my boulder-sized fists on my chest. “You want to mess with me, come
on
.”

And then—right at the biggest part of it, right when I think I could
grow
myself all the way to glory—that’s when I see her.

She is standing right up front wearing yellow shorts and a checkered top and waving her arms over her curly head—a big woman, big-boned as Miss Wanda Joy—she screams out and falls to her knees, then comes down hard on all fours and begins to crawl around, thrashing her head side to side. Twisting her neck so hard you’d think she would twist her head right off. And she’s saying something, her mouth chewing the air, fighting to get the words out.

“Abbeennddi! Jut! Abbeennddi! Jut!
”

The congregation is in a fever, but some of the folks nearby the woman can see what is happening. They go down, pulling at her arms, holding her to keep her from hurting herself.

“Abbeennddi! Jut! Abbeennddi! Jut!
”

Everybody is shouting now, with the woman’s voice on top of all of the others. She is frothing at the mouth, bubbles of pinkish foam spilling over her lips.

“Abbeennddi! Jut! Abbeennddi! Jut!
”

“Help her!” I say, coming forward on the stage, kneeling down. “Bring her up here! Help her to lay down.”

They are grabbing at her, but she is flinging them back, slapping at their hands.

“Abbeennddi! Jut! Abbeennddi! Jut!
”

“Hold her!” one of the men hollers.

People are crowding in so close, the ones at the front are starting to scream.

“Move back! Move back!”

“You’re crushing us!”

Miss Wanda Joy is up now, shoving her way through to see how she can get things under control again.

“Please! Let me through, please! Let me through!”

But before she ever reaches the woman—

A sound hits my ears.

Monstrous, loud, off in the woods. A sound with so much belly in it, it makes my legs go weak—
angry
.

I can tell the congregation feels the sound, too. I see them all sag at the knees at the same time when the sound hits— the whole mass of people sinking just like a weight is pressing them down, driving their heads toward the ground.

“Abbeennddi! Jut! Abbeennddi! Jut!
”

The men drop the woman and turn to face the sound. She lays there, wallowing and scratching. Then even she becomes still when the sound comes again, a big, long, honking blast. So hard-edged and powerful all the people flinch like they’ve been hit. And then just as sudden, it’s quiet—that in-between kind of quiet that is so much harder than regular quiet, on account of what you know is coming….

A tall hackberry—one of those kinds with long worms of raggedy bark on its trunk—it cracks. Splits and tears, just like it’s being struck by a giant invisible axe. A fifty-foot tree shivered down the middle and starting to fall.

The hackberry tree leans, then comes crashing down with a tremendous
whump
that goes all through your bones.

The hooting sound comes again, shaking right through my guts, smashing us with noise, and another tree sets up to shivering and thrashing not far from the hackberry. Then another. And another—pieces of limbs and branches thick around as pythons begin to jump and dance. Something … something is pushing its way through.

The sound rolls on and on, like it’s coming from the center of the island—a pin oak comes down next, then a white oak, then a black gum. More people are screaming now.

“Help me up!”

It’s Miss Wanda Joy; I realize she’s been screaming at me to help her up onto the stage, fighting her way through the squirming people. I get her big arm and haul back hard, but she’s too heavy; I can only get her partway up, and she flops across the treated wood. I get her to her feet, and the hooting stops in that in-between place; but with people screaming,
trees crashing down into the clearing, I can barely hear what she’s saying. She waves her arms at the crowd.

“Please! Please! We need to stay calm! We have to be orderly about this!”

She might as well be whispering in a sawmill.

It’s here
.

A pillar starts swaying.

“Run!
”

The whole congregation begins to move in a big pile-stumbling, cursing, kicking to get out, stepping on the hands and feet of other people, tumbling down the hill toward the pontoon boat.

The sound of their fear is so awful, it makes my heart ache. Another tree comes down, landing so close by it bumps me off my legs. I pick myself up and see Miss Wanda Joy on the grass below the stage, fighting two men who are pushing her toward the slope of the hill. I jump down from the stage and start toward her.

The first wave of people fleeing the clearing reach the pontoon boat, and I can see it shudder in the water, overloaded, as they pile aboard. Others in the water are clinging to the pontoons, dragging them under.

I don’t see Tee Barlow anywhere, just a gang of men on the boat trying to get it cranked. In between the blasts of the sound, you can hear them cussing and fighting over the steering wheel.

I am running toward the water just like everybody else when a new sound behind me makes me turn around and stare. I see a folding chair jump twenty feet in the air all by itself. I stop dead-still on the slope. Another empty chair shoots up, higher than the first. Then another, and another and another—for just a second the big gang of people pushing and hollering stop to gawk and tremble.

“Come, Lord Jesus! Come, Lord Jesus!” a woman is saying over and over, her arms upraised.

Some of the last words in the Bible
.

Icy prickles run up my back. Whatever it is, it’s slowly coming closer and closer.

The sound starts up again, rolling across the water, filling up all that empty distance. I flash on the old town of Vanderloo, streets and buildings and light poles, two hundred feet down. Like it’s calling to something down there.

Now folks are shoving each other out of the pontoon boat even as new ones try to climb in. Some start punching, people grabbing at each other when there’s not enough room to swing.

People are tumbling into the water. Some are jumping in on purpose, swimming heavy as horses out toward the dark, deeper water. I clap my hands over my ears, trying to shut out the sound.

Miss Wanda Joy comes dodging out of a pile of folks, arms scratched, her hair bun snatched loose, locks all wild and witchy. She pulls me to her and crushes my face into her shoulder.

“Please,” she’s saying. “Please.” Just that, over and over.

There’s a little trickle of blood just under her left eye.

“Look at me!” I shout. “Look at
me
.”

“Please—what—what can we do, Little Texas? What can we do?”

“We’ve got to get the people off this island! We’ve got to do it
now
. They can’t all go in the boat!”

I have never seen her cry before. Not once. “Why would He allow this? Please tell me why.
Why?
”

“No time for that!” I say.

I take her arm and run, half dragging her down toward the water, but away from the swarming dock. We hurry deeper into the shadows, beyond the reach of the lights. I take off my suit coat and wrap her in it, then touch at her cut with my shirttail. Tee Barlow is standing not ten feet away beside a log. His clothes are muddy, and grass is clinging to his white beard.

“Tee!
” Miss Wanda Joy says. “What are we going to do?”

“It’s the Judgment,” Tee Barlow says. “That’s what it is. ‘Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous—’”

I grab hold of his shirt and yell into his face.

“Keep her here! Don’t let her go near that dock!” I shove her into his arms.

“What are you …?”

But I’m already gone, running slantways across the hill to where the people are struggling to get in the water. I’m trying
to think clearly as my heart thuds. Sooner or later whatever is tearing up the tabernacle is going to come down this hill.

“Over here!” I holler. “Over here! This way, come this way!”

They just go on fighting and pulling at each other, struggling with the boat. Then a huge cracking sound comes from up on the hill. The chairs have stopped flinging themselves all over. The stage, the place where I was standing just moments ago, rears up in the middle, timbers rising up and up, wood splintering, screeching.

So much power
.

The rented pulpit comes apart in one big, shivery scream of tearing, the sound of the busting wood mixed with the shrieking of the nails wrenching theirselves loose.

Something runs through the crowd fighting around the pontoon boat—the way a horse’s skin will wiggle and crawl— and just like that, all the faces turn, the whole crowd turns to me.

“Little Texas! It’s Little Texas!” some of them start screaming. “Go to him! Go to Little Texas!”

They start at a rush, pushing and shoving and screaming, all barreling down on me now.

“This way! This way!” I say again and again.

I take off running, hurrying fast as I can toward higher ground, away from the dock, but away from the clearing, too. They are all running after me crosswise over the slope, heading in the same direction I am heading.

Toward the old railroad trestle.