Fat Lightning (13 page)

“Ever been to one of those?” he asks Nancy.

“No.… Well, yeah, a bunch of us one time all went to the Lee X in Richmond. But that was indoors.… and I think all they showed was tits.”

At the road, Sam turns right instead of left, then takes the dirt road that leads to the Riverview's entrance.

“What about Wade?” Nancy asks, but Sam assures her that he'll sleep through anything. She doesn't dispute him. A girl too young to be legally admitted to the Riverview's double-features takes their money, glancing at the sleeping child in the back seat.

They park two-thirds of the way back, behind the brick hut that houses the projection room, snack bar and restrooms. The Riverview still has the heavy, head-shaped metal speakers, and Sam manages to hook the one nearest to the car window after dropping it to the ground once.

He slides over from behind the steering wheel as they start watching a feature that's already begun, about a housewife who's seduced by a young stranger and then blackmailed into committing various sexual gymnastics with other strangers, supposedly against her will.

“That what you do when I'm out working?” he asks Nancy as he slides his hand up her thigh. She turns a little, kissing him as he strokes her through her jeans.

“Yeah,” she says. “Two or three at a time sometimes,” and she feels him growing in her hand. “I just can't help myself. What about you and that clerk? Do you two take some long, hard breaks in the afternoon? Hmmm?”

Sam whispers things in her ear that she's never heard him say before, but she realizes that they're about to engage in sex for the first time in about a month, and she's willing to go along. She can remember when Sam wanted to make love to her all the time, and she never knew she'd miss those times so much, so soon.

The front seat is too crowded, with Sam, Nancy and the steering wheel. She sheds her jeans and panties and straddles him. Sam is able to wedge himself between the seat and the wheel, and Nancy rides him, realizing that they're fogging up the windows like a couple of teen-agers.

Afterward, as Nancy struggles to get dressed, Sam tries to rise and accidentally rests his left hand on the steering wheel's horn button. The loud blare is answered by two or three other cars in the general vicinity, and all the noise wakes up Wade.

Sam raises his head up and looks into the back seat, where their son seems to be wide awake.

“Buddy!” the boy exclaims.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

That Wednesday night, I wasn't expecting nothing. It was the heat that done it, I reckon.

After what that Basset boy calls the pilgrims had left, and he'd gone on back to his tent by the river, it was still too hot, and I got me a sudden urge to go riding with the window down. The air-conditioner in my trailer don't work so good, and besides, nothing feels good as that cool night air whipping by at 55 miles an hour.

So I fed Granger and then got the keys to the truck and took off, headed out to Route 17 and then up towards the river, nowhere special in mind. Crossed over, feeling that cool wind whipping up my shirt sleeve and something made me turn left, towards Murro.

Now, I hadn't been to Murro in years. No reason to. Ain't nothing there but a few colored folks that can't afford to leave. Before the war, me and Warren used to come up here to the bootleggers. But Warren didn't like to take me drinking with him.

What took me to Murro, I don't know, but soon as I passed the old town sign nobody'd bothered to take down, I seen the other one: Ebenezer Free Will Gospel Holiness Church, and I didn't know right off where I seen the name before. Then it come to me. Right there in my billfold. On that card she give me.

I hadn't never been in no colored church before. Just ain't done. But something told me to turn in. It wasn't nothing but a old white frame church that looked like it needed a paint job. Probably used to be the white church and then it wasn't good enough for 'em, so they let the coloreds have it. Just don't let 'em try to go to the white church. Damn hypocrites.

There was a covered place outside with benches, where they have picnic on the grounds, I reckon, and old rotten wood steps leading up to the porch. A couple of colored men my age, might of been deacons, just looked at me when I went in, and one started towards me and stopped, but they didn't say nothing.

Something led me in there, and I took a seat in the back, took my hat off. I could see right off there wasn't another white person in there, but after some of them stared at me, they seemed like they forgot I was there.

I couldn't hardly blame 'em. It was a service to make you forget. Wasn't like them mealy-mouthed sermons the Baptists used to have. And the one giving it to 'em was Sebara Tatum.

It wasn't like she was talking. Even before I got inside, I could hear the low moans and the organ music. Inside, it was sweaty and smelled like collard greens, and Sebara was giving 'em hell.

She was wearing that same blood-red robe she had on when they'd come to the barn to see Jesus, and her hair looked like it was copper in the light of that old church. She was light-skinned and didn't have one of them big flat noses like some of 'em has. She was right pretty. Sebara Tatum'd say a few words between breaths, a-saying some and a-singing some, with the organist hitting a note while she took another breath and them colored folks in the pews going, “Uh-huh,” and “Tell it, sister Sebara” and I don't know what-all else.

She'd lift her arms up towards heaven and say, “And the LOOOORRD told Adam,” singing the “Lord” part. Then she'd take a breath, then go, “He said GOOOO and be fruitful,” another breath, then, “But old SLEEEWWWFOOOT Satan,” another breath, then, “He SAAAIID to Eve,” another breath, “you can BEEE like God,” and she went on like that for must of been 45 minutes, some people crying and falling in the aisles. One woman got so caught up in the spirit that she throwed her baby right down in the aisle, and the young'un just looked up at her. Didn't even cry.

And Lord it was hot. Must of been 100 degrees in there. But something made me stay right through it all.

And then, right at the end, she seen me back there at the back.

She pointed right at me, all them colored folks' red eyes turning my way, and said, “We HAAVE in our midst … one that has SEEEEN the sign … of the ALMIGHTY Lord … He has been VISITED by the Lord … A SIGN has come to him … He has been BLESSED with the image … of our LORD Jesus Christ … right there on the SIIIDE … of a HUMBLE barn … Jesus has TOUCHED him … BLESSED are you.”

And the colored folks are nodding and saying, “Blessed are you,” too, and then they break out into a song I ain't heard in church before, and people are dancing and praising Jesus, and that goes on for 20 minutes, me clapping and singing along with the rest of 'em, and I'm wondering what these folks do on Sundays.

Sebara Tatum comes right for me when it's over, waiting for some of the colored ladies to thank me for coming, me not knowing what to say. Then she tells me, “Follow me.” And I do.

She leads me over across the church yard to where she's got this here Lincoln automobile, and she tells me to get in it. We get in, colored people staring a hole in us from the church yard.

“I prayed you'd come,” she says, and then she starts up the car, and we go back to her place. She lived in this cinder-block house, right by the highway, couldn't hardly get that Lincoln in between the road and house. Looked like it used to be a store.

She went to the door and unlocked it and then looked at me like she was wonderin' what I was waiting for. I got out.

“We're going to be a team, Mr. Chastain,” she said. “We're going to build a shrine for Jesus.” And then she did something nobody'd done for a long time. She kissed me. Right on the lips.

People think old folks is supposed to not think about all that stuff any more, but sometimes I just can't help it. Sebara kept me there all night, told me such stuff that would make any old man feel right good. She didn't want to turn the light off, but I ain't too keen on some woman seeing all of me.

Afterwards, I had that dream again, where I'm eating fat lightning. Only this time, it's Sebara that's serving it up to me, in a bowl, and she laughs and laughs when I start to eating it.

We stayed there for two days and nights more, eating tomato sandwiches and Chef-Boy-Ar-Dee spaghetti out of cans, and then Sebara told me, on the morning of the third day, “Rise up, Lot Chastain. We got work to do.”

And she made me get dressed, took me back to the church to get my truck, and we both drove on back to Old Monacan.

People say I ain't got good sense, but Sebara is just like Momma used to be. She told me, “It ain't you that's crazy, Lot. It's them. You seen the savior. They too dumb to.”

I reckon it was God's will that took me to Murro that night.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

On Saturday afternoon, Aileen comes by. The cool weather in the wake of the storm is drifting back into summer, but the sky's still bright blue and the window air conditioner is still silenced. Sam is napping on the chaise lounge on the back porch and Wade's asleep in his crib. Nancy's writing in the study, so she's the one who hears the door bell.

Aileen looks distracted. She walks inside without speaking and looks around, then lowers her voice as if she's afraid someone will hear.

“Lot's come back,” she tells Nancy, “and he's brought a colored woman with him.”

Sam comes in, rubbing his eyes, and Aileen tells them both the whole story, or what she knows of it.

“Did you tell Daddy already?” Sam asks her.

“I told him. He acted like it wasn't none of my business, or none of his. Said Lot was bound to do something crazy; it was just a matter of what is it this time.”

Aileen persuades Sam to drive her up to Old Monacan, and Nancy decides she'll go, too. She gets Wade up and dresses him. By the time they get to Lot's, it's past 4 o'clock, too early for the pilgrims, but there are two other cars there, besides Lot's truck. One is a gray Lincoln no one recognizes. The other is Carter's Pontiac.

“Bless his heart,” Aileen murmurs.

When they knock on the trailer door, though, no one answers. Finally, Nancy notices that the front door and front windows of the old Chastain place are open, and they all walk up the clay drive lined with crepe myrtles just past their prime.

Lot comes out on the porch just as they get to the front steps.

“My land,” he says, “is it Christmas? Don't never see this much family.” He smiles, and Nancy sees how it doesn't seem to go all the way up to his eyes.

Carter comes out, too, and right beside him is a light-skinned black woman.

“How do you do?” she says, walking quickly down the steps to greet Aileen, Sam and Nancy. She picks Wade right out of Nancy's arms as if she's known the child all his life, and he picks up on this and breaks out into a big smile.

“I'm Sebara Tatum,” she tells them, when it's obvious that Lot isn't saying anything. “The Lord has brought me here.”

“He drives a nice car,” Carter says, and Sebara laughs as if she's just heard the funniest joke in the world.

Sebara, it turns out, has been cleaning. There are throw rugs with years of dust hanging on the clothesline whose posts miraculously haven't fallen down yet. The living room floor smells like ammonia.

“My sisters and I come here every month or so and clean,” Aileen sniffs, although it's been almost two months now.

“Well,” Sebara says, “there's cleaning and there's cleaning. I just thought we ought to air it out a little, is all.”

“Want you all to hang around until the pilgrims get here,” Lot says. “Might see something.”

Carter says he's seen enough, and, when Sam says he thinks he'll stay awhile, Aileen asks Carter if he'll give her a ride.

“I reckon I've seen enough, too,” she says, not saying goodbye to anyone.

“Did you get a look at that back bedroom?” Aileen asks Carter when they are out of the others' earshot.

“Yeah, I saw it,” Carter says. “What about it?”

“The bed is made,” Aileen said.

Carter shrugs. “Maybe Lot's planning to take in boarders.”

Sam, Nancy and Wade go for a walk, following the old trail that leads around behind the barn and winds down to the river. The ruts are filled with water in places, so they have to walk in the middle, where the grass tickles their ankles. The woods close in just past the barn, and Nancy thinks to herself that she's glad she isn't here alone, even if Sam hasn't been much company today.

They walk past an old brick chimney, and then the woods open out again and they're behind the sawdust pile. It isn't smoking today, as if all the rain earlier in the week has doused it.

“It'll come back,” Sam says. “It always does. One time, it quit for two or three months, except I guess it was burning inside somewhere. Then, suddenly one day, it started up again.”

Wade is fascinated by the large orange mound, taller even than some of the trees around it, and he starts crying when his parents won't let him go play on it.

Past the sawdust pile, the road starts to dip sharply toward the river.

“That's the pond where that boy drowned,” Sam says, pointing to his left, and Nancy holds more tightly to Wade's hand.

The trail gets more and more muddy, and at times it seems it is only there in Sam's memory. He has to persuade Nancy to continue, finally telling her that he's going on, and if she wants to return, she'll have to go by herself.

When they get to the river at last, it's more frightening to Nancy than the deserted trail. Three days of rain in the mountains have caused the normally placid August flow to turn into a flood. The water is out of its banks, a quarter of the way up the sycamores that are hugging the shore. Nancy sees what looks like a tree go crashing by in the brown torrent, and she and Sam have to shout to make themselves heard. Wade, sensing her fear, starts to cry.