Jonah's Gourd Vine (18 page)

There had been a mighty response to the sermon all thru its length. The “bearing up” had been almost continuous, but as Pearson's voice sank dramatically to the final Amen, Anderson lifted a chant that kept the church on fire for several seconds more. During this frenzy John Pearson descended from the pulpit. Two deacons sprang to assist him at the Communion table, but he never stopped there. With bowed head he walked down the center aisle and out of the door—leaving stupefaction in his wake. Hoffman and Nelse Watson posted
after him and stopped him as he left the grounds, but he brushed off their hands.

“No, chillun, Ah—Ah can't break—can't break de bread wid y'all no mo',” and he passed on.

“Man, ain't you goin' on back tuh yo' pulpit lak you got some sense?” Hambo asked that night. “If you don't some of 'em is sho tuh strow it uhround dat you wuz put out.”

“Naw, Hambo. Ah don't want y'all fightin' and scratchin' over me. Let 'em talk all dey wanta.”

“Ain't yuh never tuh preach and pastor no mo?”

“Ah won't say never 'cause—Never is uh long time. Ah don't b'lieve Ahm fitted tuh preach de gospel—unless de world is wrong. Yuh see dey's ready fuh uh preacher tuh be uh man uhmongst men, but dey ain't ready yet fuh 'im tuh be uh man uhmongst women. Reckon Ah better stay out de pulpit and carpenter fuh mah livin'. Reckon Ah kin do dat 'thout uh whole heap uh rigmarole.”

But after a while John was not so certain. Several people who formerly had felt that they would rather wait for him several weeks to do a job now discovered that they didn't even have time to get him word. Some who already had work done shot angry, resentful looks after him and resolved not to pay him. It would be lacking in virtue to pay carpenter-preachers who got into trouble with congregations. Two men who had been glad of a chance to work under him on large jobs kept some of his tools that he had loaned them and muttered that it was no more than their due. He had worked them nearly to death in the damp and cold and hadn't paid them. One man grew so indignant that he pawned a spirit-level and two fine saws.

John was accused of killing one man by exposure and overwork. It was well known that he died of tuberculosis several months after he had worked a day or two for John, but nobody was going to be behind hand in accusations. Every bawdy in town wept over her gin and laid her downfall at John's door. He was the father of dozens of children by women he had never seen. Felton Cozy had stepped into his shoes at Zion
Hope and made it a point to adjust his glasses carefully each time he saw John lest too much sin hit him in his virtuous eye. John came to recognize all this eventually and quit telling people his troubles or his plans. He found that they rejoiced at the former and hurried away to do what they could to balk the latter.

As one man said, “Well, since he's down, less keep 'im down.”

He saw himself growing shabby. It was hard to find food in variety.

One evening he came home most dejected.

“Whuss de matter, big foots?” Hambo asked. “You look all down in de mouf.”

“Look lak lightnin' done struck de po' house. Dey got me in de go-long Ah reckon. All de lies dese folks strowing 'round 'bout me done got some folks in de notion Ah can't drive uh clean nail in they lumber. Look lak dey spectin' uh house Ah build tuh git tuh fornication befo' dey could get de paint on it. Lawd Jesus!”

“Come in and eat some dese snap peas and okra Ah got cooked. It'll give you mo' guts than uh goat.”

“Naw thankee, Hambo. Ahm goin' lie down.”

He went into his room and shut the door. “Oh Lucy! Lucy! Come git me. You knowed all dis—whut yuh leave me back heah tuh drink dis cup? Please, Lucy, take dis curse offa me. Ah done paid and paid. Ah done wept and Ah done prayed. If you see God where you is over dere ast Him tuh have mercy! Oh Jesus, Oh Jesus, Oh-wonder-workin' God. Take dis burden offa mah sobbin' heart or else take me 'way from dis sin-sick world!”

He sought Lucy thru all struggles of sleep, mewing and crying like a lost child, but she was not there. He was really searching for a lost self and crying like the old witch with her shed skin shrunken by red pepper and salt, “Ole skin, doncher know me?” But the skin was never to fit her again. Sometimes in the dark watches of the night he reproached Lucy bitterly
for leaving him. “You meant to do it,” he would sob. “Ah saw yo' eyes.”

By day he gave no sign of his night-thoughts. His search and his tears were hidden under bed quilts.

When Hambo woke him for breakfast next morning he didn't get up.

“Don't b'lieve Ahm goin' out tuhday, 'cause if Ah meet Cozy wid dat sham-polish smile uh his'n de way Ah feel tuhday, dey'll be tryin' me fuh murder nex' time.”

His courage was broken. He lay there in bed and looked back over days that had had their trial and failure. They had all been glorious tomorrows once gilded with promise, but when they had arrived, they turned out to be just days with no more fulfillment—no more glad realities than those that had preceded—more betrayal, so why look forward? Why get up?

His divorce trial stayed with him. He saw that though it was over at the courthouse the judge and jury had moved to the street corners, the church, the houses. He was on trial everywhere, and unlike the courthouse he didn't have a chance to speak in his own behalf.

Sisters White and Carey came over around sundown with a gingerbread and melon-rind preserves.

“Always remembered you had uh sweet tooth,” Sister Carey said.

They wanted to know if he was thinking of pastoring again. Certain people had crowded Cozy in, but the real folks had “chunked him out again. His shirttail may be long but we kin still spy his hips.”

“He never could preach, nohow,” Sister White complained, “and he been strainin' hisself tryin' tuh be stronger wid de women folks than you wuz. Settin' 'round de houses drinkin' and sayin' toastes 'bout, ‘Luck tuh de duck dat swims de pond—' Bet if some dese men folks ketch 'im dey'll luck his duck fuh 'im. Since you won't consider, us callin' uh man from Savannah.”

“Oh, he's more'n welcome to all de women folks,” John rejoined.

“Where you keepin' yo'self dese days, anyhow, and whut you doin'?”

“Oh well, Sister White, since yuh ast me, Ah do any kind of uh job Ah kin git tuh make uh dollar, and Ah keeps mahself at home. Sometimes Ah reads de Bible and sometimes Ah don't feel tuh. Den Ah jus' knock uhround from pillar tuh post and sort of dream. Seem lak de dreams is true sho 'nuff sometime—iss so plain befo' me, but after while dey fades. But even while they be fadin', Ah have others. So it goes from day tuh day.”

One night John had a dream. Lucy sat beside a stream and cried because she was afraid of a snake. He killed the snake and carried Lucy across in his arms to where Alf Pearson stood at the cross roads and pointed down a white shell road with his walking cane and said, “Distance is the only cure for certain diseases,” and he and Lucy went racing down the dusty white road together. Somehow Lucy got lost from him, but there he was on the road—happy because the dead snake was behind him, but crying in his loneliness for Lucy. His sobbing awoke him and he said, “Maybe it's meant for me tuh leave Sanford. Whut Ahm hangin' 'round heah for, anyhow?”

At breakfast he said to Hambo, “Well, Hambo, Ah been thinkin' and thinkin' and Ah done decided dat Ahm goin' tuh give you dis town. You kin have it.”

“You better say Joe, 'cause you don't know. Us been here batchin' tuhgether and gittin 'long fine. Ahm liable not tuh let yuh go. Me, Ahm in de ‘B' class, be here when you leave and be here when you git back.”

“Oh yeah, Ahm goin'. Gointer spread mah jenk in unother town.”

“Where you figgerin' on goin'?”

“Don't know yet. When Ah colleck dem few pennies Ah got owing tuh me, iss good bye Katy, bar de door. Some uh dese mawnin's, and it won't be long, you goin' tuh wake up callin' me and Ah'll be gone.”

And that is the way he went. It was equally haphazard that he landed in Plant City and went about looking for work.

Several times he passed the big white building that Baptist pride had erected and that he had been invited as Moderator to dedicate, but he passed it now with shuttered eyes. He avoided the people who might remember him.

A week and no work. Walking the streets with his tool kit. Hopeful, smiling ingratiatingly into faces like a dog in a meat house. Desperation nettling his rest.

“How yuh do, suh? Ain't you Rev'und Pearson?”

He looked sidewise quickly into the face of a tall black woman who smiled at him over a gate. Yard chock full of roses in no set pattern.

“Yes ma'am. Well, Ah thank yuh.”

“Thought Ah knowed yuh. Heard yuh preach one time at our church.”

“Pilgrim Rest Baptis' Church?”

“Dat's right. Dat wuz uh sermon! Come in.”

John was tired. He sat heavily upon the step.

“Don't set on de do' step. Elder, heah's uh chear.”

“Iss all right, Sister, jus' so Ahm settin' down.”

“Naw, it 'tain't. If you set on de steps you'll git all de pains in de house. Ha, ha! Ah reckon you say niggers got all de signs and white folks got all de money.”

He sat in the comfortable chair she placed for him and surrendered his hat.

“You got tuh eat supper wid me, lessen you got somewhere puhticklar tuh go. Mah dead husband said you wuz de best preacher ever borned since befo' dey built de Rocky Mountains.”

Rev. Pearson laughed a space-filling laugh and waited on her lead.

“You goin' tuh be in our midst uh while?”

“Don't know, Sister—er—”

“Sister Lovelace. Knowed you wouldn't know me. Maybe you would eben disremember mah husband, but Ah sho is glad tuh have yuh in our midst. 'Scuse me uh minute whilst
Ah go skeer yuh up suppin' tuh eat.”

She bustled inside but popped out a moment later with a palm-leaf fan.

“Cool yo'self off, Rev'und.”

She was back in a few minutes with a pitcher clinking with ice.

“Have uh cool drink uh water, Elder—mighty hot. Ain't aimin' tuh fill yuh up on water, ha! ha! jes' keepin' yuh cool 'til it git done.”

From the deep porch, smothered in bucket flowers the street looked so different. The world and all seemed so different—it seemed changed in a dream way. “Maybe nothin' ain't real sho 'nuff. Maybe 'tain't no world. No elements, no nothin'. Maybe wese jus' somewhere in God's mind,” but when he wiggled his tired toes the world thudded and throbbed before him.

“Walk right intuh de dinin'-room and take uh chear, Rev'und. Right in dis big chear at de head uh de table. Maybe you kin make uh meal outa dis po' dinner Ah set befo' yuh, but yuh know Ahm uh widder woman and doin' de bes' ah kin.”

“Dis po' dinner,” consisted of fried chicken, hot biscuits, rice, mashed sweet potatoes, warmed over greens, rice pudding and iced tea.

“You goin' tuh set down and eat wid me, ain't yuh Sister Lovelace?”

“Naw, you go right uhead and eat. Ahm goin' tuh fan de flies. Dey right bad dese days. Ah been laying off tuh have de place screened, but jes' ain't got 'round tuh it. De wire is easy tuh git but dese carpenters 'round heah does sich shabby work 'til Ah ruther not be bothered.”

“Ahm uh carpenter.”

“You ain't got time tuh fool wid nothin' lak dat. Youse too big uh man.”

“Oh, Ah got plenty time.”

John felt warm heart-beats that night in his room. He de
cided to drop a line or two to Sanford. He sent a cheerful line to Hambo first of all.

He wrote to Mamie Lester for news and comfort. She never answered. She felt injured that he should ask such a thing of her. Her indignation burst out of her. She asked many people, “Who do John Pearson think Ah am to be totin' news for him? He ain't nothin'.” She said “nothin'” as if she had spat a stinking morsel out of her mouth.

After a long time, when he didn't get an answer, John Pearson understood, and laughed in his bed. The virtuous indignation of Mamie Lester! He could see her again as he had first seen her twenty years ago, as she had tramped into Sanford as barefooted as a yard dog with her skimpy, dirty calico dress and uncombed head; and her guitar hanging around her neck by a dirty red ribbon. How she had tried to pick him up and instead had gotten an invitation to his church. Respectability and marriage to a deacon. She, who had had no consciousness of degradation on the chain-gang and in the brothel, had now discovered she had no time for talk with fallen preachers.

Now that he had work to do, he wrote to George Gibson, asking him to return his tools that George had borrowed. George ignored the letter. He was really angry, “The son of a bum! Won't pay nobody and then come astin' me 'bout dem tools. Ah wish he would come to my face and ast me for 'em.”

“Do Pearson owe you too?” another impostor asked.

“Do he? Humph!” he left the feeling that if he only had the money that John Pearson owed him, he need never worry any more.

George was indignant at being asked favors by the weak. His blood boiled.

It became the fashion that whoever was in hard luck, whoever was in debt—John Pearson had betrayed him. Gibson habitually wore a sorrowful look of infinite betrayal. In the meanwhile he used John's tools and came finally to feel that he deserved them.

The next day after the chance meeting John began his task of screening the house of Sally Lovelace, and when he was
thru he hesitated over taking the money agreed upon.

“You done fed me more'n de worth uh de job,” he said.

“Aw shucks, man, uh woman dat's useter havin' uh man tuh do fuh got tuh wait on somebody. Take de money. You goin' tuh be tuh church dis Sunday?”

“Er—er—Ah don't jus' exactly know, tuh tell yuh truth, Sister Lovelace.”