The Neon Bible (6 page)

It seemed like a day later when I heard school letting out. When the boy who cleaned Mrs. Watkins' erasers finally left, I heard her coming down the hall. I wondered if she had the state people with her, but there was only one set of footsteps. She walked so slow toward the room that I prayed she'd hurry up and get it over with. All of a sudden she was rattling the doorknob, and then I remembered I forgot to take the lock off.

"Unlock this door."

I jumped up and ran and pulled at the lock, but she was leaning against the door, and I couldn't move it.

"I'll give you one second to get this lock off. One second!"

I was so scared I couldn't speak to tell her to stop pushing on the door.

"You don't think I can knock this door down to get in, do you, you little devil? Well, I hear you in there fooling with the door. I'll come in there and get you if it's the last thing I do today!"

She must have moved back from the door to throw herself against it, because the lock slipped and I pulled the door open. Mrs. Watkins came flying into the room. She must have expected to fall against the closed door, and she came in so fast with such a strange look on her face and her arms folded. She couldn't protect herself with her arms and fell over a chair onto the floor.

Before I could run away, she was up and had me by the collar. My heart was in my throat when I saw the horrible look on her face. Her cheek was red where she fell on it, and I could just see her little slit eyes full of tears through all the hair over her face. For a minute she just held me and breathed hot over me in quick, heavy breaths.

I could see the pain in her eyes. At least, that's all I could make her expression out to be. When she opened her lips they were still half closed and almost stuck to each other they were so dry. At first she had been pulling at my collar, but now she was leaning on my shoulders with all her weight. Her big bony body was almost bent in half. "Get the doctor, go get him right away. Damn you, hurry!" I ran out of the room and heard Mrs. Watkins fall on the floor moaning. Never before in my life did I run as fast. The doctor was over on Main Street three blocks away. I ran through people's backyards and got caught in clotheslines and frightened little children who were playing in the mud. When I told the doctor, he kited over to the school. I was hot and tired and walked back slowly. Some kids in the neighborhood saw the doctor running over to the school and followed him. When I got back there, they had almost more people around than in the whole town. The ones in my class were laughing and making jokes about Mrs. Watkins, but I didn't feel like making jokes. I felt sick. Some asked me if I had done it, and I just didn't say anything.

When I got to the empty room, they were just putting Mrs. Watkins on a stretcher. She moaned all the while and really screamed when they gave the final lift. I stood there and looked at her and felt sorry to see anyone who was so powerful suddenly be so weak and afraid. She saw me and motioned for me to come near the stretcher. When I got near, I saw the scared look in her face wasn't all from pain. She grabbed ahold of my head and whispered in my ear.

"Don't ever dare to tell anyone a word about this. You can get into plenty trouble if you do. Understand?" Her fingernails were digging into the flesh at the back of my neck. Her breath was hot and had the same bad smell. "Never a word to anyone."

I nodded, half out of relief, and wondered why Mrs. Watkins had told me to be quiet. I thought I'd have to beg her to have mercy on me. I was a lot older when I learned what the State Board of Education would have done to her if I ever opened my mouth. When I think of how grateful I was then, it makes me laugh.

After they took Mrs. Watkins out, I got my copybook and Aunt Mae's flower and left. A few people were still hanging around the school talking about the accident, which was now made out to be that Mrs. Watkins just tripped over a chair. The town people would have believed anything Mrs. Watkins said -- that is, almost everyone except the newspaper editor, who was a pretty smart man from some college up east. When he wrote about the accident in a sort of suspicious way, there was talk that Mr. Watkins was going to get up a petition against him. It never came around, though, because I guess Mr. Watkins realized the newspaper was the only way he could put himself before the town people.

Some old ladies stopped me and told me what a fine lad I was to run for the doctor and show such concern for Mrs. Watkins' welfare. The news about me was all over town by the time I got to Main Street. People who recognized me stopped and patted me on the head and kept me so long that it was dark by the time I got to the foot of the hill.

Then I remembered about Poppa and got to thinking about him and if he came home. The early stars were out. The moon was near the top of the hill as I looked up, and it was full and bright. It made the path and the leaves look silver, something like the early snow. Some night birds were already singing way up in the pines. One went
che-woot, che-woot, che-woot
in a long-drawn-out way that sounded like a dying person. I could hear that song ring out all over the hills as the other birds picked it up. Two or three flew across the moon going to meet some others in the tall pines on the north side of the valley. I wished I could fly and follow those birds and be two hundred feet above the hills and see into the next valley where I'd never been. Then I'd look back on the town from on top of the Renning smokestack. I'd look over the new town, too, and see all the new buildings I'd never seen and the streets I'd never walked on.

Nighttime was the time for all the little animals that lived in the hills to come out. They ran across the path every now and then, and sometimes I'd almost trip over one of them. It was strange that they were so scared of people when their real enemies were others of their own kind. I wasn't mad at them, because I knew what it was like to be scared to your bones by someone, only I felt a little sorry for them because I didn't have to worry about my enemy anymore.

When I got to the house it was all lighted up and Aunt Mae was sitting on the porch. I kissed her and gave her the flower, and she looked at it like it was her baby. The first thing I asked her was if Poppa was home.

She looked up from the flower and said, "Yes, he came home. He's still out in the dark behind the house trying to plow the land. Mother's got some food in the kitchen."

Aunt Mae followed me into the house and asked why I was so late. I didn't tell her the truth, but I told her that I got the doctor for Mrs. Watkins when she tripped over a chair and how people stopped to congratulate me. Aunt Mae beamed all over and said she was proud of me, even though Mrs. Watkins had hurt her many times.

Mother looked a little weak, but she was glad to see me. I didn't think there would be anything in the house to eat after what I heard her say to Poppa. She said he sold some of his seeds and the rake, and that bought a little food. She was silent after a while. When Aunt Mae told her about me at school, she said, "That's nice," and got quiet again.

All the time I ate she just stared at the wall and ran her finger along the oilcloth. Aunt Mae seemed to understand that she didn't want to speak, so I didn't say anything either. It was one of the quietest meals I ever ate, but it didn't make me sad. I was thinking that Mrs. Watkins had told me about the state authorities just to scare me and was planning to come into the empty room to really take care of me herself. I wondered what she would have done to me if she didn't hurt herself. I wondered what she was doing right then in the hospital. Well, anyway, I wasn't going to visit her to find out.

After a while I heard Poppa coming up the back steps. As soon as she heard him, Mother jumped up from the table and went upstairs. Just as he opened the back door, I heard one close above me. Poppa went over to the sink and washed his hands, and soon there was clay all over the faucet and thick tan water flowing into the drain. He wiped his hands on a dishcloth and went over to the stove. While he was looking in the pots I looked at Aunt Mae, and she was staring into the cup in front of her without any kind of look on her face. He filled up a plate and came and sat down at the table. He looked at me and said hello, and I nodded at him and tried to talk, but when I opened my mouth nothing came out of my throat. I felt embarrassed and wished I was upstairs with my train or out on the front porch or anywhere but where I was.

Aunt Mae must have seen the look on my face, because she said, "Let's go out front," and we left the kitchen. I sat on the steps, and Aunt Mae sat in a chair on the porch, the one she was sitting in when I came home. Mrs. Watkins' home was dark down in town. There were no lights on, so Mr. Watkins must have been with her. I wondered if the state paid teachers when they were sick. Besides Mrs. Watkins not working, I thought of the hospital bills she was going to have to pay. I thought of how worried Mr. Watkins would be with his wife out of school. I wondered if he'd get a job somewhere in town.

Tonight wasn't like the night before when it had been so still in the valley. A breeze was starting that soon turned into a wind. It was nice to sit on the steps and watch the pines on the far hills swaying against the sky. I looked around at Aunt Mae. Her yellow hair was flying all over her eyes, but she didn't move to straighten it. Her eyes were on the town, I don't know exactly what part. They were just staring down on the town.

It got dark on the porch after the clouds began to cover the moon. Pretty soon there was just a white glow in the sky covered by gray smoke. You could see the shadows of the clouds on the hills moving fast across the valley. Soon the whole sky was full of gray smoke from the south, and it looked like the valley had a gray lid on it. A rumbling began at the far hill and spread across the sky until it shook the house. The sky lit up off and on like one of the signs on Main Street, except without color, just a silver glow. The kind of cool breeze that always comes before a rain started up, and soon I could hear the first big drops on the porch roof and feel them hitting my knees. They hit the clay with a steady thump and made the cinders shine.

Aunt Mae and I got up and went inside. I went up to my room and sat on my bed and looked out at the pines swaying in the rain and thought how a day that started out so bad ended up so well.

Four

The war had been on for quite a while now when Poppa got his notice from the draft. He didn't have to go, but he more or less enlisted. Mother and I and Aunt Mae went down to the train to see him off, and when he left he kissed Mother and he cried, and I'd never seen a man cry before. The train pulled away, and we stood there and watched it go, and Mother kept looking long after it passed around the hill. Most of the young men in town went away too. Some of them returned when the war was over, and some didn't. Down on the street behind Main Street most of the mechanics' shops were empty. A lot of drugstores and groceries were boarded up, with "Closed for the Duration" written on the windows. We put up a service flag on the front door just like almost everyone did. You could see them on any street, even the one north of town where all the rich people lived, but not too many there.

The town got to be a real quiet place. Then they built a war plant down by the river, not a big one, just a little propeller factory. A lot of the women in town got jobs there because the men were mostly gone. Aunt Mae was one of them, and she was made supervisor of a section. Every morning when I went down to school she walked into town with me, wearing slacks and a bandanna and carrying a metal lunch box. She was about the oldest woman working in the plant, but she had a better job than a lot of ones who were younger.

Mother stayed at home and took care of the little acre of things Poppa planted up in the hills. She said he mentioned it in every letter, for her to take care of it and write him about it. He had two rows of cabbage no bigger than baseballs, and the rest of the things I could never make out because they rotted underground when Mother forgot to dig them up.

By now I was out of fourth grade and had been in Miss Moore's class for almost a year and a half. Mrs. Watkins was back teaching first to third after she was out for six months. We passed each other in the hall every day, but we always looked in a different direction. I could tell when she was coming by the funny way her steps sounded from her limp. When she first returned, one of her legs was in a cast for a month. That was the one that looked so stiff and that she stepped on so lightly.

Miss Moore was a nice lady that you can't describe too well. There was nothing different about her from anyone else. We got along, though, and my grades were better than they ever were for Mrs. Watkins.

With nothing much for anyone to do with their fathers and husbands and boyfriends gone, the movies were where everyone went. Even on Sunday nights it was crowded, and that was when the preacher had his evening meeting. Mr. Watkins tried to get the moviehouse closed on Sundays at six, but the sheriff's brother owned it, and something happened to his petition. They had a lot of Technicolor movies playing that Mother and I and Aunt Mae liked. In town we got the movies about a month after they played in the capital, and the bill was changed three times a week. We saw a lot of black-and-white movies too, but Bette Davis seemed to be in every one of them. Mother and Aunt Mae liked her, and I heard them crying next to me when she played a twin who was drowning while the other twin pulled a ring from her finger so she could pretend she was the one who really drowned and marry the drowned one's boyfriend. They had Rita Hayworth too, but she was always in Technicolor, and her hair was the reddest I ever saw. We saw Betty Grable in this movie about Coney Island. It looked like a wonderful place, and Aunt Mae told me she had been there and that it was down on the Gulf.

After a while signs began to show up all over town about a revival that was coming. It wasn't sponsored by the preacher like he usually did, because he was mad about the attendance at his church. This seemed like a mistake to me, because the people in the town liked revivals and never missed one. They came from out of the hills too, and from the county seat, when the preacher had some evangelist every year.

Across Main Street they had a rope hung from a building on one side to a building on the other. From the rope hung a long canvas poster that read: