This Rock (32 page)

“Giddyup!” I hollered. “Get your lazy ass up!”

But it didn't do no good. The wagon come to a stop and Old Fan's hooves shoved into the dirt and sidestepped to hold her place. I run around to the right side and slammed the brake shut. The wagon set still and the horse stood still. “Whoa there,” I said. “Whoa there.”

There wasn't a thing to do but throw off two or three of the rocks to make the wagon lighter. I laid them on the side of the road where I could get them later. But one rock was almost round, and it tipped over the shoulder and started rolling. Before I could grab it the rock was crashing through the leaves and banging on trees below and bouncing over logs. I watched it roll out of sight into some laurel bushes.

That rock wants to go back where it come from, I thought. It wants to go back to the riverbed. But all the rocks come from the mountaintop first. The rocks was cliffs and mountains that got busted up and washed down into the valleys. Rocks didn't want to be on mountaintops. They didn't want to be laid in the sky. They wanted to go down so they could sleep in the riverbed and dream the long story of the river. What I was doing was against nature. Setting rocks in new shapes and combinations in the sky was against nature. That's why it was so hard and why it was so important. Anybody could let things wash downhill with the drift. The hard thing was to make something strong and firm and straight, something with a will and purpose in it, something with an idea that would stand against the wash and waste of the elements. It was up to me to do the work because I was the one that had the idea.

With the wagon lighter I hollered giddyup and released the brake. I pushed on the wheel and we made it past the steepest place and labored to the top of the mountain where I'd cleared away the trees and dug the foundation. I decided to pile the rocks in several places around the site, close to where they would be used. But by the time I got the wagon unloaded I was tired out, and so was Old Fan. I seen that instead of five loads a day I'd be lucky to haul four, or maybe even three. With only the one mare to pull the wagon, there was no way to do it faster. Instead of eight days it would take ten or even twelve days just to haul the rocks up the mountainside.

That evening when I was bringing up the third load I seen a man standing in the clearing on the mountaintop. He held his hands behind his back and he was looking at the foundation I'd dug. When I got to the top I seen it was the preacher. He'd come up from South Carolina for the prayer meeting that evening.

“Evening, Brother Muir,” he said when I stopped the wagon. I was sweating from the pushing and the climb.

“Evening, Preacher Liner,” I said.

I was glad he'd come to see what I was doing. But at the same time I had a feeling. He'd not made the climb up before. I figured he'd not come to give me any good news.

“Looks like you're hauling the riverbed up here,” the preacher said.

“All I can,” I said. Didn't seem polite to start unloading with the preacher standing there.

“You have worked hard,” the preacher said. He was holding his hat behind him and he brought it around to the front and studied the brim. “I know you have worked hard,” he said.

“This is only the beginning,” I said.

“I come up here because I want to talk to you,” the preacher said.

“Figured you did,” I said.

“Brother Muir, sometimes we feel we're called to do things, and it's only our pride calling us, not the Lord.” What I felt about Preacher Liner was his weight. He was a heavy man, but he willed hisself to be heavier still. He made his voice heavy, and he put all the weight he could gather against anybody else's ideas or opinions in his voice. He wanted you to feel he could crush you.

I felt my breath getting short.

“I'm doing what I feel led to do,” I said.

“That's what I want to talk to you about,” Preacher Liner said.

“If I don't know what I'm led to do, then who does?” I said. I was tired and sweaty and I wanted to get the wagon unloaded.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” the preacher said. “Sometimes we have to listen to those older than us to know what to do.”

“Who am I supposed to listen to?” I said. I was madder than I expected to be. I couldn't help myself.

“We have to listen to them with experience,” the preacher said. “I will not have my church split up by some foolish notion.”

“I believe the Lord asked me to build this church,” I said. “He showed me a vision of what needed to be done.”

“Maybe you misunderstood the vision,” the preacher said. “Maybe you didn't get the message right.”

“I'm not building this church on my own land just to please you,” I said, my voice trembling.

“All my life I have fought Pentecostals,” the preacher said. “This church has been my work, and I won't leave it to Pentecostals.”

“I ain't a Pentecostal,” I said, “and I don't need nobody's permission to build a new church.”

“People are worried about you,” the preacher said.

“Who is worried?”

“Your mama is worried about you, I know,” the preacher said. “You're so all fired up to do things, and you keep changing your mind.”

“How do you know Mama is worried?” I said.

“Because she asked me to pray for you,” Preacher Liner said. His face was splotched red and pale in different places. I noticed there was circles under his eyes.

“Who are you to tell me that?” I hollered. Anger was swelling up in me and sweeping me away. Anger rose from the center of the earth, and from the beginning of time, and roared through my bones and belly. Lightning flashed behind my ears.

“I think we should pray about this,” the preacher said.

“I've done prayed about it,” I shouted. I wrapped the reins around the brake handle on the wagon and started walking toward the woods. I wasn't going to argue with the preacher no more.

“Pride cometh before a fall,” Preacher Liner called after me, but I kept on walking.

I
DIDN'T GO
back to church for almost a month after I argued with the preacher. I was busy building the foundation on the mountaintop. That was my worship, I told myself. I had got the foundation wall up almost two feet. But I couldn't stay away on
Christmas Eve. I wanted to hear Annie sing and her mama, Mrs. Richards, sing. And I wanted to see the little Christmas pageant that Mama had the younguns put on every year. When I was a boy I had took part in the play and carried a shepherd's crook or a box wrapped in tinfoil that was supposed to look like a Wise Man's gold.

It was a cold clear night and the service had already started when I come into the church. There was no place to set except on the back bench where the backsliders and drunks and rough old boys set.

“What say, Muir?” Wheeler said when I slid in next to him. He had a week's growth of beard.

“Not much,” I whispered.

“You getting any?” Wheeler said.

“Not much,” I said.

“Shhhh,” Will Stamey said.

I couldn't see the choir from the back of the church, but I knowed they was setting behind the curtain on the left. An angel wearing paper wings climbed up a stepladder under the star above the pulpit. “‘Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy,'” she said. “‘For unto you is born this day in the city of David a saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

“‘And this shall be a sign unto you; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.

“‘And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

“‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.'”

I felt my skin get stiff with chill bumps when the little girl said them words. She was John Fisher's girl, I think. They was among the first verses I'd ever learned in the Bible. Mama read them to us younguns at Christmastime.

Will Stamey lit a match and throwed it into Wheeler's lap. Wheeler knocked the match onto my lap. There was nothing to do but slap the match to the floor and stomp on it. My boot made a loud bang when it hit the bench in front of me. People turned to look back toward us.

“Shhhh,” Monroe Anderson said.

The women started singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” behind
the sheet stretched in front of the church. I listened for Annie's voice. I could hear her mama's fine alto. Annie had a clear soprano voice.

O little town of Bethlehem!

How still we see thee lie!

It was the best song there was. The thought of the silent stars going by, and the hopes and fears of all the years, made me shiver. And I thought I could hear Annie's voice, such a pure note with all the others. Such a rare voice.

Somebody on the back bench belched as the song come to an end. It was just a belch and wouldn't have amounted to nothing, except people started giggling. All the boys in the back row snickered and giggled till you couldn't hear what the younguns was saying at the front of the church.

“Shhhh,” I said.

But they kept on laughing among theirselves until it near about ruined the service. I looked to the end of the bench and seen Moody staring at the window. I hadn't noticed him before. He wasn't paying any attention at all and he wasn't laughing. He looked like he was way off in his own world of worry.

S
OON AS THE
play was over they called out the names of the kids with presents under the tree, and the choir sung “Joy to the World.” When the preacher said the final prayer I was the first to get outside.

“Now shake hands with everybody,” Wheeler said as he followed me out, “like a real preacher would.”

Moody come out and stood in the shadows of the churchyard, but I didn't pay him any mind. There was a moon floating high over the church and over the mountains.

“Hey, Romeo,” Moody said to me.

I looked at the moon high over the juniper trees and knowed I was not going to wait and ask Annie if I could walk her home. I hadn't had the money to buy her a present anyway. After the Christmas play and the carols, I wanted to be alone. I wanted to climb up the mountain in the moonlight and see the work I'd done on the church. That was what I wanted to do for Christmas.

“Who is Romeo?” I said to Moody and walked past him in the dark.

It was the prettiest night you ever saw. Moonlight flooded over the mountains, making them look like folds of blue-and-purple velvet. There was lights in the houses up and down the valley. When I reached the top of the ridge I heard a firecracker go off, and then another. A dog barked somewhere, and I could hear the shoals over on Bobs Creek. People going home from church carried lanterns down the road and along paths to the hollers.

Just then there was a squall from the thicket on the north side of the mountain. Sounded like it come from the laurels. I answered with a squall of my own. And then the wail come again, a high wawl that rose to a scream and sunk away to a growl. It sounded closer than before.

“Come on, wildcat,” I said to the dark. “I wish I had your hide.”

More firecrackers was popping in the valley, and then a shotgun boomed. And I heard a crash beyond the clearing, like something had jumped out of a tree into the leaves.

“You're just a kitty cat,” I hollered at the dark.

And then I seen two lights at the edge of the clearing. They was eyes so bright they reflected the moonlight. They shined and blinked.

“Come on, tiger,” I yelled. The eyes blinked again and then they was gone. I heard something bound away through the leaves down the side of the mountain.

The breeze on top of the ridge was icy. I shivered as I looked down on the lights in the valley. The moon was so bright you couldn't see too many stars. This is where people will come out of church after a service and see moonlight on the river fifty years from now, I thought.

I stepped to where I thought the door was and stumbled on rocks. Had I forgot where I had put the door of my own church? I felt my way to the wall, but the top seemed rougher and lower than I expected. I took another step and banged my foot on more rocks.

What had happened to the foundation? It felt more like a rock pile than a wall. I took out a match and struck it. There was rocks scattered every which way. It was like my wall had melted down. I thought I must be at the wrong place or looking at the site from the wrong angle. Had I forgot how much work I had done?

I bent over and seen there was dried mortar on the rocks, and pieces of busted cement on the ground. I struck another match and seen sockets and nests of cement where rocks had been knocked loose. I looked closer at a rock and seen a white dent. Somebody had took a sledgehammer and knocked down the top row of my foundation wall. It didn't seem possible. I stomped the ground and walked around to the other side and struck another match. There was rocks busted loose and broke on that side too.

It didn't seem like Christmas anymore, and I didn't care about the moonlight shining on the mountains that looked like satin. Anger flushed through me and burned my temples. Even the shadows under trees turned red. It must have took somebody a whole day to destroy my work.

I throwed down the match and started down the mountainside. I was so mad I didn't look out for limbs and brush, and they slapped me in the face. I was so angry I didn't care where I was going. I must have reached the road and walked down to the river and back without even noticing. I don't know how much time passed as I walked around the pasture and up the creek.

When I got back to the pasture fence I crossed it without thinking. The grass in the pasture was almost white with moonlight. The ground glowed with moonlight and my anger glowed. I was so mad the shadows seemed lit with red sparks, and when I closed my eyes I seen red shooting stars. Wasn't but one person mean enough to do that to my work. It was a cold night, but I was so mad I was sweating.