Brave Enemies (7 page)

“The Lord opened these blind eyes and I seen the valley before me with a river running through it. I seen the houses and barns, and this
church on Zion Hill. A light come down out of the sky and shone on the church, and a voice out of the sky said, ‘Go to Zion Hill and say I have somewhat to tell them.' ‘What do you want me to say?' I said.

“‘Say to the people if they will be true and faithful in these perilous times, if they live by faith and the Word, in this time of infidels and harlots, of wars and rumors of wars, in these last days before the judgment, then I will send my special blessing. And them of that fellowship shall not taste death, but shall be took up when I bust through the eastern sky in all my glory.'”

When the old man sat down there was nodding and the men said “Amen,” and the women said, “Thank you, brother” and “Thank you, Jesus.” While the old man talked, I had forgotten where I was. I had forgotten running through the woods from Mr. Griffin and what had happened at the hog pen. I had forgotten the awfulness of what I'd done later and the fear in my heart.

The preacher looked right at me as if he knew what I was thinking. He looked at me like he expected me to speak next. He looked at me like he could see into my heart and see the burden there. I knew I had to stand up and say something. I stood up wearing Mr. Griffin's coat and pants.

All the faces in the little church turned to me. All ears were listening. I'd never testified before. I looked around at the faces and my jaw trembled.

“What is on your heart, boy?” the preacher said. “Say what is on your heart.”

I opened my mouth but no words came out. I looked at the preacher and I looked at the congregation.

“The Lord will put words on your tongue,” the preacher said.

I saw there was nothing to do but say what I felt. I had to tell how troubled I was.

“I have done wrong and I want you all to pray for me,” I said. The words locked in my throat and I had to swallow. “A wrong was done to me,” I said, “and I was tempted by the devil and brought low.”

When I tried to go on the words set in my throat. The preacher looked at me and everybody was looking at me. The light in the room was twisting around and swimming. The air in the church swung around and I was skidding down and there was nothing to grab on to. Everybody was looking at me.

And then the air washed back the other way, and the church was a river of air running backward. I was swirled around and away, knocked backward. I reeled with arms out to catch myself. Hands reached to help me. Arms came from all directions and caught me.

I closed my eyes because the air was churning, and I felt myself lifted up and carried forward. My knee hit the corner of a bench and I was dragged forward.

“Bring him to the altar,” the preacher said. Strong arms laid me down at the altar, and I smelled boots around me and felt the cold floor.

“We will pray with this our brother,” the preacher said.

In my mind I saw the filth behind the hogpen and felt Mr. Griffin pushing me down in the filth. And I heard the grunt of pigs. I was so tired I lay there with my head on the altar. My legs were sore and my back was sore and I still hurt between my legs. I needed to rest and I needed to put down the great burden on my back and on my mind. Two days before I had been just myself, and now my life was ruined.

“Lord, help our brother to repent and forgive,” the preacher prayed beside me. “For only when we forgive can we be forgiven. It is hardest of all to accept your love, knowing in our hearts we are unworthy, knowing we are weak and uncertain.”

As the preacher prayed I thought what a wonderful thing it was that people could gather and pray and comfort one another. I'd gone to church from time to time, but had never been at a service so friendly, where others were concerned for my feelings. I had wondered why church was so important to some people.

“Help us to accept your comfort and your promise of joy,” the preacher said.

Others prayed too, in a chain around the room. They knelt with me around the altar and every voice was different. I'd never felt such a fellowship, and such a connection. They were all strangers, and yet I felt the strength of connection. I was glad they didn't know what I had done. When the last one had prayed, then the preacher prayed again, and he asked what my name was.

“Joseph Summers,” I said and felt tears running into my mouth.

“Let's welcome Joseph to our fellowship,” the preacher said.

After I stood up hands reached out to me. I shook them as firm and fast as I could. I wanted to shake like a man would. My hand was rough from work, but I wished it was stronger. I had calluses from all the work I'd done. I tried to make my shoulders seem broader and my chest flatter. In the lantern light I hoped they wouldn't notice how thin my neck was.

“Let's give Joseph the right hand of fellowship,” the preacher said.

Those that had not come forward before came now to shake my hand. There were only a few young people, a girl my age, maybe younger, a boy wearing a hunting shirt and a big knife in his belt. Most were older people, women wearing widow's black with shawls over their shoulders and scarves tied over their heads. Men with hands rough from holding ax handles and saws and scythes shook my hand.

What have I done to be treated so well? I thought. I'd hit Mr. Griffin over the head with the ax and dressed up like a man and run away. And I'd found this little chapel in the woods. Mr. Griffin had treated me like I was bad, and yet the preacher and the others treated me like I was worthy, like I was a man.

“We will sing ‘Am I a Soldier of the Cross?'” the preacher called out. “We will sing the song of victory. Hell is short one soul tonight. We have cheated the devil, for Satan and all his angels are not as powerful as our prayer.” The preacher hummed a note and raised his hand. As we sang I felt the firmness of the song, the strength of the music. It was a song of confidence, of victory. I didn't feel like myself, standing there singing. I
was used to being quarreled at and accused of laziness. I had stepped out of myself and put on different clothes. A few days before I'd been Josie that was fondled by Mr. Griffin and pushed to the ground in the mud. And here I was shaking hands with people and singing. And they thought I was Joseph, come in out of the night.

After the song the preacher prayed again and then everybody shook hands with me again. Men patted me on the shoulder and women hugged me. And then they took their lanterns and left one by one, disappearing into the night. Soon there was only myself and the preacher at the door of the little church.

“You are welcome to our fellowship, Joseph,” the young minister said. He took his wide-brimmed hat from a peg by the door and lifted a lantern from another peg. I didn't know what to do. I should have slipped out into the dark before anybody else. I should not have lingered. Yet there I was. I didn't have any place to sleep except in the woods. Maybe I could slip back and sleep in the church.

“Where do you live, Joseph?” the preacher said. He waited for me to go out and then followed, closing the door.

“I'm traveling,” I said.

“You are a traveler and a pilgrim like me,” the preacher said.

“Where do you travel?” I asked.

“I go from place to place in this valley,” the preacher said. “Some communities have churches, and some don't. I preach in barns and tents, in brush arbors and in the open. I'll be back here at Zion Hill in two weeks.”

As we walked into the darkness, I kept meaning to say good night and walk away into the woods. But I didn't. I kept walking with him.

“Do you have a place to rest?” the preacher said.

“No,” I said. I couldn't think of anything to say but the truth.

“You're welcome to stay with me in my cabin on Pine Knot Branch,” the preacher said.

A chill went through my belly. I didn't know a thing about the tall young preacher. I didn't even know his name.

“I'm John Trethman,” the preacher said.

“I'm Joseph Summers,” I said.

We shook hands and I told John Trethman I would accept his hospitality. Scared as I was, I couldn't think of anything else to do. I'd have to be careful. The least little thing could give me away.

“Just a moment,” the preacher said. He stopped and handed me the lantern. I wondered what he meant and then he turned aside and unbuttoned his trousers. He faced the dark and I heard water sprinkling the leaves and bushes beside the trail. He broke wind.

“A service leaves me full of gas and water,” he said.

I knew I was supposed to hand him the lantern when he finished and turn to the dark and make water myself. But that would have to wait until I was alone. That was the kind of thing I'd have to be most careful about.

When I handed him the lantern and his Bible we walked on. I wondered how far it was to Pine Knot Branch, but was afraid to ask. I was so tired I could have lain down on the trail and gone to sleep. As we came over a rise I saw a glow ahead. The sky was lit up and I could see flames beyond the trees.

“Oh not again,” John Trethman said.

The fire was red and ugly. A shudder passed through me down to my toes. I was going to ask what it was, but I already knew. It was not a barn on fire and it was not a lightning strike.

“It's the home of a loyalist,” John said.

We hurried up the trail, but there was dread in my feet and fear in my heart. What if we were taken for loyalists too? I didn't know what John Trethman's sympathies were. Was he a Moravian or a Baptist? Was he a Methodist or a Regulator?

It was farther to the fire than I expected. It must have been two miles or even three. As we got closer we heard whoops and hollers. And in the light of the great blaze we saw men dressed like Indians running back
and forth and shouting. They were carrying jugs and throwing flaming sticks into the barn and haystacks. They were white men.

When the men dressed as Indians saw us they hollered louder, then got on their horses and rode off into the night. By the time we reached the yard they were all gone, and the house was nearly gone too. It was all in flames and the fire was so hot and bright it burned your face just to look at it. I held my hand in front of my face.

“Lord help us in our iniquity,” John said, and I saw the horror on his face. When I looked where he was staring, I saw bodies hanging from the limb of a big oak tree beyond the corncrib. In the light from the awful fire, I saw they were hanging by the necks, a man and woman and little boy. There was blood on the woman's dress like she'd been wounded before they hung her. And the man's shirt had been torn off and his back was bloody.

I
ALWAYS LOVED
to watch clouds. Even as a boy in Virginia I could lie in the grass for hours and watch the luminous shapes of mist and vapor drifting far above. Some clouds were so thin I could look through them, and some were stacked so thick and high they appeared as alps that touched the sun, blinding as new snow and so tall they threatened to topple over.

Like all boys, I imagined forms in the clouds, sheep and puffs of cannon smoke, smoke signals from Indians, ghostly faces. I thought I saw prophets and apostles from the Bible and my ancestors beyond the blue staring at me.

Once after service our pastor, Reverend Wilson, a friend of Reverend Wesley, looked up at the steep and shining clouds and said, “Such a sight shows the presence and glory of God. How could anyone doubt it?”

I never forgot what he said, for his words gave me a shiver so strong it hurt. And after that I couldn't look up at the clouds without thinking of the face of God up there, a ghostly beard staring at me. Pastor Wilson said when Jesus returned and split the east in all his glory the clouds
would part and he would appear to be standing on the clouds. When I looked up I expected to see Jesus soaring up there.

When I was at school at the College of William and Mary I would leave my studies from time to time to rest my eyes. I studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew until the letters swam before my eyes. To refresh myself I walked in the fields and lay down in the grass and watched the clouds over apple trees and hickory trees. I found that the farther away I looked the more refreshed I felt.

Later when I was walking on my circuit there in North Carolina, from church to church and congregation to congregation, I sometimes rested by the road or by a spring to ease my weary feet, and I watched the flocks and armies of clouds appear from the north and float to the south, in even formation. I watched the clouds drift as though grazing on the blue, and felt the wholeness and peacefulness of God's handiwork. It was a privilege to be alive with such beauty, as it was a privilege to serve the people of those hinterlands and settlements. Lift up your eyes unto the hills, I said, from whence cometh your help. And then I took out my flute and played to the trees and meadows, to the sunlight and breeze, or I opened my songbook and sang a carol for the foxes and deer in the thickets.

To see the new churches there on the frontier growing and strengthening would bring tears to my eyes. For I was blessed to have that chance, to begin at each place with a few, maybe four or five, sitting on a log or beneath a shade tree, on Briar Fork and Crowfoot, at Zion Hill and Beulah, and in a year or so each place had built a little church, a meeting place, and held regular services.

It was the least I could do to honor all the preachers who had gone before me for almost eighteen centuries, to carry song and word into the wilderness, to make each place more real by placing a chapel there, even a log chapel, to show where eternity connected with time in this world, and the presence of God was everywhere and anywhere we opened our hearts.

I had been blessed beyond my wildest plans to find so many there
beyond the canebrakes and thickets willing to listen, thirsty for the word, happy to sing and testify and be baptized. I had come to the wilderness to witness and to pray, and my message was one of song and praise. I thought a service and a sermon were to give hope and strength in a troubled time. I almost never talked of hell, for people in those desperate days lived in their own hells. No need to warn them of suffering, for they were already suffering. I was called, if I was called at all, to bring joy and confidence to frightened and uncertain people. I could not countenance hate and killing. I would preach only love and praise. Our lives were too short for hatred and revenge.