Days of Little Texas (6 page)

Cobbville, Mississippi.

The Burger King is fringed with Queen Anne’s lace and thorny purple bull thistles. Sugar Tom sits at one of the outside tables trailing blue cigarette smoke.

“I’ll never forget the first time it hit home with me,” he says. “I was twelve, thirteen years old. I remember exactly where I was standing—next to the only lamppost that survived the burning of Atlanta in the Civil War. Corner of Whitehall and Alabama.

“Well, out of the clear blue this skinny gal with Shirley Temple hair came up and dang near took my arm off, she
shook it so hard. ‘It’s
you,’
she kept saying. ‘It’s
you
.’ Like I was some kind of wonder. I didn’t know her from Adam’s house cat. She drug me into a little diner and forced me to eat a patty melt while she sat there smiling like a simpleton and telling me how amazing I was. I’m telling you, Ronald Earl, it was downright
disturbing
.”

Certain Certain shows up holding two vanilla shakes for him and Sugar Tom and a strawberry one for me. Miss Wanda Joy is waiting in the motor home. She doesn’t believe in sweets.

“You know what you are to them, Ronald Earl?” Sugar Tom goes on, his cheeks caving in from sucking.
“Show people
. That’s what it comes down to. And you can’t change that once it gets fixed in folks’ heads.”

“But what if… what if I just want to
meet
somebody?” I say. “Someone who doesn’t care about all that stuff? Somebody who just wants to know me for
me
?”

Sugar Tom coughs into his hand, nearly touching his eyeball with the cigarette ash.

“You get a dog,” he says.

“Saddle up,” Certain Certain says.

Turns out the only setup spot is another cow pasture. Miss Wanda Joy is not one tiny bit pleased. She has to make some quick changes to the poster, and we have to rush around town making copies at the Kinkos and covering up the old ones.

Come see the legendary evangelist

as we share with you
the glory of our Lord
and His promise of
everlasting redemption.

The Faith Tabernacle Revival Meeting
will be held in the Wilbanks pasture
on Leadmine Road
tomorrow night,
June 13, six o’clock.

Be there and Be Saved!

You ever try to shoot a staple gun into a telephone pole?

With all the extra work, it’s dark by the time we get the tent set up. Certain Certain aims the truck lights across the pasture, showing humps of grass and staring red eyes. Cows are funny. It’s like they have just one brain amongst them, and all of them have to share it.

“Mind the coyotes,” Mr. Wilbanks says, and waddles off without smiling.

“Getting too old for this,” Certain Certain says. He settles into a folding chair behind the stage. “My momma didn’t raise no circus roustabout.”

“What would you do if you didn’t do this?” I say.

He reaches into the neck of his shirt and handles the slave tag, thinking about it awhile. “There’s someplace I sure would like to see before the day I die,” he says.

“Whereabouts?”

He blows out a long breath. “Place called Ouidah on the west coast of Africa. Gate of No Return. That’s a spot on the beach where over three million folks left on slave ships. Ouidah was the center for the slave trade. I want to stand at that gate, walk through it. Walk around the Tree of Forgetfulness, too.”

“What’s that?” I say.

“Tree they forced them slaves to walk around. Men had to walk around it nine times, women seven. It was a ritual… so the souls of the slaves would forget where they come from and never return to Africa to haunt the kings that sold them.”

Certain Certain never made it past the eighth grade, but he has read books thicker than my arm. Everything from the Civil War to the Louisiana Purchase and folks like de Soto and Frederick Douglass.

“I didn’t know there was an actual place where you can still go and see things about slavery,” I say. “I mean
over there
. Why don’t you go do it, then? Go see it?”

“I might. I might. Take you with me.”

“Why me?”

“You involved, Lightning, whether you know it or not. We
all
involved. Ghosts of slavery still with us today.”

“But—”

“You think on account of Michael Jordan selling his drawers all over TV, everything is hunky-dory? No, sir. Still got a good ways to go. Something like that done to a whole race of people—
millions
of them—it echoes a good long while. Hundred years,
two hundred
, that’s an eye blink—walk a mile in a black man’s shoes, tell me we ain’t still feeling it, black and white both.”

“But
I
didn’t do it. I wasn’t even alive back then. Besides, I’m part Cherokee.”

He gives a little snort. “Good for you,
Tonto
. So you tell yourself, ‘This ain’t my fight. My people were doing just fine and dandy till these white and black folks showed up and all hell broke loose.’”

He rubs his eyes and lets out a big yawn.

“It’s what we all owe, Lightning. You know what I’m sayin’? Ain’t enough just to say, ‘Wasn’t me, wasn’t you.’ And I ain’t letting my own people off the hook, neither. Them African kings sold they own down the river, right? Can’t forget that.”

“But it doesn’t seem like doing much,” I say, thinking about Ouidah again, “just to visit a place.”

“Yeah, you right. But I’ll tell you one thing: it’s a
start
. Least we can do is pay our respects. Help spread some
awareness
about what happened. Tell other people about it.”

The volunteers straggle by. We sit there listening to their engines rumble away across the pasture, till they’ve left us in darkness.

“What do you … what do you think would have happened?” I say. “You know, if slavery had never happened? What would Africa be like now?”

“Huh. You askin’ the wrong man that question, doctor. Too many ifs. Too much water under the gate. Who can say? Maybe the flag of free Nairobi be planted on the moon today, all we know.”

Certain Certain stands and stretches so hard, I can hear his bones cracking.

“I’m tired like to death.” He says good night and climbs into the truck.

When I crawl into bed, it’s hard to shut off my mind. I have a thing I do when it gets like this. Miss Wanda Joy taught me to pray for all the sinners and whoremongers and alcoholics and a whole long list of folks trapped in a living hell on Earth. So I lay there in my bunk praying for their deliverance from the bondage of evil, eyes clamped shut, where I can see nothing but black in front of me.

Before I know it, it’s like I’m inside the blackness with them. I can feel their presence there, held in slavery to Satan. I go forward and touch the blackness. I push against it, and a hole shaped like an
X
tears through. I poke my fingers through the
X
, peeling the darkness back. There’s light on the other side.

That is the light of our Great Redeemer, Jesus Christ. All the trapped people, they are attracted to the hole I’ve made. They come over, all of them, tearing through that hole. Through the light of His love, I have set them
free
.

Later in the night I jerk up in my bunk, thinking I’m still inside my dream; something heavy is moving around outside, tromping the ground close to the motor home. My heart sets to hammering.

The sound is so close, it’s like it’s trying to bust its way through the door. I can hear creakings and groanings and smell dirt through my little side window.

I listen for Sugar Tom or Miss Wanda Joy, but they’re not stirring. I think about calling out, but something tells me,
No, sit still, don’t let
it
know you are here
. I feel the motor home begin to shake; the steps get heavier and heavier. Praise Jesus, how many of them are out there?
What
is out there?

Then I remember: we are parked next to a whole herd of cows. I feel pretty silly, even laugh at my fear. I listen awhile longer as everything begins to settle down. Then I lay back down, and in a wink it’s morning.

I ask Sugar Tom and Miss Wanda Joy what did they think about the hullabaloo? They didn’t hear a thing. I step outside the motor home and walk around blinking in the sun, feeling a chill crawl all over my back.

Nothing
. No hoofprints.

Not a single one.

The congregation is a little better at the Cobbville service.

I handle thirteen folks, all told. Everything from TMJ to shingles to back troubles caused on account of one leg being longer than the other. By the end of the night, Certain Certain is flat exhausted just from catching them as they fall.

“Twenty-three new souls dedicated themselves to walking with the Lord,” Miss Wanda Joy says. I catch a crooked little smile as she jots down the total in her big green ledger. Sugar Tom calls my healings “the crowning moment of the service.”

Now they’re passing the collection plates, and Sugar Tom
is drowsing behind the curtain while I watch the night through the saddle flap.

This is the first time since Verbena that I’ve felt halfway comfortable with the way things are going. Maybe I’m being ungrateful? Is this the life I need to be in? Maybe I haven’t truly understood the whole importance of my mission up till now. Maybe—

It’s her—a flash of blue at the rear of the tent, mixed in with the back of the congregation. That same shade of blue …

Lucy!

What in the world is she doing here? What should I say? What should I do? I scramble to straighten my shirt, smooth my hair.

Should I go straight to her, ask her if she’s all right? But she must be, elsewise why would she be here?

She wants to thank me. Thank me for saving her life
.

I stand frozen and slack-jawed watching her. She’s staring straight ahead, not speaking to anybody else. How long has she been there like that? The whole service? What is she waiting for?

She’s waiting for
me.

The congregation is starting to break up. I look around quick, scanning the faces. No sign of her parents. I haul back the saddle flap and look outside: no Gulf Breeze motor home. Maybe she rode over with a friend?
To see me
.

Okay, Ronald Earl. Just go talk to her. Do it now
.

I hop down from the stage and make a beeline for the center aisle, keeping my eyes straight ahead so they will let me through. I can see folks swirling past Lucy. I feel like there’s a big silver hook in my side yanking me toward her.

“Little Texas,” Miss Wanda Joy calls, but I pretend I didn’t hear.

Lucy
. The inside of my head is on fire. She’s starting to move away now, skirting the last row of chairs. There’s something odd and jerky about the way she is walking, like her leg is hurt or something.

I spy a blue flick of Lucy’s dress as she turns the corner of the tent.
What do I say? Ask her about her school? Her folks? Her town? Anything but the healing. Let her bring that up
.

I run to the back entrance and race around the corner. I jerk my head right and left; I see people streaming across the lumpy grass. A scattering of cloudy stars. The Wilbankses’ little frame house glowing yellow. The line of a fence, cars, a dog nosing around a tractor tire.

And nothing else.