Fair and Tender Ladies (43 page)

I should of known then that something was wrong with him.

But the fact is that I set such store by
family,
and I was so happy to see him after this long a time, that I did not.

I couldn't tell it till he turned on me.

That first Sunday, Geneva piled up his plate and he started right in eating, which didn't slow his talking down a bit. Garnie told us all about how he had left here with Sam Russell Sage and gone West and stayed with him until Sam Russell Sage got jealous of his power—this is
Garnie's
power, mind you—which had occasioned a split between them in Kansas City after which
I took the high road and he took the low, if you know what I mean,
Garnie said, adding that the hand of God had come after that and set the hotel fire that burned Sam Russell Sage to a crisp along with his 18 year old consort who could only be identified later by her satin slippers and one gold tooth. She was a newspaper editor's daughter from Kansas City who had been missing for months, said Garnie. Garnie told us that as Sam Russell Sage grew older, he had succumbed more and more to the evils of the flesh and had become a devil. Garnie said he had witnessed it all. Then Garnie lowered his head and started in eating like crazy.

Geneva opened and shut her mouth a couple of times. Well that is mighty strong language, she said finally. You know those are very hard words, said Geneva who after all had shared her bed with this devil for years.

Yes mam,
Garnie said looking right at Geneva,
and my God is a hard God, and make no mistake about it.

Geneva's sweet sagging face turned pink.

I wouldn't mind some more ham, Garnie said, and some more of that red-eye gravy, and Oakley passed it along. Nobody said a word while Garnie ate. Ethel was off on a buying trip or she would have spoke right up and given him what for, the cat has never got Ethel's tongue yet.

Judge Brack stood up then and said he had to attend a meeting, and begged us to please excuse him, and as far as I know he never ate at that table again until after Garnie left. Judge Brack has gotten so thin now that his suits hang off of his shoulders like he is a suit rack, and flap around him when he walks. His hair is as white and fly-away as a dandelion fluff, and he always needs a haircut.

To break the silence I said,
Well how did you all meet each other?
meaning to get Ruthie to talk since she had not said word one, so far. She kept looking around and then when you'd catch her eye, she'd look down.

We had taken the message to Tullahoma, Tenessee,
Garnie said,
and Ruth here was among the saved.

I looked good at Ruthie who did not look very saved to me. Ruthie's skin was so fair it was kind of blue, but she had round patches of red rouge on each cheek. She had painted eyebrows on in thin half-circles above each eye which made her look real surprised, and her red lips were fixed in a perfect bow. In Oakley's church they don't hold with make-up at all, so I was surprised to see Garnie's wife done up like this. Her nails were long and pointed, red. Her hands did not look like she had ever washed a dish in her life and from what she told me later, this was wellnigh true. Garnie had always hired a girl to come in and do the housework, even when Ruthie was not much more than a girl herself. She is not so very old now either, which made me wonder about Garnie speaking out against Sam Russell Sage.
If the shoe fits, wear it,
Geneva always says. But Ruthie told me later that Garnie does not want any wife of his to lift a finger except to look good, and minister to his needs.

What do you mean, minister to his needs?
I said. We were sitting out on the boardinghouse porch by then and I was getting a big kick out of the way folks looked when they came walking by and got a load of Mrs. Little Garnie Rowe.

Oh well, he, I mean, you know
—Ruthie's answer trailed off in the breeze. Ruthie had a flat little Tenessee voice that came out of her nose but she could sing like an angel. That night at the First Crusade, she and Mary Magdalene were dressed just alike in pink ruffled dresses with pink bows in their hair and patent leather shoes. They sang Why Not Tonight together.

But that afternoon, I found out how she managed to get nylons in spite of the war. While Garnie was out seeing that every little thing about his Crusade was set up right, I walked by their open door with some towels and saw Ruthie in there with one foot up on a chair, drawing a line up the back of her leg with a grease pencil. She didn't have any nylons at all!
Oh hi,
she said real quick putting her foot back down, but not before I saw a flash of red silk underwear. She was wearing a fancy robe which Danny Ray told me later was Japanese, making Garnie at best a hypocrite and at worst a traitor. Danny Ray is too smart for his own good. Right then he was eyeballing Ruthie who paced back and forth in the hall wearing her robe and smoking Camels. I sent Danny Ray on down to the river with the rest of the boys.

I sure am glad to meet you, I said to Ruthie who jumped like a shot. She said, Likewise. She had long, long legs, real white. Don't you want to go back up on Sugar Fork with us after this Crusade, I asked her, and take the kids, and see where Garnie grew up?

If he wants to, Ruthie said in her high flat voice. If he wants to, I'd like it a lot, but he—he—She quit talking and started blowing smoke rings, something she did a lot.

When Garnie came back in from checking the set-up for his crusade I said as much to him.
And furthermore,
I added,
Don't you want me to tell Ruthie all about Momma and show her where she died? It was right here,
I said to Ruthie,
in the corner room upstairs.
In my mind I can see Momma so clear, sitting in her little chair.

Garnie shook his head back and forth like a dog coming up from under water. His jowls shook. Then he said,
I am no child of hers.

I am a child of God,
Garnie went on to say loudly, and I said
Oh,
and my heart sank for I knew then that the fat silly little Garnie I had loved was already dead and gone too.

Ruthie walked the hall smoking cigarettes, her long white legs flashing, and then it was time for the First Crusade, which Geneva did not attend.

But I went with Oakley to the First Crusade and it was neither better nor worse than I expected. I would rate Little Garnie Rowe about average as a preacher, and I'd bet furthermore that a lot of his fame has come from those that travel with him, such as Little Mary Magdalene in her pink dress, and this other young man that calls himself John Three Sixteen with a real deep singing voice, what Geneva calls a
basement voice.
But my own mind wandered the way it has done for years in church, and when it came time for the invitational, I enjoyed seeing everyone come forward and was not a bit surprised to see Dreama re-dedicating her life again. She cut her eyes at me but would not speak. She was wearing this
hat,
you should of seen her!

So Oakley and me drove home in the truck with the boys asleep in the back and Maudy asleep between us, her head laying in my lap.

Well, what did you think? I asked Oakley after a while, and when he didn't say a thing I leaned over in his face and asked him again.

Oakley sighed such a deep sigh that he seemed to draw it in from the night air all around us, from the very mountain.
Ivy, I wish you believed,
he said. We jolted on through the soft spring night with three of our children asleep in the truck and one dead, up under the apple trees.

I didn't say a word.

But when Garnie showed up on Sugar Fork the next Saturday, I was in a mood to listen even if he
was
a pig and a fool, and my own little brother to boot. First I heard a car door slam, down there by the creek, and bye and bye here came Garnie in a suit that made him look from a distance like a little black box, panting up the hill.

I was hanging out clothes, with the clothespins in my mouth. The boys had gone over on Deskins Fork with Oakley, where they were building Mrs. Clinton Jones a garage, and Maudy and Martha had gone off for a ride with Rufus Cook. So I was all alone there on the hillside, hanging out my clothes in the windy April day.

There was not a soul around to save me from being saved.

I remember I looked straight up at the patchy fast-moving blue spring sky with the clouds sailing past like kites, and I thought,
May be. May be it is finally time.
And I thought again of how it was that moment in the kitchen, when I
felt like
church, and how good that felt. Revel's crazy song came back to me too—

I knew I had been a sinner all right, and although I have been a fool from time to time too, I am not a fool altogether, not so much of a fool that I expect a burning bush, I mean. I knew God could come in stealth and darkness and work in mysterious ways. So it hit me, there on the hillside,
This could be it, after all these years. It could be God speaking out through your fat little brother Garnie, and why not? Stranger things have happened.
But because I am so contrary, Silvaney, another part of me said,
Well, if this is the vessel God has picked to carry his message, then it is a mighty damn poor one!
Garnie stood on the big flat rock fanning himself with a funeral fan which I guess he'd brung up there from church, and sweating, all red in the face. Even his scalp was red, under the fuzz of his hair. I kept on hanging up clothes which was hard as the wind kept trying to jerk them away from me. I was not going to say a thing. I was going to make him
work
for it. Oh Silvaney, I
am
contrary!

But Garnie didn't say anything either, except
Hidy sister,
and I said,
Hidy.
Then he sat down on the rock and started flipping through this little white Bible that he carried in his breast pocket.

So finally I couldn't stand it and I said, How many have you saved this week, Garnie? for his Crusade had been going for a week. It had another week to go.

We have brought 19 souls to God, sister. Garnie said. Since Garnie got to be a preacher, he calls himself
we.

I started adding up in my head. So that makes all together . . .

Seven hundred and forty-two, praise God!
Garnie cried out in a loud voice. He keeps a running total. Then he took out a snow white handkerchief and mopped his face.

Which brings me to my message here today, he said in a quieter tone, but still sounding like a preacher.

Garnie, why can't you talk like yourself anymore? I said. For try as I might, it was only in little bits and pieces that I could see my brother in him at all.

Because I am not that Garnie any more, Garnie said, getting all worked up. I have been born again into the love of God and the bounty of his Kingdom. I have been washed in the blood of the Lamb, he hollered.

I was losing my will to be saved, and I knew it. I could tell I was closing my mind.

And that is why I have come up this holler today sister,
Garnie said,
for it has come to my ears that you have sinned and not repented, that my own sister is going to hell in a handbasket without remorse.

I didn't answer, still hanging up clothes.

Well! What have you got to say for yourself? Garnie said, almost hollered. He reminded me of that fat little feist-dog that Geneva used to save scraps for, down in Majestic.
Ivy? What do you say?
It was like he was jumping for scraps, and all red in the face.

Finally I took the clothespins out of my mouth and said, Well, I bet you've been talking to Dreama Fox.

It don't matter! Garnie yelled. It don't matter where the word comes from, as long as it comes!

But you, he said, hopping off the rock and coming closer, you are a whore and an abomination, and make no mistake about it! What you have done, oh what you have done . . . Garnie was getting so worked up now that spit made little bubbles at the corners of his mouth. I wished they would come back, Oakley and the boys or Maudy and Martha or anybody, I knew that moment I'd had when I might be saved had gone by as fast as one of those swiftmoving clouds, and I dreaded what might come next. I wished somebody, anybody else would come to save me. For I was all alone on the hillside with Garnie, who stepped up closer.

I took a deep breath.

I'm glad to hear you saved so many souls,
I said.
And how much money did you take in?

Ivy you always were too smart which is the flaw in your tragic nature, Garnie sputtered.

I bent down to my basket to get some more shirts. I don't know what you are talking about, I said.

I will tell you Ivy right now,
Garnie said.
Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh. For God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil. That is the word of God in Ecclesiastes 12:14,
Garnie said.

Amen.
I was getting mad. I flapped out Oakley's jeans and hung them up.

Whoa now. Hold up honey! Garnie said. You had best not be so fast here. Well do I recall you as a girl and how you held yourself above your sisters and above us all, and see now where it has brought you, Ivy. It has brought you low, it has brought you down into the fiery pit of hell and into damnation, for as God has said in Proverbs 16:5, Every one that is proud in heart is an abomination to the Lord. Though hand join in hand, he shall not be unpunished.

I kept hanging up clothes, but I was getting scared. Garnie was nothing but a fat little feist-dog in a black wool suit and I knew it, yet what he said rung a bell in me someplace for I
have
been proud Silvaney, in my body and my mind, I am proud still, and if this is sin then I must claim it as my own. I thought of you Silvaney, and how you could
not
learn, and of Ethel who went without, and of Beulah that day at Diamond when she cried and told me I am the one that had everything, and then threw it all away. The wind picked up and the bed sheets flapped around my head.