Ginny Gall (11 page)

The minister gripped the pulpit, thanking everybody for coming and giving the title of a hymn, “Uncumbered Grace.” In a light sweet voice he began himself to sing a line that was picked up by the choir. The congregation sang the line back to them and so the hymn followed: a line sung by the minister and choir and repeated by the congregation. Then another hymn, this time “The Ship of Zion,” sung by everybody together.

As the last phrase died out the minister stepped to the side of the pulpit and kneeled. In his hands was a large white handkerchief stained rusty brown in places. The preacher raised the handkerchief in both hands and began to pray.

“This bit of cloth, Lord, was found in the pocket of the young man before us today. It is a handkerchief given to him by his auntie for his birthday this last May. Casey carried it with him everywhere and used it to wipe the sweat of life from his face. But night before
last he didn’t get the chance to use it. Life had already been stolen from him before he could.”

The preacher, who had been twisting the handkerchief in his two hands, raised it again. Many in the crowd had lifted their eyes and were looking at the handkerchief. A rusty tail fluttering in the warm breeze. A woman gasped. Another groaned.

“Blood from this boy’s body stains this hankie, Lord. Casey didn’t have time and the occasion was not propitious for him to draw this square of cloth. Those who kindly cut him down found it in his one unburned pocket. Now this memento belongs to his mother. She will not wash the blood from it.”

He held the handkerchief in front of his face, and Delvin thought for a second that he was going to wash his own face in it. But he didn’t.

“Heavenly Father,” he said, his hands trembling slightly, making the handkerchief flutter, “you have sanctified this blood by your own sacrifice. You too lost a son. A son who washes us all in his own blood. You too grieved. As we here are grieving. This blood, as the blood of any child does, mingles with the blood of the Savior. We here are all sinners, Lord. Fools and strayers, wayward, bumbling folk. This young man whose body lies here before us is cleansed now of all that. He lives with you in heaven. Have mercy on us here, us strugglers and sinners, those left behind in this cold world. Forgive us our sins that we can’t keep from committing. Wash us, Lord, in the blood. Wash us in the blood of the lamb. Heal us, Lord. Hear us. We cry out to you in our grief.”

He lifted his head as cries of
Amen
and cries of
Thank you
, cries of
Jesus is Lord
filled the sanctuary. The minister got to his feet with the ponderousness of a large man and staggering slightly took his stand, entered the pilothouse of his pulpit. He grasped the front rail as a captain would grasp the wheel of his gale-tossed ship. His raised face seemed lashed by a windy force. He looked out over the congregation, in his deepset eyes a sad fondness.

“There is much I could say about this Casey today. When he was a boy of twelve I baptized him in the tank out behind the church. I
watched him play at the edge of the fields and I watched that play turn gradually into the work of a man. He used to have a little one-shot rifle that he carried with him into the woods and he was a mighty hunter with it. I could tell you stories all day long, as many of you could tell stories to me.” He turned slightly so that he was half facing the young man sitting in the other cypresswood chair. “But I want to let this young gentleman up here beside me get up now and talk to you. He is the uncle of this boy, arrived last night from Nashville. Reverend Arthur Wayne is his name. He is a preacher himself and has asked to speak to you this afternoon.”

He turned fully, offering his hand to the slender man, who rose and took it. The minister pulled him fluidly and gently to him. Grasping the man’s elbow with one hand, his other behind the man’s back, he guided him to the pulpit and shuffled backwards to his seat. Delvin at first thought the man was blind. The way he sniffed the air and raised his eyes to the place where the wall joined the ceiling. But then he looked straight out into the congregation, and Delvin could tell he saw just fine. He had a large, hawkish face. He stared into the crowd, letting his eyes rest on this one or that. A silence grew heavier as it lasted and filled the sanctuary. People began to grow restless, and Delvin could sense the nervousness rising.

Reverend Arthur Wayne smacked his lips once, loudly. He threw back his head and laughed. The laugh made a high keening sound, the laugh of a madman. Many found the laugh painful to hear, many were disturbed by a mad-sounding laugh coming from a preacher and told themselves what they heard wasn’t so. Some experienced a stab of anger. Others were openly frightened. The man smacked his lips and laughed again, Rev Wayne. He swayed in the pulpit, rocking from one arm to the other and back. The older minister—his name was Oriel Munch—made a half move toward him but thought better and sank back into his chair. The young man caught the sides of the heavy rostrum. His dark-complected face shone with sweat. Some of the women wanted to go to him. He stared again into the depths of the congregation, and now many shrank from his eyes. They were afraid he would pick them out. Rev Wayne opened his mouth, show
ing a fine row of upper teeth missing the dog tooth on the right side.

He bowed his head, perhaps in brief silent prayer, raised his face, and in a gentle, even voice said, “Devilment.” He smiled again, this time without opening his mouth. “Yeah,” he said, “devilment. That’s what brought you here.”

Beyond the open window, beyond the graveyard, a breeze tugged at the tops of the cotton. Delvin felt a prickliness, as if the breeze carried with it a tiny sting like nettles or a sticker bush. Something out there seemed to touch something inside him. A precision, unlifelike and false, that carried harm. A glint of sunlight on metal. He stepped carefully back—into safety, into the other world beside what was in fields and roads and common rivers.

“Devilment,” the preacher was saying. His voice was soothing and even this word, a shocker, soothed. “We can’t help but stare at it,” he said. “We are drawn to it. I want each of you to make sure you take a good look at the devilment lying here before you today. Not the devilment in this boy. There was never any devilment in
him
. Not any more than you could find in any prancy young fellow. No more than any of us had when we were his age. The devilment is the devilment that was worked upon his helpless body. His mama didn’t want the good Mr. Cornelius Oliver here to fix him up. Mr. Oliver is a magician with his chemicals and his cosmetics. He could clean up the devil himself, I guess.” (Oliver looked blandly back at him.) “But this boy’s mama didn’t want Mr. Oliver to fix this boy so he looked like a fresh youth resting after his happy run through the world.” He drummed his fingers on the edge of the rostrum. “Why you think she didn’t want him to rectify and embellish this boy? I’ll tell you. Because she wanted you to see what the devil had wrought. Here before you, in this holy place, before God and his mighty works, the mightiest work of His Holy Hand lies before you torn to pieces. Men did this to a boy.”

He shook his head. His long stiff dry crozzled hair swayed slightly. He raised his left hand and with drawn-together fingers wiped his face. The back of his hand was lacerated with white scars. Someone gasped. A moan went through the congregation. He again
looked out. He looked straight out. “Are we children of God?” he asked.

Somebody answered yes, an old man with close-cropped gray hair, Hardy Purcell.

“Yes,” the young preacher said, “yes we are. We
are
all
children of God. And it was children of God who did this in the dark of night to another child of God. They performed an act of devilment on their brother.” He pressed his forehead with the heel of his left hand, pressed hard as if pushing back against a pain there. “Now what would make a man—make men—do this?”

“The devil!” somebody cried, a large woman, Maggie Cagel, fanning herself rapidly with her paddle fan. The swish of fans could be heard throughout the room, like the sound of bee wings.

“Yes,” the young preacher said. “The devil. But what is the devil?”

“Tell us,” another said.

“The devil . . . and all of you know him . . . he’s inside each of you . . . is . . .
trepidation.
It’s dread, it’s consternation, it’s fright. Trepidation. That’s right. Misdoubts . . . and dismay . . . and recreancy. The bugaboo, the bogie, the hobgoblin. You all know that fellow, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You all been scared. Some of you—with good reason—maybe
most
of you, are scared all the time, scared out of your wits.

“O Lord.”

“But those men the other night. Those men carrying torches and kerosene and guns and knives and axes and a rope.
Those
men were afraid. They were scared to death. The devil had entered them and scoured out all the holiness. Or most all of it. He had scoured it out and refilled the hole with trepidation. What was it they were scared of? Were they scared of governments . . . or guns . . . or God?”

“No sir.”

“They weren’t scared of
them
, you are exactly right. They were scared of this child . . . whose broken body lies before us now. This boy who just a few days ago was walking along the road out here
picking blue-eyed grass and singing a song to himself. They were scared that this little boy was going to take something from them that they couldn’t do without. What was that something?”

He leaned forward, a look of pain in his face. Nobody had answered.

“I’ll tell you. There’re many names for it. One of them . . . is strength. Another . . . is honor. Another is courage. Another’s goodness. Kindness. Mercy. Steadfastness.”

The room was quiet but for the faint buzzing and shuffling and clicking sounds of the living world. Rev Wayne looked around, fixed on this or another one. Then his eyes seemed to fix on them all.

“Those men were afraid that this boy, this sweet and generous child, was going to steal these properties from them. But these men were misinformed. This child wasn’t going to steal anything. They had it backwards. This child could only add to them. The good of one adds to the good of the many. But these men could not see this. Their scarediness had taken them over. They had become for this time . . . maybe for all time . . . the captives of this trepidation. Guarantors of the devil.”

He cupped his forehead briefly in the palm of his right hand, then held the hand before him and looked into the palm and let the hand drift to the pulpit.

“We have come here to pray for and bless and bury this child. And that we will do. We do it prayerfully with hearts weighed down by grief. But this child does not need our prayers. This child shares none of our grief. He is in heaven right now. He has been in heaven since the moment the blow that separated him from this world was struck. He is snug in the arms of the Lord. A blameless, emancipated child. It is these others who need our prayers. Those so consumed by their trepidations and frets that they were led to do evil deeds. Some of you want to flee this horror—hide yourselves. Others want to turn and seek vengeance against those who committed it. Others want
justice
. Others want simply to forget. But there is no hiding, there is no vengeance, there is no justice, there is no forgetting. There is only the Lord. That hatred we feel rising up like a streaming flame. That
trepidity that makes us want to run into the woods and hide under the bushes. That misery. That grief like a block of stone laid upon our hearts. The sweat on our bodies, the aches, the faltering, the falling. There is only the Lord for that.”

He looked around. In his eyes a look of despair.

“So fall,” he said. “Fall to your knees.”

As he said this he fell, like a man shot. His knees hit the planed boards with a cracking sound. He winced and almost keeled over but was able to right himself. His face was drawn, famished, gaunt even. Others had followed him to their knees in a symphony of groans and creaks. The preacher raised his scarred hands and held them before his face as if he was holding in a blessing or curse or the split words of a raveling faith. Slowly he lowered his hands until he could look out over the closed fingers. Then his eyes closed.

In a choking voice he said, “Fall on your knees, yes. Offer what you have to the Lord, yes. Offer the misery and the scarediness and the hate and the rage, yes. Lord!” he cried, his voice reedy and broken. “We here are scared to death. We are miserable. We are filled with hatred. Take these putrid products and like the water you changed into wine, like the loaves and the fishes you enhanced to feed a multitude, change, enhance them, until they are transfigured in the fire and love of your being into a faith that will sustain us. Help us, Lord! We cannot help ourselves.” He leaned so far forward it seemed he might pitch off the platform onto the ground.

With a struggle he righted himself. His body slumped. He forced air through nearly closed lips. Drew a rattling breath.

“Ay, Jesus,” he whispered. Silence. People looked from under lowered brows. The silence extended like a dark and steady wing over the congregation. Delvin could hear the wind rustling in the trees. At last the young preacher spoke.
“
Be kind,”
he croaked,
“Be kind.”

He staggered to his feet. He slumped before them, held up by what they could not tell. His exhausted face looked as if he was no longer behind it, as if he had been taken by an imbecility, a loose dumbness.

Cries began to pass through the assembled.

The minister Rev Munch rose and grasped the younger man’s arms from behind. He drew Rev Wayne to him and slid his arm around him and they stood together, eyes closed. Both prayed outloud and no one in the congregation was sure of what either said. Their prayers mingled and coiled about each other in the sun-filled air aswim with motes and drifting bugs. As the prayers ended the choir started in on another song.
Good news,
they sang,
chariot comin—good news.

Soon they were all out in the cemetery grouped around the big green canvas awning above the yellow hole in the ground. The air smelled of the dusty cotton plants. A warm breeze as if idly looking for something lifted the leaves of the gum trees and set them back. All around them at other graves bouquets of phlox and jacob’s ladder and yarrow and wild carrot and even the yellow blossoms of the humble dusty miller plant gave the scumbly ground a festive and mournful air.