Heading Out to Wonderful (14 page)

All she can say is now, and now again and again, until he comes back from where he was and hears her, and finally allows himself to take what she offers, to take it shyly, to take it with a force that causes no pain, to take it with the kindness and the gratitude he feels in his heart that any woman so beautiful would let him come near her. Each has become for the other, Charlie to Sylvan and Sylvan to Charlie, both the only thing there is and nothing at all. They are joined, they are alone, each needing the other to create that solitude they have lived to find, each needing the war of the other’s body to create that wholeness that seems the only place it is possible to live, for now, and now, and for the moment after that.

Every moment would last forever. Every moment would end in a split second. In the end, they wake with a flash to find that they are still who they had always been, that even this now comes to an end, and even this here has a boundary they cross at breakneck speed, cross with regret, cross with gratitude because the body knows even after the mind forgets that there are some countries in which you cannot live forever, some countries that would kill you if you stayed too long.

But in the dying, both know for the first time that each will be a citizen in the other’s country until the last breath is drawn. The women he had known before her lived in another country, far off. The feeling of being at home in them had been, every time, a lie and a heartbreak, even though he remembered every face, every detail of every body. But this, she, her, here, now, this is the truth he had imagined as a boy, something that, once known, can never be lost.

And for her, for Sylvan, he is Hollywood.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I
N BROWNSBURG, EVERYBODY
went to church, everybody except a few old men and one woman, who were still too drunk on Sunday morning to go much of anywhere. So Alma said Charlie had to go, too. He complained, politely, that Sunday was his day off, that he didn’t want to leave Jackie Robinson alone, but in her gentle way Alma won out, saying it was the thing to do, it was expected. And so he agreed, and he went.

There were five churches in town—an Episcopalian church, Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist for the white people, and a Colored Methodist Episcopal Church for the black citizens. The CME wasn’t actually a church, or at least it didn’t look like one. They met—less than two dozen people in all, including babies and a traveling preacher, the Reverend Mr. Shadwell, who only came every other week—in a storefront at the far end of Main Street, right close to where they all lived. They didn’t even have to walk into the main part of town to get to it.

Alma and Will were Presbyterians and, while Charlie hadn’t been raised one, he figured he might as well go along and worship with the people he knew best. The first Sunday in November, four days after he had first stopped his truck in front of the Glass house, he woke up at dawn, as he always did, and ironed a clean white shirt while he drank his first strong cup of coffee. He didn’t know how he felt about going to church; it had been so long he could hardly remember it.

He didn’t have a suit or a tie, so he borrowed a tie from Will, but he worried. Alma said it didn’t matter, nobody would notice.

But it did matter, at least to Charlie. He was the only man in church who wasn’t wearing a suit, even though you could tell nobody else wore one, either, except on Sunday mornings, or to a wedding or a funeral. Most of the suits were brown and old, some shiny; a lot were too small, as though they had been bought before the men gained that last twenty pounds or so. But the women looked nice. Plain, clean dresses, a lot of them made by Claudie Wiley, and every woman wore a hat; Alma even wore short white gloves, which she pulled onto her small hands and buttoned at the wrist as they walked down to the church after Charlie had joined them, waiting on their porch. Even Sam had a suit, and it was brown, like everybody else’s.

Of course she was there. When Charlie and the Haisletts walked into the church and took their seats with the assurance of people who sat in the same pew every week, Boaty and Sylvan Glass were already seated three rows in front of them.

Sylvan was the only woman in black, a black wool suit, from what Charlie could see of her, which was only from the shoulder blades up, her hair swept up tightly under a fitted black hat with a feather on it. She never turned, never greeted another parishioner, and Charlie spent the few minutes before the processional just staring at the back of her head. She wore black jet earrings, the only woman in church who was wearing any jewelry.

George McLaughlin started up the pedal organ, and a boy with a wooden cross led a small, straggly choir up the aisle, followed by Reverend Morgan, all of them staring at their hymnals so intensely they walked like blind people. They sang “Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of the Morning,” and Charlie was surprised that he knew it, knew the melody, and he sang along, although so softly that even Sam could hardly hear him.

Fair is the sunshine, fairer still the moonlight,

and all the twinkling starry host:

Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer

than all the angels heaven can boast.

Charlie had thought it wouldn’t be so bad, going to church, and it wasn’t. Everybody looked so clean and sweet, the men bored, the women attentive, the children squirming but quiet. He stared at the back of Sylvan’s head, through the singing, through the morning prayers, praying to the Lord only that she would turn around, look at him, even turn to look at one of the Victorian stained glass windows of the saints, so he could see just the side of her face. But she never moved. He counted the days until Wednesday, the hours, the minutes.

Reverend Morgan was tall and thin, at least seventy-five, and he’d been the preacher there for thirty years, so everybody had heard him say the same prayers every Sunday for hundreds of Sundays, and it gave them comfort, the sameness of it all, every word unchanging, every movement preordained, the kneeling, the standing, the full-sleeved whiteness of the starched cotta against the black of his robe.

So, not so bad. Until the sermon, at least. Before they sat for the sermon, they sang “Lord Jesus Think on Me,” and Charlie started to feel uneasy. It reminded him right away of why he didn’t go to church any more.

Lord Jesus think on me

And purge away my sin;

From earth-borne passions set me free

And make me pure within.

Charlie didn’t feel impure. And he didn’t want to hear about sin. The sight of Sylvan’s golden hair was the only brightness in the room.

Nobody seemed to mind. They sang just as heartily as they sang the first hymn, about redeeming themselves from the sin that corrupted their minds and lives, every day, in every action. And, as they sang, they dug into their purses and wallets for coins or bills to put into the passing baskets. Charlie put in a dollar.

Lord Jesus think on me

Nor let me go astray;

Through darkness and perplexity

Point thou the heavenly way.

They sang as if they believed in going astray more than they believed in the brightness of the morning. They sang as if their lives depended on it, until the verses of the hymn led them finally through the maze of sin and into the arms of redemption and heaven.

Then Reverend Morgan stepped to the pulpit, and you could see the old man trembling—with scorn, with a rage for Jesus, a fury that had never failed him once in half a century’s years of preaching.

He had a full, rich voice for a thin man, and you knew from the minute he started speaking that he meant business.

“The Gospel for today’s sermon is from John, chapter eight, verse thirty-four. Mark on this, and remember. John said, ‘Whosoever commiteth sin is the servant of sin.’ He was talking almost two thousand years ago, but he was talking to you, my brother, and to you, my sister. To the old folks and the babies. To every one of you.” He stared at them hard, looked into every eye.

Charlie knew he was a sinner. He knew, even as he couldn’t turn his eyes away, that even by looking at the back of Sylvan’s head, remembering in the back of his throat the taste of her tongue in his mouth, he was committing at least two of the Seven Deadly Sins. But he didn’t care. He was fine with that, and with whatever price he would have to pay.

“. . . and the sad thing is, dear friends, is that sin is real. As real as the rich man’s Cadillac, as real as the poor man’s crust of bread. It is as real as your neighbor’s wife, your neighbor’s land. And it is there forever. Forever and ever.”

The congregation wasn’t stirring now. They were transfixed. Even the children quieted down at the sound of that rich and terrible voice.

“When you sin . . . and who among us does not, does not sin every day in every way, from the moment we open our eyes until long after we have lost ourselves in lustful dreams? When you sin, God does not abandon you. No. No. It is not in the nature of God to abandon you, no matter how hellish your heart, no matter how sinful your dreams or your covetous desires. No. No. God does not abandon you. When you sin, you abandon God, the God who made you for no reason and who loves you beyond
all
reason, you abandon God and turn away into the open, inviting jaws of hell.

“Do you know what hell is? Hell is simply this, dear friends. Hell is the place where God isn’t. You may find riches untold there—that Cadillac you dream about, or that woman or that man, that land of riches and jewels and money, always money, that land you dream of at night with lust in your heart—but you will not find God. God waits for you. In heaven. God calls you home. In the midst of your lust and your envy and your sloth and your gluttony and your pride, stop and listen for a sound. And you will hear it, I promise you, God promises you. You will hear it as I have heard it.”

His voice grew louder, more commanding, and they sat, obedient to the fear he planted in their hearts and to the power in the old man’s voice. Morgan was almost yelling now, his voice was hoarse, rasping, the way you imagine the voice of the devil.

“It is God. He is calling you home. Home to Him. Home to heaven. Sin is real. Hell is real. And God is calling you home. Which will you choose, on that great day? Which will you choose tonight? Tomorrow? Forever?”

He stopped, and stared out over the congregation for a full minute. None of them, not one save for Sylvan, could hold his gaze. They looked at the baby Jesus in the stained-glass windows, they looked at their hands, fumbled in their pockets for a clean handkerchief.

To Charlie, these people around him didn’t look like sinners. Sinners wore makeup and drank liquor and bet on horses. Sinners shot people. Sinners lied. They didn’t go about their business with the calm and dignity of the people he’d met in the town or around the county. But, apparently, they felt like sinners. They needed to think of themselves that way, at least for the twenty minutes a week Morgan harangued them from the pulpit.

He wondered why these people, who worked so hard at doing their best, at going about their daily lives without causing anybody too much trouble, would need that kind of thing—being yelled at week after week, told every week they were going to end up in hell—and in what way it gave them comfort, strength to go on. They didn’t covet, or envy, they worked hard and, for the most part, told the truth, because it was a small town, after all. They had to live with themselves, and with each other.

They looked ashamed—of what? he wondered. After the sermon, they said the few remaining prayers as if in a daze, and then they all sang “Alleluia, Sing to Jesus” for the recessional. Their voices rose when they came to the lines, “Alleluia, not as orphans, are we left in sorrow now,” and nodded solemnly as Reverend Morgan passed up the aisle, fixing each of them with his steely gaze. Then they filed out of the church into the chill, bright morning air. In and out in an hour. At least there was that.

Charlie couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

In the churchyard, the parishioners stood around talking, as though they hadn’t seen each other every day for all of their lives. As they talked to Will and Alma and Charlie, almost every man and woman reached down absently and touched Sam’s head, tousled his hair. He was the youngest child there, except for an infant or two, the last fruit of his parents’ generation, and the people felt a special fondness for him. Sam liked having his head touched, leaned his forehead into their hands, and smiled up at them, always asking how they were and what they were doing with a genuine interest and concern.

Boaty and Sylvan Glass didn’t move around; they just stood in the one shady spot, and every man and woman went up to greet them, but only for a minute. Sylvan smiled, her lips red, her eyes hidden by the shadow of her hat and her dark, dark tortoise-shell sunglasses.

Charlie, when it came their turn to speak to them, couldn’t take his eyes off her. He couldn’t even pretend to look at Boaty, never heard a word he said. He wanted to see her eyes, her green eyes, he wanted her to look at him and say anything, anything at all, but she never did. She spoke only to Alma, and hardly even that, and nobody noticed how Charlie was staring at her, not even Boaty, who was probably used to it anyway. Nobody noticed except Sam, who also stared at her, but for other reasons, reasons he couldn’t quite fathom, as though he had never seen her before, or as though he didn’t connect this glamorous woman with the woman he had seen waiting on the porch of a big white farmhouse, just three days before.