John Crow's Devil (5 page)

“Hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

“But really now, I want to do something preposterous. Can I do it, church? Can I do it? Is that alright? Yes? Okay, everybody who wasn’t in church last week, please stand up.”

One by one they stood up at the back. The drunkards cursed themselves for being opened up to such shame. Even Christians were afraid of being made an example of. Some smiled smiles already weakened by embarrassment, some stared at the ground. Only a few looked at the Apostle, who held the moment for a few seconds. “Praise God. Church, today we’re going to talk about lost sheep.”

The Rum Preacher knew he would not be seen. That took no faith; he knew Gibbeah’s love for spectacle. They were drawn to the Apostle, but he was drawn as well. He went all the way to the old cobblestone track that led up to the church steps, but grew heartsick as soon as he saw the steeple. He could go no farther.

“I tell you, church, it’s up to you to bring every one of these lost sheep back. I can’t do much. I can only minister against the sinister. It’s up to you. Now understand me. I know it’s not your fault why we losing sheep. It’s his fault. You know of who I speak.”

“Preach it, Preacher!”

“A preacher starts a church with ten members and dies with the same damn ten. But I’m not a preacher. I came with a sword. If you’re not serving the Lord, you’re serving the Devil. One or the other, until you die. So when you crawl out of a bed that is not yours, it can only be the Devil’s work that you’re doing. Can I get a witness, Clarence?”

Clarence felt his balls quiver.

“Lost sheep. Some of us don’t want to be found. You ready for this secret, Gibbeah? This will make you tremble. Some of you are in the middle of the flock and still lost.”

The snoring woman was shaken awake. She opened her eyes suddenly, aware of her awkwardness before she saw the pool of her own drool on the floor. A stream of it hung suspended from her bottom lip unawares to her. She collected herself, sat up straight, and opened her Bible like an eager student. When the tail of spit finally fell onto the page, she shut the Bible loudly and wiped her lip, darting glances left and right.

Pastor Bligh retreated to the river. Only she would welcome him now. Only a few days ago he had staggered under guilt and shame, but now he could not escape a feeling of lightness. What was this then, honesty rising up from the torpid waters of truth? Relief? The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. He was set to become Pastor from before his brother’s death, so why should his life be bowed down by it still? Bligh accepted guilt as he did all things; condemned to live his brother’s death over and over. His time and memory was as God’s, without boundary. But why feel torment at being rejected on Earth when rejection was already decreed in Heaven? Maybe Apostle York was blessing
and
curse. Maybe this was reprieve dressed up in punishment. He let the river’s free flow convince him. He thought of a hundred burdens washing away, the yoke of sinners, the confessions of reckless conscience. Let somebody else worry about mothers sticking blame unto sons and fathers sticking penises into daughters.

Freedom washed over him. He was knee deep in water, splashing, kicking, and twirling, compelled, but not happy. No joy then, but perhaps release. No smile but a gasp. Not a laugh, but a sudden, sharp intake of breath. Bligh removed his pastoral jacket, pulled off his pastoral shirt and undershirt, and stepped out of his pastoral pants and shorts. He closed his eyes and baptized himself.

When Hector rose, the clothes had floated away. Making out the white and blue stripes of his shorts, he chased after them, splashing and stumbling several times. He scraped his toes on harsh rocks. He fell and swallowed cold water but the shorts led him like a piper. Bligh heard a laugh; a demon’s and a brother’s.
Look at it, the most wasted ding-a-ling in Christendom.
Bligh forgot freedom for shame. The shorts teased him through deep and shallow water, coarse and slippery rocks, weak and mighty currents. They stopped finally on a shelf of grass and mud that shot out from the bank and nearly sealed off the river. Out of breath, he bent down and grabbed them. When he stood up, there in front of him with her arms akimbo and her face scowling was the Widow. He quickly left her face, looking down at the broad shoulders and thick arms that came from years of man labor, the curveless plunge of her black dress that frayed right below her knees.

“Kiss me raas! Look what the man of God come to?”

He let the quiet between them grow thick. In the past, drunkenness would have saved him from embarrassment, but now he had no hope but that she would slip away. And should they pass each other, both would be shrouded in their own tribulations and acknowledge no acquaintance beyond a nod. He remembered who she was. The Widow Greenfield had buried her husband five years before and stopped coming to church since.

“Running bout the river like some mongrel dog with you business hanging all out o door. But then that is nothin new for you. Well, what you have to say for yourself?

“I suppose cock mouth catch cock. Well, me no know what prospect you have down a river so you might as well come with me. Unless God coming back with a three-piece suit.”

She stepped off, not looking to see if he would follow. There was nowhere to go but behind her step. He followed her, but not because another night of mosquitoes was unbearable. And not because he would again be under a roof. He followed her because he was now a man stripped of authority and went where authority told him.

As soon as he saw Brillo Road all sense of relief vanished. The two of them walking the entire length of the street (Widow Greenfield’s house was near the top) created much fuss. One that showed Pastor Bligh what existed beyond shame. As he hobbled dripping in shorts, each step laid bare new humiliation. The defrocked and disgraced Preacher was on the street from which he had been banished with no liquor to diffuse his awareness. The children laughed. The wives whispered. The men turned away. Only Lucinda could make this worse. Or the man in black. Always the man in black. A force, an apparition, never Apostle York. If that were not enough, there he was walking several paces behind the Widow as if he was a dog or a servant. What existed beyond shame? More shame. Disgrace as deep as grief that eroded dignity in ways that were more dreadful than one could imagine. An embarrassment so thick that it disconnected from the subject, mocking him and leaving him even more ashamed. If only the Lord would kill him right now at this very moment. Before Gibbeah would see him drag his feet into Widow Greenfield’s house.

REVIVAL Part One

S
ix men, seven women, and three children got saved on Sunday. lived outside Gibbeah and would never be seen again, but the number was still more than all the years of Hector Bligh’s pastorship, by Lucinda’s count.

Just after he prayed for salvation and sent the newly saved to their seats, the Apostle commanded The Five to remain at the altar. There they lingered, one standing alert, one fidgeting, one glancing right, the other left, the last to the floor, all fearing they would be made an example of.

“In the name of the Father I rebuke the evil spirit. I bind it by the blood of the lamb! I loose it from their dreams and thoughts and cast it back into Hell.” Then York spoke a language never heard before. All that happened next, happened to Tony Curtis first. Mute since an accident at twelve, he screamed a noise that shook the church. He had not yet fallen when the rest of The Five began to yell, scream, and fall to the ground in spasms. People remembered that before Lillamae stabbed Pastor Bligh she had damaged each of The Five who tried to subdue her. So when Brother Vixton leapt up screaming,
Hallelujah!
his stiff neck was stiff no more. Brother Patrick remained on the floor bawling at having taken his first deep breath in two years. Deacon Pinckney clutched his left eye and cried when he saw out of the right one. Brother Jakes thanked the Lord that he wore tight briefs, as his miracle brought a flush of fear. His blessing stood erect all the way home, where for the first time in two years he could violate his wife.

“You think it goin dry by itself?” she said, an annoyed parent in the weight of her tongue. She was in the bathroom with Pastor Bligh, losing her patience. After eleven years with a man, she no longer recognized the walls that men and women kept up between each other. To turn away from a man merely because he was undressing or shitting seemed as absurd as lying about the blueness of sky. She certainly wasn’t leaving before he handed her the shorts.

This was what she would do to him, he knew it. She would make him young, but only in the most wicked sense of the word. He was to be reduced from man to child, helpless and under manners.

She left him there, closing the door with a man’s strength and stirring up a wind that chilled him. Lavender rose up to his nose.

After she became a widow, Mrs. Greenfield restored femininity to the bathroom. The rest of the house still carried the manly stamp of her husband’s presence. Rooms with patterned wallpaper that haunted her with tobacco, Old Spice cologne, red dirt, and Earl Grey tea that only he drank. The bathroom was not only pink but lilac and purple, with a translucent shower curtain trimmed with crocheted lace. An oval carpet covered the tiled floor and the lid of the toilet. The mirror, also an oval, mocked him and he looked away.

This must have been where she reclaimed herself. But there was nothing about the Widow that he could color pink, lilac, or purple. Maybe this was where she left behind a former self.

Water hit the back of his neck and he pissed on himself. He had heard of showers but had never felt one before this day. Little rays of water sprung from multiple holes like a hydra and attacked him at once. He raised his arms and let the water wash away secret stenches. Water beat his face, punched his eyelids, and pushed wrinkles away from his cheek. What a thing this was to make him feel young again. This was a chance to be new. God’s gift.

Pastor Hector Bligh was fifty-three years old but guilt had pulled down his face. The promise of towering height was thwarted by his slouch. He was on the brink of a new resolve when his thoughts went south. The shower had led him to believe too much. He wondered if people left their homes similarly deluded every morning because of invigorating water jets. His dirtiness could never be washed away. The Widow barged back into the room, unconcerned with his shock or shame.

“No you just bathe in river water?”

“N-no … Y-Yes … I …”

“Suppose you need white soap to feel white as snow. Here me think you did need the holy spirit. Suit you’self. Towel in the closet outside. Anyway, I need the toilet.”

“The toi—”

“Me have to pee-pee! You understand me now?”

She pulled down her panty before he went to the door. He left the room clutching his crotch, almost slipping as his wet feet skidded across the floor. Before closing the door he heard her piss stream pierce through the pool of toilet water. The Pastor grabbed a towel from the closet and waited in the hallway. In minutes she emerged, wiping her hands on her skirt.

“Follow me.”

She took him down the hallway to the dining room, which had a dim light. From the dining room she swung left and he followed her to a darker bedroom. Although only 2:30 in the afternoon, the room spoke of twilight. Clothes were everywhere, as were chests, cupboards, and books that had not been opened since her husband died. In the center of the room was a four-poster bed. Each post had been carved with a pattern of vine leaves, which twirled and danced to a knob at the top. The Rum Preacher thought of Jack and the beanstalk and an invisible giant suspended right below the ceiling but above the bed.

“You can stay in here.”

“This is where—”

“Yes, this is where. Yes. But since him—I don’t sleep in here no more. Any more of me business you want to know?”

“No. Tha—”

“Dinner at 5:30. I suppose you can wear him clothes even though him did little shorter than you. I suppose if him have a problem him can always tell you, you bein spiritual and all.”

Once alone the room became larger, more blue, more twilight, less him. Bligh remembered again he was fifty-three years old. He had his life all planned out by twenty-two. At forty he would slip into retirement for twenty years, after which would have come obscurity, gardening, and death. Irrelevance was to come after, not before. For a God so ambiguous, there were no two ways about his punishment.

Dinner was to be served at 5:30 p.m. Hector Bligh whispered a prayer that along with the sunlight, memories of the day would lose color and fade into blackness

“The food getting cold.”

He sat down. For a woman who seemed to care little, she certainly prepared a table before him. There was simply no way she could have cooked all of this herself. Yet many women in denial of the emptiness that death brought still cooked as if the home was full. This was nothing new. Behind the mask of extravagance was the void cut open by grief. She had fried chicken in batter with honey garlic gravy to the side, steamed rice and peas and sweet potatoes, crushed bananas with butter, and shredded sweet carrots and cabbages together, then sprinkled them with cane vinegar. In the center of the table was a large glass pitcher with red punch beside two plastic cups.