The Truest Pleasure (13 page)

I baited my hook and put an extra shot on the line for the strong current. I bit down on the sinker to tighten it and then
spit out the taste of lead. It was something I hadn't done since ten or twelve. The lead was soft as candy between my teeth.

I saw Tom watching where he had throwed his line. There was little wrinkles and puffs in the eddies that took his line and worried it. Part of the mystery and thrill of fishing is you can't see what is happening. Everything is deep under the surface and all you can do is wait for the line to tighten, or the jolt to come through the pole. Fishing is like a lesson in patience and humility because you have so little power over what happens. Even if you hook a fish it may twist off before you pull it in. Trout are good at throwing the hook once they feel it in their lip. If they don't swallow the bait quick they will probably hurl theirselves off before you can land them.

Tom was being patient. He worked his pole to the left and then eased it a little to the right. He watched the swift current on the far side, and looked at a hawk circling the steep ridge above the river. Leaves was just coming out all different shades of yellows and greens up the side of the ridge. Spring colors are some of my favorite. The yellows and greens looked delicate as smoke. There was sarvis blooming and dogwoods starting to blossom. The woods shined like some new garden in the sun.

“If you w-w-worry, a fish won't bite,” Joe said.

“You can think a fish to your hook,” David said, “if you think only about good things.”

“I'm thinking about how tired my arm is getting,” Tom said.

Something tugged my line and I pulled it a little and the line jerked harder. The end of the pole tipped and I pulled up. The line throbbed and plucked at the pole. I pulled it all the way
up and a fish flashed slapping at the surface. It was white and a kind of gold.

“Ain't nothing but a h-h-hornyhead,” Joe said.

I raised the pole and took the jumping fish in my hand. It had thorns on its head and gulped air as I took it in my grasp.

“Throw it in the weeds,” David said. “Nothing but trash.”

I throwed the hornyhead into the laurels behind the clearing and heard it thrash in the leaves there from time to time. I rebaited my hook and tossed it back in.

The sky was clear now except for a few white clouds far above us. They was so bright it hurt to look at them. David stared at the clouds for a long time. “Just looking up there you can tell who made this world,” he said. “Yes sir.”

The clouds looked so bright they appeared to have lights inside them. The air was washed clean. It was good to glance away from the muddy river. The cloudtops was white as snowdrifts.

“S-s-s-signs and wonders right there,” Joe said.

“How come this is called the Bee Gum Hole?” Tom said.

“Because a bee gum was found washed up here a long time ago,” David said. “It was when white people first settled. Nobody knows where it come from.”

“I guess the trout ain't hungry today,” Joe said. “M-m-maybe they are fasting.”

Just then Tom's pole whipped into the water. He jerked it and the line run taut through the muddy pool so fast it hissed. He swung the pole and then the line started upstream. I had never heard a fishing line sing that way through the water. It whistled and burned across the pool. The line went this way and that way.

“You've g-g-got one,” Joe yelled.

The line shot to the end of the pool and come almost clear of the water, then started back, going z-z-z-z and zinging.

“It's a big one,” David said. “Hold him.” He started coughing. “That's old Plow Wing.”

“That ain't no fish,” Joe said. “That's a horse.”

Tom run along the bank holding the pole clear of brush. There was no way he could let out more line from the coils at the end of the pole. I was afraid the line would break. He run to the edge and stepped off into the pool. The water was deeper than he expected and he stumbled up to his knees in the muddy river.

“Watch out,” I yelled.

The line swung around and come right toward him. He lifted the pole as high as he could, but just barely kept it taut. The fish acted like it was going to attack him, but then swung back up the river. Tom run up on the bank to follow it.

This time when the trout reached the end of the line it jumped clear of the water. The fish looked a yard long. It was silver as a mirror and sprinkled with ink. Its sides flashed pink and gold and green. It was the prettiest fish I had ever seen, and looked untouched by the muddy water. It slapped its tail like a fan and danced across the pool before dropping back into the river.

“Don't you lose him,” Joe said, his stammer gone.

When the trout headed downstream Tom went into the pool. He held the pole over his head and pulled the fish toward the sandbar. He was hoping to get the fish on the sand and grab him.

“Sweet Jesus,” Joe said, when he saw the fish in the shallows.

“Please let him catch it,” I prayed without thinking about it.

But the big rainbow recovered its strength and shot into the deep water. The line hissed and frothed like a hot wire dropped in the river. It went
zit
and then
zit
again. Tom waded into the pool up to his armpits, holding the pole as high as he could.

“Let him get tired,” Joe called.

“Don't let him throw the hook,” David said.

But the trout was far from exhausted. It pulled Tom along the side of the pool past the sandbar at the creek mouth. It run into the shallow water further down, and he followed, stumbling over the big rocks. He had lost his hat and he was wet to his neck.

Finally he turned the fish around and it headed upstream. I don't know who was more tired, the fish or Tom. He was out of breath and staggering in the mud. The trout must have thought it could escape up the creek for it turned toward the fan of mud from the creek mouth and run into the shallows. Tom jerked the pole and pulled it further onto the sand.

While the big trout thrashed in three or four inches of water Tom leapt on top of it and grabbed its gills with both hands. He wrestled it until the fish quit flopping. When Tom stood up I saw the fish was half as long as he was. Both him and the rainbow was covered with sand. Tom was out of breath, but he held the fish up into the sunlight like it was made of silver and rubies and emeralds.

Everything went smooth until our first baby was born. I mean Tom and me had our tiffs and sulks, same as any married couple will. Tom was usually so silent it was hard to tell at first when he was sulling. But I soon got to where I could tell. There was a stiffness about him when he was mad. It was like he pulled in all his feelings and interests. He might not talk less than usual, but he give off a kind of coldness. His eyes wouldn't meet mine, and he didn't answer if you asked him something.

But the sweetest thing about little quarrels is the making up. After ignoring each other, and saying hurtful things, and after maybe days of resentment and feeling sorry for yourself, you suddenly feel it's not important. It's like falling in love again. You notice the fine things about your husband. Everything he has done and said is forgivable. You want to touch him and be with him. Nothing makes loving so intense as a quarrel patched up. It's like the charge of anger gets in your blood and becomes pleasure and rediscovery. Something bigger than you takes over in the dark and you watch yourself in the thrill of strangeness.

Our first baby come the last summer of the century, and while she was still nursing the next spring Pa and me started attending the revival held in a tent over near Crossroads. I
invited Tom to come with us. I hadn't been to a camp meeting since before we was married. It was a need I had coming back on me, now that Jewel was born. Tom knowed I had gone to the Holiness meetings before, but maybe he thought I never planned to go again. I don't know what he had thought. I just knowed I had to go. My reading was not enough, and my everyday life of marriage and work was not enough. I needed the fellowship of the meetings. There was a craving in me that nothing else could answer.

“That's a long way to go to church,” Tom said. He had been burning stubble and brush by the branch and smelled like smoke.

“Ain't church,” I said. “This is a revival meeting.”

He didn't say anything else, but he agreed to go. He drove the wagon and tied the horse to a tree outside the tent. There was maybe a dozen horses hitched in the woods there. It was a warm night in spring and you could hear peepers down by the creek.

The preacher was Billy John Jarvis, and he was from the part of South Carolina called Dark Corner that had so many preachers as well as blockaders. Many had been blockaders in their youth, before they got right. I'd heard of Preacher Jarvis. He was fiery-faced with a bold roving eye. His gift was for speaking in tongues, interpreting the message of tongues as witness.

Joe and Lily come too, and there must have been near fifty in the little tent lighted by kerosene lanterns. It always seemed magic to me, that you could create a place of worship in the woods, just by throwing up a tent or brush arbor and building an altar. It showed that the Spirit was everywhere.

Billy John's voice was small and uncertain when he spoke at first. Like a lot of men he had to talk above and below his regular voice to have force. But he made up for the thinness with speed. It took me a few seconds to get used to his quick talk. I guess some of the old and hard-of-hearing had trouble understanding him at all. But I saw what a powerful preacher he was. He had the rhythm, and the right catch in his voice. Most important, he knowed when to pause and make people wait to hear what he had to say next. After a few sentences there was shouts and Amens, and everybody got pulled along.

“I sayuntoyoudoyouknow my Jesus? Isaydoyou come here tonight to learn of Him? I saydoyouknow salvation, friend? I come to you preaching the full gospel, uh. I say to you tonight have you seen my Jesus, uh? Have you looked upon his sweet face, uh? I say these are the times of Tribulation and trouble. I say, uh, to you it is within your choice to live a life of peace and joy, uh.”

Sweat begun to stream from his red face. The glistening flush made his eyes look more searching. He raised his right hand as he spoke, not waving it and not exactly pointing to heaven either, but as if it was in contact with something invisible, like the arm of a streetcar in Greenville touching the wire above it, as he walked back and forth in front of his listeners.

“I say the Lord wants us to be joyous, uh, and to speak in tongues of joy, of men and angels. I say the Spirit is here with us tonight, uh.”

There was a lot of “Amens” and “Yes, brothers.” A large woman in white got up and started swaying where she stood. It was Tildy Tankersley. She wasn't jerking exactly, but her head swung around like she was swimming and she sung out
with her eyes closed, like she was answering the preacher. In a few seconds I saw she was not saying words but sounds like “ari ai ari aiai ee.”

The preacher stopped, then stretched out his arm over her and said, “My children we have a message tonight, a sign from our dear sister that the Lord is with us, uh. The Lord is not way off in some fine city. He is right here in this tent, uh. I interpret her message to say that the Lord will do great things right here in the community of Crossroads, uh, if we only believe him. That all you, and you, and you, have to do is cut loose from the ties of the flesh and praise him, uh. You stand at the threshold of a life of the spirit, of signs and wonders, and all you need to do is reach out and take, uh, what is offered to you tonight to step into the realms of joy. No one else can take that step for you any more than they can be born for you.”

Among the shouting that followed another woman stood up and spoke in tongues. Her mouth made sounds but she stood like she was asleep. Her message was interpreted by the preacher as a warning to the old drunk Burt Jones that this was his last chance to get right before the Judgment. And there was a warning that somebody else present, unnamed, was living in danger of hellfire. Lily stood up in the shadows, and looking straight at the preacher begun to chatter also in a high-pitched voice. The preacher pushed through the crowd and stood in front of her.

“The Lord says somebody here tonight has, uh, stayed away from the Spirit too long and has been lukewarm. And she must rededicate her life, uh, or find the Spirit has turned away.”

Preacher Jarvis looked straight at me and I knowed it was me that was meant. I felt like I was naked and my bones
bleaching in his glare. My dirty sinful heart was visible to all. A pain went through me, and it was like my heart was tearing my chest. I had to move to get rid of the burden. I couldn't stand my blackness any longer. I saw I had been away from communion with the Spirit. I had tried to trade marriage and human things and reading and even hard work for the business of praise. I had ignored what was best about myself, most satisfying. I had lost something, and I had to get it back. I had to let go of myself to save myself.

Still holding little Jewel to my chest I begun to shout, and I moved among the crowd saying, “Jesus, I give you my life. Take it, it's yours.” I guess I did a kind of dance, swaying among the people. I didn't notice I had moved across the sawdust to the front, still holding the baby. Jewel had woke up and screamed but I hardly noticed. Milk come out of my breasts and soaked down the front of my dress, but I didn't pay it any attention.

It was only when I got to the front of the tent and turned that I saw how Tom looked at me. I was feeling the sweet inner burning of the Spirit. I felt I was floating up above my life. But Tom looked shocked and scared. He come forward and took Jewel, and jerked me by the wrist out of the tent into the dark.

When we got to the wagon I never saw anybody as mad as Tom was. He pushed me up on the wagon seat, and stood on the ground holding the baby. He was so mad I don't think he could talk. He walked around the wagon and stomped the ground. We had to wait for Pa and Joe and Lily, and the preaching and shouting went on.