The Year the Lights Came On (25 page)

“Uh—nothin’. I thought, well, maybe he’d be needin’ a change of clothes.”

“I left some things on the line couple of nights ago, and I guess he got ’em. They was gone the next mornin’.”

“Yes’m.”

“Don’t know why he didn’t just come on up and see me. He knows it’d make me feel a lot better to see him.”

“Yes’m,” agreed Wesley. “Maybe he thought it’d get you in some kind of trouble, helping him out. There’s some kind of law about that, I think…”

“Don’t make no difference, Wesley. He’s my boy,” Rachel Boyd said quietly. “He’s my boy.”

“Yes’m.”

“Try to find him, boys. Tell him to come see his mama.”

“Yes’m,” I replied.

“Sometimes children don’t understand how hard it is…” She gasped for breath and suppressed a gurgling in her lungs.

“Yes’m,” Wesley said. “We’ll try, Mrs. Boyd. We’ll spend time this afternoon, doin’ some looking. Uh, guess we’d better be goin’ on to church.”

Rachel Boyd nodded, holding her throat with her hand. She swallowed and said, “Wish you boys would say somethin’ for Freeman. At church.”

“Sure will, Mrs. Boyd,” I replied. “Mama said the same thing.”

*

Emery Methodist Church meant much to us. It was the coolest of buildings, and I imagined it was inhabited by a congregation of invisible angels who billowed against the ceiling of the sanctuary, like balloons slipped away from the fingers of children. The angels were quieter than eternity when people were in the church, but their breathing was detectable in its frost coolness
and you knew—knew without being told—that you were in the presence of holiness.

In the past year, I had been swayed by the church and had spent many hours contemplating the merits of being sprinkled into membership. It would require extraordinary discipline to forsake numerous preoccupations that were offensive to the church, but pleasant to body and mind; yet, I admired the safeguard of knowing Jesus could forgive me in the batting of an eye, and, in 1947, with the rumor of terrible bombs, there was serious speculation that every living creature on Earth could perish exactly that fast—in the batting of an eye.

Unquestionably, baptism had its advantages.

But it wasn’t the angels, or the gambler’s toss-up on baptism, that most impressed me in subdued hours at Emery Methodist Church: it was Rev. Neil Eldridge.

He was an old man now. Emery Methodist Church would be his last appointment in a lifetime of appointments, and he would retire. He would no longer obey the three-year pulse beat of God’s call to carton-and-box belongings and move to another white, clapboard church in another white, clapboard setting of farm families. Moving had been his habit, his expectation, his instinct. He had not studied the wisdom of great theologians in a seminary, and God, or the Bishop, had never called him to a great church. But his voice had numbed even the most scholarly and decorated churchmen, and he was often summoned to Atlanta to deliver prayers of especial meaning. His was a voice able to penetrate the latched, inner iron gate of Hell, even in whisper; a voice able to coax sinners writhing in damnation up from fire and brimstone, up through the narrow slit of brilliant light that was heaven. It
was a voice that entered the
whole
body—was there, imploding, before the listener knew he had been filled with sound.

He was majestic in his oldness, his white-hair, blue-eyes old-ness, but he was very slow in movement and often now he lost the continuity of what he was saying or thinking. It was sad to see him in those moments. Majestic old man, slightly broken in the shoulders, seized by forgetfulness, absently scanning the Bible opened before him, searching for God’s presence cowering behind the lettering of familiar verses, and knowing his sermon of then—the sermon he intended—had become cluttered with thousands of older sermons. Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting—perfectly still—for some miraculous transfusion of the plasma of youth and vigor; waiting, and not understanding the embarrassing lapses that fell on him in midsentence like a stroke, clotting his mind and silencing his stories of the vulnerability of Jesus. He was quite certain Jesus’ vulnerability—the assailable Jesus—was the catalyst of God’s greatness; else, how would the triumphant Jesus—the invulnerable God-man—be clearly understood by congregations who knew more of injury than of conquering? Once in a sermon, he had even spoken in an admirable way of the crucifix of the Catholic church. He had his own philosophy of that venerable symbol: it was God’s screech of pain, performed in the agonized stretch of Jesus’ punctured hands, in the spike pounded into and through Jesus’ feet, in the spear rip of Jesus’ abdominal wall, in the nest of thorns shoved onto Jesus’ head. The Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost—was frozen in that scene, frozen in the heartstroke of time wedged between the plaintive Hebrew of St. Matthew (“Eli, Eli, la ma sa-bachtha-ni?”) and the simple, whispery ghost-giving in the King James English of St. John (“It is finished.”). It was a
noble scene, Rev. Neil Eldridge believed, a scene to be studied and remembered, and a scene made worthy by the assurance of the Empty Cross—“
our
symbol,” he proudly proclaimed.

*

Rev. Eldridge knew of his congregation’s split over the matter of Freeman Boyd. He could look from his pulpit and place the quarrelers—those who believed in Freeman’s innocence were on his right, and those who believed him guilty as charged were on his left. Rev. Eldridge’s congregation was split by an ax of opinion and the wound was a red carpet that divided the pews, running from the altar to the back of the church.

He did not speak of Freeman, not by name. He selected the story of Cain and Abel as his sermon topic, and he preached with such remembered vitality he seemed wholly different. His mind was rapid and sure, his presence strong as hypnotism, and his voice—his voice was thunder far away, rolling, rolling, rolling, entering the mind and blood and muscles and nerves. He abandoned his pulpit and stood with his head back and his eyes fixed on the ceiling of the sanctuary, where invisible angels praised him with the frost coolness of their breath.

He spoke a parable of brothers and forgiveness, and he challenged each member to read and remember the church motto hanging over the piano:

I am only one,

I cannot do everything,

But I
can do something.

And what I
can do,

By the grace of God,

I ought to
do.

He closed the service with the first and last verses of “Just as I Am,” and a benediction that left every man, woman, and child limp with unworthiness. It was a benediction inscribed on the flint of our souls, a masterful solicitation of God’s wonderfulness and His power to heal the wounds of strife.

Outside, after services, there were mumbled, awkward apologies for misbehavior, and a few people whispered hope that Freeman would be found and the entire, ugly affair would be concluded as a dreadful mistake.

Dupree was there, standing sheepishly to one side and trying not to be affected by the influence of:

“Preacher’s right. Fightin’ among ourselves is wrong, bad wrong.”

“What I
said last week, well, I didn’t mean nothin’. Y’all know I
didn’t mean nothin’, I hope.”

“My fault as much as yours…”

“I guess I started it…”

“This is too good a community to be tore apart by arguin’.”

“Yeah…”

Dupree did not know how to accept this, people humbling themselves before other people. He edged away from the crowd, slipped away like a thief who has considered every risk except divine intervention. He looked queasy and ill.

Wesley saw him, read him, knew what Dupree was thinking. “C’mon,” he whispered to me.

We trapped Dupree beside the tall concrete steps. “Good sermon,” Wesley said. “Good sermon the preacher had.” Dupree turned his blushing face and spat into the shrubbery. “Yeah, I sure thought the preacher was right in everything he said,” continued Wesley.

Dupree dropped his head and jammed his hands into his pockets.

“Uh—I don’t know exactly how to say this, Dupree, but I guess I’m apologizin’ for all the bad feeling we’ve had between us,” Wesley added, offering his hand to Dupree.

Dupree was surprised. He ignored Wesley’s hand and tried to push past us, but I stepped in his path.

“Don’t see why we can’t be friends, Dupree,” Wesley said. “What’s happened is behind us.”

“I pick my friends,” answered Dupree arrogantly.

Wesley stared at Dupree and Dupree did a half-turn away from us.

“Well, I can understand that, Dupree. I surely can,” Wesley admitted.

“Nothin’ the preacher said makes me think no different,” Dupree snapped. “Nothin’. It’s not me that’s been buddy-buddy with a thief; it’s y’all. You not about to find a Hixon foolin’ around with no Boyd. But I guess you Wynns don’t care.”

Anger leaped into Wesley’s face, then vanished, and he said, “I guess that’s right. I always did think Freeman went out of his way to aggravate you.”

“What’re you talkin’ about?” I demanded. I thought Wesley had gone crazy. If Dupree ever wanted to make one of us crawl, Wesley was crawling.

Wesley did not answer me. He inched closer to Dupree. “I want you to know I never did believe what Freeman said about you and that night on your granddaddy’s farm,” he whispered.

The blood left Dupree’s face in a flash flood of embarrassment. He began breathing in short, uneven gasps.

“Nope. Never did believe it. And I want you to know I didn’t,” Wesley continued. “Besides, if it did happen, we all got to learn to forgive one another. That’s what it says in the Bible.”

Dupree was weak. He swayed into the concrete steps.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” Dupree protested. “Nothin’ happened on my granddaddy’s farm. Nothin’. Where Freeman Boyd got that idea, I don’t know. But I’m tellin’ you, I’m sick to death of hearin’ about it. I mean it.”

“Well, you know Freeman,” Wesley sighed. “That boy’s a wonder.”

“That boy’s crazy.”

Wesley pinched off the leaf of a boxwood. “Now that might be right. That may be the truth. Nothin’ happened, huh? Nothin’ at all?”

Dupree stared hard into Wesley’s face. He pushed between us and walked away.

Dupree did not stay for Sunday school. He crossed Emery Road to the railroad track and turned toward his home.

The Sunday school lesson was about the Prodigal Son.

*

In the afternoon, Wesley and I wandered through Black Pool Swamp, searching and calling for Freeman. He did not answer and we could find no evidence of where he had been.

Finally, Wesley agreed to investigate the one cave we knew about.

“He’ll just have to get mad about us knowin’,” Wesley reasoned. “If he’s hidin, then we ought to know why.”

“We already know he’s hidin’,” I argued.

“Well, not from us, he’s not. He knows if we were goin’ to tell on him, we’d already have done it.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

The cave was deep in the swamp and we had to cross through a fort of blackberry briars before the woods fell off in a sharp drop to its watery bottomland. Halfway across the strip of blackberry briars, we heard voices and Wesley signaled for me to squat down out of sight. The voices were distant and we could not understand what was being said.

“Willie Lee and Baptist,” Wesley whispered, motioning with his hand in the direction of the swamp.

The voices were moving, skirting the edge of the woods and traveling away from us. They were too far for their words to hold shape, and we did not know what they were saying, but I knew by their heavy tones that Willie Lee and Baptist were serious, and I felt uneasy about eavesdropping on these two men who had spent hours with us in the happy, restful play of fishing.

We waited until the voices disappeared and then we waited another ten minutes, not moving.

When we were certain they were not returning, we slipped quietly into the woods.

“Wonder what Willie Lee and Baptist was doin’ out here?” I asked.

“Who knows? Maybe fishin’ down by the beaver dam.”

“They didn’t sound like they was fishin’.”

“How do you know what they sound like when we not around them?” Wesley replied sharply. “They’re always cutting up with us, but that’s just the way colored people are around white people. You’d be surprised how they are when they’re all alone, just talkin’ to one another.”

“Willie Lee’s not different,” I insisted.

“Willie Lee may be the most different of them all, Colin. He’s the strongest one man around here and he’s colored; that makes him different.”

“What’s different about being colored?”

Wesley paused and pushed away a cobweb stretched in a lacy bridgework between two sassafras trees. “You know, sometimes I wonder about you. You know that? It’s not easy, being colored. How’d you like to
have Dupree give you his
nigger
treatment? Or to have to buy stuff at the back door of Hixon’s store? You think about that, and then you’ll see how they feel.”

We picked the tiny spears of blackberry briars from our clothes, then dropped into the swamp and headed for Freeman’s cave. Ten minutes later, we were there, stepping silently across beds of moss that grew like a royal carpet leading to a royal throne.