This Rock (37 page)

Let this be a lesson to you, I said to myself, gritting my teeth. Be slow to anger, and even slower to judge. Oh, I am a fine person to build a church.

“I ought to go look for Moody,” I said.

“Wouldn't do no good if he's hiding,” Mama said.

“You might lead the law right to him,” Fay said.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“I read a story in a magazine where that happens,” Fay said. “A man goes to help his brother and leads the law right to him.”

I knowed there was truth to what Fay said. But surely there must be a way to slip into the woods without the sheriff seeing me. I knowed every branch and sinkhole in the Flat Woods and the Long Holler beyond the Sal Raeburn Gap. But I was too dazed to think straight. When I tried to help I usually made things worse. I couldn't
go looking for Moody unless I knowed for sure nobody would follow me.

I didn't know what I wanted to do about Moody. He had caused me so much trouble I sometimes wanted to just forget about him. And I felt guilty again for feeling that way. I would tell myself I had to go look for him, and then I would tell myself I couldn't do that: it wouldn't be fair to him. I didn't know what was the right thing to do.

W
HILE
I
WAS
thinking about what to do to help Moody, I decided I might as well go back to work on the church. I was troubled in my mind, and there was no other way to pay for my pride and my anger. Things had gone so wrong and crazy, there was nothing to do but climb back up on the mountain and start again. I dreaded to go there. It was the hardest thing, just to look at the mess and start to pick up the pieces.

T
HE SCENE ON
top of the mountain was as bad as I expected. There was nothing to do but look square at it. The rocks I'd laid for the foundation was mostly busted loose from each other. A lot of flat rocks had been broke. Rocks had been throwed off in the woods down the side of the mountain. It had took a lot of work to do all that damage. The mortar box had been chopped up with an axe, and the framework I had started was knocked loose. There'd been almost as much work of destruction as I'd put into making the foundation. I didn't know where to start. There was so much work to do it staggered me just to think of starting all over again.

But I seen one corner had not been broke. Loose rocks had been piled against it, but the corner itself was intact. That was the place to start again. Beginning with that corner I would rebuild the walls. I cleared limbs and loose boards away from the corner. I brushed leaves away and dusted the cement. I will set these stones in order, I said under my breath. I will take the rocks the Willards broke and set them back in their rightful place.

I gathered the scattered rocks into piles and toted rocks from the edge of the woods and from the brush where they had been throwed.
The rocks had to be sorted and aligned. The pieces had been tossed away by anger and ill will. Only patience and care would reassemble them into a church. As I worked I thought about Moody hiding in the woods, and I blamed myself. I knowed there was something I should do, but couldn't decide what it was.

I walked down to the pasture and caught Old Fan and hitched her to the sled. And I got a water barrel from the barn and filled it at the spring. Water sloshed in the barrel as I drug it up the rough road and then up the side of the mountain. To start again I had to have mortar, and to make mortar I had to have water. I had only two bags of cement U. G. had give me on credit, so I'd have to be careful and not waste any. I nailed the mortar box roughly together.

Mixing cement can be one of the most satisfying jobs. You pour in sand and you pour in the powder of cement, and you pour water in the box, and then you start hoeing it to mix it up. You rake it back and forth and back and forth in the box until the sand is grayish green in the batter. If the mix is too dry it'll be crumbly and mealy and won't spread. If it's too watery it won't be firm enough to stick. And if the mud is too sandy it won't set hard enough. But if there's not enough sand, it won't hold fast either and will crack and scale off.

As I worked I wondered if Moody was hiding in the Long Holler, or was he in South Carolina? Had he gone to one of the caves on the far side of Ann Mountain? Could I find him without being seen? Would it do any good if I did find him?

I hoed the mortar like I was making bread. But the slime reminded me of dung also, and the bitter smell of the cement burned my nose. Gather the rocks and hold them with slime, I said under my breath. Gather the rocks and arrange the earth in an altar.

I cleaned off the rocks that had been busted loose, chipping off the cement with my light mason's hammer. With the fresh mortar I fitted the rocks back in place again. I fitted them mostly where they'd been before, with a few small changes. It was like the rocks found their places again. I took my ruler and my level and took my try square, and I made the walls more plumb than they'd been before. Having done it once, I knowed better how to do it now. I tried to lay the foundation upright and square. I gathered rocks scattered in the
woods and added new ones. To keep the mud soft in the repaired mortar box I added a splash of water and stirred it from time to time.

“So this is where you do your work,” somebody called out. I looked up and seen Mama standing beside the ruined wall. It was the first time she had climbed up the mountain to see my work.

“Don't look like much now,” I said.

Mama was almost out of breath, and her hair had fell across her eyes. She brushed the hair out of the way and studied the piles of rocks and dirt. “You have made a start,” she said. “I will pay for whatever supplies you need.”

I was so surprised by what Mama said I was embarrassed. My face got hot, and I kept raking and smoothing the mortar in the box.

“With Moody off hiding from the law, and everything so crossed up, I want this family to be doing something,” Mama said, “something that counts.”

Mama handed me a twenty-dollar bill. She said when that run out she would find more.

I stuffed the bill in my pocket and laid the hoe down on the edge of the box. It was like going back to when I was a boy and she showed her enthusiasm for my ideas. When you have big plans all you need is the support of one person. If one can see what you're doing, then others will follow.

I wanted to hug her I was so lifted up. But when I turned to thank her, she had already started back down the mountain. There was tears in my eyes, and my throat was sore with feeling.

E
VERY DAY
I worked on the foundation, and I worried about Moody. In the cold winter wind, and in patches of sunlight and cloud shadows, I carried rocks and set them in place. I smoothed and pointed joints with my trowel, lifted rocks and put in more mortar. Sometimes a rock had to be shifted around to make it plumb. Sometimes a rock had to be pushed to make it line up with the rocks around it. I wondered what I could do to help Moody. It seemed all I could do was work on the church.

I was working harder and faster than ever on the fourth day when somebody else called out to me from the edge of the woods.

“Brother Muir,” they said. I looked around and seen Preacher Liner. At first I thought I wouldn't speak to him, and then I remembered my terrible pride and my repenting.

“Hello, Preacher Liner,” I said. I stood up with the trowel in my hand.

“The deacons have asked me to talk to you,” the preacher said.

I didn't say nothing. It didn't sound good if the board of deacons wanted to send a message to me. I dipped more mortar and slapped a tongue on the wall.

“We just want to ask you some questions,” Preacher Liner said.

“What kind of questions?” I said, and spread the wet mortar like butter on the rock.

“Questions about your intentions,” the preacher said.

“My intention is to build a church,” I said.

“Questions about Baptist discipline,” the preacher said.

“I'm not standing to be ordained,” I said. “I'm going to build a church.”

“I didn't come here to quarrel,” the preacher said. “Only to invite you to meet with us on Saturday at three.”

I picked up another rock and set it in place on the wet mortar. All the good spirit I'd felt before was gone. Anger come into my breath.

“What if I don't want to meet with you all?” I said.

“The church is not just rocks and planks and window frames,” the preacher said. “The church is the membership. That's Baptist doctrine. The least you can do is come talk to us about your plans on Saturday.”

A
FTER THE PREACHER
left I worked harder than ever. I reckon anger helped give me strength to work. I stirred mortar and slapped it in place and I heaved rocks up and worked them into the perfect position. I measured and placed the level against the wall. I was building foursquare and firm. I was building a wall that might last a hundred years. I was building a high altar on the mountaintop. I remembered that's what Peter had said when he was talking out of his head at the Transfiguration: Let's make an altar up here to remember what we have seen.

But as I worked that day and on the sunny days that followed, and
wondered where Moody was, and wondered if I was going to talk with the deacons on Saturday or not, I also thought again about how the church was going to look when I got it finished. If I built a tower for the bell that looked like a castle tower, it would appear old and powerful. But a white steeple that reached up and up and up, pointing to heaven, would be the most beautiful of all, the most inspiring.

I'd seen pictures of churches in Charleston and in New England where the steeples rose through many stages, squares and octagons, round and six sided, with arches on one story and windows on the next and columns on the tier above that. Nothing was better than a high steeple for a church. And no color was better than white.

I seen how I was going to build the steeple, and it was going to have to rise in stages far above the roof of the church and far above the trees. With Mama helping I could afford the materials. A steeple is like a chimney sending thoughts and prayers and sight up toward heaven. A steeple would be the hardest thing to build, for I would have to raise a scaffold. A steeple would have ornaments and scrollwork and fancy cabinetwork. The steeple I had in mind would go up eighty, ninety, a hundred feet. The pedestal would be of rock, but the higher levels would be white wood, white to catch the early sun and the late sun, white to be seen from Pinnacle or Tryon Mountain. The white would shine in the sky.

A
LL WEEK
I argued with myself about whether to go look for Moody and whether to meet with the deacons. I imagined things I would say to them, and things they'd say to me. I thought about just going to look for Moody and taking him some rations. I thought about ignoring the preacher's invitation. I thought about just working until dark. But as it got close to three on Saturday I decided to go down to the church after all. I'd go in my work clothes caked with cement, in my boots spotted with gritty mortar. I decided to go because I wanted to tell them what I planned to do. I'd never explained to anybody except Mama the vision I had of the church.

But stepping into that room and speaking to those men would take my breath away. I remembered how bad I had preached, and how in school I'd stood up to debate and found I couldn't say a
thing. It was like my throat locked and my mind was empty when I got up in front of people. I couldn't remember my name, and I couldn't have said it if I had remembered. It was like my tongue was still tied down and had never been snipped free.

They'll be asking the questions, I thought as I walked down the hill toward the church. All I'd have to do was answer them. And U. G. would be there. And Hank would be there. And there was nothing they could do to me. Would they try to throw me out of the church for building a church on my own property? The church hadn't give me a cent toward the building, not a nail or stick of wood.

They was all there in the church when I arrived, setting in the amen corner. There was six of them besides the preacher, as well as Riley, who was chairman of the board of deacons. I set down on the bench behind them.

“You come on up here, Brother Muir,” Riley said, and pointed to a chair in front of the altar. Riley was married to my great-aunt Catherine. He raised cattle and had the best bull in the valley. I guess Riley thought of hisself as a kind of squire.

“I don't need to set up there,” I said and swallowed. But I went up anyway.

I nodded at U. G. and Hank as I walked to the front of the church. My face already felt hot. Maybe I was windburned from working at the top of the mountain.

I set down and seen how dirty my shoes and pants was. They looked like they'd been smeared with cement. The preacher set on the front bench, and Riley stood up beside me like a lawyer in court. “I was sorry to hear your brother, Moody, was in trouble with the law,” he said. I couldn't think of nothing to answer and just nodded. Riley cleared his throat.

“This quarterly meeting of the deacons of Green River Baptist Church will come to order,” Riley said. “We have met here today to discuss one major item of business.”

Most of the deacons was looking down at their laps and at their feet. They seemed a little embarrassed to be there.

“It's said that Brother Muir is building a new church on top of the mountain,” Riley said. “Is this true, Brother Muir?”

“It is,” I said. I glanced at U. G., but he was looking away to the side of the church.

“By whose authority are you building a new church?” Riley said.

“By my own,” I said.

“A decision to build a new church has to be made by a vote of the whole congregation,” Riley said. “And the motion has to be recommended by the board of deacons. That's in the bylaws of the church.”

“I'm building on my own land and doing all the work myself,” I said.