Nate’s summer continued in its languor of chores, reading, and two-handed canasta. He was getting bored, however, and missed his weekly visits to Jim Frank’s place. Those were, he felt, gone forever, their magic broken along with Jim Frank’s statue and the phrase that had made it an integral part of Davis Corners’ culture. He realized that Davis Corners was the better for being without them. In spite of his Uncle Henry’s and his own protests to the contrary, he had come to realize that the statue and its phrase were mean to black people. He hadn’t thought so until he met Washington. Until then, black people had been no more real to him that ceramic caricature in Jim Frank’s front yard. Still, both the statue and the phrase had smacked of something, and he had broken them. Davis Corners may have been the better, but Nate wasn’t feeling like much of a hero.
One Thursday night, Nate was drawing a card when someone knocked on the front door. Actually, it wasn’t so much like a knock. It was more like a finger tapping on the glass side-pane next to the door. It was a tentative, plaintive sound, not the demanding tone of solid wood being pounded by knuckles. Grandmother Tillman’s eyes darted quickly to the hall closet, and Nate wondered if that was where she kept her rifle. The pitiful tapping came again and Grandmother Tillman, finding no threat in its meek sound, walked straight past the closet and opened the front door. The living room light spilled out onto the porch and onto a disheveled, young woman in a tight, red dress torn at the shoulder. Her arms were folded tightly across her chest, and she kept shifting nervously from foot to foot. Nate recognized her right away. It was Edna McElroy, Miss Edna, from Cole’s Truck Stop.
“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am, but I’m stranded and I wondered if I could use your phone to call someone for help.”
Miss Edna stood in the doorway with her head tossed back, trying to maintain her dignity while she asked a stranger for help. Suddenly her lower lip began quivering and then she started sobbing. Grandmother Tillman immediately went to her, put her arm around her, and pulled her into the house, all the while murmuring, “There, there.”
Although Nate was thirteen and a male, he knew instinctively this was the universal feminine drill for “been done wrong by a man.” As Grandmother Tillman led Miss Edna past Nate toward the living room, he could smell heavy perfume and just a background of beer and tobacco. It reminded him of Jim Frank’s porch and its smell of lighter fluid, Pall Malls, and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.
Grandmother Tillman took Miss Edna to the couch and sat next to her with her arm still around her. Miss Edna continued to sob and Grandmother Tillman told Nate to go make coffee. While Nate was out of the room, Grandmother Tillman asked Miss Edna if she had been hurt, but by the way she said the word ‘hurt,’ Miss Edna knew she meant ‘raped.’ Between the sobs, she said no.
Nate came back and announced that the coffee was brewing. He slumped off to the side, hoping not to be sent out of the room. Grandmother Tillman looked at the scratches and red marks on Miss Edna’s neck and arms.
“Looks like you had a bit of a struggle with someone.”
Miss Edna quit crying. She looked at Grandmother Tillman and then rolled her eyes.
“Buddy Cole,” she said, then shook her head.
This was the same Buddy Cole that owned Cole’s Truck Stop. He was married and had three kids, one of them in Nate’s class at school. Nate expected Grandmother Tillman to shoo him out of the room now, for sure, but she didn’t.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Miss Edna said while putting her hands up in resignation. “What’s a fool girl doing going out with a married man she works for.”
Grandmother Tillman cleared her throat awkwardly and said, “Well, I wasn’t thinking any such thing. Truth is, I barely know this Mr. Cole and I can’t say that you and I have had the pleasure of being introduced.”
Miss Edna and Nate both giggled. Miss Edna was embarrassed for being so stupid as to just come into a stranger’s house and blurt out such intimate details. Nate giggled because he realized that Grandmother Tillman had never seen Miss Edna before and didn’t know she’d been talking to the woman who’d been the topic of so much lurid gossip at Sunday dinners.
“Allow me the honor, ladies.”
Nate stepped closer and made the introductions, thinking to himself that this was throwing in the rooster and hollering ‘nurse’ for sure. The two women looked stunned for a moment and stared at him with blank expression.
“We’ve never formally met,” he said to Miss Edna, “But I know you from the diner. My name is Nate Williams.”
Miss Edna sat up straight and said to Grandmother Tillman, “Oh my, I’ve heard so many people talk about you.” She blushed when she realized how that sounded. “Oh no, I mean, you’re a real respected person in Davis Corners, and, oh dear, you must be thinking the most dreadful things about me right now.” Miss Edna pulled back on the couch.
Grandmother Tillman smiled and took Miss Edna’s hand. “You’re not the first person to stand at that door and ask for help. As far as that goes, you’re not the first woman with man problems to show up on my porch. I’ve never regretted what help I could give and I’ve certainly never thought the less of anyone who needed it.”
Nate watched all this and reckoned that Grandmother Tillman was delighted to have Davis Corners’ last icon of vice right here in Reformation Central, so to speak. In turn, Miss Edna seemed delighted to have found a safe refuge for the moment, not realizing that the machinery of her rehabilitation was already grinding. Nate was tempted to think she was happier than... well, she was naively happy.
The three of them went into the kitchen and Nate poured the fresh coffee into three large mugs. He couldn’t believe that he still hadn’t been sent to his room. He guessed his presence was benign and passive, like Old Redemption’s. Whatever the reason, he was grateful to be this close to Miss Edna and breathe air laced with her aroma. Grandmother Tillman and Miss Edna sat at the large kitchen table, while Nate stood off, trying to stay inconspicuous.
“My own opinion aside,” Grandmother Tillman said, “It sounds as though you think you’re being foolish to go out with Mr. Cole.”
Miss Edna laughed. “I’m not sure with Buddy I had much of a choice. Tonight was the first time. Buddy’s been after me to go out with him for a long time, but I always put him off. Hell, he’s potbellied and he’s got three kids.”
Grandmother Tillman’s back stiffened a bit and Miss Edna quickly apologized for her language.
“Today, at work, he told me that his wife was out of town with the kids at her mother’s and that if I didn’t go out with him, I could just find another place to work.” Miss Edna looked down into her coffee mug and fiddled with the handle a bit. “I don’t know how to do nothing but wait tables and flirt,” she said in a tiny voice. “Cole’s is the only place I can make a living doing it. So tonight I went out with him, and we drove around and had some beers and talked and stuff. He wanted to go to my place, but I said no, people would see us and talk, so he drove us way out here into the country and we parked down by the river. Well, he got real pushy, if you know what I mean, and when I put him off, he said ugly things about me and what he thought I did with the truckers.”
She started crying again. Grandmother Tillman waited and said nothing.
“Mrs. Tillman, people think I’m real wild, and, truth is, I’m no goody two-shoes, but I don’t fool around like people think. I like to dress up and look pretty, and I like to flirt with the men in the diner, and hell yeah, oops, I’m sorry, once in a while I go out on a date with someone, and if I like him we might neck, but I’m not what Buddy said.”
To Nate’s surprise, Grandmother Tillman didn’t get the least bit uneasy at Miss Edna’s frank talk about her social life.
“Well, I got out of his truck, and he drove off saying I was fired. I saw your lights from the road and here I am.”
Grandmother Tillman said, “You’d better stay here tonight. Buddy’s got no wife to check in with and he knows where you live, I suppose.”
Miss Edna’s face took on one more layer of despair. “He’s not only my boss, he’s my landlord. Now I got no job and probably no home, either.” She started sobbing again.
Grandmother Tillman turned to Nate. “Go make the bed in your Uncle Gabriel’s old room. Miss McElroy will be staying with us for awhile, until we can sort this all out.”
Nate’s mouth dropped open.
“I couldn’t, ma’am,” Miss Edna said. “I’m a stranger to you. I’ve got no right to impose.”
“A stranger? Hardly.” Grandmother Tillman shot a sideways glance at Nate. “Why, we’ve even been properly introduced.” She smiled and rubbed Miss Edna on the shoulder. “Humor this old widow, girl, I’ve never turned anyone away, from puppies to grown hobos. I’d hate to start with a young woman all alone in the world.”
Miss Edna made a little whirlpool in her coffee cup by swishing the coffee around. She looked into the cup and softly repeated “alone in the world.”
“Not tonight.” Grandmother Tillman hugged Miss Edna. “We’ll get your things tomorrow. You just get a good night’s sleep.”
Nate got Miss Edna’s room ready, thinking all along that Uncle Henry wasn’t going to believe this. Grandmother Tillman brought out some clothes and towels. Having raised two daughters, she had things stored away that she was able to pull out. Grandmother Tillman told Miss Edna goodnight, then went down the hall to Nate’s room.
“One simple rule,” she told him, “What goes on and what gets said in this house stay in this house. Miss McElroy’s under my protection and I intend to protect her from gossip and rumor mongers, as well as brutes.”
Nate assured her that he understood.
Her posture softened and she said, “I’ve no idea how I’m going to explain this to your mother and your Aunt Hattie.”
Chapter 18
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Chapter 16: The Revival
Nate and Henry sat in the tent and listened to the hubbub of the crowd. The noise level dropped a bit when a large woman in a blue, full dress with puffy sleeves walked to the front and sat at an old, upright piano. Three other equally large women, in similar dresses, came up and stood in front of a big microphone next to the piano. All four had lacquered hair piled high above their heads, and from the picture poster outside the tent, Nate knew these were the Gospelenes.
The woman at the piano broke immediately into a pounding introduction that silenced everyone in the tent. She played in a stride style. Both hands would come close together at the middle notes on the down beats, then fly to extremes, high and low, to strike accent notes and chords on the upbeats. The three women at the microphone didn’t sing at first, rather, they swayed their large hips in rhythm with the music. They eventually did sing “Come, All You Sinners, into the House of the Lord.”
As the song seemed to be winding down, a lone figure entered the front of the tent and stood, staring appreciatively at the Gospelenes, rhythmically tapping his fingers on a large, black book he held in his hands. He wore a suit the color of vanilla ice cream and had coal black hair, slicked back and just slightly in need of cutting.
A soon as the song ended, he jumped forward and shouted, “Welcome, indeed, all sinners into this tent, which tonight is, in fact, the house of the Lord.”
He put his hands up deferentially and waved off potential praise or attack and held his book up over his head. Printed on the cover in large, gold letters, was the single word “Bible.”
“Not because of what I or these marvelous songbirds of Christ have brought, but because Jesus himself said that ‘where two or three of you are gathered in my Father’s name, there, too, will I be.’”
He eyed the crowd and walked the front perimeter. He shook hands with three people in the front row and asked loudly, “Have you come tonight in God’s name?”
They each answered yes.
He waved the bible in the air, paced vigorously in front of the congregation, and shouted, “Amen then, we know by his own words that Jesus himself is here with us tonight.”
The crowd erupted with amens, and Nate felt goose bumps run up and down his back. It felt as if a presence had suddenly joined the tent. Even Henry squirmed uneasily in his seat.
“I am the Reverend Ralph Johnson, and these four ladies, who joyfully sing the praises of the Lord, are the Gospelenes. Together, we welcome all of you to this Faith Crusade.”
The woman at the piano made a quick run on the bass keys and the Gospelenes sang “Jesus at the Door, Let Him in, Let Him in.” The rhythm this time was a counterpoint with the piano player’s hands pumping up and down in alternate patterns like pistons. People clapped along and some joined in on the second and third choruses, after they learned what the words were. Nate’s face was warm and he clapped along too. Henry was content to merely tap his toes.
As soon as the song ended, the Reverend said, “This is a Faith Crusade, and we’re here to talk about and act on our faith.” He paced and then stopped mid-stride as if a thought had just come to him. “Three questions come to my mind about faith: What is it? Where does it come from? And how can I get me some?”
The crowd laughed at how he said the last question.
“Well, for those of you who just came to talk about faith, let me get right to the answers, so you can get home to your sofas and quit having to sit on these hard, old excuses for chairs we’ve provided tonight.”
Everybody laughed again.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s face turned serious and he snapped crisply, “Faith is the absolute knowledge that God wants what’s best for you. It comes from God, and if you want it, you get it just by the reaching out and taking it.”
The whole crowd was silent as the preacher paused.
“There, it’s just that simple, you can all go home now.” He turned to leave the tent, then pivoted abruptly back toward the congregation. He used one hand to point his bible at the crowd and put his other hand on his hip. “It’s just that simple if you think faith is something you just talk about.” He grinned and said, “Some of you were getting excited there for a moment, thinking we were going to get out early.”
The crowd laughed once more.
“The truth is, faith you just talk about is a shallow, empty faith. To be true faith, it must be something you act on.”
Someone in the back of the tent said, “Amen,” and people shuffled in their chairs.
“Consider the story about Jesus walking on the water at the Sea of Galilee. As the apostles saw him and wondered at it, Jesus put out his hand and beckoned to Peter to join him.” He stretched his hands out to the crowd in demonstration. “Just like Jesus invites all of you tonight to have faith in him and act on that faith.”
Several more amens came from around the crowd.
“Was it enough for Peter to sit in the boat and marvel at the miracle of Jesus walking on water? Did Jesus say, ‘Make yourselves comfortable while I walk around on this water for awhile?’” He paused and the tent was quiet except for the sounds of the moths crashing into the bare bulbs strung throughout the tent. “No, Jesus beckoned to Peter to join him. He asked Peter to act on his faith. And Peter did act on that faith, and he stepped onto the Sea of Galilee, and he walked on water.”
Lots of amens rose up around the tent. Some listeners had their eyes shut, as if in rapture.
“And then what happened?”
He paused for a moment and spoke so softly that everyone had to strain to hear.
“Peter lost his faith.” He then repeated it loudly, punctuating each syllable like a hammer striking a nail. “He lost his faith.” He swept his bible over the crowd. “He quit acting on his faith and immediately began to sink into the water.” He then pulled his hands back and clutched at his chest. “And when we quit acting on our faith, don’t we begin to sink?”
The crowd became animated with rocking, amens, and a general murmuring of assent.
“We sink into depression, we sink into drinking, we sink into mean spiritedness, we sink into lust.”
He paused while everyone put themselves into one or more of the categories he had described.
“How sad this story would be if Peter had just kept sinking and had drowned, how desperate our lives would seem.”
The absolute silence in the crowd testified to the level of desperation in the tent.
“But Peter cried out, ‘Help me, Lord.’” The preacher reached his hand out, imploringly, to the crowd. “He cried, ‘Help me, Lord,’ and what did Jesus do?”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson waited with his eyes shut until someone in the tent could bear the tension no longer and muttered tentatively, “He saved him.”
“He saved him,” the Reverend Ralph Johnson shouted. “Jesus grabbed Peter’s hand and pulled him from the Sea of Galilee, because Peter had acted on his faith and had prayed to God when he was weak. And when Peter acted on his faith and prayed to Jesus, He saved him.”
The tent erupted with hallelujahs, amens, and all manner of praying.
“Tonight, some people here are in pain and are sinking. They need Jesus, but are afraid to act on their faith. I beg you to come forward and act on that faith. Ask Jesus to help you tonight.”
There was a tense silence and nothing happened.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson closed his eyes and prayed, “Lord, I feel the pain and desperation in this tent tonight from so many of your children. I feel it in particular from one who has a secret pain she’s been afraid to talk about. I also feel the pain of a man who is wearied from acting like he’s strong enough on his own, but knows he needs your help. I now feel the fear of someone who’s almost ready to ask for help, because there’s no one else. She’s afraid to ask, because she doesn’t know what she’ll do if you don’t answer. She has no one else to turn to. Give that person the strength now to come forward and receive that help from you.”
A murmur spread from the back of the tent and everyone looked back. Maddie Flanagan was limping towards the front. The Reverend Ralph Johnson didn’t speak, he just walked a few steps into the aisle to meet her and stared at her with compassionate eyes.
In a hoarse, broken voice Maddie said, “My legs are getting weak and the doctor says I’m dying.”
The crowd groaned sympathetically. Nate looked for Doctor Lightcap at the edge of the tent, but couldn’t find him.
“I’ve prayed, but it’s done no good.” Her voice seemed reproachful, yet pleading at the same time.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson squinted his once compassionate eyes into beacons of interrogation. “Who did you pray to, Jesus or some plastic statue you thought could take his place?”
The crowd gasped, and Maddie’s face went white. Everyone wondered how he could’ve known about Maddie’s plastic Jesus.
“No plastic Jesus can fix your legs, only the real Jesus, who lives not on your dashboard but in your innermost heart.” The Reverend Ralph Johnson cranked his voice up and started stressing every syllable. “Believe in THAT Jesus and act on THAT faith and you shall be healed.” He reached out to Maddie, and she fell into his arms. In a soothing, almost motherly, sing-song he said, “Pray with me now, have faith, act on that faith, and be healed.”
Maddie Flanagan let out a sound that was part scream, part sob, and part shout of relief. She pulled out of the Reverend Ralph Johnson’s arms and twirled in the aisle, stopping occasionally to jump with joy. The tent went crazy with jubilation. People clapped, some shouted, “Hallelujah,” and even Nate shouted out, “Amen,” in the spirit of it all.
The preacher gave a quick eye-check to the Gospelenes, who immediately sang “I Have Walked on Galilee’s Flood” while the congregation clapped and Maddie Flanagan twirled. The Reverend Ralph Johnson stood by and clapped, too, while he watched Maddie dance. After that, there was more healing, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law gave up the drink, and there was more singing and preaching. Finally, they passed the collection baskets, which came back brimming with bills, after the Reverend Ralph Johnson explained that giving gifts in time of hardship was one way of acting on your faith, thus assuring that your prayers would be answered.
When it was all over, people poured out into the parking lot, shaking hands, slapping backs, and showing all kinds of fellowship in general. Nate and Henry found Jeremiah Lightcap and they huddled out of the way.
Henry said, “Christians or not, they’ll run you into a ditch to get back onto the highway. Let’s stay put for awhile until the parking lot clears.”
Maddie Flanagan jaunted past them and over to her Bel-Air parked a few rows away.
“Maddie,” Jeremiah called out.
“Don’t be giving me any of your talk,” she said. “I’m healed.”
“Just don’t overdo,” he said softly.
“Leave me alone,” Maddie shouted at him. She reached into her car and pulled the plastic statue of Jesus off her dashboard. “You’re just like this plastic statue. You’re both fake and I don’t need either of you.”
She turned and hurled the statue out into the dark outskirts of the parking lot. She gave a last defiant look at Jeremiah, and then sped away in a cloud of dry clay and a spray of gravel.
There was an embarrassed silence for a moment. Henry nodded his head in the direction where the plastic Jesus had disappeared into the dark.
“Well, at least you got fired in good company,” he said.
The man who had said “nigger friend” earlier walked by and slapped Jeremiah Lightcap on the back. “Looks like you don’t have all the answers, Doc,” he said in a taunting tone of voice.
Jeremiah turned on his heel and started walking toward the tent, which was just about empty now.
Inside the tent, the Gospelenes were packing up their music and putting moving pads on the piano. The Reverend Ralph Johnson was giving directions to some young men who were folding up chairs and stacking them in wooden moving crates. Jeremiah Lightcap strode right up to him and squared off, as if he were going to challenge him to a fight.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson looked up and gave a half-smile. “Well, well, Jeremiah, at last you step in from the edge of darkness and into the light.”
“You pulled ‘em in pretty good tonight,” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah,” the preacher said. “Seemed to have gotten one or two of yours in the net as well.”
“One in particular,” Jeremiah said tightly. The one with the nerve disease that’s affecting her legs and is working its way up to her lungs. You put her into a state of euphoric remission and sent her out dancing months off her life expectancy.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s easy demeanor hardened and he took on the same squared-off posture that Jeremiah Lightcap had. “Maddie Flanagan, I know. Fine, she’s dying. We’re all dying. And when it happens, she’s not going to be any the deader for the euphoria I gave her tonight.”
“She’ll be dead sooner though,” Jeremiah said.
“That may be true, but did you make her any more alive than what you saw here tonight? For all your treatment and medicine, were you able to make her better?” He let his questions sink in for a moment. “Just what the hell have you done for her that’s so damn valuable?”
“I deal in truth, not illusions,” Jeremiah said. He was shaken by the question. It hit too close to home, it was too aligned with his own cynicism.
“I saw you got well compensated tonight.” Jeremiah said. He knew it was a weak come-back.
The preacher’s half-smile and easy demeanor came back. “And just when did you quit charging for your services?”
Jeremiah stared back at him for a moment and then the fight visibly went out of him. He slowly turned and started walking away, when he stopped and straightened his sagging posture. He turned. “But I’ll be here tomorrow with these people, and you’ll be gone.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson watched Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap leave, and his face softened. He had beaten a man better than himself and took no great pleasure in it. He called out after him, too softly for anyone to hear, “I’ll give you an amen on that, brother.”
---
Grandmother Tillman had cake and iced tea waiting for Nate and Henry when they got back to her place. They all sat on the porch and Nate told her about the evening. He talked about the people who had been healed or who had sworn off drink or lust. Grandmother Tillman commented how there seemed to be a general air of redemption in Davis Corners, ever since that dreadful statue had been broken. Nate looked at the porch floor uncomfortably.
Henry said, “I think you’re right.”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate both looked at him in shock. He laughed at their expressions.
“I’m merely agreeing that it’s true, I’m not saying I like it. The only thing of any interest left in this town is Miss Edna.”
Grandmother Tillman’s eyebrow went up reproachfully. “I still say there’s a broken heart hiding there.”
“I don’t think so,” Uncle Henry said. “Lord knows I’ve looked hard enough, and there’s not much she hides in that general neighborhood.”
That comment ended the evening with Grandmother Tillman telling her son-in-law Henry he had no sense of decency and shooing him home, but all the time laughing in spite of herself. As Nate watched him and the yellow Caddy disappear into the darkness, he thought nostalgically about their visits to Jim Frank’s place. He thought that except for the beer and cigarettes, tonight’s trip hadn’t been all that different.
Chapter 17
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
The woman at the piano broke immediately into a pounding introduction that silenced everyone in the tent. She played in a stride style. Both hands would come close together at the middle notes on the down beats, then fly to extremes, high and low, to strike accent notes and chords on the upbeats. The three women at the microphone didn’t sing at first, rather, they swayed their large hips in rhythm with the music. They eventually did sing “Come, All You Sinners, into the House of the Lord.”
As the song seemed to be winding down, a lone figure entered the front of the tent and stood, staring appreciatively at the Gospelenes, rhythmically tapping his fingers on a large, black book he held in his hands. He wore a suit the color of vanilla ice cream and had coal black hair, slicked back and just slightly in need of cutting.
A soon as the song ended, he jumped forward and shouted, “Welcome, indeed, all sinners into this tent, which tonight is, in fact, the house of the Lord.”
He put his hands up deferentially and waved off potential praise or attack and held his book up over his head. Printed on the cover in large, gold letters, was the single word “Bible.”
“Not because of what I or these marvelous songbirds of Christ have brought, but because Jesus himself said that ‘where two or three of you are gathered in my Father’s name, there, too, will I be.’”
He eyed the crowd and walked the front perimeter. He shook hands with three people in the front row and asked loudly, “Have you come tonight in God’s name?”
They each answered yes.
He waved the bible in the air, paced vigorously in front of the congregation, and shouted, “Amen then, we know by his own words that Jesus himself is here with us tonight.”
The crowd erupted with amens, and Nate felt goose bumps run up and down his back. It felt as if a presence had suddenly joined the tent. Even Henry squirmed uneasily in his seat.
“I am the Reverend Ralph Johnson, and these four ladies, who joyfully sing the praises of the Lord, are the Gospelenes. Together, we welcome all of you to this Faith Crusade.”
The woman at the piano made a quick run on the bass keys and the Gospelenes sang “Jesus at the Door, Let Him in, Let Him in.” The rhythm this time was a counterpoint with the piano player’s hands pumping up and down in alternate patterns like pistons. People clapped along and some joined in on the second and third choruses, after they learned what the words were. Nate’s face was warm and he clapped along too. Henry was content to merely tap his toes.
As soon as the song ended, the Reverend said, “This is a Faith Crusade, and we’re here to talk about and act on our faith.” He paced and then stopped mid-stride as if a thought had just come to him. “Three questions come to my mind about faith: What is it? Where does it come from? And how can I get me some?”
The crowd laughed at how he said the last question.
“Well, for those of you who just came to talk about faith, let me get right to the answers, so you can get home to your sofas and quit having to sit on these hard, old excuses for chairs we’ve provided tonight.”
Everybody laughed again.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s face turned serious and he snapped crisply, “Faith is the absolute knowledge that God wants what’s best for you. It comes from God, and if you want it, you get it just by the reaching out and taking it.”
The whole crowd was silent as the preacher paused.
“There, it’s just that simple, you can all go home now.” He turned to leave the tent, then pivoted abruptly back toward the congregation. He used one hand to point his bible at the crowd and put his other hand on his hip. “It’s just that simple if you think faith is something you just talk about.” He grinned and said, “Some of you were getting excited there for a moment, thinking we were going to get out early.”
The crowd laughed once more.
“The truth is, faith you just talk about is a shallow, empty faith. To be true faith, it must be something you act on.”
Someone in the back of the tent said, “Amen,” and people shuffled in their chairs.
“Consider the story about Jesus walking on the water at the Sea of Galilee. As the apostles saw him and wondered at it, Jesus put out his hand and beckoned to Peter to join him.” He stretched his hands out to the crowd in demonstration. “Just like Jesus invites all of you tonight to have faith in him and act on that faith.”
Several more amens came from around the crowd.
“Was it enough for Peter to sit in the boat and marvel at the miracle of Jesus walking on water? Did Jesus say, ‘Make yourselves comfortable while I walk around on this water for awhile?’” He paused and the tent was quiet except for the sounds of the moths crashing into the bare bulbs strung throughout the tent. “No, Jesus beckoned to Peter to join him. He asked Peter to act on his faith. And Peter did act on that faith, and he stepped onto the Sea of Galilee, and he walked on water.”
Lots of amens rose up around the tent. Some listeners had their eyes shut, as if in rapture.
“And then what happened?”
He paused for a moment and spoke so softly that everyone had to strain to hear.
“Peter lost his faith.” He then repeated it loudly, punctuating each syllable like a hammer striking a nail. “He lost his faith.” He swept his bible over the crowd. “He quit acting on his faith and immediately began to sink into the water.” He then pulled his hands back and clutched at his chest. “And when we quit acting on our faith, don’t we begin to sink?”
The crowd became animated with rocking, amens, and a general murmuring of assent.
“We sink into depression, we sink into drinking, we sink into mean spiritedness, we sink into lust.”
He paused while everyone put themselves into one or more of the categories he had described.
“How sad this story would be if Peter had just kept sinking and had drowned, how desperate our lives would seem.”
The absolute silence in the crowd testified to the level of desperation in the tent.
“But Peter cried out, ‘Help me, Lord.’” The preacher reached his hand out, imploringly, to the crowd. “He cried, ‘Help me, Lord,’ and what did Jesus do?”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson waited with his eyes shut until someone in the tent could bear the tension no longer and muttered tentatively, “He saved him.”
“He saved him,” the Reverend Ralph Johnson shouted. “Jesus grabbed Peter’s hand and pulled him from the Sea of Galilee, because Peter had acted on his faith and had prayed to God when he was weak. And when Peter acted on his faith and prayed to Jesus, He saved him.”
The tent erupted with hallelujahs, amens, and all manner of praying.
“Tonight, some people here are in pain and are sinking. They need Jesus, but are afraid to act on their faith. I beg you to come forward and act on that faith. Ask Jesus to help you tonight.”
There was a tense silence and nothing happened.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson closed his eyes and prayed, “Lord, I feel the pain and desperation in this tent tonight from so many of your children. I feel it in particular from one who has a secret pain she’s been afraid to talk about. I also feel the pain of a man who is wearied from acting like he’s strong enough on his own, but knows he needs your help. I now feel the fear of someone who’s almost ready to ask for help, because there’s no one else. She’s afraid to ask, because she doesn’t know what she’ll do if you don’t answer. She has no one else to turn to. Give that person the strength now to come forward and receive that help from you.”
A murmur spread from the back of the tent and everyone looked back. Maddie Flanagan was limping towards the front. The Reverend Ralph Johnson didn’t speak, he just walked a few steps into the aisle to meet her and stared at her with compassionate eyes.
In a hoarse, broken voice Maddie said, “My legs are getting weak and the doctor says I’m dying.”
The crowd groaned sympathetically. Nate looked for Doctor Lightcap at the edge of the tent, but couldn’t find him.
“I’ve prayed, but it’s done no good.” Her voice seemed reproachful, yet pleading at the same time.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson squinted his once compassionate eyes into beacons of interrogation. “Who did you pray to, Jesus or some plastic statue you thought could take his place?”
The crowd gasped, and Maddie’s face went white. Everyone wondered how he could’ve known about Maddie’s plastic Jesus.
“No plastic Jesus can fix your legs, only the real Jesus, who lives not on your dashboard but in your innermost heart.” The Reverend Ralph Johnson cranked his voice up and started stressing every syllable. “Believe in THAT Jesus and act on THAT faith and you shall be healed.” He reached out to Maddie, and she fell into his arms. In a soothing, almost motherly, sing-song he said, “Pray with me now, have faith, act on that faith, and be healed.”
Maddie Flanagan let out a sound that was part scream, part sob, and part shout of relief. She pulled out of the Reverend Ralph Johnson’s arms and twirled in the aisle, stopping occasionally to jump with joy. The tent went crazy with jubilation. People clapped, some shouted, “Hallelujah,” and even Nate shouted out, “Amen,” in the spirit of it all.
The preacher gave a quick eye-check to the Gospelenes, who immediately sang “I Have Walked on Galilee’s Flood” while the congregation clapped and Maddie Flanagan twirled. The Reverend Ralph Johnson stood by and clapped, too, while he watched Maddie dance. After that, there was more healing, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law gave up the drink, and there was more singing and preaching. Finally, they passed the collection baskets, which came back brimming with bills, after the Reverend Ralph Johnson explained that giving gifts in time of hardship was one way of acting on your faith, thus assuring that your prayers would be answered.
When it was all over, people poured out into the parking lot, shaking hands, slapping backs, and showing all kinds of fellowship in general. Nate and Henry found Jeremiah Lightcap and they huddled out of the way.
Henry said, “Christians or not, they’ll run you into a ditch to get back onto the highway. Let’s stay put for awhile until the parking lot clears.”
Maddie Flanagan jaunted past them and over to her Bel-Air parked a few rows away.
“Maddie,” Jeremiah called out.
“Don’t be giving me any of your talk,” she said. “I’m healed.”
“Just don’t overdo,” he said softly.
“Leave me alone,” Maddie shouted at him. She reached into her car and pulled the plastic statue of Jesus off her dashboard. “You’re just like this plastic statue. You’re both fake and I don’t need either of you.”
She turned and hurled the statue out into the dark outskirts of the parking lot. She gave a last defiant look at Jeremiah, and then sped away in a cloud of dry clay and a spray of gravel.
There was an embarrassed silence for a moment. Henry nodded his head in the direction where the plastic Jesus had disappeared into the dark.
“Well, at least you got fired in good company,” he said.
The man who had said “nigger friend” earlier walked by and slapped Jeremiah Lightcap on the back. “Looks like you don’t have all the answers, Doc,” he said in a taunting tone of voice.
Jeremiah turned on his heel and started walking toward the tent, which was just about empty now.
Inside the tent, the Gospelenes were packing up their music and putting moving pads on the piano. The Reverend Ralph Johnson was giving directions to some young men who were folding up chairs and stacking them in wooden moving crates. Jeremiah Lightcap strode right up to him and squared off, as if he were going to challenge him to a fight.
The Reverend Ralph Johnson looked up and gave a half-smile. “Well, well, Jeremiah, at last you step in from the edge of darkness and into the light.”
“You pulled ‘em in pretty good tonight,” Jeremiah said.
“Yeah,” the preacher said. “Seemed to have gotten one or two of yours in the net as well.”
“One in particular,” Jeremiah said tightly. The one with the nerve disease that’s affecting her legs and is working its way up to her lungs. You put her into a state of euphoric remission and sent her out dancing months off her life expectancy.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson’s easy demeanor hardened and he took on the same squared-off posture that Jeremiah Lightcap had. “Maddie Flanagan, I know. Fine, she’s dying. We’re all dying. And when it happens, she’s not going to be any the deader for the euphoria I gave her tonight.”
“She’ll be dead sooner though,” Jeremiah said.
“That may be true, but did you make her any more alive than what you saw here tonight? For all your treatment and medicine, were you able to make her better?” He let his questions sink in for a moment. “Just what the hell have you done for her that’s so damn valuable?”
“I deal in truth, not illusions,” Jeremiah said. He was shaken by the question. It hit too close to home, it was too aligned with his own cynicism.
“I saw you got well compensated tonight.” Jeremiah said. He knew it was a weak come-back.
The preacher’s half-smile and easy demeanor came back. “And just when did you quit charging for your services?”
Jeremiah stared back at him for a moment and then the fight visibly went out of him. He slowly turned and started walking away, when he stopped and straightened his sagging posture. He turned. “But I’ll be here tomorrow with these people, and you’ll be gone.”
The Reverend Ralph Johnson watched Doctor Jeremiah Lightcap leave, and his face softened. He had beaten a man better than himself and took no great pleasure in it. He called out after him, too softly for anyone to hear, “I’ll give you an amen on that, brother.”
---
Grandmother Tillman had cake and iced tea waiting for Nate and Henry when they got back to her place. They all sat on the porch and Nate told her about the evening. He talked about the people who had been healed or who had sworn off drink or lust. Grandmother Tillman commented how there seemed to be a general air of redemption in Davis Corners, ever since that dreadful statue had been broken. Nate looked at the porch floor uncomfortably.
Henry said, “I think you’re right.”
Grandmother Tillman and Nate both looked at him in shock. He laughed at their expressions.
“I’m merely agreeing that it’s true, I’m not saying I like it. The only thing of any interest left in this town is Miss Edna.”
Grandmother Tillman’s eyebrow went up reproachfully. “I still say there’s a broken heart hiding there.”
“I don’t think so,” Uncle Henry said. “Lord knows I’ve looked hard enough, and there’s not much she hides in that general neighborhood.”
That comment ended the evening with Grandmother Tillman telling her son-in-law Henry he had no sense of decency and shooing him home, but all the time laughing in spite of herself. As Nate watched him and the yellow Caddy disappear into the darkness, he thought nostalgically about their visits to Jim Frank’s place. He thought that except for the beer and cigarettes, tonight’s trip hadn’t been all that different.
Chapter 17
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 15: Evans Field
On Saturdays, Grandmother Tillman would command Old Redemption to stay, and then she and Nate would get into her Oldsmobile and drive into Davis Corners. Old Redemption would try to look sad, but his wagging tail would give him away. Nate wondered what kind of mischief Old Redemption got into to while they were in town. He wondered where a dog might go for dis-sanctuary.
In town, Grandmother Tillman would pick up groceries and other items while Nate knocked around. Occasionally he got his hair cut at the same barbershop where Buster, Old Redemption’s sire, and Billy Taggert had hung out. Once, he asked if anybody remembered the old picture of dogs playing cards that had been on the wall, but nobody did. Nate thought about Old Redemption’s wagging tail and figured he wouldn’t make much of a poker player.
The last week in June, they were driving back from town, and Nate saw a billboard that advertised Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade. It said there was to be a tent meeting, featuring gospel singers, Wednesday night at eight-thirty at Evans Field. Every summer, “that tent preacher,” as Nate’s mother called him, came to Davis Corners. Nate’s family never went because his parents were too conservative for this sort of boisterous approach to religion. To them, it was too close to “colored religion.” With that many indictments stacked in its favor, Nate wanted desperately to go.
Nate had been going with Grandmother Tillman to her small church out on State Road Forty-one, which catered mostly to poor, farming families. The services, like the building and the people who came, were plain. They would sing a little, but they mostly listened to the thin preacher describe the various torments that awaited unrepentant sinners. Nate felt that rural people were attracted to that kind of religion because it made life on the farm seem not so bad.
“Can I go to Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade,” he asked directly, because he could do that with Grandmother Tillman. She didn’t have that automatic “no” reflex his mother did.
“Why on earth would you want to go there?”
“I’ve never seen it and I want to see what it’s like,” Nate said.
“Well I have, and I’ve got no desire to do it again.” Nate could tell by the tone of voice that this didn’t meant he couldn’t go, it just meant that she didn’t want to go.
“I could get somebody to take me,” Nate said.
“Who?” Grandmother Tillman sounded suspicious.
“Uncle Henry.”
Grandmother Tillman laughed, and it made Nate think of how young she’d looked in his dream.
“Why not,” she said, still laughing. “When the dog and cat fight, throw in the rooster and holler ‘nurse.’”
Nate had no idea what she meant, but he started laughing too. He figured it must mean that if someone can’t stop something, they might as well escalate it to a level that makes it interesting.
After they got back to Grandmother Tillman’s, Nate unloaded all the groceries. He called Uncle Henry and told him what he wanted to do and told him Grandmother Tillman said it was okay if he took him.
“She put you up to this,” Henry said.
“No, I just want to go.”
Henry was convinced, nonetheless, that it was Grandmother Tillman’s plot to get him into church.
“It’s not a church,” Nate said, “It’s a tent.”
“Same difference.”
“No it’s not,” Nate said. “They’ll be hooting and hollering and faith healing and all kinds of stuff you don’t see in church.”
Eventually, Henry gave in, but only after Nate assured him that they were going for the cultural experience and not for the religion. Wednesday night, Henry showed up in the Caddy and picked Nate up. As they left, Grandmother Tillman put a dollar in Nate’s hand for the collection basket.
“Now it’s a different approach to God, but it’s God all the same. Don’t you two be snickering or acting blasphemous.”
They assured Grandmother Tillman that they’d behave, and they left.
“If this guy takes out a snake and kisses it, I’m leaving,” Henry said in the car.
“They do that?” Nate said with obvious excitement.
“Probably not here, but you go back in the woods and you bet they do.”
“Why?”
“To prove that the serpent, you know, Satan, has no power over them.”
“They ever get bit?” Nate said.
“All the damn time.” Henry laughed. “Just proves that some people still love God, even though he didn’t give them a lick of sense. Me, personally, I think I’d be holding a grudge after I got bit the first couple of times.”
“Don’t they die?”
“The snakes?” Henry said in a mocking tone of voice. “Lord no, they’ve got cast iron stomachs.”
“No, the people they bite.” After Nate said it, he realized that his uncle had been pulling him along.
“Not usually,” he said. “Snake poison works mainly on the brain, making those folks mostly immune to it.”
Nate remembered Grandmother Tillman’s admonition and thought that this conversation was probably not a good start to the evening.
They got to Evans Field and saw the big tent pitched in left field. The infield lights were turned on so people could see their way. Bare electric bulbs were stung up in the tent, casting a yellowish tint on everything inside, especially when compared to the whiter spot lights outside.
They parked the Caddy in the clay and gravel lot and got out. Nate saw a nice looking car parked away from the others and a dark figure leaning against it. The figure pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pecked at a spot on the side view mirror. Nate knew right away who it was.
“Washington.” Nate ran over to him.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the young man from the gas station,” he said in his refined, low tone. Nate realized that he’d never told him his name.
“Nate,” he said awkwardly.
Washington seemed to weigh that new information for a moment, and then nodded his head approvingly.
“Nate,” he said as he extended his hand.
They shook.
“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you,” Washington said.
Nate explained that he was staying at his grandmother’s and this was his night out for good behavior.
“Had your behavior been bad prior to this?”
Nate panicked. Davis Corners was a small town, and the story of his episode with Grub Hanley and Jim Frank’s statue could easily be common knowledge, even among the black people in town.
“I did some things I wouldn’t be proud to admit to,” Nate said.
Washington gave an approving smile and said, “Haven’t we all? I suspect that’s what draws most of these people out tonight.”
They looked around at the crowd chatting outside the tent. Nate could see that his Uncle Henry had connected with some men he knew and was talking with them. Henry saw Nate and made kind of a quizzical look. Nate knew he was wondering who Washington was and probably didn’t remember him from that day at Thompson’s. Nate smiled and nodded back to him.
“What are you doing out here,” Nate asked Washington.
“Chauffeuring Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law, Mr. Caterson,” Washington said, with a strained edge to his voice.
This time Nate had the quizzical look.
“Mr. Wanamaker’s sister thought her husband needed some good, old, bible-thumping religion, but he was more of the opinion that he needed half a bottle of whiskey. The compromise was that I got to drive him here, so he doesn’t smash up the car.”
“Nice car,” Nate said as he admired it.
“It’s the flower car,” Washington said, almost disdainfully. “It’s all right, but nothing like the big car or the hearse.”
Nate remembered that Washington wanted to drive the hearse. “Any luck on getting to drive either one of those?”
“Not yet,” he said wistfully, “But I keep hoping.”
“I’m only thirteen,” Nate said. “I’d be grateful to drive anything.”
Washington laughed. “Oh, but there are big differences in cars, just like there are big differences in people. You wouldn’t hang around with just anybody would you?”
Nate conceded that he wouldn’t.
“Same with me and cars. This flower car, for example—vinyl upholstery, manual windows, no weight to the body. That Cadillac hearse, though, is top of the line. Leather seats, electric windows, heavy body, yet it steers and moves like it weighed nothing. It’s the last ride anywhere for the passenger in the back, so it’s got to be first class all the way. One of these days, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law’s going to get drunk on the wrong day and my chance will come.”
“I believe it will.”
“I believe it too,” Washington said and winked.
Uncle Henry called over to Nate, so he wished Washington good luck and said he’d see him around. Uncle Henry was talking to some men Nate recognized from hanging around Hank Thompson’s.
“Who’s your nigger friend?” one of them said.
“He’s not...”
Nate stopped mid-breath and wondered if he was going to say “nigger” or “friend.”
“He’s Mr. Wanamaker’s driver from the funeral home. He drove Mr. Caterson out here because Mrs. Caterson wanted him to get religion, but he got drunk instead.”
The men all laughed and one of them said, “If you want to know the gossip, ask the hired help.”
Nate and Henry broke off and started walking toward the tent. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Nate felt kind of ashamed, and he thought about the day he’d had coffee in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman.
He looked back at the men and yelled over his shoulder, “And he ain’t no nigger.”
“What was that about?” Henry said while walking quickly away from the men.
“Washington’s a friend of mine. I couldn’t just let the insult lie,” Nate said.
“He wasn’t insulting him. It’s just his way of talking,” Uncle Henry said.
“It wasn’t like he was saying ‘Jim Frank’s nigger,’” Nate said. “He meant it different.”
The two of them shuffled awkwardly for a few steps. Nate’s reference to the statue reminded them both what had been lost between them since Nate had broken it.
“Sorry I embarrassed you,” Nate said.
Henry laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “You didn’t embarrass me, just surprised me a little.”
“Seen Jim Frank lately?” Nate said.
“No, Hattie keeps me working on Saturdays.”
Nate was reminded again how much he’d broken that night he’d stolen Jim Frank’s statue. He and Uncle Henry had become a couple of real homebodies, whose idea of getting wild was going to church on a Wednesday night.
As they crossed through the white glare of the infield lights and toward the yellow air of the tent, Nate wondered what the difference was between “Jim Frank’s nigger” and how that man had said “nigger friend.” He wondered why he had staunchly defended the one in Grandmother Tillman’s dining room, yet had attacked the other. He was trying hard not to admit that maybe there wasn’t any difference.
His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Henry Givens, my word, you’re the last person I expected to run into here.” It was Jeremiah Lightcap.
“Make that the second-to-last if you count yourself,” Henry said. “I’d think faith-healers represent a certain degree of competition for you.”
“Oh, you should always keep an eye on the competition,” Jeremiah said softly, with a smile. “You never know, they may come up with something.”
It was indeed odd for Jeremiah Lightcap to be there, seeing that he was the closest thing Davis Corners had to an avowed atheist.
“How’ve you been,” he asked Nate in a focused way that let Nate know he was referring to that day in his office.
“Fine.”
“I hear you’re spending the summer with your grandmother, helping out on the place and all.”
“Yes, sir,” Nate said.
“Good for you, probably good for your grandmother as well.”
The crowd hadn’t settled in yet, so Jeremiah took out a pack of Camel cigarettes. He offered one to Uncle Henry.
“Hattie’ll kill me if she smells tobacco on me. Besides, Doc, they aren’t good for you.”
Jeremiah shrugged and lit up anyway.
Henry watched the people streaming into the tent. None of them were folks he’d normally run into, although there were some familiar faces here and there.
“This guy reels ‘em in,” Henry said.
“Oh yes,” Jeremiah said. “And before the night’s over, he’ll have reached into the pockets of every simple, believing soul in the crowd.”
Nate felt a little embarrassed about Grandmother Tillman’s dollar bill, which he had in his right pocket. When the time came, he thought, he’d be discreet about slipping it into the basket.
“As a man of science, what do you think about this faith healing stuff?” Uncle Henry said.
“I’m not at all sure that science has any good answers for what science does,” Jeremiah said with a cynical shake of his head, “But at least it has some basis for it, some rationale for what it tries.” He pulled hard on the cigarette and surveyed the tent, now almost filled. “This guy’s just an outright charlatan who works people’s emotions. Spiritually and scientifically, he’s as bogus as a wooden nickel.” He crushed his cigarette vigorously into the gravel. “Not many seats left, you’d better get in. I like to watch from the outside.”
Nate and Henry nodded good-bye and scooted into the tent. They sat in two hard, wooden, folding chairs near the front and settled in for the evening’s entertainment.
Chapter 16
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
In town, Grandmother Tillman would pick up groceries and other items while Nate knocked around. Occasionally he got his hair cut at the same barbershop where Buster, Old Redemption’s sire, and Billy Taggert had hung out. Once, he asked if anybody remembered the old picture of dogs playing cards that had been on the wall, but nobody did. Nate thought about Old Redemption’s wagging tail and figured he wouldn’t make much of a poker player.
The last week in June, they were driving back from town, and Nate saw a billboard that advertised Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade. It said there was to be a tent meeting, featuring gospel singers, Wednesday night at eight-thirty at Evans Field. Every summer, “that tent preacher,” as Nate’s mother called him, came to Davis Corners. Nate’s family never went because his parents were too conservative for this sort of boisterous approach to religion. To them, it was too close to “colored religion.” With that many indictments stacked in its favor, Nate wanted desperately to go.
Nate had been going with Grandmother Tillman to her small church out on State Road Forty-one, which catered mostly to poor, farming families. The services, like the building and the people who came, were plain. They would sing a little, but they mostly listened to the thin preacher describe the various torments that awaited unrepentant sinners. Nate felt that rural people were attracted to that kind of religion because it made life on the farm seem not so bad.
“Can I go to Reverend Ralph Johnson’s Faith Crusade,” he asked directly, because he could do that with Grandmother Tillman. She didn’t have that automatic “no” reflex his mother did.
“Why on earth would you want to go there?”
“I’ve never seen it and I want to see what it’s like,” Nate said.
“Well I have, and I’ve got no desire to do it again.” Nate could tell by the tone of voice that this didn’t meant he couldn’t go, it just meant that she didn’t want to go.
“I could get somebody to take me,” Nate said.
“Who?” Grandmother Tillman sounded suspicious.
“Uncle Henry.”
Grandmother Tillman laughed, and it made Nate think of how young she’d looked in his dream.
“Why not,” she said, still laughing. “When the dog and cat fight, throw in the rooster and holler ‘nurse.’”
Nate had no idea what she meant, but he started laughing too. He figured it must mean that if someone can’t stop something, they might as well escalate it to a level that makes it interesting.
After they got back to Grandmother Tillman’s, Nate unloaded all the groceries. He called Uncle Henry and told him what he wanted to do and told him Grandmother Tillman said it was okay if he took him.
“She put you up to this,” Henry said.
“No, I just want to go.”
Henry was convinced, nonetheless, that it was Grandmother Tillman’s plot to get him into church.
“It’s not a church,” Nate said, “It’s a tent.”
“Same difference.”
“No it’s not,” Nate said. “They’ll be hooting and hollering and faith healing and all kinds of stuff you don’t see in church.”
Eventually, Henry gave in, but only after Nate assured him that they were going for the cultural experience and not for the religion. Wednesday night, Henry showed up in the Caddy and picked Nate up. As they left, Grandmother Tillman put a dollar in Nate’s hand for the collection basket.
“Now it’s a different approach to God, but it’s God all the same. Don’t you two be snickering or acting blasphemous.”
They assured Grandmother Tillman that they’d behave, and they left.
“If this guy takes out a snake and kisses it, I’m leaving,” Henry said in the car.
“They do that?” Nate said with obvious excitement.
“Probably not here, but you go back in the woods and you bet they do.”
“Why?”
“To prove that the serpent, you know, Satan, has no power over them.”
“They ever get bit?” Nate said.
“All the damn time.” Henry laughed. “Just proves that some people still love God, even though he didn’t give them a lick of sense. Me, personally, I think I’d be holding a grudge after I got bit the first couple of times.”
“Don’t they die?”
“The snakes?” Henry said in a mocking tone of voice. “Lord no, they’ve got cast iron stomachs.”
“No, the people they bite.” After Nate said it, he realized that his uncle had been pulling him along.
“Not usually,” he said. “Snake poison works mainly on the brain, making those folks mostly immune to it.”
Nate remembered Grandmother Tillman’s admonition and thought that this conversation was probably not a good start to the evening.
They got to Evans Field and saw the big tent pitched in left field. The infield lights were turned on so people could see their way. Bare electric bulbs were stung up in the tent, casting a yellowish tint on everything inside, especially when compared to the whiter spot lights outside.
They parked the Caddy in the clay and gravel lot and got out. Nate saw a nice looking car parked away from the others and a dark figure leaning against it. The figure pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pecked at a spot on the side view mirror. Nate knew right away who it was.
“Washington.” Nate ran over to him.
“Well, well, if it isn’t the young man from the gas station,” he said in his refined, low tone. Nate realized that he’d never told him his name.
“Nate,” he said awkwardly.
Washington seemed to weigh that new information for a moment, and then nodded his head approvingly.
“Nate,” he said as he extended his hand.
They shook.
“It’s a pleasant surprise to see you,” Washington said.
Nate explained that he was staying at his grandmother’s and this was his night out for good behavior.
“Had your behavior been bad prior to this?”
Nate panicked. Davis Corners was a small town, and the story of his episode with Grub Hanley and Jim Frank’s statue could easily be common knowledge, even among the black people in town.
“I did some things I wouldn’t be proud to admit to,” Nate said.
Washington gave an approving smile and said, “Haven’t we all? I suspect that’s what draws most of these people out tonight.”
They looked around at the crowd chatting outside the tent. Nate could see that his Uncle Henry had connected with some men he knew and was talking with them. Henry saw Nate and made kind of a quizzical look. Nate knew he was wondering who Washington was and probably didn’t remember him from that day at Thompson’s. Nate smiled and nodded back to him.
“What are you doing out here,” Nate asked Washington.
“Chauffeuring Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law, Mr. Caterson,” Washington said, with a strained edge to his voice.
This time Nate had the quizzical look.
“Mr. Wanamaker’s sister thought her husband needed some good, old, bible-thumping religion, but he was more of the opinion that he needed half a bottle of whiskey. The compromise was that I got to drive him here, so he doesn’t smash up the car.”
“Nice car,” Nate said as he admired it.
“It’s the flower car,” Washington said, almost disdainfully. “It’s all right, but nothing like the big car or the hearse.”
Nate remembered that Washington wanted to drive the hearse. “Any luck on getting to drive either one of those?”
“Not yet,” he said wistfully, “But I keep hoping.”
“I’m only thirteen,” Nate said. “I’d be grateful to drive anything.”
Washington laughed. “Oh, but there are big differences in cars, just like there are big differences in people. You wouldn’t hang around with just anybody would you?”
Nate conceded that he wouldn’t.
“Same with me and cars. This flower car, for example—vinyl upholstery, manual windows, no weight to the body. That Cadillac hearse, though, is top of the line. Leather seats, electric windows, heavy body, yet it steers and moves like it weighed nothing. It’s the last ride anywhere for the passenger in the back, so it’s got to be first class all the way. One of these days, Mr. Wanamaker’s brother-in-law’s going to get drunk on the wrong day and my chance will come.”
“I believe it will.”
“I believe it too,” Washington said and winked.
Uncle Henry called over to Nate, so he wished Washington good luck and said he’d see him around. Uncle Henry was talking to some men Nate recognized from hanging around Hank Thompson’s.
“Who’s your nigger friend?” one of them said.
“He’s not...”
Nate stopped mid-breath and wondered if he was going to say “nigger” or “friend.”
“He’s Mr. Wanamaker’s driver from the funeral home. He drove Mr. Caterson out here because Mrs. Caterson wanted him to get religion, but he got drunk instead.”
The men all laughed and one of them said, “If you want to know the gossip, ask the hired help.”
Nate and Henry broke off and started walking toward the tent. Even though he hadn’t done anything wrong, Nate felt kind of ashamed, and he thought about the day he’d had coffee in the kitchen with Grandmother Tillman.
He looked back at the men and yelled over his shoulder, “And he ain’t no nigger.”
“What was that about?” Henry said while walking quickly away from the men.
“Washington’s a friend of mine. I couldn’t just let the insult lie,” Nate said.
“He wasn’t insulting him. It’s just his way of talking,” Uncle Henry said.
“It wasn’t like he was saying ‘Jim Frank’s nigger,’” Nate said. “He meant it different.”
The two of them shuffled awkwardly for a few steps. Nate’s reference to the statue reminded them both what had been lost between them since Nate had broken it.
“Sorry I embarrassed you,” Nate said.
Henry laughed and patted him on the shoulder. “You didn’t embarrass me, just surprised me a little.”
“Seen Jim Frank lately?” Nate said.
“No, Hattie keeps me working on Saturdays.”
Nate was reminded again how much he’d broken that night he’d stolen Jim Frank’s statue. He and Uncle Henry had become a couple of real homebodies, whose idea of getting wild was going to church on a Wednesday night.
As they crossed through the white glare of the infield lights and toward the yellow air of the tent, Nate wondered what the difference was between “Jim Frank’s nigger” and how that man had said “nigger friend.” He wondered why he had staunchly defended the one in Grandmother Tillman’s dining room, yet had attacked the other. He was trying hard not to admit that maybe there wasn’t any difference.
His thoughts were interrupted by a familiar voice.
“Henry Givens, my word, you’re the last person I expected to run into here.” It was Jeremiah Lightcap.
“Make that the second-to-last if you count yourself,” Henry said. “I’d think faith-healers represent a certain degree of competition for you.”
“Oh, you should always keep an eye on the competition,” Jeremiah said softly, with a smile. “You never know, they may come up with something.”
It was indeed odd for Jeremiah Lightcap to be there, seeing that he was the closest thing Davis Corners had to an avowed atheist.
“How’ve you been,” he asked Nate in a focused way that let Nate know he was referring to that day in his office.
“Fine.”
“I hear you’re spending the summer with your grandmother, helping out on the place and all.”
“Yes, sir,” Nate said.
“Good for you, probably good for your grandmother as well.”
The crowd hadn’t settled in yet, so Jeremiah took out a pack of Camel cigarettes. He offered one to Uncle Henry.
“Hattie’ll kill me if she smells tobacco on me. Besides, Doc, they aren’t good for you.”
Jeremiah shrugged and lit up anyway.
Henry watched the people streaming into the tent. None of them were folks he’d normally run into, although there were some familiar faces here and there.
“This guy reels ‘em in,” Henry said.
“Oh yes,” Jeremiah said. “And before the night’s over, he’ll have reached into the pockets of every simple, believing soul in the crowd.”
Nate felt a little embarrassed about Grandmother Tillman’s dollar bill, which he had in his right pocket. When the time came, he thought, he’d be discreet about slipping it into the basket.
“As a man of science, what do you think about this faith healing stuff?” Uncle Henry said.
“I’m not at all sure that science has any good answers for what science does,” Jeremiah said with a cynical shake of his head, “But at least it has some basis for it, some rationale for what it tries.” He pulled hard on the cigarette and surveyed the tent, now almost filled. “This guy’s just an outright charlatan who works people’s emotions. Spiritually and scientifically, he’s as bogus as a wooden nickel.” He crushed his cigarette vigorously into the gravel. “Not many seats left, you’d better get in. I like to watch from the outside.”
Nate and Henry nodded good-bye and scooted into the tent. They sat in two hard, wooden, folding chairs near the front and settled in for the evening’s entertainment.
Chapter 16
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 14: The Invitation
Jeremiah Lightcap looked out his office window and watched the dark clouds over the distant hills. For a moment, he thought about Iron Hoop and wondered if water could seep in where the railroad company had sealed its entrance many years ago. He was glad there were only two more patients to see that afternoon.
His nurse stuck her head around the door. “Elaine Collins is on the phone.”
With school out, the principal had too much time to worry about him, Jeremiah thought. “Tell her I’m with a patient.”
“That’s what she said you’d say, and she told me she’ll stay on hold if she has to.” Her look told Jeremiah that she had no patience for this game.
“I’ll take it, thank you.” He picked up the phone with a dismissing nod of his head to his nurse. “I’m in the middle of a delicate surgical procedure and you’re jeopardizing the health of my patient.”
“You’re getting ready to lance a boil on Betty Hayslip’s butt.”
In spite of his melancholy, Jeremiah laughed, caught off guard by Elaine’s candid language and her irreverent attitude.
“It seems my nurse doesn’t quite understand the confidential nature of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.
“No,” Elaine said, “It’s just that Betty has a big mouth and doesn’t care what she talks about over morning coffee.”
“Okay, the procedure isn’t delicate and my patient’s health is not in jeopardy. Still, I have to get to work.”
“Come over, tonight.” She got right to the point.
“Why the sudden invitation?”
“I’m a teacher on summer vacation and I’m bored, I miss you, and besides, if you don’t, you’re just going to sit around and get grumpy and depressed. You always do when it rains.”
“What makes you think I won’t just sit around your place grumpy and depressed?”
“Please come?”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He hung up, relieved that she had called. He put the storm clouds out of his mind and went into the treatment room to see Betty Hayslip. He wasn’t surprised to find her standing instead of sitting.
After he finished with his last patient for the day, Jeremiah swung by home and showered. He shaved and put on fresh clothes. Elaine would’ve been off all day, so he expected that she would be all done up. He felt obliged to be the same. Also, he did it because her voice had sounded special on the phone, and he wanted to look nice tonight. By the time he left his house to drive over to Elaine’s, the storm had come and gone. All that remained were a few large puddles and some small branches strewn about the street and people’s yards. He hated the sound his tires made on the wet pavement. He just wanted everything to dry up and the storm to be completely forgotten.
He got to Elaine’s and he’d been right, she looked fabulous. She was wearing a loose, summer dress and had her hair pulled back with a cotton scarf folded into a band. While all the other women were copying the prim, Jackie Kennedy angular look, Elaine was soft and flowing. The open collar of her dress stopped just short of revealing cleavage, but certainly wasn’t what one would expect of an elementary school principal in a small Southern town.
“You look terrific,” Jeremiah said.
“What, this old thing?” She spun around and her dress billowed out. She did look good and she knew it. “Would you like a drink?”
“I didn’t bring any wine.”
“That’s okay, I’ve got a bottle of bourbon around here some place.” Jeremiah looked a little stunned. “Jeremiah Lightcap, I may be a school marm, but I’m forty-two, I was raised with four brothers, and I have a life. I even smoked a cigarette once.” She stared at him for a moment. “How do you take your bourbon?”
“Ice, just a splash of water.” He watched as Elaine made him a drink and then a highball for herself. He grinned when he took his drink and said, “Only forty-two, I thought you were a lot older than that.”
“Oh, you country boys do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She punched him on the arm. “You’re pretty feisty tonight.”
“Beats grumpy and depressed.”
They sat on the couch and talked and gossiped about the town. Jeremiah hadn’t heard about Nate William’s run-in with Grub Hanley.
“I thought I told you about that. Policeman came by the school and talked to some of the teachers and students. Seems that Grub actually shot at Nate.”
Jeremiah got quiet and pensive for a moment at the mention of the shooting. “Nate told me he was having trouble with Grub. Seemed real interested in his grandfather, too.”
“Well, he’s out staying with his grandmother for the summer. Hopefully, that’ll keep him out of trouble.”
“They find the gun?”
“I don’t think so. They haven’t found Grub Hanley yet. Why do you ask about the gun?” Elaine could see Jeremiah pulling back inside himself as he often did when he just seemed on the edge of opening up. She hadn’t bought this dress and found that old bottle of Early Times just to lose him this early in the evening.
“I just get bits and pieces of what goes on around here,” she said, “But I’ve picked up on some kind of connection between that gun and Nate’s grandfather. Something else seems to run deep, but nobody’s talking to me. What the heck, I’ve only lived here three years, I’m still that outsider from Mobile.”
She got up and freshened their drinks. Jeremiah looked toward the kitchen to see if maybe he’d be saved by dinner. “What’s for dinner?”
Elaine sat back on the couch with one leg tucked up under her. “Maybe nothing if you don’t relax and talk to me a little.”
“What makes you think I know anything about any of this?”
“Betty Hayslip,” Elaine said. Jeremiah was sorry he hadn’t poked Betty harder that afternoon. “She said you knew all about Nate’s granddaddy.”
“What does Betty Hayslip know?”
Elaine got very serious and leaned toward Jeremiah. “Enough to know you’d be moody this afternoon when she heard the weather report.” She took Jeremiah’s hand. “I’m your friend. I got all dolled up and we’re having drinks on my living room couch because I’d like to be more than just a friend. But you’ve got to start giving me little pieces of yourself. You’ve got to give me something to build with.”
Jeremiah took a deep breath and a sip from his drink, and then told her the story about Iron Hoop. He stuck to facts and details, not getting into his own feelings about any of it, but Elaine knew it was a beginning and didn’t press for them. He told her about the gun and speculated that maybe it was the same one that Grub had used.
“What do you figure his grandmother thinks?” Elaine said.
“Mrs. Tillman and I have never spoken of the matter since it happened.”
Elaine wondered how two people joined by such a tragic event could not speak about it and share their common grief. How sad, she thought, that such a young boy had to shoulder such a burden silently, and how it showed on the grown man he had become.
“You’ve always been such a contradiction to me,” Elaine said, as she freshened their drinks once more. “You’re so kind and yet somehow aloof, almost cynical at times.”
They both sat on the couch and sipped their drinks in silence. Jeremiah knew that he would have to ante up more than he already had.
“Ever go to the greyhound races?” he said.
“Once.”
“They say if a dog ever catches that mechanical rabbit they chase, you can never race him again. He knows it doesn’t really matter, and he just can’t put his heart into it.”
Jeremiah took her hand. He wanted to be more than just friends, too. Little pieces of himself weren’t easy to come by, but he was trying to chip at the monolith of his emotions.
“Sometimes, I feel like that greyhound. I think that day in Iron Hoop I caught the mechanical rabbit, and ever since, I just can’t put my whole heart into the race.”
Elaine felt frightened. She had asked for something and he had given it to her. She was frightened by his trust, and she was frightened by her own feelings. She finished her highball and put the glass down. She took Jeremiah’s glass and put it on the table next to hers. “You know what’s the mating call of a Southern belle?”
“What?” Jeremiah was relieved by her lightening up the mood.
“Yoo-hoo, I’m drunk.” Elaine kicked off one of her heels and leaned back into the couch. Jeremiah knew that dinner wouldn’t get burned, there wasn’t any to burn. The invitation had never been about dinner.
Chapter 15
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
His nurse stuck her head around the door. “Elaine Collins is on the phone.”
With school out, the principal had too much time to worry about him, Jeremiah thought. “Tell her I’m with a patient.”
“That’s what she said you’d say, and she told me she’ll stay on hold if she has to.” Her look told Jeremiah that she had no patience for this game.
“I’ll take it, thank you.” He picked up the phone with a dismissing nod of his head to his nurse. “I’m in the middle of a delicate surgical procedure and you’re jeopardizing the health of my patient.”
“You’re getting ready to lance a boil on Betty Hayslip’s butt.”
In spite of his melancholy, Jeremiah laughed, caught off guard by Elaine’s candid language and her irreverent attitude.
“It seems my nurse doesn’t quite understand the confidential nature of the doctor-patient relationship,” he said.
“No,” Elaine said, “It’s just that Betty has a big mouth and doesn’t care what she talks about over morning coffee.”
“Okay, the procedure isn’t delicate and my patient’s health is not in jeopardy. Still, I have to get to work.”
“Come over, tonight.” She got right to the point.
“Why the sudden invitation?”
“I’m a teacher on summer vacation and I’m bored, I miss you, and besides, if you don’t, you’re just going to sit around and get grumpy and depressed. You always do when it rains.”
“What makes you think I won’t just sit around your place grumpy and depressed?”
“Please come?”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” He hung up, relieved that she had called. He put the storm clouds out of his mind and went into the treatment room to see Betty Hayslip. He wasn’t surprised to find her standing instead of sitting.
After he finished with his last patient for the day, Jeremiah swung by home and showered. He shaved and put on fresh clothes. Elaine would’ve been off all day, so he expected that she would be all done up. He felt obliged to be the same. Also, he did it because her voice had sounded special on the phone, and he wanted to look nice tonight. By the time he left his house to drive over to Elaine’s, the storm had come and gone. All that remained were a few large puddles and some small branches strewn about the street and people’s yards. He hated the sound his tires made on the wet pavement. He just wanted everything to dry up and the storm to be completely forgotten.
He got to Elaine’s and he’d been right, she looked fabulous. She was wearing a loose, summer dress and had her hair pulled back with a cotton scarf folded into a band. While all the other women were copying the prim, Jackie Kennedy angular look, Elaine was soft and flowing. The open collar of her dress stopped just short of revealing cleavage, but certainly wasn’t what one would expect of an elementary school principal in a small Southern town.
“You look terrific,” Jeremiah said.
“What, this old thing?” She spun around and her dress billowed out. She did look good and she knew it. “Would you like a drink?”
“I didn’t bring any wine.”
“That’s okay, I’ve got a bottle of bourbon around here some place.” Jeremiah looked a little stunned. “Jeremiah Lightcap, I may be a school marm, but I’m forty-two, I was raised with four brothers, and I have a life. I even smoked a cigarette once.” She stared at him for a moment. “How do you take your bourbon?”
“Ice, just a splash of water.” He watched as Elaine made him a drink and then a highball for herself. He grinned when he took his drink and said, “Only forty-two, I thought you were a lot older than that.”
“Oh, you country boys do know how to sweet-talk a lady.” She punched him on the arm. “You’re pretty feisty tonight.”
“Beats grumpy and depressed.”
They sat on the couch and talked and gossiped about the town. Jeremiah hadn’t heard about Nate William’s run-in with Grub Hanley.
“I thought I told you about that. Policeman came by the school and talked to some of the teachers and students. Seems that Grub actually shot at Nate.”
Jeremiah got quiet and pensive for a moment at the mention of the shooting. “Nate told me he was having trouble with Grub. Seemed real interested in his grandfather, too.”
“Well, he’s out staying with his grandmother for the summer. Hopefully, that’ll keep him out of trouble.”
“They find the gun?”
“I don’t think so. They haven’t found Grub Hanley yet. Why do you ask about the gun?” Elaine could see Jeremiah pulling back inside himself as he often did when he just seemed on the edge of opening up. She hadn’t bought this dress and found that old bottle of Early Times just to lose him this early in the evening.
“I just get bits and pieces of what goes on around here,” she said, “But I’ve picked up on some kind of connection between that gun and Nate’s grandfather. Something else seems to run deep, but nobody’s talking to me. What the heck, I’ve only lived here three years, I’m still that outsider from Mobile.”
She got up and freshened their drinks. Jeremiah looked toward the kitchen to see if maybe he’d be saved by dinner. “What’s for dinner?”
Elaine sat back on the couch with one leg tucked up under her. “Maybe nothing if you don’t relax and talk to me a little.”
“What makes you think I know anything about any of this?”
“Betty Hayslip,” Elaine said. Jeremiah was sorry he hadn’t poked Betty harder that afternoon. “She said you knew all about Nate’s granddaddy.”
“What does Betty Hayslip know?”
Elaine got very serious and leaned toward Jeremiah. “Enough to know you’d be moody this afternoon when she heard the weather report.” She took Jeremiah’s hand. “I’m your friend. I got all dolled up and we’re having drinks on my living room couch because I’d like to be more than just a friend. But you’ve got to start giving me little pieces of yourself. You’ve got to give me something to build with.”
Jeremiah took a deep breath and a sip from his drink, and then told her the story about Iron Hoop. He stuck to facts and details, not getting into his own feelings about any of it, but Elaine knew it was a beginning and didn’t press for them. He told her about the gun and speculated that maybe it was the same one that Grub had used.
“What do you figure his grandmother thinks?” Elaine said.
“Mrs. Tillman and I have never spoken of the matter since it happened.”
Elaine wondered how two people joined by such a tragic event could not speak about it and share their common grief. How sad, she thought, that such a young boy had to shoulder such a burden silently, and how it showed on the grown man he had become.
“You’ve always been such a contradiction to me,” Elaine said, as she freshened their drinks once more. “You’re so kind and yet somehow aloof, almost cynical at times.”
They both sat on the couch and sipped their drinks in silence. Jeremiah knew that he would have to ante up more than he already had.
“Ever go to the greyhound races?” he said.
“Once.”
“They say if a dog ever catches that mechanical rabbit they chase, you can never race him again. He knows it doesn’t really matter, and he just can’t put his heart into it.”
Jeremiah took her hand. He wanted to be more than just friends, too. Little pieces of himself weren’t easy to come by, but he was trying to chip at the monolith of his emotions.
“Sometimes, I feel like that greyhound. I think that day in Iron Hoop I caught the mechanical rabbit, and ever since, I just can’t put my whole heart into the race.”
Elaine felt frightened. She had asked for something and he had given it to her. She was frightened by his trust, and she was frightened by her own feelings. She finished her highball and put the glass down. She took Jeremiah’s glass and put it on the table next to hers. “You know what’s the mating call of a Southern belle?”
“What?” Jeremiah was relieved by her lightening up the mood.
“Yoo-hoo, I’m drunk.” Elaine kicked off one of her heels and leaned back into the couch. Jeremiah knew that dinner wouldn’t get burned, there wasn’t any to burn. The invitation had never been about dinner.
Chapter 15
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 13: The Storm
The Sawatassee River wound through Davis Corners. Its slow but consistent current was made of eddies and backwaters that picked up objects along the way and carried them downstream, snagging them later with deadfalls or just eventually laying them gently back on the bank. In a way, it was like Jim Frank’s, a place for the disconnected trying to be rejoined to something. Some things never made it back to land, but either sank to the river bottom or just kept spinning in the whirls and eddies until they eventually ended up in the ocean. There, they were lost forever.
The day after school let out for the summer, Nate’s mother packed his suitcases, and his father drove him out Gray’s Road across the Sawatassee River Bridge and deposited him at Grandmother Tillman’s. Nate was relieved to be away from his own household for a while, where hardly a word was spoken between his parents and him, except to conduct such necessities as passing the salt or saying goodnight. Nate could hear his mother and father talking after he went to his room and assumed they were talking about him. His mother’s voice had that hurt and shocked quality her face had shown the day the policeman had come. Even though Nate couldn’t make out her words, that tone was unmistakable.
Grandmother Tillman put him in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Her own room was downstairs, so it was like having his own apartment, at least that’s how it felt to Nate at thirteen. From his window, he could look out over the garden and see the Sawatassee River working its way around the edge of the farm and disappearing under the wooden bridge on Gray’s Road. Because of the steep banks, one usually couldn’t see the river’s water until one was almost to the edge. But from Nate’s vantage point on the second floor, he could make out the brown current and its lazy whirls. The constant tug of the current on low branches made them move back and forth in a rhythmic palsy, as if they were giant hands seeking comfort in the cool water. This was better than any room he’d ever had. Even if Grandmother Tillman preached to him out of the Bible for eight hours a day, Nate was glad to have such a place to eventually get back to and be alone.
Nate unpacked his suitcases into the chest of drawers and closet. The room also had an old, oak table with a ceramic washbasin and pitcher on it and a modest table and chair arranged to serve as a desk. Nate examined the pile of books neatly arranged there. Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, and a biography of Winston Churchill had been assembled, apparently for him. As Nate was thumbing through the books, Grandmother Tillman showed up at the door with a cardboard box in her hands.
“This was your mother’s and your Aunt Hattie’s room,” she said. “You can use any of the others, but this one has the nicest view.”
“No, this is great. I can see the river.”
She laid the box down on the makeshift desk. “There’s no TV here,” she said, in no way apologetically. “I found your Uncle Gabriel’s old radio. You might want it up here with you.”
“Thank you.” Nate pointed to the stack of books. “It looks like you’ve put together a suggested reading list.” He grinned and rolled his eyes, as if the task before him were of Herculean proportion.
“Yes.” She smiled back and said, once again without a hint of apology, “You have this active mind. You can start to learn something about life this summer.”
“You and Uncle Henry certainly put a lot of stock in books,” Nate said.
Grandmother Tillman seemed a little pained by the association. “Yes, well, I’ll give Henry that. He has an active mind too, he just needs to grow up.” She snickered. “Now that you’re up here with me, I wonder who he’s going to play with this summer.”
Nate thought wistfully about his Saturday trips to Jim Frank’s place and knew he would miss them. Grandmother Tillman turned her attention back to the books.
“I don’t think you’ll find these as daunting as you think, young man. There’s plenty of adventure here.” Her face got serious and she put her hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Great literature, history, and life itself are written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains. You’ll find plenty of both in these books.” She walked to the door and turned around. “Morning is chores. I have lots of things for you to do this summer, but I want you to spend two hours reading after lunch everyday. The rest of the time until dinner is your own. After dinner, we’ll talk about what you’ve read that day. There’s plenty of old magazines and jigsaw puzzles around, and as a part of your education, I intend to teach you two-handed canasta. That and the radio and whoever happens to drop by will be our entertainment at night.” She abruptly turned and left.
Nate almost yelled “Yes, drill sergeant,” but thought twice and wisely chose not to.
Nate slipped into the routine of life on Grandmother Tillman’s farm without too much difficulty. He fed chickens, gathered eggs, knocked down an old outbuilding and piled the lumber up by the chicken coop. He moved dirt from places God had put it to places Grandmother Tillman wanted it and did a host of other things that needed doing. Grandmother Tillman seemed to have an endless list, and Nate wondered what she would’ve done, had he not gotten into trouble. Throughout most of the day, his constant companion was Old Redemption, who seemed to have adopted Nate as his newest best friend. He was too old to be frisky, but his company was protective and comforting.
Nate found out that Grandmother Tillman had been right about the books. He was amazed how readable and engaging they were. She’d help him with Macbeth, reading the passages out loud, so he could hear the words flow. And as promised, valor and infamy abounded in all.
Perhaps the best, though, Nate learned to shuffle double decks of cards and cut a deck with one hand. Once, after Grandmother Tillman had shuffled the deck, Nate waived the right to cut.
“Always cut the deck.”
“You’re my grandmother.”
“If you won’t cut your grandmother’s shuffle, you risk insulting the one whose deck you do,” she said. “If you always cut, even your own grandmother, no one can ever take offense.”
So the summer was passing with generous doses of hard work, literary masterpieces, and the finer points of card etiquette. The whole family still visited on Sundays, and things were relaxing a bit between Nate and his parents. His mother would call during the week and they would chat. Nate missed Saturdays with his Uncle Henry and Jim Frank, though. Something else had gotten broken along with the statue. Nate felt that his going to Jim Frank’s would be too awkward. Besides, his uncle never asked him to come any more. It seemed he was barred from the dis-sanctuary—he was in the camp of the righteous now.
Toward the end of June, Nate was in his room reading and watching the first summer thunderstorm building off in the distance. Dark clouds piled on top of darker clouds until it looked like they’d just fall down and squash everything. Nate heard the phone ring downstairs and waited for Grandmother Tillman to answer it. It just kept ringing and ringing, until whoever was on the other end lost patience and gave up. Nate walked apprehensively downstairs. Old Redemption was lying, sort of cowering, in the front hall, and Nate called out tentatively to Grandmother Tillman. The house was deathly silent, yet the memory of the ringing phone seemed to linger in the air, as if someone could have walked into the house at that moment and know the phone had been ringing seconds before.
Nate walked into the kitchen, and there was Grandmother Tillman, staring out across the garden through the back door. Her hands were slowly wringing the apron she was wearing and her lips were trembling.
“Grandmother?” Nate looked past her gaze, over the garden, and could see the hills beyond the farm. Those dreadful looking black clouds came over the hills like a menacing giant that couldn’t be kept at bay, even by so massive a wall. He was frightened by the clouds and by Grandmother Tillman’s agitated state, along with the dead air and the lingering echo of the unanswered phone.
“Grandmother,” he said with his agitation evident in his voice.
She turned and looked at him. She didn’t act startled, like someone who had just been pulled out of a trance. It gave Nate the oddest sensation that he’d been pulled into hers instead.
“How it rained that day,” she said, returning her eyes to the oncoming clouds.
Goose bumps came over Nate when he realized where her mind had been, and he shivered.
“Rabbit run over your grave?” She turned her eyes back to Nate and away from the ghastly clouds.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was so long ago, but when I see those clouds like that, I remember it as if it were yesterday.” She looked at Nate apologetically. “I never went to see him up there. I had the children and all. I could have, someone would’ve looked after them, but I couldn’t bear to see him trapped like that.”
“From what I hear, you wouldn’t have been able to get down there.” Nate didn’t know how else to comfort her.
“That’s what Jeremiah told me. Still...” Her eyes got distant again.
“Why’d granddaddy want his gun?” It was a question only a thirteen year old would be insensitive enough to ask.
“Jeremiah said your granddaddy wanted it in case animals got into the cave when he was alone,” she said in a flat voice.
“That makes sense.”
“Jeremiah and I pretended it did then, too,” she said with a sharp, rebuking glance at Nate. “Never mind that animals don’t go that deep into a cave. Never mind that your grandfather was never scared of any animal in his life. It was a good lie and we pretended to believe it.”
“Then why?”
“The only thing in this world your grandfather was scared of was...” She clutched her apron to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. “Drowning.” She started to cry. “He was afraid of water, of all the stupid things, and he was terrified of the idea of drowning. I knew it was wrong to, but I put that Colt of his in his satchel and sent it to him, knowing full well what he intended to do with it, God forgive me. I did a sinful thing and I let that sinful thing loose into the world and now it’s come back. What goes around comes around and that gun’s loose out there because of me.”
Suddenly, Nate understood everything. The gun Grub Hanley had used to shoot at him was the gun Grub’s father, Luther Hanley, had stolen at Iron Hoop. It was the gun that had been sent on an immoral mission almost forty years ago and now had returned to do its evil deed. Only it was seeking out Nate, instead of his grandfather. Nate now realized Grandmother Tillman hadn’t insisted on his coming to stay with her at the farm just for his reformation. She was protecting him from Grub Hanley and the gun she set loose a generation ago. Old Redemption wasn’t just keeping Nate company whenever he went out, he was guarding him.
Grandmother Tillman sat down and watched out the kitchen window as the rain started to come in sheets. “I let slip that dog of war,” she said, “And now it’s come back after my own. God forgive me.”
The phone rang again and Nate went into the living room and answered it. It was his mother. She sounded worried and said she’d called earlier and no one had answered. Nate assured her everyone was okay. She asked about Grandmother Tillman and said she could get melancholy during rainstorms. Nate reassured her that Grandmother Tillman was okay and told her he looked forward to seeing her on Sunday. They said good-by and hung up.
Nate left Grandmother Tillman alone in the kitchen. He went to his room and watched the storm rage and the Sawatassee River fill up and surge. For the first time he realized how cruel and frightening the world could be and how easily someone could be caught up in its current and be lost.
Chapter 14
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
The day after school let out for the summer, Nate’s mother packed his suitcases, and his father drove him out Gray’s Road across the Sawatassee River Bridge and deposited him at Grandmother Tillman’s. Nate was relieved to be away from his own household for a while, where hardly a word was spoken between his parents and him, except to conduct such necessities as passing the salt or saying goodnight. Nate could hear his mother and father talking after he went to his room and assumed they were talking about him. His mother’s voice had that hurt and shocked quality her face had shown the day the policeman had come. Even though Nate couldn’t make out her words, that tone was unmistakable.
Grandmother Tillman put him in one of the bedrooms on the second floor. Her own room was downstairs, so it was like having his own apartment, at least that’s how it felt to Nate at thirteen. From his window, he could look out over the garden and see the Sawatassee River working its way around the edge of the farm and disappearing under the wooden bridge on Gray’s Road. Because of the steep banks, one usually couldn’t see the river’s water until one was almost to the edge. But from Nate’s vantage point on the second floor, he could make out the brown current and its lazy whirls. The constant tug of the current on low branches made them move back and forth in a rhythmic palsy, as if they were giant hands seeking comfort in the cool water. This was better than any room he’d ever had. Even if Grandmother Tillman preached to him out of the Bible for eight hours a day, Nate was glad to have such a place to eventually get back to and be alone.
Nate unpacked his suitcases into the chest of drawers and closet. The room also had an old, oak table with a ceramic washbasin and pitcher on it and a modest table and chair arranged to serve as a desk. Nate examined the pile of books neatly arranged there. Moby Dick, A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, and a biography of Winston Churchill had been assembled, apparently for him. As Nate was thumbing through the books, Grandmother Tillman showed up at the door with a cardboard box in her hands.
“This was your mother’s and your Aunt Hattie’s room,” she said. “You can use any of the others, but this one has the nicest view.”
“No, this is great. I can see the river.”
She laid the box down on the makeshift desk. “There’s no TV here,” she said, in no way apologetically. “I found your Uncle Gabriel’s old radio. You might want it up here with you.”
“Thank you.” Nate pointed to the stack of books. “It looks like you’ve put together a suggested reading list.” He grinned and rolled his eyes, as if the task before him were of Herculean proportion.
“Yes.” She smiled back and said, once again without a hint of apology, “You have this active mind. You can start to learn something about life this summer.”
“You and Uncle Henry certainly put a lot of stock in books,” Nate said.
Grandmother Tillman seemed a little pained by the association. “Yes, well, I’ll give Henry that. He has an active mind too, he just needs to grow up.” She snickered. “Now that you’re up here with me, I wonder who he’s going to play with this summer.”
Nate thought wistfully about his Saturday trips to Jim Frank’s place and knew he would miss them. Grandmother Tillman turned her attention back to the books.
“I don’t think you’ll find these as daunting as you think, young man. There’s plenty of adventure here.” Her face got serious and she put her hand on Nate’s shoulder. “Great literature, history, and life itself are written in the valor of heroes and the infamy of villains. You’ll find plenty of both in these books.” She walked to the door and turned around. “Morning is chores. I have lots of things for you to do this summer, but I want you to spend two hours reading after lunch everyday. The rest of the time until dinner is your own. After dinner, we’ll talk about what you’ve read that day. There’s plenty of old magazines and jigsaw puzzles around, and as a part of your education, I intend to teach you two-handed canasta. That and the radio and whoever happens to drop by will be our entertainment at night.” She abruptly turned and left.
Nate almost yelled “Yes, drill sergeant,” but thought twice and wisely chose not to.
Nate slipped into the routine of life on Grandmother Tillman’s farm without too much difficulty. He fed chickens, gathered eggs, knocked down an old outbuilding and piled the lumber up by the chicken coop. He moved dirt from places God had put it to places Grandmother Tillman wanted it and did a host of other things that needed doing. Grandmother Tillman seemed to have an endless list, and Nate wondered what she would’ve done, had he not gotten into trouble. Throughout most of the day, his constant companion was Old Redemption, who seemed to have adopted Nate as his newest best friend. He was too old to be frisky, but his company was protective and comforting.
Nate found out that Grandmother Tillman had been right about the books. He was amazed how readable and engaging they were. She’d help him with Macbeth, reading the passages out loud, so he could hear the words flow. And as promised, valor and infamy abounded in all.
Perhaps the best, though, Nate learned to shuffle double decks of cards and cut a deck with one hand. Once, after Grandmother Tillman had shuffled the deck, Nate waived the right to cut.
“Always cut the deck.”
“You’re my grandmother.”
“If you won’t cut your grandmother’s shuffle, you risk insulting the one whose deck you do,” she said. “If you always cut, even your own grandmother, no one can ever take offense.”
So the summer was passing with generous doses of hard work, literary masterpieces, and the finer points of card etiquette. The whole family still visited on Sundays, and things were relaxing a bit between Nate and his parents. His mother would call during the week and they would chat. Nate missed Saturdays with his Uncle Henry and Jim Frank, though. Something else had gotten broken along with the statue. Nate felt that his going to Jim Frank’s would be too awkward. Besides, his uncle never asked him to come any more. It seemed he was barred from the dis-sanctuary—he was in the camp of the righteous now.
Toward the end of June, Nate was in his room reading and watching the first summer thunderstorm building off in the distance. Dark clouds piled on top of darker clouds until it looked like they’d just fall down and squash everything. Nate heard the phone ring downstairs and waited for Grandmother Tillman to answer it. It just kept ringing and ringing, until whoever was on the other end lost patience and gave up. Nate walked apprehensively downstairs. Old Redemption was lying, sort of cowering, in the front hall, and Nate called out tentatively to Grandmother Tillman. The house was deathly silent, yet the memory of the ringing phone seemed to linger in the air, as if someone could have walked into the house at that moment and know the phone had been ringing seconds before.
Nate walked into the kitchen, and there was Grandmother Tillman, staring out across the garden through the back door. Her hands were slowly wringing the apron she was wearing and her lips were trembling.
“Grandmother?” Nate looked past her gaze, over the garden, and could see the hills beyond the farm. Those dreadful looking black clouds came over the hills like a menacing giant that couldn’t be kept at bay, even by so massive a wall. He was frightened by the clouds and by Grandmother Tillman’s agitated state, along with the dead air and the lingering echo of the unanswered phone.
“Grandmother,” he said with his agitation evident in his voice.
She turned and looked at him. She didn’t act startled, like someone who had just been pulled out of a trance. It gave Nate the oddest sensation that he’d been pulled into hers instead.
“How it rained that day,” she said, returning her eyes to the oncoming clouds.
Goose bumps came over Nate when he realized where her mind had been, and he shivered.
“Rabbit run over your grave?” She turned her eyes back to Nate and away from the ghastly clouds.
“I’m sorry.”
“It was so long ago, but when I see those clouds like that, I remember it as if it were yesterday.” She looked at Nate apologetically. “I never went to see him up there. I had the children and all. I could have, someone would’ve looked after them, but I couldn’t bear to see him trapped like that.”
“From what I hear, you wouldn’t have been able to get down there.” Nate didn’t know how else to comfort her.
“That’s what Jeremiah told me. Still...” Her eyes got distant again.
“Why’d granddaddy want his gun?” It was a question only a thirteen year old would be insensitive enough to ask.
“Jeremiah said your granddaddy wanted it in case animals got into the cave when he was alone,” she said in a flat voice.
“That makes sense.”
“Jeremiah and I pretended it did then, too,” she said with a sharp, rebuking glance at Nate. “Never mind that animals don’t go that deep into a cave. Never mind that your grandfather was never scared of any animal in his life. It was a good lie and we pretended to believe it.”
“Then why?”
“The only thing in this world your grandfather was scared of was...” She clutched her apron to her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. “Drowning.” She started to cry. “He was afraid of water, of all the stupid things, and he was terrified of the idea of drowning. I knew it was wrong to, but I put that Colt of his in his satchel and sent it to him, knowing full well what he intended to do with it, God forgive me. I did a sinful thing and I let that sinful thing loose into the world and now it’s come back. What goes around comes around and that gun’s loose out there because of me.”
Suddenly, Nate understood everything. The gun Grub Hanley had used to shoot at him was the gun Grub’s father, Luther Hanley, had stolen at Iron Hoop. It was the gun that had been sent on an immoral mission almost forty years ago and now had returned to do its evil deed. Only it was seeking out Nate, instead of his grandfather. Nate now realized Grandmother Tillman hadn’t insisted on his coming to stay with her at the farm just for his reformation. She was protecting him from Grub Hanley and the gun she set loose a generation ago. Old Redemption wasn’t just keeping Nate company whenever he went out, he was guarding him.
Grandmother Tillman sat down and watched out the kitchen window as the rain started to come in sheets. “I let slip that dog of war,” she said, “And now it’s come back after my own. God forgive me.”
The phone rang again and Nate went into the living room and answered it. It was his mother. She sounded worried and said she’d called earlier and no one had answered. Nate assured her everyone was okay. She asked about Grandmother Tillman and said she could get melancholy during rainstorms. Nate reassured her that Grandmother Tillman was okay and told her he looked forward to seeing her on Sunday. They said good-by and hung up.
Nate left Grandmother Tillman alone in the kitchen. He went to his room and watched the storm rage and the Sawatassee River fill up and surge. For the first time he realized how cruel and frightening the world could be and how easily someone could be caught up in its current and be lost.
Chapter 14
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 12: The Grand Reformation
On Saturday morning, Henry Givens came by to take Nate to Grandmother Tillman’s. He was probably in trouble too. After all, he was the one who took Nate to Jim Frank’s every Saturday while he and Jim Frank told tall stories, smoked cigarettes, and drank beer. Nate slid into the front seat and just stared down at his sneakers.
Before Henry put the Caddy into gear, he looked at Nate. “Here’s how I see it. I’ve got seventeen dollars in my wallet and half a tank of gas. We can either make a run for it and take our chances with what we’ve got or we can go over to Mother Tillman’s.”
He gave Nate a poke in the ribs when he didn’t answer.
“I vote for running and taking our chances,” Nate said with a smile half playing on his tight lips.
“That would be the reasonable thing to do,” Henry said, “but I’m afraid I have to do the grown-up thing instead.”
They both chuckled and it felt to Nate as if the world lifted off him for a moment. Being in trouble with someone else is so much easier than going it alone, he thought.
As soon as they crossed the bridge over the Sawatassee River and came into sight of Grandmother Tillman’s, the world settled back on Nate’s shoulders with all its weight. He prepared himself for what he expected to be the worst experience of his life.
They parked in the drive and got out of the car. Old Redemption gave a mandatory bark then settled back to his position in the front yard when he realized who it was. He gave a heavy sigh that blew up the dust by his nose. Henry hollered their arrival from the front porch and they walked in.
“Back here,” Grandmother Tillman called out from the kitchen. Her voice sounded friendly and inviting.
Henry and Nate looked at each other in surprise and shrugged their shoulders. They walked back. Grandmother Tillman was at the stove in a long, purple, velvet robe with a lace collar. Her slate gray hair was pulled back from her face by two barrettes and hung loosely around her shoulders. Nate was used to seeing her with her hair pulled up and pinned back. She looked comfortable and approachable, and Nate almost forgot the purpose of the meeting.
“I’d like some time with Nate, this morning,” she said to Henry in a diplomatic tone. “Could I make you a cup of coffee to take out onto the porch?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll just see if Old Redemption wants to escort me around the farm and chase sticks or something.”
“Don’t let him overdo it.” Grandmother Tillman smiled. “He’s not a puppy by a long shot.”
Henry gave Nate a sympathetic look and quickly exited out the front door. Nate heard him call to Old Redemption and wished he were with them. Grandmother Tillman poured coffee into two large, blue and white china mugs and set them down on the wooden kitchen table. Rings in the table attested that saucers were saved for Sunday dinners in the dining room and not for coffee in the kitchen. Nate had never drunk coffee before and was flattered at being treated in such an adult fashion. Grandmother Tillman set a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of milk on the table.
“I drink mine black,” she said, “But you might like to try it with milk and sugar.”
Nate sipped it black at first. He made a face and quickly added two teaspoons of sugar and finished filling the cup with the milk. He tried it again and kind of liked it. He thanked her for the coffee and set his cup down. He could tell it was time to move to the agenda, and he was ready to get it over with.
“It seems you’re growing up,” Grandmother Tillman said. “You’re becoming independent and quite adventuresome too, I might add.”
Nate squirmed a little in his chair and tried to hide his unease by drinking more coffee.
“I’ve heard all kinds of stories lately, so why don’t we start by you telling me what really happened.”
Nate started to report what he had told the policeman, being equally careful not to say what he’d said to Grub.
Grandmother Tillman pressed, however. “Just what did you say to Grub Hanley?”
“I can’t say it here. I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” Nate stared into his coffee cup.
“That’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.” Grandmother Tillman looked at Nate for a moment. “Any time we do something or say something we’d be embarrassed to have someone else know about, especially if it’s someone we respect or care about, it means we’ve done something wrong. Whenever we feel like we’ve let someone else down, it means we’ve let ourselves down.”
She was quiet for a while and let Nate think about what she’d said.
“But I had to do something. I didn’t know what else... I just didn’t think.” Nate didn’t know how to tell her about how he felt about her and his grandfather, how he wanted to be like them and stand up for himself. “What would you have done, instead?”
Nate wasn’t challenging her, he really wanted to know. Grandmother Tillman could tell that, so she thought about it and gave him her sincerest answer.
“I’d have thrown rocks at him.”
“Rocks?”
“Lots of advantages to rocks,” she said. “You can hurl them from a distance so you still have escape possibilities, and you’re safe from immediate punches. They hurt, and that’s what you’re trying to do, make the bully’s behavior painful to him, instead of to you. Most important, you don’t degrade yourself by throwing rocks. David threw rocks at Goliath.”
Nate was impressed by her answer, but said, “It’s against school rules to throw rocks. I’d have gotten in trouble for that too.”
She shrugged her eyebrows and sipped her coffee. “Nothing’s free. You asked what I would’ve done.” She looked at Nate for a moment. “If you’d thrown rocks at Grub, and we were sitting here and I asked what you had done, could you have looked me in the eye and said ‘I threw rocks at him, Grandmother’?”
Nate thought about it. “Sure.”
“That’s my only point. Pick someone you respect before you do anything, and ask yourself if you could look that person in the eye and admit to it. If the answer’s ‘yes,’ it’s probably the right thing to do, even if it means getting in trouble.”
Nate thought about Grandmother Tillman on the bridge with Ricky Thornton. “Did you point a gun at Mr. Thornton for drowning puppies in the Sawatassee River?” His eyes locked on hers.
“I did, indeed,” she said without blinking.
“They could’ve thrown you in jail for that.”
“Nothing’s free,” she said.
“You really would’ve thrown rocks at Grub Hanley,” Nate said, believing it for the first time.
The two of them laughed. Nate could see Grub running from some girl on the schoolyard as she coolly squinted one eye, took aim, and launched rocks at him. Nate could hear Grub yelp each time one hit him. Knowing Grandmother Tillman, he assumed that more than one would’ve found their target.
Grandmother Tillman’s face got serious again. “Tell me the rest of what happened.”
Nate went through the rest of it, neither afraid nor embarrassed. When he got to the part about Grub shooting at him, Grandmother Tillman asked a lot of questions about the gun. She wanted to know things like what it looked like, how big was it, had it been a revolver, and all kinds of stuff. She seemed disappointed that he hadn’t seen the gun and couldn’t answer any of her questions.
“You could have been killed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“I’ve had a talk with your mother,” she said. “School lets out next week for the summer, and I’d like you to come stay out here on the farm with me for awhile. Seems you have a lot of energy, and farm life would be good for you. I have lots of chores I need help with, and besides, it would give us some time together.”
Nate figured that his mother must have known this yesterday. Part of her attitude probably came from being overridden by her mother. Apparently, Grandmother Tillman wasn’t pleased with how her daughter was raising her grandson, so she was taking over for a while.
“Sure,” Nate said awkwardly. “That’ll be fine.”
They heard Henry come in the front door and Grandmother Tillman hailed him to come back to the kitchen. He saw Nate and gave him a questioning look. Nate just smiled back in a way that said he was okay and it hadn’t been all that bad.
“There’s some unfinished business you need to help Nate with,” Grandmother Tillman said. “I believe he needs to return that wretched statue to Jim Frank.”
Nate had completely forgotten. It was still out on Founder’s Hill.
She looked at Nate. “You have to take it back.”
“But it’s broken.”
“Still, you took it. Now you have to take it back.”
Her tone of voice wasn’t commanding. It was more like she was explaining a law of physics. Nate had to do it, not because she told him to, but because it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll see you boys for dinner tomorrow,” she said and ushered them out the front door.
Henry drove Nate to Founder’s Hill. There was the statue, right where it had fallen that night. Nate was amazed that no one had taken it, but then figured that no one would want it. Henry looked it over and let out a respectful whistle.
“That Grub Hanley’s a pretty cool shooter, considering it was dark and all,” he said.
Nate looked at the statue with its head half blown off, and for the first time, realized it could have been him, in fact, was intended to be him. He felt sick to his stomach.
“Let’s get him in the car,” Henry said.
They carried the statue to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. Henry tied the lid down with some old rope and they headed to Jim Frank’s.
They didn’t speak much on the ride. Nate felt worse now than he had when they’d been headed to Grandmother Tillman’s. Everything else had been abstract and just being in trouble. This was tangible. He had stolen something and broken it.
They got to Jim Frank’s and Nate wanted to die when he saw Jim Frank pop out of the junk reef. Jim Frank didn’t give his usual hoot and greeting, but stood quietly waiting for whatever Nate had to say.
Nate got out of the Caddy and walked up to Jim Frank. “I’m the one who took your statue,” he said right away, so as to get the worst of it over with.
“I see,” Jim Frank said. He had known it was Nate that night. He knew that Nate had come to confess and was letting him do what had to be done.
“The bad part,” Nate wanted to get it all over with, “is that I broke it.”
Jim Frank tugged nervously at his overalls. “Well, let’s see what we got.”
Henry untied the lid and they all stood around, looking at the statue. “Help me get him back on his stump,” Jim Frank said to Henry.
They lifted the statue out of the trunk and sat it back on its usual perch.
“You can’t sit him out like that,” Nate said, in horror.
It looked grotesque with its head half blown away. Its one remaining eye looked to be wide in terror and what was left of his naive grin looked maniacal.
“Why not?” Jim Frank said.
“It’s broken,” Nate said weakly.
“It’s mostly still okay,” Jim Frank said.
“Can’t you just throw it away?”
Jim Frank let out a soft, amused laugh and gestured all around him. “Where would I throw him? I’m the junk man, he’s already been thrown away.”
“But he’s ruined and everyone’ll see he’s ruined.” Nate started to cry. His face burned with humiliation. “It’s ruined.” He tried to get Jim Frank and Henry to understand.
“The statue?”
“No.” Nate cried even harder. “The phrase. Look at him. He’s not happy anymore. Nobody’ll ever be able to say ‘happier than Jim Frank’s ...’ you know what, anymore.
It sank in on Henry and Jim Frank. More than just the statue had been broken, part of Davis Corners had been broken too. Henry started to say something, then stopped. It was true. There was nothing happy about the statue any more, and the phrase no longer made any sense.
Nate made one last appeal to Jim Frank. “Please take him down and put him where nobody’ll see him.”
Only Jim Frank knew, however, where junk belonged in his junkyard. Only he knew the toonickle of that statue.
“But that’s where he belongs,” he said.
It was the same tone that Grandmother Tillman had used when she told Nate he had to return the statue.
He gently touched Nate’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay, and so will you.”
Jim Frank thanked Nate for returning the statue, and Nate and Henry drove off. They didn’t talk about it, but they both knew the end of an era had occurred. The Saturday trips to the junkyard, the cigarettes, and the beer were all tied, somehow, to that statue and its phrase. They were gone as well.
That moment marked the start of the period Nate would call “Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.” With the phrase she hated so much now excised from its tiny culture, Davis Corners was a little less crude, a little less cruel, a little more civilized. And that was only the beginning. As Nate rode in the Caddy, watching the phone poles and rural countryside flicker past his window, he couldn’t help but think that Grandmother Tillman would have the whole summer to dedicate herself to his further improvement.
Chapter 13
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Before Henry put the Caddy into gear, he looked at Nate. “Here’s how I see it. I’ve got seventeen dollars in my wallet and half a tank of gas. We can either make a run for it and take our chances with what we’ve got or we can go over to Mother Tillman’s.”
He gave Nate a poke in the ribs when he didn’t answer.
“I vote for running and taking our chances,” Nate said with a smile half playing on his tight lips.
“That would be the reasonable thing to do,” Henry said, “but I’m afraid I have to do the grown-up thing instead.”
They both chuckled and it felt to Nate as if the world lifted off him for a moment. Being in trouble with someone else is so much easier than going it alone, he thought.
As soon as they crossed the bridge over the Sawatassee River and came into sight of Grandmother Tillman’s, the world settled back on Nate’s shoulders with all its weight. He prepared himself for what he expected to be the worst experience of his life.
They parked in the drive and got out of the car. Old Redemption gave a mandatory bark then settled back to his position in the front yard when he realized who it was. He gave a heavy sigh that blew up the dust by his nose. Henry hollered their arrival from the front porch and they walked in.
“Back here,” Grandmother Tillman called out from the kitchen. Her voice sounded friendly and inviting.
Henry and Nate looked at each other in surprise and shrugged their shoulders. They walked back. Grandmother Tillman was at the stove in a long, purple, velvet robe with a lace collar. Her slate gray hair was pulled back from her face by two barrettes and hung loosely around her shoulders. Nate was used to seeing her with her hair pulled up and pinned back. She looked comfortable and approachable, and Nate almost forgot the purpose of the meeting.
“I’d like some time with Nate, this morning,” she said to Henry in a diplomatic tone. “Could I make you a cup of coffee to take out onto the porch?”
“No, thank you,” he said. “I’ll just see if Old Redemption wants to escort me around the farm and chase sticks or something.”
“Don’t let him overdo it.” Grandmother Tillman smiled. “He’s not a puppy by a long shot.”
Henry gave Nate a sympathetic look and quickly exited out the front door. Nate heard him call to Old Redemption and wished he were with them. Grandmother Tillman poured coffee into two large, blue and white china mugs and set them down on the wooden kitchen table. Rings in the table attested that saucers were saved for Sunday dinners in the dining room and not for coffee in the kitchen. Nate had never drunk coffee before and was flattered at being treated in such an adult fashion. Grandmother Tillman set a bowl of sugar and a small pitcher of milk on the table.
“I drink mine black,” she said, “But you might like to try it with milk and sugar.”
Nate sipped it black at first. He made a face and quickly added two teaspoons of sugar and finished filling the cup with the milk. He tried it again and kind of liked it. He thanked her for the coffee and set his cup down. He could tell it was time to move to the agenda, and he was ready to get it over with.
“It seems you’re growing up,” Grandmother Tillman said. “You’re becoming independent and quite adventuresome too, I might add.”
Nate squirmed a little in his chair and tried to hide his unease by drinking more coffee.
“I’ve heard all kinds of stories lately, so why don’t we start by you telling me what really happened.”
Nate started to report what he had told the policeman, being equally careful not to say what he’d said to Grub.
Grandmother Tillman pressed, however. “Just what did you say to Grub Hanley?”
“I can’t say it here. I’m too embarrassed to tell you.” Nate stared into his coffee cup.
“That’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.” Grandmother Tillman looked at Nate for a moment. “Any time we do something or say something we’d be embarrassed to have someone else know about, especially if it’s someone we respect or care about, it means we’ve done something wrong. Whenever we feel like we’ve let someone else down, it means we’ve let ourselves down.”
She was quiet for a while and let Nate think about what she’d said.
“But I had to do something. I didn’t know what else... I just didn’t think.” Nate didn’t know how to tell her about how he felt about her and his grandfather, how he wanted to be like them and stand up for himself. “What would you have done, instead?”
Nate wasn’t challenging her, he really wanted to know. Grandmother Tillman could tell that, so she thought about it and gave him her sincerest answer.
“I’d have thrown rocks at him.”
“Rocks?”
“Lots of advantages to rocks,” she said. “You can hurl them from a distance so you still have escape possibilities, and you’re safe from immediate punches. They hurt, and that’s what you’re trying to do, make the bully’s behavior painful to him, instead of to you. Most important, you don’t degrade yourself by throwing rocks. David threw rocks at Goliath.”
Nate was impressed by her answer, but said, “It’s against school rules to throw rocks. I’d have gotten in trouble for that too.”
She shrugged her eyebrows and sipped her coffee. “Nothing’s free. You asked what I would’ve done.” She looked at Nate for a moment. “If you’d thrown rocks at Grub, and we were sitting here and I asked what you had done, could you have looked me in the eye and said ‘I threw rocks at him, Grandmother’?”
Nate thought about it. “Sure.”
“That’s my only point. Pick someone you respect before you do anything, and ask yourself if you could look that person in the eye and admit to it. If the answer’s ‘yes,’ it’s probably the right thing to do, even if it means getting in trouble.”
Nate thought about Grandmother Tillman on the bridge with Ricky Thornton. “Did you point a gun at Mr. Thornton for drowning puppies in the Sawatassee River?” His eyes locked on hers.
“I did, indeed,” she said without blinking.
“They could’ve thrown you in jail for that.”
“Nothing’s free,” she said.
“You really would’ve thrown rocks at Grub Hanley,” Nate said, believing it for the first time.
The two of them laughed. Nate could see Grub running from some girl on the schoolyard as she coolly squinted one eye, took aim, and launched rocks at him. Nate could hear Grub yelp each time one hit him. Knowing Grandmother Tillman, he assumed that more than one would’ve found their target.
Grandmother Tillman’s face got serious again. “Tell me the rest of what happened.”
Nate went through the rest of it, neither afraid nor embarrassed. When he got to the part about Grub shooting at him, Grandmother Tillman asked a lot of questions about the gun. She wanted to know things like what it looked like, how big was it, had it been a revolver, and all kinds of stuff. She seemed disappointed that he hadn’t seen the gun and couldn’t answer any of her questions.
“You could have been killed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
“I’ve had a talk with your mother,” she said. “School lets out next week for the summer, and I’d like you to come stay out here on the farm with me for awhile. Seems you have a lot of energy, and farm life would be good for you. I have lots of chores I need help with, and besides, it would give us some time together.”
Nate figured that his mother must have known this yesterday. Part of her attitude probably came from being overridden by her mother. Apparently, Grandmother Tillman wasn’t pleased with how her daughter was raising her grandson, so she was taking over for a while.
“Sure,” Nate said awkwardly. “That’ll be fine.”
They heard Henry come in the front door and Grandmother Tillman hailed him to come back to the kitchen. He saw Nate and gave him a questioning look. Nate just smiled back in a way that said he was okay and it hadn’t been all that bad.
“There’s some unfinished business you need to help Nate with,” Grandmother Tillman said. “I believe he needs to return that wretched statue to Jim Frank.”
Nate had completely forgotten. It was still out on Founder’s Hill.
She looked at Nate. “You have to take it back.”
“But it’s broken.”
“Still, you took it. Now you have to take it back.”
Her tone of voice wasn’t commanding. It was more like she was explaining a law of physics. Nate had to do it, not because she told him to, but because it was the right thing to do.
“I’ll see you boys for dinner tomorrow,” she said and ushered them out the front door.
Henry drove Nate to Founder’s Hill. There was the statue, right where it had fallen that night. Nate was amazed that no one had taken it, but then figured that no one would want it. Henry looked it over and let out a respectful whistle.
“That Grub Hanley’s a pretty cool shooter, considering it was dark and all,” he said.
Nate looked at the statue with its head half blown off, and for the first time, realized it could have been him, in fact, was intended to be him. He felt sick to his stomach.
“Let’s get him in the car,” Henry said.
They carried the statue to the Caddy and put it in the trunk. Henry tied the lid down with some old rope and they headed to Jim Frank’s.
They didn’t speak much on the ride. Nate felt worse now than he had when they’d been headed to Grandmother Tillman’s. Everything else had been abstract and just being in trouble. This was tangible. He had stolen something and broken it.
They got to Jim Frank’s and Nate wanted to die when he saw Jim Frank pop out of the junk reef. Jim Frank didn’t give his usual hoot and greeting, but stood quietly waiting for whatever Nate had to say.
Nate got out of the Caddy and walked up to Jim Frank. “I’m the one who took your statue,” he said right away, so as to get the worst of it over with.
“I see,” Jim Frank said. He had known it was Nate that night. He knew that Nate had come to confess and was letting him do what had to be done.
“The bad part,” Nate wanted to get it all over with, “is that I broke it.”
Jim Frank tugged nervously at his overalls. “Well, let’s see what we got.”
Henry untied the lid and they all stood around, looking at the statue. “Help me get him back on his stump,” Jim Frank said to Henry.
They lifted the statue out of the trunk and sat it back on its usual perch.
“You can’t sit him out like that,” Nate said, in horror.
It looked grotesque with its head half blown away. Its one remaining eye looked to be wide in terror and what was left of his naive grin looked maniacal.
“Why not?” Jim Frank said.
“It’s broken,” Nate said weakly.
“It’s mostly still okay,” Jim Frank said.
“Can’t you just throw it away?”
Jim Frank let out a soft, amused laugh and gestured all around him. “Where would I throw him? I’m the junk man, he’s already been thrown away.”
“But he’s ruined and everyone’ll see he’s ruined.” Nate started to cry. His face burned with humiliation. “It’s ruined.” He tried to get Jim Frank and Henry to understand.
“The statue?”
“No.” Nate cried even harder. “The phrase. Look at him. He’s not happy anymore. Nobody’ll ever be able to say ‘happier than Jim Frank’s ...’ you know what, anymore.
It sank in on Henry and Jim Frank. More than just the statue had been broken, part of Davis Corners had been broken too. Henry started to say something, then stopped. It was true. There was nothing happy about the statue any more, and the phrase no longer made any sense.
Nate made one last appeal to Jim Frank. “Please take him down and put him where nobody’ll see him.”
Only Jim Frank knew, however, where junk belonged in his junkyard. Only he knew the toonickle of that statue.
“But that’s where he belongs,” he said.
It was the same tone that Grandmother Tillman had used when she told Nate he had to return the statue.
He gently touched Nate’s shoulder. “He’ll be okay, and so will you.”
Jim Frank thanked Nate for returning the statue, and Nate and Henry drove off. They didn’t talk about it, but they both knew the end of an era had occurred. The Saturday trips to the junkyard, the cigarettes, and the beer were all tied, somehow, to that statue and its phrase. They were gone as well.
That moment marked the start of the period Nate would call “Grandmother Tillman’s Grand Reformation.” With the phrase she hated so much now excised from its tiny culture, Davis Corners was a little less crude, a little less cruel, a little more civilized. And that was only the beginning. As Nate rode in the Caddy, watching the phone poles and rural countryside flicker past his window, he couldn’t help but think that Grandmother Tillman would have the whole summer to dedicate herself to his further improvement.
Chapter 13
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Chapter 11: The Policeman
Nate took it easy over the weekend, feigning recovery from his alleged fever and catching up on the sleep he’d lost. Occasionally he looked out the window to see if Grub was lurking about. Before last night, Grub had been an intermittent school yard menace, more of an inconvenience, actually. At the very worst, he had been an occasional purple tittie-twister at recess. Now that he had stood up to Grub, Nate realized that he would have to be on the alert for him at all times.
Monday came and Nate went to school, wondering if Grub would be there for the next round but hoping that he’d actually gotten rid of him. Gratefully, he saw no sign of the bully.
Bill VanDiver approached Nate with a smirk. “Join Grub for a midnight snack Friday? Sorry I missed it.”
“Yeah,” Nate said, “You should’ve been there to see Grub running away.”
“Yeah right.”
“Ask him,” Nate said. “That is, if you can find him.” Nate shot a furtive glance around the school yard.
Just then, Freddie came up. A small crowd had already started to gather to hear the exchange between VanDiver and Nate.
“It was so cool,” Freddie said enthusiastically.
VanDiver seemed to waiver “Nate says Grub ran away Friday night. Did he?”
“Yeah,” Freddie said. “After he shot at us and we chased him.”
“Us? He shot at me,” Nate said. “You and Skip were hiding off in a whole different area.”
“Actually, he shot at Jim Frank’s nigger.”
The allusion to gun play and the mention of Davis Corners’ most noted icon galvanized the crowd. Everyone started asking questions at once. Freddie started to answer, but backed off in deference to Nate when he saw the glare Nate aimed at him. This was clearly Nate’s moment and Nate’s story.
Nate told the story pretty much the way it had happened, but with the embellishments the boys had added afterwards in the car. He sounded like his Uncle Henry, the way he paused when he wanted the listener’s imagination to churn a while, before he supplied more detail. He used his eyes to work the crowd, just like his Uncle Henry did on Sunday afternoons in Grandmother Tillman’s living room, trying to pull each listener in. Nate was a hero because he had driven away Grub Hanley. More important to him now, however, was that he had a story people wanted to hear.
Nate’s classmates wanted to know how he’d come up with the plan and how it felt being shot at. He lied, of course, about how it felt. He couldn’t tell them that it hadn’t felt like anything when it happened. He couldn’t tell them that he was out of danger by the time he realized he’d been in it. So he told them that he’d felt like he was going to be killed for sure and that his whole life had raced before his eyes.
“Wow,” Margaret Haynes said, “Just like they say it happens.”
At every opportunity over the next few days, Nate kept getting drafted to tell the story to different audiences. He was a celebrity, and by the end of the week, just about everyone in Davis Corners knew the story, either having heard it first-hand from Nate or retold by someone else. Nate started to get nervous about his newfound notoriety. For one thing, he liked the idea of Grub Hanley thinking he was dead. For another, he didn’t want his parents hearing about it, because then he would be dead. Most of all, though, he didn’t want Grandmother Tillman or Washington hearing about it. He felt that he would die of embarrassment if either of them knew. For Grandmother Tillman, he was embarrassed by the language, for Washington, he was embarrassed by the association with Jim Frank’s statue.
When Nate rode his bike home after school on Friday, his nervousness went to panic as he saw his father’s car and a police car in the driveway. Optimistically, he wondered if there’d been a death in the family, but he knew it was somehow related to his adventure at Founder’s Hill.
He walked into the living room and saw his parents sitting stiffly on the couch. A police officer in a brown uniform was sitting on a straight-backed chair taken from the dining room. Nate’s mother had a look on her face that expressed both shock and hurt at the same time, as if someone had just slapped her. It intensified slightly when Nate walked in, as if she had been posing with it, but was now turning it on for real, the way an actress might turn on her character just before she walked on stage. Nate’s hopes for a death in the family evaporated. That look could only mean he was in serious trouble.
“This police officer has some questions for you,” she said. “And when he’s through, your father and I have a few of our own.”
The police officer said, “I’m investigating something that may be harmless or which could be serious, so it’s important that you tell me the truth. Your parents here want you to tell the truth, that’s what they’ve taught you, isn’t it?”
Nate admired the officer’s technique and wondered if he’d learned it in police school. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“A young man’s missing,” the police officer said. “Grub Hanley hasn’t been seen since last Friday night. We think he’s just run away, but I understand that you might have some information that would corroborate that.”
“Why do you think that?”
“We’ve talked to Miss Collins, the principal from your school, and she said there were lots of stories going around that you and Grub were involved in an incident Friday night.”
Nate’s mother sucked in her breath and held it. Since the officer hadn’t actually asked him a question, Nate tried just staring back at him in silence. After three seconds he cracked.
“Yes, sir. I saw him Friday night.”
Nate’s mother let out a gasp and his father shifted on the couch.
“What happened?” the policeman said.
Nate told a censored version of the story, how Grub had been bullying him on the school yard and saying only that he’d cursed at Grub. The policeman nodded at that, and Nate assumed he’d already picked up the details in other interviews. He hoped the policeman wouldn’t make him say exactly what he’d said to Grub. Nate quickly went on with the rest of the story, not identifying who picked him up and gave him the ride. He told what happened at Founder’s Hill. His plan sounded incredibly stupid to him as he recounted it in his living room to three grown-ups.
“He ran away when he heard the others shouting,” Nate said. “I think Grub thinks he’s killed me and he’s run away.”
After a long silence, Nate’s mother said, “I don’t know what to say. We’ve tried to raise Nate to be a responsible person and now it’s like I don’t even know who this boy is, sitting here telling this incredible story.”
“Don’t feel too bad, ma’am,” he said. “These are the kinds of teenage high-jinks young boys get into.”
They sat there talking about Nate is if he wasn’t there, and it made him feel like a little kid.
The policeman finally turned to Nate. “Good job of telling the truth. I think you’re right. Grub’s just run away, either afraid or embarrassed.” He wrote some notes in a little spiral-bound memo pad and stood up. “The next time you’re being bothered by a bully, tell your parents or teachers. They know how to handle those sorts of things.”
Nate wondered how his mother would’ve handled it. Maybe she would’ve told him to tell Grub to get his own lunch money, and to tell him that Nate’s father worked hard to give Nate lunch money and it wasn’t intended for the likes of Grub. Nate was sure that would’ve gotten him tittie-twistered to death. And the teachers were as scared of Grub as the kids were. Nate thought about telling that to the policeman so he could see that Nate had done the only thing he could have, that he did what his grandfather would’ve done.
“Yes, sir,” he said contritely.
The policeman handed Nate a business card. “Or call me, if you want. Just remember, there’s no need to take things into your own hands.”
Nate looked at the card. Officer Ernie Roberts it said, and it gave the phone number for the Davis Corners police department. Nate thanked him and put it in his pocket.
As he was leaving, the policeman told Nate’s parents, “Don’t be too hard on him. Grub Hanley’s a white trash bully. Nate had no idea what he was dealing with.”
Nate was sorry to see the policeman go. As corny as he was, he had seemed to be on Nate’s side. Nate felt that the policeman was glad that Grub had gone and was grateful to Nate for having caused it. Nate’s mother shut the door behind the departing officer and marched back into the room. She squared up in front of Nate.
“How could you do this to us?” she said. “Do you have any idea how mortifying that was to have the police come to our home, park in front of our house, where all the neighbors could see, and tell us that our son had been involved with a gun and some hooligan when we thought you were home in bed?”
Nate tried to make some kind of answer, but was taken aback by his mother’s suddenly shifting the emphasis of the crime from his cursing in school yards and sneaking out of the house and almost getting killed to the fact that he had put them into a socially embarrassing situation.
“It’s not so much what you’ve done to me,” she said, “Although God knows how this has broken my heart. I’m more concerned about what it has done to your poor father.”
Nate’s father looked up with surprise and curiosity.
“The complete lack of respect you’ve shown to him in doing this.”
Nate didn’t understand, and apparently from his father’s look of initial bewilderment, he didn’t either. But if his wife dictated that he was hurt and disrespected, then who was he to question. He immediately put on an expression of hurt pride and feelings.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Nate’s mother said. “Is that all you have to say?”
Actually, Nate had a lot he wanted to say. For one thing, he wanted to tell her that this was about him, not her. She always had the spotlight, he wanted to tell her. This was his turn. It was his story and she was trying to take it away from him. Once, he remembered, she had caught him with a pocketknife he had traded for, and she took it away. That knife had made Nate feel neat. He would open it and watch the light gleam off its blade. He’d heft it in his hand and wave it slowly in the air. He felt good with that pocketknife and she’d taken it away. Now she was taking his story away. She was making it about her, and she was the one telling it, not Nate. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t have it, it was his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys.”
“Well, this is a fine time to start thinking about us.”
Nate knew there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t set up a counter attack.
“Maybe you should’ve thought about our feelings when you snuck out in the night.” She turned and let out a deep, quavering sigh, then calmed herself. “Your grandmother called, and I had to tell her everything.”
Nate was horrified and wondered how much the policeman had already told her before Nate got there.
“I can’t tell you how upset she is.”
“Then why’d you tell her?”
“Because some of us don’t believe in lying and deceiving our parents,” she said. “She wants to see you tomorrow.”
Nate’s sense of dread intensified. He could take what his mother was doing because he could distance himself from it. He wasn’t prepared to go through this with Grandmother Tillman.
“Why do I have to see Grandmother Tillman?”
“I think she wants to tell you herself how disappointed she is.”
Her tone was taunting. Nate figured that she’d gotten chewed out pretty badly herself. The very fact that he was being summoned by Grandmother Tillman showed that she wasn’t confident that her daughter could handle it. It gave Nate a small degree of compensation, knowing that his mother had gotten demoted a little.
She sighed. “I just hope you’re satisfied.”
There was a sharp, metallic edge to her voice, and Nate wondered what had ever become of the pocketknife she had taken away from him.
Chapter 12
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
Monday came and Nate went to school, wondering if Grub would be there for the next round but hoping that he’d actually gotten rid of him. Gratefully, he saw no sign of the bully.
Bill VanDiver approached Nate with a smirk. “Join Grub for a midnight snack Friday? Sorry I missed it.”
“Yeah,” Nate said, “You should’ve been there to see Grub running away.”
“Yeah right.”
“Ask him,” Nate said. “That is, if you can find him.” Nate shot a furtive glance around the school yard.
Just then, Freddie came up. A small crowd had already started to gather to hear the exchange between VanDiver and Nate.
“It was so cool,” Freddie said enthusiastically.
VanDiver seemed to waiver “Nate says Grub ran away Friday night. Did he?”
“Yeah,” Freddie said. “After he shot at us and we chased him.”
“Us? He shot at me,” Nate said. “You and Skip were hiding off in a whole different area.”
“Actually, he shot at Jim Frank’s nigger.”
The allusion to gun play and the mention of Davis Corners’ most noted icon galvanized the crowd. Everyone started asking questions at once. Freddie started to answer, but backed off in deference to Nate when he saw the glare Nate aimed at him. This was clearly Nate’s moment and Nate’s story.
Nate told the story pretty much the way it had happened, but with the embellishments the boys had added afterwards in the car. He sounded like his Uncle Henry, the way he paused when he wanted the listener’s imagination to churn a while, before he supplied more detail. He used his eyes to work the crowd, just like his Uncle Henry did on Sunday afternoons in Grandmother Tillman’s living room, trying to pull each listener in. Nate was a hero because he had driven away Grub Hanley. More important to him now, however, was that he had a story people wanted to hear.
Nate’s classmates wanted to know how he’d come up with the plan and how it felt being shot at. He lied, of course, about how it felt. He couldn’t tell them that it hadn’t felt like anything when it happened. He couldn’t tell them that he was out of danger by the time he realized he’d been in it. So he told them that he’d felt like he was going to be killed for sure and that his whole life had raced before his eyes.
“Wow,” Margaret Haynes said, “Just like they say it happens.”
At every opportunity over the next few days, Nate kept getting drafted to tell the story to different audiences. He was a celebrity, and by the end of the week, just about everyone in Davis Corners knew the story, either having heard it first-hand from Nate or retold by someone else. Nate started to get nervous about his newfound notoriety. For one thing, he liked the idea of Grub Hanley thinking he was dead. For another, he didn’t want his parents hearing about it, because then he would be dead. Most of all, though, he didn’t want Grandmother Tillman or Washington hearing about it. He felt that he would die of embarrassment if either of them knew. For Grandmother Tillman, he was embarrassed by the language, for Washington, he was embarrassed by the association with Jim Frank’s statue.
When Nate rode his bike home after school on Friday, his nervousness went to panic as he saw his father’s car and a police car in the driveway. Optimistically, he wondered if there’d been a death in the family, but he knew it was somehow related to his adventure at Founder’s Hill.
He walked into the living room and saw his parents sitting stiffly on the couch. A police officer in a brown uniform was sitting on a straight-backed chair taken from the dining room. Nate’s mother had a look on her face that expressed both shock and hurt at the same time, as if someone had just slapped her. It intensified slightly when Nate walked in, as if she had been posing with it, but was now turning it on for real, the way an actress might turn on her character just before she walked on stage. Nate’s hopes for a death in the family evaporated. That look could only mean he was in serious trouble.
“This police officer has some questions for you,” she said. “And when he’s through, your father and I have a few of our own.”
The police officer said, “I’m investigating something that may be harmless or which could be serious, so it’s important that you tell me the truth. Your parents here want you to tell the truth, that’s what they’ve taught you, isn’t it?”
Nate admired the officer’s technique and wondered if he’d learned it in police school. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“A young man’s missing,” the police officer said. “Grub Hanley hasn’t been seen since last Friday night. We think he’s just run away, but I understand that you might have some information that would corroborate that.”
“Why do you think that?”
“We’ve talked to Miss Collins, the principal from your school, and she said there were lots of stories going around that you and Grub were involved in an incident Friday night.”
Nate’s mother sucked in her breath and held it. Since the officer hadn’t actually asked him a question, Nate tried just staring back at him in silence. After three seconds he cracked.
“Yes, sir. I saw him Friday night.”
Nate’s mother let out a gasp and his father shifted on the couch.
“What happened?” the policeman said.
Nate told a censored version of the story, how Grub had been bullying him on the school yard and saying only that he’d cursed at Grub. The policeman nodded at that, and Nate assumed he’d already picked up the details in other interviews. He hoped the policeman wouldn’t make him say exactly what he’d said to Grub. Nate quickly went on with the rest of the story, not identifying who picked him up and gave him the ride. He told what happened at Founder’s Hill. His plan sounded incredibly stupid to him as he recounted it in his living room to three grown-ups.
“He ran away when he heard the others shouting,” Nate said. “I think Grub thinks he’s killed me and he’s run away.”
After a long silence, Nate’s mother said, “I don’t know what to say. We’ve tried to raise Nate to be a responsible person and now it’s like I don’t even know who this boy is, sitting here telling this incredible story.”
“Don’t feel too bad, ma’am,” he said. “These are the kinds of teenage high-jinks young boys get into.”
They sat there talking about Nate is if he wasn’t there, and it made him feel like a little kid.
The policeman finally turned to Nate. “Good job of telling the truth. I think you’re right. Grub’s just run away, either afraid or embarrassed.” He wrote some notes in a little spiral-bound memo pad and stood up. “The next time you’re being bothered by a bully, tell your parents or teachers. They know how to handle those sorts of things.”
Nate wondered how his mother would’ve handled it. Maybe she would’ve told him to tell Grub to get his own lunch money, and to tell him that Nate’s father worked hard to give Nate lunch money and it wasn’t intended for the likes of Grub. Nate was sure that would’ve gotten him tittie-twistered to death. And the teachers were as scared of Grub as the kids were. Nate thought about telling that to the policeman so he could see that Nate had done the only thing he could have, that he did what his grandfather would’ve done.
“Yes, sir,” he said contritely.
The policeman handed Nate a business card. “Or call me, if you want. Just remember, there’s no need to take things into your own hands.”
Nate looked at the card. Officer Ernie Roberts it said, and it gave the phone number for the Davis Corners police department. Nate thanked him and put it in his pocket.
As he was leaving, the policeman told Nate’s parents, “Don’t be too hard on him. Grub Hanley’s a white trash bully. Nate had no idea what he was dealing with.”
Nate was sorry to see the policeman go. As corny as he was, he had seemed to be on Nate’s side. Nate felt that the policeman was glad that Grub had gone and was grateful to Nate for having caused it. Nate’s mother shut the door behind the departing officer and marched back into the room. She squared up in front of Nate.
“How could you do this to us?” she said. “Do you have any idea how mortifying that was to have the police come to our home, park in front of our house, where all the neighbors could see, and tell us that our son had been involved with a gun and some hooligan when we thought you were home in bed?”
Nate tried to make some kind of answer, but was taken aback by his mother’s suddenly shifting the emphasis of the crime from his cursing in school yards and sneaking out of the house and almost getting killed to the fact that he had put them into a socially embarrassing situation.
“It’s not so much what you’ve done to me,” she said, “Although God knows how this has broken my heart. I’m more concerned about what it has done to your poor father.”
Nate’s father looked up with surprise and curiosity.
“The complete lack of respect you’ve shown to him in doing this.”
Nate didn’t understand, and apparently from his father’s look of initial bewilderment, he didn’t either. But if his wife dictated that he was hurt and disrespected, then who was he to question. He immediately put on an expression of hurt pride and feelings.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Nate’s mother said. “Is that all you have to say?”
Actually, Nate had a lot he wanted to say. For one thing, he wanted to tell her that this was about him, not her. She always had the spotlight, he wanted to tell her. This was his turn. It was his story and she was trying to take it away from him. Once, he remembered, she had caught him with a pocketknife he had traded for, and she took it away. That knife had made Nate feel neat. He would open it and watch the light gleam off its blade. He’d heft it in his hand and wave it slowly in the air. He felt good with that pocketknife and she’d taken it away. Now she was taking his story away. She was making it about her, and she was the one telling it, not Nate. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t have it, it was his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys.”
“Well, this is a fine time to start thinking about us.”
Nate knew there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t set up a counter attack.
“Maybe you should’ve thought about our feelings when you snuck out in the night.” She turned and let out a deep, quavering sigh, then calmed herself. “Your grandmother called, and I had to tell her everything.”
Nate was horrified and wondered how much the policeman had already told her before Nate got there.
“I can’t tell you how upset she is.”
“Then why’d you tell her?”
“Because some of us don’t believe in lying and deceiving our parents,” she said. “She wants to see you tomorrow.”
Nate’s sense of dread intensified. He could take what his mother was doing because he could distance himself from it. He wasn’t prepared to go through this with Grandmother Tillman.
“Why do I have to see Grandmother Tillman?”
“I think she wants to tell you herself how disappointed she is.”
Her tone was taunting. Nate figured that she’d gotten chewed out pretty badly herself. The very fact that he was being summoned by Grandmother Tillman showed that she wasn’t confident that her daughter could handle it. It gave Nate a small degree of compensation, knowing that his mother had gotten demoted a little.
She sighed. “I just hope you’re satisfied.”
There was a sharp, metallic edge to her voice, and Nate wondered what had ever become of the pocketknife she had taken away from him.
Chapter 12
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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