Blood Kin Page 8

  She felt a pain in her left side then, numbness in her arm, and she saw the way his face wrinkled up. “Granddaddy —”

  “Sadie, no more stealing from Miss Perkins’ shop, okay? You don’t need to do that — you’re better than that.”

  She felt her face go hot. She thought she would just about die. “Grandpa, I’m sorry. I don’t know why —”

  “It’s alright. There’s lots of reasons we do the things we do, but that has to stop. I found out and I paid her. She’s not going to tell your folks, but you’ve got to promise me, no more.”

  “I promise.” She felt that pain again. “Grandpa —”

  “Best be getting on to that church, sweetheart. I’ve got lots to do here.”

  “Okay, you take care,” she said tenderly. She swung around and started walking away then, the pain burning brighter for a second, then gradually softening the farther away she got. “Love you!” she shouted back over her shoulder.

  “Love you, too!” he cried out, so fiercely the pain came into her side again, spreading into her ribs, and then into nothing. She would always wonder if she’d hurried away thinking the preacher would be mad if she was late, or because she’d wanted to outrun her granddaddy’s pain.

  Sadie’s hands went sweaty as soon as she saw those words, “The First Church of Signs of His Return” printed in thick black paint on three gray barn boards nailed to a maple downhill from the church building. She figured the tree didn’t much like being nailed into because it had bubbled up dark brown sap that dripped across the middle of all three boards. Course somebody like the preacher probably thought that a good thing — it looked like dried blood.

  The preacher’s house was past the church, further up the hill, where the land started flattening out into woods and cornfields and the like. It looked dark and dreamy now with the sun down and a lantern hanging on the front porch. Folks said the preacher mostly walked around the house in the dark, only using the lantern if he had somebody with him. Sadie wondered how he read his Bible with it dark like that, and that made her picture him with his eyes glowing like some critter back in the woods. She shook that off though because it scared her.

  The church didn’t look too much like a church except it’d been whitewashed until it was as white as white can be. It didn’t have any kind of proper steeple or a little room on top for a bell like the Baptist Fellowship over in Clinch had. Sadie hardly ever went to church but when she did she went there to the Clinch church with her momma. She’d liked it — they had real pews to sit on and the people were all pretty quiet and dressed up nice for the service and smiled a lot and talked real polite. None of the mountain churches were anything like that and this one was supposed to be the worst.

  What this church did have was a big ugly drippy cross painted on the side of the building with that same rough black paint that had been used on the sign. There were torches stuck in the ground for the people to see their way in and they made that paint shiny like it was still wet. The church also had a passage from the Bible painted on it in crooked lines and letters all different sizes like a crazy man did it (which he was). She could just imagine the preacher climbing up and down ladders with a messy brush and paint can in his hands, and skittering around hanging from a rope making all those letters.

  And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; They shall take up serpeants; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. MARK 16 17-18

  Those two Bible verses filled up most of that side of the building, even a little bit of window glass where he’d made one of the l’s too tall. She noticed right off that “serpents” was misspelled. She didn’t know if that made it a big mistake because it was in big letters, or if maybe that was the church way of spelling serpents. She had to give the preacher a little credit. There wasn’t nobody going to walk into that church without having some idea what went on there.

  People were trailing in from the cow paths that ran up the slopes and through the woods, mostly farm people she didn’t know — there were lots of folks in the back hollows that almost never came into town and just had their store orders sent up on a wagon. Off on the left side of the church somebody had tied a few horses to the fence. There were only two or three cars she knew of in the area, and she had no acquaintance with their owners, and it was looking like none of them went in for snake handling.

  She heard some familiar voices coming up from behind her so she hurried on inside. She wanted a seat out of the way so she wouldn’t have to talk to nobody. This was a punishment, not a social visit.

  Inside the building everything looked all smoky yellow and brownish because of the oil lamps hanging on hooks along the sides and up by where the preacher was supposed to do his business. She looked around and there wasn’t a lot to see. Somebody had made a cross out of two thick, more-or-less straight branches and nailed it to the front wall. They hadn’t even bothered to paint it — so it looked like this was some kind of outdoor church in the deep woods — the preacher should be doing his preaching outside with a cross like that, and maybe there should be a big campfire.

  The pew benches were homemade like that, too, made out of split logs with legs attached. Except toward the back and on the sides there were a few extra seats somebody had rigged up out of old boards. They’d made the benches kind of low, though. When she sat down on the last bench back in the far left corner it made her knees rise up. She couldn’t imagine some of those old folks getting up off a bench as low as that. Then she noticed that they’d put regular kitchen ladder-back chairs at the end of some of the rows and against the side walls.

  The walls were pretty bare — except for the lamps there were a bunch of long nails to hang coats, and this faded cardboard picture of Jesus they’d put up near the cross. There was melted candle wax on the wall near the cross, but whatever had been there to hold the candles was gone, and no candles had been replaced.

  The room was big enough — she reckoned a good thirty-five foot by forty or so — that the light from the oil lamps couldn’t fill it, which turned the yellow air all gray down the middle and in the corners like where she sat, and high up under the roof, where it was smoky looking and just plain spooky. If she looked close enough she could see clouds of dust drifting by, smoke from the outside and dust from the floor and people’s boots. Sometimes the clouds would move in funny ways, and make shapes a bit like whatever she was thinking about.

  There wasn’t a proper pulpit, or anything for the preacher to stand on while he was preaching, but Sadie couldn’t think of any holy man that needed one less, excepting maybe Jesus himself.

  She could see signs of the preacher’s pacing in the worn boards and bruised varnish that made a rough circle in the floor below that picture of Jesus.

  The elderly Collins sisters came in, but they didn’t sit together. One of them nodded at Sadie, but she couldn’t tell them apart so she didn’t know which one. She’d always thought of them as kind of proper and prissy — the last people she’d expect at a snake-handling meeting.

  Then a whole crowd of farmers she didn’t know came in, and in the middle of them that awful Mr. George Mackey, his head bobbing above them all like one of those balloons she’d seen at the fair. She bowed her head and turned her face away, her hand on her forehead like she was crazy praying. And she was praying — that Mr. George Mackey wouldn’t see her.

  Then a little old man shuffled in, his face all pale and rubbed-out looking, his eyes like they were peeking up out of the bottom of some well. He was looking straight ahead like if he got distracted by just about anything he’d lose his way. He looked awfully familiar, except she was sure she’d never seen that face before. Then she knew with a shock it was Will Shaney, whose boy Fred had bled his life out down by the livery.

  Some others trailed in after it was time to start, Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lilly being the last. They must have hu
rried up from her house after that little party they had with her parents — Uncle Jesse’s shirt wasn’t even tucked in and he weaved when he walked like he was dancing a waltz or something. Lilly turned her head and looked straight at Sadie as if she’d known exactly where she’d be sitting. She did something with her mouth that wasn’t quite a smile. I see you girl, was the way it felt.

  Sadie always thought these snake services were supposed to be loud, lively affairs, but so far everybody was quiet and hardly looked at each other. It was like they were all waiting for something. Then two men got up and opened the double church doors wide, and everybody turned their heads in that direction.

  His face came like a ghostly oval out of the blackest part of the night, rushing towards them like he had wings, the rest of him so dark that pale face was all she could see, like he was the moon or something, set loose from its heavenly tether and flying through the night sky. Then as he got closer to the opening she saw that the preacher was running, hell-bent down the path from his house, his black coat flapping like he was a huge bat, his big black hat pushed down hard over his eyes. “Holyyy!” he cried. “Holyyy!” he screamed, sounding like his throat was on fire.

  “Holyyy!” most of the members cried back. “Holyyy!”

  “Holy, holy ghost!” the preacher cried, running up the aisle to the front of the church. “Holy ghost, amen!”

  “Holy ghost, amen!” the congregation echoed back. They were all standing now, and not wanting to be noticed, Sadie was standing too.

  The preacher walked around the room then, moving fast, charged with feeling, going row to row greeting, embracing, scolding. Now and then he looked directly at Sadie and she withered. Then he ran up to the front and shouted something at the ceiling impossible to understand. It was like he had three tongues all trying to say something different at the same time.

  The preacher turned around and took his hat off, tossed it to a young girl at the end of the front row. She squealed when she caught it. “Oh, I feel good tonight!” he shouted. “Going to save me some sinners tonight! I can feel it in my hands!” He held them up for all to see. Sadie stared at that dark patch on the palm of his left hand. People still talked about how he’d almost died the first time he got bit — two weeks in bed out of his head, screaming at the Lord and trying to make a bargain. He’d lived, but part of his hand had rotted away.

  Sadie kept staring at his face. He looked different, handsomer, standing up there. Still scary, but it was that kind of scary preachers always had, because they talked to the Lord and knew you were sinning. Not the dark and evil kind of scary she knew from the preacher first hand. And try as she might, she couldn’t see the scar she knew was on the left side of his face.

  “And I can feel it in my feet!” He did a little dance except you couldn’t call it a dance because these people didn’t believe in dancing. So maybe it had some kind of church name — like “celebrating” or “praising” — that made it okay.

  Whatever you called it, the people liked it, because they clapped and cheered.

  The preacher stood up straight then, like he could stretch every bone in his body to make himself taller, and he was already a tall man. His lips spread out like they were reaching for his ears. He made probably the widest smile she’d ever seen, but it was the way she imagined one of them African crocodiles in her geography book smiled, because his eyes weren’t smiling at all. They were like two black stones down at the bottom of the creek.

  The dim light of the church appeared to gather in the whiteness of his face, and it wasn’t like he had skin at all. She’d seen limestone cliffs like that, pale and cracked and flaked off from the rain, the lines black as coal seams, so that his mouth was like a wound in the side of the mountain, the tight lips hiding secrets that went back before Melungeons, went back before folks even walked on two legs.

  Then he opened his arms out like he was going to embrace the entire congregation and he said, “If this be your first time in our little church, well, welcome. Welcome. But let me be clear bout this. The First Church of Signs of His Return is a Jesus Only church! In this church we believe in one God, one Spirit, and all of them the one Jesus! Jesus only!”

  “Jesus Only!” most of the congregation roared back.

  “Jesus only, Holy Ghost amen, bless His name, Jesus only!” he shouted, stomping his feet.

  “Jesus only!” they roared again.

  “Jesus only Jesus only Jesus only Jesus only…” the preacher hollered, tossing his head back and forth, his voice becoming more and more tortured, hoarse, and torn.

  “Amen, Brother, Amen!” the congregation shouted, but not together this time. People kept repeating it, their voices overlapping as they stood up, waved their hands in the air, sat down, stood up again and shouted it some more. It was like they wanted the whole world to know and they didn’t care what nobody felt about it.

  The preacher waited until the shouting died down and then he said, “At this here church we aint got no preacher been to no school to learnt how to preach! At this here church you’re stuck with me!”

  A couple of the men laughed. The others shouted, “Praise be!”

  “This here preacher never were told how to preach! This here preacher been called! And you know who called him dont you?”

  Old lady Woodard jumped up and down. “Jesus called you! Jesus called you!”

  The preacher pointed at her like she’d just won the big prize. “You got that right, good lady! Jesus called this preacher! But Lordy, I give him one sorry mess to work with!”

  “No!” several folks said, like they were surprised. But Sadie figured they must all have heard this before.

  “Oh, yes. I confess I was a terrible sinner! I used to drink! I used to carouse!” He said that last word like he was growling. “I used to stay out all night in the arms of sluts and whores!” Old lady Woodard shook her head, weeping and howling. “But then the Holy Ghost came! And the Holy Ghost moved on me!”

  The congregation was shouting again, saying “Amen!” and “Praise his name!” and “Holy Ghost!”

  “I was rescued from the lion’s mouth!” Sadie was watching his lips now, moving like worms fat with venom, jumping and dancing on his face. It was like they wanted to kiss everybody in the congregation. “He’s there to help the good ones, but he’s there to help the sinners too, the back-sliders and even the blasphemers. ‘For because he himself has suffered when tempted,’ they tell us in Hebrews, ‘he is able to help those who are being tempted.’”

  “Praise Jesus!” someone shouted.

  “Tempt us, oh, do tempt us, Lord Jesus have mercy!” a drunken voice shouted from her right. Sadie looked over there and saw her aunt trying to hush her uncle Jesse. Terrified that she might laugh, Sadiepinched herself hard under her left knee.

  “I say I was a sinner, I was a carouser, a drunkard. I lay with all kinds of women!” And the congregation kept shouting “No!” “But I was saved!” The cheers erupted again. And although that crowd couldn’t have been dancing, they certainly looked like it.

  “You tell them, Preacher! You tell them!” Uncle Jesse shouted again. Aunt Lilly was jerking on his arm.

  “I aint like some preachers — I know what it’s like to be a sinner! I tell you I can feel their trouble! And I’ll tell you this.” He held up a little Bible, waving it in one hand. “I believe every word in this book is true!”

  This was greeted with a chorus of “Amens,” “Yeses,” and “Holiest of Holys.”

  “Oh I used to love me a fight! I used to live ever day in sore need of a fight! But now I fight for Jesus!”

  Sadie had heard her mother say that when the preacher was a boy pretty much everybody was scared of him, even the Grans. “That boy was one dirty fighter,” Momma said, and then Daddy told her to shut up, because if it ever got back to the preacher that she’d said that, well, there’d be hell to pay.

  “I’m getting ready for Jesus!” the preacher cried out, striding back and forth in front o
f the cross like he was some kind of proud rooster. “I’m walking his way! I’m talking his way!”

  “Walkin for Jesus, Amen!” said an old woman Sadie didn’t know, who made walking movements with her legs without going anywhere, like she was a soldier marching in place.

  “I’m gettin ready! Dont stop me! I’m gettin ready to leave this world!”

  Some of the church folk laughed, but Sadie couldn’t find the joke in it. It made her go cold all over.

  Suddenly the preacher stopped his stepping and ran up to a man sitting at the end of the third row. “Are you wearing short sleeves in my church? Lord, dont tell me you’re wearing short sleeves in my church!” It was a hot day, but as Sadie looked around she saw that all the men were wearing long sleeves. “We dont dress immodest in my church, Mister!” the preacher shouted into the poor man’s frightened face.

  The man got up and ran out the doors, the preacher after him. The congregation was still; no one said a word. The preacher stopped at the double doors, gazing outside as if listening. Then he slammed the doors shut so hard they made an awful cracking noise. Still no one said a word. The preacher walked back up to the cross slowly shaking his head.

  “This country — it aint what it used to be,” he said, his voice low and sounding troubled. “Down here in these hollers we’re a long ways off from Washington and DC. They tell us there’s this great big depression going on. They tell us folks are out of jobs and out of money. But I tell you this, when did folks like us down in these hills ever have good jobs and good money?”

  Everybody cheered, men got up and stamped their feet and shouted “Never!”

  “I tell you there aint no way we can know all what goes on up North. I tell you I dont know but I spect there’s stuff going on up there’d turn a baby’s hair white! And for sure they’d love to deny us the right to worship this way. But we will not be denied! I love this country, but first in my heart is Jesus!”