Blood Kin Read online

  “Amen! Jesus first! Praise Jesus!”

  “This may be a small town up here in the mountains, hardly more than a few buildings at a crossroads, but it’s got more than its fair share of whores! I say it’s got whores crawling all over these hills! Down in the dirt spitting and writhing no better than animals! Sorely tempting to a man feeling low.”

  “Yes, Jesus!” she heard her Uncle Jesse say.

  “But I tell you we’re better than a bunch of hogs wallowing in the mud. We’re better than the beasts of the field. Jesus, he’s got a plan for us! And he aint gonna be satisfied till we’re sanctified and biblicized!

  “So we got rules in this here Jesus church. In His name we got rules to keep this a holy place! First rule being no sluts!”

  There was a scattering of amens.

  “Second rule being no blasphemers, no drunkards, no adulterers!” This time the amens were more numerous and spirited.

  “In this here church there’ll be no dancing, smoking, chewing, or drinking.”

  “Praise God!”

  “We dont need no beer, tobacca, or swearing.”

  “Praise Jesus!”

  “We’re the lucky ones — we’re inside the sanctuary of our Lord Jesus’s loving arms! They tell us in the Book of Revelation, they tell us outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. But once you’re inside the church you’re safe from all that. In fact you can take the church wherever you go, because this church, it aint just a building, it aint no single place, this here church is a state of mind!”

  “Oh yes, Jesus! Praise be his name!”

  “And I’ll tell you something else. We dont need no store bought medicine — that’s for fools!”

  A man stood up in the back and shouted, “Took some of that last winter when I was sick and didn’t do me a bit of good!”

  “If you take medicine for your ills it’s a sure sign you aint got no faith!” the preacher shouted. The man, looking embarrassed, sat down. The preacher started walking back and forth at the front of the church like he was nervous, like he could hardly contain himself. “If you’re sick, take it to Doctor Jesus! If you’re troubled, take it to Doctor Jesus!

  “There are some things we weren’t meant to understand! That’s why we’ve got faith! If you got faith you dont need to understand!”

  An old woman stood up and raised her arms, walking in circles and shaking her hips, shouting, “Looky here, I got faith. I got faith!”

  “Thank you, Sister, I know you do! I know you do. And I know some of you come a long way to be here tonight. But I think some of you came expecting salvation to come easy.”

  “Not us, preacher!” someone shouted from the back. “Aint nothing good come easy!”

  “Amen, Brother, amen. Aint that the truth? It aint like it weren’t no hardship for Our Lord Jesus Christ! It weren’t no easy ride for him! No sir! You ever get the spikes nailed through your hands you tell me how easy it was!”

  The preacher was walking up and down the center aisle, crouched low, prowling like a thief sneaking up on a chicken coop, and laying his feet down so that his shoes just slapped against the floor, and with each shoe slap he made a Huh sound, like he’d just been punched in the gut. “Sometimes we fail. Huh. Sometimes we sin. Huh.” It seemed the silliest thing, but the folks in the congregation couldn’t keep their eyes off him.

  “I tell you there aint no rewards on this earth. Huh. I dont care how much you own. Huh. There aint no rewards. Huh. No sir! Huh.” Then he got down even lower and darker looking if that was possible. He was walking so low it was like an animal in a dark coat prowling up and down the aisle. “Every step we take is a step toward death! Huh! Ever crawl of a tiny little baby is a crawling toward death! Huh!”

  “Oh, Jesus, it’s true!” a lady in the front row wailed. “Every step we take!”

  “But Jesus, he gives us his con-so-lation!” The preacher had stood up and was half-shouting, half-singing. “He takes us in his-o-so-loving arms! Sing with me now, would you? A little bit of ‘Bright Morning Stars.’”

  The preacher started singing then, and Sadie had to admit he had a pretty fine singing voice, cept maybe a little low and growly for her taste. But he sang like that’s what he lived for, and everybody else, including Sadie, stood up then and joined him, repeating the lines he sang after he sang them.

  Bright morning stars are rising

  Bright morning stars are rising

  Day is a breaking in my soul

  Where are our dear mothers

  Where are our dear mothers

  Day is a breaking in my soul

  They have gone to heaven a shouting

  They have gone to heaven a shouting

  Day is a breaking in my soul

  And that last part, he shouted it more than he sang it, his head thrown back like he was shouting straight up at Jesus or God or whoever it was might be living up there, letting them know he was coming. Or warning them he was coming because Sadie figured that whenever he got up there there’d be Hell to pay.

  He shouted those lines with all his voice would give him. He shouted like he was trying to make the deaf angels hear him, until his voice cracked and he had to preach hoarse for a while. His voice got rough and raw, and then it got all mournful sounding, like he was being tortured by demons.

  And all the folk in the church were clapping and shouting and stomping like they’d all gone crazy, like they’d shouted out their minds, their eyes closed and their mouths open so wide it was like their jaws were broken.

  This went on for a long time until the preacher just stopped it all of a sudden. Grinning, and mopping his forehead with an old gray hanky, he raised his hand and said, “Enough! That’s enough now!” And the rest of them, they just stopped like they’d just been turned off. “Lordy, dont it feel good,” he said.

  “Amen, amen,” they all said.

  “But it takes a lot out of you, man my age.” There was scattered, soft laughter. “Well, then, anybody here needing healing? I know I do!” He laughed. “But anybody else?”

  He said that last part so softly she wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, but the people responded, several walking up the center aisle slowly, mostly women, making a line. One by one he took them in hand, pulling them into a firm embrace, and then laying his hands on their shoulders, then their faces, then other parts of their bodies.

  None of them announced what was wrong with them, and the preacher didn’t tell. But almost everybody in the hollow over the age of twelve had some kind of ailment, some injury — rheumatism and arthritis in the older folks, crippled limbs or wounds or at least a couple of unpopped Bible cysts in the ones younger. Pain was living up here in the mountains.

  All during this he spoke softly to them, occasionally raising his face to the ceiling to croon aloud “Glory be to God!” and “Praise be!” then tilting his head back towards them, sometimes touching forehead to forehead, whispering to them like he was their boyfriend or something, rubbing their backs, then looking up to the ceiling again and shouting “By the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God — !” And their bodies would jump and wiggle like they were throwing some kind of fit.

  Now and then somebody’d fall to the floor after he said something to them, like they’d been overcome, couldn’t control themselves. All of them women, the ones falling. And when they fell, it was like it was catching, because other women out in the congregation started falling too, so pretty soon there were so many women lying on the floor of that church Sadie was afraid they were going to get stepped on, because the other people still standing up were all dancing around and shouting, she guessed celebrating that these folks were going to get healed.

  “Behold the words of Micah!” the preacher shouted. “‘They shall lick the dust like a serpent, like the crawling things of the earth.’”

  She didn’t understand — were all these women lik
e the preacher’s girlfriends or something, or like Jesus’s girlfriends? Because they acted that way. They acted like they loved the very dust he stepped on.

  The preacher was bent over one young woman now, praying loudly and speaking so fast Sadie couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. He put one hand on the woman’s head and the other practically between her legs. She snapped and moaned. “Jesus, let me not help her as a man helps a woman, but as your instrument, oh Lord Sweet Jesus!” Then he turned his head and Sadie swore he was looking straight back into her eyes.

  No one else seemed to be watching the preacher. The women were hopping up and down in their plain seed sack dresses. The men in their dull white shirts and overalls were hollering and waving their heads around with their eyes closed. All of them were stamping their feet and clapping their hands. Somebody brought out a tambourine, and then another, and another still. Like it was a miracle like that story about Jesus and the loaves and the fishes, the miracle of the multiplying tambourines! Somebody was banging on a beat-up guitar. A bunch of people were beating on their pews, slapping their chests and their thighs and making nonsense sounds come out of their wide open mouths.

  They were like a bunch of wild people with their lips loose, tongues flapping, eyes rolling. Sadie’s ears were splitting from the shrieks that surrounded her like she was in the middle of some kind of whirlwind.

  “Oh how I love Jesus!” The preacher was standing again and shouting, waving the little Bible around in the air. “Oh I dearly love him so!”

  A couple of tall, skinny men were dancing wildly. No, Sadie reminded herself, these people dont dance. So those were two skinny men wildly worshipping, their four feet moving as if they were on fire, faster than what she thought feet could move, like four independent animals in their hard leather shells moving like their little animal brains had exploded.

  One of the men bent backwards so that his back was practically floating above the floor, his shoulders pumping like he had motors in them.

  The preacher ran over to the man and all around him, pointing. “See how the power of the Holy Ghost gets on him! See how this man can move when it’s the Lord holding onto them legs!”

  The man straightened up as if the preacher’s voice had electrocuted him. Eyes shut, hands waving, the man started walking slowly backwards in circles. He did it so deliberately, so rhythmically; it was like a dance, but in reverse. It was a Jesus dance! Sadie thought, and made herself laugh.

  Then the fellow’s spine jerked suddenly, snapping like a whip and he fell to the floor. She stopped laughing. Was the preacher making this happen?

  “See! See what Jesus can do?” the preacher shouted. He ran to the poor man on the floor and started dancing around him. Other men joined him in the circle, bodies jerking wildly as if an electrical jolt was passing from one dancer to the next.

  Other members of the congregation, both men and women, moved around the group, making circles around circles, gyrating, jerking, and praising the Lord. They turned into a mass of straining faces, their hands raised and shaking.

  She stood up, not wanting to be the only one still sitting, not wanting to be singled out, but she couldn’t see any way she could ever make herself move like they did.

  Sadie froze watching as the congregation slowed down and member after member dropped to the floor or onto the benches — pale, worn-out, quivering — the preacher started pacing with his head thrown back, staring at the ceiling. “What’s that Lord? Oh, I know we can do better. If we cant do better I’m not doing my job, and Lord if I cant do better you should take me now. I am in your hands, Lord, in your hands! I have no will except whatever will you would give me. I have no life except whatever life you care to bless me with!”

  One old woman who’d never sat down, who’d just kept going and going even when much younger folk had collapsed — began to scream and bark and lurch. She suddenly went stiff, grabbed her chest and fell to the floor. Sadie leaned forward, sure the woman had had a heart attack, but no one else seemed at all concerned.

  The preacher pranced over her body a few times shouting “Take these, our pitiful garments of flesh! God is good! God is great!” He ran up and down beside her. Sadie was sure he was going to step on her. But the old woman didn’t move at all. Maybe she was already dead, and it didn’t matter what terrible things folks did to her body now. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! John 5:25! ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.’” The preacher held out his hand and one of the men handed him a bottle with some oil in it. The preacher crouched over the old woman and took an oily finger and drew a cross on her forehead. Still she didn’t move. Somebody had to do something! And then mercifully two big men went up to the front and carried the old woman outside.

  Then all the folks looked like they’d been poured out on the floor, their faces all white but for the shadow around the pits of their eyes. Some of them had a hard time figuring out where they’d been sitting, wandering up and down the aisle and whispering, the preacher glaring at them the whole time until somebody took pity and made a space for them. Several men were still standing, weeping on each other’s shoulders.

  Several of the members sitting in the front pews still wiggled around as if they were in the grips of a great emotion or simply out of their minds in pain. They folded up their bodies, mouths stretched out like their faces had frozen at the extremes of some scream, flesh sweating so badly Sadie wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d actually started sweating blood.

  The preacher didn’t say anything for a while, just walked around as if he was taking the measure of his flock, deciding who was wanting and who had even a little chance of pleasing him in this life. He had a sour expression, like he’d just eaten a bad piece of fruit but wasn’t about to give anybody the satisfaction of throwing it up. Sadie slunk in her pew, sure that if he even looked at her she’d start bawling and not be able to stop.

  “As much as I love these hills I cant deny it’s a hard life, harder than most I reckon. You pay for living here with your blood and your kin’s blood. And if you got a last name of Gibson, or Collins, or half a dozen other’n well I dont need to tell you folks life can be harder still. There’s people in this here county would as soon spit as smile on you and your kind. Same as the rest of the country I reckon. They dont know us. They dont care what happens to us.”

  “That’s right! They dont care!” someone shouted. “Nary a one!”

  “Bout the only comfort for folks like us is in our Lord Jesus Christ. Cause Jesus, he loves the poor people. He loves the forsaken, the mistaken, and the denied! Read your Bible! ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.’ Matthew 19:24. I reckon that gives folks like us a leg up as far as Heaven is concerned.” Some of the people laughed, but the preacher’s hard expression didn’t encourage much laughter.

  “Remember the Israelites? Even the lowliest of the low have power on God’s green earth! And I tell you sweet brothers and sisters, each and every one of you need to recognize the powers that Almighty God has bestowed upon you. You know what I’m talking about! Some of you more than others!” Sadie knew he was talking about her, and when she made herself look up into his face, there was his scar, big and bold and red as could be. “You learn to seize that power, you learn to love that power, and I swear nobody will be spitting your way again.”

  The preacher started pacing back and forth then, swinging his arms, rocking his shoulders, shaking his head like he couldn’t stop himself, like he could hardly hold himself back from something, something awful, but Sadie couldn’t imagine what.

  “Mountain folk like us, we’re on the shy side. We’d rather do than talk, and we dont always speak up, even when we’re in a world of pain. But people, you got to open your mouths and let the words come out! Not the words that men have taught you, not those words you learnt in school, but th
e ones Jesus put into your mouth. Let Jesus be the one to train your tongue!

  “Member that place in Acts 2 where our Bible tells us ‘and suddenly there came from heaven a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as of fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.’

  “And right there in Mark 16:17 it says ‘they will speak in new tongues!’ So let’s hear some of these new tongues! Let’s hear what the Lord gives us to say!”

  The preacher kept walking around, swinging his arms, twitching like he had hundreds of insects stinging him. The rest of the church was the quietest they’d been since the services began. A couple of people stood up, looked like they were about to say something, but it was like they suddenly lost the words, or were too shy to say them. They sat back down looking embarrassed.

  Then this sound started, this low sound like from deep inside a cave, and at first she couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Then it got louder, and she watched the preacher, who was back up near the cross now, and he was all tense, then swaying, his bones loose like all that connected them together was a little bit of string. And the sound was coming from him — she just wasn’t exactly sure how.

  Then the preacher opened his mouth more, and he started saying things, and the people sat up, most of them, like they’d been slapped.

  “Glory be to God hallelujah!” the preacher said. “Ah sa lelogo shelagalah!” he shouted, or something liked that. What was he saying? Had he gone crazy? He sounded just like that auctioneer down the county fair last year.

  The preacher was strutting like a rooster. His head moved back and forth. “Shi rilly yaya shang be to goddah holly lujah! Glor holly to goddah lujah!”

  The preacher walked around the inside of the church, marching with his elbow brushing the walls, circling every member of his flock like he was herding the bunch of them in. It made Sadie awfully nervous to see that, to see him up front, then behind, then right beside her. He kept running faster and faster, saying all that nonsense, then raising his arms out to his sides like a little kid playing airplane, then screaming “Where are my saints! Where are my saints?” Certain people stood up and delivered their own version of whatever it was he’d been shouting, each in their way praising the Lord with their “Muss alowa goddah! Shah ally lawja!” The spirit took them one at a time, and then the spirit took them in waves, standing and shouting, turning in circles, laid back in the pews with their heads roiling around, lying on their backs on the floor with their hips jumping. The people in front were shaking and twitching, the people in back still standing in their rows but waving and shouting, some with eyes big as eggs, or rolling into the backs of their heads, the whites glowing in the light from the lanterns hanging along the walls.