A Shiloh Christmas (3 page)

With school starting on Monday, I decide to go hear the preacher. Ma believes in going to church every Sunday, while Dad's the one who reads the Bible to himself. Says he and God have some pretty good arguments while he's out working the garden or driving his mail route.

Saturday night Ma lays out a clean shirt for me and washes Dara Lynn's hair. My sister hates to have her hair washed, even for church. We're supposed to be saving water, not using it, she says, and when that don't work, she bellows, “If God wanted me to wash my hair,
he'd have sent some rain.” Ma's got her head all soaped up under the kitchen faucet, and Dara Lynn's holding a towel over her face, screeching that there's soap in her eyes.

“Dara Lynn, if a little soap in your eye is your only misery, you got a fine life ahead of you,” Ma says. “Now hold still.”

Sunday's a steamy day for dressing up—hotter than it was the day before—but Dad's already outside, working on the new addition. I got to put on a fresh shirt and a tie.

Ties are on my
why
list. Wonder what kind of man it was who hated himself enough to design a noose around his neck. David Howard says you wear a tie just to hide the buttons on your shirt. Seems to me if that's the case, you want something pretty, you could just put bright blue buttons on every shirt so that a blue tie wasn't necessary.

At church, the parking lot's packed! Don't hold more'n twenty cars, and there's some parked along the road, too. But we file inside the little white building—
CHURCH OF THE EVERLASTING LIFE
, it says over the door—and find a space for the four of us in one of the pews. Not many there Becky's age, but she wanted to come anyway. Likes putting on her Sunday dress and socks.

I see the preacher—Pastor Dawes is his name—up on the platform. He's a tall man with deep creases on either side the mouth. Wears those glasses without any rims, and his hair is thin over the top of his head. Has on a brown suit and brown tie, and I suppose brown socks and shoes too, but I can't see those. He sits solemn-like as Mrs. Maxwell plays the piano, and more folks come in to find seats.

What I like most about church is the singing. We got a deacon, Brother Hatch, forty pounds more going sideways than the preacher, and he's the one leading the singing. Got the voice to do it too—as deep as a well—and he even smiles as he sings.

“Brothers and sisters,” he says, “turn to page one hundred thirty-eight and sing it like you mean it!” One thirty-eight is my favorite hymn—got a rhythm that almost needs some clapping: “A Little Talk with Jesus” is what it's called.

Mrs. Maxwell plays a few notes, Brother Hatch leads off, and we all come in at the right places:

“Let us . . . ,” he sings.

And the rest of us sing out:

“Have a little talk with Jesus . . .”

Brother Hatch sings:

“And we'll . . .”

“Tell him all about our troubles . . .”

“He will . . .”

“Hear our faintest cry . . .”

“And he will . . .”

“Answer by and by,” we warble.

There's six or seven verses like this, and Becky swings her legs back and forth while we sing. Mrs. Maxwell slows it at the end, so we're all of us singing together, and our voices go up and down on that last note: “A . . . little . . . talk . . . with . . . Jesus . . . makes . . . it . . . riiiiigghht.”

“That's just what I like to hear, brothers and sisters,” Brother Hatch says, his cheeks pink from the effort of directing us. “Isn't that just the finest song?”

Everyone else seems to think so too, and I hear a few “Hallelujahs,” but no telling what Pastor Dawes thinks, because those creases around his mouth sure ain't from smiling.

Becky sits all serious during Scripture reading, and then Pastor Dawes begins the sermon. I figure he's going to be loud, but he starts out soft and gentle as a breeze, and breezes are part of what he wants to preach about.

“Friends,” he says, “I want to talk to you today about signs. Not stop signs. Not store signs. But signs that just might be God's way of talking to us. ‘Why doesn't God
talk to us the way he talked to folks back in the Old Testament?' people ask me sometimes. And my answer is that maybe he does, and we're just not listening.”

So far Becky's paying attention. So's Dara Lynn, though she's got her fingers spread out on her knees, admiring the pink and purple polish on her nails.

“If you know your Bible stories,” he continues, and this time his eyes seek out the children in every row, “you know how God parted the Red Sea so the Israelites could cross out of Egypt, and he closed it again on the Egyptians' chariots and men. You know how he sent the flood to cover the whole earth, all except Noah and his ark, to show how disappointed he was with his people. He made a bush to burn, a volcano to erupt, a whirlwind to take his beloved prophet Elijah to heaven, and the earth to open up and swallow those who had displeased him.”

Then he reads part of a chapter from Deuteronomy about how if you obey God, he'll send rain for your corn and grass for your cattle, but if you don't, he'll “‘Shut up the heavens . . . and you'll perish quickly off the good land the Lord gives you. . . .'”

I don't know how much of that Bible reading Becky understands, but she still hasn't reached for Ma's pocketbook, where Ma keeps some little slide puzzles, the kind you push squares around to make a picture. Dara Lynn
sits like a statue beside me. The rest of the sermon is on the drought, and how come God sent it.

Finally Brother Hatch leads us in “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” and we're in the car again.

The sun is even hotter going home than it was coming. The girls buckle up in the backseat, and I turn down the sun visor on my side. Wish we had air-conditioning in our car like the Howards do.

Mom's a mile or two down the road when Becky says, “I don't like him.”

“Pastor Dawes?” asks Ma.

“God,” says Becky.

There's a gasp from Dara Lynn, and I turn halfway round in my seat. I never heard nobody in our family say that. Becky's lips are like a line in a cement sidewalk, and she's staring straight ahead.

“Why's that, sweetheart?” asks Ma, but I can guess.

“He does bad things,” says Becky.

“Only if
you're
bad.
Really
bad,” says Dara Lynn, the expert. “What I don't get is, if God knows everything, don't he already know we need rain? Why do we have to keep telling him?”

I'll say this for Dara Lynn, she's not afraid to ask questions.

“Maybe he forgets,” says Becky.

I don't even try to get into that conversation, but Dara Lynn has a point.

“I think it's to remind us that we shouldn't take him for granted,” says Ma. “Doesn't want us to go day after day just thinking the earth is always going to stay beautiful, and we don't have to take care of it.”

“
I
take care of it!” says Becky. “I water my tomato plant!” And then, in a smaller voice, “Will the earth ever open up and swallow
me
?”

“No, Becky,” I tell her, even though I don't know more'n anyone else. The thing is, I just can't believe in a God who would do that, so I guess Pastor Dawes'll be after me next.

Wonder if my friends ever think about stuff like this. I asked David Howard once what did he think happened to us after we die, and he said he hopes we get reborn as somebody else. I say, “Who do you want to be reborn as?” And he says, “Methuselah, 'cause then I'd get to live nine hundred sixty-nine years more.”

‘B
OUT THE TIME THE FIRST
trees turn color, you'll hear school buses grinding up the hills and along the back roads of Tyler County. Up until this year, me and Dara Lynn rode the same bus. But now that middle grades have classes at Tyler Consolidated High and I'm going into seventh, I got to be out at the bus stop at 6:55 in the morning. Dara Lynn gets a half hour more sleep.

The bus comes, I give Shiloh one last hug, and the doors swing open. First thing I see when I climb aboard is feet. Feet with shoes on 'em big as rowboats. And when I'm staring down that aisle at the knees and arms and shoulders to go with 'em, I figure that any one of those high school boys could pick me up in one hand and have me for lunch. Even the girls are big.

Driver must know what I'm thinking, 'cause he smiles at me and says, “Go on back. They don't bite.”

Fact is, they're so busy talking and hooting and laughing at their own jokes they hardly pay me any mind at all. There's a few more of us middle schoolers scattered here and there, but I find an empty seat to save for David Howard, and the bus moves on.

Looking at all the different houses we pass, I'm thinking that our little two-bedroom house is about as small as they come, even though my dad gets a decent salary. But nobody could guess the number of years he paid for Grandma Preston's nursing care before she died, and he don't go around telling about the money he lent Ma's brother when Uncle Bill's house got washed away in a flood—no insurance, neither—money we'll never see again and he knows it.

But once we get that new addition, our house'll be that much bigger—a right nice-looking house.

Bus is heading down the winding road toward Little and stops to pick up a girl I've never seen before. She's by herself, and the driver reminds her she's left her sweater on the bench. She goes back down the steps to get it, her cheeks bright as holly berries from embarrassment.

I'm going to have to tell her this seat's saved, but
she don't even look my way when she passes. I even had a smile ready, but she don't want it. Okay by me.

Bus stops for David Howard and some other kids in Friendly. “Heeeerrrre's Da-vid!” he says, spreading his arms wide as he gets on the bus, and even the high school boys laugh. He slides onto the seat beside me. “How'd I do?” he says.

I make a buzzer sound like he's bounced off the show, and he elbows me in the side.

“Man, all I wanted to do this morning was sleep,” he says.

“Me too,” I tell him. “And Dara Lynn's cat was crawling around all over me before Dad even comes to wake me up. I'm going to be
so
glad when I have a room of my own.”

“You said it. I'll be your first sleepover, and we will
party
!” says David.

Partying with David Howard at my place means exploring the fields outside after dark. That's what he likes to do, 'cause he don't have all the land down here in Friendly like we've got up in Shiloh. (I like to think we named our community after my dog, not the other way around.)

“You know, we have to find the middle school
entrance when we get to Tyler,” I say. “I think the high school has its own wing. Their own hallways and everything. Even their own gym.”

“Well, I hope I never get mixed up and wander into it. I don't want to be overhauled by any of these guys,” David says, speaking for both of us.

Bus makes the turn, and we're riding along the Ohio River toward Sistersville. I've seen some of those houses in Sistersville, passed down from great-granddaddies. Three stories, some of 'em, with those little towers on top.

When the bus pulls up to Tyler Consolidated, the high school kids troop off to the new wing, and the principal's there to welcome new middle school students and tell us where to go.

David and I have different homerooms, and don't see each other again till English. We're both of us in that class, with a new teacher, Mr. Kelly.

So far, my teachers have all been nice, but this man walks in wearing a dark-purple shirt with a black tie. I'm thinking,
Who gives this guy fashion advice, a funeral director?
He don't even look at the class—just opens a black notebook and starts talking.

“My name is James Kelly, and you will address me as Mr. Kelly. I do not accept excuses for assignments turned in late; I do not tolerate talking in class; no gum, no food
of any kind; and if you are absent more than twice, it will cost you points off your grade. Any questions?”