Days of Little Texas (7 page)

“So how’d we do?” Sugar Tom says.

“The Church of the Hand won’t starve … yet,” Miss Wanda Joy says, clutching the prayer box to her lap.

“Speaking of which,” Certain Certain says, “I could eat the hind end of a mule. Without the sauce.”

We pile into the motor home and head out to Shoney’s. Everybody else is keyed up from the service, saying it was our best in weeks. They all chatter away, Sugar Tom having fun with a cute little waitress. But I was that close to talking to Lucy.
That close
. I am pure heartsick.

“You were quiet tonight at supper,” Miss Wanda Joy says when we get back.

“Yes’m.”

She shakes the box in her lap, letting me hear the coins bounce. “It was a good service. Nothing to worry about.”

“I know.”

“Our next stop is Clampton. They were good to us last time.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Well. Sleep.”

She moves away from my end of the motor home, skirts swishing and leaving behind a cloud of lavender.

Laying down in my bunk, I feel like a car is squatting on my chest.
Why is she so important to me? Why do I feel like I’ve lost something I never had to begin with?

I fall into a ragged sleep and keep waking up with pieces of dreams on the edges of my mind. Each scrap of dream has something blue in it, hanging just out of reach.

The next morning the sun comes up like three-day-old orange juice. I rub my stinging face and stare out at the dark green of the trees against the horizon.

YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CLAMPTON, MISSISSIPPI
, a little sign tells us. The town looks to be a little bigger than Cobbville, but every bit as run-down—a gang of saggy old homes ranging around a town square, and brick stores with messages painted on them advertising stuff nobody has bought for probably fifty years.

“I suspect the national pastime around here is sitting on your ass shelling purple hull peas,” Certain Certain says.

We have a lot of volunteers in Clampton, so Sugar Tom and me spend the hours reading and playing chess while Certain Certain supervises. Sugar Tom likes to call the chess men things like Hittites, Amalekites, and Jebusites. I have never beaten him.

“‘I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt,’” Sugar Tom says. “Checkmate.”

“Huh?”

“Some days the Spirit is close, Ronald Earl, others it’s far away.”

When it’s time for the service, I sit peeking through the saddle flap. No Lucy, only the same kinds of faces I always see. I know what they’re expecting. I just don’t know how much of it I want to give.

“Game time,” Certain Certain says.

After Sugar Tom introduces me, I stand there in the lights and the screaming, and that’s all I do. I’m not smiling, I’m not doing anything. I let it soak into me, not thinking about the whiteness, not thinking that I need to get started. Just
feeling
. I let them settle down. Then I let them
more
than settle down. They go so ghostly quiet, you would think I was all alone.

My head is hanging a little, eyes down. Then I begin to hear them whisper, wondering if something is wrong. Maybe I won’t do it this time. Maybe this is the time I just walk off
and keep going. Quiet. Quiet. And then I see it. The chessboard still sitting there over behind the curtain, the game pieces still laid out. I raise my head and say this:

“Have you ever played chess, brothers and sisters? A chessboard has pieces on it. Pawns. Bishops. Knights. Rooks. A king and a queen. One player takes black, one takes white. If you corner the other player’s king, you win. Simple as that.”

Even I’m not sure where this is going.

“Are we the Lord’s chess pieces, my brethren?” I say. “Is that what we are here for, for Him to play games with us? Do we even have any say in where we end up on the chessboard of
life?
”

Miss Wanda Joy looks like she just swallowed a broomstick sideways. She makes motions with her hand, cutting it across her neck:
Cut it off
.

But I can’t.

“Maybe one side of the board belongs to Jesus, the other to Satan. Which side do you pick? And what piece? Are you a bishop, thinking you can sneak catty-corner past the devil? Or maybe you’re a knight, hopping out of trouble? A pawn, where you can only march straight ahead, Satan’s sacrifice? A rook, plowing straight in a line, no matter what? Or maybe you’re a queen. You can go anywhere, do anything you want. All the power is in
you
. But maybe, my brethren, just maybe, you are a
king
. You spend your time hiding from life, letting others fight your battles. The most powerless player on the board.”

A smattering of voices holler out, “Amen.”

I sneak a glance at Miss Wanda Joy. She’s not slashing her throat anymore. I feel my voice rising, the whiteness coming up behind my eyelids, climbing my throat. I close my eyes and raise my arms.

“This is what I’m here to tell you, brothers and sisters,
ah!
It doesn’t matter
what
piece you are in this game,
ah!
Because a great reckoning is coming,
ah!
The arm of Christ Jesus,
ah!
is coming to sweep aside every piece on the chessboard,
ah!
Each and every one of us,
ah!
Queen to pawn,
ah!
The Lord’s side,
ah!
Satan’s side,
ah! All
will fall like wheat to the thresher,
ah!
For the Great Harvester,
ah!
He is coming to take His accounting,
ah!
at the End of Days,
ah!
when the dead in Christ,
ah!
I say the
dead
in Christ,
ah!
shall rise like a great anointing,
ah!
and ‘they that sow in tears shall reap in joy,’
ah!
”

Now they’re on their feet, waving their hands in the air, swaying back and forth, yelling out “Amen” and “Praise His name!” It goes on and on, the praising and the hollering, my arms up in the air, and I remember again why I’m standing here, why I’m talking. It’s not me. It’s not me, it’s something
using
me, something bigger and brighter and cleaner than I could ever be.

Hallelujah!

“As there is no sanitary hookup here,” Miss Wanda Joy says, all grim, “we will be staying in a motel tonight.”

What she’s really saying is the place where we’ve parked the motor home, sidled up against a used-car lot, isn’t somewhere we can just let our toilet hosepipe dump on the ground, like we’re used to out in the country. Folks would talk.

“The devil’s playground,” Miss Wanda Joy says when she signs for the rooms.

The man behind the counter just smiles; he doesn’t have tooth one, and his skin looks like a field that’s been left fallow, all sunken and punched with holes and stubble.

The rooms are small and damp, but it feels good to get a shower in a tub where your elbows aren’t knocking the walls. Me and Certain Certain bunk in together, and Sugar Tom and Miss Wanda Joy take the room next door. I figure they spend most of the evening reading, holy scripture for her, stories about things like a girl from Russia with X-ray vision for him.

Miss Wanda Joy generally doesn’t like us watching much TV, but the first thing Certain Certain does is grab the remote and flip it on, keeping the volume low, on account of the thin walls.

He skims down to his drawers and socks. Certain Certain’s legs look like they haven’t seen the sun since birth. The slave tag is a hot little square of brownish gold on his chest. He pretty much never takes it off, like it’s some kind of protection for him.

We watch a show where a man gets to pick from twelve different sinful women to marry. He gets to kiss them
all
, sometimes even with the other women looking. They squabble and cuss each other something fierce. Miss Wanda Joy would have an aneurism.

“Not worth spit,” Certain Certain says. “He might as well throw darts. Not one of them gals got the brains the good Lord gave a turnip.”

But I can sure stand looking at them.

We watch a bunch of other stuff we shouldn’t be watching, too. This is how we keep up with things in the outside world. Certain Certain laughs at a cell phone commercial.

“Day is coming, Lightning, people will always know where they are. Satellites, navigators, tracking each and every one of us. But don’t let folks kid you … they lost the true path a
longtime
ago. Ain’t no GPS indicator goin’ locate their tails for them.”

Last thing I remember is Arnold Schwarzenegger toting a casket full of weapons on his shoulder while the army tries to blow him up. Then somewhere Certain Certain must’ve cut out the light, on account of I wake up hours later with a big old blob of moonlight on my belly, coming through a gap in the curtains.

I’ve always liked watching the moon, so I slip out of bed and yank the curtains back—and holler the worst cuss word I’ve ever said.

By the time Certain Certain gets the light switch, I’m scrabbled up against the door, trying to find the knob.

“What is it, boy? What’s got you spooked?” he says, scratchy and fuddle-headed.

“Out there!” I say, shaking my finger at the window. “She—she’s
looking
at us!”

Certain Certain goes over and hauls the drapes all the way open. “Can’t see a damn thing,” he says. “Too bright in here. Cut the lights out.”

I flip the switch on the lamp. “Ain’t nothing,” he says. I dare to look—an empty sidewalk running in both directions and the shiny parking lot, all lit up by a big fat spring moon.

“She was there!” I say, starting to feel a little ridiculous. “I saw her. Her face was pushed up against the glass, looking straight at me, when I opened the curtains….”

I could see her hair brushing her shoulders, her wet eyes, not much more. The thing is, she didn’t move one bit when she saw me—just kept staring straight into our room, giving me the awful feeling she had been standing right there for hours, knowing I would have to take a look outside sooner or later. Waiting all night, just hoping to catch a glimpse of me. Stare straight into my eyes.

Somebody’s beating the door down. We cut the lights back on and drag on our pants. Miss Wanda Joy hurries in wearing a purple bathrobe with a gold cross crocheted on the pocket. Her hair is done up all over with bobby pins, with one or two wispy pieces trailing down her back. Her eyes look like two fried eggs.

“Just what is going on over here?” she barks.

“Night terrors,” Certain Certain says, grinning and put ting his elbow into my side, making my face go hot. “Ronald Earl thought a burglar was trying to bust in.”

“A burglar?”

“Well, let’s make that a burgla
rette
,” Certain Certain says. “Some little gal peeking in the windows.”

“She wasn’t peeking, she was
staring
,” I say. “Did you see anybody coming up the sidewalk?”

Miss Wanda Joy pinches her lips together. “There’s no one out there, Little Texas.”

But just in case, we pile out on the sidewalk to peek. The air smells of French fries.

“She must’ve run off the other direction,” I say.

Close by there’s a set of busted concrete stairs and a Dr Pepper machine. It’s dark up under the stairs, making a little chill go through me. She could be hiding right there, all I know.

“Where’s Sugar Tom?” Certain Certain says.

“Asleep,” Miss Wanda Joy says. “As should we all be. It would take the final trumpet to wake that man.”

We crawl back into bed, but I can’t sleep. Is she still out there lurking in the shadows, just waiting for our lights to go out so she can come back?

The next day my head feels sour and my eyes are burning. We eat a quick breakfast and head over to the car dealership to break down the tent.

“Oh my sweet Jesus,” Certain Certain says when we pull into the vacant lot. My mouth falls open, but I can’t find words to speak.

“‘And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven,’” Sugar Tom says.

There are long, jaggedy tears in the canvas side of the tabernacle. The pulpit has been tumped over and smashed.

But the worst part is this: some of the folding chairs are hanging thirty feet up in the trees.