Go Tell It on the Mountain (7 page)

And the Lord, as He had promised to the two or three first gathered together, sent others; and these brought others and created a church. From this parent branch, if the Lord blessed, other branches might grow and a mighty work be begun throughout the city and throughout the land. In the history of the temple the Lord had raised up evangelists and teachers and prophets, and called them out into the field to do His work; to go up and down the land carrying the gospel, or to raise other temples—in Philadelphia, Georgia, Boston, or Brooklyn. Wherever the Lord led, they followed. Every now and again one of them came home to testify of the wonders the Lord had worked through him, or her. And sometimes on a special Sunday they all visited one of the nearer churches of the Brotherhood.

There had been a time, before John was born, when his father had also been in the field; but now, having to earn for his family their daily bread, it was seldom that he was able to travel farther away than Philadelphia, and then only for a very short time. His father no longer, as he had once done, led great revival meetings, his name printed large on placards that advertised the coming of a man
of God. His father had once had a mighty reputation; but all this, it seemed, had changed since he had left the South. Perhaps he ought now to have a church of his own—John wondered if his father wanted that; he ought, perhaps, to be leading, as Father James now led, a great flock to the Kingdom. But his father was only a caretaker in the house of God. He was responsible for the replacement of burnt-out light bulbs, and for the cleanliness of the church, and the care of the Bibles, and the hymn-books, and the placards on the walls. On Friday night he conducted the Young Ministers’ Service and preached with them. Rarely did he bring the message on a Sunday morning; only if there was no one else to speak was his father called upon. He was a kind of fill-in speaker, a holy handyman.

Yet he was treated, so far as John could see, with great respect. No one, none of the saints in any case, had ever reproached or rebuked his father, or suggested that his life was anything but spotless. Nevertheless, this man, God’s minister, had struck John’s mother, and John had wanted to kill him—and wanted to kill him still.

John had swept one side of the church and the chairs were still piled in the space before the altar when there was a knocking at the door. When he opened the door he saw that it was Elisha, come to help him.

“Praise the Lord,” said Elisha, standing on the doorstep, grinning.

“Praise the Lord,” said John. This was the greeting always used among the saints.

Brother Elisha came in, slamming the door behind him and stamping his feet. He had probably just come from a basketball court; his forehead was polished with recent sweat and his hair stood up. He was wearing his green woolen sweater, on which was stamped the letter of his high school, and his shirt was open at the throat.

“You ain’t cold like that?” John asked, staring at him.

“No, little brother, I ain’t cold. You reckon everybody’s frail like you?”

“It ain’t only the little ones gets carried to the graveyard,” John
said. He felt unaccustomedly bold and lighthearted; the arrival of Elisha had caused his mood to change.

Elisha, who had started down the aisle toward the back room, turned to stare at John with astonishment and menace. “Ah,” he said, “I see you fixing to be sassy with Brother Elisha tonight—I’m going to have to give you a little correction. You just wait till I wash my hands.”

“Ain’t no need to wash your hands if you come here to work. Just take hold of that mop and put some soap and water in the bucket.”

“Lord,” said Elisha, running water into the sink, and talking, it seemed, to the water, “that sure is a sassy nigger out there. I sure hope he don’t get hisself hurt one of these days, running his mouth thataway. Look like he just
won’t
stop till somebody busts him in the eye.”

He sighed deeply, and began to lather his hands. “Here I come running all the way so he wouldn’t bust a gut lifting one of them chairs, and all he got to say is ‘put some water in the bucket.’ Can’t do nothing with a nigger nohow.” He stopped and turned to face John. “Ain’t you got no manners, boy? You better learn how to talk to old folks.”

“You better get out here with that mop and pail. We ain’t got all night.”

“Keep on,” said Elisha. “I see I’m going to have to give you your lumps tonight.”

He disappeared. John heard him in the toilet, and then over the thunderous water he heard him knocking things over in the back room.

“
Now
what you doing?”

“Boy, leave me alone. I’m fixing to work.”

“It sure sounds like it.” John dropped his broom and walked into the back. Elisha had knocked over a pile of camp chairs, folded in the corner, and stood over them angrily, holding the mop in his hand.

“I keep telling you not to hide that mop back there. Can’t nobody get at it.”

“I always get at it. Ain’t everybody as clumsy as you.”

Elisha let fall the stiff gray mop and rushed at John, catching him off balance and lifting him from the floor. With both arms tightening around John’s waist he tried to cut John’s breath, watching him meanwhile with a smile that, as John struggled and squirmed, became a set, ferocious grimace. With both hands John pushed and pounded against the shoulders and biceps of Elisha, and tried to thrust with his knees against Elisha’s belly. Usually such a battle was soon over, since Elisha was so much bigger and stronger and as a wrestler so much more skilled; but tonight John was filled with a determination not to be conquered, or at least to make the conquest dear. With all the strength that was in him he fought against Elisha, and he was filled with a strength that was almost hatred. He kicked, pounded, twisted, pushed, using his lack of size to confound and exasperate Elisha, whose damp fists, joined at the small of John’s back, soon slipped. It was a deadlock; he could not tighten his hold, John could not break it. And so they turned, battling in the narrow room, and the odor of Elisha’s sweat was heavy in John’s nostrils. He saw the veins rise on Elisha’s forehead and in his neck; his breath became jagged and harsh, and the grimace on his face became more cruel; and John, watching these manifestations of his power, was filled with a wild delight. They stumbled against the folding-chairs, and Elisha’s foot slipped and his hold broke. They stared at each other, half grinning. John slumped to the floor, holding his head between his hands.

“I didn’t hurt you none, did I?” Elisha asked.

John looked up. “Me? No, I just want to catch my breath.”

Elisha went to the sink, and splashed cold water on his face and neck. “I reckon you going to let me work now,” he said.

“It wasn’t
me
that stopped you in the first place.” He stood up. He found that his legs were trembling. He looked at Elisha, who was drying himself on the towel. “You teach me wrestling one time, okay?”

“No, boy,” Elisha said, laughing, “I don’t want to wrestle with
you
. You too strong for me.” And he began to run hot water into the great pail.

John walked past him to the front and picked up his broom. In a moment Elisha followed and began mopping near the door. John had finished sweeping, and he now mounted to the pulpit to dust the three thronelike chairs, purple, with white linen squares for the headpieces and for the massive arms. It dominated all, the pulpit: a wooden platform raised above the congregation, with a high stand in the center for the Bible, before which the preacher stood. There faced the congregation, flowing downward from this height, the scarlet altar cloth that bore the golden cross and the legend:
JESUS SAVES
. The pulpit was holy. None could stand so high unless God’s seal was on him.

He dusted the piano and sat down on the piano stool to wait until Elisha had finished mopping one side of the church and he could replace the chairs. Suddenly Elisha said, without looking at him:

“Boy, ain’t it time you was thinking about your soul?”

“I guess so,” John said with a quietness that terrified him.

“I know it looks hard,” said Elisha, “from the outside, especially when you young. But you believe me, boy, you can’t find no greater joy than you find in the service of the Lord.”

John said nothing. He touched a black key on the piano and it made a dull sound, like a distant drum.

“You got to remember,” Elisha said, turning now to look at him, “that you think about it with a carnal mind. You still got Adam’s mind, boy, and you keep thinking about your friends, you want to do what they do, and you want to go to the movies, and I bet you think about girls, don’t you, Johnny? Sure you do,” he said, half smiling, finding his answer in John’s face, “and you don’t want to give up all that. But when the Lord saves you He burns out all that old Adam, He gives you a new mind and a new heart, and then you don’t find no pleasure in the world, you get all your joy in walking and talking with Jesus every day.”

He stared in a dull paralysis of terror at the body of Elisha. He
saw him standing—had Elisha forgotten?—beside Ella Mae before the altar while Father James rebuked him for the evil that lived in the flesh. He looked into Elisha’s face, full of questions he would never ask. And Elisha’s face told him nothing.

“People say it’s hard,” said Elisha, bending again to his mop, “but, let me tell you, it ain’t as hard as living in this wicked world and all the sadness of the world where there ain’t no pleasure nohow, and then dying and going to Hell. Ain’t nothing as hard as that.” And he looked back at John. “You see how the Devil tricks people into losing their souls?”

“Yes,” said John at last, sounding almost angry, unable to bear his thoughts, unable to bear the silence in which Elisha looked at him.

Elisha grinned. “They got girls in the school I go to”—he was finished with one side of the church and he motioned to John to replace the chairs—“and they nice girls, but their minds ain’t on the Lord, and I try to tell them the time to repent ain’t tomorrow, it’s today. They think ain’t no sense to worrying now, they can sneak into Heaven on their deathbed. But I tell them, honey, ain’t everybody lies down to die—people going all the time, just like that, today you see them and tomorrow you don’t. Boy, they don’t know what to make of old Elisha because he don’t go to the movies, and he don’t dance, and he don’t play cards, and he don’t go with them behind the stairs.” He paused and stared at John, who watched him helplessly, not knowing what to say. “And boy, some of them is real nice girls, I mean
beautiful
girls, and when you got so much power that
they
don’t tempt you then you know you saved sure enough. I just look at them and I tell them Jesus saved me one day, and I’m going to go all the way with
Him
. Ain’t no woman, no, nor no man neither going to make me change my mind.” He paused again, and smiled and dropped his eyes. “That Sunday,” he said, “that Sunday, you remember?—when Father got up in the pulpit and called me and Ella Mae down because he thought we was about to commit
sin—well, boy, I don’t want to tell no lie, I was mighty hot against the old man that Sunday. But I thought about it, and the Lord made me to see that he was right. Me and Ella Mae, we didn’t have nothing on our minds at all, but look like the Devil is just everywhere—sometime the Devil he put his hand on you and look like you just can’t breathe. Look like you just a-burning up, and you got to do something, and you can’t do nothing; I been on my knees many a time, weeping and wrestling before the Lord—
crying
, Johnny—and calling on Jesus’ name. That’s the only name that’s got power over Satan. That’s the way it’s been with
me
sometime, and I’m
saved
. What you think it’s going to be like for you, boy?” He looked at John, who, head down, was putting the chairs in order. “Do you want to be saved, Johnny?”

“I don’t know,” John said.

“Will you try him? Just fall on your knees one day and ask him to help you to pray?”

John turned away, and looked out over the church, which now seemed like a vast, high field, ready for the harvest. He thought of a First Sunday, a Communion Sunday not long ago when the saints, dressed all in white, ate flat, unsalted Jewish bread, which was the body of the Lord, and drank red grape juice, which was His blood. And when they rose from the table, prepared especially for this day, they separated, the men on the one side, and the women on the other, and two basins were filled with water so that they could wash each other’s feet, as Christ had commanded His disciples to do. They knelt before each other, woman before woman, and man before man, and washed and dried each other’s feet. Brother Elisha had knelt before John’s father. When the service was over they had kissed each other with a holy kiss. John turned again and looked at Elisha.

Elisha looked at him and smiled. “You think about what I said, boy.”

When they were finished Elisha sat down at the piano and played to himself. John sat on a chair in the front row and watched him.

“Don’t look like nobody’s coming tonight,” he said after a long while. Elisha did not arrest his playing of a mournful song: “Oh, Lord, have mercy on me.”

“They’ll be here,” said Elisha.

And as he spoke there was a knocking on the door. Elisha stopped playing. John went to the door, where two sisters stood, Sister McCandless and Sister Price.

“Praise the Lord, son,” they said.

“Praise the Lord,” said John.

They entered, heads bowed and hands folded before them around their Bibles. They wore the black cloth coats that they wore all week and they had old felt hats on their heads. John felt a chill as they passed him, and he closed the door.

Elisha stood up, and they cried again: “Praise the Lord!” Then the two women knelt for a moment before their seats to pray. This was also passionate ritual. Each entering saint, before he could take part in the service, must commune for a moment alone with the Lord. John watched the praying women. Elisha sat again at the piano and picked up his mournful song. The women rose, Sister Price first, and then Sister McCandless, and looked around the church.