Go Tell It on the Mountain (8 page)

“Is we the first?” asked Sister Price. Her voice was mild, her skin was copper. She was younger than Sister McCandless by several years, a single woman who had never, as she testified, known a man.

“No, Sister Price,” smiled Brother Elisha, “Brother Johnny here was the first. Him and me cleaned up this evening.”

“Brother Johnny is mighty faithful,” said Sister McCandless. “The Lord’s going to work with him in a mighty way, you mark my words.”

There were times—whenever, in fact, the Lord had shown His favor by working through her—when whatever Sister McCandless said sounded like a threat. Tonight she was still very much under the influence of the sermon she had preached the night before. She was an enormous woman, one of the biggest and blackest God had ever
made, and He had blessed her with a mighty voice with which to sing and preach, and she was going out soon into the field. For many years the Lord had pressed Sister McCandless to get up, as she said, and move; but she had been of timid disposition and feared to set herself above others. Not until He laid her low, before this very altar, had she dared to rise and preach the gospel. But now she had buckled on her traveling shoes. She would cry aloud and spare not, and lift up her voice like a trumpet in Zion.

“Yes,” said Sister Price, with her gentle smile, “He says that he that is faithful in little things shall be made chief over many.”

John smiled back at her, a smile that, despite the shy gratitude it was meant to convey, did not escape being ironic, or even malicious. But Sister Price did not see this, which deepened John’s hidden scorn.

“Ain’t but you two who cleaned the church?” asked Sister McCandless with an unnerving smile—the smile of the prophet who sees the secrets hidden in the hearts of men.

“Lord, Sister McCandless,” said Elisha, “look like it ain’t never but us two. I don’t know what the other young folks does on Saturday nights, but they don’t come nowhere near here.”

Neither did Elisha usually come anywhere near the church on Saturday evenings; but as the pastor’s nephew he was entitled to certain freedoms; in him it was a virtue that he came at all.

“It sure is time we had a revival among our young folks,” said Sister McCandless. “They cooling off something terrible. The Lord ain’t going to bless no church what lets its young people get so lax, no sir. He said, because you ain’t neither hot or cold I’m going to spit you outen my mouth. That’s the Word.” And she looked around sternly, and Sister Price nodded.

“And Brother Johnny here ain’t even saved yet,” said Elisha. “Look like the saved young people would be ashamed to let him be more faithful in the house of God than they are.”

“He said that the first shall be last and the last shall be first,” said Sister Price with a triumphant smile.

“Indeed, He did,” agreed Sister McCandless. “This boy going to make it to the Kingdom before any of them, you wait and see.”

“Amen,” said Brother Elisha, and he smiled at John.

“Is Father going to come and be with us tonight?” asked Sister McCandless after a moment.

Elisha frowned and thrust out his lower lip. “I don’t reckon so, sister,” he said. “I believe he going to try to stay home tonight and preserve his strength for the morning service. The Lord’s been speaking to him in visions and dreams and he ain’t got much sleep lately.”

“Yes,” said Sister McCandless, “that sure is a praying man. I tell you, it ain’t every shepherd tarries before the Lord for his flock like Father James does.”

“Indeed, that is the truth,” said Sister Price, with animation. “The Lord sure done blessed us with a good shepherd.”

“He mighty hard sometimes,” said Sister McCandless, “but the Word is hard. The way of holiness ain’t no joke.”

“He done made me to know that,” said Brother Elisha with a smile.

Sister McCandless stared at him. Then she laughed. “Lord,” she cried, “I
bet
you can say so!”

“And I loved him for that,” said Sister Price. “It ain’t every pastor going to set down his own nephew—in front of the whole church, too. And Elisha hadn’t committed no big fault.”

“Ain’t no such thing,” said Sister McCandless, “as a little fault or a big fault. Satan get his foot in the door, he ain’t going to rest till he’s in the room. You is in the Word or you
ain’t
—ain’t no halfway with God.”

“You reckon we ought to start?” asked Sister Price doubtfully, after a pause. “Don’t look to me like nobody else is coming.”

“Now, don’t you sit there,” laughed Sister McCandless, “and be of little faith like that. I just believe the Lord’s going to give us a great service tonight.” She turned to John. “Ain’t your daddy coming out tonight?”

“Yes’m,” John replied, “he said he was coming.”

“There!” said Sister McCandless. “And your mama—is she coming out, too?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “She mighty tired.”

“She ain’t so tired she can’t come out and pray a
little
while,” said Sister McCandless.

For a moment John hated her, and he stared at her fat, black profile in anger. Sister Price said:

“But I declare, it’s a wonder how that woman works like she does, and keeps those children looking so neat and clean and all, and gets out to the house of God almost every night. Can’t be nothing but the Lord that bears her up.”

“I reckon we might have a little song,” said Sister McCandless, “just to warm things up. I sure hate to walk in a church where folks is just sitting and talking. Look like it takes all my spirit away.”

“Amen,” said Sister Price.

Elisha began a song: “This may be my last time,” and they began to sing:

As they sang, they clapped their hands, and John saw that Sister McCandless looked about her for a tambourine. He rose and mounted the pulpit steps, and took from the small opening at the bottom of the pulpit three tambourines. He gave one to Sister McCandless, who nodded and smiled, not breaking her rhythm, and he put the rest on a chair near Sister Price.

He watched them, singing with them—because otherwise they would force him to sing—and trying not to hear the words that he forced outward from his throat. And he thought to clap his hands,
but he could not; they remained tightly folded in his lap. If he did not sing they would be upon him, but his heart told him that he had no right to sing or to rejoice.

And he watched Elisha, who was a young man in the Lord; who, a priest after the order of Melchizedek, had been given power over death and Hell. The Lord had lifted him up, and turned him around, and set his feet on the shining way. What were the thoughts of Elisha when night came, and he was alone where no eye could see, and no tongue bear witness, save only the trumpetlike tongue of God? Were his thoughts, his bed, his body foul? What were his dreams?

Behind him the door opened and the wintry air rushed in. He turned to see, entering the door, his father, his mother, and his aunt. It was only the presence of his aunt that shocked him, for she had never entered this church before: she seemed to have been summoned to witness a bloody act. It was in all her aspect, quiet with a dreadful quietness, as she moved down the aisle behind his mother and knelt for a moment beside his mother and father to pray. John knew that it was the hand of the Lord that had led her to this place, and his heart grew cold. The Lord was riding on the wind tonight. What might that wind have spoken before the morning came?

PART TWO
The Prayers of the Saints

And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?

Florence’s Prayer

F
LORENCE RAISED HER
voice in the only song she could remember that her mother used to sing:

Gabriel turned to stare at her, in astonished triumph that his sister should at last be humbled. She did not look at him. Her thoughts were all on God. After a moment, the congregation and the piano joined her:

She knew that Gabriel rejoiced, not that her humility might lead her to grace, but only that some private anguish had brought her low: her song revealed that she was suffering, and this her brother was glad to see. This had always been his spirit. Nothing had ever changed it; nothing ever would. For a moment her pride stood up; the resolution that had brought her to this place tonight faltered, and she felt that if Gabriel was the Lord’s anointed, she would rather die and endure Hell for all eternity than bow before His altar. But she strangled her pride, rising to stand with them in the holy space before the altar, and still singing:

Kneeling as she had not knelt for many years, and in this company before the altar, she gained again from the song the meaning it had held for her mother, and gained a new meaning for herself. As a child, the song had made her see a woman, dressed in black, standing in infinite mists alone, waiting for the form of the Son of God to lead her through that white fire. This woman now returned to her, more desolate; it was herself, not knowing where to put her foot; she waited, trembling, for the mists to be parted that she might walk in peace. That long road, her life, which she had followed for sixty groaning years, had led her at last to her mother’s starting-place, the altar of the Lord. For her feet stood on the edge of that river which her mother, rejoicing, had crossed over. And would the Lord now reach out His hand to Florence and heal and save? But, going down before the scarlet cloth at the foot of the golden cross, it came to her that she had forgotten how to pray.

Her mother had taught her that the way to pray was to forget everything and everyone but Jesus; to pour out of the heart, like water from a bucket, all evil thoughts, all thoughts of self, all malice for one’s enemies; to come boldly, and yet more humbly than a little child, before the Giver of all good things. Yet, in Florence’s heart tonight hatred and bitterness weighed like granite, pride refused to abdicate
from the throne it had held so long. Neither love nor humility had led her to the altar, but only fear. And God did not hear the prayers of the fearful, for the hearts of the fearful held no belief. Such prayers could rise no higher than the lips that uttered them.

Around her she heard the saints’ voices, a steady, charged murmur, with now and again the name of
Jesus
rising above, sometimes like the swift rising of a bird into the air of a sunny day, sometimes like the slow rising of the mist from swamp ground. Was this the way to pray? In the church that she had joined when she first came North one knelt before the altar once only, in the beginning, to ask forgiveness of sins; and this accomplished, one was baptized and became a Christian, to kneel no more thereafter. Even if the Lord should lay some great burden on one’s back—as He had done, but never so heavy a burden as this she carried now—one prayed in silence. It was indecent, the practice of common niggers to cry aloud at the foot of the altar, tears streaming for all the world to see. She had never done it, not even as a girl down home in the church they had gone to in those days. Now perhaps it was too late, and the Lord would suffer her to die in the darkness in which she had lived so long.