“Because I know how silly the three of you can act.”
Finally, Anna Lee was able to convince her mother to let her go but Ida, Norma’s mother, was adamantly against it. “I will not have you going out there to that thing. There’s no telling what sort of people will come crawling out of the backwoods and start babbling in tongues. . . . Besides, we’re Presbyterians—we don’t believe in that sort of primitive carrying on.” But Norma told her mother that she was spending the night with Patsy Marie and went anyway.
On the second night of the revival Norma got her boyfriend, Macky, to drive them out to the country. They started around six but before they left town Norma made Macky go into the Trolley Car Diner and get them all hamburgers to go. She pointed to the flyer with the map that advertised
TENT REVIVAL AND DINNER ON THE GROUND
. “I’m not eating anything off the ground; if I got sick my mother would know exactly where I’d been.” As they turned off Highway 78 and onto a dirt road they saw crude signs pointing the way that said
THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, ARE YOU SAVED? PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER,
and
GOD TAKES ALL CALLS PERSONALLY—HE HAS NO SECETARY.
Patsy Marie observed, “They misspelled
secretary
.” About forty-five minutes later, when they got close to the spot called Brown’s Pasture, behind the Highway 78 Church of Christ, they could see a large round tan tent with red and white triangle banners hanging from the ropes, way off in the distance. The sides of the road were lined with cars and trucks and tractors already and they had to park about a half mile away. The place was teeming with people, all carrying plates and baskets. When they finally got closer to the tent, they saw long tables and benches set up everywhere, laden with food the families had brought to share. Norma was surprised to see that “dinner on the ground” did not literally mean on the ground but dinner on tables covered with tablecloths made out of newspapers. When the others saw the piles of fried chicken, homemade macaroni and cheese, plates full of fresh corn on the cob and watermelon, they were sorry they had listened to Norma and had only hamburgers to eat. Norma defended herself as they walked, saying, “Well, how was I to know—it didn’t
say
dinner on the table!”
By the time they got inside the big tent, most of the wooden folding chairs were already taken and they had to sit toward the back, which is where Norma wanted to sit anyway. The ground was covered with sawdust and it smelled like the circus, with almost a circus excitement as well. Instead of acting serious like they were in church, children were allowed to run up and down the aisles and make all the noise they wanted. It was a festive atmosphere with a feeling of anticipation. Anticipation of what, the Elmwood Springs girls did not know yet. The place was packed with people they had never seen before: Pentecostal; Church of Christers; hard-shell, foot-washing Primitive Baptists; you name it, all come together for a good time.
The men were in clean overalls and the women all had on the same kind of homemade dresses that Minnie and Betty Raye wore. It was a hot night and the ladies, most with their hair done up in buns at the back of the neck, sat there fanning themselves with cardboard fans, a picture of the Last Supper on them, which the church had provided, and chatted happily with one another. The round stage in the middle of the tent was bare except for a piano and sound system and one artificial fern in a stand-up basket. While they waited for things to start, Anna Lee, Patsy Marie, and Norma sat around punching one another and giggling as Macky pointed out an old lady dipping snuff and spitting it back out in a tin can she had brought with her. Just then a large, big-boned, sweet-looking lady and a small man in overalls walked past. Norma looked up and immediately dropped to the floor and hid under a chair.
Macky looked at her. “What are you doing, Goofy?”
Norma whispered, “It’s my aunt Elner! If she sees me she’ll tell Mother.” Norma, who at the time was wearing dark sunglasses and a scarf, was to spend the entire evening bobbing and weaving behind the people in front of her, terrified that her aunt might somehow turn around and pick her out of a crowd of seven hundred. But Norma’s chance of her aunt Elner seeing her that night was to be the least of her worries.
At exactly 7:00
P.M.
the Highway 78 Church of Christ preacher came out. In a few moments, after a lengthy prayer, he introduced the Oatman Family Gospel Singers and they filed onstage to thunderous applause.
Patsy Marie nudged Anna Lee. “Which one is Betty Raye?”
“The skinny one.”
Patsy Marie noticed that she was also the only one of the Oatmans that did not have thick coal-black hair and commented, “She doesn’t look a thing like the rest of them, does she?”
Norma said under her breath to Macky, “Who would want to?” In a few minutes, after the Oatmans got the evening started with a rousing, foot-stomping, hand-clapping rendition of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion,” they continued on with “Are You Washed in the Blood?,” “Tell Mother I’ll Be There,” “I’ll Meet You by the River,” “I Believe in the Man in the Sky,” and just when they had the audience shouting and rocking in their seats, the visiting preacher and revival leader, the Reverend Stockton Briggle, straight out of Del Rio, Texas, came running down the aisle, jumped up on the stage, and with Bible in hand danced and shouted, “I feel the spirit moving tonight!” He proceeded to put on a show the likes of which the four of them had never seen. Reverend Briggle had been saved by the famous evangelist Billy Sunday and was determined to return the favor. He hopped on one foot, then the other, and warned those in the audience who had not been saved about the eternal fires of hell. He raved on about fighting the devil for souls, yelling, “I’ll fight him with a shovel . . . I’ll fight him with an ax . . . I’ll fight in the morning . . . I’ll fight him in the night!” He got himself so worked up he was red in the face. He was so upset and agitated over the devil that he started to spit every time he shouted and the people in the front row were dodging back and forth. Macky thought this one of the funniest things he had ever seen and suddenly laughed out loud and then tried to pretend he was coughing. Anna Lee and Norma lost control and got the giggles so bad they almost choked. But Reverend Briggle did not let up until several women jumped to their feet and started dancing and shouting in an unknown tongue. Soon the sinners in the crowd began to sweat and squirm in their seats and after about an hour of ranting and getting everybody all worked up and scared to death about going to hell he finally called out for all the unsaved to come forward, confess their sins to the Almighty God, and be saved from eternal damnation. About three hundred people jumped up, some who always got up to get saved over and over, others for the first time, all headed up the aisle toward the altar, amid shouts of “Praise Jesus” and “Hallelujah!” One man down at the end of their row jumped up and did a dance right there like he had just stuck his finger in a light socket.
Norma and Macky and Anna Lee had been so busy watching him they didn’t notice that their friend had suddenly gotten up and started marching down the aisle with the crowd, headed for the altar. When she looked over and saw her Norma screamed, “Oh my God, Macky, there goes Patsy Marie—grab her!” But it was too late; she was already halfway to the front. An hour later, after they had pulled a dazed Patsy Marie out of the tent and were heading home, she tried to explain. “I was just sitting there and before I knew it I was up out of my seat and going down the aisle. It was like someone had picked me up and was putting one foot in front of the other, and I couldn’t stop myself.” She said, “After that I don’t remember a thing, so I must have been saved.”
Anna Lee, who was fascinated and somewhat in awe, asked, “What’s it like to be saved, Patsy Marie? Do you feel any different?”
Patsy Marie thought it over for a moment and then answered sincerely, “I don’t know . . . but my headache’s gone.”
Macky laughed but Norma did not find Patsy Marie’s recent experience with salvation even slightly amusing. “It’s not funny, Macky.” But then she said to Patsy Marie, “If you go crazy and start babbling away in some strange tongue, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
Alarmed at that thought, Anna Lee looked more closely at her friend. “Do you feel like you want to babble in the unknown tongue, Patsy Marie?”
Patsy Marie gave the question serious thought. “No, I don’t think so . . . not yet, anyway.”
Norma rolled her eyes. “Oh, great . . . now we are going to have to watch her like a hawk night and day. This is your fault, Macky.”
Macky said, “Me? What did I do?”
“If you had grabbed her when I told you to, she wouldn’t have gone up there in the first place.”
“Norma, I couldn’t . . . she was already way up the aisle. Why didn’t you go after her? You were the closest.”
“And have Aunt Elner tell my mother she saw me? Do you want me grounded for the rest of my natural life? You know Mother—she would have a fit if she knew Aunt Elner had been to a Church of Christ revival, much less her own daughter.”
The Party
T
HE NEXT AFTERNOON
, on the way over to the Coke party Anna Lee was having for Betty Raye, Norma got Patsy Marie to make a solemn promise that if she felt in the least bit strange or as if she might start speaking in the unknown tongue she was to leave at once. “If we want to be cheerleaders next year, we can’t afford for you to have a relapse and get all religious.” Then, more considerately, she asked, “How is your headache today?”
Poor Patsy Marie, who had been stared at by Norma for the past twenty-four hours, said, “I think it’s back.”
This was good news to Norma. Perhaps Patsy Marie was unsaved.
The party was to be held in the little clubroom over at Cascade Plunge. Anna Lee had warned her friends in advance that Betty Raye’s religion did not allow dancing and so that was out. They all squawked but they showed up anyway. The party was supposed to take place from three to five but the family who drove Betty Raye out to the revival every night came and picked her up at four. It was just as well. They had all been on their best behavior but the minute Betty Raye left, they ran to the jukebox and the jitterbugging began.
When Anna Lee came home her mother was in the kitchen having a meeting with the local chapter of the Red Cross, discussing the upcoming annual drill. Anna Lee was returning some plates she had borrowed. Dorothy, who had been anxious all afternoon, asked, “How did the party go?”
Anna Lee made a face and motioned for her mother to come out on the back porch. Dorothy excused herself and closed the door. Anna Lee whispered, “Oh, Mother, it was just awful. Everybody tried their best to be nice but all she did was stand over in a corner and shake.”
“Oh no.”
“She dropped an entire plate of food all over herself. I felt so sorry for her, I didn’t know what to do. All the boys tried to talk to her but she just doesn’t know how to act. Do you think there’s something wrong with her, that she’s retarded or something?”
“No . . . of course not. She’s probably not used to going to parties, that’s all.” But secretly Dorothy was concerned and wondered.
The next afternoon, after Betty Raye had been picked up, Anna Lee said, “I think she just hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you, honey,” Dorothy said.
“Well, she sure doesn’t like me much. I invited her to come to my room so we could talk and try to get to know each other better but all she did was sit there and act like I was holding her prisoner or something.” Anna Lee was sincerely baffled. “I don’t understand it, Mother, everybody else likes me. . . . I was voted the most popular junior . . . and every time she sees Bobby she turns around and goes the other way.”
Mother Smith laughed and said, “That I can understand.”
“And poor Jimmy,” Anna Lee continued. “The other day, when he came in the kitchen and said hello, she backed all the way into the pantry and hid behind the door until he left.”
“It’s like living with a little mouse in the house, isn’t it?” Mother Smith mused. “I hear her late at night scurrying into the bathroom, washing out her little things; then she scurries back to her room. She tiptoes around almost like she’s apologizing for living, scared to make a sound. I think she would mash herself into the wall and just disappear if she could.”
“I know,” said Dorothy, “it just breaks my heart. But all we can do is keep trying to make her feel at home and be as sweet to her as possible.”
For the rest of the week Mother Smith and Anna Lee tried their best to make conversation the few times they saw her, but without much luck. At the end of her visit, Dorothy and Princess Mary Margaret seemed to be the only ones Betty Raye might have felt somewhat at ease with. She never came out of her room when the radio show was going on. But a few times in the afternoon, if no one else was around, she would quietly slip into the kitchen and sit in the corner, petting the dog and watching Dorothy cook. Dorothy wanted to chat, but did not push her to talk and just let her be. But on Betty Raye’s last morning there, Dorothy felt she just had to say something, and she went into the little sewing room and sat down on the bed.
“Sweetie, come over here and sit and talk to me for a minute, will you?”
Betty Raye sat down. Dorothy took her hand and looked her in the eyes. “I know it’s none of my business but I’m worried about you. You know, you really mustn’t be so timid and afraid around people. We all like you very much but if you won’t talk to us, we don’t know if you like us.”
Betty Raye’s cheeks turned red and she looked down at her lap. Dorothy continued: “I know it’s probably just because you are shy—and believe it or not, when I was your age I felt the same way. But, sweetheart, for your own good you need to understand that you are a perfectly lovely girl and people will always want to be your friend if you let them.” Dorothy patted her hand. “I know you can do it . . . will you promise me to at least try?”