At the edge of a ridge, he looked down on a field covered with bluebonnets and sunflowers, and while he let the gelding graze in the meadow where the helicopter had roared in, filling the sky with its dark terror, Caney watched a red-tail hawk gliding on a current of air.
In the remnant of the orchard near Ted Kyle’s now collapsed old home place, he picked a green apple smaller than a golf ball and almost as hard, but bit into it anyway, the sourness sweet with the memory of others he’d tasted in another time.
He rode to the lake and watched a bass break water in a cove where he and Dewey O’Keefe had fished on Sundays, sharing a breakfast of Vienna sausage and hard biscuits, taking turns bailing water from a leaking johnboat.
He saw a black snake sunning on a slab of granite, felt the rough bark of a bois d’arc and smelled earth fresh turned by a tractor in a field where he’d shot at his first deer and missed, perhaps inten-tionally.
He watched scissor-tailed flycatchers rise from a black gum tree, and from a far hill, he heard the bellowing of coon hounds, reminding him of how grown-up he’d felt at nine, crouched around a predawn campfire with Soldier and Quinton, sharing strong black coffee and lies as they listened to their blueticks bay.
He watched a crawdad back into its mud tunnel beside a narrow creek, then smiled at the memory of himself and Carl Phelps cutting school to catch crawdads with bacon tied to the end of a string.
By the time the sun had centered itself in the sky, Caney’s eyes were bloodshot from its brightness, his arms burned from its heat.
A dull pain spread between his shoulder blades while a muscle spasm gripped his lower back. A bee sting reddened and swelled on his elbow, and his fingers, unused to the grip of a saddle horn, had stiffened, yet he was filled with the boyness of his life . . . whole and free, alive again.
A
S REVEREND THOMAS took the pulpit, the congregation of the AME Church steeled themselves for bad news.
They knew it was coming. Not because of the solemn expression that creased the Reverend’s face with deep furrows. They were used to that look, figured it came with the burden of trying to deliver them to the Kingdom of Heaven. No, today it was not the preacher’s face that gave him away. It was his feet.
On those mornings his toes weren’t tapping out the rhythm of the spirituals the choir sang to open up the service, they knew something unfortunate, perhaps even tragic, was about to be revealed to them. And today, his spit-polished black Florsheims had remained rooted to the floor, even when the choir sang “Praying My Way to the Promised Land,” his favorite, the song that always caused his feet to dance.
Now, fearing to hear the worst—that one of their number had passed over, they looked anxiously around them to see who was missing.
“Brothers and sisters . . .”
At the sound of his rich, deep voice, they grew silent with the dread of the news he was about to give them.
“The sermon I had prepared for you today was inspired by the beautification of our house of worship. For each time we come together, we marvel at yet more evidence of the wondrous skill of our benefactor, who continues to remain anonymous.
“Why, in just this past week alone, my study has received a fresh coat of paint, the trash stacked behind the shed has been removed and the supplies and materials in the basement have been reorganized and neatly stacked against the walls.
“My Scripture for today’s sermon was to have come from Second Corinthians. ‘Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.’ ”
Ordinarily, the reading of Scripture would be met with a chorus of amens, but now the congregation was stilled by foreboding.
“But you will not hear that sermon prepared for you this morning. I’ll save that for another time. A time when my heart is less troubled than it is today.”
“Here it comes,” Sister Hannah whispered to Galilee, who was already rigid with premonition.
“While I was in the basement this morning, I made a shocking discovery.”
Reverend Thomas waited until the agitated whispering ceased before he went on.
“My friends, our holy house has been invaded by an intruder.”
A collective groan, shy of only one voice, rumbled through the sanctuary.
“As Christians,” the Reverend continued, “we strive to follow God’s commandments, including that which comes to us from Ex-odus, chapter twenty, verse four.
“ ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.’ ”
“Amen” rose in a subdued quartet of voices as Reverend Thomas reached beneath the podium and took out an object covered by a brown towel.
“But as we know, there are those who do not heed the commandments of the Lord.”
Then, with a dramatic flourish, the preacher pulled the towel away to expose a stone Buddha, the sight of which charged the congregation with alarm.
Sister Cordelia, still traumatized by the recent vandalism of her house, recoiled in fear at the memory of a rock hurled through her kitchen window by a nine-year-old neighbor boy. Brother Junior, his emotions raw after visiting his wife in the nursing home earlier that morning, began to weep. Brother Samuel, who had suffered two heart attacks, slipped a nitroglycerin pill beneath his tongue. And Sister Hannah, always at the edge of hysteria, shouted, “Lord, help us,” which so startled her husband that he jumped and cracked his shin on the pew in front of him.
“I ask you now, as servants of our Father in Heaven, if any one of you can shed some light on what this unholy idol is doing in God’s house?”
The congregation fell silent again as, leaning forward and back, they examined the faces of their friends and neighbors. Then they turned, as if in orchestrated movement, and watched, incredu-lously, as Galilee Jackson struggled to her feet.
“Oh, Mr. Boo, my legs were shaking so bad I didn’t think they’d hold me up. Just the way I felt when I was a girl in school and had to stand to recite my lessons. My insides gone to jelly, mouth drying up, hands all quivery.
“I was getting up real slow, partly because these worthless old bones was thinking about going on strike, and partly to figure out what I was gonna say if I could get my mouth to work. Then out of my blue memory comes a skinny, ashy-legged ten-year-old girl jabbering in my bad ear, reminding me of the day I was called on to recite a poem by Mr. Countee Cullen.
“Now it was a long poem, but I had it memorized. Why, I’d said it for my mama at home near a hundred times and never missed a word. But that day at school, standing there in front of my classmates and my teacher, it was a different thing.
“I guess I was over halfway through that poem, word after word just tumbling out when all of a sudden, my mouth stopped working. Stopped just like that.”
Galilee snapped her fingers to show Bui the suddenness with which muteness could strike.
“I could hear the words in my head, but I couldn’t say them for the life of me.
“Then, when some of the boys started to snicker and point at me, the awfulest thing happened. I started to cry, which only made them laugh harder, the whole class by then, even the girls. And then, I wet myself. Wet myself standing right there by my desk where every student in that room and my teacher, too, could see the puddle forming around my feet.”
Galilee shifted in her chair, discomforted by the image of her ten-year-old self, which now, over a half century later, still caused her pain.
“Well,” she said, getting back to her story, “my mind played back over that embarrassment as I got to my feet in church, wondering if my mouth would fail me again.
“So you know what I did, Mr. Boo?”
Bui shook his head.
“I prayed. I prayed a silent prayer, asked God to give me the words to tell them about you, tell them about your Buddha and how you come to be living and working in the church.
“And glory to the Lord, my prayer was answered. I told it all without ever stopping, not even once. Just told the whole thing straight out.
“But when I thought I’d said all I had to say and was about to sit down, Mr. Countee Cullen’s poem flashed into my head, and this time the words didn’t get stuck there. No, sirree!
“Without even knowing I was going to say ’em out loud, the words just came sliding out, my voice as soft as churned butter, and my mouth working fine. Real fine.”
Galilee leaned forward in her chair, then closed her eyes as she began her recitation.
Lord, I fashion dark gods, too
Daring even to give You
Dark despairing features where
Crowned with dark rebellious hair,
Patience wavers just so much as
Mortal grief compels, while touches
Quick and hot, of anger, rise
To smitten cheek and weary eyes.
Lord, forgive me if my need
Sometimes shapes a human creed.
*
When Galilee opened her eyes, they were brimmed with tears.
“Well, Mr. Boo, when I finished, they were so quiet, froze in their seats like statues, and the preacher, he looked like a statue, too.
“Then, after what seemed an awful long time of silence, Reverend Thomas bowed his head and we bowed ours as he asked God what he should do, but before the words was hardly out his mouth, a breeze kicked up and set that chandelier to swinging. And all those little glass crystals you’d polished sent tiny beams of light dancing all over us, and as they went spinning, they made sweet tinkling sounds like music, which was surely a joyful noise unto the Lord.
“Well, the preacher didn’t hesitate after that. He just wrapped that towel around your Buddha
real
careful and said he was gonna put your stone right back where he found it, and then he led us in prayer again.
“And you know what he asked for, Mr. Boo?”
“No.”
“He asked God to keep you folded safely in his arms.”
B
Y THE DAY of Brenda’s concert, MollyO was already worn out. But she couldn’t let up. Not now. Not after she’d worked so hard to make it happen.
She’d started her promotion nearly a week ago when she hand-lettered two dozen index cards which she slipped into the sleeves of all the menus.
SEQUOYAH’S OWN BRENDA O’KEEFE
NASHVILLE RECORDING STAR WILL APPEAR LIVE
AT THE HONK AND HOLLER OPENING SOON THIS
FRIDAY, APRIL 4TH, AT EIGHT O’CLOCK P.M.
ADMISSION IS FREE! AND SO IS THE COFFEE!
Molly O figured she might be stretching the truth just a bit in using the term “recording star,” but she had, after all, given Brenda two hundred dollars for studio time to put one of her songs on a cassette. And though only one radio station in Nashville had aired the tape a couple of times, that seemed enough to justify star status, at least to the folks at the Honk.
She’d had to be creative to come up with something for the newspaper since Brenda had thrown such a fit about it. Finally, she’d written a small notice for the classified section, just thirty words which had ended up sandwiched between an ad for the sale of three pygmy goats and another for six dozen Vidalia onion sets.
Molly O felt pretty sure Brenda wouldn’t see it as she appeared to have no interest in raising goats or onions.
For the posters, Molly O dug out of her scrapbook a photo of Brenda singing at the Kiwanis pancake supper just before she’d dropped out of school and gone off to Nashville. Terry Stillman at the photography studio downtown had blown the photo up and printed eight-by-ten glossies which Molly O taped to large pieces of poster board. She’d put one in Bilbo Porter’s Grease-and-Go, one at Hook’s bait shop, one at the Goodwill and another in Wilma Driver’s Century 21 office.
Then Molly O spent most of one day on the phone, calling to extend personal invitations to Mrs. Miles, Brenda’s kindergarten teacher, who’d cast her as the Singing Heart in a Valentine’s Day play; Julia Campy, Brenda’s first piano teacher; Mr. Dunn, director of the junior high band in which Brenda had played cymbals and bass drum; Dutch Swain who owned Gold-N-Guns where Brenda had pawned her great-grandmother’s antique clock so she could buy a Gibson guitar, which, according to Dutch, had belonged to Tanya Tucker; Leroy Jeleski, owner of a liquor store and tattoo par-lor, who’d called Molly O when Brenda, at thirteen, had demanded he tattoo the devil’s face on her butt; and Carl Phelps, the sheriff, who’d kept Brenda out of jail after he’d found her smoking pot behind the high school with a boy from Poteau.
When Molly O completed her last call, Wanda Sue, who’d been at the counter drinking coffee most of the day, said it sounded to her like the Rolling Stones were coming to the Honk. But Molly O
didn’t care what Wanda Sue said. She was only trying to make sure Brenda had an audience.
The next day she drove to Ft. Smith and spent three hours shopping. Her feet were killing her by the time she started back to Sequoyah, but the seat beside her was heaped with packages for Brenda: a white silk blouse with soft ruffles at the sleeves, a light blue denim skirt and vest trimmed with fringe, navy blue boots with silver tips on the toes and earrings shaped like tiny guitars.
When she got home, Brenda took one look at the new outfit and said she wouldn’t wear it even
if
she did show up. Molly O tried to pretend she didn’t take the threat seriously, but secretly she was afraid that Brenda might really back out.
But when Hamp came by that evening and he and Brenda re-sumed their rehearsal, Molly O told herself that everything was going to be all right. Most likely.
With time running out, she turned her attention to the Honk and, with the help of Bui, Caney and Vena, gave it, as nearly as they could manage, the look of a nightclub.
While Bui put together an elevated platform which would serve as a stage, Caney worked out a way to rig up a spotlight.
Molly O and Vena covered all the tables with red tablecloths borrowed from the community center and rearranged the furniture to make room for some folding chairs Life brought from the pool hall.