Three Days Before the Shooting ... (67 page)

Amen! Deacon Wilhite sang out. Now the Scripture next says, To Come….

Oh my Lord, just look how the word leaps! Daddy Hickman said. First the babe, then the preacher. The babe father to the man, the man father to us all. A kind father calling for the babes in the morning of their earthly day. Then in the twinkling of an eye Time slams down and He calls us to come….

… To come, Brother Alonzo!

Ah yes, to come, meaning to
approach
. To come up and be counted; to go along with Him, Lord Jesus. To move through the narrow gate bristling with spears, up the hill of Calvary, to climb onto the unyielding cross on which even lil babies are transformed into men. Yes, to come upon the proving ground of the human condition. Vanity dropped like soiled underwear. Pride stripped off like a pair of duckings that’ve been working in all week in the mud. Feet dragging with the gravity of the moment; legs limp as a pair of worn-out galluses; with eyes dim as a flickering lamp wick! Read to me, Deacon; read to me!

He said, Come unto me, Deacon Wilhite cried.

Come to me—Yes! Meaning to take up His burden. At first the little baby-sized load that with the first steps we take weighs less than a butter-ball; no more than a sugar-tit. Then, Lord help us, it grows heavier with each step we take along life’s way, until in that moment it weighs upon us like the headstone of the world. Meaning to come bringing it! Come hauling it! Come dragging it! Come on, even if you have to crawl. Come with your abuses! And come with no excuses! Amen! Let me have it again, Reveren’ Wilhite….

Come unto Me, the Master said.

Meaning to help the weak and the downhearted. To stand up to the oppressors. To suffer and hang from the cross for standing up for who you are and for what you believe. Meaning to undergo His initiation into the life everlasting. Oh Yes, and to cry … cry…. cry…. eyeeee!

Bliss could hear the word rise and spread to become the great soaring trombone note of Daddy Hickman’s singing voice. It seemed somehow to arise there in the box along with him, shaking him fiercely as it rose to float with throbbing pain up to Daddy Hickman again, who now seemed to stand high above the tent. And trembling now, he tensed himself and rose slowly upright in the controlled way Daddy Hickman had taught him, feeling the terror gripping like quicksand. He could feel the opening of his mouth and the spastic flexing of his diaphragm as the words rushed from his throat to join the resounding voice.

Lord, Lord!

Why…

… Hast Thou…

… Forsaken me?

And now Daddy Hickman was opening up and bearing down,

More man than men and yet in that world-destroying-world-creating moment just a little chile calling his father…. Then pausing before his next cue:

HEAR THE LAMB A-CRYING ON THE TREE!

LORD, LORD, Bliss cried, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?

Amen, Daddy Hickman answered, Amen!

Then his voice came fast, explosive, with gut-toned preacher’s authority, awe-inspiring:

The Father of no man who yet was the Father of all men; the human-son-side of God—Great God A-mighty! Calling out from the agony of the cross!

Ho, open up your downcast eyes and see the beauty of the living Word….

All babe, and yet in that mysterious moment, ALL MAN. Him who had taken up the burden of all the little children crying, LORD….

LORD, Bliss cried.

Crying plaintive as a baby sheep …

… Baaaaaaaa!

The little lamb crying with the tongue of Man…

… Lord…

… Crying to the Father…

… Lord, LORD…

… Calling to his pappy…

Lord, Lord, why hast…

… Amen! Lord, Why…

… Hast Thou…

… Forsaken me….

Aaaaaaaah!

WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME, LORD?

Bliss screamed the words in answer and now he wished to cry, but the sound of Daddy Hickman’s voice told him that this was not the time, that the words were taking Daddy Hickman where they wanted him to go. Now he could hear him beginning to walk up and down the platform behind him, pacing in his great black shoes, his voice rising with his heavy tread, his great chest heaving:

Crying—Amen! Crying, Lord, Lord—Amen! On a cross on a hill, His arms spread out like my grandmammy told me it was the custom to stretch a runaway slave when they gave him the water cure. When they forced water into his mouth until it filled up his bowels and he lay swollen and drowning on the dry land. Drinking water, breathing water, water overflowing his earth-bound lungs. Nailed! NAILED! Riveted to the cross-arm like a coon-skin fixed to the door of the House of God, but with the live coon still inside the furry garment! Still in possession of his body and his mind, with all nine points of the Roman Law a fiery pain to consume the earthly house. Yes, and every point of law a spearhead of injustice.

Look! See with me! His head is lollying! Green gall is drooling from his lips! Drooling, yes! down his chin like pap from his mammy’s breast as it had drooled in those long, sweet, baby days long gone.

AH YES! BUT NO TIT SO TOUGH NOR PAP SO BITTER AS TOUCHED THE LIPS OF THE DYING LAMB!

Oh, no! Oh, Grandmother Death was suckling the son of MAN! Yes, and the son of God was beginning to shine in all His beauty.

There He is, hanging on; hanging on in spite of knowing the way it would have to be. Yes! Because the body of Man does not wish to die! It matters not who’s inside the ribs, the heart, the lungs. Because the body of Man does not sanction death! Suicide is but a sulking in the face of hope! Ah, Man is
tough
. Man is
human!
By definition Man is
proud
. Even when heaven and hell come slamming together like a twelve-pound sledge on a piece of heavy-gauged railroad steel, Man is tough and Man is
mannish—
and Ish means
like
. There
He
was, stretching from hell-pain to benediction; head in heaven and body in hell…. Tell me, who said He was weak? Who said He was frail? Because if He was, then we need a new word for
strength
. We need a new word for
courage!
We need a whole new dictionary!

Ah, but there He was, with the others laughing up at Him, their mouths busted open like rotten melons—laughing! You know how it was, you’ve been up there; you’ve heard that contemptuous sound: “IF YOU BE THE KING OF THE JEWS AND THE SON OF GOD, JUMP DOWN.” Jump down, black bastard, dirty Jew, Jump down!

Scorn burning the wind. Enough halitosis alone to burn up old Moloch!
The many ganged up against the few! … He’s bleeding from his side. Hounds baying the weary stag…. And yet there is the power and the glory locked in the weakness of His human manifestation; bound by His human limitation, His sacrificial humanhood! Ah, yes; for He willed to save Man by dying and dying as
Man
died. And He was a heap of man in that moment, let me tell you. I say, let me tell you, that mister was much
man
in that awful moment. He was Man raised to his most magnificent image, shining like a prism with all the shapes and colors of man, and dazzling all who had the vision to see. Man moved beyond mere pain to tragic joy … There He is, with the spikes in his tender flesh. Nailed to the cross—first with it lying flat on the ground, and then being raised in a slow, flesh-tearing, bone-scraping arc, one hundred and eighty degrees—Up, up, UP! Aaaaaaaaah! Up until He’s upright like the ridge-pole of the House of God.

Lord, Lord, Why?

See Him! Watch Him! Feel Him! His eyes rolling as white as our eyes, looking to His, Our Father, the tendons of his neck roped out, straining like the steel cables of a heavenly curving bridge in a storm. Help me! Help me now! His jaw muscles bursting out like kernels of corn on a hot stove lid. Yes! And His mouth trying to refuse the miserable human questioning of the words….

Lord, Lord…

… Oh yes, Reveren’ Bliss, crying above the laughing ones for whom He left His Father to come down here to save, crying.

… Lord, Lord, Why?

Amen! Crying as no man since, thank you, Jesus, has ever had to cry.

Ah Man, Ah human flesh! This side we all know well, on His weaker, human side we were all up there on the cross, just swarming over Him like ants. Yes, but look at Him with me now. Look at Him freshly, with the eyes of your most understanding heart. There He is now, hanging on in man-flesh, His face twitching and changing like a field of grain struck by a high wind, hanging puzzled, bemused and confused, mystified and teary-eyed—wracked by the realization dawning in the gray matter of His cramped human brain; knowing in the sinews, in the marrow of his human bones, in the living tissue of his most human veins—realizing that Man was born to suffer and to die for other men! There He is, look at Him. Suspended between heaven and hell, hanging already nineteen centuries of time to one split second of His torment and realizing in that second of His anguished cry that life in this world is but a zoom between the warm womb and the lonely tomb. Proving for all time, casting the pattern of history forth for all to see in the undeniable concreteness of blood, bone, and human grace before that which has to be borne by every man…. Proving—proving that in this lonely,

lightning-bug flash of time we call our life on earth we all begin with a slap of a hand across our tender baby bottoms that starts us to crying the puzzled
question with our first drawn breath—Why was I born…. Aaaaaaaah! …

And hardly before we can get it out of our mouths, hardly before we can exhale the first lungful of life’s anguished air … even before we can think to ask, Lord, what’s my true name? Who, Lord, am I?—here comes the bone-crunching slap of a cold iron spade across our puzzled countenance and it’s time to cry, WHY, LORD, WHY WAS I BORN TO DIE?

Yes, why? Reveren’ Hickman, tell us why?

Why, Reveren’ Bliss? Because we’re men, that’s why! The initiation into the lodge is hard! The dues are outrageous, and nobody can refuse to join. Oh, we can wear the uniforms and the feathered hats, the tasseled fez and the red-and-purple caps and capes a while, and we can enjoy the feasting and the marching and strutting fellowship—then Dong, Dong! and we’re caught between two suspensions of our God-given breath: one to begin and the other to end, a whoop of joy and a sigh of sadness, the pinch of pain and the tickle of gladness; learning charity if we’re lucky, faith if we endure, and hope in sheer downright desperation!

And now, thank God, because He passed his test like any mannish man—not like a god, but like a pale, frail, weak man who dared to be his Father’s Son … amen! Oh, we must dare to be, brothers and sisters…. We must Dare,

my little children…. We must dare in our own troubled times to be our Father’s own. Yes, and now we have the comfort and the example to help us through from darkness to lightness, a torchlight along the way. Ah, but in that flash of light in which we flower, we must find Him so that we can find
us
, ourselves. For it is only a quivering moment—then the complicated tongs of life’s old good-bad come clamping down, grabbing us in our tender places, locking like bear’s teeth beneath our short hair—Lord, He taught us how to live, yes! And in the sun-drowning awfulness of that moment, He taught us how to die. There He was on the cross, leading His sheep, showing us how to achieve the heritage of our godliness which HE in that most pitiful human moment—with spikes in His hands and through His feet, with the thorny crown of scorn studding His tender brow, with the cruel points of Roman steel—not Jewish,
Roman
—with those points of Roman steel piercing His side….

Crying, Lord…

… Lord!

LORD! Amen. Crying from the castrated Roman tree unto His Father like an unjustly punished child. And yet, Reveren’ Bliss, Glory to God….

And yet, He was guaranteeing with the final expiration of His human breath our everlasting life….

Bliss could feel the words working in the crowd now, boiling in the heat of the Word and the weather. Women were shouting and far back in the dark he could see someone dressed in white leaping into the air with outflung arms,
going up, then down, over backwards and up and down again, in a swooning motion which made her seem to float for a moment in the air which was being stirred by the agitated motion of the women’s palm-leaf fans.

It was past the time for him to preach Saint Mark, but each time he cried “Lord, Lord,” he couldn’t hear his own voice as they shouted and screamed even louder. He tried to see to the back of the tent, back where the seams in the ribbed white cloth curved down and were tied in a roll; past where the congregation strained forward or sat in rigid fixation, seeing here and there the hard, bright disks of eyeglasses glittering in the hot yellow light of lanterns and flares. The faces were rapt and owl-like, gleaming with perspiration in the heat of Daddy Hickman’s interpretation of the Word.

Then suddenly, right down there in front he could see an old white-headed man beginning to leap in holy exaltation, bounding high into the air and sailing down; then up again higher than his own head, moving like a jumping-jack, with bits of sawdust dropping from the bottom of his white tennis shoes. A brown old man, whose face was a blank mask, set and mysterious, his lips tight, his eyes starry like those of a china doll, soaring without effort through the hot shadows of the tent; sailing as you did in dreams just before you fell out of bed and woke up. A holy jumper, Brother Pegue….