Ruby did hear him. She sat so still that she never even bothered to wipe away the sweat that slid from beneath her turban and snaked down the sides of her face. She didn’t even stand when Brother Mabry gave the invitation to come to the front and seek forgiveness. But when the accordion player stopped and Brother Mabry stood back up out of the tall wooden chair that creaked with his weight, Ruby shot up from the bench. Before Gil, the newspaperman, could stop her from walking up the small wooden steps that led to the stage, she was already standing next to Brother Mabry. He reached out his hand like he might touch her, but she darted to the side. She dashed to the front of the platform and through tears screamed, “I’m a sinner!”
Mrs. Pomeroy nudged the woman next to her, and they raised their eyebrows at the same time. “What did I tell you?”
“I’ve sinned. I’ve sinned.”
When Brother Mabry stepped toward her, she ran to the other side of the platform and looked out into the audience. Her arm was outstretched, pleading with the congregation. She yelled in a voice so mighty that others would later speculate if she was not demon possessed. “I’m with child. I’m carrying Clive Gillespie’s baby child.”
At first no one said a word, not even Brother Mabry. Murmuring from the front of the tent rolled all the way back to where Clive stood. The benches groaned and popped as people turned around to look at his face, which was growing as red as Brother Mabry’s coat. Clive licked his lips and thumped his pencil on his notepad. Rising up on his toes, he chuckled and shook his head.
Before Ruby could be pulled off the stage by an officer, she threw her head back and screamed, “He paid me. He paid me to fornicate with him.”
Mrs. Pomeroy fanned and leaned closer until the folds of her hips hung over the side of the bench. Myer Simpson swayed as if she might faint. Her Bible tumbled out of her lap and onto the sawdust-covered ground. Then she jumped up and squinted, wanting to see Clive’s reaction.
“She’s gone and completely lost her mind,” Clive kept repeating about the girl they had all seen lead imaginary parades.
As the officer gripped her forearm and pulled her down the aisle to the back of the tent, he could not stop her from jumping up in the air and kicking Clive sideways. The jolt caused the officer to lose control, and before anyone could move from the last pew to protect Clive, Ruby had knocked him to the ground. She pounded her fists and swung her head, saying words that caused mothers to cover the ears of their children.
Two men jumped over the bench and helped the officer pull Ruby up and drag her out. “My baby ain’t a bastard,” she screamed until her voice sounded nothing more than a whimper.
Gil, the newspaperman, hovered over Clive and offered his hand. Wiping the blood from his lip, Clive declined. Instead, he balanced himself on his free hand and rose back up. Even though he acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, there was no denying that his hair had broken free of the wax and flopped over his eyebrows.
As the meeting broke up, people walked out carrying their Bibles and looking at each other with wild-eyed shock.
“They tell me she’s one of them fire starters,” the woman who sat next to Mrs. Pomeroy reported to the hardware store owner. “She could’ve killed everybody in here. There’s no telling.”
A girl wearing a flowered dress made from a feed sack broke away from her mother, who was busy speculating about the revelation with her neighbor by the center tent pole. The girl squatted down and scooped up the cherry-sequined turban that had landed underneath the bench. She brushed off the dirt and sawdust before putting it on her head. Running out of the tent, the girl squealed all the way to the gazebo where the other children played hide-and-seek behind ancient oak trees that had weathered many storms.
After Clive publicly denied all charges and was assured that Sheriff Bissell had obtained a judge’s order that Ruby be locked up for her own protection, Ruby’s father, Earl, sat on the broken step of his house. He intermittently sipped whiskey and looked down at the faded, crumpled picture of his wife that he kept in the back of his pants pocket. Having Ruby taken away to the institution in Chattahoochee was the remaining vow to his wife that he had been unable to keep. He might have been a drunk or a bum in the eyes of the good people of Dead Lakes, but he was a survivor. Growing up the middle child of a brood of eleven in a house built out of mud and pine logs, he had learned early on that if he was going to have enough food to satisfy the hunger pains, then he was going to have to provide the kill. He shot and dressed his first deer at age eleven. As a man, whiskey might have clouded his vision, but his sight was still good enough to hunt when he needed to.
Looking at the stained mattress on the front porch, Earl pictured Clive Gillespie rolling around on it with his daughter. He tossed his head back and drained the last remaining drop from the bottle. Pulling his arm back, he threw the bottle at the mangled and misaligned cinder blocks stacked in his yard. “You might be ignorant, but you’re naturally born hardheaded. When you set your mind to it, you can get water from a rock if need be,” his mama had said when he brought the first deer he killed home by dragging it through the swamp by the hind legs. Somewhere between determination and disappointment, that boy had died. He thought of Ruby thrashing in a cell wearing a straitjacket and wiped his mouth with his stained shirtsleeve. Most likely she’d be knocked out and given an abortion to hide the evidence. The images that flashed in his mind resurrected the boy inside him. It wasn’t a deer or a trout line that he was after this time. It was Clive Gillespie.
Dead Lakes might have been a quaint hamlet tucked in the corner of Franklin County, but there was nothing simple about the inside of the church where Reverend Simpson ministered. A cross made from glazed cypress hung on the wall. The altar glistened in the light of candles that had been arranged on candelabras, a gift left behind to immortalize a deceased benefactor.
As the townspeople filled the church until wooden folding chairs had to be placed at the ends of the pews, everyone wondered where Reverend Simpson had taken off to in his automobile. They clipped the sweet smell of cypress with their fans and patted sweat from their lips with their handkerchiefs.
“He’s delayed,” Myer Simpson said, sitting in the front row in the lilac-colored dress she had sewn special for the occasion. “He went out to the old salt mine to question the nigras once more. To gather all the facts for the discussion, you know.” She tried to smile and fan at the same time. The fact of the matter was that Reverend Simpson had left long before supper. His plate of vegetables and cornbread soaked by the turnip juice that swam on the plate was long past room temperature. Before dressing, Myer had tossed the food out the back door for the stray dogs that wandered through town at night.
The beekeeper and the head elder walked back and forth at the foot of the altar. The beekeeper kept pulling his pocket watch. A murmur, just as strong as the one heard at Brother Mabry’s revival, began to rise up to the wood ceiling. The beekeeper motioned for the organist. “Play ‘How Great Thou Art’ or something.” The organist, who wore a hat with a wilted daisy tucked in the side, ignored the request.
The fervor only faded when Ella and Narsissa walked through the doors. Heads craned and a buzz rose when they sat down on two folding chairs at the back of the church. Neva smiled and squeezed Ella’s hand. Crickets sang out beyond the open windows, and Myer Simpson fanned faster.
“Well, if there’s one good thing to come out of all this, it’s the fact that Ella Wallace has been forced back to church,” Myer said to the organist.
“And to think she brought the Indian with her too. I wonder if that thing has ever even been to church,” the organist whispered.
“We’ve had a delay,” the beekeeper yelled, and the crowd quieted. “Myer assures me it’s a momentary delay.” The beekeeper thumped the face of his pocket watch.
Myer fanned and tucked her head down until her chin brushed the collar of her new dress. “Slight delay.”
“Perhaps we could all sing a hymn. . . .” The beekeeper pointed to the organist again.
“I don’t think that’s appropriate,” the organist said first to Myer and then to the beekeeper. “This isn’t a church service, you know.”
The beekeeper’s face flushed, and he stammered. The roar from a car engine outside momentarily drowned out the chirp of the crickets.
Reverend Simpson came through the side door of the church. His white beard stood out at full attention as if electricity had struck him. He left the door partially open. Bonaparte was standing just outside with his hands on his daughter’s shoulders.
The murmur amid the crowd returned, and the sweat stains underneath the arms of Myer Simpson grew wider.
Reverend Simpson stood next to the beekeeper and motioned with his hands for the crowd to hold their tongues. When that didn’t work, he brushed against the beekeeper until the man moved to the side. Then he proceeded to have his say. “Ladies and gentlemen. Now I know there is excitement . . . dare I say intrigue involved in our meeting tonight. Some of you have come for pure curiosity, others out of genuine concern.”
“Concern for the children,” the blacksmith with the puffy black beard yelled out from the middle section of the church.
“Amen,” the beekeeper said.
Reverend Simpson once again pushed his hands down in the air, trying to guide the crowd to silence. “Let’s not forget that we are in the house of the Lord.”
A toddler screamed, and a woman got up from her pew, slipping past the crowd and into the night with the fair-haired child in her arms.
Reverend Simpson’s voice grew louder over the feedback from the crowd. “I’ve been a minister for going on twenty-seven years,” he said. “I’ve never seen emotions run as high as what I’ve witnessed the past month.” Reverend Simpson walked up the steps to the pulpit, where a white flag stitched with a gold sacrament cup hung. He took his place below the flag with a confidence few of those who belonged to the church had seen before.
“In these twenty-seven years, I have made mistakes and learned lessons. And the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that faith based on fear and emotions is usually a faith that won’t hold. Emotions ebb and change with the direction of the sun . . . dare I say, with the voice of popular opinion. But true faith is another matter entirely. I don’t have the answers. I don’t make such claims.”
The crowd buzzed again, but Reverend Simpson’s voice grew stronger.
“After all, faith is made up of things hoped for and things not seen. I venture to say that if any man claims to understand all matters of faith, well then he probably never understood faith at all.”
“Now hold on,” the beekeeper said and rose from his seat.
“I’ve been troubled,” Reverend Simpson said with a rising voice. “Yes, even grieved at how our community has turned propaganda into proof. And yes, I am grieved even more to stand before you and say that I too have been strung along.”
“Strung along?” the blacksmith yelled.
“Jesus told His disciples that indeed they would be able to do miraculous works in His name. Did He not? And yet, I wonder, if we were in another time and place, would we even be here tonight? Indeed, if we were in the days directly proceeding Jesus, maybe not. Maybe healings were commonplace.” Reverend Simpson shrugged his shoulders and opened his palms. “But now, if we were in the days of the settlers of this country . . .” Reverend Simpson paused, looked down at his wife, and then moved to the opposite end of the altar. “You see, our daughter was prone to convulsions when she was a girl. The fact of the matter was her condition made her a spectacle. She’d fall out in fits at the market or out in the street. Our beautiful child became a spectacle beyond her own control.”
Myer Simpson’s face grew flush with anger. She fanned faster until the thin handle of the fan split in two. Not even the organist could comfort her.
“The doctor treated her with tonic and said she’d grow out of it. Praise be, she did. But I wonder now . . . especially now. What if we would have been in the age of witch trials and the like? What would have been said about the circumstances that rendered my daughter out of control and left my wife and me with questions and doubt? Would she be the subject of a meeting like the one tonight? Would she have been burned at the stake for simply being different?”
The beekeeper sat down, and Myer Simpson wept into a lace handkerchief meant for show, not tears.
“Do I understand miracles? Have I ever seen one? I don’t know. I certainly saw my prayers answered with my daughter. But I do have faith enough to believe that all things are possible, with or without my understanding. And I understand enough to know that accusations of evil, without substance, are repugnant. And I’ve sinned.”
Stunned silence fell over the crowd and then a sharp intake of air from Myer. She cocked her head to the side and dug her fingernails into the seat of the pew.
“I have taken part in such discourse . . . gossip, to be exact. I ask your forgiveness as well as God’s.”
“What in the world?” the organist whispered when the reverend called Bonaparte and his daughter into the church with the crook of his finger.
The girl took a step into the sanctuary before stopping and looking up at her father. Bonaparte waited until Reverend Simpson smiled before he ushered the child into a domain that up until this night had been forbidden for the people down at the old salt mine. Shocked gasps within the congregation transitioned into agitated grumbling.
“This is not appropriate,” the organist said, sliding to the edge of the pew.
“You’ve gone too far with it now, preacher,” the beekeeper said.
“I want them out of here.” Mr. Olsen, the head of the school board, yelled. The beige suit vest that he wore bowed out when he stood up.
“It’s your free will to leave if you wish.” Reverend Simpson raised the volume of his voice until he drowned out the disapproving chants. The minister placed his hands on the same place on the girl’s shoulders where Bonaparte’s hands had rested.
“The Wallace boy has given us his account,” Reverend Simpson said. “He was drowning in his own fluids practically, and this man—this Lanier Stillis, if you haven’t taken the time to meet him—this man healed him. The boy didn’t hear any words. He just knew he had been healed. But this young lady . . .” Reverend Simpson patted her shoulders. “This young lady heard.”
“Heard what?” Mr. Olsen called out.
“She heard words of supplication.”
The little girl pulled at the sleeves of her best dress, a thin, faded pink shift. When Reverend Simpson patted her shoulders a second time, she turned and sought confirmation from her father. Bonaparte nodded assurances, and Reverend Simpson called the beekeeper up to the altar. “In case there should be need for a witness,” he explained.
“Tell us. Don’t be bashful.” Reverend Simpson grunted and knelt down. His bended knee brushed against the hem of the girl’s best dress. “Tell us what the man said when he bowed over you after you’d been burned.”
The woman returned back inside with the towheaded child in her arms. She settled in the back of the church next to a man wearing a lopsided red bow tie. A cough rang out, and people moved to the edge of the benches, trying to at least read the girl’s lips that at first whispered.
She pulled at her sleeves and rocked back and forth on her heels. “He says something about his Father.” Her sleeves were pulled halfway down over her hands.
The old man who had stood on the box out in front of Ella’s home held up the crudely painted sign with the word
Antichrist
. “What did I tell you? He’s a-saying he’s Jesus.” He had his say three times before the blacksmith and church elder grabbed the man by the elbow and escorted him outside.
“Speak up, girl,” a man cupping his ear shouted, and the little girl jumped.
Reverend Simpson rubbed the girl’s shoulders and looked right into her eyes. “One more time. Strong and courageous.”
“In the name . . . ,” the girl said. Her hands were now completely hidden under the dress sleeves. “He says in the name of the Father,” she said with the conviction of a grown woman. “In the name of the Son and Holy Ghost.”
The congregation was at first reverent, as if the girl had said a prayer. Then Mr. Olsen stood up. The crumpled end of his white shirt snaked out from the waist of his pants.
“You mean to tell us that’s the best you can do,” Mr. Olsen said. “Drag some nigra child up here to make a case for that man.”
“That’s right,” Reverend Simpson said. “Just a child. She has the faith of a child. The same sort of faith we’re called to have.”
The reverend held up his black, leather-bound Bible and then laid it open across the top of the pulpit. “If you’re ever going to listen to me, listen now.” He flipped through the pages and pointed twice at the words before him and read. “‘And heal the sick that are therein, and say unto them, The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.’” He held the opened Bible up as proof. “The words of Lord Jesus Christ.”
Narsissa brushed her finger across Ella’s hands that were clasped together in prayerlike fashion.
Reverend Simpson unfurled a paper from the inside of his jacket pocket. “I don’t claim to know the ways of the mountain people. Never had the pleasure of visiting the mountains. It’s a way of life that I venture to say is foreign to us. As I’m certain our ways are equally foreign to them. After all . . . who would eat mullet and call the trash fish delicious.”
A few laughs rolled out from the audience, and Bonaparte’s shoulders relaxed a bit.
“This man, this Mr. Stillis, he holds true to the traditions of his people,” Reverend Simpson said. “Traditions that I don’t believe I’ll ever completely understand. But let it be said that I don’t understand the power of the living God, either. The God who says His ways are not our ways.”