Stories (2011) (36 page)

Course, even though he had this ability to attract the
women, he had never put it to bad use. That wouldn't be God's way. Some preachers,
men of God or not, would have taken advantage of such a gift, but not him. That
wouldn't be right.

It did make him wonder about Louise though. Since the Lord
had seen fit to give him this gift, why in the world had he ended up with her?
What was God's master plan there? She was a right nice Christian woman on the
inside, but the outside looked like a four car pileup. She could use some work.

He couldn't remember what it was that had attracted him to
her in the first place. He had even gone so far as to look at old pictures of
them together to see if she had gotten ugly slowly. But no, she'd always been
that way. He finally had to blame his choice on being a drinking man in them
days and a sinner. But now, having lost his liquor store business, and having
sobered to God's will and gotten a little money (though that was dwindling), he
could see her for what she was.

Fat and ugly.

There, he'd thought it clearly. But he did like her. He knew
that. There was something so wonderfully Christian about her. She could recite
from heart dozens of Bible verses, and he'd heard her give good argument
against them that thought white man came from monkey, and a better argument
that the nigger did. But he wished God had packaged her a little better. Like
in the body of his next-door neighbor's wife for instance. Now there was a
Godly piece of work.

It seemed to him, a man like himself, destined for great
things in God's arena, ought to at least have a wife who could turn heads
toward her instead of away from her. A woman like that could help a man go far.

There wasn't any denying that Louise had been a big help.
When he married her she had all that insurance money, most of which they'd used
to buy their place and build a church on it. But the settlement was almost run
through now, and thinking on it, he couldn't help but think Louise had gotten
cheated.

Seemed to him that if your first husband got kicked to death
by a wild lunatic that the nut house let out that very afternoon calling him
cured, they ought to have to fork up enough money to take care of the man's
widow for the rest of her life. And anyone she might remarry, especially if
that person had some medical problems, like a trick back, and couldn't get
regular work anymore.

Still, they had managed what she had well; had gotten some
real mileage out of the four hundred thousand. There was the land and the house
and the church and the four hundred red-jacketed, leatherette Bibles that read
in gold, gilt letters on the front: THE MASTER'S OWN BAPTIST MINISTRIES INC.,
SONNY GUY OFFICIATING. And there were some little odds and ends here and there
he couldn't quite recall. But he felt certain not a penny had been wasted.
Well, maybe those seven thousand bumper stickers they bought that said GO JESUS
on them was a mistake. They should have made certain that the people who made
them were going to put glue on the backs so they'd stick to something. Most
folks just wouldn't go to the trouble to tape them on the bumpers and back
glasses of their automobiles, and therefore weren't willing to put out
four-fifty per sticker.

But that was all right. Mistakes were to be expected in a
big enterprise. Even if it was for God, The Holy Ghost, and The Lord Jesus
Crucified.

Yet things weren't going right, least not until he started
visiting the elephant. Now he had him some guidance and there was this feeling
he had that told him it was all going to pay off. That through this creature of
the Lord he was about to learn God's grandiose plan for his future. And when he
did learn it, he was going to start seeing those offering plates (a bunch of
used hubcaps bought cheap from the wrecking yard) fill up with some serious
jack.

Candy came back with the electric heater, extension cord and
tarp. He had a paper bag in one back pocket, his harmonica in the other. He
looked toward the entrance, just in case Butch should decide for the first time
in his life to come back early.

But no Butch.

Candy smiled and opened the stall's gate.

"Here we go, Mr. Sonny, you ready to get right with God
and the elephant?"

Sonny took hold of the tarp and pulled it over his head and
Candy came in and found places to attach all four corners to the fence near the
ground and draped it over the old elephant who squeaked its skin and turned its
head ever so slightly and rolled its goo-filled eyes.

"Now you just keep you seat, Mr. Bull Elephant,"
Candy said, "and we all gonna be happy and ain't none of us gonna get
trampled."

Candy stooped back past Sonny on his stool and crawled out
from under the tarp and let it fall down Sonny's back to the ground. He got the
electric heater and pushed it under the tarp next to Sonny's stool, then he
took the extension cord and went around and plugged it into one of the barn's
deadly-looking wall sockets. He went back to the tarp and lifted it up and said
to Sonny, "You can turn it on now, Mr. Sonny. It's all set up."

Sonny sighed and turned the heater on. The grill work went
pink, then red, and the fan in the machine began to whirl, blowing the heat at
him.

Candy, who still had his face under the tarp, said.
"You got to lean over it now to get the full effects, Mr. Sonny. Get that
heat on you good. Get just as hot as a nigger field hand."

"I know," Sonny said. "I remember how to do
it."

"I knows you do, Mr. Sonny. You great for remembering,
like an elephant. It heating up in there good?"

"Yeah."

"Real hot?"

"Yeah."

"That's good. Make you wonder how anyone wouldn't want
to do good and stay out of hell, don't it, Mr. Sonny? I mean it's hotter under
here than when I used to work out in that hot sun for folks like you, and I bet
when I drop this here tarp it just gonna get hotter, and then that heat and
that stink gonna build up in there and things gonna get right for you . . .
here's you paper bag."

Candy took the bag out of his back pocket and gave it to
Sonny. "Remember now," Candy said, "when you get good and full
of that shit-smell and that heat, you put this bag over you face and you start
blowing like you trying to push a grapefruit through a straw. That gonna get
you right for the ole elephant spirit to get inside you and do some talking at
you cause it's gonna be hot as Africa and you gonna be out of breath just like
niggers dancing to drums, and that's how it's got to be."

"Ain't I done this enough to know, Candy?"

"Yes suh, you have. Just like to earns my five dollars
and see a good man get right with God."

Candy's head disappeared from beneath the tarp and when the
tarp hit the ground it went dark in there except for the little red lines of
the heater grate, and for a moment all Sonny could see was the lumpy shape of
the elephant and the smaller lumps of his own knees. He could hear the
elephant's labored breathing and his own labored breathing. Outside, Candy
began to play nigger music on the harmonica. It filtered into the hot tent and
the notes were fire ants crawling over his skin and under his overalls. The
sweat rolled down him like goat berries.

After a moment, Candy began to punctuate the harmonica notes
with singing. "Sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies. Hot in here,
worse than outside, and I'm sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies." A
few notes on the harmonica. "Yes suh, gonna be bad when the pachyderm's
dead, ain't gonna have five dollars to buy Coalie's bed." More notes.
"Come on brother can you feel the heat. I'm calling to you Jesus, cross my
street."

Sonny put the bag over his face and began to blow viciously.
He was blowing so hard he thought he would knock the bottom out of the bag, but
that didn't happen. He grew dizzy, very dizzy, felt stranger than the times before.
The harmonica notes and singing were far away and he felt like a huge hunk of
ice cream melting on a hot stone. Then he didn't feel the heat anymore. He was
flying. Below him the ribs of the heater were little rivers of molten lava and
he was falling toward them from a great height. Then the rivers were gone.
There was only darkness and the smell of elephant shit, and finally that went
away and he sat on his stool on a sunny landscape covered in tall grass. But he
and his stool were taller than the grass, tall as an elephant itself. He could
see scrubby trees in the distance and mountains and to the left of him was a
blue-green line of jungle from which came the constant and numerous sounds of
animals. Birds soared overhead in a sky bluer than a jay's feathers. The air
was as fresh as a baby's first breath.

There was a dot in the direction of the mountains and the
dot grew and became silver-grey and there was a wink of white on either side of
it. The dot became an elephant and the closer it came the more magnificent it
looked, its skin tight and grey and its tusks huge and long and
porcelain-white. A fire sprang up before the elephant and the grass blazed in a
long, hot line from the beast to the stool where Sonny sat. The elephant didn't
slow. It kept coming. The fire didn't bother it. The blaze wrapped around its
massive legs and licked at its belly like a lover's tongue. Then the elephant
stood before him and they were eye to eye; the tusks extended over Sonny's
shoulders. The trunk reached out and touched his cheek; it was as soft as a
woman's lips.

The smell of elephant shit filled the air and the light went
dark and another smell intruded, the smell of burning flesh. Sonny felt pain.
He let out a whoop. He had fallen off the stool on top of the heater and the
heater had burned his chest above the bib of his overalls.

There was light again. Candy had ripped off the tarp and was
pulling him up and sitting him on the stool and righting the electric heater.
"Now there, Mr. Sonny, you ain't on fire no more. You get home you get you
some shaving cream and put on them burns, that'll make you feel right smart
again. Did you have a good trip?"

"Africa again, Candy," Sonny said, the hot day air
feeling cool to him after the rancid heat beneath the tarp. "And this time
I saw the whole thing. It was all clearer than before and the elephant came all
the way up to me."

"Say he did?" Candy said, looking toward the barn
door.

"Yeah, and I had a revelation."

"That's good you did, Mr. Sonny. I was afraid you
wasn't gonna have it before Mr. Butch come back. You gonna have to get out of
here now. You know how Mr. Butch is, 'specially since his wife done run off
with that ole 'diller purse and the money that time. Ain't been a fit man to
take a shit next to since."

Candy helped Sonny to his feet and guided him out of the
stall and leaned him against it.

"A firewalking elephant," Sonny said. "Soon
as I seen it, it come to me what it all meant."

"I'm sho glad of that, Mr. Sonny."

Candy looked toward the open door to watch for Butch. He
then stepped quickly into the stall, jammed the paper bag in his back pocket
and folded up the tarp and put it under his arm and picked the heater up by the
handle and carried it out, the cord dragging behind it. He sat the tarp and the
heater down and closed the gate and locked it. He looked at the elephant.
Except for a slight nodding of its head it looked dead.

Candy got hold of the tarp and the heater again and put them
in their place. He had no more than finished when he heard Butch's truck pulling
up to the gate. He went over to Sonny and took him by the arm and smiled at him
and said, "It sho been a pleasure having you, and the elephant done went
and gave you one of them rav'lations too. And the best one yet, you say?"

"It was a sign from God," Sonny said.

"God's big on them signs. He's always sending someone a
sign or a bush on fire or a flood or some such thing, ain't he, Mr.
Sonny?"

"He's given me a dream to figure on, and in that dream
he's done told me some other things he ain't never told any them other
preachers."

"That's nice of him, Mr. Sonny. He don't talk to just
everyone. It's the elephant connection does it."

Butch drove through the open gate and parked his truck in
the usual spot and started for the ticket booth. He had the same forward trudge
he always had, like he was pushing against a great wind and not thinking it was
worth it.

"The Lord has told me to expand the minds of
Baptists," Sonny said.

"That's a job he's given you, Mr. Sonny."

"There is another path from the one we've been taking.
Oh, some of the Baptist talk is all right, but God had shown me that
firewalking is the correct way to get right with the holy spirit."

"Like walking on coals and stuff?"

"That's what I mean."

"You gonna walk on coals, Mr. Sonny?"

"I am."

"I'd sho like to see that, Mr. Sonny, I really
would."

Candy led Sonny out to the pickup and Sonny opened the door
and climbed in, visions of firewalking Baptists trucking through his head.

"You gonna do this with no shoes on?" Candy asked,
closing the pickup door for Sonny.

"It wouldn't be right to wear shoes. That would be
cheating. It wouldn't have a purpose."

"Do you feet a mite better."

Sonny wasn't listening. He found the keys in his overalls
and touched the red furrows on his chest that the heater had made. He was proud
of them. They were a sign from God. They were like the trenches of fire he
would build for his Baptists. He would teach them to walk the trenches and open
their hearts and souls and trust their feet to Jesus. And not mind putting a
little something extra in the offering plate. People would get so excited he
could move those red leatherette Bibles.

"Lord be praised," Sonny said.

"Ain't that the truth," Candy said.

Sonny backed the truck around and drove out of the gate onto
the highway. He felt like Moses must have felt when he was chosen to lead the
Jews out of the wilderness. But he had been chosen instead to lead the Baptists
into a new way of Salvation by forming a firewalking branch of the Baptist
church. He smiled and leaned over the steering wheel, letting it touch the hot
wounds on his chest. Rows of rich converts somewhere beyond the horizon of his
mind stepped briskly through trenches of hot coals, smiling.