The Homecoming of Samuel Lake

by Jenny Wingfield

  Bernice sidled up to Samuel and asked, “Do you believe this?”

  “I’m beginning to,” he said.

  Samuel clicked on the microphone and said “Testing, testing,” and when they heard his voice go booming over the loudspeakers, the tent went quiet in anticipation. He didn’t bother to introduce himself. They all knew who he and Bernice were.

  He struck a chord on the guitar, and gave Bernice a nod, and they launched into “I Saw the Light.” Samuel and Bernice, singing into that microphone, voices melding like Heaven come down. Pretty soon feet started tapping, and hands started clapping, and somebody in the congregation hollered, “Glory!” Samuel responded by upping the tempo.

  Once, when his eyes rambled over the crowd, he could have sworn he saw Ras Ballenger at the back of the tent (Ras Ballenger, smiling benignly), but when he looked back, there was no sign of the man. So maybe he’d been wrong.

  It was the first time in his life that Samuel had ever been glad to think someone hadn’t shown up for church.

  Calla had been right in her prediction that the revival and Never Closes would bring each other business. Not everybody at the service was there because they wanted to be. Some were there because they’d been dragged by dominant spouses. And some of them didn’t stay where those spouses parked them. Henpecked husbands sneaked across to the bar for a few drinks while their wives were caught up in the Spirit. Of course, the tide flowed both ways. Sinners in the bar, who couldn’t help but hear the gospel music, would get to thinking about how they ought to change their miserable ways and would venture across to the tent revival in search of salvation. It was a tug-of-war between God and the devil, with both sides winning a few and losing a few.

  The revival was such a success that there was no telling how long it would go on. People talked a little about how it was a shame that Samuel’s wife was working in a honky-tonk while he was over there preaching his heart out, and other people talked about how Samuel wouldn’t be having to put on a tent revival if he hadn’t gotten himself kicked out of the Methodist conference, but they didn’t let Samuel hear them, and he wouldn’t have let it get the best of him if they had. There were souls coming to salvation every night, so this had to be God’s plan in action.

  Samuel was a happy man.

  Bernice was in her element.

  Toy was mending, no thanks to his wife, who couldn’t just hold his hand all the time. How could she hold his hand all the time, when she had so much to do? There was helping Samuel with the services every night, and talking to Samuel after the services about every spiritual thing she could think of, not to mention running all over the country with Samuel during the daytime, printing up more flyers and inviting folks to come out and worship. And then, she had to take care of her own needs sometime, looking perfect every minute can just take hours. Anyway, it wasn’t as if Toy was still in any real danger of dying. Dammit.

  Willadee was so tired from being on her feet twelve hours a night, and still trying to keep up with the kids and the house in the daytime, that she was already wondering how long she’d be able to keep up this pace. By the time she made it into bed every morning, Samuel was just getting up to start his day. It was John and Calla, all over again.

  Calla Moses helped with the kids and stayed ruffled out like a wet hen, because Bernice didn’t help with diddly.

  The kids were kids.

  Thanksgiving came and went. All the children were in school programs, and Willadee somehow made it to every one of them except Noble’s, which took place at night. (Calla went in her stead.) Samuel made it to Bienville’s and Blade’s, which were both in the daytime, on the same afternoon, but the rest of the time, he was tending to the Lord’s business. Swan hardly noticed that her daddy wasn’t at her program. He’d been tending to the Lord’s business since before she was born, so she was used to it.

  Ras Ballenger showed up at the revival again (Samuel was sure he saw him this time), but he still didn’t cause a speck of trouble. Blade felt his presence, and looked around and saw him, and had nightmares for a week. After that, he started creeping into bed with Samuel every night, and the bad dreams stopped as abruptly as they had begun.

  Toy came home from the hospital. Home to Calla’s, not home to his own house. Life would have been lonesome stuck over there by himself while Bernice was out helping Samuel promote the revival. Plus, Willadee and Calla wanted Toy where they could see to him.

  Bernice thought the hospital had let him go a little early.

  Christmas arrived, and Swan was relieved to discover that the Lake family was no longer prudent. Attendance had fallen off at the revival when it got too cold for most people to stand it, but the offerings had been good up to that point, and Samuel had saved money back. There were presents for everybody.

  All the aunts and uncles and cousins came over for Christmas dinner. You could hardly find room to walk through the house, there were so many people, which suited Calla fine. This was her first Christmas without John, and she didn’t want to spend the day missing him. Still, after everybody who didn’t live there had gone home, she went out to the cemetery and stood in the cold beside his grave for the longest time, wishing she could turn back time.

  Ras Ballenger showed up, late in the day, bringing presents for Blade. Calla thanked the man again for helping to save Toy, but Blade hid in Bienville’s room until after his daddy was gone and then refused to open the packages.

  His nightmares returned.

  It got to be January. The crowds were slimmer over at the tent revival, but not slim enough for Samuel to even begin to think about closing it down. With the smaller crowds, the services grew more intimate. Folks gave their testimonies (Bernice gave hers every night, and it touched folks’ hearts, every time), sinners still came forward at the end of every service, and the music just kept getting better and better.

  Swan turned twelve, and Noble turned thirteen, both in the same week. Swan asked her mother for a bra and got a camisole instead. Mail order, from the Wish Book. Toy gave Noble the keys to Papa John’s truck, which still wouldn’t run right, since it still needed the motor pulled. Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cake you put candles on, so there was nothing to blow out and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you’re eating pineapple upside-down cake, there’s nothing much left to wish for.

  Toward the end of January, Toy announced at breakfast that, in another couple of days, he’d be ready to go back to work at Never Closes. Willadee was so happy she could have danced on the table. Bernice wasn’t at all sure it was the right thing for him to do; after all, he’d been close enough to death’s door to look inside, and he still didn’t have all his strength back.

  What was really bothering her was that, once Toy took over his duties, Willadee would be free to take over hers, which wasn’t the least bit fair. Here Bernice had earned Samuel’s trust and gotten him believing in her, and sometimes when they were singing, their voices melded so sweetly that it was as though the two had become one, and now Willadee was going to ruin everything. Bernice was well aware that a woman who’s in a man’s bed at the same time he is has a diabolical advantage over a woman who’s never managed to get into bed with that man at all, and she could see her chance (or what she believed was her chance) slipping away.

  Her plan had always been to finesse the situation so that Samuel thought the whole thing was his idea, but she didn’t have forever, and that’s how long it was taking him. He wasn’t leaving her any choice except to seduce him. If he’d wanted to make the first move, he’d had plenty of chances.

  If everything worked out in her favor, she and Samuel would come together in a rapturous fusion that would be the start of a lifetime of happiness. If it all fell apart, life wouldn’t be worth living anymore, so she guessed she’d just have to kill herself.

  That night, the service was a particularly emotional one. Bernice was so glad of that, since emotions of the spiritual kind can lead to emotions
of another kind like a stream feeding into a river. She and Samuel were both still feeling the glow after the crowd had dispersed.

  “I can’t tell you how thankful I am to God for this whole experience,” she told him after they’d finished straightening the chairs and putting things in order. They were at the back of the tent, and Samuel was about to turn off the lights. It seemed like a perfect moment for this conversation, and Bernice thought that tucking in a reference to God had lent just the right touch. “I’ve had more happiness in the last several weeks than I’ve had in the rest of my life put together.”

  Samuel smiled and said, “You’ve done more than your share to make this whole thing work, Bernice. I don’t know what I’d have done without you all these weeks.”

  She reached over and turned off the lights.

  “I don’t know how we’ve done without each other for so long,” she whispered, moving in so close that strategic parts of her body brushed against him. Samuel recoiled instantly and switched the lights back on. He was so horrified, his hands were shaking.

  “What on earth are you doing?” he demanded, his voice hoarse.

  That set her back a little, but she figured his voice just sounded that way because he was so excited he could barely talk.

  “Samuel …,” she sighed.

  “Bernice, we need to get back across the road, where we belong. You’ve got a husband waiting, and I’ve got a wife.”

  “You feel the same way I do,” she insisted, taking his hands so that she could guide them where she was positive he really wanted them to be. “You know you do.”

  Samuel jerked his hands away and just stared at her. “No,” he said. “I do not. And, if you’re feeling anything out of the way, you need to ask the Lord to help you overcome it.”

  “Anything out of the way?” Oh, she was indignant now. “Anything out of the way?” Her voice was rising, getting shrill around the edges.

  Samuel said, “Bernice, I’m taking you to the house.”

  He took her arm.

  She jerked it away. “Like hell you are,” she seethed. “You think you’re just going to take me back over there and drop me in Toy’s lap, and say, ‘Here she is, I’m finished with her’?”

  Samuel backed away in disbelief.

  “Well, we’re not finished, Samuel. We won’t ever be finished. I’m the one who stood beside you when everybody knew you were floundering. Why, I’ve been more of a helpmate to you than your own wife, who’s over there tending bar and probably being rubbed up against by the regulars right this very minute.”

  Samuel shook his head and looked away. Bernice knew she’d just touched on a sore spot, so she pressed her advantage.

  “I’ve heard stories about Calvin Furlough spending an awful lot of time in Never Closes since Willadee started working in there,” she informed him. “And you know, Calvin’s got a way with the ladies. He could wake a woman up sauntering through her dreams at night.”

  Samuel rubbed his eyes and laughed. It was a sort of hollow laugh, but it was still a laugh, and nobody laughed at Bernice Moses.

  “Don’t you laugh at me, Sam Lake,” she warned him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for laughing. It’s not funny anyway, it’s pathetic.”

  He’d said it was pathetic. Which meant she was pathetic. Bernice glared at him. Hating him suddenly. Despising him.

  “It’s pathetic,” Samuel went on, “because you can’t let a good thing be a good thing. You can’t even stand for a good thing to live. You poison everything you touch.”

  “Poison,” she said. “Now, there’s a thought.”

  And with that, she walked away.

  Samuel lay awake that night wondering whether Bernice had been trying to make him believe that she was going to kill herself or somebody else. Whichever one it was, he was sure it was an empty threat. Bernice could be spiteful and devious, but she’d never do anything to jeopardize her own comfort or safety, much less her freedom. She had driven off in the direction of her own house, and he assumed that was where she’d ended up. Probably, she would show up at the revival tomorrow night trying to convince him that he’d imagined the whole thing ever happened.

  He considered waking Toy and telling him about the incident. But what would that accomplish? There’d be a lot of hard feelings, and Toy would have one more piece of unpleasantness to have to live with, and Bernice would just turn everything around to make it sound as if Samuel had been the one making the advances.

  So maybe he shouldn’t say a word. Maybe sometimes the best thing a man can do is let folks believe whatever makes them happy. It didn’t occur to Samuel that this kind of reasoning was the very thing he’d hated most about Moses Honesty. All he was thinking as he drifted off to sleep was that he could hardly wait for morning and for Willadee.

  Chapter 35

  At dawn, when Willadee dragged herself up the stairs and into their room, Samuel grabbed her and hung on like a drowning man. Kissing her hair, which reeked of smoke. Kissing her eyes, which were red with fatigue. Kissing her mouth and her neck and her shoulders and all the other familiar territories, which he’d been neglecting of late.

  She tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her.

  “I love you,” he said. “Willadee, I love you like a bird loves the sky.”

  “I smell like the bar,” she protested.

  “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care.”

  “What’s happened to you, Samuel?”

  He was laughing now. Loud enough to be heard through the walls, if anybody was listening. And if anybody was listening, he didn’t care about that, either.

  “I had a vision last night,” he said. “God gave me a vision. He showed me clear as day what my life would have been without you.”

  It was all Bernice could do to stay inside her own skin. She paced the floor of her house like a caged cat, weeping and yowling. All this time, she’d been planning what her life would be like with Samuel, and now that her plans had been shattered, she couldn’t think of one thing in the world that she wanted or cared about.

  She didn’t really want to die, but she didn’t really want to live, either, plus she’d made that comment to Samuel about the poison, so she had more or less painted herself into a corner. It seemed to her that committing suicide or attempting suicide or at least appearing to attempt suicide would be the only way she could save face and punish Samuel at the same time. He would surely blame himself for driving her to that, and once word got around, everybody else would blame him, too. His reputation would be sullied, if not destroyed.

  As for her own reputation, she really didn’t care what happened to it. She knew full well what folks around here had thought of her, ever since Yam Ferguson died. The only reason they looked at her with any kind of respect nowadays was that she’d been making such a show of having religion, and she was not about to keep that up. Acting the part had been kind of a lark, as long as she’d thought it might win Samuel over, but she’d be damned if she would spend the rest of her life acting all holy. If Samuel had really cared about her salvation, he’d had his chance to help her stay on the straight and narrow.

  Besides, she wasn’t going to stay in Columbia County. She wasn’t even going to stay in Arkansas. Why should she? There had to be someplace better, and in another day or so, she was going to go looking for it.

  But first things first.

  Knowing Samuel, he must be torturing himself, wondering what she’d meant by what she said, and whether she was going to do something desperate. She figured that, after last night, he’d be way too gun-shy to come to check on her himself, but she was confident that he’d send somebody.

  By late afternoon, Bernice had gathered everything in the house that she thought might be poisonous and had the items lined up on the kitchen table. Bleach, ammonia, Drno, furniture polish, floor polish, rat poison, a small bottle of Miltown “happy pills” that the doctor had prescribed for her back when Toy was in the hospital and sh
e was acting distraught, and a large bottle of Cardui that Calla had given her once when she made the mistake of claiming to be having trouble with her monthlies.

  Deciding what to take was easy. Besides not wanting to die, she didn’t want to suffer while she was waiting to be saved, so she ruled out all the household products right off the bat. She left them on the table, though, for the impact they would have. Whoever came to check on her would be talking for the rest of their life about how it was a good thing she didn’t drink that bleach or eat that rat poison because then there would have been no saving her. Just for fun, she uncapped the can of rat poison and laid it over on its side so that some of it spilled out onto the tabletop.

  All she intended to take was a couple of Miltowns, and she wouldn’t down those until her rescuer arrived and was coming in the front door. No sense tempting Fate. She’d never been much of a drinker (liquor hit her too hard and too fast), but she needed something to ease the knotted-up feeling in the pit of her stomach, so she helped herself to a fifth of spirits from the liquor supply that Toy had stockpiled in the spare bedroom back when he was still bootlegging. Then she took a hot bath that lasted for over half the bottle.

  When Bernice didn’t show up at the tent revival that night, Samuel didn’t know whether to be troubled or relieved. The temperature had dropped down below freezing, so the congregation was a bit sparse, but the folks who had bundled up and come out kept asking him while he was tuning the instruments where Bernice was and why she was late. The only thing he could tell them was that he hadn’t talked to her all day, and he sure hoped she hadn’t come down with a cold or the flu. He was getting more Moses Honest all the time.

  He couldn’t escape the thought that somebody ought to go over and look in on her, to make sure she was all right. He would have bet his life she was, but he’d never stop feeling guilty if it turned out she wasn’t and he hadn’t tried to help.