Saving Grace

by Lee Smith

  I went home with a family named Rogers that we were staying with. Daddy never did come back that night, nor the next day.

  Rose Rogers, a nice sickly woman, kept casting glances at me while I was helping her can some beans, but she didn’t say anything. It was after supper the next night, almost dark, when Daddy finally came driving up to the house in the Arnold’s Electric truck with Carlean Combs in the front seat. She stayed in the truck.

  But Daddy came in like gangbusters, hugging Rose and Lucius Rogers, tousling the kids’ hair and saying how pretty they were. The kids got to laughing and Rose and Lucius lost their sour look. Nobody could stay mad at Daddy when he was right there in the room.

  “Come on, Grace,” he said to me as he had said so many times before. “Get your things,” though he knew that they were mostly in the truck.

  But I made no move to come. “Where are we going?” I asked him straight-out. “Are we going someplace with her?” I pointed out the front door at the truck.

  Lucius Rogers cleared his throat and looked at Rose, who nodded.

  “Brother Virgil,” Lucius began, “we feel, me and Rose, that there is things you ought to know, sir, before you go rushing off into something.” He held his head up and seemed determined to have his say.

  “Such as what?” Daddy straightened up from where he’d been bent over tickling a child. He stared at Lucius Rogers.

  “We have been knowing that there woman for a long time around here.” Lucius spoke out strongly. “She does not go to our church, nor to any church, and she is not fit for a preacher like yourself. You will do us all harm, sir, to take up with such as that.”

  I felt a stab of fear at these words.

  But Daddy gave Lucius a look that had made many before him quake. “Do you propose to tell me who is good and who is not good in the eyes of the Lord, Mr. Rogers? For there is only one that can say these things, and that one is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And let me tell you another thing, Mr. Rogers. Jesus ain’t stuck-up. Oh no, beloved. Oh no. He ain’t too stuck-up to stoop for a poor sinner woman who has given herself over to Him in the hope of glory and the chance for a better life. Oh no, honey! Oh no! He has got a big house, beloved, and He’s got a room for us all. Why, He’s got a room for you-uns, and a room for me, and a room for my daughter Grace here, and a room for Carlean Combs. Yes, He has! Don’t you doubt it! Why, don’t you-uns remember the words He spoke to Simon the Pharisee, concerning that sinner woman? ‘I entered your house,’ He said, ‘but you didn’t give me no water for my feet, and here she has wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t give me no kiss, but from the time I came in here, she has not stopped a-kissing on my feet. You did not anoint my head with oil, and here she has come along and anointed my feet with ointment. So I’ll tell you what. Her sins, which are many, are forgiven this minute, for she has loved much; but who is forgiven little, loves little.’ Now what about that, my friends? Oh, you had better be careful now! You had better watch out! Remember the woman that they brought to Him in John Eight, why, she had committed the sin of adultery, beloved, and they was all ready to stone her, but Jesus said, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And you know what? They couldn’t do it, beloved. And we can’t do it today either!”

  Daddy thundered at Rose and Lucius, who clung together as they listened to him. A picture of Jesus Himself hung on the wall behind them. They were good, God-fearing people, and their faces changed as they listened.

  Finally Daddy lightened up. “But He will forgive you, beloved, just as He forgives us all for our manifold sins and wickedness on this earth, for His mercy is everlasting. Now let us pray together—Grace, have you got your things?—before we go.” Daddy prayed a long prayer asking God’s forgiveness for Rose and Lucius, who knew not what they’d done. He said that he himself had already forgiven them. Then he stood and beamed at everybody.

  If he had left it at that, it would have been all right, but he could not resist saying one more thing from the door, and Lucius Rogers’s conscience was so strong he could not resist answering.

  “And I’ll tell you what!” Daddy was smiling. “Carlean Combs is just as happy as she can be today, as a newborn child of God. Why, she’s been shedding tears of pure joy! She will be joining the church directly, for she’s just crazy about Jesus!”

  “Sir, she is just crazy,” Lucius said quite plain as Daddy closed the door. Daddy paused on the stoop but did not go back. He charged off down the steps muttering, and unlocked the back of the truck, and I had to get in there and ride amongst coolers and piles of stuff, while Carlean Combs rode up in the front with Daddy.

  * * *

  SHE WAS CRAZY, as it turned out. She had been in the hospital several times, and had had shock treatments. She took nerve pills. She had been married three or four times, nobody was exactly sure, nor was it clear where she had come from. I learned all this from the fat old man named Mister Harnett Bean who ran a truck stop called the Volunteer Café, and employed Carlean as a waitress. When I asked him where the husbands were now, thinking of our own safety, he grinned at me in a funny way, shaking his head. He was so fat that his jaws flapped, and fat rose up on his neck like those collars on English queens. “Gone,” he said. “She wore ’em out.”

  I nodded. I could see that. I was hoping she would wear Daddy out before long too. I hated Carlean, and I hated living out in the woods behind the Volunteer Café, in the little old beat-up trailer which Mister Harnett Bean had given her. Nobody decent would have lived out there. We did not even have water. We had to walk up the sandy path to the Café to take a shower. We hauled our drinking water out there in plastic jugs.

  The trailer itself was dark green, with brown rusted-out places all over it. It looked like camouflage. One of the blocks it sat on had sunk into the swampy ground, so that the whole trailer was on a slant. I had to walk uphill to get to the tiny back room where I slept on a mattress on the floor, and all night long I’d feel like I was slipping off of it, and wake up numerous times, and in the mornings I’d be real tired.

  Whenever I woke up in the night, I’d hear Daddy and Carlean Combs, still up, and still at it. Talking and carrying on. They never seemed to sleep. Whatever was wrong with her, it was wrong with him too. It was wrong with both of them. In the morning I’d find cigarette butts and clothes strewed all over the slanted linoleum floor, and sometimes beer bottles.

  I knew that Daddy was backsliding, and that Carlean had not really been saved.

  But the folks over at the Hi-Way Tabernacle had not figured it out yet, as both Daddy and Carlean put on a real show of holiness when they went over there for meeting, Carlean with her wild red hair pulled back so tight it gave her slant-eyes, in long plain dresses that made her look like she was in disguise. These dresses had belonged to Mr. Bean’s dead wife, Belle. There was no end to them, as he was rich and had never touched a one of her things since she had died eight years before. Mr. Bean appeared to get a kick out of seeing them on Carlean.

  Carlean became the one that read the Bible out for Daddy to preach, though she pronounced about half of it wrong.

  I didn’t even care. Sometimes I didn’t even go to meeting. I felt that God didn’t have much use for the likes of me, anyway. Mr. Bean had given me a job waiting tables at the truck stop, which made me real nervous at first, but then I started enjoying it. At least I enjoyed it when Carlean wasn’t there, for she’d swoop by like an eagle, keeping an eye on me.

  “I know what you’re up to,” she told me more than once. “You might fool your daddy, but you can’t fool me.” Close up, Carlean was cross-eyed. The awful thing was, I thought she might be right. For I felt that Carlean did know me, like Lamar had.

  And it was true that I liked to talk to the truckers and the local men that came in there, I liked to kid with them all. I had also bought myself some pink Tangee lipstick a
nd some Maybelline blush-on and mascara at the drugstore. I’d go in the ladies’ room at the café and put them on to work my shift. I had a cute pink waitress uniform, and I knew the men were looking at me. Carlean was right. One of them was looking at me a lot. His name was Davey Street, and he was tall and gangly, with a big grin. He drove a truck for Wonder Bread, and came by four days a week, in the late afternoon. I knew he was going to ask me for a date before long, but he kept not quite doing it. He was not much older than me, and shy, though he liked to talk once you got him started. He’d order a piece of pie and a Pepsi and ask me a lot of questions, which made me real nervous, as I did not want him to find out anything much about my life. I did not intend to get into what Daddy did, nor what our situation was.

  Over at the Tabernacle they were having a power struggle. This is what Daddy called it. What it was, was that some of the elders had begun to have their doubts about Daddy, but Daddy had the rest of them in the palm of his hand. So there was serious dissension among them, which is not good for working the signs. A woman named Lois Montreat was hurt at a home meeting by a canebrake rattler which Daddy handed to her, and then she went to the hospital and talked about it, with the result that Daddy was arrested in front of the Tabernacle one Sunday morning before the meeting even got started. They drove him away in an unmarked police car, while the church people gathered around by the church house steps, praying and talking among themselves. When the police car was out of sight, some people turned to go inside, which Travis Word was urging them to do, but a lot of them—the ones that had come just to see Daddy work the signs—turned around and left. Me and Carlean left too.

  She drove me back to the trailer in the Arnold’s Electric truck, with her skirt hiked way up on her thighs. It was hot that morning, and she had rings of sweat under the arms of Mr. Bean’s dead wife’s long-sleeved brown dress. She took it off the very minute she got inside the trailer, and dropped it on the floor. Then she walked over to the refrigerator in her half-slip and pointy bra to get a beer. She opened the bottle and looked at me. “You want a beer?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I knew it.” Carlean handed me one, and I opened it and licked off the foam, which tasted bitter and not at all the way I’d thought it would taste. I acted like I liked it, though. I took a big swallow and carried the bottle back with me, walking uphill to my room, where I figured I would change clothes and then go to the Volunteer Café and get the funny papers from Mr. Bean, who saved them for me.

  I was putting my dress on a hanger when I heard the lock click behind me. I ran right over to the thin metal door and pounded on it. “Carlean!” I yelled. “Carlean! What are you doing?” I hadn’t even known that my door could be locked.

  Carlean was laughing and laughing on the other side of it. “Don’t you go noplace now, you hear?” she cackled. Then I heard her moving around out there for a while longer, singing “This Ole House.” Then I heard her slam the trailer door, and a little later I heard the truck start, way up the path where they kept it parked.

  I did my best to get out of that place, but there was no way. There was no window, and though the door rattled, it would not give. Finally I got so hot and tired from pushing at it that I just laid down on the mattress and drank the rest of the beer. Everything began to spin around. Since all this was happening on a big slant anyway, I started to feel like I was going crazy. I swore I would not do it, that I would not go crazy like the rest of them, I swore it on the Bible which lay on the floor at my feet. The only light in the room came from a forty-watt bulb in the ceiling, so it was very dim in there. The walls were painted aqua. I laid there on the mattress and imagined myself as a fish swimming around in an aquarium. This was peaceful. But with another part of my mind I was thinking it was simply a matter of time until I did go crazy, whether I swore on the Bible or not. I prayed hard to God, saying that if He would just get me out of there, I would give in to Him and do His bidding from that day forward. I would open my heart to Him and let Him in, and join the church. I meant it too. I felt Him move in my heart then, a little flutter like a baby bird just learning how to fly. Then it started to rain, drumming on the trailer’s metal roof. This was a sound which I loved. I took it as a sign that God had heard me, a sign of His care. I let Him comfort me with the sound of the rain. I closed my eyes and let go of everything until I was swimming free, beyond the aquarium, in and out of undersea caverns through shafts of light that pierced the beautiful blue water of the sea.

  I don’t know how long I slept, nor when they came back, nor why I didn’t call out when I woke up and heard them. They were making a lot of noise, banging things around in the big part of the trailer. I was instantly, totally awake. It had quit raining. I felt all rested, like I had slept for hours and hours. I had to go to the bathroom real bad, but something made me hold it and lay still. It came to me that they were packing.

  They were going to leave me.

  Sure enough, it was not long before I heard the rusty front door of the trailer slap and then slap again, as they carried things out to the truck. One time there was a crash over in the kitchen part of the trailer, and the sound of breaking glass. Carlean yelled, “Shit!” Daddy said, “Leave it. What do you want all this stuff for, anyway? You ain’t gonna need it. I’ve got all the stuff you need.” Then there was a lot of laughing and breathing noise while, I guess, they kissed.

  They took some more things out to the truck, and then I heard the jingle of keys. You can always tell what keys sound like. Go, go, just go, I was thinking. Go to Hell. The door slammed one more time and I could hear their voices getting fainter, moving away. I sat up on the mattress.

  Then I heard the door again, and Carlean yelling, “Where the hell are you going?” and Daddy’s voice saying, “Just a minute, honey, I forgot something,” and Carlean saying, “Come on now, Virgil, you didn’t forget nothing.” The trailer shook as Daddy strode across it and up the slant toward my room. I lay back down on the mattress and closed my eyes. His footsteps stopped, and I could hear his heavy breathing outside the door. I thought he must have come back for the Bible. Then it crossed my mind that he might kill me. But what he did was flip the lock on my door. The trailer shook again as he went out.

  “Never mind, I couldn’t find it,” he hollered to Carlean.

  “You asshole,” she yelled back.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS I heard the truck leave, I jumped up and ran out into the dark, wet woods, not too far, and peed like crazy. The woods smelled wonderful, the way they do after it rains. I breathed in deep. I had been dying for air in that little room. Then I walked back to the trailer and sat on the steps enjoying the cool sweet smell of the night. After a while I went inside and ate some saltine crackers, which was all that I could find. I didn’t care. I felt real good. But I did not want to sleep in the room where she had locked me for so long. I walked down the slope to the other end of the trailer and looked at their unmade bed, which was nasty. I found a half a pack of Camel cigarettes on the floor and went out on the steps to smoke them. Then I went inside and lay down on the old sofa and fell immediately asleep.

  In the morning I got dressed and went to the Volunteer Café, where I took a shower and washed my hair and put on my uniform and makeup. Carlean was supposed to work that shift, not me, but I was here and she was gone.

  Mr. Bean raised his eyebrows when he saw me come out of the washroom. He sat in his big chair by the cash register reading the paper, with his belly balanced on his spread-apart knees like a beach ball. “Where’s Carlean?” he asked, and I told him.

  “Son of a gun!” he said, slapping his leg. He laughed his wheezy laugh. “I never did think all that religion had took with her.”

  “Can I eat something before I start working?” I asked, and he looked at me good and then hollered at Don to fix me whatever I wanted. But he told me to bring him the phone first, and I did. Mr. Bean never got up if he d
idn’t have to. I ate two fried eggs and some sausage and three pancakes while he talked on the phone. Then he asked me if there was anybody I wanted to call, and I said no. Even now I am not sure why I said that, or why I felt that way. I simply thought that I had come too far along the road that I was on, to turn back now. I had to keep on going. I could not imagine going back to live with Ruth and Carlton Duty and Billie Jean and that baby I had never seen, back there where everything awful had happened. I thought about it and thought about it, but I just could not bring myself to call them. Some truckers came in and I took their orders, and before long here came two elders from the Hi-Way Tabernacle that I had to talk to, and then the police, who were real respectful, calling me “Miss.” I liked that. Daddy and Carlean had run off with as much Tabernacle money as they could lay their hands on, which did not surprise me, but I couldn’t give the police any leads. I didn’t have a clue as to where they’d gone.

  Mr. Bean told everybody that I was welcome to stay out in his trailer and work at the Volunteer Café as long as I wanted to. This was a big relief to me, since I was broke, of course. Daddy had not left me a dime. I thought Mr. Bean was real nice. But then the next Wednesday when I got done with my shift, Marcia told me Mr. Bean had said for me to come over to his house and see him for a minute before I left for the night. He lived right next to the café in a nice white house, and so I walked on over there, thinking nothing of it, bone-tired but enjoying the early-evening breeze and the fireflies rising from the scrub grass along the path that went to his house. Out on the road, cars and trucks flashed back and forth. I enjoyed seeing them, too. I had big plans right then. I hoped it would not be very long before I could save up enough money to get some kind of a car myself. Then I would drive over to Scrabble Creek for a visit before heading out for parts unknown, where I would get a job, and make my fortune. For I had learned to be a good waitress at the café, and I could do that anywhere.