Walking Across Egypt

by Clyde Edgerton

  She threw back the covers, stood; yes, the soreness was about gone—because she’d kept moving. She wasn’t about to give over to a little fall through a chair.

  She put on her housecoat and sweater and went to the bathroom. Thank goodness she’d always been regular. No problems there. Because she ate so well. Anybody who ate all the vegetables she did couldn’t help but be regular—didn’t need Milk of Magnesia like Alora did. And never the first hint of a hemorrhoid.

  She walked into the kitchen, turned on the light and saw through the window that the eastern sky was dark red. It was her favorite time of the day. She stepped out onto the back step. It was cool. She also liked it when it was cold and she could stand there taking in the cold morning while the sky was red, and time stopped, stood still, and rested for a minute. People thought that time never stood still, except in Joshua when the sun stood still; but she knew that for a minute before sunrise when the sky began to lighten, showing dark, early clouds, there was often a pause when nothing moved, not even time, and she was always happy to be up and in that moment; sometimes she tried to stand perfectly still, to not move with time not moving, and it seemed that if she were not careful she might slip out of this world and into another. That made the moment risky, bright shining, and very still at the same time. She hoped that when her time came, it would be close to morning, and she could wait for the still moment.

  Mattie’s Sunday school departmental assembly—one of the three adult groups—was held in a large meeting room on the second floor in the back of the church. Small classrooms fed into the large room. After the twenty-minute assembly the group always split into same-sex and -age groups and went into the small meeting rooms where they held classes for about thirty minutes.

  The department president, Martha Bowers, standing behind a podium, called the assembly to order and opened with a prayer. Officers had been elected two Sundays ago, and Mattie was now vice-president. Of course, a vice-president never had to do much, unless the president was sick, but Mattie liked the sound of “vice-president.”

  Mattie sat in her usual place on the second row. After the prayer they all stood and sang “The Church’s One Foundation.” Then Martha announced that Clarence Vernon, the head deacon, would be around any minute with an announcement about the Lottie Moon offering. Lottie Moon was a missionary who had worked long ago in China, and in whose name money was collected for foreign missions each year. For the past five years, Mattie had been in charge. She was sure that this morning Clarence would announce that she would again be in charge. Her job would be to call up the president of each Sunday school assembly in the church and tell them where to pick up the envelopes. Then she would coordinate the whole affair, collecting money and making reports to the church treasurer. She would visit each assembly on Sunday mornings and make announcements and reports. Then at Christmas the money would be donated to missions.

  When Clarence came in, he sat beside Mattie while waiting to make his announcement. He leaned over and whispered, “Mattie, you do want to do the Lottie Moon again this year, don’t you?”

  Mattie looked at him, smiled, nodded yes.

  “You do such a good job.”

  “I enjoy it.”

  Clarence stood and made several short announcements, the last one being that Mattie Rigsbee would be heading up the Lottie Moon again.

  Martha then gave the lesson, another hymn was sung, a prayer said, and the meeting broke up so people could go to their small classes. Mattie said a word or two to several people on the way to her class. When she arrived, three of the regulars were already there: Martha, Beatrice, and Carrie, the class president. The others usually lingered in the assembly room a little while.

  As soon as Mattie cleared the doorway, before she even had a chance to sit down, Beatrice said, “Well, Mattie, I hear you got stuck in your rocking chair.” Mattie had known Beatrice would be the first one to mention it. Beatrice was the secretary-treasurer of the class, and knew everything about everybody and was prepared at the drop of a hat to say anything about anybody. Her specialties were sickness, soreness, death, separations, miscarriages, and car wrecks.

  Mattie didn’t like Beatrice. “That’s right. I left the bottom out. My memory’s getting so I can’t remember a thing.”

  “Lord, have mercy, I can’t remember nothing no more either,” said Beatrice.

  “I can’t either,” said Martha, smoothing her dress under her legs, the wicker in her chair bottom popping. Martha was direct. She got to any point immediately with a straight look, straight mouth, straight head. Mattie liked her, felt secure with her, enjoyed speaking her mind to her. “Can’t remember nothing no more,” said Martha, staring without a smile at Mattie, and ready to talk.

  “Somebody was telling me something about getting old and buying bananas,” said Beatrice. “Something about green bananas.”

  “Johnny Arnold,” said Martha, “told about how he was getting so old he was afraid to buy green bananas.” She smiled.

  “That was it!” said Beatrice and laughed.

  Carrie and Mattie smiled.

  “Don’t you get it?” Beatrice asked Mattie.

  She didn’t get it but she wouldn’t admit it. “Yes, I got it.”

  “You might die before they get ripe,” said Martha.

  “Right,” said Mattie. “Well, that’s like Old Mrs. Bledsoe. You heard about that. She said—”

  Beatrice interrupted—“if she’d known she was going to live until she was ninety-four she would have bought a new bed.”

  She interrupted, thought Mattie, and on top of that she got it wrong. “What she said was,” said Mattie, “‘If I’d known I was going to live this long I’d of bought a new mattress.’ That’s what she said. I was there when she said it.”

  Beatrice looked stunned, then recovered.

  “Let’s get started,” said Carrie. The others had come in. “Beatrice, would you lead us in a word of prayer?”

  There, I went and did it, thought Mattie. Lord, forgive me. I shouldn’t get mad at her like that. Dear Lord, please help me to control my anger and to love and tolerate Beatrice, a Christian. At least she says she is.

  Mattie thought about Lamar and Wesley. She wondered if they were saved. Surely Wesley wasn’t. Maybe Lamar, but she doubted it: the way he kept his hat on in the house indicated something, a lack of something. But maybe he’d been saved when he was a little boy, the way Robert had been saved when he was only nine. And Robert once sang the most beautiful little solos with the Primary Choir and then in the Junior Choir; but then he lost complete interest in singing. Seemed like he was embarrassed, and that was the last thing in the world she had wanted to happen. A man embarrassed to sing is a man incomplete somehow. Paul would never sing either. She never heard Paul sing a single word for as long as she knew him—over fifty years. And she’d heard him say only one prayer, and that was a blessing, at a family reunion when Steven Purvis had been asked by somebody who didn’t know what they were doing to say the blessing and Steven, panic in his face and eyes, had turned to look at Paul standing beside him and without leaning over to Paul or moving his head said, “I can’t pray!” and Paul had closed his eyes and said “Dear God, bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies, Amen.” Mattie had felt almost stricken. It was so unlike Paul to say a prayer out loud. Surely he’d prayed silently; he was a Christian. But she’d never known when, or what for.

  Beatrice was still praying. God forgive me, thought Mattie. If I get mad at my Christian friends what would I do with non-Christians. I’m supposed to love them too, even the communists. There might be some communists, thought Mattie, that I’d like more than Beatrice. At least if they talked I wouldn’t know what they were saying. But if it was some Russian man my age who had a shop and made things, maybe sharpened saws and made little things out in the shop, had big hands, wore rough clothes and would come in and sit down beside me on the piano bench and sing a hymn with me, I know I’d like that man better than I like Beatrice
whether he could speak English or not.

  “Let’s open our quarterlies, page forty-three,” said Carrie, standing behind a podium in the small room. The others sat in their wicker-bottomed chairs. Two windows were along one wall. A bulletin board and a chalk board were along other walls. “Mattie would you read the scripture?”

  Mattie found and read the scripture printed in the quarterly at the beginning of the lesson. It was from Jeremiah 31, about the new covenant that God was to make with the house of Israel, and included “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Mattie had thought about that Wesley boy when she studied it last night, and had wondered where that other scripture about “the least of these” was—doing unto the least being the same as doing for Jesus.

  She would have to look into some way of doing something for Wesley. There was so much promise in his kin, his uncle, Lamar. He had a good heart. She could tell. He had a straightforwardness to him. He didn’t shirk around in the shadows like so many young people nowadays. He’d speak to a person. So many young people at church wouldn’t speak. Their parents didn’t make them—didn’t seem to care whether they spoke to old people or not. She’d elbow them, and make them speak, by golly.

  When Lamar stopped wearing that hat inside, decided to polish his shoes and get some crease in his pants he could be downright pleasant to be around.

  When the class was over and the closing prayer finished, Carrie said, “Mattie, I want to hear about you falling through your rocking chair.”

  “Good gracious,” said Mattie. “It won’t nothing. I just fell through.” She decided to show them the bruises on the backs of her legs. “Close that door,” she said. Beatrice closed the door. “Look a-here,” she said. She raised her dress and turned around so they could all see.

  “Lord have mercy, Mattie.”

  “Good gracious in the morning.”

  “I’ll swanee, Mattie.”

  Mattie liked that about herself: how she’d go ahead and do little things the others wouldn’t do—like raise her dress to show off a bruise, and she could sense that people liked that about her, counted on her for it. “Yes,” she said, “it was just awful, and funny in a way.”

  Mattie walked alone to the church sanctuary, shouldered against several young people to get them to speak to her. She knew that courteousness had started on the way out with television and integration and a man on the moon. She wished somebody would put their finger exactly on the connections so something could be done about it. And she knew the weather had been affected by those people landing on the moon. No question about it. It was all mixed in with reasons for the great decline of courtesy. In some ways she was glad it was now that she was slowing down and not forty years from now, having had to live through the decline of everything good.

  She walked into the sanctuary, down the aisle, toward her seat, left side, halfway. Carrie would be along in a minute to sit with her. She moved into the middle and sat down. Some people would sit on the end of an empty pew and then everybody had to crawl over them. And those young people in the back were so noisy these days. Three Sundays ago, before the service started, she had gotten up, walked back there, and told them if they couldn’t be quieter to go outside. They got quiet, too. If the Lord’s house got to be not sacred then there could be no place that was sacred, no place on earth for the rest of the earth to compare itself to.

  The sanctuary began to fill up. Buck Bosser and Phil Gates walked in along the empty pew behind her, bent over and asked her about getting stuck in the rocking chair. She laughed quietly, turned to look up at them. They moved on. Why did she even think about keeping it a secret anyway? It was fun. Phil had said he wanted to hear all about it after the service. He would be standing in his place outside after the service. He and Buck and Buck’s wife, what’s her name, there by the pole supporting the rain shelter leading to the education building. Mae and George would be over by the other pole. She would tell them all, and have a good time doing it.

  The choir members filed in, one by one in their robes. She’d stopped singing in the choir when she realized for sure that she was slowing down. She’d sung there for over thirty years and had listened to some folks stay far beyond their prime. Mrs. Brown, bless her heart, had stayed until she squeaked and went flat. And she, Mattie, had begun to feel the pressure of the performances; it got so it took her longer to learn her part. She had sense enough to step down. Nobody begged her to stay either, but that was all right.

  And there singing alto on the front row, Marie Lloyd with all that makeup. If Marie only knew how much better she looked without it. Mattie was almost glad she couldn’t see that far anymore. She would never forget the Christmas Marie was sick and the choir went Christmas caroling and went out of their way to go by Marie’s house. Marie was inside in the living room, on the couch, watching television. Bill told them to come on in; they did, and there Marie was sitting on the couch in her bathrobe without any makeup. Mattie marveled over how much better she looked sick, without makeup, than she did well and with makeup. She had such good features.

  It was time for the scripture. Mattie read along. It was the time people needed to be most quiet, but some of the young people didn’t pay any attention at all to what was going on. Some of the adults didn’t. That Denise Singletary was as likely to be coming in as going out with that brat of a little boy she had no idea how to manage. Always sitting down there at the front. That child climbing up, looking back, making faces and noises, Denise sitting there as if he didn’t exist and then when it was far too late, bending over and saying something to the child which the child ignored, of course—it won’t the child’s fault—and then saying something again, and then when the whole church was looking, disturbed and missing whatever was going on, she would walk out holding the little crying screaming thing on her shoulder. The child was cute on those rare occasions he behaved—he had potential.

  That afternoon, Wesley Benfield, stringy blond hair down his neck and over his ears, a few tufts of hair here and there on his face, including the beginnings of a blond mustache, sat on a bench at a picnic table looking through red-rimmed eyes across the Young Men’s Rehabilitation Center yard at the fence. What a goddamned joke this whole place was. He hooked his one long fingernail—the little one on his right hand—under a splinter on the table, pulled it up. The splinter cracked from the table as it widened, more and more wood coming up. He could make a weapon if it kept coming up. It was pointed. He looked around. He carefully raised the piece of wood. Pop, it broke from the table. Not enough for a weapon. He’d like to take that picnic table apart piece by piece. He’d like to take the whole goddamned institution apart piece by piece.

  His eyes moved along the fence. He shook the hair back out of his eyes. Every day he looked for a hole in the fence, a ruptured link, a break, a slight opening of some sort, something nobody else would notice. No luck.

  He wanted a cigarette so bad he didn’t know what to do.

  If he could find a hole, an opening, he’d be out of that place as fast as—he looked around, then spoke to himself: “I’d be out of here as fast as a greasy string through a duck’s ass.” He scratched the back of his leg.

  He noticed Norman, the guard, at the gate, checking in some old woman.

  He sucked air in through his teeth, inhaled it, pretending he was smoking. Lamar had said he would bring him a carton of Salems. Wesley smoked Salems because John Prine had a pack of them along with a glass of water sitting on a stool on stage at a concert one time. Wesley had been on the front row watching, and ever since then he’d smoked Salems. Prine was cool. Wesley had tried to sing some of his songs. Learned a few chords on a guitar. Wrote a few songs himself, the words anyway. Good songs. Lamar had said he was going to bring him a John Prine tape with “Spanish Pipedream”
and “Please Don’t Bury Me” on it, but he hadn’t. Where the hell was Lamar anyway? He should have been there already.

  The old woman was talking to Norman. Norman was pointing . . . at him, it looked like. Wesley looked over his shoulder and saw Benny and Gerald over by the wall. Norman must be pointing at them. For sure it won’t him. He didn’t know no goddamned old woman.

  Mattie looked at the young man sitting alone at the picnic table. He was wearing a blue shirt—like the others were wearing.

  The guard held the gate open and Mattie walked through it and toward the young man. There’s nothing to be afraid of, she thought. All these families are out here, scattered around.

  She’s headed at me, thought Wesley. He looked over his shoulder again. She’s got to be coming to one of them guys. I ain’t done nothing to her.

  He don’t look like Jesus, thought Mattie.

  I’m getting the hell out of here, thought Wesley. She was headed right at him. Headed right between his eyes, carrying a covered tin pan and a paper sack.

  He stood, lifted his foot over his seat and onto the ground, looked around at Benny and Gerald, back at the old woman, who had stopped right there at his table.

  “Wesley?” she said.

  He froze. Seemed like she was saying that like she had brought something for him—that in the pan. He started his foot back, rested it on the seat. “You got a cigarette?” he said.

  “A cigarette?”

  “Yeah.”

  She set the pan on the table. “No I don’t have no cigarette. You don’t need one either.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “A piece of cake, piece of pie.”

  “Who’s it for?”

  “You’re Wesley, ain’t you?”

  “Yeah, I’m Wesley.” He sat, slowly. What the hell was going on? What kind of goddamn trick was this. Somebody out to poison his ass?

  “I brought you a little something. I’m Mattie Rigsbee.” He’s not a bad-looking boy at all. A little wrung out maybe. “I can tell you smoke by your color.”