Holding Smoke

by Steph Post

  “I will. No one goes against me. No one. You will keep your mouth shut, or you will regret it even from the depths of hell.”

  Sister Tulah circled around the recliner, but paused at the sliding door with her hand on the latch. She crooked her neck and looked back over her shoulder.

  “Remember. I own you, Brother August. And I own that little girl’s life. Do not forget.”

  Sister Tulah slid open the glass and stepped out into the night.

  7

  Ramey kicked her bare feet up on the front porch railing and let the afternoon sun prickle her legs through her jeans. As usual, the weather couldn’t make up its mind and today was cool again, but only just. Fall in Florida came peppered throughout the waning months, with only a handful of days having the spice of a new season. Ramey leaned back as far as she could in her rocking chair in the corner of the porch. There was a breeze blowing in from the southeast and the wind chimes above her head tinkled in competition with the screaming cicadas and the lilting coos of nearby ground doves. For a moment, it was all she’d ever wanted. For a moment. A distant growl was slowly growing louder, and soon she heard the grate of tires slithering up the long, curving driveway. A car was coming. Of course.

  She jerked her head around, but kept her feet up and her body swung low in the chair. A dusty green Rabbit came around the curve—Shelia, driving slow, as if scoping the place out before she committed to pulling up into the yard. Ramey lifted her hand in a wave, but already her stomach was sinking. Shelia wasn’t the type of woman to just stop by on a Sunday afternoon for a cup of decaf and some girl talk. Neither was Ramey the sort to appreciate it. Ramey did like Shelia. She might have threatened to kill the blonde a few times, but it wasn’t for anything Shelia didn’t deserve. And Shelia understood that. Just yesterday, Judah had made some joke about Ramey and Shelia being the two most unlikely of friends and the comment had startled her. She wasn’t friends with Shelia. Some women drew strength from one another. They laughed together, cried together, shared baby pictures and moves their men had tried in bed. They zipped up dresses and braided hair and fixed pantyhose runs with nail polish. They were comfortable with each other’s skin. They had no aversion to being touched. For them, love could be something spread and shared. It didn’t always have to be a dagger.

  No, Ramey and Shelia were not friends, because women like them did not have friends. They had kin, born of blood and made from blood, banded together like tribes. As Shelia stepped out of her car and came up the dirt walkway, it occurred to Ramey that she had punched Shelia, but never hugged her. She’d never once put her arm around Shelia’s shoulder, but they had almost killed a man together. And they had survived together.

  Shelia climbed the front steps, her leather wrap sandals smacking the boards, and leaned back against the porch railing. She wasn’t smiling, and Ramey ran through the list of reasons Shelia could be stopping by, ranging from dealing with Benji to news that someone had a hit out on the Cannons. Any of it was possible. Shelia gripped the railing behind her and twisted her hands as she glanced idly around the yard.

  “Where’re the boys?”

  Ramey relaxed slightly as she reached over the arm of the rocking chair and snatched up her cigarettes. It sounded like the trouble was going to be with Benji. Ramey wondered what he’d said to her this time. Or thrown at her. Or threatened to do. Not that Shelia didn’t give it right back. Ramey figured eventually they’d either fall for or kill one another, and she wasn’t sure which would be worse. Ramey lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Shelia, who only shook her head. Ramey shrugged as a wisp of smoke blew across her face.

  “Who knows? Who cares? They’re not here, at any rate.”

  “Judah’s home from jail all of three days and you already miss the quiet, huh?”

  “I miss the peace, that’s for sure.”

  Ramey drew her feet off the railing and sat up straight in the rocking chair. She sighed, taking a long drag of her cigarette.

  “Judah went over to Benji’s about an hour ago. Said he wanted to finally spend some time with the brother he still gave a shit about. Said something about working on Benji’s pickup with him, but they’re probably just sitting around drinking. Which is fine by me.”

  Ramey didn’t mention that Judah had come home tight-lipped the night before, only admitting that, yes, he’d talked to Levi and, no, they hadn’t worked things out. He’d gone straight for the freezer for a bag of frozen peas, though he hadn’t explained why his knuckles were bruised. He’d absently kissed her and spent the rest of the evening smoking one cigarette after another, pacing the length of the porch, checking his phone and muttering to himself. Ramey had given up trying to talk to him and gone to bed. Alone.

  Shelia yanked at her leopard print scrunchie and shook out her hair. She twirled a length of it between her fingers slowly, examining the bleach damage. Ramey wished Shelia would just say whatever she needed to say.

  “That’s good. I mean, I think Benji’s been feeling left behind by Judah. Or left out of everything y’all are working on. You know, I think he really looks up to Judah.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Benji feeling left out had better not be the reason Shelia was acting so cagey. And interrupting her afternoon. Ramey hunched forward, putting both elbows on the rocking chair’s armrest. She tilted her head and raised an eyebrow expectantly.

  “Shelia? Spit it out.”

  Shelia’s mouth contorted into a frown and she tossed her brittle hair over her shoulder with a huff.

  “Fine. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. I tried to tell Benji yesterday, but I couldn’t make it come out right. So, do what you want with it. It’s up to you if you want to tell Judah or not.”

  Ramey pitched her cigarette over the railing and stood up. The rough porch boards were like a cat’s tongue on the soles of her bare feet.

  “Tell him what?”

  Shelia began to describe the meeting she’d overheard between Levi, Elrod, and a woman named Dinah, who—it took Ramey a second to figure out—was also staying at the Blue Bird.

  “She was eyeballing me the other night when I got home, nosey bitch. So, like I said, I was just going to get some crackers, when I hear her in the laundry room, yapping away to Elrod and Levi. The three of them had a pow-wow right there in front of the damn washing machine. Dinah’s got some kind of plan to steal a horse down in Ocala—”

  “A horse? Like, what, something out of a Western?”

  Shelia, talking a mile a minute, hiked one shoulder up in a lopsided shrug.

  “I guess. Anyway, she’s got Elrod on board, but she needs more muscle. And brains. Which is why she wanted Levi to talk to Judah.”

  Ramey had been leaning halfway over the railing, inspecting the broken stems of a hydrangea bush, but now she snapped up and whirled on Shelia.

  “Wait, what? Judah’s in on this?”

  Shelia shook her head.

  “No, see, that’s the thing. That’s why I’m telling you. Who cares about a stupid horse, right? If the boys want to play My Little Pony and bring home the bacon, what’s the big deal? I’m telling you ’cause Judah don’t know. Dinah and Elrod wanted the full deck of Cannons, but Levi made it clear he weren’t going to tell Judah or Benji.”

  Ramey frowned.

  “Like, he didn’t think they’d care? Or be interested?”

  “Maybe. I mean, I couldn’t see Levi’s face, but it didn’t sound that way to me.”

  First Sukey, now this. Ramey couldn’t wonder where it would end, when it had only just begun. She swallowed hard, gripping the railing in both hands, holding herself steady.

  “How’d it sound?”

  Shelia crossed her arms and spread her fingers wide, inspecting the chips in her nail polish.

  “Like Levi wanted to be sure his brothers, and Judah especially, had no part in it. Almost like he wanted it kept a secret from them. I had to put money on it, I’d say Levi’s
trying to make a move for himself.”

  Shelia flicked her eyes up to Ramey.

  “One that don’t include the rest of the Cannons.”

  Ramey took a breath and slowly turned to face Shelia.

  “All right. Go back to the beginning and tell me everything. Every single thing you heard. I need to know it all.”

  *

  Sister Tulah bent the spine back on her worn leather Bible and trailed her thumb across the feathery pages. She stood tall behind the imposing new pulpit, front and center on the low wooden stage, taking account of her followers. Like her new office furniture, the pulpit was made of rich, dark mahogany, lacquered to a high shine, gleaming underneath the recently installed recessed lighting that cast Tulah in a softer glow than she would have preferred. The jelly jar of strychnine and plastic squeeze bottle of olive oil still occupied the two corners of the pulpit and the tin bucket was still wedged underneath, at the ready in case someone was taken up by the Holy Ghost and needed to spew out a demon. Overall, though, the pulpit was just a bit too slick for her taste. She missed the old one, gouged by clawing fingers and scorched by the flames of fire bottles. There had been blood in that pulpit, soaked down to the wood’s very fibers. The blood of sinners and saints, the righteous and backslidden and saved. But the pulpit that had been in her family for over seventy years, that her own grandfather had stood behind when the Last Steps church hadn’t been much more than a small gathering beneath a brush arbor, had been charred black and riddled with bullet holes by those who had wished to destroy her.

  Behind her, where once had hung the heavy wooden cross Felton had used to brain Sherwood Cannon, the wall was bare except for a coat of fresh white paint. Sister Tulah had decided that the congregation needed no distractions, no place for their lazy eyes to drift, nothing to take them away from her and the message she would impart. Sister Tulah fixed her smoldering eye on the doors at the back of the church and the engraved brass plaque, mirroring the one outside.

  “And ye shall be left few in number, whereas ye were as the stars of heaven for multitude; because thou wouldest not obey the voice of the Lord thy God.” – Deuteronomy 28:62

  Sister Tulah wasn’t sure which of the two verses she liked best, though the one she set her steely gaze on now seemed the most relevant for the topic of her sermon tonight. Tulah methodically raked her stare down through the rows of her followers, on their feet at attention in front of the backless wooden benches, clapping and stamping to the ceaseless pounding of Sister Mona at the piano and Brother Arlo at the drums. Tulah’s congregation was rapt and ready, but also exhausted. The morning service had brimmed with the Spirit, but also with the swarms of demons who had descended on the faithful like locusts. Windows had been raised and lowered in a fury, trying to keep the Spirit in and Satan’s horde out, and the now sanitized bucket at Tulah’s feet had been passed around more than once. If Tulah squinted her eye and looked closely, she could make out the bruises already blooming on the neck and face of Sister Sarah, standing meekly in the front row, in a clean yellow cotton dress. She had been particularly set upon that morning, forcing Sister Tulah to command her few, still-cognizant, followers to hold Sarah down as she demanded the demon’s identity. When it had finally relinquished the name Balamat, Tulah’s terrified followers had released the poor girl in fear and scattered. By the time it was over—the demon having been chased through the open front doors—the long sleeves of Sarah’s dress were smeared with ringlets of blood. Many thought Balamat had carved up Sister Sarah’s arms, though it had, of course, been only the girl’s own nails in her convulsions.

  Now, Sister Sarah appeared contrite, stomping and clapping along with everyone else, though it was obvious from her stilted movements she was still in pain. Sister Tulah swept her eye one last time across the church. No more revelations. No more hysterics. Sister Tulah nodded curtly to the woman with the long braid hunched over the piano, her eyes not on the keys, but on her preacher. The piano died out and with another nod, so did the drums. The time for singing and dancing was over. Sister Tulah had something to say.

  She waited until the room was completely hushed, no shifting or scuffling, no small children picking their noses or slouching teenagers with wandering eyes. Until the silence mushroomed, until the apprehension became deafening, and then she grasped her Bible in both hands, raised it high above her head, and brought it down on the edge of the pulpit with the whipping thwack of leather against wood.

  “And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.”

  Tulah peeled the Bible off the pulpit and clutched it to her chest.

  “Some folks, not you saints, of course, but some—riding around out there with their Jesus fish stickers on the backs of their minivans, wearing their W.W.J.D. bracelets, making a point to eat at Chick-fil-A, yet only going to church once a week—those folks might not even know where that verse comes from. They might even say that it’s not in the Bible and they certainly wouldn’t admit that it’s from the lips of God himself, speaking through the prophet Moses.”

  Tulah grasped the edge of the pulpit with one hand and leaned forward, looming over it.

  “I’m talking about the folks who think God loves everyone, all the time, and if He doesn’t, well then He’s just a little bit disappointed. These folks who so proudly proclaim themselves born of Christ. Who feel the need to tell the world via their clothing and adornments, as if we’re all part of some sort of club. Well, let me tell you, if you need a bumper sticker on the back of your vehicle to remind you of your faith, then you’ve got a long way to go.”

  Tulah stepped back and tossed the Bible onto the pulpit with a dramatic flourish.

  “You see, these folks, they somehow have gotten it into their heads that when this world ends, when the Latter Rain falls and the Rapture is upon us, when the worthy rise to meet our Lord on his white throne, these folks think they’re all going along for the ride. That there’s room enough for everyone on the bus. That every child who helped her grandma cross the street and every man who stopped and helped a woman change a tire holds a ticket to heaven. That all you have to do is be a good person and sit your butt in church every once in a while on Easter and put a few dollars in the basket when it comes around.”

  Sister Tulah stalked to the edge of the stage with her shoulders squared back like a general.

  “But we know better, don’t we, brothers and sisters? Don’t we, saints?”

  Sister Tulah sucked in a mouthful of air and bellowed across the church.

  “How many men and women will be sealed by the angels?”

  A thin, reedy voice called back to her.

  “One hundred and forty-four thousand!”

  “How many?”

  An old woman in the back of the room screeched.

  “One hundred and forty-four thousand!”

  Tulah’s cheeks puffed as she roared again.

  “And what will happen to them?”

  “They will be taken to the throne!”

  “And what will happen to the rest?”

  “They will remain on earth to witness the horrors!”

  “And then?”

  “They’ll be judged!”

  “And then?”

  “The lake of everlasting fire down in the pit of hell!”

  Tulah nodded in approval to Brother Mark’s boy, only seven years old, with a sheen in his eyes and a feverish glow on his pasty, freckled face.

  “Exactly.”

  Tulah began to move now, prowling across the breadth of the stage with her hands clasped loosely behind her back.

  “One hundred and forty-four thousand. Sounds like a lot, but it isn’t. Most big cities have more people, and here, Christ and the angels are going to have to choose from the population of the whole world and all the folks that have ever lived in it. That’s a lot of people, brothers and sisters. A lot of people who might have thought they’d go among the chosen
, but who will be feeling those flames licking up their backsides sooner than they’d like.”

  Sister Tulah paused. The fatigue had lifted from her followers’ faces and their eyes and hands were raised to her in ecstasy. They were giddy with the thought that they, among all the world, would one day soon be sitting at God’s feet. A slow, dark grin spread across Sister Tulah’s lips. She loved to see this confidence in her congregation, especially after a day when they had, quite actually, spilled their blood to prove their devotion. She loved seeing their self-assuredness and their blind, frantic faith. Almost as much as she loved destroying it.

  *

  Ramey felt like she had spent half her life watching the Cannon brothers fight. Over girls, over cars, over family favor. More often, these were only the parameters, the ropes of the ring to give them some bounds as they raged against the forces that swirled around them every day like nipping, unseen sylphs. Vulnerability and uncertainty and pride. Always pride, the gnashing teeth of hubris that drove Levi’s fists or Benji’s smile or Judah’s narrowed eyes. She’d witnessed these three men—now pitted in a standoff in her front yard, with arms crossed, knees locked, chins raised, bowing up like roosters—do terrible things to one another. Push one another out of moving trucks, slash at each other with broken beer bottles, take wild swings with bats, hurl cinder blocks, and grapple on the ground like hogs in the mud. Ramey drew her knees up to her chest as she sat on the sun-warmed hood of her Cutlass and wondered how far they would take it this time.

  While keeping her body perfectly still, Ramey’s eyes darted across the yard to Judah, standing closest to the house, his face marbled by the porch light glow. The sky was swollen, shot through with violet fading to jet, and, through the trees, a scattering of lightning bugs were drifting in and out of flickering constellations, but Ramey was watching Judah.

  “It’s bullshit, all bullshit. That’s all it ever was, that’s all you were ever full of. Don’t try to turn this around and don’t try to drag Benji into it like he’s just some kind of dog on your side you throw a stick to every now and then when you feel like it.”