Mercy Me

by Margaret A. Graham

  “I got a license number I want you to look up.”

  “I’d be glad to do that for you.” He rolled his chair over to the computer. “Gimme the number.”

  “It’s South Carolina, 409 ARK.”

  The sheriff stopped short, his mouth dropped, and he shot me a look I’ll never forget. “What you want that number for?”

  “Nothing important. Just curious.”

  “Curious?” He stared at me. “It don’t have nothing to do with burying that mule, does it?”

  “No, nothing about the mule. Why do you ask?”

  He shifted his chair back to the desk. “Well, Esmeralda, this is my son’s number. If he’s in any kind of trouble . . .”

  I had to think fast. “Oh, Sheriff, don’t you think you’d be the first to know if Horace was in trouble?”

  “Well, then, what is it brings you down here at eight o’clock in the morning, wanting to know my son’s license plate number?”

  I tell you, the man was getting downright insistent. “Well, if you must know . . .” Then it came to me. “Sheriff, I’m planning on buying Elijah a tiller, but I have got to find something for him to haul it around town in. I was just hoping the owner of that old white pickup would be willing to sell. If the price is right, I might be able to raise the money to buy it.”

  Sheriff Thigpen relaxed. “Oh, I see.” He laughed a little. “You had me worried there for a minute. When Horace buried the mule for you, he come home and told me that you and them Willing Workers is something to be reckoned with. You want me to call him?”

  “No, that’s all right,” I said, heading for the door. “I’ll take care of it later.”

  Boy, was I glad to get out of there! My conscience was beating up on me about lying like that, and I knew I had to find a tiller so I wouldn’t be outright lying for long.

  When I got back home, the mail had already come. Along with a bill, there was a note from Beatrice.

  I read it as I was walking back to the house, skipping down to the part where she wrote:

  Esmeralda, you must be out of your mind. There is no way in this wide world I can believe that man Carl has taken a fancy to me. Besides, I am not the least bit interested in any man.

  But I done what you asked me to. I looked him over good this morning. Looks like he shaves every day and he wears round glasses with a ribbon holding them on. No long nose or nothing and although he crawls around under houses looking for bugs he is clean. Of course, that pigtail sticking out from underneath his baseball cap is most likely not clean. I hate that thing. He don’t ever take off that cap. Chances are he is bald on top. If he has a potbelly he keeps it covered under his jacket. On second thought, he does not wear a jacket so he must not have a potbelly. If he didn’t have that pigtail he would be an all right looking man but looks is not everything. He must not be married, he don’t wear a wedding ring. What more do you want to know?

  I felt good about that letter. Given enough time to collect my thoughts, I would write her a letter and see if maybe we could get something going there.

  My phone was ringing. I picked it up, wondering if it was Beatrice.

  “Miss Esmeralda?” It was a man’s voice.

  “That’s right.”

  “This is Horace Thigpen. We have got to talk.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything. “I’ll be up to your house in five minutes.”

  11

  In a few minutes I heard the squeal of tires as that truck turned the corner. Horace Thigpen wheeled up my driveway so fast he clipped my blue hydrangea. I met him on the porch.

  He was white as hoarfrost froze solid. “Miss Esmeralda, I want to know how you got my license number and why.”

  “Well, Horace, I see you driving all over town.” I was stalling, trying to come up with an answer that wouldn’t give me away. “I could’ve got it in the parking lot down at the sheriff’s office.” As soon as I said it, I knew he could see right through me.

  “What do you mean you ‘could have’? You know good and well where you got it!”

  My heart was thumping. “Oh, I do, do I? Horace Thigpen, I am a busy woman, and with all I got to do, there’s no reason under the sun why I should clutter my mind with details such as that.”

  He parked himself on the glider. “Miss Esmeralda, I’m sitting right here until you tell me the truth. I believe you hid in them bushes down there next to the street and got my license number in the dead of night.”

  Well, I saw no use in denying it. “Horace, I didn’t know it was your truck.”

  “You do now!”

  I was afraid to open my mouth. When Horace saw I wasn’t going to volunteer anything more, he stormed out at me. “What business is it of yours how I spend my time, where I go, what I do? You’re just a nosy woman out to cause trouble for other people. And you call yourself a Christian! Exactly what did you plan to do once you got my number?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t have a plan exactly, but I’ll tell you right now, we don’t need such as that going on in Live Oaks.”

  He snorted. “You don’t live in the real world, Esmeralda. You and them religious pokes have got nothing better to do than take away the rights of people like me. A man has got a right to his own kind of pleasure if it don’t hurt nobody else. What harm is it to you?”

  “Do you want a glass of tea?”

  “No, I do not want a glass of tea!” He stood up to look out the porch. “I guess you’ve spread this around to all your busybody friends.”

  “No, Horace, I haven’t. I haven’t told a single soul.” I sat down on the other end of the glider, hoping that might help cool him down, but he kept on ranting.

  “That cock-and-bull story about wanting to buy my truck—what makes you think my truck is for sale?” He didn’t expect an answer, obviously, because he kept right on going. “That was just an excuse you give my daddy, but I tell you, Esmeralda, you better not tell him anything different. And I better not hear you’ve told anybody else how you got my number. If I hear one word of this, it is just possible Elijah’s shack will burn to the ground, with him in it.”

  “What? Are you threatening me? How dare you!”

  “You heard me. Elijah has got no business using kerosene lamps in that shack. They explode easy. Besides, any puff of wind can turn one over. Nobody would ever believe a fire at his place was anything more than an accident. Do you get my drift?”

  “Get off my porch, Horace Thigpen. Get off right this minute!”

  He smirked. “I see you got my drift.”

  I wanted to throw him down the steps, but he took them two at a time and jumped in his truck. I yelled after him, “Horace Thigpen, be sure your sin will find you out!”

  As he backed down the driveway, I could see that he was grinning.

  I turned, went back in the house, and slammed the screen door. I was so mad I was talking to myself out loud. When I’m mad like that, work is the only thing helps get it out of my system. I got the hoe and headed for the garden.

  Chopping weeds, I went over that conversation a thousand times. I tried to think of what I might’ve said different so as not to show my hand, but chances were he knew the truth anyway and nothing I said would’ve fooled him.

  It did unsettle me to be called nosy. And also the things he said about Christians. Were we a bunch of busybodies? Well, I didn’t know about that. Maybe we were.

  Maybe I was.

  At the end of a row, I leaned on the hoe a long time, wondering about that. Finally, I went back to chopping and muttered, “Lord, let me know what you think.”

  It was Wednesday, and by suppertime I had to stop and get ready for a missions meeting at church. I took my bath, washed my hair, rolled it up, and watched the news while I ironed my red blouse.

  After the news went off, I unplugged the iron, folded up the board, and cleaned my teeth. After getting dressed, I brushed out my hair and sprayed it good. When I was powdering my face, I studied what I was seeing in the mirror. “Esmeralda,” I sai
d to myself, “you are one old fool. Do you think Jesus would hide in the bushes to get the goods on somebody?” Of course, he wouldn’t have to. But be that as it may, like as not he would wait his time and, given the opportunity, love that whoremonger until that sorry person gave up and repented.

  I did not feel good about myself.

  At the church, as I was climbing out of my Chevy, I could hear the band instruments getting tuned up. What a racket! I knew that if I could hear it out in the parking lot, it would be louder still inside. Much as that would bug me, I was determined not to say one word about it.

  The missions group was meeting in the W.W.s’ classroom across the hall from where Boris’s practice session was going on. The women were not happy about giving up the fellowship hall for the young people, and the noise threatening to drown out our meeting did not help matters. Clara, whose granddaughter had become a star performer in the youth group, was trying to stay on top of the situation, but already there was an undercurrent of comments being passed around. I knew Clara would try to keep the lid on any criticism about Boris’s music program, but she might just as well try to put a lid on a volcano determined to erupt. Standing behind the podium, she held on to it like she needed support and commenced the meeting on time.

  We had prayer and the usual stuff before Clara started reading a letter from missionaries. Trembling like she was, the paper in her hands rattled and her voice got screechy as it rose above the racket coming from across the hall.

  While reading at the top of her lungs, the tune-ups stopped, and she was left hollering so loud you could hear her downtown. I had a hard time keeping a straight face.

  Clara quieted down and resumed reading just as the youth choir began rehearsing. Naturally, everybody tuned out Clara to listen to the singing. Seeing she had lost them, Clara stopped reading the letter and turned to the business of raising money for AIDS orphans. The women did not reach for their pocketbooks, because they weren’t listening to her. Clara was frantic, wide-eyed and screaming to be heard, straining her neck, stretching it so long she could’ve passed for an ostrich.

  It’s a good thing she was screaming real loud, because the band started up again. The trumpets and the trombones were not getting along together, so Boris would stop them and then get them started again, only to stop them a second and third time. To keep up with this, Clara’s voice went up and down like a yo-yo. With the sudden stops, she would be caught yelling so loud the kids could hear her in the fellowship hall. About the time she brought down the volume, the band would start up again. That woman has got one shrill voice.

  Finally, the band calmed down and a violin took over. The look on Clara’s face was something to behold. From screaming, she switched to beaming. Wiping perspiration from her forehead, she put her neck back in place and for once shut up. In the middle of whatever her granddaughter was playing, the music stopped and we heard the girl say, “I popped a string.” That was the end of her solo, and in two minutes the full force of horns was blasting again, the sound bouncing off the walls, down the hall, out the windows.

  That’s when the stack blew, and the criticisms began to pelt down on Boris Krantz. “I’ve had about enough of that!” Thelma said, her voice loud and clear above the noise.

  The high-sounding horns and the big, booming drums reverberating all around did not let up, and Mabel clapped her hands over her ears. “Brass horns and drums have got no place in church!”

  Like that little boy with his finger in the dike, Clara tried to stop the gushing of hot words. “Oh, ladies, let’s not criticize,” she yelled in that trumpet swan voice of hers. “Music has done wonders for my granddaughter.”

  I believe I’m the only one heard Clara, because the other women were all talking at once.

  “You call that music?” someone hooted.

  “Whatever it is, it is outrageous!”

  “Why, you could dance by what they were singing just minutes ago.”

  “They practically do dance—swing their hips with the rhythm, snap their fingers, and so on.”

  The sparks were flying, and a prairie fire couldn’t spread no faster.

  “Ladies! Ladies!” Clara screeched. “We must get back to the program. Pleeeze!”

  But there was no reining them in—they were off to the races. “Ain’t it enough that Boris is bringing that homeless man to church? Why, that man is no doubt a drug addict.”

  “Or running from the law.”

  “Could be a gangster, a murderer, or who knows what!”

  “Most likely, he’s a pedophile coming to church to prey on our young people.”

  Thelma leaned straight forward in her chair. “I know from my experience up North that street people bring vermin into the rescue missions. What will the deacons do when vermin gets in and piles up in the corner of a pew?”

  I, for one, didn’t know who Vermin was, but I say, whoever is brought to church is a good thing. I didn’t open my mouth, however.

  In that pious way of hers, Mabel Elmwood pursed her lips and informed us, “I like the old hymns. They have got a message.” Then she kind of giggled. “Roger says these songs the young people sing is nothing but a ‘seven eleven’—seven words sung eleven times.”

  If that was supposed to be funny, I didn’t get it.

  A loud drumroll was knocking my hearing aid out of commission. When the noise finally stopped, Thelma stood up. “If you ask me, ladies, it is high time the deacons put Boris Krantz on notice that he has got to clean up his act!”

  Clara, wringing her hands and about to cry, sputtered, “Please, ladies, pleeeze!”

  I should’ve nipped the thing in the bud, but now that the pot was boiling over, I took charge. I stood up, and they all put their mouths on hold for a minute to look at me. I deliberately took my time, knowing it would make them more curious. I laid my pocketbook on the chair, straightened my skirt, and with my Bible under my arm, marched up front. Motioning Clara aside, I took over the podium, waited for her to sit down, then laid my Bible open on the speaker’s stand. The music had stopped, and everything was so quiet you could’ve heard a pin drop.

  First, I asked if they had forgot the jazzy choruses we used to sing when we were young. Clara’s head was going up and down like one of them stuffed puppies in the back window of a car.

  “Half them choruses had no Christian message to speak of,” I told them, “and if they did, it went right out the window. Even back then, I wondered why we were climbing Jacob’s Ladder, and as for ‘Give Me Oil in My Lamp,’ I didn’t see no need of that since we all had electricity. The most we did was sing our hearts out and make a joyful noise, thinking it was unto the Lord.”

  “That’s right,” Clara said, her voice so high that she sounded historical. “Go on, Esmeralda, go on.”

  I flipped the pages of my Bible until I came to the Chronicles and a verse I had marked. “Listen to this: ‘And David and all Israel played before God with all their might, and with singing, and with harps, and with psalteries, and with timbrels.’” I looked down over my glasses at them. I didn’t have to say a word, because I could see that what I was getting at was soaking in.

  Then I continued. “As for brass horns and drums in the church, may I remind you ladies that the Lord uses trumpets so much in the Bible, they must be his favorite instrument? He even lets Gabriel use one. At the sound of the last trumpet, I hope you ladies will not be put off by it being a loud brass instrument and miss the rapture.”

  They didn’t like that one bit and squirmed in their seats, ready to come back at me. But I wasn’t through. “May I remind you that King David’s psalms are full of clanging cymbals and trumpets? They used anything they could get their hands on, not just harps. Let me read you just one verse from Psalm Ninety-eight.” As I turned the pages, I told them, “When you go home, mark it in your Bible. It’s verses 8 and 9; no, it’s 5 and 6. It reads: ‘Sing unto the LORD with the harp; with the harp, and the voice of a psalm. With trumpets and sound of cornet make a
joyful noise before the LORD, the King.’ Ladies, I have been told David’s harp was like a guitar. What do you make of that?”

  Nobody challenged me, but I was far from through. They would have to sit tight.

  “As for the young people keeping time with their music, swaying a little, well, I don’t go for that, because Papa didn’t allow us to keep time patting our feet in church. But if you would read your Bible a little more often and a little more carefully, you would know that Miriam and a bunch of women danced with tambourines to celebrate crossing the Red Sea. It was women with women, of course, nothing like couples slow dancing. David danced, too, when he was bringing up the ark. It was only men dancing, of course. Don’t you go outta here and say that I said it is all right to dance in church. I don’t favor that in the least, but we have got to let the young people enjoy their way of worshiping, even as they let us enjoy our way.”

  So far, so good. I took a deep breath and dived into the hard part. “Now let me explain something to you.” Then I laid it on the line and talked about how music is like language and how our music language is foreign to young people today because they’ve been brought up on rock and roll, country music, and the like of that. (I was in water over my head trying to think of the different kinds of music they have.)

  “Excuse me,” Mabel sniffed. “That is worldly music. We are in the world, but we are not of the world.”

  Before she scored a point, I whipped out my secret weapon, the sword of the Spirit. “Mabel, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ With all due respect, you have not understood one word I have said here. Much as you and I might like the ‘Hallelujah Chorus,’ young people don’t cotton to that kind of singing; it is not in their language, so to speak. We have been sitting here listening to reports from missionaries in foreign countries. Every one of them missionaries had to learn the language of the people they were sent to win. You should be thankful that you don’t have to learn Chinese or this language that’s foreign to us, this youth music. We all should shut up and be happy the young people are making music to Jesus. We don’t have to like it. I, for one, will not split the church over it.”