“Oh,” she said. “It’s not red like blood?”
“Naw, it’s fairly white.” He remembered that his “Assortment” contained one scene in which the feller’s jism landed on the gal’s bosom, and he was tempted to offer to show that scene to her. But somehow the thought of watching a stag film in the company of a doe was awkward, and nearly all the scenes showed how the fellers were able to go on and on and on forever before they shot off. Hoppy lost himself in meditation upon this woeful inadequacy of his and did not even notice that there were no further questions or comments from his audience down below. When at length he remembered that he’d been engaged in a spicy conversation with a member of the opposite sex, he bethought himself that perhaps she had at last drifted off into the land of Nod, and he certainly felt like joining her there. He yawned noisily, smacked his lips, rolled over again toward the wall, cradled his head in one arm, shut his eyes tight and tried his best trick for falling asleep: emptying his head of all thought. After a long while a thought forced itself upon him, and he realized he had never wished her a good night.
He whispered, although it seemed the chorus of night critters was quieting, as if they had fallen asleep themselves or were simply giving up in their efforts to advertise their horniness. “Good night, Sharline. You sure do play the pianer awful purty.”
She did not even say, “Why, thank ye kindly.” Or even “Good night yourself.” She did not say anything, and for a while he bounced back and forth between two thoughts: one, she was already on the seventh of her forty winks and completely out, or two, something he’d said about jism might have offended her. Maybe she didn’t care for buttermilk. He lay there for a long, long time before a third possibility hit him: she wasn’t even there. “Sharline!” he said, not whispering but loud enough to wake the dead. It did not wake her. He climbed down off his upper bunk and felt around on her bunk but there was no body in it. He went to the door and looked out. Maybe she was just out there somewheres attending a call of nature. He was tempted to put on his pants and shoes and go off looking for her but he didn’t bother getting dressed, he simply went on out there. He’d spent most of his childhood going barefoot, so it didn’t bother his feet none. There was a moon, not full but waxing, and he could see well enough not to trip over anything. He walked all around the schoolhouse and even looked into the girls’ outhouse (the boys didn’t have one, as usual). He wandered through the brush arbor, which made him think of Emmett Binns and made him wonder if possibly Sharline had sneaked off to join the man. Where was Binns staying, anyhow? Probably with the Bedwell’s in the town’s best and biggest house, across the road from the general store. Unmindful that he was dressed only in his underclothes, Hoppy went to the Bedwell’s house and walked around it. Dogs barked at him, and he retreated, but not before convincing himself there were no lights in the Bedwell house, nor anybody up.
Some time had passed, and it occurred to him she might have returned to Topper and gone back to bed, and he checked there, but she wasn’t home yet. As long as he was awake, he fished his tobacco pouch out of his shirt pocket and rolled himself a cigarette, and while smoking it he recalled how Sharline on the first night—or rather Carl—had talked about fairies, and Hoppy had found him or her in the edge of the woods. So Hoppy explored the tree-line and for a while he stared off up the forested mountainside. The woods were shrouded in mist or fog, which seemed to glitter in the moonlight and amongst those shimmerings he caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a figure…or two or three. Nothing except heights had ever scared Hoppy since he was a little kid, but there was something spooky about those figures, whatever they were, which made Hoppy very reluctant to approach them. But he did, plunging into the woods and climbing the mountainside. Soon the various figures had merged into only one, which he clearly perceived now as the silken slip she was wearing (which was light pink, but in the black and white of this story was only a nice pale sepia). “Sharline,” he said.
Then it seemed as if she divided into two or three other girls in slips, who drifted off into the mists. But there was one left, and that was her, and that was enough. And she spoke. “You scared me.”
“You scared me,” he said. “What in heck are you doing out here?”
“Dancing with my friends,” she said.
“Your fairy friends?”
“If that’s what you want to call ’em.”
“I thought they were only Carl’s friends.”
“But I’m Carl.”
“Why did you leave, without ary word to me?”
“All that talk we was doing. It just made me get too het up and light.”
“So you came up here to cool down?”
“Sort of. My friends helped me.”
“How’d they do that?”
“They helped me have that ‘big spasm of delight’ you was talking about.”
“Oh. Did ye actually, now? How was it?”
“Just swell. Everything around me, all these woods, everything, just quit, just stopped being, and I had the all-overs right powerful.”
“All-overs, huh? I reckon that’s a good way to put it. Did your friends show you what jism looks like?”
“They don’t have any.”
“Why not? Aint some of them fairies fellers?”
“No, they’re not males or females.”
“Huh? Then how did they make you come?”
“Come?”
“That’s what it’s called, that all-overs business.”
“It was more like went than came.”
“Then how did they make you went if they don’t have any tallywhackers?”
“Is that what you call them?”
“Or whatever. Peters. Peckers. Prides. Pricks. Privates. Penises.”
“You don’t have to have one of those to come. Or to help someone else get over the mountain.”
“Who told you that?”
“They did. My friends. I told them about you, and they said your problem is that you live inside of your penis.”
“My, my. Is that what they said? Well, that sure is clever of ’em, even if I aint so sure just what it means. It don’t even sound like something you could make up out of your own fine head.”
“But they also told me I ought to be happy because you do keer so much about me that what bothers ye most is the thought your penis would let ye down so’s you couldn’t satisfy me. They said that most fellers don’t even keer about whether their gals can come or not. They said you feel you’d be a-cheating me if you came and I didn’t. They said most fellers just want to get their own pleasure without giving any.”
“They said all that? Well, I tell ye, they sound like they’ve got a good head on their shoulders.”
“They told me to ask you how many times you’ve been kissed.”
“Me? Well, come to think on it, that there is something I haven’t yet tried.”
“You went to bed with two or three gals but never kissed one?”
“I reckon it never crossed my mind. Nor theirs.”
“Landon. Kiss me.”
Chapter nine
Bright and early the next morning, folks started coming from all over. Word must’ve spread awful fast, and it made him jealous to think that all these folks were coming primarily to camp out for the brush arbor camp meeting, not to attend the pitcher shows, although Sharline tried to console him in that suspicion by pointing out that probably it was a combination of the two attractions: that those folks were coming to camp out for the brush arbor, sure, but they were also coming because they’d heard that the camp meeting would be including pitcher shows at night.
“Has anybody ever camped out for a pitcher show?” she asked him. It was one of these here rhetorical questions that he didn’t have to answer, although the answer was no, nobody had ever been known to camp out for pitcher shows, whereas at camp meetings it was traditional for whole families to come into town with their wagons loaded up with all the supplies they’d need, plus a tent of some sort. The pop
ulation of this town seemed to double overnight, the same night that he and Sharline had become more than just friends, had in fact become a twosome, and had slept so late that when they finally did step out of Topper it was to discover that dozens of strangers were setting up their tents around the perimeter of the brush arbor. Most of these weren’t really tent tents, that is, they weren’t made of canvas ducking or nothing, but just crude shelters of some kind, boards and stuff thrown together, more likely tied than nailed, that would make sleeping places for a family. It looked like a gold rush town or something, and a whole bunch of little kids was already surrounding Topper, so that when Hoppy put on his ten-gallon and stepped down from Topper, one of the kids asked him, “Are you the preacher?”
“No, I’m just the pitcher shower,” Hoppy replied. He caught sight of Emmett Binns moving among the settlers of this tent city, and pointed to him. “That there’s the preacher right over yonder, in the fancy suit.”
But the kids did not leave. Another one asked, “What’s a pitcher shower?”
“A man who shows moving pitchers,” Hoppy answered. These kids all looked like they were from the deepest, darkest hollers of the mountains.
“What’s a moving pitcher?” they wanted to know.
Sharline, dressed real pretty with her hair brushed nice, came down out of Topper. “Just wait till you see,” she told them. She swept her hand across the screen tacked to the side of the schoolhouse. “You’ll see horses a-galloping, and injuns a-whooping, and six-shooters a-blazing, and mountains much mightier than these.”
“The heck you say!” one of them said. “How do you get the pitchers up there? How do you make ’em move?”
Sharline pointed to the square hole in the back end of Topper, beyond which stood the projector, and attempted to explain what a projector was, and Hoppy smiled with admiration and no little pride as his girlfriend put in plain words the complicated mechanics of the cinema. Hoppy realized she would make a good school teacher if they ever had to give up traveling and go to work for a living.
But the kids weren’t completely satisfied. “Show us a pitcher!” they requested.
“It’s daylight now,” she observed. “We’ll have to wait until dark.”
“Huh? How can we see the pitchers in the dark?”
These kids and their families, Hoppy and Sharline were to discover, had come to town from the most remote parts of Johnson and Franklin counties; for some of the younger ones, it was their first trip to a town of any size. All of them, grown-ups too, were thrilled with what amounted to a holiday, at least a holiday from the backbreaking work of their poor homesteads in the far hollers.
Groups of people were already singing hymns, although they were conflicting with each other: one group here was singing “I’m Coming, Lord” while another group over there was singing “Happy Am I” and although both were in 4 /4 time the melodies clashed.
Emmett Binns came up and said, “Sister Sharline, hon, we need you to play the piano. Do you know ‘We’ll Work till Jesus Comes’?”
“Hum a little of it and I’ll pick it up,” she said, and left Topper and Hoppy to go up to the piano beside the pulpit.
Hoppy wasn’t none too happy to lose his assistant to the religious crowd, but he enjoyed watching and listening as her playing brought the whole bunch of them together in singing the same song, without conflict. Soon she was joined by a pair of fiddlers, a banjoist, a mandolinist, a dulcimoron, and three guitarists. And she hadn’t even had breakfast yet, although most of these people were getting ready for dinner. As he listened to the music, Hoppy let his mind back up to the enchantments of the night before. You know, it was hard not to believe in those fairies she claimed she’d talked with and cavorted with. He didn’t see how she, or any gal, could have made up some of the stuff they had told her. He still didn’t quite understand what they’d meant by him living inside of his tallywhacker, but it was certainly something to think about, and, in fact, when he and Sharline had later attempted to become one, he had tried to get outside of his tallywhacker so to speak, that is, he had endeavored to quit thinking of that pestiferous appendage as a part of himself, or at least not the dominant part of himself during the firm but gentle moments of taking Sharline’s virginity. And sure enough, it seemed to him, at least it seemed to him, that he had been able to last a little longer than he expected to, not nearly long enough to give her any satisfaction but not so all-fired speedy as to mortify him. He hadn’t hated himself at all, and they had drifted off together to the land of Nod all entwined. Yes, there probably really were some sort of fairies out yonder in the woods, and he wouldn’t be at all surprised if he eventually met up with some of them himself, if he managed to stick with Sharline long enough.
Later he took Sharline a plate he filled from the dinner-on-the-grounds, a feast which, he discovered, would be a kind of continuous part of the camp meeting. After they’d eaten, they joined the audience in the brush arbor for the afternoon’s services. It was a scorching hot day, but the thick canopy of brush overhead filtered the sunlight that fell on them, and once again Hoppy was sorry this was all in black and white and couldn’t do justice to the yellowish-green glow that the brush, filtering the sunlight, cast all over everything.
Sharline had to get up and return to the piano whenever a hymn was called for. There weren’t enough songbooks to go around. Sharline had told him she couldn’t read music anyhow; she could just play it by ear. For that matter, most of these folks, coming from the farthest reaches of the deep Ozark Mountains, couldn’t read in the first place. So the congregation improvised, with the loudest voices coming from those who knew the hymns by heart, while those who didn’t hummed or crooned under their breath. Even Hoppy was able to join in on the bass parts of “Amazing Grace” because he’d heard it so often, although it bothered him to declare himself “a wretch like me,” even though it was the truth.
That was the last hymn, for a while, and Sharline got up from the piano and came to sit beside Hoppy while one of the elders delivered the opening prayer, thanking the Lord for the beautiful day and for bringing all these folks together here in this peaceful and holy place and asking the Lord to grant power and persuasion to Brother Binns in his efforts to lead the unrighteous to salvation.
Then Brother Binns mounted the pulpit, holding his arms wide in welcome after brushing back his slick hair. His voice was soft and gentle as he began, and Hoppy had to allow that he was a pretty good speaker. He hadn’t said more than a dozen words when the first shouts of “Amen!” came from the audience, and soon Binn’s every sentence was met with folks hollering “Hallelujah!” and “Praise the Lord!” and “Yes, Jesus!” and “Glory to God!” Sharline, who had apparently had one or more previous experiences listening to Binns in a brush arbor, whispered to Hoppy that this was called “getting happy.” Hoppy figured out that the main drift of Binn’s sermon was to convert the unsaved to repentance and baptism and salvation. But the preacher first had to spell out the sins and transgressions which required salvation, and these included drinking, smoking, lying and cheating, playing cards, disobeying parents, disbelieving the Bible, fornicating, dancing…and attending pitcher shows. Hoppy’s hack-les rose as he listened to Binns declaiming, “Bretheren and sisteren, lookee yonder at that big white sheet a-hanging from the side of the schoolhouse! Do ye know what that’s for? Tonight after it gets dark, right here on this very sacred ground, right here in front of the innocent childring and womenfolks, a man who thinks he looks like a cowboy name of Hopalong Cassidy, and that’s him a-setting right there, friends, that man is going to start up a machine that will throw up on that screen big pitchers of people actually moving around and doing things, nonsense about cowboys and all sorts of foolishness meant to steal your minds away from righteousness. And he’s planning to make you pay cash money just for the right to look at it! If it wasn’t so sinful for you to watch such foolishness, you could stay right in your tent and see it just as well without paying a penny. But he’s
going to try to get you to sit right where you’re sitting now and pay for the privilege! He’s going to sell you a one-way ticket to Hell!”
Some of the womenfolk in the audience stood and started shouting angrily in a tongue that wasn’t English but wasn’t any tongue known to man, either. Hoppy was taken aback at the audience’s clamor, and looking around him he beheld the hostile looks of a bunch of tough fellers who seemed ready to lynch him. Sharline put her hand on top of his, where he was clawing his knee.
“Don’t let me catch none of you good folks at the pitcher show tonight,” Emmett Binns warned. “Just to make sure you won’t be here for such as that, we’ll all gather tonight at the river. They’s a hole on the Mulberry not far from here where we can take our lanterns and have a night-time baptizing, while this pitcher shower stays here all alone.”
“Except for me,” Sharline said out loud, loud enough that the preacher heard her. He cast her a stern glance and seemed to be trying to think of a way to answer her.
“Bretheren and sisteren,” he said to his audience, “most of you good folks who came here for this great revival meeting, some of you coming for miles and miles and planning to stay at least a week, you didn’t bring any money with you anyway, did you? Hard times like these, you didn’t have any money to bring, did you? Like the Good Book says, First Timothy six and ten, money is the root of all evil. So you don’t want to give any of it that you might have to fill the pockets of this evil pitcher shower. Matter of fact, I think it would be a good idee if you took any money that you might have brought with you and get rid of it by putting all of it in the collection plates that Brother Dowdy and Brother Tharp are going to pass around right now! What do you say? Let me hear you, what do you say?”
The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3 Page 10
