“Mighty fine,” He says again, and quickly eats the entire peach.
“Where’re you from, Stranger?” you ask Him, although you know.
“Galilee,” He answers.
“Which part of Newton County is that in?” you ask, pretending ignorance.
“No part of it,” He says, “Haven’t you ever heard of Galilee?”
“Oh, you mean the one in the Bible,” you say.
“The same,” He says.
“You know, you remind me an awful lot of a certain fellow.”
“Who’s that?” He asks.
“Fellow named Every Dill,” you answer.
“Oh,” He says. “Him.”
“You know him?” you ask.
“Know him?” He says. “Why, the day never goes by that he doesn’t yak at me. He badgers me without let-up.”
You ask: “Was it you who told him that you would show him his true vocation?”
“That’s right. I figured I’d never be able to get him off my ear otherwise.”
“But which sign did you mean? What is it you want him to be?”
“Why, you were there, weren’t you? Didn’t you see the way I fouled up Doc Swain’s car so Every would have to fix it?”
“Then you really want him to be just an auto mechanic?”
“What’s wrong with being an auto mechanic? Some of my best friends were nothing but poor fishermen. Me, I’m just a carpenter by trade myself. Besides, in this day and age a good experienced auto mechanic stands to earn a really decent living. More than decent, really. Downright indecent, if he starts doctoring the service bills.”
“Why don’t you want him to be a preacher any more?”
“I never wanted anybody to be a preacher. It’s a crying shame the way the world is filling up with preachers, and every blessed one of them has his own half-cracked idea of what I said…or what I meant to say, anyhow. If all these preachers can’t start agreeing, I might just have to Come Again, and soon.”
“But Every claims you told him in that Nashville hotel room that you would make me well on the condition he became a preacher.”
“Did he say that?” He demanded. “Well, there’s just another good example for you of how I never can get anybody to even remember, let alone understand, what I say to them. I didn’t say a word to him about becoming a preacher. I just told him to follow me. I just told him to believe in me and follow me for the rest of his life. That’s all I’ve been telling anybody. You don’t have to call yourself a preacher just to follow me.”
“But did you really make me well because of that?”
“You look pretty good, I’d say. How you been feeling lately?”
“Pretty good, thank you. And you?”
“Tolerable,” He says.
“But if you were really in charge of all that situation, why did you rig it up so that he and I wouldn’t even see one another again for more than fourteen long years?”
“Don’t question my ways, girl. Let’s just say I’ve got a pretty good reason for everything I do. Some of it may not make any sense at all, but I never do anything just to be contrary or crotchety.”
“Well, tell me,” you ask, “did you really make me faint on account of he and I making love?”
“Yes,” He declares.
“You don’t approve of fornication?”
He shudders. “Oh, that word! What I was talking about—and my followers who recorded my words sure didn’t use any of that Latin gobbledygook—was unchastity and immorality without love or even affection. Marriage is in the heart anyway. I could name you several billion married couples who are committing fornication with each other as far as I’m concerned.”
“Then why did you punish me by making me faint?”
“Did you think I was punishing you, child? Did I say anything about punishing you?”
“But you just said—”
“You asked me if I made you faint on account of you and Every making love, and I said ‘Yes.’ Yes you fainted because you were making love, but I didn’t think of it as punishment. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think it must be kind of a big thrill to pass out afterwards, isn’t it?”
“Oh,” you say. Then you offer, “Help yourself to another peach.”
“Thank you. Don’t mind if I do.” He reaches up and plucks one off the tree.
“Is it all right with you if Every and I make love?” you ask.
“Don’t ask me. That’s not for me to say. My Dad gave you folks free will in the first place, to decide for yourselves what you want to do.”
“But Every tells me that you’ve spoken out against fornication.”
“That word again! Look, let’s say I’ve spoken out against betrayal, I’ve spoken out against abusing and using others, I’m on record as opposed to uncleanness and dissipation, and I’ve taken a rather strong stand against cuckoldry, because in a triangle somebody’s liable to get hurt. But I thought I’ve made it pretty clear that my supreme commandment is ‘You better love your neighbor the same way you love yourself.’ And that means all neighbors, male and female.”
“But you don’t mean sexual love, do you?”
“I sure do. ‘Sexual’ is just another one of those fancy Latin words, and sometimes I wish I had never allowed the Romans to gaum up the language the way they have. But all love is sexual love.”
“Now wait just a minute,” you protest. “If you tell me to love my neighbor as I love myself, and you say all love is sexual, then you’re insinuating that I masturbate.”
“Ooo!” He cries, smiting Himself on the brow, “now that is absolutely the godawfulest ugly word that ever got squeezed out of Latin. Please don’t use that one around me.”
“Well, whatever you want to call it then. Is it implied in what you mean by loving myself?”
“I don’t know,” He says. “Is it? Some people do, and some people don’t. Loving yourself takes all sorts of forms and fashions. You love yourself when you eat one of these here peaches. Far’s I’m concerned, there’s not much difference between eating a peach to yourself and making love to yourself.”
“Then you don’t condemn it?”
“I condemn it if it’s not matched by your love for your neighbor.”
“Can I get into bed with all my neighbors? Do you want me to love all my neighbors sexually?”
“Now you’re beginning to sound like Every when he’s pestering me with questions. You’re asking me a big question I’m not going to answer because I’ve already answered it.”
“Is that why you refuse to give Every permission to make love to me?”
“My goodness, girl, don’t you realize I’m not in the business of granting permissions? If I had nothing better to do than grant permissions, all my time would be taken up in a more or less bureaucratic desk job, and that’s certainly not what Dad had in mind for me when He made me His only begotten son.”
“But what can I do?” you plead. “You know Every won’t make love to me unless I marry him, and you know I won’t marry him unless he makes love to me. So one of us has got to yield, right? Why can’t it be him, if you don’t disapprove of forn—of us making love?”
“Child,” He says tenderly, “my heart really bleeds for you, but there’s nothing I can do. I thought I’d done enough, by showing him that sign, by telling him to stop being a preacher. That’s all I can do.”
“Couldn’t you simply say to him, ‘It’s all right to make love to Latha?’”
“I’m sorry.”
You sigh. “Well,” you say. After a while you offer, “Care for another peach? The market’s low this year, and there’s plenty.”
“In that case—” He says, and helps Himself to another. You also have one. The two of you munch your peaches in silence.
“You know,” you remark reflectively, “there is something rather sexual about eating peaches, don’t you think?”
“You can say that again,” He agrees. “I think Dad wanted it that way, when he made them
. But if you stopped to think about it, there’s something sexual about nearly everything.”
Straightway you ask, “Are you sexual?”
“Why not?” he says.
“Well—” you search for words “—after all, you’re somebody rather special, you know, and pure and holy…”
“I’m a man,” he protests. “Matter of fact, I’m not simply a man, but the Son of Man.”
“Have you ever had any girlfriends?”
“Have I!” he exclaims. “Why, there’s never been a man in history who’s had more than I.”
“But have you ever slept with one?”
“You can’t imagine the number I’ve slept with.”
“But I mean have you ever actually…you know, actually entered them?”
He smiles. He just smiles.
You say to him, “Look, you said all love is sexual, right? Well, maybe I don’t know what you mean by sexual, but didn’t you also say something one time about loving the Lord?”
“With all of your heart, and with all of your soul, and with all of your mind.”
“But not with all of your body?”
“That can’t be done,” He points out.
“Then how can you say all love is sexual?”
“Is sex only in the body?” he asks. “Isn’t it also in the heart and soul and mind?”
“All right,” you agree. “So let’s suppose I feel a great love, which is sexual, in my heart and soul and mind, for you, and you’re here in person, so why can’t you just make love to me?”
He smiles. He commands you, “Close your eyes.” You close them and become all excited, wondering what is about to happen. But nothing happens. He is playing a trick on you. He is mocking you. But you keep your eyes closed, until He says, “Okay, now open them.”
You open your eyes. But He is gone. You are alone. “Where are you?” you call out.
“Yes, that’s the question,” He says. “Where am I?”
“Oh, dear heavens!” you suddenly cry out.
“Where am I?” He asks again. “Am I in your heart or your soul or your mind or your body?”
“Oh, goodness gracious!” you exclaim, suddenly lying down in the orchard grass.
“Yes, that’s it,” He says. “Goodness Gracious. Gracious Goodness. How does it feel?”
“I…I can’t even begin to describe it…” you say.
“That’s right,” He says. “Not even those smart Romans could come up with a language that could express it properly. So you see the trouble I’ve had trying to get my message across? You see how you folks can’t even express feelings, let alone understand what I’ve been trying to say about love? There’s just not any way of—”
“Oh, don’t talk,” you plead. “Just—”
You are there, O Bug, not I; how am even I to describe it?
“Nobody will believe me,” you declare. “When I tell them—”
“That’s true enough,” He agrees. “So why bother to tell them? Nobody would believe me either.”
You moan, “I’m going to faint clean out of my skin.”
You hear Him chuckle. “Now that,” He says, “is the closest to a good description I’ve ever heard yet.”
“Hush,” you whisper, and you whisper faintly, “Could you…oh, could you make it work just a little faster?”
“Sure,” He obliges.
You faint clean out of your skin.
And awake.
It is still night; the room floats with the charged light of a stormy night sky; you find the sheet upon which you are lying is twisted into a landscape of wrinkles. Your breath comes in heaves.
You marvel, That was so real!
You declare, Oh, I can’t wait to tell Every about it!
You realize, Oh no, if I told him Who that was, he would really wash his hands of me.
You sigh.
You stare up at the ceiling for a long while, unable to fall back into sleep. At length you speak aloud, “I love you, Lord Jesus.”
It begins to rain. It is the first rain in five weeks. Like any summer rain in Stay More, it is a downpour. My wetness awakens me. I whimper, and crawl out of the leaves and in under a cedar tree. But even the thick boughs of the cedar tree can’t keep all the rain off me. Oh, I’m as wet as a dog.
The dog is Gumper. But when he comes sniffing and nuzzling up to me, I scream and thrash about, thinking he’s a wild beast. Then, just before I could panic right out of my mind, I recognize him by his smell. There is on earth only one thing that smells worse than Gumper, and that is Gumper soaking wet. I hold my nose and yell “Git!” and kick at him.
Then an idea occurs to me: if I told him to get for home, and he got for home, I could follow and find my way out of here.
“Git home!” I yell and wave my arms and kick.
I cannot see him in the dark. Has he gone for home? But I still smell him, unless it’s what he left behind.
Then a flash of lightning illuminates him. He is under the cedar tree, on the opposite side from me, sound asleep.
The only thing worse than a wet smelly dog is a wet smelly dog who’s stubborn and stupid.
A peal of thunder lifts me off the ground.
Lightning, Lightning Bug, of an infinitely brighter sort than yours.
You wish you could sleep again, could dream again, could talk with Him again, but the rainstorm keeps you awake. Not even your pillow over your head will muffle it.
It reminds you of the night you slept with Every; the rain poured down hard that night; you were eleven years old; he was twelve. You think to go remind him of it again.
You arise. Again you put on your houserobe. You have left the door from your bedroom to the store unlocked, thus you do not need to search for the key. You open it.
He is sleeping deeply, sprawled out on his back upon the gingham bags of Nutreena and Purina feed. He no longer snores. Not even the crash and boom of the lightning storm seems to disturb his heavy slumber. You sit down upon a nail keg beside him, and in the intermittent flashes of lightning you study him. You remember he said he got no sleep the night before. He is making up for it, you reflect. Deep, deep his sleep, and deep your longing. You study and admire his face; in sleep his hair is tousled. Your gaze wanders down the length of him and back, and settles upon his groin. You detect there a tight bulge. What is he dreaming? you wonder. You cannot resist reaching out and touching it. Then you are taken with an urge to lay it bare. Slowly your fingers undo the buttons. As the last button is opened, the bulge rises. The polka dot shorts come into view, overlapped upon the bulge. Gently your fingers spread open the flap, and of a sudden the thing stands.
You regard it lovingly and a little wonderingly, thinking, It’s sure changed since he was twelve.
You dub it, with a smile: His Every-thing. My Every-thing.
You ask yourself: Do I dare?
If you did dare, it would surely waken him, and then what would he do? Would he hate you for tricking him? You do not know of the time on the road in Tennessee when he took you in your sleep, for he had censored that from his narrative. Had you known, you could have said surely, if he woke, “See, now we are really even.” But not knowing this, you are reluctant, and afraid. I do not dare, you think.
So you merely bestow a fleeting kiss upon it, and return to your room and your bed.
But you did not replace it. As you fall asleep again finally, you are amusedly wondering, What’s he going to think when he wakes up and finds it hanging out? Oh, won’t he wonder and wonder!
“Please, Gumper,” I plead. “Please get up and show me how to get out of here.” But he just lies there. Exhausted I lay my head down on the wet earth.
Ending
From the woods, night, forever, Stay More, Ark.
IT WILL END:
we sleep. They will sleep.
In the morning, early, they will go out looking for him, all of them, first his aunt who will discover him missing and then will discover, while hunting for him at Lat
ha’s place, Brother Every Banning Dill, who will be asleep in the store on a pile of feed bags with, to her profound shock and offense, his male member hanging from an open fly. Rosie will not be able to resist telling this to her husband Frank, and Frank in turn will not be able to resist mentioning it, during the height of the search, jokingly to Every himself, who forthwith will quit the search, and quit the town as well.
She will run after him. When Sonora will inform her that she saw him walking rapidly off up the Parthenon road with his suitcase in his hand, Latha will run after him, walking for a while, then running again.
She will go all the way past Jesse Witter’s place before she will spot him up the road ahead. Then she will slow to a rapid walk again. She will be panting hard, and sweating. “Every!” she will call after him, but he will neither stop nor turn his head. He will increase the pace of his walking.
She will run again, and she will catch up with him and grab his arm. He will shake her off and keep walking, his face grim. She will throw herself in front of him.
“Get out of my way!” he will snarl.
“Every, please!” she will say. “What are you doing?”
He will not stop walking. “I’m putting distance between Stay More and me,” he will say severely.
“You’re leaving me?” she will cry. “Can you leave me?”
“Easily,” he will say.
She will not be able to keep trotting alongside him. She will stop, and as he goes on past she will wail, “BUT WHY?”
He will stop, at last, and turn to her. “Because you’ve mortified me, that’s why! I caint ever show my face in that town again!”
“Just because Rosie saw you through the store window?”
“Oh, so you know about it too!” he will say fiercely. “Well, I wish you’d told me! If you’d told me, you’d’ve spared me the embarrassment I’ve done been put through!”
“What happened?” she will ask. “Did Frank bawl you out for it?”
“Naw, he laughed at me! He laughed and got downright sarcastic and told me I was sure gettin my revival off to a big start! Haw! As if I would even dare hold a revival after the word got around! I don’t even dare appear anywhere in this whole county again! Or this whole state, for that matter!”
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