by R. A. Nelson
“Please.”
I look at Certain Certain; he raises his shoulders. Miss Wanda Joy comes over, her mouth set in a tight line.
I kneel beside the girl. My heart is in my neck. “I’ll do— I’ll do what I can.”
She looks to be about my age. Thin and small with curly blond hair. Her face is wet, wet as if somebody just splashed her. I bend over her.
“Y’all step back, give her some air.”
The top of Lucy’s dress is open a little bit. Her skin is smooth and perfect.
I have absolutely no idea what I am doing.
I don’t feel ready. Everything is wrong. When the Spirit comes over me, when I’m full of the Holy Ghost, I can move mountains. I know I can. But everything strong has already rushed out of me tonight. I am empty. Tiny. Weak. This is just Ronald Earl Pettway kneeling here, not Little Texas. Pray, I think. Pray to heaven….
I close my eyes and clasp my hands together in the air over Lucy’s chest.
“Dear blessed heavenly Father. Please guide my hands and bring about a healing to this girl’s—to Lucy’s—spirit, her soul, and her body.”
I open my eyes. Her father is hovering over my shoulder, her mother at my elbow. I put my ear close to Lucy’s mouth. She is breathing, but it sounds shallow, rough.
Then Lucy’s eyes flick open and lock on mine for just a second. She moans, face twisting in pain. Her hands clutch at her stomach, fingers digging in. She starts tearing at her dress, pulling so hard the buttons are about to tear loose.
“Get her hands!” I say to her father, and he and Certain Certain bend low to pull them back.
Lucy screams and bucks forward, then flops back, limp. I lean over and put my hands over her. I’ve never been so close to a girl like this. She’s everything I’ve ever been afraid of, all of it, in one soul, one body, taunting me.
I glance at Miss Wanda Joy. She makes a face like she disapproves. But I’ve got to do something. Anything.
“Please,” Lucy’s mother says.
My hands start to shake. I don’t know how to make them stop. I drop them down to the only place it feels safe to touch, the place between Lucy’s chest and belly—so warm!— the material of her dress is so thin, I can feel her hot skin. Her bosom is small—that’s what Sugar Tom says to call it, a bosom.
“Lift her up,” Miss Wanda Joy says.
“But…,” I say.
Certain Certain has already got Lucy under her arms and is standing her. She doubles up in pain again and slumps toward me. Her father helps Certain Certain prop her up.
“Now,” Miss Wanda Joy says, looking at me. “Do it now.”
“Hurry,” Lucy’s father says again. “Look at her, look at what she …”
Her lips are turning bluer. Is she even breathing? Lord help me, help me, please. Then her eyes pop open and she is staring right straight into my eyes, pleading for something:
Take the pain away, take me away, save me, save me, save …
A single tear burns down her face.
I clap my eyes tight, force myself to clear my mind. Think. Something clean. Something pure. Remember. Remember. And I do remember. Mark, chapter nine, verse three: “And His raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow.”
Shining white as snow, shining white as snow, shining white as snow.
I say it to myself over and over—till it seems like I’ve said it a thousand times. And at last the whiteness, the goodness, the clean fills up my head. It’s all I can see, even when I open my eyes. Now, thank the Lord, I can feel His power flood into my fingers, boiling straight up to the tips. My voice comes out hoarse.
“Are you ready to be sanctified by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ?” I say.
Lucy’s answer is barely a whisper, more lips than throat.
“Yes.”
I slam my hand into her forehead, not the heel this time, but laying my whole fingers up into her wet hair—
A sound comes up in my ears, a sound like I’ve never heard. Like something moving, something tearing apart. I don’t even know if it’s anywhere besides my head.
Lucy howls and bows her shoulders. I open my eyes—I can see again. Then Lucy goes slack and drops straight into Certain Certain’s arms. He lays her back on the blankets. I look down. Lucy is smiling.
A smile that only comes from a deep inside healing.
Lucy’s body is limp. Certain Certain wraps her in one of the blankets, and her father picks her up again.
“Little gal gonna be just fine now,” Certain Certain says, patting her yellow hair.
“Thank you, thank you so much,” Lucy’s mother says, hugging me tight and kissing my cheek. She stuffs something in my coat pocket.
“God bless you, Little Texas,” her father says, tears rolling down his face. He works a hand free to shake. “I can’t tell you how much this means to us.”
Lucy’s eyes are closed, but there’s still a little half smile on her mouth like she’s out of pain, at least. As her parents leave the tent, I can see her legs dangling out of the blanket. Her mother is walking alongside her father, holding one of Lucy’s feet. For the first time I notice she’s wearing little white basketball shoes. High-tops. It’s the last thing I see of her as they round the corner.
Something about those shoes … or maybe it’s just how frail she looks, how slack her legs are hanging….
I sit down hard on the stage, head spinning.
“You all right, doctor?” Certain Certain says, touching my arm.
“I’m—I’m a little dizzy,” I say.
“You need some supper, that’s all. Sit still a spell, and we’ll all of us go get something to eat. Ain’t never been prouder of you, boy.”
He claps me on the back and walks over to the volunteers to get them started breaking down the tent. But it feels like something is breaking inside me. Miss Wanda Joy comes bustling over.
“Little Texas. Did they—I saw her put something in your pocket….”
I pull the crumpled twenty-dollar bill out and push it into her hand. Jump down from the stage and start running. I rush out of the tent, see a big motor home perched alongside the sorghum field with the words Gulf Breeze painted on it.
Miss Wanda Joy has always warned me not to hang around with the folks I heal.
“People can be … unpredictable,” she says.
The taillights flash, and the big motor home is rolling, making the long, slow curve back toward the main road.
Take me with you!
I pull up, breathing hard, sweaty in Sugar Tom’s suit. I take the suit coat off and loosen my tie and yank it off, too.
Then there is nothing but crickets in the sorghum and stars covering the sky in tiny fires a million miles away.
I never knew my great-uncle, a man Miss Wanda Joy calls Daddy King. Certain Certain says Daddy King brought a truckload of souls to the Lord.
“Then one night in Galveston, he was hollering about ‘smiting the idolaters’ and keeled over from a brain aneurism.”
Daddy King was twenty-five years older than Miss Wanda Joy when they got married. She carries a picture of him wherever she goes. He’s got a big, wide face, an old-timey mustache, and slicked-back hair. Eyes that follow you.
I try to think about what that must have been like, falling in love with a man so old. But maybe a woman like Miss Wanda Joy doesn’t really fall in love in a romantic way? She’s always so practical. She would think about things from every angle, then choose the best one.
I admit I can’t picture any man sniffing around her these days. She has got to be close to fifty or more. But Certain Certain says it’s the way she looks at the world that has hardened her up the most.
Miss Wanda Joy keeps a ledger detailing every place we’ve gone. It shows how much of a love offering they gave in such and such a town, going back years. She always says things are getting tougher every year.
“Folks just don’t believe like they once did,” Certain Certain says under his breath so she can’t hear. “Rather sit
at home, watch some fool on TV, pay by credit card. ‘Pray for my soul, Pastor, I can’t go to the baffroom by myself no more.’ Hallelujahjesus.com.”
We’re sitting in the IHOP waiting on our food. Miss Wanda Joy’s sitting by herself in a booth, counting the collection. She rolls all the bills in rubber bands. Certain Certain claims all that twanging and popping is the most irritating sound in the world.
She must be home by now, right?
Lucy’s family. Probably they live in a two-story house with a yard and a dog. Somebody comes by every day and throws them a newspaper. They keep their grass cut. Ride the bus to school. Sing songs at Christmastime around a big old tree.
“I didn’t even get her last name,” I say, almost not realizing I’m talking out loud.
“That sick little gal?” Certain Certain says. “She in no mood to fool with you, boy. Besides, what you gonna do, chase them all the way to Mobile?”
I feel a tickle of excitement in my stomach. “Mobile? Is that where they’re from?”
Certain Certain reaches across the table and smacks the side of my head.
“How would I know? Alabama tags, all I saw. What you wanna go mess with her for? Little thing is too narrow in the hips.”
“Hey.”
“Am I lying?”
“She’s not a horse.”
Certain Certain laughs. “I could eat me one right about now.”
I sigh. But it feels good to be back in my jeans. Not many folks in the restaurant this late; most of the other customers have tattoos and motorcycle head rags. All the waiters are very polite, with thick black mustaches, black hair, and accents. Our server says his name is Azeem.
“It means ‘defender,’” Azeem says. “It is one of the ninety-nine qualities of God.”
“That a fact,” Sugar Tom says. I stop his arm from dragging through the boysenberry.
Azeem smiles. I have never seen teeth so pure beautiful. “I am from Kandahar.” He makes his hands like he’s holding a rifle. “Bang!”
“May I have more orange juice?” Miss Wanda Joy says from her booth, scowling.
“That’s what you think, is it not?” Azeem says. “When I say Kandahar. Bang. CNN.” He points up in the air as if there is an invisible TV there. “But it is a very important city. Founded by Alexander the Great. You do not know this, I think.”
I have barely touched my Colorado omelet. How far away is Lucy right now? Is she sleeping at home in her own bed?
“You know they put pancake batter in that, don’t you, Lightning?” Certain Certain says to me.
“Orange juice?” Miss Wanda Joy says, coming over and sitting down with the prayer box tucked under her arm.
“Ninety-nine qualities of God,” Sugar Tom says. He shakes out his pack of Marlboros. The front of the package always reminds me of chess, on account of the two horses that look like knights leaning against the king’s crown.
“No smoking, please,” Azeem says, wagging his finger.
“Everything is no smoking these days,” Sugar Tom says, frowning so hard his eyeballs are near lost in his eyebrows. He glares at Azeem. “Do you believe Christ the Lord is your personal Savior, young man? Have you been born again?”
“Sugar Tom,” Certain Certain says, touching his arm.
“Who is this Born Again?” Azeem says. “Once is enough, I think.”
Miss Wanda Joy clonks her glass on the table, making everybody jump.
“Orange juice. Please.”
Azeem looks her square in the eyes and gets the full jolt. He scoots off and doesn’t say another word the whole rest of our meal.
Certain Certain drives the motor home back to the camp. When we stop for gas, Miss Wanda Joy fishes out a couple of bills so Sugar Tom can buy the latest copy of the Star. He holds it open so I can see it, too. There’s a story about a man who lived forty days in the Australian desert with nothing but a Bible. He ate the pages.
“Made it all the way to Galatians,” Sugar Tom says. “And look here. Astronaut James Irwin has finally discovered Noah’s ark on Mount Ararat. I swannee.”
“That man is dead as my grandma Florala,” Certain Certain says. “He was a Christian. They had a write-up about it in the Christian Examiner years ago. How can a dead man be discovering anything?”
“It’s all right here in black and white,” Sugar Tom says.
“So maybe old James is a holy ghost,” Certain Certain says. “Maybe Noah give him some instructions up in heaven on where to find it.” He laughs.
“Keep it up, make all the fun you want,” Sugar Tom says. “‘Let those be stricken with terror, that come against thy holy people to blaspheme.’ One thing I have learned is every story of the strange has a mustard seed of truth.”
“So you think he is a haint?” Certain Certain says. “Come back down to Earth till his mission is complete?”
“Better reread your scripture,” Miss Wanda Joy says, biting a link sausage in half. I can tell by the way she’s sitting, she’s got the prayer box settled across her lap. “Ecclesiastes, chapter nine, verses five through six: ‘The dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.’”
Worst thing about being on a revival tour? Sooner or later all the talk doubles back to the Bible. Like that man lost in the Australian desert makes me think of Deuteronomy: “Man doth not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
I take that to mean all kinds of things. I need more than just bread to live. More than just old folks and their Words. I need someone who—
“What you thinking ’bout, Lightning?” Certain Certain says.
“Nothing.”
“That little gal in the blue dress?”
I look out at the dark. There’s a picture of a pancake with a blond-headed girl on it. She’s looking right straight at me.
“Can we go?” I say.
Back in camp Certain Certain climbs inside the truck. I see the dome light flick on, and he is already in his undershirt. The light flicks off again. Certain Certain sleeps up in that little space above the cab. I’ve always liked small, secret places like that.
Sugar Tom has settled into bed, but he wants the light on so he can finish reading his magazine. I step outside to stretch my legs. The tent is packed away, and all the volunteers are gone, but I can still see the tire marks where Lucy’s motor home was sitting.
“Little Texas.”
I jerk around, and Miss Wanda Joy is standing behind me.
“I’m going to take a little walk before turning in,” she says. “Would you like to come along?”
I know better than to say no. She heads straight across the sorghum field, with me dragging along behind. I can barely see to keep from stepping on the plants. Miss Wanda Joy stops close to the gurgling sound of a little brook.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“I’m okay. A little tired, I guess.”
She circles around me, getting between me and the motor home. I can see little pieces of light in each of her eyes and not much else.
“What happened tonight with the healing?” she says, voice tight.
“What? I thought it went pretty well—”
“You know what I mean. The little girl in the blue dress. Do I need to worry about you?”
“No, ma’am. I’m okay.”
“Are we doing too much? Too many services?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just…”
How can I tell somebody like her what’s bothering me? I’d sooner run naked down Bourbon Street with my hair on fire.
“Just what?” she says, waiting.
“Nothing. It’s just… I didn’t know … I didn’t know what to do for her. She was so hot—I mean, her skin. She was so sick. I was scared I maybe couldn’t help her.”
Even in this light I can see Miss Wanda Joy’s hands go
to her hips.
“Well, of course she was sick. They are all sick.”
“Well, ma’am, some of them …”
“What are you saying?”
“Well, most of them … they aren’t so hard to heal. You know what I mean?”
“No, I do not. Please explain it to me.”
My mind jumps to the little old woman in the flat shoes. “Like that woman with a hip problem. I knew—I knew I could help her. Most of them are like that. They are so … so ready. She believed so hard, Certain Certain could have healed her. It’s like Jesus says—”
“And what does He say?”
I swallow. “Well… that anybody can do a miracle. It’s the believing that does it. Jesus just said a thing and it just was. It was already there. Because they believed so hard. But this girl, she wasn’t even completely awake….”
Miss Wanda Joy puts her hands on my arms, squeezing hard.
“Do you presume to know what was in our Lord and Savior’s mind when He performed His great works?”
“No, ma’am, it’s just that—”
“If just anybody could perform a healing, if just anybody could do miracles, then why don’t they?” She lets me go.
“Because they—um, maybe on account of they don’t know they can—”
“Let me tell you something, Little Texas. This whole ministry was founded by my grandfather on one very sacred element—the absolute uniqueness of the anointed. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Yes’m, I think so.”
“The Church of the Hand. That is your hand it’s referring to. Your anointing.”
I feel her straighten, and her breathing eases up a little. “People come to see you, Little Texas. A uniquely anointed servant of God. That is the wheel that makes everything turn. If you cease to be uniquely anointed in their eyes, everything— all our work, our ministry—all falls to naught.”
“But what… what if it’s something I can’t help?”
“Are you saying your belief is failing?”
I think very carefully about what I say next. “No, ma’am. No. It just… it was hard, that’s all. I was afraid—afraid of what might happen. That girl—Lucy—she might have died.”
