by R. A. Nelson
“When the dead in Christ shall rise?”
“Don’t make fun of me. What if somebody’s not good enough? What if…”
“They go to hell? Is that what you’re worried about, Ronald Earl? There is no hell.”
“How do you know?”
“Hell isn’t a place. It’s more like a condition. You understand?”
“I think so.”
“God expects us to be merciful, right?”
“Sure.”
“And He’s perfect, right?”
“He’d have to be, or nothing would make sense.”
“Okay, then His mercy must be perfect. It has to be, because He’s perfect. So just think how much more perfect His mercy is than ours.”
“But… if somebody does really bad things, evil things—”
“They’re already there,” Lucy says. “Already in hell. Nothing can be worse for a person like that than to live the life they are already living.”
“Oh.”
Lucy beams. “See, you understand.”
“No, I just know the way people like you think.”
“People like me?” she says, sitting on the bed. And I hear just how ridiculous that sounds when she says it.
“No, well… you know … people who don’t go to church. People who don’t believe the way they’re supposed to believe.”
Lucy’s eyes twinkle. “Supposed to believe? Don’t make me kick your ass. I told you before—you’re bigger than that. Way bigger.”
“I just wish I understood more, that’s all,” I say, feeling the red come up in my face.
“You’ve always understood,” Lucy says. “Whether you believe it or not. That’s why they picked you. That’s why they brought us together.”
“What do I understand, Lucy? I don’t know anything about what it’s like for you. What it’s like over there. When you’re home. Can’t you tell me?”
Lucy takes a long breath. “Okay. Okay. Have you ever almost died?”
“Well, I got struck by lightning once.”
“That’ll do.” She pats the bed. “Come here. Sit next to me.”
“You’re not going to do anything weird, are you?”
“Compared to what?” she says, laughing.
“Not funny.” But I come over and sit down. Lucy lays back crossways on the bed.
“Lie next to me,” she says.
I scoot closer, feeling the heat she is giving off, like a living furnace.
“Closer.”
I get up against her now, the whole side of my body tasting that heat through her dress. I’m wondering what she wants me to do, but mostly I’m just not caring, on account of I’m touching her. For me, she is everything and swallows up everything, and all the bad things go away in the swallowing.
“Now,” she says. “Lay your head on my—on my chest.”
She lays there looking at the ceiling, not at me. Waiting on me to do it. I scrunch up on my side, tight against her, but it’s hard to do it this way.
“Put your arm under me,” she says.
She lifts up enough to let me slide my arm under, and then she is holding me as I hold her. I ease my head over. Settle my head onto her chest. So slow, so gentle, I can feel each part of her. First the dress, then Lucy herself, in separate pieces.
“Shhh,” she says, putting a finger to my mouth.
Now my ear is flat against her. I wait, but nothing happens. After a little while I look up at her.
“Okay, I don’t think it’s going to work this way,” Lucy says. “We have to try something different.”
“What?”
“Look, I don’t want to scare you or anything but… it’s not going to work unless it’s skin to skin.” She waits, looking at me.
“Okay,” I say.
Lucy grabs the hem of her dress, starts skimming it up her body. I shouldn’t look, but I do. Her legs are thin, but they’re so smooth and perfect. The dress is past her knees now….
“You want me to shut my eyes?” I say.
Lucy stops. “A little late, huh? You’re so innocent, you know that? In-no-cent. But that’s one of the reasons I love you.”
She starts pulling again; her legs widen out, so soft and curved … then her underwear, then above her underwear, her belly button like a tiny scooped-out shadow. All the way to just under her bosoms. She stops again.
“They’re called breasts, Ronald Earl. B-r-e-a-s-t-s. It won’t kill you to say it.”
“Lord, okay. Breasts.” Can you read my mind?
Lucy smiles. “Not all the time. Only when you really want me to.”
She goes to skimming the dress again—and she doesn’t have a bra, there’s just the swell of her skin. She’s not like that girl Genna at the rest stop. Lucy’s breasts are … small.
“You can start breathing again,” she says. “Now lay your head down like before.”
I lay my head over again, my ear flat against her warm skin. So tight against her, the air goes out of my ear like a suction cup. I’m stuck to her chest. I can smell her skin. Can feel the wet corner of my mouth right there.
I don’t know what she needs me to do—then I figure maybe it’s just laying still and quiet so she can concentrate.
I can hear it—I can hear her heart. And it’s beating so fast. I didn’t know a heart could beat so fast. Kadump, kadump, kadump. Then …
“Oh Lord.”
Something is changing.
The side of my head, my ear, my cheek, my jaw, all these parts of me—they start to lose their feeling. They start feeling just the same as Lucy’s soft, hot chest. They are all the same parts, mine and hers; there’s nothing between them, on account of there is nothing between them—they are pieces of the same body.
“Ohhhhh.”
My head—it starts to sink into her. She’s letting herself go all soft, and my head is going down into her, I’m sinking. Sinking straight into her, and I’m still, so still, afraid if I even twitch a muscle, I will ruin it.
I’m passing through, except I’m falling, there’s nothing else but falling and falling and—
“Open your eyes,” Lucy whispers.
First it’s all over white, bright as looking into the middle of the sun, but somehow the brightness doesn’t hurt my eyes. Things start to settle around me, take shape. I’m sitting in a garden on a little bench made out of black iron. Leaves are floating in the air all around me, leaves so pure green it makes me ache to look at them. I can see veins running all through them, like I’m looking at them under a magnifying glass.
And I can smell something like honeysuckle, only it’s a hundred times, a million times, the smell of honeysuckle, but still, it’s not overpowering. I could lay there breathing in that smell till the Judgment.
I can’t see water, but I can hear it, dribbling and splashing like a song spilling over this place.
This place—I’ve fallen into Lucy’s heart. And I know what she said about hell must be true, because it’s true about heaven. It’s not a place, either. It’s a gift you are given.
Lucy sighs, and I can feel her sigh roll through me like a golden warm day. The garden disappears. I can’t see anything, only black. Then there is a chain, monstrous heavy, links big around as my wrist.
The chain sets to wrapping itself around me, starting with my legs, then pinning my arms to my sides, crushing the air out of my chest. Then it comes up around my mouth and I can taste it, can taste the rusty metal as it covers my nose and last my eyes, all the while pulling tighter and tighter. I can’t—I can’t stand it anymore. I have to pull myself back. Get out of her. Back into the room, away from her.
Can’t breathe.
The chain is still wrapped around me, those cold links. I fight, trying to tear the chain off. Too big, too heavy, I—I—I—
Lucy claps her hands in front of my eyes, one big slapping noise. I see her white blue eyes. I suck in a big breath and fall over on my back.
She has given me a taste of how it feels to be held
like those people are being held. The agony they must have been suffering all these years … to be separated that way—I have no choice. I have to do it. Have to help them break free.
So they can go home again.
I lay there awhile, my breath coming in short, shaky gasps. Lucy puts her warm face on my chest, cooing to me till I start to feel myself calming down.
“Let me know when it’s okay,” she says, stroking my cheek. “Let me know. Because we need to talk. We have to make a plan.”
When I wake up there is a knock at my door. The last little bits of a dream about Lucy melt away. The knock comes again.
My head clears, and I remember about Sugar Tom and the plan I made with Lucy. My heart tightens. I haul on my pants and go to the door.
“Well, good morning,” Miss Wanda Joy says. “It’s about time.”
Her eyes are dark, exhausted, but lit up all the same. She is wearing a long black dress and holding a New Testament with a blue cover.
“Today’s the big day, Little Texas.”
“Yes’m.”
“Well, we have much to do, so please come along.”
I pull on my shirt and shoes and follow her down. Miss Wanda Joy stops me on the stairs, takes out a pocket comb, licks the palm of her hand, and smooths my cowlick back. She has been doing this long as I can remember. She does it two or three times before she’s satisfied. I notice her hands are trembling.
“Is everything all right?” I say. “You look tired.”
“I’m fine. Everything is ready. After breakfast I want you to spend a quiet day indoors before the congregation arrives.”
“Have you heard anything from Certain Certain about Sugar Tom?”
“No. And I don’t expect to for a while. He has a long road ahead of him. We need to dedicate tonight’s service to him.”
I think long and hard before I ask my next question.
“Did Certain Certain tell you about what we saw in the dirt all around Sugar Tom’s chair?”
“The cloven hooves? I know about that. What did you expect him to do?”
“Satan, you mean?”
“We’re taking his sting away. Our faith is too strong, our mission too righteous. He knows that. All he can do now is childishly act up.”
“What happened to Sugar Tom wasn’t childish.”
Miss Wanda Joy takes my face in her hands, eyes burning direct into mine. She doesn’t say anything, just stares, squeezing harder and harder till I can feel a tear track down my cheek.
“Tonight we are going to fight one of the Lord’s battles, Little Texas. Tonight we are His warriors. Should we put down our swords and leave the field to the enemy without a fight? Romans, chapter sixteen, verse twenty. ‘And the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly.’”
She lets my face go. I can still feel the imprint of her big fingers. She touches the cover of her little Bible to the tear on my cheek and scrapes it away.
“Let’s go downstairs,” she says. “They’re waiting for us.”
At the breakfast table Faye Barlow asks about Sugar Tom and looks at me with a secret hurt all over her face. I know what she really wants to say: I warned you. Didn’t I warn you?
“With the Lord’s help and our prayers, I’m sure Sugar Tom will make a complete recovery,” Tee Barlow says. He has us bow our heads and says an extra-long grace.
“Well, thank you, Tee,” Miss Wanda Joy says when we open our eyes again. “So how is the weather report?”
“Couldn’t be better. High sixties to low seventies when the sermon is scheduled to begin. Not much humidity, a bit of a breeze coming off the lake. We won’t need the tent.”
Miss Wanda Joy has made out some notes for me, and I spend a little time pretending to go over them, then wander around the house, slipping into the den to watch TV when Faye Barlow is not around. The day creeps by but also moves too quick. It’s not that it lasts so long, but that I can feel each drip of its passing.
I head back upstairs to read after lunch. Usually on the day of a service I spend a lot of time talking with Certain Certain and playing chess with Sugar Tom. It feels awful lonesome not having them around. But it’s worse than that. Without them I feel like I’m going into battle without my armor. I pray our plan will work. If it doesn’t…
Don’t think like that.
I fall asleep late in the afternoon and dream of that same farmhouse that is all white on the inside, and I’m walking through it.
Black sludge starts streaming down the walls. It spills over my feet, starts climbing up my ankles, then my shins, getting deeper and deeper. I can’t find the way back out….
I force myself awake. It’s still daylight, and somebody is tapping on the door. I sit at the little table with my book to look like I’ve been reading all along and tell the person to come in. It’s Faye Barlow. I feel my jaw tighten.
“I’ve been feeling so guilty and sad, Ronald Earl,” she says. “Knowing things aren’t right between us.” She comes across the room holding a big plastic bag draped over one arm. It looks to be a suit of dark clothes. “I brought you something for the service.” I guess I’m looking at her kind of nervous, because she turns around and says, “Don’t worry. I’ll hide my eyes while you try them on.”
I slip into the suit. The pants are just right; nothing is bunched up or loose. It’s the first time in years I’ve had a suit on that is truly my size.
“It fits perfect,” I manage to say, holding my arms out to check the sleeves. “Thank you.”
“You look wonderful,” Faye says, turning around. “So handsome. I want you to keep it.” She fiddles with the shoulders, then knocks some lint off my back.
“Is it… Mr. Barlow’s?”
She walks over to the chair but doesn’t come any closer. “It belonged to a cousin of mine, a boy named Bradley. He moved here when his mother, my first cousin, was sick, and there was really nowhere else for him to go. He lived with us nearly a year. Such a beautiful singing voice!”
I can feel some pain in her voice, and I let her go on.
“He—Bradley—he had an accident over in Morgan County. A drunk driver. Bradley was in the passenger seat, and he—he was killed.”
“Oh. Lord. I’m sorry,” I say, feeling uncomfortable. All of a sudden the suit feels a little tight.
“It—it was just so sad. He was such a beautiful boy in so many ways. I’ll miss him always. The last time we ever decorated for Christmas, it was Bradley who did it.”
I put my hand on the material, running my fingers across the neat stitching, trying not to think about it. That this was a suit worn by a person who is dead. I slip the coat off and lay it on the bed.
“Well,” Faye says. “I just wanted you to have that.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Tee said to remind you, he will be leaving about four o’clock.”
“That early?”
“He’s going to start ferrying people over at four-thirty. He wants you to be on the island to receive them as they come over.”
“Wait—you said ‘he.’ Aren’t you coming?”
Faye gives me a pleading look.
“I’m sorry, Little Texas—Ronald Earl—I’ve decided I can’t be there. Not after dark. I would walk a hundred miles to hear you speak—anywhere but on that island.”
“I understand.”
“Please—please don’t feel mad. And don’t mind me. My husband—he’s embarrassed enough as it is.”
“It’s all right. Thank you again for the—for the suit.”
We eat an early dinner, and my heart feels like a pebbly stone is stuck behind it. And every time it beats against the stone, I can feel it, every little pit and pockmark.
I give my black shoes a quick shine, then say a long prayer holding on to my Bible, kneeling in front of the bed, eyes shut. I read once that this is not how the early Christians prayed. They prayed standing up, looking up at heaven, with their hands in the air.
“They must have
been an optimistic bunch,” Sugar Tom has always liked to say. Sugar Tom …
I’m not putting myself up there with our Lord and Savior, but I can’t help thinking—when Miss Wanda Joy comes to fetch me—how they found Jesus in the garden and led Him away. Him knowing all along what was coming.
We head down to the dock, with me toting the prayer box instead of Certain Certain. Miss Wanda Joy has on a long blue dress I’ve never seen before; she must have just gotten it in town. I’m surprised. She is smiling, eyes like bubbles of shiny ink.
“You ready?” Tee Barlow calls.
Miss Wanda Joy grins.
“‘And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.’”
“Amen, sister,” Tee Barlow says.
Three of the volunteers are waiting on us when we get down to the dock. We all shake hands. The men are quiet. They all have hairy arms and look strong. It makes me feel a little better knowing men like this will be there with us.
Tee Barlow waves us into the pontoon boat. It’s a little strange being in a boat dressed in a suit. I have to stand up the whole way to make sure I don’t mess up my pants. We swing out into the water, and as the boat slowly passes under the skeleton of the trestle, I can feel the long shadows of the iron crosspieces ripple over my shoulders.
I touch the little piece of brick in my pocket.
Lucy—are you with me?
Tee Barlow steers the boat up to the dock on the far side, and the men scramble out. I help Miss Wanda Joy step out, and we meet several other volunteer folks on our walk up the hill. They clap me on the back, offering best wishes and prayers. Miss Wanda Joy swishes through them like a queen.
It’s funny how this part of being a preacher is something I’ve never gotten used to, being amongst people telling you how great you are. I don’t feel great. I feel… small. Not young. Just small.
The clearing is already clotted with hundreds of folding chairs lined up in ranks. On the far side of the columns is a tall metal tree full of lights that look like silvery pots of fire. The shadows of the pillars run almost to the water’s edge.
