by R. A. Nelson
She closes her eyes and becomes very still, very quiet. Somewhere out on the lake there is a bird making a long, unbroken noise. Lucy comes closer. I drop my head a little. Our lips touch. I shut my eyes and try to wrap my arms around her, but my hands pass through. She’s putting everything she has into our kiss. Making it real.
I keep kissing her, feeling her mouth, her warm lips, and tell myself every part of her is right there. Her lips have to be enough. They have to be all of her. They have to be.
I want to melt inside her. Not just my face. My mind. My spirit. Climb all the way in, go wherever she goes. Finally she pulls back. It’s over. She holds her head away from me.
“That’s it,” Lucy says, her voice getting faint. “That’s all of it. We can’t… we can’t touch anymore.”
My eyes flood with tears. I try to fight them back, but I can’t.
“You remember, you told me what we are … it’s too big. Too big to be held,” I say. “You told me—”
Lucy nods her head. “Goodbye,” she says. I don’t know if I really hear it, or just believe I hear it.
“I love you,” I say. I hope she can hear me. “I love you. I love you.”
She’s moving away now, not gliding, but walking.
Stepping backward into the black of the woods. Watching me the whole time.
When she goes, it’s not like the others. She keeps on pulling back, waving her small hand. I reach toward her, fingers shaking. She’s gone.
Gone.
“Little Texas!”
The man’s name is Danny. He knows me; turns out he was here before, when Sugar Tom took sick.
I’m still watching the island. Watching it move away. It’s too much, so I watch Danny instead. I can’t focus on what he is saying, though. I have to focus on the things that make sense. Things that are simple. Like the fact Danny has hair like a brush and a fire-colored beard.
He dabs at my cuts and wraps a band around my arm and pumps up that black squeezy thing. He puts something in my mouth, looks at my eyes with a little flashlight.
I don’t care about my body right now. Whatever is wrong, let it heal itself.
The boat engine rumbles. Red lights are flashing all over the pasture, white lights swinging down the shore. I look at the old trestle.
“They had to fish some folks out of the lake,” Danny says. “It’s a miracle nobody died. But everybody made it out, far as we can tell.”
Everybody made it out. Especially one in particular. She wears a blue dress, has skinny arms. Sometimes walks like a bird riding on a breeze.
The lights start blurring, washing the nighttime out. I hear men and women shouting, see them coming and going. They start to blur, too. That’s okay. I can see. I can see.
I won’t talk to any of them, so the TV people surround Miss Wanda Joy instead.
The hot lights make her squint. I’ve never seen her look so rough, eyes wild, hair in strings. One of the hospital cleaning guys points, pretending he is flying on his mop. I’m too far gone to care. We aren’t who they think we are.
Certain Certain says all kinds of news folks are clamoring to see Devil Hill, but Tee Barlow has forbidden anybody access.
“Just a matter of time before CNN, Fox News turn up,” Certain Certain says when he comes to see me in my room. His eyes are red and watery. He perches on the edge of the bed. “Somethin’ like this is just right for the freak-show slot. You gonna be hot as a two-dollar pistol, Lightning. Ministries all over itchin’ to hear you speak. Likely be a whole new wave of revival come out of this, praise His name. So maybe some-thin’ good can come out of that old plantation after all?”
I squeeze his big hand. His skin feels cold. “Thanks for getting me out of there,” I say, meaning the emergency room.
Certain Certain frowns. “Look like you been in a seven-day axe fight, lost your axe on the first day. How you feeling?”
“I’ve been better,” I say.
They have a drip needle stuck in the back of my hand. Plenty of cuts, bruises, bandages. Seven stitches over my eye. But everything’s still attached, nothing broken. Except my heart.
“You ready to talk about it, just let me know,” Certain Certain says.
I haven’t told him about how I lost his slave tag, how it saved my life. Maybe my soul.
What can I believe now?
I’ve seen too much. Besides, I’m just not built to not believe. Maybe all I can do is believe in more.
“You have to believe bigger.… The truth is not that small.”
Lucy said that.
Everything is getting soft, starting to dissolve. The fog of the drip needle is starting to kick in.
“How’s … Sugar Tom?” I say.
Certain Certain leans forward, tipping his ear to me. “What’s that?”
“S’gar Tom,” I say, slurring the words.
“Old skizzard? Talking.”
“He is?”
“Like a teenage gal with a new callin’ plan. Woke up late this evening; first thing he did was ask about you and the service.”
“Is he—is he all right? His side, arm …”
“I don’t know could he shin a bear up a tree without a stick, but he’s a tough old cracker. He’ll be all right, I’m thinking. But of course that’s up to the Big Man.”
“Can I … can I go see him?”
Certain Certain grins, his mouth tugging his tore-up lip into a grimace. He pats my arm.
“We can think about that in the mornin’, boy. You lay back and get you some rest.”
“But…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right outside. They goin’ be beating this door down any minute. I’m gonna cut me a hick’ry pole, run they asses straight back to Peachtree Street, they get too rambunctious.”
As he’s going, I raise up my hand and wave. He stops.
“What?”
“Thanks,” I say. “Thanks f’everything.”
“Shoot.”
And he’s gone. I dream of nothing. Nothing at all.
The first face I see the next morning is Miss Wanda Joy’s. She comes stepping in, light as a cat in house shoes, when they wheel out my breakfast tray. She’s looking about 300 percent better than she was. Her eyes are shooting black fire again.
“Well, Little Texas,” she says, plunking down in the chair. She’d never think to sit on the edge of the bed like Certain Certain. “We had quite a time of it, didn’t we?”
Miss Wanda Joy never asks how a person is doing unless she purposefully remembers to. It’s just not her way.
“Are you okay?” I say. I scratch at the back of my hand where the drip needle was. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to them last night. I just… I wasn’t feeling up to it. No. Really, it just didn’t feel right.”
She brushes my words away with a wave of her hand.
“It couldn’t have worked out better. You won’t believe the opportunities that have come out of this. Much better even than if the service had gone off without a hitch.
“We’ll do the big networks first. NBC, Fox, CBS, anyone who will have us. As a courtesy. But then”—her dark eyes go wet—“then they will have to start paying. Cable channels. Magazines. Don’t worry, I didn’t give them much last night. Daddy King always said, ‘Sell the steak with the sizzle.’ A book. Do you think you could write a book? Just write it in your own words. I could help with the grammar.”
“I don’t know if—”
“Of course, everything is going to be so much bigger now. Your name will be known all across the country. The world, Little Texas. Just think about that! Japan. England. Perhaps even China. In South Korea, Billy Graham had an audience of one million attend a single service! But that’s Billy Graham. As you know, fame is fleeting. What happened on that island will be old news in days. Maybe hours. If you want the maximum return, you have to keep it going, keep it in front of the public eye. Fan the flames. Tee Barlow knows a thing or two about this. He’s got the island shut down in the meantime. We’ve hired some men t
o—well, don’t worry about that. We book your new dates for you before the ink is even dry on the media contracts. With everything building to another service on the island. The television coverage would be enormous. The money—”
“But what about souls? Souls saved.”
“Oh, that goes without saying! Now, the first thing is, we have this CNN thing set for this afternoon at two o’clock. We need to get someone in here, someone good and fast. I want your hair done, clean you up some. The cuts—the cuts are good. Stitches, perfect, that will really show up well. But here’s the careful thing—we don’t have a lot of time to go over this, what you need to say. We have to be so careful. Not one word about what happened to you after you went back. Not one word. We are saving that. Everything else—there are too many witnesses. Too many people already telling their stories. But what you saw, what happened when you were alone, that’s the core.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
“What? Well, of course you weren’t. The Lord was there with you. Of course He was. We have to guard those details, save them… we especially can’t afford to let it all dribble out in dribs and drabs. Now, here is how you are going to get around that, not telling them. Because it’s the most important thing they will—”
“I’m not going to do this anymore,” I say.
“Mercy,” Certain Certain says after Miss Wanda Joy has left. “I would give ten dollars to have seen that woman’s eyes when you told her.”
We’re moving slowly up the hall, me in a wheelchair, him pushing. “I feel stupid in this thing,” I say. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
“You sure about this now, Lightning?” Certain Certain says. “You know she’s going to be after you, don’t you? She ain’t gonna let it lay.”
“I know. But that’s just the way it is.”
“No changing your mind?”
“No. I won’t…”
I let the thought trail away. I don’t want to talk about the island. I don’t know if I ever will. It’s where I lost her. Selfish, I know. But I’m feeling a little selfish these days.
Maybe by not talking about it, I can hold on to her longer? Feels like talking about Lucy might water it down, make everything drizzle away. And then I’ll have nothing.
Folks are so good at taking the most amazing experiences ever and turning them into something ordinary. Already some people are claiming there was a tornado on Devil Hill. How nobody ever really saw anything after all.
“It’s so easy to not believe. That’s what we’re coming to,” Sugar Tom likes to say. “Folks who know everything and know nothing at all.”
“So whatcha going to do if you don’t preach anymore?” Certain Certain says. “Won’t you miss it?”
I let the wheelchair wheels turn a few turns. “I don’t know. Go to a regular school. Maybe see a football game.”
“Who you going to stay with?”
A scary little cold shivers through me. Scary, but also exciting. Like maybe I get to decide. “I haven’t thought it out that far. What about you? You going on with the ministry?”
Certain Certain takes in a long breath.
“I’ve never been one to hurt for ways to make money. But it’s been a long, long time since I ever did anything else. Besides, I can’t see leaving Sugar Tom. Who’s he got, if we all split up?”
“That’s the whole thing,” I say. “We shouldn’t have to. We’re a family. Families don’t break up just because somebody wants to do something different.”
We’re quiet, both of us knowing we’re thinking about Miss Wanda Joy.
“She’s the one who’d have to change,” Certain Certain says. “And I just can’t see that happening. And you not being an adult, boy … that’s something you going to have to work around. In two years you could join the army or something. Till then, I don’t know….”
We arrive at door number 302, and Certain Certain stops pushing. He knocks on the door gently and steps inside, then comes right back out.
“They helping him take a baffroom break. But it won’t take too long.”
I climb out of the wheelchair and stand beside him. I hang my head, looking down at my hands a long time. Her hand—it fit just there. Her mouth. I bite my own lip, remembering. I have to work hard to keep everything in. I can feel it all building behind my eyes.
Certain Certain gives me a little pinch on the arm. “Hey, big man. It’s all right. It’s all right.”
I’m surprised to see Sugar Tom sitting up in bed when they let us in his room. He makes a big sputtering noise and drops his fruit cup.
“Ron’ld Ur!” he slurs, talking out of one side of his mouth. He’s so thin…. Sugar Tom’s holding his right arm funny, propping himself up with the other. There are cheap magazines spread around on the covers bones of ST. JOHN THE REVELATOR DISCOVERED IN ARKANSAS, one of them says.
“Somebody ought to take a comb to your hair, doctor,” Certain Certain says.
Sugar Tom starts to laugh, but it turns into a cough.
“How you feeling?” I say, touching his wrist.
“Puny,” Sugar Tom says. He says something I can’t make out, so I get him to say it again, cocking my ear closer. “I said puny’s better’n being in South Dakota,” he says.
“Did you see it?” I say. “South Dakota, I mean.”
Sugar Tom puts down his plastic spoon. “Su-surely did, Ron’ld Ur. Grass waving right in … front of me. And she was there. Right there.”
“Who was there?”
“Old Pu-laski,” Sugar Tom says, spitting the word out. “My Pu-laski angel.”
“Serious?” Certain Certain says. “That crazy little gal? Put a big hole in you?”
“Mayb’line Petty. I saw her. Pure as the living word. No … no pistol.”
I laugh a little, then the laugh hangs in my chest. Put a big hole in you, I think. Somebody filled up mine.
“Where’s your sooco?” Sugar Tom says.
“He ain’t understanding you, Skizzard,” Certain Certain says. “Have to speak up more clearly.”
Sugar Tom looks at me, face getting red. He shifts on the bed.
“Sooco, son. Your sooco. No minister ever lived s’posed to go around without a sooco on.”
Oh. Suit coat.
I remember my dream, waking up that time in the motor home, thinking Sugar Tom’s suit coat was the devil. And I laugh. Then I laugh some more, till it’s hard to stop laughing, and it’s all running through me inside the laugh. All the bad parts and the hard parts. But the good is mixed in there with it. Lucy. And the good is so much stronger than all the rest, it’s like the bad is something you threw in a river, and the river carries it away.
Thanks to my fabulous editor and friend at Knopf, Cecile Goyette, and her wonderful assistant, Katherine Harrison.
Thanks to my extraordinary agent and friend, Rosemary Stimola.
Thanks to five fantastic writers, Catherine Ryan Hyde, Sena Jeter Naslund, Laurie Faria Stolarz, Lisa McMann, and Mary Pearson, for their friendship and kind encouragement.
Thanks to a matchless teacher and friend, Becky McDowell, as well as her brilliant students at Huntsville High School and notrequiredreading.com.
Thanks to my friends Amy Stewart, Shay Atchison, and Terri Hull, librarians extraordinaire, and their amazing students at Holtville Middle School and Stanhope Elmore High School.
Thanks to all my great new friends at the Alabama Writers’ Conclave, the Alabama Center for the Book, MySpace, Facebook, the Writing Away Retreats, Black Cat Books in Manitou Springs, Colorado, and Tammy Lynn’s Book Basket in Wetumpka, Alabama.
And, as always, thanks to my family, Deborah, Zach, Alex, Chris, and Joe.
And a special thanks to Socks and Paco for making my desk an adventurous place to be!
R. A. Nelson lives in northern Alabama with his wife, Deborah, and their four sons. A senior technical writer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, Nelson loves poetry, quantum physics, old movies, spelunking, history, travel, ast
ronomy, archaeology, basketball, exploring, and just plain old walking in the woods. He made an exciting literary debut with his critically lauded and controversial Teach Me, followed by Breathe My Name, which School Library Journal hailed as “thoughtful, moody, and entirely thrilling.”
Days of Little Texas grew out of Nelson’s longtime fascination with the fervor and messianic showmanship of revival preachers. As for ghosts, while Nelson’s never seen one, he wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of their existence out of hand. It occurred to him that it might be interesting to see what would happen if evidence of the existence of ghosts was forced upon someone whose religion demanded disbelief. With this notion came a corresponding vision of a teenage preacher and a beautiful girl in a blue dress—characters who became Days of Little Texas’s Ronald Earl and Lucy Palmer.
Writing Days of Little Texas was a joy and a challenge for Nelson, who doesn’t mind tackling subject matter that “scares” him, meaning pushes him creatively. As a kid, he was the one who was always coming up with ideas for things to do or try, with the varying support of his brothers and “wonderful oddball friends.” He created airplanes that were launched from a giant slingshot made from old tires, explored caves and bear-walked through storm sewers, built tree houses and forts, dreamed about inventing a time-travel machine, and designed a celebrated Horror House every Halloween.
In his adult life, Nelson continues to delve into a plethora of passions, including travel to obscure and mysterious places both far afield and close to home. He feels that there are “at least ten million or so very important things” that he should know but has yet to discover. The stories he has yet to create will no doubt draw upon both his treasury of past experiences and these future discoveries.
Visit R. A. Nelson on the Web at www.ranelson1.com.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
