by Billy Coffey
“Maybe Reverend Johnny just got tired is all,” Abel says.
“That man don’t know tired, boy. Don’t know trial. Don’t know what we go through ever’ day.”
“You mean Dumb Willie?”
“Gives a damn about Dumb Willie,” Henderson says. “I mean me. Raisin’ up a child got a man’s body and don’t know his head from a hole in the ground. That boy’s an evil. Stains our good name.”
“He ain’t evil, Mister Farmer.”
“You shut up.” Henderson raises his hand, making Abel jump, then lowers it. Wouldn’t be good for business, striking a boy in front of Christians. Stain his good name. “Oughta smack you for talkin’ to things you don’t know. You ever had a daddy, you’d know better. Dumb Willie’s a curse. It’s a monster inside’m. Anybody knows that, should be you.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Shut up,” he says again. Then softer and tired, like he’s got no strength left in him to speak a threat: “You shut your little bastard mouth.”
Henderson walks off, muttering to himself. Far down the path, Abel can hear Dumb Willie’s crooning. More folks pass. The crowd in front of the barn begins to thin as Lisa reappears. She glances around as though embarrassed and shoves a wad of money into Abel’s hands.
“Stick this in your pocket,” she says.
“What’s it for?”
“Us,” she answers, and when she takes in his eyes she says, “Don’t think bad of me, Abel. Please. I didn’t make as much today as I should’ve. Darnell’s glad to see us up here, but not so much he’ll forgive our debt at the market. That hill preacher didn’t have much, but the lady one from town handed over a dozen coffeepots worth of tips.” She grins. “Guess all these people were right. Miracles happen.”
Abel can’t decide which is worse, that his momma is depraving herself or that he is the cause.
“What’d that Henderson Farmer want?”
“I don’t know,” Abel tells her. “Nothing.”
“Well, you stay here, there’s one more preacher I want to talk to. Don’t know if he’s got much charity to give, but he’s staring. You hang on to that money, Abel. I can’t let’m see I already been given to or I’ll look greedy. And you hang on to it tight, or this whole sorry night’ll count for nothing.”
“Yes’m.”
“Good, then.” Lisa squeezes Abel’s good arm (not too hard) and smiles before swaying off in her blue jumper. She turns back when he calls.
“Do you wish I was healed?”
“Nothing would make me happier. Stay here now. Toots love.”
“Toots love,” Abel says.
He remains in place more from shame than obedience. His right arm is throbbing now. Reverend Johnny sticks his head out from the barn door and inches his way toward the side, where he disappears around the corner. No one—not even the singing women—sees.
It’s a trick, Abel thinks. All of it. The healings, that flash. He’s seen no miracles this night, only weakened people who expected such because they believed themselves deserving of it. Folk will believe most anything they think can help. Or heal. But still.
But still.
He watches the darkness at the corner of the barn, wonders what’s there.
Lisa is talking to a man holding a Bible in one hand and her fingers in the other. She’s smiling.
You stay here, she said, but Abel moves anyway. He has always done his best to obey and be no more a burden than he must. Yet now, this night, he decides that burden is one that must be shared. His momma shouldn’t be the only one who must beg.
Besides, the only miracles you get in this life are the ones you go after on your own.
*
There is no dark like country dark, and that is the sort Abel finds around the side of the barn. The trees grow thick here and close, swallowing the sky above and the voices out front. What glow is cast by the lantern light fades. There is no path.
He scoots his feet along the uneven ground rather than raising them so as not to stumble. A hint of what may be a man’s cologne hangs in the thick air, sweet and damp and woody. Abel passes this off as another of the mountain’s aromas instead, believing the scent too pure to be bottled. No sign of Reverend Johnny. It is as if the traveling preacher has vanished, returning to the very strangeness from which he emerged. For not the first time this night, Abel ponders what in fact he is doing, what it is exactly he wants. He decides it is proof, nothing more. Proof of Reverend Johnny and maybe, maybe, a chance to learn.
The first trick ever taught to Abel came out of a library book. One Hundred and One Magic Tricks for Boys was the title, plucked from a shelf on a whim by his momma. It took him over a month (which seems a year when you’re only seven) to learn how to make a quarter disappear well enough to shock Lisa to a yelp, but that shock and yelp were enough to hook Abel since. It isn’t so much that he believes in magic, just that he does it. That he imparts only for a moment, long enough to turn a trick, the sheer notion of possibility in the hopes that he, too, may be reminded of its fact. That things aren’t always what they seem and that life, the world, everything, is not as dull and gray as he sometimes fears. It is a belief he has never been capable of putting to words but has always felt—that the unseen fringes of all he sees are laid in bright and flowing hues and sometimes those hues leak to the center, not giving new life but rendering the life already there somehow more.
That, he thinks, is what happened tonight inside that barn. In the end, that’s all magic really is: a shot of color into a dying world.
He runs his left hand along the barn’s outer wall, afraid that if he loses hold he will be lost forever in deep woods. Time and place warp with no means of direction. Each shuffle brings him a step farther into the unknown. It is as if Abel makes his way not from one side of the barn to the other but from this world to another hidden alongside, leaving his mind to quarrel with his heart. One shouts, Turn back, the other, Push on, his desperation caught in the middle.
The wall ends at an abrupt right angle, leaving Abel to grope for it in panic. Here the trees yield to a wide field bathed in the faint light of moon and stars, tall grass rustling as though hiding some unseen army. A lone whip-poor-will calls from the bank of trees at the far edge—what Abel takes as the only living thing here other than himself until he spots the rusting sedan parked against the back of the barn. Both the trunk and the driver’s door are open, leaving the dome light to surround the few feet around it in dull amber. Reverend Johnny is there, loading bags into the back. He slams the trunk and sighs hard as he leans against the bumper. Abel hears a clicking sound. Sees a flash, not like the others, spark in Reverend Johnny’s hand, smoke rising like a prayer’s ghost. His other hand holds a wad of cash he sets to counting.
Abel steps out from the side of the barn. Turns back. Steps out again. He speaks with as much force as his lungs will allow before fear can win him again, hoping the squeak can carry this distance between them:
“Excuse me, sir.”
Reverend Johnny jumps so quick that his cigarette goes flying into a bit of trampled grass. The money disappears into his pocket. “Who’s ’at?”
“It’s me,” Abel says. “Abel Shifflett? I seen your show.”
The preacher looks to relax, though only some. He picks up his smoke from the edge of the dome light’s arc, puffs twice, then snuffs it under his shoe. “You liked to scare me to death, boy. What you doing back here?”
“I seen you leave. You snuck, but I seen you.”
“Then you got good eyes.” He leans right and left, peering into the black spaces behind where Abel stands. “Anybody there with you?”
“Nosir. My momma’s around front selling her soul. I did something bad.”
“And your daddy?”
Abel shrugs. He doesn’t think Reverend Johnny can see. “My daddy’s dead.”
“Well then, maybe you should go keep an eye to your momma, Abel Shifflett. Service is over. All my healin’s done.”
> “How’d you do all those tricks in there?”
“Tricks?” Reverend Johnny steps forward, easing Abel back. “You think that’s what they are, then? Don’t seem like tricks’d bring you all the way back here risking a momma’s wrath. Come on over here, son.”
Abel moves far enough that the moonlight catches him.
The preacher nods. “Tricks, you say. Didn’t look to me you thought it was tricks when you stood out in that aisle and lifted your hand.”
“You seen me,” Abel says. “I knew you did, but you didn’t call on me. I know a man named Dumb Willie. You didn’t call on him neither.”
“Dumb Willie? Believe I know the man you mean. Lots folk in there in need of healin’ tonight, but I am only a single soul. Pains me that I can’t help’m all. Is my burden, you see. One of many. You don’t need me to set that arm right no way. It’ll heal on its own.”
Abel says, “Ain’t my arm I need set right.”
He sees Reverend Johnny’s head dip down and up. “You got a condition,” he says. A statement of fact rather than a question. This, Abel knows, is neither trick nor magic. No one has need of powers to know something is wrong about him. “You think I didn’t call you up because I can’t heal you.”
“Thought that’s what my momma wanted. I still think it, even though she don’t believe.”
Reverend Johnny leans down, hands on his knees. “And what is it you believe, boy?”
“I don’t know,” Abel says. He’s never pondered such a thing. “But I can do tricks. Not as good as you, but some.”
As proof, Abel slides his left hand into his pocket for the nickel he’d used to impress the girl on the bench. Which didn’t, he concedes, though this time it isn’t merely a nickel that Abel conjures, but the grin on Reverend Johnny’s face. “I was hoping you’d teach me.”
He chuckles. “That ain’t half bad, kid. Not half bad at all. But here’s your mistake—you think all the healin’ I do is by my own hand. It ain’t, son. Lord’s One gives me that power, just as He gave me eyes to see plain. I can’t teach you that. It’s a gift not mine to bestow. All I do is heal.”
“You heal for real?”
“You seen that in there,” Reverend Johnny says.
“Can you heal me? It ain’t selfish. It’s for my momma as much as me.”
The preacher leans in close, studying things. “There’s too much doubt in you, Abel Shifflett. Takes faith to be made well.”
Abel is ready for this line of protest. “That shouldn’t matter none,” he says. “You’re the one doing the healing, so you’re bound to be the one needing more faith than me. Which you got.”
“Afraid that ain’t how things work.” The preacher stands back up, folding his arms. “What you want here, son? You ask me to heal what God Hisself made to be broke, that needs faith. More faith than you got, maybe even more than was in that whole buildin’ tonight. Ain’t a person this world can find faith like that in the time it takes to walk from the front of a barn to the back. Sorry, Abel Shifflett. I can’t help you, and I got to be moving on. Road’s ever long.”
He turns back toward the car. Abel stops him. “What about one a those words, then? Like the ones you gave all them others. I need to believe to hear one a them?”
Preacher eases back around. Abel inches near all the way to where the dome light reaches. Letting Johnny get a good look at how pitiable the boy in front of him is, Abel hoping guilt can manage what begging has not.
“A word?”
“I hear something good, maybe then I’ll believe. Something that’ll help.”
“Help what?”
“Me and my momma. We’re dire.”
Reverend Johnny measures his words as though weighing them on a balance. “Might be so inclined as to give you a word, son. One that may well be a boon to your happiness and alter your very life. It is a gift no less precious than the healing your doubt will not allow, and one that takes no faith to receive. Just ears to hear is all that’s required. But even a gift comes with a price. This here’s my livelihood, you see. Puts gas in my car and food in my belly. I can’t give it free, even if it’s just you and me here. Wouldn’t be proper.”
The preacher stands waiting for an answer Abel can give until the idea finally comes. It is a terrible thought at first, a thing he knows if followed through will lead to a whole new sense of dire the likes of which he and his momma have never seen. And yet Reverend Johnny’s words hang like fruit ripe for picking, and Abel has never been so hungry.
He reaches into his pocket and draws out the money his momma gave him to hold. Lofts it high so Reverend Johnny can see. For once, Abel is glad for his tiny hands. They make the cash look even more.
“I give you all I got,” he says.
Reverend Johnny grins. He whips out a hand and snatches the money away, leaving behind a tingle in Abel’s fingers. “This’ll do. Yessir, this’ll do just fine.” He glances again behind where Abel stands. “Have to be a quick one, though.”
Abel readies himself. He expects Reverend Johnny to do out here just as he’d done inside, and that is how things at least begin. The preacher raises his hand (to the stars this time rather than some old cobwebby ceiling) as though to beg quiet, cocking his ear for a voice small and still that only he can hear. Waits.
“You getting something? Momma’ll be waiting. She told me not to move.”
“Hang on your britches. This ain’t like dialin’ Verizon.”
“Okay,” he says. “Sorry,” he says.
Still nothing. Abel leans his neck back, trying to see. There is the moon and most of Orion, other dots of light he and Dumb Willie have long stared at from the field behind his house but never really seen, never considered. Far away comes the sound of engines starting. He hopes one of those is not his momma, so fed up with the boy her son has become and so disappointed that he wasn’t healed that she now feels it best to leave Abel up here to rot.
“Abel Shifflett, the Lord says He knows you hurt. He knows it, that’s what He’s telling me.” The preacher coughs once, excuses himself. His shut eyes clench. His mouth winces like he’s stepped into a cow pie. “He, uh, says you’re special—”
“He better not be saying that.”
“—and that He—” Reverend Johnny coughs again. Tugs at the collar of his shirt with the hand not raised up to call down heaven. “Sorry,” he says. “I ain’t. This ain’t right.”
“What do you mean it’s not right?” Abel asks. “I don’t got any more money.”
The preacher’s chin, tilted toward the moon, now tilts higher. Tears fall to his cheeks as his Adam’s apple begins to rise and fall like he’s choking on something that will go neither down nor up. Abel can see the tendons of his neck strain, making tiny valleys of skin down through the narrow part where Reverend Johnny’s shirt is unbuttoned.
“What’s wrong? Reverend Johnny?” Abel cannot hide the panic in his words. “You ain’t got to do no tricks,” he says as the preacher’s feet set to dancing, his heels turning in the dirt and now rising up, putting him on his toes, Reverend Johnny struggling, a haaaaaah coming from his mouth as Abel’s panic yields to full-on fear. “I said no tricks.”
Reverend Johnny’s boots lift from the ground. One inch, then two, now six. His body floats free of the hill country earth as his head lolls back at an angle wholly unnatural. One arm rises slowly. The other, the one he had lifted so as to ask for quiet, lowers itself. The two level straight out at his shoulders, leaving a conclusion both impossible and undeniable—Johnny Mills is about to be raptured straight to heaven.
Abel steps back, stumbling as his feet get confused. He wants to scream for help but cannot form the word, wants his momma or Dumb Willie or even Principal Rexrode, but the corner of the barn is so far away and they are all so far away.
That sound again—haaaaaah—draws him back. The preacher’s neck snaps forward. His feet remain unchanged, free of the grass, his arms still stretched like a bird’s wings, but Reverend Joh
nny’s eyes are gone. The irises, the pupils. Only the whites have been left to show, afire with a light that burns so clear it looks blue and so bright that Abel cringes before its power. Those eyes taking in all around them, wide and unblinking. Seeing tree and mountain and sky as though these were foreign things unknown until this moment. Looking down and beholding his own flesh and fingers.
“Reverend Johnny?” Abel croaks. “You ain’t got to do it this way,” he tries. “You’re scaring me, and I just want to get on now. I want to—”
“Abel.”
The voice is not Reverend Johnny’s. All this night he has spoken in the soft drawl of the Southern mountains, adding letters to some words and taking other letters away, his tones as lilting as land. But this voice comes deeper yet softer somehow, and with a music underneath that sounds like rain and feels like the sun that follows after.
“Abel.” He speaks again—not Reverend Johnny, but the thing that has stolen him.
A feeling comes over Abel to kneel or at least bow his head, one he resists. He does raise his good hand as if to remove a hat he does not wear, leaving it hanging like an awkward salute. His lips tremble.
“What is it, Reverend Johnny?” Staring at those eyes, how the thing inside the preacher has filled him to near bursting. That gaze of ecstasy and agony at once.
“Find your treasure, Abel. Your treasure will be your healing.”
“My healing?”
“The treasure must bring healing. The healing must bring reward. The treasure is yours should you seek it, though go in haste and do not turn away. Your time has come.”
