by Wiley Cash
Wiley Cash
DEDICATION
M.B.C.
FOR YOU, BECAUSE OF YOU
EPIGRAPH
Something has spoken to me in the night … and told me
I shall die, I know not where. Saying:
“[Death is] to lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth.”
—THOMAS WOLFE, YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Adelaide Lyle
ONE
Jess Hall
TWO
THREE
Clem Barefield
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
Jess Hall
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
Clem Barefield
ELEVEN
Adelaide Lyle
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
Clem Barefield
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
Jess Hall
NINETEEN
TWENTY
Adelaide Lyle
TWENTY-ONE
Clem Barefield
TWENTY-TWO
Jess Hall
TWENTY-THREE
Clem Barefield
TWENTY-FOUR
Adelaide Lyle
TWENTY-FIVE
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Adelaide Lyle
ONE
I SAT THERE IN THE CAR WITH THE GRAVEL DUST BLOWING ACROSS the parking lot and saw the place for what it was, not what it was right at that moment in the hot sunlight, but for what it had been maybe twelve or fifteen years before: a real general store with folks gathered around the lunch counter, a line of people at the soda fountain, little children ordering ice cream of just about every flavor you could think of, hard candy by the quarter pound, moon pies and crackerjack and other things I hadn’t thought about tasting in years. And if I’d closed my eyes I could’ve seen what the building had been forty or fifty years before that, back when I was a young woman: a screen door slamming shut, oil lamps lit and sputtering black smoke, dusty horses hitched to the posts out front where the iceman unloaded every Wednesday afternoon, the last stop on his route before he headed up out of the holler, the bed of his truck an inch deep with cold water. Back before Carson Chambliss came and took down the advertisements and yanked out the old hitching posts and put up that now-yellow newspaper in the front windows to keep folks from looking in. All the way back before him and the deacons had wheeled out the broken coolers on a dolly, filled the linoleum with rows of folding chairs and electric floor fans that blew the heat up in your face. If I’d kept my eyes closed I could’ve seen all this lit by the dim light of a memory like a match struck in a cave where the sun can’t reach, but because I stared out through my windshield and heard the cars and trucks whipping by on the road behind me, I could see now that it wasn’t nothing but a simple concrete block building, and, except for the sign out by the road, you couldn’t even tell it was a church. And that was exactly how Carson Chambliss wanted it.
As soon as Pastor Matthews caught cancer and died in 1975, Chambliss moved the church from up the river in Marshall, which ain’t nothing but a little speck of town about an hour or so north of Asheville. That’s when Chambliss put the sign out on the edge of the parking lot. He said it was a good thing to move like we did because the church in Marshall was just too big to feel the spirit in, and I reckon some folks believed him; I know some of us wanted to. But the truth was that half the people in the congregation left when Pastor Matthews died and there wasn’t enough money coming in to keep us in that old building. The bank took it and sold it to a group of Presbyterians, just about all of them from outside Madison County, some of them not even from North Carolina. They’ve been in that building for ten years, and I reckon they’re proud of it. They should be. It was a beautiful building when it was our church, and even though I ain’t stepped foot in there since we moved out, I figure it probably still is.
The name of our congregation got changed too, from French Broad Church of Christ to River Road Church of Christ in Signs Following. Under that new sign, right out there by the road, Chambliss lettered the words “Mark 16:17–18” in black paint, and that was just about all he felt led to preach on too, and that’s why I had to do what I done. I’d seen enough, too much, and it was my time to go.
I’d seen people I’d known just about my whole life pick up snakes and drink poison, hold fire up to their faces just to see if it would burn them. Holy people too. God-fearing folks that hadn’t ever acted like that a day in their lives. But Chambliss convinced them it was safe to challenge the will of God. He made them think it was all right to take that dare if they believed. And just about the whole lot of them said, “Here I am, Lord. Come and take me if you get a mind to it. I’m ready if you are.”
And I reckon they were ready, at least I hope so, because I saw a right good many of them get burned up and poisoned, and there wasn’t a single one of them that would go see a doctor if they got sick or hurt. That’s why the snake bites bothered me the most. Those copperheads and rattlers could only stand so much, especially with the music pounding like it did and all them folks dancing and hollering and falling out on the floor, kicking over chairs and laying their hands on each other. In all that time, right up until what happened with Christopher, the church hadn’t ever had but one of them die from that carrying on either, at least only one I know about: Miss Molly Jameson, almost eleven years ago. She was seventy-nine when it happened, two years younger than I am now. I think it might’ve been a copperhead that got her. She was standing down front on that little stage when Chambliss lifted it out of the crate, closed his eyes, and prayed over it. He wasn’t more than forty-five years old then, his black hair cut close and sharp like he’d spent time in the army, and he might have for all I knew about him. I don’t think a single one of us knew for sure where he came from, and I figure anyone who said they did had probably been lied to. Once he finished praying over that snake, he handed it to Molly. She took it from him just as gentle as if someone was passing her a newborn baby, this woman who’d never had a child of her own, a widow whose husband had been dead for more than twenty years, his chest crushed up when his tractor rolled over and pinned him upside a tree.
But like I said, she held that copperhead like a baby, and she took her glasses off and looked at it up close like it was a baby too, tears running down her face and her lips moving like she was praying or talking to it in such a soft way that only it could hear her. Everybody around her was too wrapped up in themselves to pay any attention, dancing and carrying on and hollering out words couldn’t nobody understand but themselves. But Chambliss stood there and watched Molly. He held that microphone over his heart with that terrible-looking hand he’d set on fire years before in the basement of Ponder’s feed store. I’d heard that him and some men from the church were meeting for worship down in that basement, drinking lamp oil and handling fire too, and I don’t know just how it happened, but somehow or another Chambliss got his sleeve set on fire and it tore right through his shirt and burned his arm up something awful. They said later that his fingers were even melted together, and he had to pull them apart and set them in splints to keep them separated while they were healing. I didn’t ever see his whole arm because tha
t man didn’t ever roll that right sleeve up, maybe the left one, but not that one. I reckon I can’t blame him. That right hand was just an awful sight, even after it got healed.
Like I said, Chambliss stood back while Molly handled that snake and he watched her catch hold of the Holy Ghost, and when he felt like she was good and filled up with it he went to her and put his good hand on her head. Then he took up that microphone and prayed into it. I remember just exactly what he said because it was the last time I ever heard that man preach. It was the last time I ever stepped foot inside that church until now.
He said, “O dear, sweet Jesus, take this woman and fill her up with your spirit from head to foot. Fill us all, sweet Jesus, with your good Holy Ghost. Lift us up in your name, dear Lord.” And when he said that, he put his good hand under her elbow and helped her lift that snake up over her head. He moved away real slow, and she just held it there above her like she was making sure God could see it, her eyes closed tight, her feet running in place, her mouth alive and moving in a prayer she probably hadn’t ever prayed in her life.
When she lowered that copperhead is when it happened. The first time it struck it caught her just under her left eye, right along her cheekbone. And when she went to pull it off her face it got her on her right hand, right in between her thumb and her finger, and it wouldn’t let go. She hollered out and cracked that snake like a bullwhip, but it was too strong. Chambliss dropped his microphone, and him and two of the deacons laid her down right there in front of the church. They held her still and finally got that snake’s fangs to turn her hand loose. You could tell by the way they handled it that they didn’t want to hurt it, and they didn’t want themselves to get bit either. Chambliss picked it up just as gentle as he could and then opened the top of that crate with the toe of his boot and let that thing slide right back inside. Everybody stopped their dancing when they heard Molly hollering, and soon the music stopped too. That church was quieter than it had ever been until Chambliss got down on his knee beside Molly and put that microphone up to her lips like he expected her to say something. “Go ahead,” he said to her, but all you could hear was the sound of her panting like she couldn’t catch her breath. Somebody brought her a glass of water, and those two deacons helped her raise herself up and take a drink. When they sat her up, you could see that her cheek had started to turn blue, and they had to tip the water glass into her mouth because her lips were almost swollen shut.
“Sister Jameson,” Chambliss said, “you’ve stepped out in faith, and we’re all witness to that belief you have in the love of Jesus Christ to protect you and keep you safe, whether it’s here with us on this sinful earth or at home with him in glory.” Whispered “amens” rose up out of the congregation, and people waved their arms over their heads in hallelujah. “I’m going to ask the rest of the deacons to come up here with me and lay their hands on you, Sister, and maybe the good Lord will let us pray you through this.” The sound of folding chairs being pushed across the linoleum rang out, and groups of men went up on the stage and kneeled around Molly and laid their hands on her and prayed different prayers, some of them in tongues, some of them calling on God and asking him to save her. Chambliss stayed knelt down beside her and kept his eyes closed, his good hand on her head, the burned one still holding on to the microphone.
“God’s sent his angels,” he whispered. “I can hear their foot-falls up on the roof above us; I can hear their wings just a-fluttering, Molly. God’s sent his angels to be with you this very morning, and we don’t know if they’re here to watch over you and keep you with us, or if he’s sent them to carry you home to glory, but we feel them here with us, don’t we, and we feel Jesus’s love washing over us this very minute.” He looked up at the congregation. “And all God’s people said, ‘Amen.’”
“Amen!” the people hollered back. Chambliss stood up and looked out at us, and then he looked back down at Molly where she was laid out and surrounded by all those men who were still busy praying over her.
“But the world ain’t made up of God’s people,” he said. “The world ain’t given to know what we know. The world ain’t going to understand this woman’s faith; it ain’t going to understand her wanting to take up that serpent to conquer the Devil. And I can tell you that the world ain’t ever going to understand the will of God in allowing her to come home to him.”
“That’s right!” someone hollered out. “Hallelujah!”
“But we know,” Chambliss said. “We know what’s at work here. We know God has a plan for his people. We know God lets only the righteous into Heaven. We know God brings only the worthy home.”
“Amen!” another voice said.
“And I tell you,” Chambliss said, “it’s a good day when one of us goes home. It’s a beautiful Sunday morning when one of us is called back to Jesus. Hallelujah!” He dropped his hands to his sides and shuffled across the front of the church like he was dancing. “It gives me joy to see it! No tears. No sadness. Hallelujah! Just joy. Joy that this woman’s going home. We got that good Holy Ghost power up in our church today, praise God!” He looked over to where Mrs. Crowder sat behind the piano, and he nodded toward her and she took up playing and pounding away at the keys. The drums and the guitar picked up after that, and before I knew it the congregation had started in on “Holy Ghost Power” and everyone had took to dancing and singing like nothing had ever happened, like they’d all done forgot that Miss Molly Jameson was dying from a snakebite right there in front of us, the music so loud and pulsing you could feel it in your chest. A couple of deacons picked Molly up and carried her out of the church, right down the middle aisle, right past everyone there, but not a single one of them people even seemed to notice.
A few days later I was down at the post office in Marshall when I heard a woman at the counter telling the postman about how Molly’s sister-in-law came over to the house and found Molly dead in the garden on Wednesday evening. Said she was out there laying facedown in a row of tomatoes, a spade still in her hand.
“What took her?” the postman asked. He wet his finger with his tongue and counted out dollar bills for the woman’s change, and he laid them out on the counter like a fan.
“They don’t know exactly what got her,” the woman said. She tore a stamp from the sheet the postman had just given her, and she licked it and smoothed it out on her letter before handing it over to him. “But they reckon a snake must’ve been hiding in them tomato plants. By the time they found her on Wednesday her right hand had turned black, and she had a black lump under her eye too. It was just as round and hard as it could be,” she said. “Shiny too, like a ripe apple but for the blackness.”
They buried Molly that Friday, and Chambliss preached her funeral.
After that I understood that my church wasn’t no place to worship the Lord in, and I realized I couldn’t stay. I’d been a member of that church in one way or another since I was a young woman, but things had been took too far, and I couldn’t pretend to look past them no more. If having Molly Jameson die right in front of that church didn’t convince Carson Chambliss to stop his carrying on, who’s to say that somebody setting themselves on fire and burning down the church would change his mind? There wasn’t no amount of strychnine that could’ve got him to stop; wasn’t no kind of snake that man wouldn’t pick up and pass around.
Even though that newspaper in the windows kept folks from seeing inside that church, I figure everybody in town knew what was going on, and it wouldn’t be long before they had the law down there trying to break it up. I didn’t like none of it one bit at all, and I knew if it wasn’t a safe place for an old woman, then there wasn’t no way it was a safe place for children, and so I prayed on it and I prayed on it, and that’s when God laid it on my heart. Addie, he said, just as clear as day, you need to get out of that church, but you know you can’t leave them children behind. And I knew then that I’d have to stand up to Carson Chambliss, that I’d have to tell him that what he was doing was wrong.
“Would you carry this inside for me, Phil?” he asked. “I’m going to stay out here and visit with Sister Adelaide for a bit.” He slammed the gate on the truck bed, and Ponder nodded his head and smiled at me and walked on inside the church. Chambliss dusted off his hands and walked over to where I was standing by my car. “You’re here awfully early,” he said. His eyes narrowed to keep out the sun, and then he lifted his good hand to shield them from the light. His face was ruddy and weathered like most men’s faces up here who’ve spent too much time working in the sun or smoking too many cigarettes, or maybe both.
“I wanted to get here early because I need to talk to you about some things,” I said.
“What things?”
“About what all has happened,” I said. My voice was shaking, but I tried my best to hide it because I didn’t want him knowing I was scared of crossing him. “I want to talk to you about what happened to Molly last Sunday.”
“What do you need to talk about?” he asked me. “You were there. You saw it. She stepped out in faith, and the Lord took her home.”
“But it ain’t right,” I said. “It ain’t right what y’all did to her.”
“What do you mean, ‘It ain’t right’?”
“It ain’t right what you done with her after church,” I said. “Taking her home and laying her out there in the yard and just leaving her, hoping somebody would find her before the animals started eating at her. People got a right to know about these things.”
