by Wiley Cash
“What was it?” she hollered. Pastor Chambliss whipped his head around and looked toward the front yard.
“Nothing,” he hollered. “Go back inside.” He turned and looked down at Stump again.
“You sure?” she said.
“Yes,” he hollered. “It ain’t nothing. The rain barrel tipped over, that’s all. Go on back inside.” He squatted down like he was getting a good look at Stump, and then he reached behind the rain barrel with that wrinkly arm like he was offering Stump his hand so he could help him up. “What did you see, boy?” he said. He waited like he expected Stump to say something, and then he laughed. He turned and walked back to the front. I got a good look at that bad arm, and I saw that it didn’t even have any hair on it. I laid there in the woods behind those roots and stared at his arm until he’d gone around the corner of the house toward the porch steps and I couldn’t see him anymore.
That night, while me and Stump were getting ready for bed, I asked Mama what had happened to Pastor Chambliss’s hand that made it look like that. Stump and I were already in the bed, and she was folding some of our clothes and putting them in the dresser and she was hanging our dress shirts in the closet. With the closet door open I could see Stump’s quiet box sitting up on the top shelf. Mama’d made it for him when he was little because she said when the world got too loud Stump needed a quiet place where he could go off and be alone. She took one of Daddy’s shoe boxes and wrote, “Quiet box—do not open” on the side of it. I could read her handwriting from where I laid in the bed. She’d never let me see what was inside the quiet box, and I’d always been afraid to even ask Stump because I was afraid she’d find out that I’d been messing with it.
Mama had just picked up the shirt I’d worn to school that day when I asked her about Pastor Chambliss’s hand, and, instead of hanging it up, she just held it out in front of her and stared at it like she was looking to see how clean she’d been able to get it.
“What do you mean, ‘What happened to his hand?’” she asked. She finally put my shirt on a clothes hanger and hung it in the closet. Then she reached down into the laundry basket again.
“How’d it get that way?” I said. “Why’s it all pink?” She turned around and looked at me. I saw that she was holding the blue jeans that I’d gotten wet and muddy down at the creek.
“What’s got you thinking about that?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just wondering.” She turned back toward the dresser and folded my jeans and opened a drawer and put them inside. She sighed.
“Would you believe that once upon a time, back before the Holy Ghost got ahold of him, Pastor Chambliss was on fire for the world and the things of this world burned him up?”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means that he wasn’t living for the Lord,” she said. “He was on fire for the world. But now he’s on fire for the Lord Jesus, and nothing in this world can ever burn him again.” She kept on folding clothes without looking back at us. Down the hall in the living room I heard the sound of Daddy reclining in his chair. Then I heard the television set turn on.
“What’s the rest of him look like?” I asked. “Is it all burned up too?” Mama grabbed the rest of the clothes out of the laundry basket and stuffed them into one drawer without even folding them. She picked up the basket and turned around and stood by the door and looked at me and Stump where we were laying in the bed.
“Why would you ask me that?” she finally said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wondered.”
“I’ve never thought about what the rest of him looks like,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be thinking about things like that either. Go to sleep.” She turned off our bedroom light and closed the door. I heard her walk down the hall to her and Daddy’s bedroom, and I heard the door close and the sound of her kicking her shoes off onto the floor. The bed springs creaked when she laid down.
I laid there in the dark with my eyes open and stared up at the ceiling. Then I rolled over on my side and looked across the bed at Stump.
“Stump,” I whispered. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at me. “What did you see when you were up on the rain barrel?” We stared at each other for a minute, and then he closed his eyes and turned over on his other side. I laid there and looked at the back of Stump’s head, and I pictured Pastor Chambliss coming around the corner of the house and asking him the same thing: “What did you see?”
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling again, and then I closed my eyes as tight as I could and tried to say my prayers, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t help wondering if that pink, burned-up hand had touched my mama.
BUT NOW PASTOR CHAMBLISS HELD HIS BIBLE IN THAT BURNED-UP hand inside the church, and I remembered what Mama’d said about him being on fire for the Holy Spirit, and I thought about him bursting into flames and giving off all kinds of heat, and how that air conditioner might just be pulling it out of the church and blowing it right onto me and Joe Bill.
The air conditioner and that piano were going too loud for me to hear what Pastor Chambliss was saying, but it looked like he must’ve been preaching into the microphone because he had his Bible in his hand and he raised it and pointed it at everybody. He walked back and forth, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see him, but then he came back to where I could watch him and when he did he had a woman on the stage with him; I knew it was Mama before I even saw her face. I raised myself up a little higher to get a better look, and when I did I saw Stump standing right there beside her. I felt something tugging on the back of my shirt, and I realized it was Joe Bill. He’d come around under the air conditioner and was standing beside me.
“I just saw Stump,” he said. He tugged on my shirt again, and I balanced myself on one of my tiptoes and kicked at his hand to get him to stop. “Hey,” he whispered up at me.
“I see him too,” I said.
“Why is he down front?”
“I don’t know,” I said. He let go of my blue jeans and ducked under to the other side of the air conditioner again.
I couldn’t see anything except the back of Stump’s head, but I could tell he was looking all around the church at all those people and I saw that now most of them had their eyes open and they were looking right back at him. Pastor Chambliss held his Bible with his bad hand, and he stepped around and got in between Mama and Stump and reached out his other hand and put it on top of Stump’s head. Mama reached across Pastor Chambliss and touched Stump on the shoulder and it looked like they were all praying, but after they stood like that for a second Stump started jerking around like he wanted to get away from them. Pastor Chambliss got up behind him and held his Bible and wrapped that ugly arm over Stump’s shoulder like he was giving him a bear hug. He reached out with his left arm to keep Mama away from Stump, and she took her hand off his shoulder and backed away until I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t stand seeing Pastor Chambliss wrap his arm around Stump, and I couldn’t help but be mad at Mama for letting him do it.
Pastor Chambliss just held Stump and held him and it looked like he was hugging him from behind and he wasn’t ever going to let him go, even though Stump was trying to get away because he hadn’t ever liked folks touching him and holding him like that. All the people in there held their hands up in the air, and then they started singing again after somebody got to banging away on the piano, but I couldn’t hardly hear nothing except that air conditioner right up against my head. My arms were getting so sore and tired that I was afraid I was going to fall. I couldn’t find Mama’s face, but I saw her hand reach out and take Stump’s, and he was fighting so hard with Pastor Chambliss that Mama could just barely hold on to it. Pastor Chambliss had both arms around Stump now, and he was holding on to him real tight with his Bible pressed right up against his chest, and they rocked back and forth like they couldn’t stand up, and all of a sudden they just fell over and I couldn’t see them at all no more because they were laying out
on the floor.
Mama reached down and tried to get Stump to stand up, and it looked like she was pulling on his hand, but Pastor Chambliss wouldn’t let him go and Mama cried and looked like she was hollering for him to turn Stump loose. I felt Joe Bill tugging on my jeans so hard that I was scared he was going to yank me out of that window and I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.
“What are they doing to him?” Joe Bill said, but his voice was just barely a whisper and it sounded like he was running out of breath and he had to force out the words. “Jess,” he said. “What’s he doing to him?” I just kept watching Mama, and I didn’t say nothing to Joe Bill because seeing her cry got me crying too and I didn’t want Joe Bill seeing me do that.
Another man came up on the stage and kneeled down, and I figured he was helping Pastor Chambliss hold Stump still, but I couldn’t see nothing except Mama crying and trying to hold on to Stump’s hand. It looked like she was still hollering for them to get up and leave him alone.
“Jess, we better go,” Joe Bill said. I felt him behind me pulling on my shirt, but I didn’t turn around and I didn’t get off my tiptoes.
“They shouldn’t be doing that to him,” I said.
“Jess,” he said. His voice sounded like he was about to cry. “We got to go. He’s all right.” He didn’t say nothing after that, and I turned my head to ask him to put his hands under my feet to boost me up so I could see Stump, but Joe Bill was gone. When I looked across the field, I saw him hightailing it toward the woods, and I watched him run through the high grass with his untucked shirttail flapping out behind him.
I looked in the church again and saw Mr. Gene Thompson standing right up on stage too, and he had his arms locked around Mama and she was crying and fighting with him, but he wouldn’t let her go. I still couldn’t see Stump or Pastor Chambliss either, and I looked around and around but it was only a little crack and I couldn’t see everything in there. I dropped down and ducked under the air conditioner to the other side where Joe Bill had been standing and I got up on my tiptoes and raised myself up onto my elbows so I could look in again, and when I did I saw Stump laying on the stage and Pastor Chambliss and that other man laying on top of him. Stump’s feet were kicking like he was trying to get away and a couple other men left their chairs and walked up on the stage and put their hands on him and touched him and somebody was just banging away on the piano and just about all of them had their eyes closed except Mama and Mr. Thompson. She was staring at them where they were laying on Stump and holding him down and touching him and she was crying and hollering for them to stop. Stump kicked his legs around like he was trying to run sideways on the floor, and Mama screamed so loud that I could hear it over that piano and I could hear it over the air conditioner and all those people singing.
For a second I forgot where I was and I hollered out, “Mama!,” and when I did she jerked one of her hands up over her head and busted Mr. Thompson right on the lip. He let her go and raised his hand and touched his mouth to see if there was blood coming out. Mama got down on her knees and started pulling all them people off Stump, and he sat up as quick as he could and she hugged him to her and rocked him back and forth and all those men just sat there on the floor and stared at Mama and Stump like they didn’t know what to think. Mr. Thompson looked down at Mama, and then he whipped his head around and his big, yellow eyeballs looked right through that little crack like he was staring straight at me.
I figured everybody in the church’d heard me holler out for Mama, and when I leaned back to drop myself down I felt somebody behind me and they put their hand over my mouth and pulled me backward out of the window. I reached out for the window ledge, and I felt a chunk of that old wood break off in my hand. Whoever it was behind me tackled me, and we fell back into the high grass. The sun hit me right in the eyes, and I couldn’t see and I was crying and I couldn’t catch my breath because somebody’d put their hand over my mouth and it was keeping out all the air. Then it felt like something heavy was resting on my chest. I closed my eyes and tried to scream, but then, when I opened them, I saw it was Joe Bill sitting on top of me.
“Be quiet, Jess,” he said. “Be quiet.” I tried to roll over on my stomach so I could get up and run, but he wouldn’t get off me. “Be quiet, Jess,” he said again. “They’re just trying to help him.” I was scared to death, and I was crying so hard that I couldn’t even breathe. I laid there fighting with him on top of me, and before I knew it I was up and running for the trees.
I ran all the way across the field and into the woods, and I kept running until I was dizzy and had to stop to catch my breath. I looked around for Joe Bill, but I didn’t see him. There was a tree beside me, and I reached out and held myself up to keep from falling over, and then I leaned my back against it. I heard something crashing through the trees behind me, and I knew it was Joe Bill coming to find me. I put my hands on my knees so Joe Bill wouldn’t see me crying, and when I did I saw my hand had blood on it and I had it all over my blue jeans and it was on my shirt too. I turned my hand over and saw that a splinter half as long as my middle finger had gotten stuck down in the fat part of my hand right below my thumb. All of a sudden it hurt so bad that I couldn’t even think about touching it. I just stayed bent over with my other hand on my knee and I stared at the splinter and watched a drop of blood run through my palm, down my fingers, and into the leaves. I tried to clear my head and think about something else besides what I’d seen them doing to Stump. I heard Joe Bill running through the woods behind me.
He stopped running, and I heard him panting like he was out of breath. I turned my head so he wouldn’t see me crying, and I tried to make a fist to hide all the blood, but that splinter was so big that it wouldn’t let me close my fingers. A drop of blood had landed on my shoe and was running off the side into the dry leaves.
“It’s all right, Jess,” Joe Bill said. He couldn’t hardly talk because he was so out of breath. “They were just laying their hands on him,” he said. “They were trying to help him.” I looked up at Joe Bill. I saw that he was crying too.
THREE
WHEN I DIPPED MY HAND INTO THE RIVER, THE WATER was so cold that it almost took my breath away. I let my wrist go limp, and I swished it back and forth like a brook trout flicks its tail in shallow, rocky water, and I watched the blood leave my hand and move into the river like red smoke drifting up from a fire. I took my other hand and cupped water into it and splashed it over my face to keep my eyes from getting too red and swollen from all the crying. I didn’t want Miss Lyle or Mama or nobody else up at the church to know I’d been crying because I didn’t want them asking me nothing about what we’d been doing.
Joe Bill sat by the water on top of a rock a little piece down the bank with his arms locked around his knees. He looked out at the river. Neither one of us had said a word since we came out of the woods and snuck back down to the riverbank. I stared at his back for a minute, and then I stood up and shook the water off my hands.
“You know we can’t tell nobody about this,” I said to him. “We shouldn’t have seen that. We weren’t supposed to see anything.”
“I know,” Joe Bill said.
I thought about what I was saying, and then I pictured those men lying down on top of Stump, and in my head I heard myself holler out for Mama. I stood up and turned away from Joe Bill before I started crying again, and I untucked my shirttail and wiped my eyes with it. I tried to keep my right hand from touching my shirt any more than it already had so I wouldn’t get more blood on it.
“We never should’ve gone up there,” I said. I looked back at Joe Bill. He turned his face toward me, and he looked like he might start crying again too.
“I think they were trying to help him,” he said. “Mr. Thompson told us it was Stump’s special day. Maybe they were trying to heal him. Maybe they were laying their hands on him so he could talk.”
“He couldn’t breathe!” I screamed at him. “He was trying to get up and run because he couldn’t
breathe, and they wouldn’t get off him! They might have been trying to kill him!”
“They weren’t,” Joe Bill said.
“How do you know?” I hollered. At that second I thought about telling Joe Bill about what else I’d seen: Pastor Chambliss with no shirt on, standing over the rain barrel and staring down at Stump. But then I thought about how Joe Bill hadn’t ever kept a secret in his whole life, and I was already worried about what he was going to tell people about what we’d just seen happen inside the church.
I got down on my knees again and dipped my hand into the water. The splinter had gotten a little softer once I’d gotten it wet, but it still hurt too bad for me to close my fingers and make a fist to hide it from Mama. I cleaned the blood off my hand and splashed more water on my face. Farther down the river, I heard Miss Lyle hollering for all the kids to quit playing and head up the path to the road, and I knew church had let out and it was time to go home. We sat there and listened to her calling for us.
“I reckon we should go,” Joe Bill said.
“You can’t say nothing, Joe Bill,” I said. “You can’t say nothing to nobody. I mean it.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
He turned and ran down the riverbank to where Miss Lyle and the rest of the kids were. I thought about running after him, but then I looked down at my hand and I felt it throb every time my heart beat. I figured I’d better just walk instead.
BY THE TIME I GOT BACK DOWN TO WHERE WE’D HAD SUNDAY school, Miss Lyle had taken the rest of the kids back up the path and across the road to the church parking lot. I walked up the path and stopped at the top and looked across the road. The parking lot was full of people. Heat waves came up off the asphalt and it looked like a mirage, like everybody over there was at the bottom of a swimming pool and I was standing on the edge looking down at them. I thought about what a mirage must look like in the desert after you’ve gotten yourself lost and you ain’t had nothing to drink and are just about ready to die. I reckon at that point your mind can trick you into seeing just about anything it wants you to see.
