Grace ignored him and continued singing.
Why should my heart be lonely
And long for heaven and home—
Grief interrupted, “I have a song she might like to try.” He strutted to Violet, stood directly in front of her, and bellowed out of key:
Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do
I’m half crazy, all for the love of you—
“Stop it!” Grace yelled from the couch. She took a breath, peered at Violet who was shaking in her seat.
“How about getting Mother a glass of milk,” she suggested, trying to sweeten her voice. “And maybe a piece of sugar bread to settle my stomach.”
Violet let go of the chair and stumbled into the kitchen, legs trembling, tears running down her face.
Grief followed the child as far as the doorway. His eyes remained fixed, as if seeing her for the first time.
Grace lay on the couch, concentrating on her breathing.
“Just one spoonful is all it takes,” Grief called back to Grace as he stole another look at her daughter.
“I don’t like it when you’re peevish,” Grace whispered.
“I don’t know what you’re waiting for,” he said, taking out his sterling silver buttonhook and pointing it at Violet’s throat. “It’s time to make the girl pay for what she did,” he tiptoed back to Grace, “to your beautiful Daisy.” He danced to the end of the couch and caressed her bare feet with his free hand.
“It was an accident.” Grace struggled to keep her voice low. “A terrible accident.”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do,” he said. “Why else would you indulge me these many months?”
“As if I had a choice!” she shouted. Remembering herself, she started again in a whisper, “She’s my child.”
“I think you’re afraid of her.” He poked Grace’s foot with the hook, and seemed both surprised and delighted when he drew blood. He watched for a moment as the red drops bubbled to the surface, before running down toward the cushions.
Grace lay still.
He pushed on: “Here’s a thought. Ask her what happened that day. Find out once and for all, and we’ll see if confession really is good for the soul.” He lifted Grace’s foot to his mouth and sucked up the blood. “Unless,” he dropped the leg and looked into her eyes, “it’s your soul that needs saving.”
Grace squeezed her eyes shut and held her breath.
“So, it’s true,” he said, shaking his head. “Poor Gracie. The lye is for you.” He circled the couch. “Then the confession should be yours as well.” He leaned down close to her face and whispered, “Say it. You know she killed Daisy, just say it.” He yanked Grace up from the couch and shook her. “Say it!” he shrieked. “Say it! Say it! Say it!”
“You killed Daisy!” Grace screamed, just as Violet walked back into the room.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
OWEN AND CARL STUMBLED OUT OF THE SPEAKEASY around six thirty that evening and stepped into half a foot of fresh snow.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Carl lit a cigarette and looked up at the sky. “Don’t seem to be stopping.”
“Can’t be that bad. The streetcars are still running,” Owen said, as one pushed past with a plow attached in front. He took another swig from the nearly full bottle of whiskey Carl had won with a pair of loaded dice, and handed it back to his new friend. “Anyway, you said we should find Grace.”
“Hell yeah,” Carl nodded. “That woman is all you can talk about.”
Arm in arm, the two men staggered down North Washington Avenue through sheets of falling snow. Carl slipped on a patch of ice, pulling both of them into a snowdrift. “Stop horsing around!” Owen yelled. He stood up unsteadily and brushed himself off.
“Sorry.” Carl extended his hand to Owen, who yanked him upright. “Wasn’t looking where I was going.” He searched the pile of snow, found his whiskey bottle intact, and smiled.
The pair pushed on, bowing their heads against the weather. Occasionally, they veered into the street before finding the slippery sidewalk again.
“Where you going?” a voice called out.
Owen lifted his head and tumbled backward into Carl. Before them, the tabernacle seemed to rise up like an enormous chariot bathed in light. A man in a fur-trimmed coat and an oddly shaped fedora stood alone, crowned in electric sunlight.
“I say,” the man tried again, “where you headed?”
Owen fixed his eyes on the voice. “I’m looking for Grace,” he slurred.
“Well, you’ve come to the right place, brother.” He guided the men toward the tabernacle’s main entrance. “Go ahead and take a seat. You’ll find grace waiting for you inside.” He reached his hand out to Carl. “Billy Sunday,” he said, keeping his arm outstretched and his fingers open.
Carl took a long swig of whiskey, wiped off his mouth with an icy hand, and began reciting,
Here’s to the glass we so love to sip,
It dries many a pensive tear;
’Tis not so sweet as a woman’s lip,
But a damn sight more sincere.
At the conclusion of his toast, Carl handed the half-empty bottle to Sunday, and followed Owen into the tabernacle.
* * *
“Are you still out here, Billy?” Rodeheaver yelled, as he pushed open one of the side doors.
“Just taking in some fresh air,” Sunday called back.
Rodeheaver glanced around at the blanket of snow. “Do you think we ought to cancel tonight’s service?” He pulled his coat tight.
“Not on your life,” Sunday said, holding up the bottle of whiskey. “There’s at least two men inside who are in need of the Lord’s Word. Found them myself not five minutes ago.” He came around and opened a door at the back of the building. “Just remember, Rody,” he held up the bottle a second time, “the Lord always provides.” The two men chuckled as they stepped inside.
* * *
“Myrtle said Grace should be here.” Owen’s eyes roved drunkenly over the crowd. He stumbled partway up the main aisle before noticing his first familiar face. Davyd Leas sat in a pew next to his three boys. “Have you seen my wife?” Owen leaned against a pole to keep from falling down.
Davyd looked up. “I don’t believe she’s here, on account of her condition,” he said, “but Betty could say for sure.” He pointed at the singers seated behind the platform. “She knows more about women’s matters than I do.”
Owen wandered up the aisle toward the choir, when Carl pulled him by the arm.
“I need to sit down for a spell,” he said, dropping into the first pew in front of the pulpit and resting his head against a pillar.
Owen staggered over to Preachers’ Row, where Reverend Halloway sat talking to the minister from Bethania Presbyterian. “Where is she?” he asked.
Reverend Halloway turned around and shook his head. “She’s home. Best place for her, if you ask me.” He watched as Owen swayed back and forth. “Let’s get you a seat.” He stood up and took Owen by the arm.
“I have to find her.” He pulled away with such force that he lost his balance and landed on his back in the sawdust.
Reverend Halloway motioned to Davyd Leas, who quickly ran down front to help. The two men lifted Owen, brushed him off, and placed him at the end of a second-row pew behind Carl.
“Let him sleep it off,” Davyd said. “Maybe he’ll wake up a new man.”
Reverend Halloway nodded. “God willing.”
* * *
By the time Rodeheaver and Ackley finished preparing the crowd for Billy Sunday’s entrance, at least a foot of snow had fallen, covering the skylights that dotted the tabernacle’s turtle-back roof. Inside, fifteen coal stoves and four thousand bodies provided enough warmth to convince those in attendance to stay put and wait out the storm.
“I am the sworn, eternal, uncompromising enemy of the liquor traffic!” Billy Sunday bellowed as he ran out on stage. “Seventy-five percent of our idiots come from intemperate parents. Eigh
ty percent of our criminals are whiskey-made!” He began pacing back and forth across the stage. “I find men behind prison bars and ask, What put you here?” Sunday stopped dead in his tracks and shouted the answer. “Drink!” He started moving again. “I stand by the scaffold and ask, What made you a murderer?” He cupped his ear toward the audience.
“Drink! Drink! Drink!” the crowd screamed, some so enthusiastically that they fell faint and had to be tended to by the ushers.
Carl sat up in his seat and yelled, “Drink!” with a fist in the air and his eyes still closed. Then he settled his head against the pillar and went back to sleep.
Sunday threw off his jacket and loosened his tie. He leaned forward as if speaking confidentially. “The saloon is the sum of all villainies. It is the crime of crimes. It is the mother of sins.”
Resounding “Amens” punctuated each sentence.
“The devil and the saloon keeper are always pulling the same rope.”
“Save us!” someone shouted from a back row.
“Now you’re talking.” Sunday smiled. “If you believe in a greater Scranton, if you believe in men going to heaven instead of hell,” he hollered as he lifted a chair and threw it across the platform, “then down with the saloon!”
“Amen!” the crowd shouted. “Amen!”
Myrtle’s eyes rolled back and she fainted into her husband’s shoulder. Mildred swooned alongside her.
The widow looked sympathetically at Mr. Evans, squashed up against a pole by the weight of both women.
“One never likes to be outdone by the other,” he called over.
Myrtle gave him a good pinch, sat back up, and pushed Mildred off her.
“The wrath of an outraged public will never be quenched until the putrid corpse of the saloon is hanging from the gibbet of shame!” Sunday strode over to the pulpit, reached inside, grabbed a half-empty bottle, and waved it in the air. He jumped down off the platform and stormed toward the first row, where Carl slept off the last of his drunken stupor. “Not one hour ago, I wrestled this poison out of the hands of this whiskey-soaked man!” He pulled Carl up by the shirt for all to see, before dropping him back on his bench. Carl stirred, shaking off the grogginess that weighed on him like a coat of lead.
Sunday smashed the bottle against the wooden post, soaking the audience in the first three rows and sending glass across the sawdust-covered aisle. Startled, Owen sobered on the spot.
“The saloon is a rat hole for a wage earner to dump his pay!”
At the words rat hole, Owen wriggled in his seat like an insect pinned to a wall.
“The only interest it pays is red eyes and foul breath.” Sunday pointed a finger at Carl. “You go in with character and you come out ruined!”
Owen held his head, trying to collect his thoughts.
Sunday turned his ear toward the door. “Listen up, folks.” He waited for everyone to settle. “There’s a storm raging outside these walls, but I tell you, it’s nothing compared to the blizzard of misery that befalls not only the drunkard, but those he loves.”
A vision of Grace and Violet flashed in Owen’s mind and stung his eyes. He hid behind his calloused hands, but his quaking shoulders betrayed him.
Sunday turned back toward his congregation. “It impoverishes your children, and it brings insanity and suicide!”
Suicide. The word taunted Owen like a dare. He kneaded his temples to stop the pain coursing through his head.
Sunday rushed back on stage and yanked Ackley up from the piano as a prop. “It will take the shirt off your back!” He made a pretense of ripping off the pianist’s clothing and pushed the man to his knees. “And yank the last crust of bread out of the hand of the starving child.” Ackley looked up and feigned begging. “It will take the last cent out of your pocket, and will send you home staggering to your family.” Sunday pulled the man to his feet and sent him back to the piano. “It will steal the milk from the breast of the mother and take the virtue from your daughter.”
“God save us all!” someone shouted from the rear.
“He’s our only hope,” Sunday shot back, “because the saloon is the dirtiest, most low-down, damnable business that ever crawled out of the pit of hell!” The preacher pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped up the sweat on his forehead and neck. He paused for a moment, retrieved his toppled chair, and straddled it.
Everyone leaned forward, waiting for him to continue.
Sunday stood up slowly. “The saloon is a liar!” He sent the chair flying a second time. “It sends the boy home with a lie on his lips to his mother; and the husband home with a lie on his lips to his wife.”
A lie on his lips to his wife. These words tumbled like dice inside Owen’s head, knocking into and over and around each other. A lie. To his wife. On his lips. He struggled to make sense, to hear truth, but the pain inside screamed louder.
“It’s a murderer!” Sunday stepped behind the podium and pounded his fist.
The howling wind slammed back as if to register its displeasure, with Sunday or the devil, no one could say for sure.
The evangelist stopped and listened as the snow beat against the windows. “Oh God,” he closed his eyes and prayed, “get out there and grab that blizzard by the snout and shake the daylights out of it so that this crowd may get home tonight.”
Sunday opened his eyes and leaned over the pulpit glaring down at Carl. “God’s wrath be upon you if you do not change your wicked ways.” Sunday peered across the crowd and concluded quietly but resolutely, “Repent or go to hell.”
The applause began hesitantly, as if unsure of the appropriateness of this last statement, but swelled soon enough into thunderclaps. Sunday motioned the crowd forward, like a coach at third waving a runner home. In spite of the storm raging outside, hundreds hit the sawdust trail. Ackley started playing “Amazing Grace,” that evening’s hymn of invitation. Most of those in line caught up by the second verse.
’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed.
Grace. Words swelled in Owen’s mind, squeezing into crevices usually filled with whiskey. Daisy, he thought. And rat holes. His head started spinning. Grace. She ought to know better. Violet, sweet Violet. A lie on his lips to his wife. A lie. And then he remembered. She did know better. The words stood at attention.
Lye on the lips of his wife!
Owen jumped up from the pew and turned his back on Billy Sunday’s promise of salvation. He pushed and squeezed his way up the aisle, in the opposite direction of those rushing forward.
“You can’t go out in this!” Carl hollered from the front of the line, his eyes aglow with newfound fervor.
Owen bent down, scooped some sawdust into his pockets to keep his hands warm in the frigid air, turned up his collar, and opened the door.
“It’s suicide!” Carl warned.
“Exactly!” Owen yelled back as he ran into the grievous night.
* * *
At the end of that evening’s revival, about fifteen hundred people, who lived close by, set out for home.
Just before ten o’clock, Sunday called out to the twenty-five hundred marooned inside the tabernacle, “God will provide as God hath plenty.”
Everyone hushed so the evangelist could be heard.
“I’ve been talking to these fine pressmen.” He pointed around the platform. “Seems all of the telegraph wires are down, but a few of the phone lines still work, praise the Lord.”
Cheers rose up from the crowd.
“Now, I hate to send the dishpans around a second time,” he said, nodding to the collection plates, “but we’re running out of coal to feed the fires, and we’ll need to feed our bodies as well.” Sunday pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to one of the ushers. “I’ll be the first to contribute. And we’d be much obliged to anyone else who can give. Remember the story of t
he widow’s mite when you’re reaching into those pockets.”
* * *
C.E. Shelp and two of the men in his employ braved forty-five-mile-an-hour winds and two feet of snow to deliver coal to the tabernacle by ten thirty. “Took twenty minutes to urge the horses through some of them drifts,” Shelp said. Several of the men in attendance at the revival volunteered to carry the coal inside.
Just before midnight, patrol wagons arrived with enough sandwiches and ground coffee to feed everyone twice over. “Compliments of the Truth,” one policemen explained.
“And the Times,” a reporter called out.
“And the Republican,” a third man chimed in.
The women in the choir took charge of setting out the food and boiling coffee in the collection plates on top of the potbellied stoves.
“Women and children first,” Myrtle said, pushing past a group of men from the Odd Fellows. “Just like the Titanic,” she added, to dispel any doubts about her right to be fed ahead of them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
YOU KILLED DAISY!
The accusation had exploded from Grace’s lips like a forgotten shell in the barrel of a shotgun. “God, forgive me!” she wailed. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” She dropped to the couch and covered her eyes.
“Don’t buckle now.” Grief smiled, sweeping loose strands of hair behind Grace’s ears. “I’m bursting with pride.” He lifted her chin, pointed her face toward the kitchen, and licked his lips. “Behold what you have wrought.” He took a step back, giving her an unimpeded view.
Violet stood in the doorway, stunned, wounded, ravaged, milk in one hand, sugar bread in the other. The late-afternoon sun broke from the gray sky and burned through the window behind her.
Forced to shield her eyes, Grace turned away from her daughter. “Look what you did!” she hissed at Grief, now standing on the opposite side of the room. “Jealous, that’s what you are.”
Jealous? Violet wanted to rush over to her mother and tell her that she was not a jealous girl. That she was sorry, so very sorry for what had happened that horrible day. That she loved her sister at least as much as she loved her mother and father. And that no one had to blame her for what happened. She blamed herself enough to fill the bottomless hole that Daisy had left behind.
Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night Page 23
