“They should teach you all about tornadoes at Bridgewater,” Henry said. “With all that tuition they charge, you’d think somebody would teach a class in safety. Water safety, fire safety, CPR, what to do in a tornado. Around here, your biggest danger is snakes. These woods are crawling with them. Rattlers, copperheads . . . You step over a log, and wham! That snake thinks he’s caught him a rabbit.” He shook his head, seeing Roderick and me the way a snake would, as rabbits. “Down in those woods, we’d never be able to find you. You just lie there beside the log, for days and nights—”
“That’s enough, Henry.”
He paused. “I don’t know how many children die every year from gunshot wounds. Why a parent would leave a loaded gun in the house, I don’t know, but they do. Firecrackers are almost as bad. I’ve seen children with their hands blown clean off.”
“Where?” asked Roderick.
“Why, at the wrists. Sometimes the elbow.”
“He means where did you see them,” said Florida, making another attempt to take Henry’s iced tea glass off the table.
“Then there’s poison,” said Henry. “No matter how smart you are, if you accidentally swallow rat poison, you’re in big trouble. You start bleeding from your nose, your mouth, even your eyes—all the orifices.”
“I bet you were standing right beside a ditch when that tornado blew your hat off,” said Florida.
Henry bit into his roll. “At the plant, we have mandatory safety classes for every employee.”
“Your father would not sit in a ditch and get his good suit dirty to save his life,” said Florida, sitting back down at the table with a dishrag in her hand. She touched his arm. “Would you?”
“I was ready to get in the ditch. Then my hat blew off.”
“I knew it! You chased after it, didn’t you?”
“Well it was just across the road. There were no cars coming. I went over there, and it blew a little further, so I went around the curve, and then you won’t believe what I saw.”
“America the Beautiful?” I suggested.
“I saw Leo Frommlecker’s Tracked Troop Carrier coming right down the road. You know that one he bought from the Army Reserve? Of course, that’s illegal. But he had it out this morning, driving around in the tornado. That thing cost him a pretty penny, so I guess he tries to get some use out of it whenever he can. He gave me a ride to work.”
Florida shook her head slowly back and forth. “My goodness. Leo saved your life, honey. Maybe you’ll like him better now.”
Henry shook the empty catsup bottle. Then he screwed the cap on tightly and set it upside down on the table because there is always something at the bottom of the bottle.
“NOOO,” SAID FLORIDA into the kitchen phone that evening. “Louise did not tell me she had called you.” She motioned wildly to Henry. Then she put her palm over the receiver and said in a stage whisper, “It’s Reverend Waller.” Pursing her lips, she nodded in my direction. “Well, thank you,” she said into the phone. “She can be sweet sometimes, but not always. Yes, we think so, too. Yes, that’s what Henry said. Who told you about it? Shirley? Not a scratch on him, thank the Lord. He answered our prayers. We’re so grateful to Leo. And you all made it through all right? Good. Mmmm, hmmm.” She scowled. “No, Louise is not twelve. She must have misinformed you. She turned seven last December. Yes, she is a bird.” She shook her head at Henry. Then she smiled into the phone and said, “We think so, too. We’ll see you in church on Sunday. Bye now.”
After she hung up the phone, Florida sat down at the table and put her head in her hands. As she rubbed her hand across the back of her neck, the ringlet curler clattered to the floor. Henry picked it up. “She did it again, Henry. She called Reverend Waller and asked to be saved. Told him we forbade her. I don’t know what all else.”
Roderick walked into the room and asked for a Saint Bernard.
“I have tried and tried,” said Florida. “She does this to spite me.”
“They have small ones,” said Roderick. “I’ll feed him. I promise.”
“I just can’t take it anymore.” She patted the skunk stripe in her hair, then rose swiftly from the table and began to make school lunches for the next day. Without looking at Roderick, she said, “Not in Georgia, honey. A Saint Bernard would burn right up. You’ve got to be practical.”
“He’ll stay in the air-conditioning.” Pale freckles stood out on his nose. He crossed his arms over his chest, licked his chapped lips, and stared hard at Florida, concentrating his will on her. “Please.”
I climbed up on the counter to get some vanilla extract, knocking a box of powdered sugar to the floor.
“I’ve had it!” screamed Florida. “You all can just fend for yourselves tonight. I am through!” With ten sharp taps across the tile floor, she was gone. The three of us looked at each other for a minute, listening to the overhead light buzz. Then Henry got the broom and began to sweep.
The next day, the white Princess phone was removed from my bedroom, until I could learn not to call the preacher up and lie about my age, or anything else.
EXCEPT FOR FALLEN trees and telephone poles, one uprooted fire hydrant, and several broken windows, Counterpoint did not suffer any serious damage from the tornadoes. Apparently, God struck the town not with the intention to destroy but to reorganize.
ONE WAY street signs now pointed in the direction of heaven. On the playground at Pruitt Elementary, which sat adjacent to the city dump, a commode and a rusted television set balanced on a teeter-totter. Yard animals had traveled from the Meshack Trailer Court to the Mansion District. A fifty-thousand-dollar reproduction of Venus di Milo sailed out of Lacy Dalton’s garden, across the New Hope River, and into Frenchie Smartt’s yard. Frenchie fixed the broken arms and put it up for sale.
On the Sunday after the tornadoes, Henry drove us to church early so we could survey the wreckage. He steered the Ford Galaxie 500 down Mount Zion at a speed even slower than his usual Sunday crawl, commenting on every fallen limb in the neighborhood. “Would you look at that!” he cried. “Old Richardson sure does have a mess to clean up in his yard. Take him a week.”
It was a warm day, with a cloudless blue sky, but we kept the windows up. If anyone asked for air, Henry turned on the vent. He obliged requests for music by turning on the AM radio that came with the car, turning the volume so low that a person had to more or less imagine the music being played. When Elvis Presley came on the radio, however, Florida took charge. She turned up the volume and hushed anyone who spoke. “Shhh,” she said in the voice she reserved for Elvis. “Here he is.” The King’s tenor broke through the wheeze of AM radio, boldly striking the first notes of “Rock of Ages.”
Florida leaned forward, as if the King might emerge from the dashboard, then she fell back against her seat, let her head sink into the headrest without messing up her hair, and with her eyes closed, began to hum. On her face was pure rapture.
Henry sped the car up to a devil-may-care thirty-five miles an hour, but Florida didn’t even notice. ‘No honey, I’m listening to him,” she said sweetly when he tried to turn the volume down.
“That ole mama’s boy,” Henry said. “I don’t know why you get so shook up over him.”
“Hush,” she said. Elvis crooned,
Rock of ages cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood, From thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure, Save from wrath and make me pure.
“I don’t know when he got religion,” said Henry. He laughed to himself as he looked over at her.
“You’re jealous,” she said. Love had smoothed the worry lines on her brow and taken the pinch from her mouth; she was beautiful.
“Ha,” he said. “Jealous of that hillbilly? Ha.” With one hand rolling over the steering wheel, he turned the car onto Shaddrack Street. He was about to point out a bicycle wedged in a tree when I rolled my window down and stuck out my head. Florida put a hand up to
protect her hair. Henry cried, “Get your head back in the car before someone drives by and knocks it clean off. Shut that window!”
I pretended not to hear him. The wind roared in my ears as I twisted around to get another look at the redhead on the corner. The woman’s hair was everywhere, falling over her shoulders, draped down her back. A flattened ball of hair rolled down the sidewalk; she held a long braid in one hand. With the other hand, she knocked on the window of the Shamrock Liquor Store. A large sign in the window read closed. Beside her, a man in a cowboy hat pulled at her arm, shouting. Suddenly, she swung at him, clipping his ear, knocking his hat off. He hit her back. Blood squirted from her nose, just like on TV. Then he hit her again, and she crumpled to ground.
“Stop!” I screamed.
“Stop the car!” said Florida.
“What is it?” asked Henry. “Roderick, pull her in right now.”
“What happened, honey? Henry, don’t have a wreck. Just pull over. Roderick, is she hurt?”
“She’s just trying to get attention,” said Roderick, but he was looking out the window, too.
Henry skillfully maneuvered the car onto a grassy patch of Calvary Cemetery without hitting a tombstone.
“What happened?” asked Florida, who had unfastened her seat belt to twist around and get a better look at me. “Did a rock fly up and hit your head?”
“You shouldn’t open the car windows while we’re driving,” said Henry. “I’ve told you a thousand times.”
“A man hit that lady, and she fell down.”
“What lady?” Florida frowned. Then she looked back at the parking lot of the Shamrock Liquor Store, where the man and woman were walking off together. “Oh, that lady. Go on, Henry. Start the car. We’re going to be late for the service.”
“Was she in the road?” asked Henry.
“No, honey.” Florida shook her head. “In the parking lot of the liquor store.”
“She was bleeding,” added Roderick.
“Lock your doors,” said Henry.
“Hush that sniveling, Louise,” said Florida. “We don’t need that this morning.”
“Why can’t we help her?”
No one said anything as the car pulled smoothly off the grass and dipped into the road.
Finally, Florida said, “Say something to her.”
“What?”
“You don’t listen, dear. She wants to know why we don’t help those people.”
“Why didn’t we stop?”
Henry sighed. “Honey.” He sighed again. “We just don’t get involved in that. Don’t you ever go near a liquor store parking lot. Roderick, that means you, too. All kinds of things happen in those places. They attract an element.”
“Someone was shot there last year,” added Florida.
“That’s what you get when you hang around those places,” said Henry. “People shouldn’t expect anything else.”
Florida reached into her pocketbook, pulled out a compact, and began to apply her lipstick in the mirror. From the depths of the bag, she retrieved a wadded-up Kleenex and added another kiss to it. Then she snapped the compact shut, cleared her throat, and said, “It’s time to get your mind on church now.”
God and Jesus were the furthest things from my mind. All I could think about was that woman in the parking lot of the Shamrock Liquor Store, with all that fake red hair falling off her head, how, even with a bloody nose and no glasses, she looked like Regina Bloodworth.
THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE church service, I sat on the edge of the pew, gripping the Children’s Holy Bible and praying for another tornado to hit so I wouldn’t have to be born again. Now that I knew I was really going to walk down the aisle, I wasn’t sure I wanted anybody living in my heart. What if I wanted to be alone sometimes? What if Jesus and I didn’t get along with each other? When I stood up next to Henry and lip-synched “I am weak, but Thou are strong,” my knees wobbled.
Then there was the whole question of heaven. Hell might actually be more fun. I had never really enjoyed traveling with my family: Niagara Falls, Disney World, Rock City, Grandmother Deleuth’s farm in Red Cavern, Kentucky—after the first day, we got in each other’s hair.
When Henry put his arm around me, mouthing “Thro’ this world of toil and snares, If I falter, Lord, who cares?” I almost wished he would hold me in place, but he only patted my back.
The hymn ended, and I was not saved. No one was saved. Reverend Waller looked at the congregation the way my teacher, Miss Fitzpatrick, looked at the class when something had been stolen. Then we all had to put our heads down on our desks, with our eyes closed, and wait for the thief to tiptoe up to the front of the room and hand the goods over to her. Even though I had never stolen anything, I always felt guilty with my head down on my desk, and had to struggle not to turn myself in. I felt the same way now, looking back at Reverend Waller. He looked straight back at me, with deep sorrow in his face. Jesus was calling, and I wasn’t coming. He was glad to take whoever came to the altar, of course; we weren’t short of sinners, but it was me He really wanted. He had His eyes on Louise Peppers.
Reverend Waller hung his head for a minute, so that we could all see he was praying, and then he motioned to Barbara Groche, who raised her hands and hit the chords of “A Closer Walk with Thee” one more time. Again, we opened our mouths to sing.
At the beginning of the last stanza, I shot out of the pew. I was wearing my white vinyl go-go boots and had to be careful because the zippers came undone sometimes. It was a long hike down the beige-carpeted aisle to Reverend Waller’s outstretched arm, with every eye in the congregation turned on me. I walked for what seemed like a couple of hours, and during that time, a miracle happened.
Up until then, a small part of me had suspected that there was no God, that Reverend Waller, and Florida, and all the Baptists, were making this up as they went along. The apostles were just trying to convince each other that we weren’t out here on Earth all by ourselves, making a big mess. They were lonesome, that was all. Baby Jesus, Bethsemene, the Tower of Babel, Jezebel, the lions, water into wine, creating the world in six days then taking Sunday off and making all the stores close—sometimes it was hard to swallow the whole story, especially when people tried to make you believe, the way people do when they’re lying.
I had other worries. What if Barbara Groche stopped playing the organ before I reached the altar—what if she didn’t see me? If that happened, I would be the only person left standing up in church, like the loser in musical chairs. Or what if I got to the altar and kept walking, right past Reverend Waller, out the door? Florida would kill me when we got home.
What happened to me was this: My chest began to hurt. Then I felt warm all over, and light, the way I did when I had had the chicken pox. Everything in the sanctuary at Bellamy Baptist Church began to glow. The sun hit the pastel stained glass in a new way, as if someone had just cleaned the windows. The plain wooden cross over the baptismal, which I had never admired because it didn’t have a dead body on it, suddenly looked important. Inside, I felt clean and bright and new. As I passed by Mrs. Gubbel, my Wednesday night Girls in Action leader, I didn’t think, Gobble gobble gobble. I wasn’t afraid of anybody. I didn’t worry about the zippers on my boots. I didn’t feel like beating anybody up. I felt fine. I felt the way Florida looked when she was listening to Elvis.
By the time I reached the altar and took Reverend Waller’s sweaty hand in mine, I knew that it was all true somehow, that you could really close your eyes and talk to God. God and Jesus listened to you and loved you like crazy.
Smoothing the cord of the microphone with his free hand, Reverend Waller smiled and said, “Brothers and sisters in Christ, Frances Louise Peppers comes to us this morning with a decision to surrender her life to Jesus.” We beamed at each other. He had bad breath, but I didn’t care.
While Barbara Groche played softly “My Redeemer,” the church body filed out of the pews and snaked down to the altar to shake my hand, to say they were h
appy for me, I had made a good decision, and they loved me. I shook hands the way Henry had taught me: two short, firm strokes and look ‘em in the eye.
An old, stooped-over lady, smelling strongly of gardenias, wouldn’t shake hands. Instead, she pressed my hands inside her gloved ones, and held them. She wore a stiff navy blue hat with a short blue veil, a dress in the pattern Florida called Swiss dot, and two long strands of fake blue pearls. Leaning in close, she said in a raspy voice, “You have shed that old life like a snake skin.” Her eyes were milky blue. “Reborn.”
“So fresh,” she said, running one gloved finger down my cheek. I nodded. I felt so new I was afraid I would squeak if I opened my mouth. Reborn! I couldn’t wait to do it again.
Chapter Three
ALL BAPTISTS LIVE for doomsday, but the Pepperses are downright morbid. Henry is the least embarrassed about it. If he saw a wreck on the highway, he’d change lanes and slow down to see the victims up close. Florida always closes her eyes, so he narrates the scene in gruesome detail, filling in the blanks with his imagination.
“That eighteen-wheeler creamed right into him,” he’d say, craning his neck to get a better view. “Cut his arm clean off.”
Without opening her eyes, Florida would say, “Henry, you’re telling a story.”
“No I’m not! I saw the fingers sticking right out of the honeysuckle. Saw his wedding band.” Such a scene, real or imagined, brought to Henry’s mind other tragedies, which he related in the form of lectures on safety.
He once told about the time he saw the back door of a Pontiac pop open on I-75. “That baby flew right onto the shoulder of the road. Couldn’t have been more than two. Luckily, it was all right. I hope that mother learned her lesson.”
“That’s enough Henry,” said Florida, covering her face with her hand, but he went on.
The tornado he’d witnessed on Mount Zion grew bigger with each telling. Twister, he called it.
The School of Beauty and Charm Page 4
