Fiery Rivers

by Daefyd Williams

  Marie finished the last stanza, “When we been there ten thousand years, bright shinin’ as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God's praise than when we first begun.”

  “Thank you, Sister Hensley.”

  She went back to where she had been standing.

  Adam continued, “Now, are you gonna spend eternity in heaven, or are you gonna spend eternity in hell, the lake o’ fahr, burnin’ forever? There’s only one way to get into heaven, an’ that’s through ‘The Old Rugged Cross,’ that song we sang. The Bible tells us that God gave his only son, Jesus, to us so that we can be saved an’ go to heaven to be with him. Jesus had to die on the cross for that to happen, an’ he done it for me, an’ for you, an’ you, an’ you.” He pointed his finger at a different person each time he said “you.” “All ya gotta do to be saved is to ask Jesus to forgive you for your sins an’ accept Jesus Christ into your heart tonight as your personal savior. Are you willin’ to do that tonight? Do you wanta spend eternity in heaven an’ be with Jesus, or do you wanta spend eternity burnin’ in hell? Don’t put it off till tomorr’. You could die tonight, an’ your chaince to be saved will be gone, an’ you will be cast down into the lake o’ fahr. Do it now! Let’s all bow our heads an’ close our eyes. Lord Jesus, let each person here tonight hear you callin’ ‘em in their hearts right now. Give ‘em the strength, Lord, to confess their sins to you, an’ open your arms wide an’ welcome ‘em into your lovin’ embrace so that they may be with you an’ God, your heavenly father, in heaven for eternity. We thank thee for blessin’ us all tonight. In your holy name, amen.”

  When he opened his eyes and raised his head, there were tears streaming down the faces of several people. He and Marie went individually to each person to help them give their hearts to Jesus.

  Those who were not crying sat mutely and watched with terror in their hearts while Adam and Marie brought six souls into Jesus’s fold. They quietly began to leave while Adam and Marie talked with those who wanted to be saved, images of burning forever in a lake of fire accompanying them home. The six repentant sinners were Sister Craig, the fat woman in the black dress; Nando and his wife, Fannie; Adam’s sisters, Virgie and Lee; and Silas, a truck driver for Borden’s milk company. After everyone was led through his or her own personal catharsis and all of their burdens had been lifted, Adam and Marie sang one last song, “When the Roll is Called up Yonder”:

  When the trumpet o’ the Lord shall sound, an’ time

  shall be no more,

  An’ the mornin’ breaks eternal, bright an’ fair,

  When the saved of earth shall gather over on the other

  shore,

  An’ the roll is called up yonder, I’ll be there.

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  I’ll be there.

  On that bright an’ cloudless mornin’

  when the dead in Christ shall rise,

  An’ the glory of his resurrection share;

  When his chosen ones shall gather

  to their home beyond the skies,

  And the roll is called up yonder,

  I’ll be there.

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  When the roll is called up yonder,

  I’ll be there.

  By the end of the song, all of the newly redeemed were smiling broadly. A heavy burden had been lifted from their souls. They felt light, buoyant, as though their souls were tenuously tethered to the earth and only restrained from soaring to heaven by the finest gossamer thread. They had been born again, into a new world of peace and happiness.

  As Adam and Marie were hugging everyone as he or she left, Silas, awkwardly accepting being embraced by Adam, pulled away and shook Adam’s hand. “I got me a empty house on muh propity down there by the river iffen yer lookin’ to start up a church here. I won’t charge ya nothin’,” he declared.

  Adam immediately knew that this was God’s confirmation of calling him to Snyderville, that he was obeying God’s will. “How big is it?” Adam queried.

  “It’s a one bedroom. You wanta see it?”

  “Shore do.” He turned to Marie. “Honey, git the kids in the car. Brother Silas wants to show us his house.”

  Brother Silas sat on the back seat with Del and Devon. Gloryann sat on Marie’s lap. He directed them north on Snyderville Road, across the railroad tracks, west on Wynn Road, which paralleled the tracks, and then right onto Mad River Road. “It’s that one, righ’ cheer on the right,” Silas pointed. “Jus’ park in front.”

  Adam stopped the car in front of a small house. Everyone got out.

  “I’ll turn on the porch light for you’uns,” Silas said. He unlocked the front door and reached inside and flipped a switch. The front porch light came on, revealing the house to be painted a bright pink. “Come on inside,” he said. He flipped another switch, and a bare bulb in the center of the living room ceiling came on. The living room was small, with a wooden floor. He walked across the living room to another room and flipped a switch. “This here’s the kitchen,” he nodded. The kitchen was comparable in size to the living room, with two sinks and a refrigerator. “An’ here,” he said as he walked back across the living room and into a room on the left, “is the bedroom and toilet.” He flipped the light switch. It was smaller than the living room. “Ya lack it?”

  “We shore do,” Adam replied. “But to make this into a church we’d haf to tear down the wall ‘tween the kitchen an’ livin’ room an’ take out the Frigidaire an’ the zincs.”

  “That ain’t no problem,” Silas stated. “Ain’t nobody lived here more’n six months. I just wanta do what’s right so ya kin have yourselfs a place to preach. Lord knows we need us a good preacher.”

  Adam turned to Marie. “Wha’da ya think, Mother?”

  “I think it’ll be fine once ya tear down that wall an’ take out the zincs. This’ll work as a church.”

  Adam grinned. “Alright, Brother Silas, we’ll take ‘er. Can we start workin’ on it next week?”

  “Ya shore kin. All I ask is that ya pay the ‘lectric. Kin you do that?”

  “I think we can git enough money jus’ through offerin’s alone, don’tchou Mother?”

  “God willin’,” Marie agreed.

  Adam stuck out his hand. “Brother Silas, I think Snyderville’s got itself a church.”

  Silas awkwardly pumped Adam’s hand. “Praise be. Praise be. We shore need it,” he said shyly.

  For the next month, Rufus and Dwayne helped Adam tear out the wall between the kitchen and living room, remove the sinks and refrigerator, build pews out of two-by-fours, and a dais and a pulpit out of plywood. They installed a gas heater along the west wall in the middle of the church, and hung a framed picture of Jesus behind the pulpit, his brown eyes benignly staring out from his hirsute Gentile face. For the duration of this reconfiguring, Adam and Marie continued to have services in Fannie and Nando’s living room every Saturday night.

  The transformation that had taken place in Nando was miraculous; he no longer drank, he bathed and shaved regularly and started wearing a tie and a suit to Adam and Marie’s services. He was meek and humble, eager to walk upright in the footsteps of the Lord and earn a mansion for himself in heaven.

  Adam was overjoyed. He had finally heeded God’s calling, and the rewards of his obeying God had been instantaneous that very first night, with six souls coming to the Lord and Brother Silas giving him his own church. By the time the church opened in November, there were sixteen souls newly redeemed and tarrying to be filled with the Holy Ghost.

  On the last Friday of November, the Indians were winning in a fight against the cowboys. Several cowboys were already lying dead in the dirt as the Indians slowly closed in on them. It seemed hopeless for th
e cowboys until one brave man walked out into the open with his pistol, unafraid of death.

  “DEVON!” Adam yelled from the master bedroom. “Wha’d I tell ya about playin’ with them cowboys an’ Injuns? Put ‘em away an’ git in bed!”

  Devon did not answer. The brave cowboy was instantly pierced by a dozen arrows and fell to the ground, dead. The Indians tightened their circle around the cowboys. Devon heard the bedsprings squeak as Adam got out of bed. All of the cowboys and Indians died instantly as he swept them up and put them into their fort, a shoebox in which he also kept the plastic trees and crossing signals for the model railroad that Del and he had gotten for Christmas when they lived in the little house on Grampa’s property before they moved to Franklin.

  Adam stood in the bedroom doorway in his pajamas with a belt in his hand. “Are you deef? Why can’tchou mind me like your brother an’ sister?”

  Devon fumbled with the shoebox lid as he whined, “I’m sorry, Daddy. I didden mean nothin’. I won’t do it again!”

  “No, you won’t, an’ it’s too late to ‘pologize. C’mere an’ git your whuppin’.”

  Devon started to cry as he slowly walked to his father. “I told you I woulden do it no more. I’m sorry!”

  Adam grabbed him by his left wrist and began whipping him across his pajama-clad back and buttocks, hard. “You’re gonna learn—” Lash! Lash! “to mind me the first time I tell ya to do sump’n’—” Lash! Lash! “or you’re gonna get a taste o’ tea—” Lash! Lash! “ever time. You unnerstan’ me, boy?” Lash! Lash!

  Devon pranced as though he were walking on red-hot coals each time the belt scorched his back and behind. “Yes, Daddy, yes! I’ll be good! Please stop!”

  Adam stopped. “Now you git in that bed, an’ I don’t wanta hear one more peep outa you!”

  Devon scooped up the shoebox and went into his and Del’s bedroom, sobbing.

  “I’ll swan I doeknow why that boy is such a hard head,” Adam said to Marie as he climbed back into bed. “Del ain’t like that.”

  “I doeknow neither,” Marie agreed. “I reckon he was just born that way.”

  “I reckon so,” Adam agreed.

  On Tuesday, Adam took Marie to the hospital and the next day, November thirtieth, Denny was born. He weighed ten pounds, nine ounces, and was twenty-one inches long. He had dimples, ruddy cheeks, and black hair. Adam was bursting with pride, but Marie had been hoping for a girl.

  “Ain’t he the beautifullest child you ever seen?” Adam asked, caressing his hair.

  “Shore is,” Marie replied, forcing herself to smile.

  One day, Devon was holding the newborn baby and rocking him in the pink Naugahyde rocking chair in the living room by the front door. Marie and Adam were in the kitchen. He looked down lovingly at his face. “When you grow up,” he whispered as he rocked, “you an’ me’re gonna run away from this place an’ have picnics together. No more whuppin’s, an’ we’re gonna buy us a go-kart and ride it as long’s we want.”

  The baby started to cry.

  Marie came to the entryway of the living room. “Wha’djou do to ‘im, Devon?”

  “I didden do nothin’. I was just rockin’ ‘im.”

  She walked over to the rocking chair. “Give ‘im to me. He’s either hungry or needs to be changed. Lemme see which one it is.” She picked him up and left the living room.

  The next week, Devon and Curtis, a red-headed, freckled boy like Marie, were selected by Mrs. Dillon to represent her fifth grade class at the school Christmas concert, to which parents were invited. Devon had been chosen to sing the lead in “O Come, All Ye Faithful” with Curtis joining him on the chorus, but a few days before the concert, Mrs. Dillon changed her mind and asked Curtis to sing the lead and Devon to accompany him. Nevertheless, Devon was excited on the Thursday night the family drove to the concert. He had never sung in front of anyone.

  He was nervous when it came time for Curtis and him to take the stage. But they sang their parts beautifully, and Devon was bursting with pride when he walked back to his family. Adam smiled at him as he sat down. Del whispered, “That was good, Dev.” Marie said nothing.

  After the concert, everyone shared the punch and cookies that had been laid out on tables in the back of the cafeteria. Mrs. Dillon approached Adam and Marie and said, “Mr. and Mrs. Hensley, I want to congratulate you on raising such a fine boy as Devon. He’s one of my better students, and he has a lovely voice.”

  Marie, still not smiling, flatly stated, “Thank you.”

  Adam added, “We didden even know he could sang.”

  “Well, he sure proved that he could tonight, didn’t he?”

  “Yeah, I reckon he did,” Adam said as he smiled.

  When they were settled in the car, Marie turned around and looked at Devon crossly and said, “If I’da known you was only gonna sing the chorus, I wouldn’ta come.”

  An invisible hand instantly severed the cord to which Devon’s exuberant feeling was attached, and the shroud of his deflated excitement fell with a thud on his young heart. He rode the rest of the way home with the shroud pressing ever more heavily upon him with each passing mile, silent tears streaming down his face. “Why can’t I ever do nothin’ she likes?” he wondered.

  Chapter 5

  1961

  Layers of pain, like fine, black silt had gradually been deposited upon Devon’s heart for years. The cruel taunting of his classmates as a result of his being taller than everyone else and placed in a different school every year, in which he once again was the stranger, the outsider, the other; the whippings from his father; the spitefulness of his mother; the fear that he was a hunchback; his inability to do commonplace “boy” things; the mystery of his “almost” being a girl had all settled heavily upon his heart layer upon layer. It was so covered and obscured now that the weight was almost too much for his young heart to bear, and so he sat on a metal folding chair with his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, staring down dejectedly at the hardwood floor along the west wall of his father’s little pink church, listening to Brother Peatry, a preacher from Tennessee who had fourteen children, preach in the first revival ever held in the new church.

  “God loves ya, brothers an’ sisters. He’ll forgive you o’ all the sins you ever committed, long as you ask Jesus to come into your heart an’ repent o’ your sins before ya die, up till the minute you die, long as you ask for forgiveness an’ repent o’ your sins in that last minute before your last breath.” He paused and looked around at the faces of the redeemed and into the faces of the sinners. “But . . . I wouldn’t advise you waitin’ that long, brothers an’ sisters. What if you was to walk outen this church tonight without bein’ saved an’ warshed in the blood o’ the Lamb, carryin’ a heavy burden o’ sin, an’ you was walkin’ ‘cross the street, mindin’ your own business, not payin’ attention to nothin’, an’ a semi comes up an’ runs you over an’ kills ya dead. Where do ya think you’re gonna end up? You ain’t gonna be in heaven, brothers an’ sisters, sittin’ inside the pearly gates an’ sangin’ God’s praises. No, you’re gonna be in the blackness o’ hell an’ thinkin’ you shoulda got saved when you had the chance, but it’ll be too late, brothers an’ sisters, ‘cause they ain’t no forgivenness in hell. You’re gonna burn forever an’ ever, wishin’ an’ hopin’ that someone would jus’ give you one little drop o’ water on the tip o’ your tongue to ease the pain, jus’ one little drop, but you ain’t a gonna git no water, brothers an’ sisters, ‘cause they ain’t no relief from pain an’ sufferin’ in hell. An’ all you’re gonna hear is wailin’ an’ the gnashin’ o’ teeth o’ the other lost souls beside you, cryin’ out for that same drop o’ water.”

  Brother Peatry took a white handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow with it, although he was not sweating (it was the middle of February), and at that moment, the gas heater that Devon was sitting beside along the west wall hissed on, the blue and orange flames at the bottom curling and flicking their lon
g fingers inside the bottom grate. Brother Peatry moved away from the pulpit and stepped off the six-inch dais to stand in front of the pulpit, so that his small head and the picture of the head of Jesus on the wall behind him were directly aligned. Jesus stared benevolently out from the picture with mild brown eyes, his long brown hair and brown beard immaculately coiffed, as befitted the Son of God.

  “Now I wanta tell ya somethin’, brothers an’ sisters,” he said, as he lowered his voice to a whisper, “there is only one thang that God won’t forgive ya for. An’ that is . . . BLASPHEMIN’ THE HOLY GHOST!!!” he shouted, startling the crowd and disrupting Devon’s melancholy reverie.

  He turned around and grabbed his Bible off the pulpit and opened it to where the black cloth bookmark that was attached to the spine had been placed. “Brothers an’ sisters, in the third chapter o’ Mark, verses twenty-eight an’ twenty-nine, Jesus is talkin’ to the scribes who have come down from Jerusalem an’ have accused him o’ bein’ the Devil ‘cause he can cast out demons. He tells ‘em, an’ you can read along with me, ‘Verily I say unto you, all sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, an’ blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness but is in danger of eternal damnation.’ Didjou hear that, brothers an’ sisters? ETERNAL DAMNATION!! So iffen ya ever hope to git to heaven an’ join us in sangin’ his holy praises before his face, you oughten never say that ya don’t believe in the Holy Ghost, or mock the Holy Ghost, or laugh at us Christians speakin’ in tongues ‘cause we are filled with the Holy Ghost. For iffen you do, you have blasphemed agin the Holy Ghost an’ you will NEVER enter the gates o’ heaven but will be doomed to forever burn in the lake o’ fahr. Shah nah nah nie, lamoe thanie!”