It was not to be. Adam would soon discover that Marie would not accept any variance in their lovemaking from their very first night together. She thought his attempts to put his mouth on her were “doglike” and forever forbade him to do it. He did not even consider asking her to put her mouth on him. He was destined to be an oral lover manqué the rest of his life.
Rig and Devon were sitting on a pew along the aisle close to the back of the little pink church. There were six pews altogether that Adam, Uncle Rufus, and Uncle Dwayne had constructed from two-by-fours. To save money, they had left a gap of two inches between the planks on the backs and bottoms of the pews, which did not make them the most comfortable places to sit. Del was sitting on the last pew against the wall, whispering to Geneva, a brunette with a slender figure, large breasts, and a round face to whom he had been attracted ever since she had started coming to church six months ago. She giggled softly and Sister Agnes, who was sitting at the opposite end of the pew on which Devon and Rig sat, turned around and glowered at her. She stopped giggling.
Uncle Rufus, who was giving the sermon from behind the pulpit, was in a fine fettle and working himself up into an even better one. His talking point was Noah’s ark. “Now, brothers an’ sisters, are you gonna walk up that ramp o’ Nork’s ark two-by-two like them animals done an’ be saved, like God tells us they done in chapter seven, verse nine o’ Genesis?” He looked down and read from the Bible with his finger following the words on the page: “‘There went in two an’ two unto Nork into the ark, the male an’ the female, as God had commanded Nork.’ Course you ain’t, brothers an’ sisters, ‘cause we ain’t got no ark no more ‘cause this happen a long time ago, an’ that ark’s long gone, but we do got sump’n’ better’n an ark to lift us up an’ save us. We got the blood o’ the Lamb, Jesus Christ! Praise his holy name! All you gotta do is beg forgiveness for all the sins you committed an’ accept the sweet Lord into your heart as your personal savior an’ you can join me an’ Sister Mayall an’ Brother an’ Sister Hensley an’ Sister Agnes an’ all those who have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal savior an’ be carried up to heaven when the rapture comes an’ all the redeemed will join us in that heavenly choir singin’ praises to him for eternity. Won’tchou join us right now, brothers an’ sisters? Do you hear him talkin’ to ya, askin’ you to join us in that heavenly choir? Come up an’ be saved tonight, brothers an’ sisters. Tomorr’ might be too late.” A strand of his Brylcreem-slick black hair flopped down onto his forehead as his gesticulations increased. “You could be drivin’ home tonight an’ a drunk cross the mejum an’ hit you head-on an’ kill ya dead. Then where would ya be, dead without askin’ God for forgiveness o’ your sins? I’ll tell ya where you’ll be, brothers an’ sisters, YOU’LL BE BURNIN’ IN THE LAKE O’ FAHR FOREVER!!” White spittle gathered at the corners of his mouth as he shouted. “An’ they ain’t no askin’ God for forgiveness then, when you’re in hell an’ burnin’ an’ gnashin’ your teeth an’ wailin’ in pain. It’ll be too late. They ain’t no forgiveness in hell! Do it now, while you still got the chance! Come up right now, an’ git down on your knees here at the altar an’ ask Jesus to forgive all the sins you committed an’ join us in heaven.” He paused. “But you might say, ‘Brother Mayall, I don’t believe I have committed no sin. I been a good person my whole life.’ WRONG!! The Bible says here in Psalms, chapter fifty-one, verse five.” He turned the pages to a red bookmark and read: “‘Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; an’ in sin did my mother conceive me.’ You were born a sinner! It don’t matter if you think you’ve walked the straight an’ narr’ all your life, you are a SINNER! So come up now, git down on your knees here at the altar an’ accept Jesus into your heart so you can join us in heaven an’ be in his holy presence forever. Don’t wait till tomorr’. Tomorr’ might be too late. Sister Hensley, please lead us in a hymn.” He closed the Bible and Marie, who was sitting between Adam and Uncle Dwayne on the dais on metal chairs behind Uncle Rufus, stood up and began singing “Bringing in the Sheaves.”
As she sang, Adam and Uncle Dwayne joined in, and Uncle Rufus implored the sinners, “Why don’tchou come up right now, brothers an’ sisters, an’ accept Jesus into your hearts as your personal savior an’ ask him to forgive you o’ your sins an’ be born again? Don’tchou wanta spend eternity in heaven with us, praisin’ Jesus, ‘stead o’ burnin’ in the lake o’ fahr for eternity, a place where you’ll be in agony forever?”
Uncle Dwayne and Adam got up and walked out into the congregation to persuade the reluctant sinners to go to the altar and ask Jesus for forgiveness.
WHOOSH! The gas heater on the west wall of the church beside what used to be the kitchen door suddenly lit and accentuated the image of hell for the sinners, the metal bar at the base of the heater burning brightly with columns of six-inch orange-tipped blue flames. Suddenly, Rig, who was sitting beside Devon at the end of the pew nearest the aisle, jerked his right forearm toward the aisle. “That was weird,” he whispered to Devon.
“What was?” Devon inquired.
“I felt somethin’ heavy at the end o’ my arm right now an’ tried to throw it off. It was my hand!”
Devon laughed. “That is weird!”
“Yeah, idden it? Very weird,” Rig agreed.
Uncle Dwayne had persuaded a man and a woman sitting on the second pew to go to the altar and ask Jesus to forgive them of their sins.
“Yes, Lord! Hallelujah! Thank you, Jesus!” erupted from the mouths of the redeemed in the congregation. As they knelt at the altar, Uncle Dwayne got down on one knee beside them and Adam got beside them on a knee on the other side to coax them onto the straight and narrow path that leads to heaven.
Devon glanced at the heater and saw Rig’s severed bloody hand lying on its back on the floor in front of the flames. It slowly turned over and righted itself with its fingertips and stood erect on its wrist in the pool of blood. It pointed its forefinger directly at Devon and then beckoned him to come toward the flames. The icy fist of fear plunged into Devon’s stomach. “I do believe in the Holy Ghost! I do believe in the Holy Ghost! I do believe in the Holy Ghost! I do believe in the Holy Ghost! I do believe in the Holy Ghost!” Devon repeated frantically in his head.
“You OK?” Rig asked. He had felt Devon go rigid beside him.
“Yeah, I’m alright,” Devon assured him, as he repeated the Holy Ghost mantra over and over in his head.
At the end of the service, the small group of the redeemed that surrounded Dora and Keith, the new converts, to congratulate them and welcome them into the fold, discovered that Keith had once been a boxer. “Yeah, I ain’t boxed for ten years, but I’m still in purty good shape,” Keith said. He turned to Dwayne and challenged him, “Hit me in the stomach as hard as you can.”
“What?” Dwayne asked.
“Go ahead. I wanta show ya how hard my stomach is.”
Dwayne demurred. “Nah, I don’t think . . .”
“Go ahead!” Keith insisted. “You ain’t gonna hurt me.”
Not wanting to offend a new convert, Dwayne said, “Well, if you insist.”
“I do,” Keith confirmed.
Dwayne drew back his right arm and hit Keith in the stomach. Keith did not flinch. “Ah, you can do better’n that. Try again.”
Dwayne had been on the basketball and football teams in high school and was not a weakling. He drew back again and hit Keith as hard as he could. Keith did not move. “That’s better,” Keith said.
“Wow,” Del said. He, Devon, and Rig had been standing behind the adults, watching. Del turned to Adam and asked, “Daddy, can I borry the car keys? Geneva needs a ride home.”
Adam looked at him. “You ain’t got no license. You’re only fourteen.”
“You know I know how to drive, ‘cause you been teachin’ me. It ain’t as though I’d be drivin’ out on the road. She lives just down the lane. Please?”
Adam looked across at Marie. She nodded. He fished in his pocket until he found th
e keys. “Alright. Here they are. You be careful, now. An’ you come right back.”
Del smiled. “I will, Daddy. Thanks.” He went out the front door with his arm around Geneva’s waist.
Turning to Devon, Keith asked, “You wanta hit me, son?”
Devon shook his head no. “Nah, I don’t think so.”
“Can I?” Rig piped up eagerly.
Keith smiled. “Sure, son. Gimme your best shot.”
Rig gave Keith as hard a punch as he could in his stomach. “Wow, you’re as hard as a board,” he said.
“Yes, I am,” Keith concurred. He looked back at Devon. “You sure you don’t wanta give it a shot?”
Since Rig had hit the man, Devon now was eager to do it himself. He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, OK.” He drew back and hit Keith with his right fist as hard as he could. It was as though he had struck his fist against a wall. “Wow, that’s amazin’!”
“Yep, I’m in purty good shape, if I haf to say so myself.”
On the way home, Marie and Adam exulted in the number of souls they had been able to bring to Jesus. Everything seemed to be going their way since they had become soldiers in God’s army. Adam was grateful that he had complied with that still, small voice he had first heard in Brother Doyle’s church in Franklin. “Thank you, Jesus,” he said softly.
“What honey?” Marie asked.
“I was jus’ thankin’ Jesus for savin’ my soul an’ callin’ me to the ministry.”
“Yes, Lord. Praise his holy name,” Marie affirmed.
In the back seat, Devon leaned his head against the window and tried to eradicate the image of the hand beckoning him to enter the fire by repeating the Holy Ghost mantra again and again and again. Denny was asleep on his lap. On the other side of the car, Del was also leaning his head against the window and remembering how soft Geneva’s lips had been when he kissed her, the first time he had mustered enough courage to do so. He was so in love with her. Gloryann was leaning against him, asleep.
It was an early March afternoon, and winter was over. The days were getting longer and warmer. Del was out collecting money for the Dayton Daily News. Devon was on his bed, his head against the headboard with a pillow supporting his lower back, reading Jim Kjelgaard’s Big Red. He loved to read books about animals, especially dogs, since Dukie had been killed. After he died, Marie and Adam had allowed him and Del to pick a kitten from a litter that Uncle Kenny’s cat in Middletown had had, but it was not a dog. Devon had named him Feisty. He was a calico cat. Model airplanes hung motionless from the ceiling above his head. He and Del had begun building model airplanes and hanging them from their ceiling just as Rennie had done in his bedroom in Franklin. They had not been back to see him or called him since they moved to Dayton.
A door slammed downstairs, and Devon looked up toward the chest of drawers to the left of the door. He saw the Conestoga wagon lamp atop the dresser. The wagon was a piece of cactus. A light bulb was inside the simulated canvas top of yellow plastic. Adam and Marie had brought it back from Phoenix. “I wonder?” Devon thought. He turned the book face down on the bed so that he would not lose his place and looked inside the plastic canvas top. It was there. He reached in and pulled it out and held it in his hand. It was a square piece of blue foil containing a condom. Del had put it there in case he “got lucky” with Geneva or any girl he met.
Devon put it into his pocket and took it into the bathroom. After peeing, he put the seat and toilet lid down, unbuckled his pants, and let them drop to the floor. He sat down on the lid and fished the condom out of his pocket. He tore the foil and took the condom out and held it between his thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “I wonder how this works?” he thought. After one unsuccessful attempt at putting it on backwards, he figured out that the condom worked by putting the tip over the head of his bird like a cap and then rolling it down its neck with both hands. As he rolled it down, his bird’s neck stiffened and grew longer. When he had rolled the condom all the way down, he grabbed the tip and pulled once. “That feels good,” he thought. He pulled harder, and his bird’s neck was drawn towards the tip. He released it slowly, and the flesh eased back, causing his bird’s neck to stiffen more. Again he pulled the tip and then released it, and his bird’s neck seemed to get even harder. He kept pulling and releasing, pulling and releasing until a jolt of pleasure burst forth from the center of his being. He looked at the condom with incredulity. “You can come at twelve?! You can come at twelve! Huh!” He pulled the condom off the neck of his bird, wiped his bird with some toilet paper and flushed the condom and the toilet paper. He pulled his pants up, crumpled the foil into a tiny ball and threw it into the trash can, and went back to his bedroom and continued reading about Big Red, the Irish setter.
After that first experience, he began making regular trips to the bathroom with the daily comics from the Dayton Daily News in hand. L’il Abner’s Daisy Mae, with her raggedy skirt and plunging necklines on her polka-dot top, was the focus of his attention in these avian assignations with his right hand, no longer requiring the condom. He discovered that his bird much preferred the warm flesh of his palm to the cramped confinement of the latex.
Monday morning at recess, Devon asked David and Joe, as they were talking on the grassy field outside the classroom, to hit him as hard as they could in the stomach.
“What?” Joe asked, incredulous.
“Hit me as hard as you can in the stomach. It won’t hurt me.”
“OK, here goes.” Joe drew his arm back and hit Devon with a powerful punch to the stomach.
Devon had clenched his stomach muscles tightly before the punch, but he was unprepared for the power of Joe’s punch. “Ow! That hurt!!” he thought. Outwardly, he did not flinch, and said, “Told you it woulden hurt.”
“Lemme try,” David pleaded.
“No problem,” Devon said and turned towards him.
David was not as strong as Joe, and his punch was slightly weaker, but no less painful. “Oh wow! I gotta stop doin’ this,” he thought. “Didden feel a thing,” he said to David.
“That’s amazing,” David said in awe.
“I learn to do it over the weekend.”
“Yeah?” Joe asked. “Where’djou learn?”
“At church. We had a boxer come to church an’ he showed us how to do it.” I do believe in the Holy Ghost. I do believe in the Holy Ghost.
“How do ya do it?” inquired Joe.
“Ya gotta make your muscles tight right before you git hit,” Devon replied.
“Lemme try,” Joe said. “You hit me.”
“OK,” Devon agreed. “Make your muscles as tight as you can.”
“OK, go.”
Devon drew his right fist back and hit Joe as hard as he could.
“Mmmmpppfff,” Joe grunted. “It hurts, but not as bad as it would’ve.”
“You jus’ gotta practice,” Devon advised. He had never allowed anyone to hit him in the stomach until that day.
“Try it on me,” David said to Devon.
“OK, tighten ‘em up.” He drew his fist back and was ready to hit him when the bell rang. He hit David lightly in the stomach. “We’ll practice at lunch time.”
“OK,” Joe and David said.
Back inside the classroom, Mr. Wilson was writing the spelling words for the week on the blackboard. Devon, who was sitting in the back because of his size, could not read the board. He squinted as hard as he could, but he could not make out the letters that Mr. Wilson was writing. His vision had gotten progressively worse since that day he had lain on his back and tried to discern the spots on the sun, right before the ant had bitten him on the lip. He raised his hand. Mr. Wilson was occupied with writing on the board and did not see Devon’s hand. “Mr. Wilson,” he called out, with his hand still raised.
Mr. Wilson turned around. “Yeah, Dev, what is it?”
“I can’t see the board no more.” I do believe in the Holy Ghost. I do believe in the Holy Ghost.
“You can�
��t see the board? Is this somethin’ new?”
“Nah, I been havin’ trouble all year.”
The class tittered, and Devon felt a resurgence of that old shame and embarrassment he used to feel. I do believe in the Holy Ghost. I do believe in the Holy Ghost.
“Why didn’t you say sump’n’ before now? Half the year’s gone.”
“I doeknow.” I do believe in the Holy Ghost.
“Well, tell your parents tonight that you can’t see so they can take you to an optometrist.” He looked at Mike sitting in the first seat of Devon’s row. “Mike, will you switch seats with Devon?”
“Sure,” he replied. He took out his books, crayons, and pencils from inside his desk and walked back to change seats with Devon.
Devon squinted even in the first row, and he could barely make out the words that Mr. Wilson was writing. He would tell his parents that night that he needed glasses.
Mr. Wilson finished writing and turned around. “While you’re copyin’ those words, I wanta encourage you to study hard an’ do your best to get a hundred on every spellin’ test. We’re gonna have a class spellin’ bee next month, an’ whoever wins in the classroom gets to participate in the school spellin’ bee the first week in May. Who knows? Maybe we have the best speller in the school sittin’ right here with us.” He smiled. “When you’re finished copyin’ the spellin’ words, take out your grammar book and turn to page 154, ‘Linkin’ Verbs.’ Start readin’ the page silently to yourself when you finish copyin’ the words.”
Fiery Rivers Page 20
