The Reverend Joy’s house wasn’t big, but it was solidly made of logs and had split shingles. It rose up higher than most single-floor houses. The shingles was coated over with a thin brushing of tar to keep out water, and I could see tar paper sticking out from under them at the edges. The roof was shiny in the sun. The front porch was tight, with firm steps, and had a rocking chair on it.
Out front of the house was a black car with a coating of dust and a front right tire and wheel missing. The axle on that side was up on some wood blocks and there was grass growing around the car like hair around a mole. A half dozen crows were camped on it and had speckled it like a hound pup with their white droppings; they gave us a beady look as we came up. With his car up on those wooden blocks, looked to me like we wouldn’t be talking the reverend into taking us anywhere.
There was a well house out front, too. It was nicely built of seasoned lumber. It had a roof over it with a platform out to the side where you could step up and take hold of the rope and work the pulley to drop the bucket down the well. There was a pretty good-sized shed nearby, too. It was made of logs, like the house, and had the same kind of shingles. It had an open place with a roof over it and a long bench under it, and another section that was closed in by walls and a door. There was an outhouse not far away and it was painted blood red; it had been built recent, and a few spare two-by-fours and the like lay near it in the yard.
Only the garden looked out of step. It was a pretty big square with some buggy squash growing on top of badly hoed hills, and a line of beans that were yellowed and withering. The whole thing looked as if it was begging to be set on fire and plowed under, so as to be put out of its misery.
On a hill, not real far away, was a church. I figured that would be the reverend’s church, and this would be the house the congregation provided.
Inside the house there was a window on every wall, two on each of the long walls. The windows was all lifted to let in air, and there was outside screens over the windows to keep out bugs. It was cooler inside than I would have thought, and that was probably on account of the tall ceiling. He had a new icebox in one corner and everything in the house was scattered about and old enough to have been found in a pyramid in Egypt. But there was plenty of it. We all took a seat at a big plank table in the center of the room. The reverend got some glasses out of a cabinet, went to the icebox, took an ice pick, and went to chopping us some chips. He put them in glasses, and from another part of the icebox he got out a pitcher of tea and poured tea into the glasses.
We sat and looked at each other and sipped our tea, which was made with lots of sugar; it was so sweet it made my head swim, but it was cold and wet and I was glad to have it.
The Reverend Joy lost interest in the rest of us and spent his time looking at Mama. It was the kind of sick look a calf has for its mama.
“You on some kind of picnic?” he asked her.
“A pilgrimage of sorts,” Mama said. “We are off to see what we can see.”
“Is that a fact?” he said.
“It is,” Mama said.
“Well, I’m sure glad to have you in my house, and that God has brought us together,” Reverend Joy said.
“Or the river,” Jinx said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Maybe the river brought us together, and not God,” Jinx said.
“Aren’t they the same?” Reverend Joy said.
“They might be, but if they is the same,” Jinx said, “that same river that will get you together for a glass of tea will drown you or get you snakebit.”
The Reverend Joy grinned at Jinx. She looked a mess, as all of us was, except Mama. Then again, she hadn’t dug up two bodies, burned up one in a brick factory, wrestled goods onto a boat, and poled and paddled down the river. That sort of thing had taken the freshness out of the rest of us. But Jinx, she was special messed up. She had bits of pine straw in her pigtails, and the sides of her pants showed damp dirt. I figured when she got up from that chair her butt would leave enough mud you could plant a fair stand of corn in it and have room left over for a hill or two of cucumbers.
“You don’t sound like a strong believer in the Word or the Heart of the Lord,” Reverend Joy said, never losing his smile.
“I got my own thoughts,” Jinx said.
This was true, but I knew her well enough to know they weren’t under lock and key and could come out and be seen with only the slightest bump of suggestion. I was hoping Reverend Joy would leave it there, but like the rest of his breed and politicians, he just couldn’t.
“I suppose you’re one of those wants to see a miracle before you’ll believe,” he said.
“That would be a good start,” Jinx said. “I think that could get me in the boat right away.”
The Reverend Joy chuckled a bit, like he was giggling over something silly a kitten had done, and maybe at the back of that giggle he was thinking about a sack to go with that kitten, along with some rocks and a trip to the river. “Miracles happen every day.”
“You seen one?” Jinx said.
“The bluebird that sings in the morning,” he said. “The sun that comes up. The-”
“What I want to see,” Jinx said, “is something a little more surprising and less regular.”
“Don’t be rude, Jinx,” Mama said.
After that remark the reverend lost his smile and it got so quiet in the room you could have heard a sparrow fart from the top of a tall pine tree. I was thinking that when I got the chance, I’d have to pull Jinx aside and explain to her how you just had to let religious folks run their thoughts out, because if you didn’t believe what they did, they would keep coming back at you with it until you finally was a believer or lied or drowned yourself just to get some peace.
Finally a smile came back to visit the Reverend Joy’s face. “I know a man that had a terrible accident. He got a wagon turned over on him and it crushed his chest. By the time they got him to the doctor he was dead. They laid him out and called the family, and when they come in to look at him, he woke up.”
“He wasn’t never dead, then,” Jinx said. “The dead don’t wake up.”
“It was a miracle.”
“Wasn’t never dead,” Jinx said again.
“Doctor said he was.”
“Doctor was wrong,” Jinx said.
“Now, you weren’t there,” Reverend Joy said.
“Was you?”
“Jinx,” Mama said.
“No, but I got it on good word,” the reverend said.
Jinx nodded and sipped her tea. “Did this man got a wagon rolled on him get up off the table and go on with things like nothing ever happened?”
“He did,” the reverend said.
“Right then?”
“No. He had to recover. The ribs and chest had to heal.”
“So,” Jinx said, “it was a miracle that needed a doctor to look in on him, and he needed time to get over things, like that crushed chest and such.”
“Yes, but God was watching.”
“Uh-huh,” Jinx said. “He might have been watching, but I can’t see he did much. And where was he when that wagon rolled over on that fella? What was he doing then? And if that’s a miracle, my ass is white.”
“Jinx!” Mama said, but since Jinx didn’t really know her that well, her complaint didn’t carry much weight.
Jinx plowed ahead. “Always someone’s got to tell me about miracles and how they happen now like in the Bible. Mama read that Bible to me when I was young, and it cured me of religion itself. That Old Testament is just chock-full of mean ol’ men who killed whole tribes of people and was with other men’s wives, and even their own children, and they’re the heroes.
“Them other books, the New Testament about Jesus, they’re better, but there ain’t one miracle in that book like any miracle I’ve heard about that’s happened now. That Lazarus, he didn’t come back from the dead then need a week to rest before he could get out of bed. He come back all ready to go. And blind men and cripples Jesus was said to heal didn’t have to have a doctor come help them out and cure them up after Jesus was said to put his word on them. They was in a miracle right then, not over a stretch of time. The cripples leaped up and walked, blind men took to seeing right away. Least, that’s the stories. And it don’t fit anything I’ve heard you talk about, no matter what you name it. Way I see it, if there’s miracles, tell me how many folks done lost arms and legs and had them grow back. Got an eye poked out and had a new one pop back in their head. That happens now and then, I might go more in the direction of believing that hooey.”
The Reverend Joy had been sitting there listening to Jinx politely, but his cheeks were red as fire and his smile had tumbled off. There was a feeling in the air like we had all just seen a cow drop a pile in the floor, but didn’t none of us want to mention it.
The Reverend Joy sat staring at Jinx. Then slowly he found his smile again. It was a little crooked, but he had it back. “You know, baby girl, you have some real thoughts there on miracles. And maybe I’ve been too quick to call something that is explainable a miracle. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a God and that he doesn’t watch over us and there aren’t miracles.”
“I certainly believe he watches over us,” Mama said.
“So do I,” Terry said.
I decided to remain quiet and on the fence.
“You may not believe in him,” Reverend Joy said, “but he believes in you. And he’s up there watching and caring.”
“Well, if he’s up there and watching and caring,” Jinx said, “he’s sure one for making you earn your spot.”
You’d think that stuff Jinx was talking about would have made the Reverend Joy sour on us right away, but it didn’t. At first I think it crawled up under his skin like a dying animal, but the more he sat and thought on it, the more I think he liked it. I figure that was because he thought he might save Jinx and offer up her soul to Jesus, though most likely, like a lot of whites, he thought she’d end up in Nigger Heaven, which was separate of whites and would give the white folk someone to do their laundry and cooking during harp concerts and the like.
Anyway, they went at it, arguing religion. No matter how the reverend tried to give his ideas, he couldn’t make headway. I could tell Jinx had become a challenge to him, his Wall of Jericho that needed tumbling down. This led to us staying for dinner, and having that ice cream-which was a little runny and not that cold-and then it led to the reverend sleeping in his car, and the rest of us sleeping in his house, though he made a few suggestions that indicated he might like Jinx out in the storage building.
That night, Mama slept in the bed in the other room, and the rest of us slept on pallets on the floor under the table. Terry went to sleep right away, but me and Jinx was awake. I could hear her tossing and turning.
I told Jinx, “If you don’t get converted before supper tomorrow, we might have a whole day of something good to eat.”
“I promise not to embrace Jesus before then.”
“There may come a time, though,” I said, “when he gets tired of the argument, and you might want to get converted so we can keep eating and having a roof over our heads. I think he likes trying to convert you right now, but later he may insist on it.”
“What I was really thinking is we don’t need no roof,” Jinx said. “What we need is to get back on the river. We haven’t gone that far, and here we sit.”
“Mama’s doing better,” I said. “She even seems a little happy. Maybe she just needs some time.”
“I had an uncle was a drunk, and that cure-all is the same kind of thing,” Jinx said. “What happens is they quit a day or so, then they get to craving, and they get sick, then they get better if they don’t go back to it. But the real bad time is coming yet, and you got to be ready for it.”
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“I know it well enough,” she said. “Same as I know that fried chicken tonight was too salty.”
“You ain’t against looking a gift horse in the mouth, are you?”
“Even if the horse is free, you ought to check its teeth now and again to make sure ain’t none of them falling out,” Jinx said. “Besides, I ain’t the reason he wants us here. It ain’t arguing religion he likes so much. He likes your mama.”
“I see that,” I said.
“He looks at her, it’s like he’s licking his lips over a pork chop.”
“You think he’s got bad intentions?” I asked.
“He’s got regular man intentions, that’s for sure.”
That night rolled into a series of nights, and then I lost count. We got the river off our mind. The food was good and it was brought to the reverend free by his church members, though there was someone who always did overdo the salt.
It was a good life and easy, and I wasn’t having to carry stove wood to bed with me. There wasn’t any sudden outburst that ended in Mama holding her eye and limping off to the bedroom. The reverend had a good singing voice, and he sang spirituals and old songs, and he sang them well, like his voice was coming from down deep in a well.
This enjoyment didn’t keep me from allowing the reverend to help us build that rudder he talked about for our raft. Then he built a kind of hut made of lumber and logs in the middle of it. It wasn’t much of a hut, but it could hold all of us at one time if we didn’t breathe heavy or think too hard. He even stocked the hut with a couple bags full of goods so that if we decided to leave, we’d have a few things with us.
But after it was built, we didn’t leave. We was like flies stuck in sweet molasses. Things was so comfortable there, I was beginning to think we had gotten worked up for nothing, and no one was following us. A few miles down the river had given us a freedom. It had been at our fingertips and we hadn’t even known it. I had hesitated about running away from home, but now realized just how much of a captive I had been. What really struck me was there hadn’t been no walls or guards around me, yet I had stayed in my prison on a kind of honor system. I had been my own guard and prison wall, and hadn’t even known it.
As I said, the reverend slept in his car, and now and again he would sit at the table in his house with a big pad and pencil, the Bible at his elbow, and would write out sermons. To see how they would go with his flock, he would try them out on us. We told him how it all hit us, and gave him a few tips on how it might sound better to his listeners. He didn’t even mind that a nonbeliever like Jinx had some suggestions. He got so good at delivering them sermons, Jinx was damn near ready to get baptized.
While we was there, for our keep, we did chores. Mama hoed out the garden and showed Reverend Joy how to better take care of it. She even looked stronger, and the gardening gave her use of her muscles and some sunlight. But, as Jinx said it would, the cure-all came back on her. She had seemed clear of it, but then her need for it showed up. She did have a few days and nights where she got weak, yelled, and had some bad dreams-dreams about that black horse, and the other, winged now, and white as a cloud. We held her while she talked out of her head. The reverend didn’t even ask her what was wrong. Just sat by her and put a damp rag on her head. It was clear to me he knew what was going on, but it was also clear to me he never intended to say a word. During the day Mama tossed and turned and the bed was wet with her sweat, which was thick as hog lard on the sheets.
After a few days of this, Jinx went off in the woods and got some roots and bark and such, brewed it all up together, put it in a cup, and gave it to Mama to sip. Jinx said it was what they had given her uncle that caused him to quit drinking. Mama tried to fight off drinking that stuff, but she was too weak. Jinx was able to slip it down her throat. From the smell of that mess, I figure Mama got better just to keep from having to drink any more of it. Jinx said it was because she wasn’t a true-to-the-bone drunk, but was a drunk in her head, which meant she just didn’t like her life and wanted to get away from it, and that the cure-all was the door out. Now that she had gotten off it, and things was good, she had lost the desire, and unlike most drunks, the worst of which would drink shoe polish or hair tonic if it had alcohol in it, Mama was most likely done with it. Or so we hoped.
It got so Mama washed the reverend’s clothes, and ours, and while she did my overalls and shirt, I had to wear my good dress. This led to the reverend telling me how pretty I was, and it led to me believing it to such a point, next thing I knew I was up in church singing with the choir.
We all started going to church, and even Jinx got to come in, but she had to stay in the back and was told not to be too familiar with white people, and she wasn’t supposed to discuss her views on religion, even if she was asked a direct question. That was okay with her. She mostly slept through the sermons.
Truth is, we was all pretty content.
Now, there did get to be some talk. Folks at the church started asking me about us, about where we had come from, how long we had been at the reverend’s house, and exactly what was his and Mama’s arrangement. They also wanted to know why was we staying around with a nigger, meaning Jinx, of course. I told them we was just folks he was helping out with good Christian charity, and that he was sleeping in the car and Mama in the house, and there wasn’t nothing funny going on, and Jinx was a friend, which was a thing that kind of concerned them. They will tell you they got “good nigger friends,” if you ask, but what they mean is they have colored folks who they know and nod at and hire for jobs wouldn’t nobody do if they didn’t need the quarter, which was a kind of standard payment for everything from cutting grass to chopping wood, even if it was done all day in the hot sun.
To sum it up, his flock started to talk bad about Reverend Joy after church, and fewer men shook hands with him at the door. Even the kids run by him like they was passing a wasp nest, and my guess is they didn’t know sin from a pancake.
The women would stand out in the church lot and yak and think I wasn’t hearing them, but I have good ears, and I’m nosy, too, so I heard a lot.
There was one woman about Mama’s age, not bad-looking in a kind of long-nosed anteater way. She was always narrowing her eyes and smiling, but that smile reminded me of how a dog will do when it’s trying to decide if it ought to snarl or not. She seemed to be the main source of the gossip, and reason for that was plain to me. She was the one Jinx identified as the Too Much Salt in the Fried Chicken Lady; the one that came around and smiled and brought food, and tried to peek about to see if Mama had her underwear hanging over the door or some such business. It was clear to me that she saw herself not so much as a protector against sin but as someone disappointed the sin she suspected wasn’t hers, and that she wasn’t going to be what she most wanted to be-the preacher’s wife.
Anyway, she and them other women was talkers, standing around in their good-enough dresses and spit-shined shoes, their big church hats propped on their heads. It was the kind of talk that made me want to break off a limb and take to whacking her and that bunch of hypocrites across the back of the head.
I started to tell Mama and Reverend Joy about it, but figured if I did, then we’d have to leave, and we’d be on the river again in the Kingdom of the Snake. I thought about what it was we had planned to do, thought about May Lynn from time to time, about her being in a bag, and that she was still a long way from Hollywood. But the truth was, it wasn’t at the front of my mind.
Terry, the one who most wanted to take her out there, had even settled down, though now and again he would take the bag with May Lynn in it and go out and set with it on the edge of the raft like they was spooning. I even heard him talking to her once when I come up behind them. I was on my way to sit on the edge of the raft and dunk my feet in the river, but when I heard him talking, I decided to turn around and go back up the hill and leave them to it. In time, he found a lard can to keep her in, like the money. I guess he figured that was safer, and it had a nifty handle for carrying.
Only Jinx wanted to move on, though I don’t know how much May Lynn’s ashes had to do with it. For all his kindness, the reverend still treated Jinx a bit like a stain. He had stopped trying to convert her, however, and said something about there being some souls that was bound on the Judgment Day train for hell and there was no way to stop it. He would bring this up now and again, and when he said it, he would look at Jinx, and she would go, “Choo-choo.”
Anyway, we stuck, cause sometimes when you’re happy, or at least reasonably content, you don’t look up to see what’s falling on you.