“Yeah,” Fred reportedly agreed. “You couldn’t call him a ballplayer by lookin’ at him, that’s for sure. Alvin’s so skinny you could x-ray him with a flashlight, but he’s something else when he’s throwin’ the ball.”
And then Delores proudly announced her bargain: “I told him, for every no-hitter he threw, we could go on a date.”
Fred was ecstatic. “Honey, you better get you a calendar. Alvin’s gonna be livin’ at your place,” he said. Reportedly. According to Freeman.
*
I suspected there was some truth in Freeman’s tale. Alvin was a changed man, even in warm-ups. His fastball was a lethal weapon. His curve and screwball had three breaks—30 degrees, 60 degrees, and 90 degrees. His knuckleball looked drunk; it would run up to a hitter, stop, tap dance, take a bow, and flutter back to the catcher’s mitt like a butterfly landing on a honeysuckle. He developed a pitch he called the Buckdance, one called the Gee-Haw, one called the Balloon. And Alvin had control. I swear he could have thrown in the strike zone of a boll weevil if the boll weevil could have hoisted a bat. It was easier to hit a flying gnat in the tail with a Red Ryder BB gun than it was to hit Alvin.
But there was even more astonishing proof of Alvin Bond’s greatness as a baseball pitcher. After his warm-up, Alvin waited and chatted to Freeman and Wesley and me as Winslow Dees, his catcher, unlaced his catcher’s mitt and put a thawed-out steak in the lining.
“What’s he doin’ that for, Alvin?” I asked.
“Shoot, that’s right. You not been around since I been pitching,” replied Alvin. “Well, that’s so Winslow can catch my stingers without breakin’ his hand.”
I was stunned. “What?”
“Yeah,” Freeman explained. “That meat takes the pounding. You wait and see. It won’t be as thick as a piece of paper when the game’s over.”
On that Sunday there was a scheduled double-header against Danielsville. Alvin won the first game, 5-0, on a two-hitter, and it was thrilling to watch his long body whipping off the mound in an awkward contradiction of arms and legs working independent of his body. Alvin’s windup defied gravity and the laws of anatomy, but it worked for him and all of us knew that somewhere in that tangle of movement was The Secret.
But it was the second game that I remember.
In the second game, Alvin volunteered to pitch for both teams because the Danielsville pitcher had to leave early to lead singing in a revival.
In the second game, Alvin did something that should have made the Guinness Book of World Records, or the Book of Baseball Records, or at least The Royston Record: he threw two no-hitters in the same game. He struck out 32 batsmen, walked only five and was tied with himself, 0-0, in the thirteenth inning when the game was called for frustration.
Alvin was philosophic about it. “If I could have hit against myself,” he said, “I’d of struck out a bunch more men.”
And Alvin left smiling, steering his daddy’s Ford in the direction of Delores Fisk’s house trailer.
*
On those Sundays when we watched baseball at Harrison we did not attend Methodist Youth Fellowship at Emery Methodist Church. It meant not seeing Megan and Megan had become hauntingly important. The REA and Alvin had made summer alive and adventuresome, fuller than any summer, and I could feel energy spilling out of me, expiring in the heat of work and the heat of play. Yet, I missed Megan.
But there was the upcoming week of Bible school and revival, when Methodist members of the Highway 17 Gang and Our Side would meet for a week of play and treats, subtly conditioned by spirited tales of the Old Testament and nightly invitations to submit our worthless souls to the altar of the hymn, “Revive Us Again.” I would see Megan then. I was even half-considering two or three occasions of conversion, just to impress her.
Wesley and I had been talking about Bible school and revival as we worked. Wesley was wondering about the qualifications of the guest preacher; I was concerned with a rumor that we would not have a final-day party. We often talked about different things in the same conversation. Wesley forgave me for being secular, and I forgave him for being ecclesiastical. We were very close.
We did not see Freeman, as he emerged from the pine stand below us.
“Hoooooo, boys,” he yelled.
He was shirtless and barefoot. In summer, Freeman became a bronze boy god. His skin turned deep brown the first day he peeled his shirt and he swam so much that the muscles of his chest knotted into tight bands of rope. He was only a year older than Wesley, but at least two inches taller, and in summer, with his bronze body, his faded-blue eyes and auburn-blond hair, Freeman could have passed for a sixteen-year-old.
“Slavin’ away, I see,” Freeman called cheerfully as he walked up to where we were mopping cotton for early boll weevils.
“Yeah,” answered Wesley. “You ever done any work, Freeman?”
“Nothin’ as crazy as slopping molasses and junk on cotton. There’s better ways, boys. Better ways.”
“Yeah, doin’ nothing,” I said.
“Nothin’? Who said anything about nothin’? I’m about to take me a full-time job, ol’ buddy.”
“Doin’what?” I asked.
Freeman laughed and plopped down on the ground between two rows of cotton. “Well, you not gonna believe it, boys, but I’m goin’ to work next week for Old Man Hixon.”
“Hixon?” I exclaimed.
“Dupree’s daddy?” asked Wesley. “You going to work for Dupree’s daddy?”
“That’s right, boys. That is absolutely, dead-on-it right.”
“You know you not supposed to have nothing to do with them,” I protested. “Ain’t that right, Wesley? What goes for me, goes for Freeman.”
“Why, it’s not the same at all,” Freeman argued. “I’m just gettin’ me a job. Wesley’s always after me for bein’ lazy.”
“It’s the same,” I snapped.
“Aw, c’mon, Colin, it’s not and you know it,” Wesley replied. “How’d you get a job workin’ for Mr. Hixon, Freeman?”
“Dover Heller,” Freeman said.
“What’s that mean?” asked Wesley.
“Well, you know that Dover’s been workin’ summers in the warehouse and cotton gin for Old Man Hixon for years, but he’s caught on with the REA, bound and determined he’s gonna be a lineman, or somethin’. So when Old Man Hixon asked him about work this summer, Dover turned him down, told him he ought to hire me. And that’s just what he done.”
“I bet Dupree’s having a fit,” I said.
“I don’t care if he stands on his nutty head and rattles his brain,” Freeman declared. “It don’t make one whit to me. Ol’ Dupree don’t do nothin’ but stand around that candy counter all day, playin’ big shot. Anyhow, I’ll be out in the warehouse. If I work it right, I won’t even have to see him.”
Wesley dabbed at the top of a cotton stalk with his mop. A black wad of calcium arsenic and blackstrap molasses rolled slowly to the edge of a leaf, pooled up, and thickened.
“Well, Freeman, I hope it works out,” Wesley said. “I hope nothin’ happens to get Dupree any madder at you than he already is.”
“Good Lord, Wes, Dupree stays mad at somebody all the time.”
“Yeah, I guess so. Anyway, you better understand that his daddy expects you to be a hired hand, and he won’t be puttin’ up with any of your games, or cuttin’ up. He’ll fire you right on the spot, and you know it.”
“Wesley, you worry too much, you know that? Anybody ever tell you that you’re too plain serious about things? I know how to behave. You’d be shocked at how well I behave when I have a mind to.”
“Freeman, I’d probably faint.”
“Now, maybe you would, Wesley. Yessir, you just may.”
Wesley picked up his bucket of molasses and dipped his mop into it. “Well, we gotta get to work, Freeman. Hope every thin’ works out on the job.”
“Tell you what, get me a bucket and I’ll help you,” Freeman volunteered.
“Naw. That’s all right,” Wesley answered. “Daddy’ll think we takin’ it easy if he sees you up here talkin’ to us.”
“Well, just thought I’d offer.”
“We don’t got much more to do and we’ll be finished,” I said. “We quitting early so Mama can go have a meeting about the revival.”
“Revival,” Freeman said suddenly. “Yeah. That’s what I was gonna ask y’all about. You remember me tellin’ you about ol’ Preacher Bytheway? Well, he’s havin’ his Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle revival next week over in Sosbee’s pasture, down by the spring, and I thought maybe y’all would like to go over one night. It’s a sight, boys. I’m guaranteeing you, it’s somethin’ not to be missed.”
Wesley squinted at Freeman. Wesley did not like the way Freeman regarded a preacher’s earnest attempt to spread the Lord’s word. “Freeman,” he said, “if you think it’s a big circus, why do you go? Someday you’re gonna need the help of the Almighty and you’ll be sorry for everything you ever said about Preacher Bytheway.”
Freeman grinned. He secretly enjoyed Wesley’s sermonettes, because he knew Wesley cared.
“Yeah, Wes, you’re right. Forgive me.”
“It’s not me you need to be askin’ forgiveness of, Freeman.”
“You’re right, Wes. Forgive me, Colin.”
Wesley looked at Freeman and shook his head. “Someday, boy, you’ll be regrettin’ every little funny thing you ever tried to pull.”
Freeman tried to suppress a giggle. He wiped his hand over his face and the smile disappeared. Then he looked up with a serious, pleading expression. “Yeah, Wesley, I know. I know.” The smile reappeared.
Freeman could not resist the temptation to tease and bewilder Wesley’s simple confidence in spiritual matters. To Freeman, nothing was as joyful as being in Royston with Wesley and me on Saturday afternoons and being confronted by a street preacher. The preacher would flail the air and gasp and quote something from the Bible, usually John 3:16, and he would pray and lay his hands on our heads and ask us if we had been saved. Freeman would tremble and quiver, and a whimper would rise out of his throat, and he would say, over and over, “Not till now, brother. Not till now. Oh… Oh… Oh… I feel it, brother. I feel it. The spirit’s a-comin’, brother. Lay on them hands, brother.” And the street preacher would get spastic and praise God from Horton’s Drug Store to the Rialto Theater. Such behavior on Freeman’s part would leave Wesley speechless and he would ignore Freeman for the rest of the day. I thought it was funny, because the same street preacher saved us an average of a dozen times each summer.
Freeman pestered Wesley until Wesley agreed to attend the Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle during the following week.
“You won’t regret it, Wesley,” Freeman promised. “Preacher Bytheway’s as good as they come. Ask your mama or daddy. I bet they know of him.”
Wesley did ask Mother if she had ever heard of Bartholomew Bytheway.
“Who, son?”
“Bytheway,” Wesley answered. “By-the-way That’s his name, Freeman said.”
“I believe I have heard of him. A traveling preacher…”
“Yes’m. That’s what Freeman said, too.”
“Well, I don’t remember what it was I heard, but I’ll ask around. Maybe he’s that old man that’s kin to Hilda Marsh’s first cousin. Hilda was a Sutherland before she married. I’ll ask.”
Mother believed even then that Wesley would someday stand behind a pulpit himself and she radiated with gladness whenever he asked questions about religion.
“Well, I’d appreciate whatever you can find out,” Wesley said. “Freeman wants us to go over to hear him at revival next week, and since it’s the only time Freeman ever gets to a church, I thought we’d go.”
“That’s nice, Wesley. Are Freeman’s mama and daddy going?” asked Mother.
“Freeman didn’t say. Maybe his mama. His daddy won’t, I guess.”
“Well, there’s people like that, Wesley,” explained Mother.
“Yes’m.”
*
Mother did ask about Rev. Bartholomew R. Bytheway and learned only that he was a fixture in certain small towns in Georgia and the Carolinas. Freeman, in a remarkably incoherent session of laughter and half-sentences, told the better story of the good reverend and his famous tent.
The tent had been purchased at auction in Greenville, South Carolina, when a traveling carnival called it quits one Saturday afternoon because the show’s only trick horse choked on some oats and died. The Rev. Bytheway had been street-preaching in Greenville, practicing his call to evangelism. He needed experience, and he knew it. Until his calling, Bartholomew Bytheway had been a fertilizer salesman grasshopping up and down the Savannah River Valley for the Green Grow Fertilizer and Plant Food Company. But he had had his troubles. He didn’t know 6-8-6 fertilizer from 6-10-10 fertilizer, and each year he lost more and more customers in the small towns along the rich bottomland of the Savannah River. It had been his failure as a fertilizer salesman and the gnawing aggravation of believing he was meant for better things that had driven Bartholomew Bytheway to street preaching—that and one night at a Holiness church, where he had gone to please a potential customer. On that night, with the spirit overflowing, Bartholomew Bytheway put down his fertilizer catalogue and picked up a Bible.
And so it happened that Rev. Bytheway purchased his tent and promptly dedicated it as the Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle. Two months later, he bought a retired school bus with a dying Ford motor and a Blue Bird body. He had a sign painter scrape off the county school inscriptions and cover them with a picture of a man speaking fire. The fire rose out of the man’s mouth and ballooned over his head. In the balloon, the words BE SAVED had been printed in letters that looked like spears. Bartholomew Bytheway had then hired two guitar players from Gaffney to travel with him, and he had begun his ministry in the same small towns of the Savannah River Valley where he had tried to peddle fertilizer. Things had worked surprisingly well for Rev. Bytheway. People loved him. They loved his name, his anger, his shouting, his pleading, his threats. They loved the way he danced around and the way he slapped his hands in a tambourine rhythm. In short, they loved his showmanship, and to prove it they were willing to fling themselves before him and declare personal salvation.
*
We went to the Speaking-In-Tongues Traveling Tent Tabernacle revival on Tuesday evening. Freeman came up from Black Pool Swamp wearing an old pair of crumpled Sunday pants and a white shirt frayed around the collar. Wesley and I were sitting on the front porch with our mother, who had fussed and dusted us off for over an hour. Her face was literally blazing with pride. In the middle of the week, her two sons were going to a revival meeting with Freeman, that poor, misunderstood child who had nothing but a tubercular mother and a drunken father. In her way, Mother loved Freeman as much as she loved us.
“Hello, Freeman,” Mother said. “My, but you’re sure lookin’ smart tonight.”
Freeman tucked his head. “Yes’m. Y’all ready?”
“They’re ready, Freeman. Oh yes, they’re ready. Freeman, it’s real nice of you to invite the boys to go to your church. Some Sunday, you’ll have to go with them to the Methodist preachin’.”
“Yes’m.”
“Now, you sure you don’t want me to drive you over?”
Wesley was quick. “No, Mama. It’s not far. We’ll walk.” Wesley knew that Freeman was too proud to accept a ride, even in a 1938 Ford.
“Yes’m. We’ll walk. It’s not far through the swamp,” Freeman assured her.
“But you might get all messy.”
“No’m. I know the way.”
Mother smiled and resigned herself to Freeman’s determination. “Freeman, I do believe you know more about that old swamp than any man alive. I just can’t believe you get around in it so easy in pitch dark.”
“Yes’m.”
Wesley stepped off the porch. “Well, Mama, we’ll be
in later.”
“Be careful,” Mother begged. She had never trusted the swamp.
But Mother was right about Freeman. He did know Black Pool Swamp. He knew Black Pool Swamp the way other people know their homes. Freeman had charted every rabbit path, every squirrel nest, and every foxhole in the swamp. He could walk through the mud and mire and never make a footprint. In Black Pool Swamp, no man was Freeman’s equal.
We crossed through the swamp, carefully following Freeman’s exact steps. At the top of the hill overlooking Sosbee’s Woods and Sosbee’s Spring, we heard the faint singing of “The Old Rugged Cross.”
“…till my trophies at last I lay down…”
The voices were muffled under the tent, and the wheezing of the tenors and altos pitched and bounced around the drooping canvas in a frenzy of discord wanting to escape.
“…so I’ll cherish the old rugged cro—osss…”
Freeman stopped and stood on a pine stump.
“You listen,” he said happily. He smiled and spread his arms to hush us. “Hear ol’ Preacher Bytheway singin’ away?”
Preacher Bytheway’s voice was clearly unusual. It came out of his nose and was compressed into a sound between the scratching of fingernails on a blackboard and the stripping of gears on Mother’s old 1938 Ford.
“…and exchange it some day for a crown…”
Freeman laughed aloud. “You ought to hear that fool doin’ ‘O For A Thousand Tongues to Sing.’ Now that is class.”
We crossed into the pine-tree windbreak separating Sosbee’s cotton field and Ben Looney’s wheat field.
“C’mon, Methodists,” Freeman said. “We are goin’ to a circus.”
There were thirty-five or forty people sitting on wooden chairs that had been borrowed from the Emery Junior High School lunchroom. Fresh sawdust from Wray’s Sawmill covered the ground and had been cooking all day under the heavy canvas. In the tent, it smelled like resin burning. People fanned themselves with fans that had a picture of Jesus knocking at a door without a handle on it. An advertisement for Higginbottom’s Funeral Parlor was on the back of the fan, containing the message: Give Your Life to Jesus, Trust Your Remains to Us. Babies wiggled at their mothers’ feet, playing in the sawdust. Old men wearing bib overalls over starched, white shirts sat rigidly still and mouthed the closing verse of “The Old Rugged Cross.” Freeman and Wesley and I eased into three chairs in the last row, as the song ended.