“No, ma’am.”
Dorothy was at a loss. All she could come up with was “Oh dear.”
Bobby jumped in with a bad idea. “Hey, you can stay in my room if you want to. I’ve got all kinds of stuff in there.”
“No, Bobby, she’s not staying in your room. I’m just trying to think of where else you might like. We can take a look around if you like.”
Betty Raye cringed again and almost whispered a scared little “Would you mind?”
Thoroughly flustered, Dorothy said, “No of course not, you’re our guest. We want you to be happy.”
As the three of them followed behind Betty Raye like a small parade all over the house from room to room, Dorothy glanced over at her daughter and threw her hands up and shook her head, as if to say silently, “I don’t know what she’s doing, do you?” But Anna Lee was suddenly enjoying this strange turn of events and did not respond. Instead, she just looked up in the air and innocently batted her eyes with an attitude that translated as “Don’t look at me, you’re the one who invited her.” And at that moment Dorothy could have pinched her head off.
Betty Raye had almost gone through the entire house when she opened the door to the little sewing room off the sunporch. She looked in and pointed to the daybed that was against the wall, covered with old scraps of material and patterns. “Can I stay here?”
Dorothy, crushed, said, “Why yes, I suppose you can . . . but it’s just a little hole in the wall no bigger than a closet. There’s not even a place to hang your clothes. Wouldn’t you really feel better having a nice big bedroom with your own bathroom?”
But Betty Raye said, “No, ma’am, this will be fine.”
Dorothy tried to be cheerful. “Well, all right, we want you to be happy while you are here. Anna Lee, help me get all this stuff off the bed, and let’s fold up the ironing board.”
That night at dinner Betty Raye hardly ate a thing. She spoke only when spoken to and even that was minimal.
Doc had just gotten home in time for dinner and tried to chat with her. He asked pleasantly, “So, Betty Raye, how do you like your room?”
Bobby piped up. “She didn’t like it. She’s sleeping in the sewing room.”
Doc looked at Dorothy. “Why is she sleeping in the sewing room? I thought she was going to stay in Anna Lee’s.” There was a pause you could have driven a truck through as Dorothy tried to come up with a tactful answer. But Bobby, oblivious to the awkwardness of the moment, noticed that their visitor did not have much of an appetite and took this opportunity to inquire, “If she doesn’t want her dessert, can I have it?”
After dinner, without saying a word, Betty Raye went to the kitchen and stood by the sink, ready to help wash dishes. When Dorothy realized what she was doing she said, “Oh no, dear, you are a guest. You run on and enjoy yourself. Mother Smith and I will take care of this.” Betty Raye seemed surprised but went straight to her room and closed the door. When Anna Lee, who had been dragging games out of the closet so they could play, came in and asked where she was, Dorothy said, “I’m not sure but I think she’s already gone to bed.”
“But it’s only seven o’clock.”
“Maybe she’s tired from her trip, honey,” Dorothy said.
“Well,” said Anna Lee, “I guess we won’t be playing Monopoly, will we?”
Later, before Dorothy had joined them on the front porch, Mother Smith confided to Doc, “She’s an odd little person, isn’t she?”
Is It Any Wonder?
THAT FIRST NIGHT Mother Smith had thought Betty Raye was odd, but the next morning, after having encountered the entire Oatman clan in all its glory, including mystery man Uncle Floyd Oatman, complete with his Scripture-quoting ventriloquist’s dummy named Chester, who wore a cowboy hat and proceeded to sing “Jesus Put a Yodel in My Heart,” she changed her mind. Once she had seen the rest of the Oatman family, she quickly realized that Betty Raye was the best of the lot.
After they left and Betty Raye went back to her room, Mother Smith whispered to Dorothy, “Good God, no wonder she’s a little peculiar. Who can blame her?”
At exactly 9:15 they had all piled out of the car and banged into the house like an invading army, and had eaten every one of the six dozen cookies in the entrance hall in less than ten seconds. During their segment on the show Minnie took over Mother Smith’s organ and almost pumped it to death. After the group had done three songs, Chester the dummy announced in his high squeaky voice, “Don’t forget, folks, starting tonight we’re all gonna be at the Highway 78 Church of Christ annual dinner on the ground and tent revival all week—there’s gonna be a whole lot of good singing . . . good eats . . . and soul saving, so come on out!” And then they all piled back in the car and left. The rest of the living room audience that day had thoroughly enjoyed their singing, particularly Beatrice Woods, the Little Blind Songbird, who had loved every song they sang and had clapped her hands in delight when Chester the dummy had yodeled. Mother Smith, not quite so enthralled, was glad to get her organ back in one piece. The fact that Betty Raye wore homemade clothes or was a gospel singer didn’t make a bit of difference to Bobby. He was delighted to have another person in the house.
It gave him someone new to show off in front of. The second morning he waited until he saw Betty Raye go into the kitchen for breakfast. Just as she sat down at the table with Dorothy and Mother Smith, they heard a strange eerie whistle coming from down the hall. Then, wearing his father’s long overcoat with the collar turned up over his ears and a big gray felt hat pulled down over his eyes, Bobby appeared in the doorway and in an odd voice announced to the room, “I am the Whistler and I know many things, for I walk by night. I know many strange tales hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes . . . I know the nameless terrors of which they do not speak!” And then he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, laughing maniacally all the way down the hall.
Betty Raye had been somewhat startled by this odd behavior but everyone else at the table just kept eating. The only thing Dorothy said, as she buttered a piece of toast, was “If he would spend as much time with his schoolwork as he does listening to his radio shows he’d be a genius.” Betty Raye glanced out the window and saw a woman in sunglasses holding on to a clothesline coming across the backyard and up the back steps as a frazzled woman in pin curls wearing a hairnet ran in the front door to the kitchen and asked, “Have you seen Momma?”
Dorothy looked alarmed. “No, she hasn’t been here. Is she missing again?”
“Yes . . . I turned my back for five seconds and off she goes. If you see her, grab her.”
After the woman left Mother Smith said, “Poor Tot, that’s the second time this week.”
Dorothy shook her head. “Poor Tot.”
Mother Smith turned to speak to Betty Raye, but she had disappeared, leaving most of her breakfast uneaten. A second later they heard the lock on her door click shut. The two women looked at each other in surprise.
“Well,” said Mother Smith.
“Well,” said Dorothy. “I don’t know what to think, do you?”
“No.”
Anna Lee came in for breakfast. “Is she up yet?”
“Yes, been here and gone. You missed her.”
Betty Raye never came back out of her room until it was time to go to the revival and then she slipped out the front door without anyone hearing her and stood on the sidewalk and waited to be picked up by the family. Later, when Dorothy knocked on her door and there was no answer, she went into the room to see if Betty Raye was all right but she was gone. She didn’t mean to pry but she could not help but notice that the dress Betty Raye had arrived in was on the bed and the open suitcase on the floor was empty. Dear God, she thought, that little girl only has two dresses to her name.
Her first impulse was to run downtown and buy her an entire new wardrobe. That night she talked it over with Doc. Throughout the years they had both quietly supplied people with clothes and food or sent t
hem money anonymously when they needed it. But Betty Raye was a different situation. She was a guest in their home. How could they do it without seeming to regard her as a charity case and maybe take a chance on hurting her feelings?
It was a dilemma that tugged on Dorothy’s heart every time she saw her in the same threadbare dress, day after day.
The Revival
EVER SINCE the Oatmans had come to town and appeared on The Neighbor Dorothy Show, Anna Lee, Norma, and Patsy Marie were just dying with curiosity about the revival and having a fit to get out there and see it. All three girls had been raised in town and had never really wanted to go to one, until now. Dorothy, however, was immediately suspicious about their sudden interest in tent revivals.
“Now, Anna Lee, I don’t want you girls going out there and making fun of those people . . . do you hear me?”
“Mother!” said Anna Lee, shocked at the idea. “Why would you think something like that?”
“Because I know how silly the three of you can act.”
Finally, Anna Lee was able to convince her mother to let her go but Ida, Norma’s mother, was adamantly against it. “I will not have you going out there to that thing. There’s no telling what sort of people will come crawling out of the backwoods and start babbling in tongues. . . . Besides, we’re Presbyterians—we don’t believe in that sort of primitive carrying on.” But Norma told her mother that she was spending the night with Patsy Marie and went anyway.
On the second night of the revival Norma got her boyfriend, Macky, to drive them out to the country. They started around six but before they left town Norma made Macky go into the Trolley Car Diner and get them all hamburgers to go. She pointed to the flyer with the map that advertised TENT REVIVAL AND DINNER ON THE GROUND. “I’m not eating anything off the ground; if I got sick my mother would know exactly where I’d been.” As they turned off Highway 78 and onto a dirt road they saw crude signs pointing the way that said THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, ARE YOU SAVED? PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER, and GOD TAKES ALL CALLS PERSONALLY—HE HAS NO SECETARY. Patsy Marie observed, “They misspelled secretary.” About forty-five minutes later, when they got close to the spot called Brown’s Pasture, behind the Highway 78 Church of Christ, they could see a large round tan tent with red and white triangle banners hanging from the ropes, way off in the distance. The sides of the road were lined with cars and trucks and tractors already and they had to park about a half mile away. The place was teeming with people, all carrying plates and baskets. When they finally got closer to the tent, they saw long tables and benches set up everywhere, laden with food the families had brought to share. Norma was surprised to see that “dinner on the ground” did not literally mean on the ground but dinner on tables covered with tablecloths made out of newspapers. When the others saw the piles of fried chicken, homemade macaroni and cheese, plates full of fresh corn on the cob and watermelon, they were sorry they had listened to Norma and had only hamburgers to eat. Norma defended herself as they walked, saying, “Well, how was I to know—it didn’t say dinner on the table!”
By the time they got inside the big tent, most of the wooden folding chairs were already taken and they had to sit toward the back, which is where Norma wanted to sit anyway. The ground was covered with sawdust and it smelled like the circus, with almost a circus excitement as well. Instead of acting serious like they were in church, children were allowed to run up and down the aisles and make all the noise they wanted. It was a festive atmosphere with a feeling of anticipation. Anticipation of what, the Elmwood Springs girls did not know yet. The place was packed with people they had never seen before: Pentecostal; Church of Christers; hard-shell, foot-washing Primitive Baptists; you name it, all come together for a good time.
The men were in clean overalls and the women all had on the same kind of homemade dresses that Minnie and Betty Raye wore. It was a hot night and the ladies, most with their hair done up in buns at the back of the neck, sat there fanning themselves with cardboard fans, a picture of the Last Supper on them, which the church had provided, and chatted happily with one another. The round stage in the middle of the tent was bare except for a piano and sound system and one artificial fern in a stand-up basket. While they waited for things to start, Anna Lee, Patsy Marie, and Norma sat around punching one another and giggling as Macky pointed out an old lady dipping snuff and spitting it back out in a tin can she had brought with her. Just then a large, big-boned, sweet-looking lady and a small man in overalls walked past. Norma looked up and immediately dropped to the floor and hid under a chair.
Macky looked at her. “What are you doing, Goofy?”
Norma whispered, “It’s my aunt Elner! If she sees me she’ll tell Mother.” Norma, who at the time was wearing dark sunglasses and a scarf, was to spend the entire evening bobbing and weaving behind the people in front of her, terrified that her aunt might somehow turn around and pick her out of a crowd of seven hundred. But Norma’s chance of her aunt Elner seeing her that night was to be the least of her worries.
At exactly 7:00 P.M. the Highway 78 Church of Christ preacher came out. In a few moments, after a lengthy prayer, he introduced the Oatman Family Gospel Singers and they filed onstage to thunderous applause.
Patsy Marie nudged Anna Lee. “Which one is Betty Raye?”
“The skinny one.”
Patsy Marie noticed that she was also the only one of the Oatmans that did not have thick coal-black hair and commented, “She doesn’t look a thing like the rest of them, does she?”
Norma said under her breath to Macky, “Who would want to?” In a few minutes, after the Oatmans got the evening started with a rousing, foot-stomping, hand-clapping rendition of “Give Me That Old-Time Religion,” they continued on with “Are You Washed in the Blood?,” “Tell Mother I’ll Be There,” “I’ll Meet You by the River,” “I Believe in the Man in the Sky,” and just when they had the audience shouting and rocking in their seats, the visiting preacher and revival leader, the Reverend Stockton Briggle, straight out of Del Rio, Texas, came running down the aisle, jumped up on the stage, and with Bible in hand danced and shouted, “I feel the spirit moving tonight!” He proceeded to put on a show the likes of which the four of them had never seen. Reverend Briggle had been saved by the famous evangelist Billy Sunday and was determined to return the favor. He hopped on one foot, then the other, and warned those in the audience who had not been saved about the eternal fires of hell. He raved on about fighting the devil for souls, yelling, “I’ll fight him with a shovel . . . I’ll fight him with an ax . . . I’ll fight in the morning . . . I’ll fight him in the night!” He got himself so worked up he was red in the face. He was so upset and agitated over the devil that he started to spit every time he shouted and the people in the front row were dodging back and forth. Macky thought this one of the funniest things he had ever seen and suddenly laughed out loud and then tried to pretend he was coughing. Anna Lee and Norma lost control and got the giggles so bad they almost choked. But Reverend Briggle did not let up until several women jumped to their feet and started dancing and shouting in an unknown tongue. Soon the sinners in the crowd began to sweat and squirm in their seats and after about an hour of ranting and getting everybody all worked up and scared to death about going to hell he finally called out for all the unsaved to come forward, confess their sins to the Almighty God, and be saved from eternal damnation. About three hundred people jumped up, some who always got up to get saved over and over, others for the first time, all headed up the aisle toward the altar, amid shouts of “Praise Jesus” and “Hallelujah!” One man down at the end of their row jumped up and did a dance right there like he had just stuck his finger in a light socket.
Norma and Macky and Anna Lee had been so busy watching him they didn’t notice that their friend had suddenly gotten up and started marching down the aisle with the crowd, headed for the altar. When she looked over and saw her Norma screamed, “Oh my God, Macky, there goes Patsy Marie—grab her!” But it was too late; she was alr
eady halfway to the front. An hour later, after they had pulled a dazed Patsy Marie out of the tent and were heading home, she tried to explain. “I was just sitting there and before I knew it I was up out of my seat and going down the aisle. It was like someone had picked me up and was putting one foot in front of the other, and I couldn’t stop myself.” She said, “After that I don’t remember a thing, so I must have been saved.”
Anna Lee, who was fascinated and somewhat in awe, asked, “What’s it like to be saved, Patsy Marie? Do you feel any different?”
Patsy Marie thought it over for a moment and then answered sincerely, “I don’t know . . . but my headache’s gone.”
Macky laughed but Norma did not find Patsy Marie’s recent experience with salvation even slightly amusing. “It’s not funny, Macky.” But then she said to Patsy Marie, “If you go crazy and start babbling away in some strange tongue, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
Alarmed at that thought, Anna Lee looked more closely at her friend. “Do you feel like you want to babble in the unknown tongue, Patsy Marie?”
Patsy Marie gave the question serious thought. “No, I don’t think so . . . not yet, anyway.”
Norma rolled her eyes. “Oh, great . . . now we are going to have to watch her like a hawk night and day. This is your fault, Macky.”
Macky said, “Me? What did I do?”
“If you had grabbed her when I told you to, she wouldn’t have gone up there in the first place.”
“Norma, I couldn’t . . . she was already way up the aisle. Why didn’t you go after her? You were the closest.”
“And have Aunt Elner tell my mother she saw me? Do you want me grounded for the rest of my natural life? You know Mother—she would have a fit if she knew Aunt Elner had been to a Church of Christ revival, much less her own daughter.”
The Party
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, on the way over to the Coke party Anna Lee was having for Betty Raye, Norma got Patsy Marie to make a solemn promise that if she felt in the least bit strange or as if she might start speaking in the unknown tongue she was to leave at once. “If we want to be cheerleaders next year, we can’t afford for you to have a relapse and get all religious.” Then, more considerately, she asked, “How is your headache today?”