Going Where It's Dark

  She was not an especially large woman, but she had a large voice, low and clear, that carried well over the sound system. She gave a short talk about the importance of faith—how crucial it was to believe—really believe—that the Lord was able to heal through her.

  “Doubt,” said Sister Pearson, the gray hair across her forehead like the fringe on a lampshade, “is smoke, keeping the air from getting through. What you’ll see at this service is not hypnosis or magic. It’s the Lord’s power—that’s the sum of it. How many here will lift up your hand and say, ‘Sister Pearson, I know it’s not you doing the healing, it’s God, and He’s real’?”

  Hands began to rise here and there until almost everyone’s hand was in the air. Buck’s mom raised her hand partway and nudged him, but Buck sat like stone. How was he supposed to know for sure?

  Then the rope in the front row was removed, and Sister Pearson asked those with a special need to come forward, down the left aisle, and sit down as space allowed. While the rest of the crowd was asked to sing the words on the song sheet, first one, then another person came forward and took one of the empty chairs while a few more stood in the aisle, waiting their turn.

  Sister Pearson continued: “Friends, the Lord has been preparing me all my life for this work. If you want God to lift your spirits and heal your pain, you’ve got to believe He can do it. Sometimes you feel that relief right away. Sometimes you’ll feel it by the time you get home. Sometimes it takes a day and sometimes it takes a week. But if His eye is on the sparrow, dear friends, it is certainly, most certainly, on you.”

  “Amen,” said someone in the back row.

  “Amen…Amen…,” came echoing voices from the crowd.

  Buck’s mind drifted again to the piano player, who was playing without music now, hymns Buck had heard played and sung in his own church with Pastor Otis doing the singing: “Love Lifted Me,” “I Would Be True,” “Open My Eyes,” “Why Not Now?” He scanned the poles holding up the tent, the sag in the canvas at places where rainwater was probably collecting, then down to the electric cords that snaked from the speakers to some place under the side of the tent, and probably over to the Goodwill store.

  Sister Pearson was stepping down off the platform now and was standing over the first person in the front row of seats, placing her hands on his head. Her eyes were closed, and she looked upward again, her voice becoming a mighty wind as she called on God to heal this man of his sciatica—to straighten the disks in his spine that had given way, and heal him for the glory of the Kingdom of Heaven.

  She grasped the sides of his face then, and it was hard for Buck to see what was happening next. But after thirty seconds, even forty, perhaps, with Sister Pearson continuing her prayer, the man slowly got to his feet, and the healer’s hands went with him, so that she was reaching up now, and his back was erect, shoulders straight.

  “Hallelujah!” someone said from the crowd.

  “Yes, Hallelujah! God is good,” said Sister Pearson, and the man began to smile.

  As he moved on, one of the assistants helping him back to his seat, Sister Pearson bent over the next person in line, a woman in a pink jacket, whose hands clasped the handles of the walker that she had maneuvered jerkily down the aisle. There were murmurs between the two of them, and this time Sister Pearson kept her head down as she prayed loud and earnestly that God would relieve the woman of the pain in her hip and all the other internal problems that were plaguing her, for God knew our bodies more intimately than a surgeon ever could….

  One by one the people who had been prayed over rose and slowly took the right aisle back to their seats, some smiling, some not, and the empty chairs were soon filled by the next in line, then the next and the next. When Buck glanced cautiously around, he saw the line extending all the way to the back of the tent, and the stooped man at the keyboard played on.

  “Mom, we’re going to be here all night!” Buck whispered.

  “What’s a night compared to a lifetime of stuttering, Buck?” she said in answer, and Buck stretched his legs out in front of him as far as space would allow and settled in.

  Sometimes Sister Pearson’s voice was so faint it was only a murmur, not for the audience to hear, and other times she would let everyone in on the fact that this man or woman had been suffering with knee pain for eleven years, or headaches so severe it was impossible to get out of bed in the morning. There were people, Buck discovered, who had been in pain for more years than he was alive.

  As rain pattered down on the roof of the tent, accompanied by a soft piano, Sister Pearson told the listeners that she could feel God’s power surging through her shoulders, her arms, down into the palms of her hands and off the tips of her fingers. It was so strong, she said, it was like an electric shock, but she knew that she was taking the pain right out of the suffering creature before her. And then she would grasp the arm or the knee or the shoulder of that person, cover it with both hands, and once again plead with God to send his healing power. And suddenly she would jolt backward with the current and call out, “God is with you, brother!” or “Sister, you are healed!”

  Sometimes the person she was touching would shout “Praise Jesus!” Sometimes he wouldn’t say anything. Most looked somewhat stunned as they groped for their canes or their walkers again and made their way back to their seats. Occasionally there was a distant rumble of thunder and a flicker of lights, but Sister Pearson carried on.

  Buck wondered if he really belonged there. All the others seemed so willing, so eager, almost—to go down front with everyone watching, and tell Sister Pearson about their troubles. The thing he couldn’t understand was why God had to wait for Sister Pearson to come to Hillsdale to do anything for them. God knew that Buck stuttered. If He didn’t hear Buck’s prayers, He surely heard Mom’s. But it didn’t seem right to ask What are you waiting for? of God.

  Mom nudged him and gave him a quizzical look that meant When are you going to go up? and Buck just looked away.

  Occasionally Sister Pearson would stop right in the middle of placing her hands on someone’s head and call out something like, “God tells me there’s a man here from Maryland who’s had heart issues for seven years. Wherever he’s sitting, God wants him to come up here where I can pass along God’s healing grace.” And once Buck heard a woman’s voice say, “Howard, that’s you! Go on! Go on up there!” And a man in a brown shirt and a bolo tie came down the aisle, surprise and wonder on his face.

  How did Sister Pearson know that? Buck wondered. He wasn’t sure when he should go up, though. He definitely didn’t want her calling out his name, or the fact that he stuttered. He looked around and there were still a few people in the aisle, waiting their turn.

  “Go on!” his mother urged.

  He shook his head and folded his song sheet in halves, then in fourths, then folded it still again until it was just a hard lump inside his fist. His knee bobbed nervously up and down. What would Sister Pearson say to him? How much did she know? This was a hundred times worse than being on the school bus with Pete Ketterman kicking the back of the seat. This was a whole tent full of people watching.

  “The service is going to be over, and you’ll be the last one left,” his mother whispered, nudging him again. “Is that what you want?”

  Suddenly Buck propelled himself up out of his chair. He stumbled over the cane of the man sitting in the aisle seat and lurched down the aisle and onto one of the empty chairs in the first row. The two people sitting there turned and looked at him and so did Sister Pearson.

  She closed her eyes again, however, and continued praying over the elderly man before her, willing God to cure his worsening eyesight.

  Buck wished he were next. Wished it were over with and he was going back to his seat. Wished he and his mom were heading out to the car, and that on the way home he could talk a blue streak and the stuttering would be gone and finally he would be like everyone else. It could happen.

  But there was still one more person between him
and Sister Pearson, and the palms of his hands were so wet that he wiped them again on his jeans. The inside of his mouth felt like the dry fuzz on a tennis ball, and his jaws ached from the tension of holding them still. His whole body was trembling. Suddenly both the blind man and the man who had brought him down front were leaving, and the gray-haired woman with the piercing gray eyes was leaning over Buck.

  “What do you ask of the Lord?” she said, and Buck tried to get his mouth open.

  He jerked his head to one side, trying to fling the words out, but his jaws were like a clamp. For a moment he felt as though something physical might have happened and he had lockjaw. His eyes were wild as he flung his head again and again, and the next thing he knew Sister Pearson had his head in both her hands, pressing her palms harder and harder against his cheeks until his lips puckered. She smelled of camphor and roses, and was so close that he could see all the lines of her face, even the faint fine mustache above her upper lip.

  “I…I…uh…,” Buck stammered, but now he couldn’t even shake the words out, and embarrassment was swallowing him alive. The two men who had started to walk away stopped and turned around.

  Sister Pearson released his head and put both hands on his shoulders, pressing down, harder and harder to hold him still. Her eyes were closed, her face pointed upward, and everyone could hear her asking God to make this young man whole, dispel his troubled thoughts and heal his mind. “Give him the peace that passeth understanding, dear Jesus, because we know that in you, all things are possible….”

  Buck slammed the car door hard the moment he got inside.

  “W…w…why’d you m…make me come, Mom?” he bellowed, writhing in the passenger seat as he clicked his seat belt buckle. “She th…th…thought I was c…crazy! Now every…b…body thinks it.”

  Mrs. Anderson was almost as upset as he was. “Buck, I’m sorry. I don’t think she understood. Didn’t you tell her you stuttered?”

  Buck could only press his feet against the floorboards, his back stiff as a broom, then flopped himself against the door. “I t…tried b…but I couldn’t s…say the w…words!” he said miserably. “I hate myself! I h…hate b…being me.”

  “Buck, don’t say that.”

  “You’re not me!”

  “There’s so much about you to like. You know I love you just the way you are.”

  “That’s a l…lie, Mom! If you d…did you w…wouldn’t have t…t…t…tried to g…get that woman to p…p…p…pray over me.”

  “I only wanted to help! I want you to be happy in eighth grade, Buck! I want you to have a good time in high school. I want you to be able to get any job you want when you’re grown. I don’t want your stuttering to hold you back.” She was crying, Buck could tell, and he hated himself all the more. Why couldn’t he talk like other people when part of the time he could? Sometimes, he knew, teachers thought he didn’t even try to control it. Or that he did it to annoy the other students and attract attention. He wished they could be him for just one day.

  It was like a wall he couldn’t climb over, he couldn’t crawl under, and he couldn’t get around. He didn’t want to make his mother unhappy, always having to worry about him. And no, he didn’t want to be teased or rejected either. He even imagined putting his mouth and jaws in some kind of primitive device all summer so his lips couldn’t tremble, he couldn’t make those awful sounds or stupid twisted faces when he stuttered that got people thinking he was weird or crazy. If there were such a device, he’d do it!

  It just didn’t seem fair. Not that he’d ever wish it on Katie, but they were twins. Why did he stutter and she didn’t? He could remember back when he was four…maybe five…thinking that someone must have taught her how to speak correctly but had forgotten to teach him. How desperately he had wished that, just as sometimes he’d go to bed with his leg hurting him, but wake up and the pain was gone, that some morning he’d discover he didn’t stutter any longer. But that never happened.

  •••

  It had been a quiet supper.

  The tension between Buck and his mom was like vapor that had settled down over the table; every time people inhaled, their voices seemed higher, tighter, as though they might cough at any minute. When anyone spoke, it was about something trivial, with a lightness that belied the pink of Mrs. Anderson’s face, the mechanical passage of Buck’s fork from his plate to his mouth and back again.

  He was the first one to leave the table. He rinsed off his plate and silverware in the sink, put them in the dishwasher, and went upstairs, closing the door to his room with a thud and flopping onto his bed. Buck lay staring up at the fine crack in the ceiling plaster that resembled, he’d often thought, the highway Mel took from Roanoke to Boston when he made the north/south run. Buck wished he were on that highway now, going almost anywhere, he didn’t care where. Anywhere but here.

  Downstairs, he knew, they were talking about him—Mom telling what had happened at the faith healing that afternoon. For several minutes there seemed to be no sound at all coming from below, and then, finally, an indignant cry from Katie—and he knew the story had been told about Sister Pearson praying to heal his mind.

  Buck rolled off the side of the bed and noiselessly opened his bedroom door. Putting most of his weight on the banister, he maneuvered himself down the stairs, avoiding the step that creaked, and sat down near the bottom. He was good at eavesdropping these days. Would make a good spy. If anyone needed a spy who never talked…

  Katie’s voice: “But didn’t he tell her?”

  And Mom’s anguished reply: “He tried to, but he couldn’t get the words out, Katie! He simply couldn’t tell her that he stuttered. I almost got up and came forward myself to explain it, but I knew that would embarrass him even more.”

  She was right about that, Buck thought. He remembered times people talked around him, even though he was standing right there!

  Doctor to Mom: “Is he having any pain in the other ear?”

  Neighbor to Dad: “Could Buck give me a hand with the trimming, do you think?”

  Friend to Katie: “Does Buck want to come with us?”

  There were murmurs in the kitchen that Buck couldn’t make out. Then:

  “Well, he’s got to learn to stand up for himself.” Dad’s voice, a deep sigh in it. “Someone can’t be following along after to explain him to other people.”

  “I know, Don, I know. And that’s the last thing on earth Buck would want. But it’s so hard to watch his face get all twisted, the way he tries to speak sometimes and can’t.”

  Buck could actually feel the color rising in his neck.

  Now Katie again: “He must have been so humiliated, Mom! Why did you ever take him there? Even if the woman realized he stuttered, how did you think it would help?”

  Mom went on the defensive: “You can just get off your high horse, missy! Who was it came out here in the kitchen on Friday saying why didn’t we do something about that boy’s stuttering? Well, now I did something, and everybody’s jumping on me for it.” Her voice wavered, and Buck swallowed.

  “Look. Nobody’s jumping on you, Mom,” said Joel. “We read all that stuff I found online, and he’s told you he won’t go to Norfolk….”

  “Doris,” said Mel, “let me tell you, if I thought Buck had something physically wrong with his mouth or throat, I’d drive him to the best specialist there was—the Cleveland clinic or over to Baltimore—that Johns Hopkins place….I’d go in debt to do it. But if he doesn’t want to go…”

  No one spoke for a while. And then an exasperated burst from Gramps: “Let the boy alone, for heaven’s sake. We know dang well there’s nothing wrong with his mouth. He can talk right when he puts his mind to it. Don’t drag him here, drag him there. He’ll figure it out one of these days.”

  “And what if he doesn’t, Gramps?” asked Katie. “He hasn’t so far. None of us knows what it feels like to be Buck. We have no clue what he’s going through.”

  More murmurings.

  An
d finally, the squeak of chairs that meant the meal was over and so was the conversation. Everything was right back to where it had been, where it always was: nobody, including Buck, knew what to do, and even talking about it was painful.

  Buck slipped out the front door before anyone left the kitchen. He climbed on his bike and took off, and when he reached the road, he didn’t know whether to turn right or left. He didn’t know where to go except back to the Hole, as deep and dark as he could get, but he wasn’t stupid enough to do that. It would be night in another hour. Already the moon was out, faint over the poplars.

  He was heading toward town, but he wasn’t about to go to Center Street. A warm night like this, there would be a dozen or more kids hanging out in front of the B&I, going in and out of the Sweet Shop. The last thing he wanted to do was run into someone who had seen him over in Hillsdale that afternoon, unlikely as that was.

  Everything he’d heard from outside the kitchen made him sick to his stomach. The pity in their voices, the way they predicted how the rest of his life would be. He hated his mouth, his throat, his tongue, his face. Hated himself for not being able to control anything, change anything, like there was a twin self inside him that took delight in every humiliation that came along.

  He rode over a pothole on purpose and the bike skidded, almost knocking him off. He wished it had. Wished it had thrown him. Wished it had thrown him and landed on top of him, the chain cutting his stupid lips.

  And then, because he didn’t know what else to do, Buck turned a corner and rode straight to the driveway of Jacob Wall’s house.

  He wouldn’t allow himself to just sit there. Even stopped himself when he started to turn and ride away. Leaving his bike by the Volvo, every step he took was full of disgust and embarrassment.

  Finally the door opened, and there was Jacob. He didn’t say anything. Just stood there looking at Buck. A dish towel was tucked into the belt of his pants, and Buck wondered if he’d interrupted a late night supper. He didn’t care. It was now or never.