Around ten o’clock, the younger boys came home, soggy and cold. Mamma fed them, and Bethany sent them all to sleep at her house.
“You need some sleep, Nanna,” Bethany said.
“I can’t sleep,” Nanna snapped. “I’m going out there to look for him.”
“No, Leila,” Great-Aunt Imogene tried. “You know old women can’t see at night, even with a flashlight.”
I was holding Canaan, and Laura wasn’t even trying to take him away. It seemed like all the rules and all the problems of the community had been suspended temporarily, and I got to play with him all that night and kiss his head as much as I wanted and follow him around that great room as he ran. I got to feed him and watch the way he opened his mouth when the spoon approached. I was the one who got to rock him to sleep. I only felt the tinest bit guilty for taking pleasure in such a troubled time.
“I think the best thing we can do is hold a prayer meeting,” Laura said.
“That’s the best idea I’ve heard all day,” Mamma replied, placing her hand on Laura’s shoulder.
So we sat in a circle and began calling out to Christ. Everybody prayed, together, aloud, and most people cried. Occasionally, there’d be a break, and then they’d start up again.
But during one break, Nanna spoke up and said, “Children, I believe I’m going to get in my bed and do my praying there.”
“Do you want me to go with you?” Mamma volunteered.
“No. You stay here. Maybe Ninah will come sleep with me.”
“Go with her, Ninah,” Mamma instructed, even though I was already on my feet.
“Now, y’all come get me if you hear anything,” Nanna demanded. “Don’t let me sleep if you hear any news.”
“We won’t,” Wanda said, and kissed her cheek.
“Any news at all,” Nanna whispered.
We walked right in Nanna’s back door, and I was about to take off my shoes when Nanna pulled out a flashlight and threw me some long johns to put on under my clothes. “We’re going looking,” she said.
I knew from her tone that there was no need to try and change her mind. I didn’t want to anyway.
Five minutes later, we stole out the front door, walking quickly down the dirt road and keeping our eyes primed for headlights in the distance.
“Where are we going?” I asked her.
“To the place where we dunked you,” she said carefully.
“Do you think he’s there?” I asked. I wondered if she was afraid he’d drowned himself. Just the thought chilled me.
“I don’t know.”
She was almost running. I had to hustle just to keep up.
When we came to the woods, we turned on the flashlight and made our way through the branches. I went first so I could hold back branches for her and strip down the spiderwebs with my face so they wouldn’t cross hers. But I don’t think Nanna noticed any of that.
I hoped the batteries in the flashlight were good. We needed the light. The moon was hidden by all the clouds, and the rain felt like a million mosquito bites against my skin.
When we got to the creek, I shined the light on the water, looking for a narrow place to cross, but Nanna never slowed down. She walked right through the water, and I ran behind her, then ahead.
When we came to the clearing where James had killed his first deer, I talked her into stopping to catch her breath. My own lungs were stinging, and I had to spit to make way for the air I was gulping.
But not long afterwards, Nanna was walking again, and we didn’t stop until we came to the broken tree that stretched out over the pond.
Nanna took the flashlight, pulled herself onto the trunk, and stepped out over the water. “Herman?” she hollered. “Old Man, you’ve been out here long enough. You’ve scared us good, and it’s time to go home.” When she said “home,” her voice caught halfway and squeaked with the loss.
“Nanna, he’ll be okay,” I promised her stupidly.
“Now you don’t know that, do you, young lady?”
“No, ma’am,” I admitted.
“Well, then hush.”
She swung the flashlight left and right, studying the reeds, the surface of the pond. But I was searching for rope. Even after Nanna got down and we walked along the bank, rope was all I could think about.
“Do you reckon we could see any better from the dunking plank?” she asked as we approached the giant tree.
I couldn’t imagine climbing to that place again.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’ll go.”
“We’ll both go,” Nanna insisted, and she walked over to the makeshift ladder and began her climb.
I had the flashlight then, holding it straight up so Nanna could see where to put her hands. I worried so hard that she’d fall, and if she did, I wanted to be there to catch her. But she was steady and moving like someone so determined that I knew that even if she was marching to her death, she was sure it was what she wanted to do.
When she reached the top, she straddled the thick branch and scooted her way along.
I couldn’t help feeling that sick fear of heights. I couldn’t help remembering the only other time I’d been in that tree, and I sensed again and again that everything inside my rib cage was dropping from within its frame. My heart, my lungs, my stomach and liver and gallbladder, all dropping. The only thing that convinced me it couldn’t happen was the thought of all that kudzu tangled inside.
And then we were on the plank, side by side. Nanna took the flashlight and waved it across the water and land.
“Did you see that?” she said, when she noted a movement.
“Turtle,” I replied.
The rain had cut to a drizzle, but I was soaked and shivering, listening to my teeth tapping out the fear and coldness I couldn’t admit. Because the leaves hadn’t grown on the trees yet, there was nothing to protect us from the wetness, even up high. In the quiet, I let myself remember for just a second the horrible swishing of a branch being pulled through water.
“The night I first loved Herman,” Nanna said finally, “I knew there was more to God than praying and singing songs and going to preaching.”
She turned off the light, and we sat completely in darkness, suspended above the pond like someone about to be punished. I thought maybe we were being punished already. I worried that she might jump.
“I knew after holding him and kissing that way, kissing so hard that one person’s breathing was enough for two, I knew one of the reasons why my mamma killed my pappa, and at the same time, I knew I’d found out what God was about.”
I put my hand on her legs to be sure that if she moved, I’d have a grip on her, and even if I couldn’t keep her up there with me, I could go down too. He-ba-ma-shun-di and splash.
“I remember the day he began Fire and Brimstone. He’d been planning it for a time, and he couldn’t think of the right name. He came bustling into the kitchen one day and said, ‘The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind,’ and then he broke out laughing, and I fixed him some grits, and I watched him eat, just staring at his speckled skin and his laughing eyes. All along I wanted to call it ‘God’s Wind.’ I thought ‘God’s Wind’ was enough. But it was Herman’s project.”
Nanna chuckled to herself. “Crazy old man. Always coming up with a plan, a way to do something different. Something that ain’t never been done before.”
After a time, the wind started passing right through me, not even shuddering me, and though I couldn’t feel my feet anymore, it didn’t seem to matter. I thought we might be ghosts already, or that that’s what we’d always been.
“I have loved that man more than anything,” Nanna muttered, more to herself than to me. “I’ve wondered a lot of times when this day would come.”
The night seemed to be holding its breath. For a while there, with Nanna saying so much and me not having a word worth its air, I thought for sure that the darkness was going to suffocate itself, blacking us out with it.
“And you
know what else?” Nanna choked, then shook her head. “My mamma killed Pappa because she was always wishing, always wishing for more than she had. Wishing for another chance, another story to tell. But even Weston Ward wouldn’t have been enough. Even if he’d given her the moon, she would have been wishing for a star to go along with it....”
“It ain’t so bad to wish for things,” I told her.
“I reckon me and Mamma have more in common than I’d like to admit. Never satisfied with what the good Lord puts down before us.” She reached over and touched my thigh. I think her hand was pressing hard, but I was too chilled to feel it.
“But you’ve always known that, haven’t you?” Nanna continued. “That’s why you want me to keep telling the story. You wish for more than anybody I know, but you better be careful. That’s all I got to say.”
I forced myself to breathe, deep, to keep from dying with the night. The only thing I understood was that God’s will or not—Nanna wanted Grandpa back. But at least she was honest about it. At least she wasn’t afraid to say she’d like her tale to have a happier ending.
“Nanna,” I said, “you don’t know how this is going to wind up.”
“No,” she answered. “But things are going to change now. From here on out. That much I do know.”
I don’t quite remember how we got down. I think it was Nanna who held the light, and I groped around in the darkness, feeling my way. But I wasn’t worried about falling anymore. For some reason, maybe just exhaustion, I trusted my hands and the tree.
Back at Nanna’s we dried off with heavy towels, and Nanna got us both dry clothes. I wore one of her dresses and a sweater, and I didn’t even mind looking like an old woman. We sat by her wood stove long enough to burn the chill out, though it never quite left my feet.
I didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted to comfort her, but I also understood that sorrow’s a silent place. It seemed like I could see Nanna shriveling behind her eyes. The force that made her eyes shine was backing up, getting farther and farther away.
“Are you okay?” I asked her finally.
It took her a minute to figure out I’d posed a question. She looked at me, her eyes like unplugged sockets, and replied, “Put on your shoes.”
I followed her onto the porch, hurrying to button my coat. “We should get started on breakfast,” I said. “The men will be back soon.”
“I want to take one more look,” Nanna replied. So we headed back out to the woods.
The foliage and weeds dried themselves against our ankles. It had rained so hard during the night that even after daylight came, it looked like the darkness had stuck to the ground. And as much as I loved Nanna, the only place I wanted to be was in the fellowship hall, preferably drinking something hot and holding Canaan.
Nanna marched across land we’d covered before. I could see the footprints of others in the muddy mulch. She took us in circles around the same piece of land and didn’t seem to notice we weren’t getting anywhere.
I kept trying to take the lead, but Nanna’d step out in front. It was almost as if she was assuring herself that I couldn’t see her face.
“We’re not going to find him out here,” I said after a while.
Nanna stopped walking, turned back to me, her hair pushed out of its bun by the rain and splatted against the sides of her neck. “If you don’t want to be out here,” she snapped, “then go your ass back to the church.”
I was surprised to hear her talk that way to me. But the thing that made me think I might cry was watching her stand with her hand against a tree and seeing a fat drop of water fall from a pine bough and land on her forehead. Nanna looked so insulted, as if the rain had hit her on purpose, and she slapped the drop away like a tick or a spider, put her hands over her face, and wandered off.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I yelled.
“If you’ve given up on Herman, you’ve left me already,” she called back without turning around.
“Nanna,” I begged, catching up. Then I held onto her, wishing I had a rocking chair so I could soothe her proper. “It’s okay, Nanna. It’s okay.”
And when she couldn’t stop, when I felt her shuddering so hard I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep her bones from separating and slipping from my hands, I said, “We don’t have time for this right now, Nanna. Come on.”
She followed me.
We crossed the creek, and only a few minutes later, we heard a voice call out—David’s—and then Nanna raced towards him. By the time I got there, David was kneeling on the ground, lifting up Grandpa Herman’s khaki pants, dark flannel shirt, and camouflage jacket.
As others gathered around and more voices called from far echoes, “Did you find him?” Nanna reached down and gathered Grandpa’s boxer shorts, socks, and shoes.
“Oh, Lord,” Everett said. “Did y’all see this?” He motioned to the ground beneath a bush where a bottle of Coca-Cola sat upright, half-full. There was a pack of Nabs beside it, with two uneaten and a soggy one bitten in two.
We stood together at daybreak, not feeling the light at all. We stood so silently that breathing sounded like shouting. And then David said it.
“He was raptured. It was the rapture.”
“Hush, David,” Daddy whispered. But other voices were already launching, and I couldn’t tell one from another. It was as if the voices were struggling to hoist each other into Heaven—hoping to at least get their voices there if their bodies had missed the call.
“Oh dear Jesus” overlapped by “Help us, Heavenly Father,” tumbling across “The Rapture? When?” The voices called from behind trees. The voices puffed and panted. The voices blasted into the morning, “Save us, Jesus.”
“No way,” I said out loud. “Stop it!”
“It was the rapture, ” David repeated, then began crying, then praying. “We’ve been left behind. Jesus, don’t tell me we’ve been left behind.”
I turned to Barley, who held his mouth open—like he was trying to keep it from moving. I could see him filling up, rising like a thermometer, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before the top blew off.
“I don’t believe it,” Barley yelled out. “Great-Grandpa got raptured?” He shook his head as if to throw the idea away, then took off running. “I’ve got to tell them,” he called back, his voice cluttered with fear.
“Hold on, now,” Daddy shouted, but Barley was gone. David stood up and took off running after him. Then Joshua and the others, screaming, crying out to trees, “Lord, forgive us. Lord, don’t leave us here.”
“Do you think it’s true, Daddy?” Everett asked. His chin rigored beneath his beard, and then he ran behind them, forgetting who he was.
It all happened so fast and felt so slow.
“Y’all get back here right now,” Nanna hollered. “We got to keep looking.”
But nobody came back for her.
“Come on, Leila,” Daddy said. “My truck’s over here.” And he offered her his arm and hustled her away. I ran behind, then ahead of them. I hopped into the truck bed. They climbed inside. And Daddy drove us home.
It seemed like a long ride back, though we got there just as the others were running into the yard. Uncle Ernest’s truck clanked behind us, then halted to park. I didn’t know what to think. There’s something about fear that gets in your blood and thickens everything up. I didn’t feel much of anything. I knew that Fire and Brimstone had been consumed, but I was scared not to stick with them for fear of having nothing to hold onto at all.
David was the first through the door, then Barley and Daddy and Nanna and me.
The women were sitting at the table, eating toast and eager for news.
“We found his clothes,” David shouted. “We found all his clothes.”
“Well, did you find him?” somebody asked.
“Don’t you see?” David said. “It was the rapture. He’s been raptured.”
“What?” Mamma said.
Then Barley screamed out, “We’ve b
een left behind.”
Everybody was quiet for a second, and then Mamma broke into tears and began to hold onto Laura, who had started to scream.
“We got left behind?” Pammy said, and then she began crying too. “Why’d we get left behind?”
“God, have mercy,” Olin said, and then Mustard, who had just come in with John and some younger boys, took off running, hollering, “Nooooo” so loudly that his voice graveled.
“We ain’t missed the rapture,” Daddy said, but in his voice, I could tell that he wasn’t quite sure himself. “I know we ain’t all missed it. Do you think Herman would have been the only one taken?”
But three-quarters of the people were already on their knees, sobbing out to Jesus, hollering and begging.
“It was the storm last night,” Wanda called. “That must have been when it happened.” And then she began praying too.
Some people broke into tongues. Some people screamed and begged God to reconsider. I stood looking at Daddy and Nanna, who were as perplexed as I was. “That’s bullshit,” I said. “Ain’t been no rapture.”
“He was the only one,” Laura yelled, “the only one who tried to get you to repent. And it’s your sinfulness that tainted this community, Ninah, and kept us from being resurrected.”
“It’s not the rapture,” I defended. “Look.” And I ran to the faucet and turned on the water to show her that it wasn’t running blood. But I was grateful for the clearness when it came.
“That won’t happen until later,” she wailed. “It’s your sinfulness that’s kept us here,” and she ran to me and grabbed my head and began pulling my hair, shaking me by my hair until Nanna hauled off and slapped her into the floor where she collapsed and began her prayers again.
I thought it must have been the long night and the stress, the worry and uncertainty that had made them all so strange.