It makes pictures but not a kodak? So maybe he’s got hold to one of those big ones like they use to take your picture at the carnival. You know, the kind they take you out of wet and you have to wait around until you dry….
Body shook his head. No, Rev, this here is something different. This is something they say you have to be in the dark to see. These folks come out already dry.
You mean a nickelodeon? I heard them talking about one of those when we were out there preaching in Denver.
I don’t think so, Rev, but maybe that’s what they meant. But, man, how’s Sammy doing to get something like that just to play with? A thing like that must cost about a zillion dollars.
I don’t know, I said. But remember, his papa has that grocery store. Besides, Sammy’s so smart he might’ve made him one, man.
That’s right, he a Jew, ain’t he? He talk much of that Jew talk to you, Bliss?
No, how could he when I can’t talk back? I wish you would remember some more about that box. It’s probably like the magic lantern I seen one time—except in those the pictures don’t move.
I hulled seven peanuts and chewed them. I could smell the fresh roasted smell and I tried to imagine what Body had heard while his voice flowed on about the Jews. Somehow I seemed to remember Daddy Hickman describing something similar but it kept sliding away from me, like when you bob for apples floating in a tub.
Say, Rev, Body said.
What?
Can’t you hear? I said do you remember in the Bible where it tells about Samson and it says he had him a boy to lead him up to the wall so he could shake that building down?
That’s right, I said.
Well, answer me this, you think that little boy got killed?
Killed, I said, who killed him?
What I mean is, do you think that maybe old Samson forgot to tell that boy what he was fixing to do?
I cut my eyes over at Body. I didn’t like the idea. Once Daddy Hickman had said: Bliss, you must be a hero just like that little lad who led blind Samson to the wall, because a great many grown folks are blind and have to be led toward the light…. The question worried me and I could hear Body popping peanut hulls. I was looking up at the ceiling of the porch where dirt daubers were building a nest.
Look, Body, I said, I truly don’t feel like working today. Because, you see, while you’re out playing cowboy and acting the fool and going on cotton picks and chunking rocks at trains and things like that, I have to always be preaching and praying and studying my Bible….
What’s all that got to do with what I asked you? You want somebody to cry for you?
No, I said, but right now it looks to you like we just eating these here good goobers and talking together and watching those sparrows out there beating up dust in the road—but I’m really resting from my pastoral duties, just like Daddy Hickman does; understand? So now I just want to think some more about this box that Sammy Leatherman’s supposed to have. How did those white boys say it looked?
Man, Body said, you just like a bulldog with a bone when you start to thinking about something. I done told you, they say Sammy got him a machine that has people in it…
People in it? Watch out there, Body….
He rolled over, looking at me now.
Sho, Rev—folks. They say he point it at the wall and stands back in the dark cranking on a handle and they come out and move around. Just like a gang of ghosts, man.
Like ghosts?
Yeah, Body said. That’s how he can keep so many of ‘em in that machine. Ghosts don’t wear no shoes so you can jam a heap of ‘em in a tight place.
Body, you expect me to believe that?
He frowned. Now listen here, Bliss, I had done left that box because I wanted to talk about Samson and you didn’t want to. So don’t come trying to call me no lie….
Forget about Samson, man. Where does he have this thing?
In his daddy’s basement under the grocery store. You got a nickel?
I looked far down the street, past the chinaberry trees. Some little kids were pushing a big one on a racer made out of a board and some baby-buggy wheels. He was guiding it with a rope like a team of horses, with them drawn all up in a knot, pushing.
I said: Man, we ought to go somewhere and roast these goober peas some more. That would make them even better. Maybe Sister Judson would do it for us. She makes some fine fried pies too, and she just might be baking today; I have to remember to pray for her tonight, she’s a nice lady. What’s a nickel got to do with it?
‘Cause Sammy charges you two cents to see them come out and move.
I looked at him. Body had a round face with laughing eyes and a smooth black skin. He was a head taller than me and very strong. He saw me doubting and grinned. He was going to tease.
They move, man, he said. I swear on my grandmother that they come out of that machine and move. And that ain’t all: They walk and talk—only you can’t hear what they say—and they dance and fist-fight and shoot and stab one another; and sometimes they even kiss, but not too much. And they drink liquor, man, and go staggering all around and they hit one another in the face with pies.
They sound like folks, all right. I said.
They folks all right, Body said. And they ride hosses and fight some Indians and all stuff like that. They say it’s real nice, Bliss. It’s really keen.
Who says?
Those white guys, man.
I willed to believe him. I said, And they all come out of this box?
That’s right, Rev.
How big are the people he has in there, they midgets?
Well, it’s a box about this size.
I looked at his hands, his thumbs back like the hammer on a pistol. Now I know you’re lying, I said…. Body?
What?
You know lying is a sin, don’t you? You surely ought to by now because I’ve told you enough times.
He looked at me then cut his eyes away, scowling. Listen, Bliss, a little while ago you wouldn’t tell me whether that boy who was leading Samson got killed or not, so now don’t come preaching me no sermon about lying. ‘Cause you know I can kick your butt. I don’t have to take no stuff off you. This here ain’t no Sunday, nohow. Can’t nobody make me go to church on no Friday, neither on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. In fact, on Friday I’m subject to boot a preacher’s behind ‘til his nose bleeds. I’m liable to kick him straight up a tree and throw rocks at his butt! And won’t let him come down ‘til Sunday!
I rebuked him with my face, but now he was out to tease me.
That’s the truth, Rev, and you know the truth is what the Lord loves. On a Friday I’ll give a doggone preacher hell. Let him catch me on Sunday if he wants to, that’s all right providing he ain’t too long-winded. And even on Wednesday ain’t so bad, but please, please, don’t let him fool with me on no Friday.
I flipped a goober at his boasting head.
That’s right, he said, on Friday I’ll boot a preacher’s butt ‘til it ropes like okra.
I flipped another goober but he wouldn’t dodge, trying to stare me down. Then we dueled with our faces, our eyes, but I won when his lips quivered and he had to laugh.
Rev, he said, shaking his head, I swear you’re my ace buddy, preacher or no—but why do preachers always have to be so serious? Look at that face of yourn! Let’s see how you look when you see one of those outrageous sinners, one of those midnight rambling, whiskey-drinking gamblers come p.i.-limping by….
I’ve told you now, Body….
He stopped teasing and lay back with head upon his arms, his knees crossed. Man, you too serious. But I’m not lying about that box though, honest. It’s suppose to be about this size, but when they come out on the wall they git as big as grown folks—hecks, bigger. It’s magic, man.
It must be, I said. What kind of folks has he got in that box? You might as well tell a really big lie.
White folks, man. What you think? Well, he has got a few Indians in there. That is if any of th
em are left after they’re supposed to have been killed.
No colored?
Naw, just white. You know they gon’ keep all the new things for theyselves. They put us in there about time it’s fixing to wear out.
We giggled, holding one hand across our mouths and slapping our thighs with the other as grown men did when a joke was outrageously simple-minded and yet somehow true.
Then that’s got to be magic, I said. Because that’s the only way they can get rid of the colored. But really, Body, don’t you ever tell the truth?
Sure I do, all the time. I know you think I’m lying, Rev, but I’m telling you the Lord’s truth. Sammy’s got them folks in that machine like when you put lightning bugs in a jug.
And about how many you think he’s got in there?
He held his head to one side and squinted.
About two hundred, man; maybe more.
And you think I’m going to believe that too?
It’s true, man. He got them jugged in there and for four cents me and you can go see him let ‘em come out and move. You can see for yourself. You got four cents?
Sure, I said, but I’m saving them. You have to tell a better lie than that to get my money. A preacher’s money comes hard.
Shucks, that’s what you say. All y’all do is hoop and holler a while, then you pass the plate. But that’s all right, you can keep your old money if you want to be so stingy, because I seen it a coupla times already.
You saw it? I felt betrayed. Body was of my right hand. I saw him skeet through the liar’s gap in his front teeth and roll his eyes, pouting.
So why’re you just now telling me?
Shoots, you don’t believe nothing I say nohow. I get tired of you ‘sputing my word. But just the same, I’m telling the truth; they come out and move, and they move fast. Not like ordinary folks. And last time I was down there Sammy made them folks come out real big, man. They was twice as big as grown folks, and they had a whole train with ‘em….
A whole train?
Sho, a real train running over a trestle just like the “Southern” does. And some cowboys was chasing it on they hosses.
Body, I said, I’m going to pray for you, you hear? Fact is, I’m going to ask Daddy Hickman and the whole church to pray for you.
He stood up, brushing the hulls from his overalls.
Don’t you think you’re so good, Bliss, he said. You better ask them to pray for you while they doing it, ‘cause you don’t believe nothing nobody says. Shucks, I’m going home.
Now don’t get mad—hey, wait a minute, Body. Come back here! Where’re you going? Come on back. Please, Body. Can’t you hear me say Please?
But now I could see the dust spurting behind his feet as he ran toward home. I was sad, he was of my right hand.
Mister Movie-man, she said. I smiled. High up the hill the cattle tinkled their bells. So now I wanted to say, No, Daddy Hickman; if that’s the way it has to be, let’s not go. Because it was one more thing I’d have to deny myself because of being Appointed and Set Aside, and I didn’t want the added yearning. Better to listen to the others telling the stories, as I had for some time now, since Body had brought the news and the movies had come to town. Better to listen while sitting on the curbstones in the evening, or watching the boys acting out the parts during recess and lunch time on the school grounds. Any noontime I could watch them reliving the stories and making the magic gestures and see the flickery scenes unreeling inside my eye just as Daddy Hickman could make people relive the action of the Word. And seeing them, I could feel myself drawn into the world they shared so intensely that I felt that I had actually taken part not only in the seeing, but in the very actions unfolding in the depths of the wall I’d never seen; in a darkness I’d never known, experiencing with the excruciating intensity of a camel being drawn through the eye of a needle a whole world issuing through an eye of glass.
So Daddy Hickman was too late, already the wild landscape of my mind had been trampled by great droves of galloping horses and charging redskins and the yelling counterattacks of cowboys and cavalrymen, and I had reeled before exploding actions that imprinted themselves upon one’s inner eyes with the impact of a water-soaked snowball bursting against the tender membrane of the outer eye to leave a felt-image of blue-white pain throbbing with every pulse of blood propelled by the eager, excited heartbeat toward heightened vision. And I sat on the hard clay behind the white clapboard schoolhouse dizzy before the vastness of the action and the scale of the characters and the dimensions of the emotions and responses that whirled in my mind; had seen laughs so large and villainous with such rotting, tombstone teeth in mouths so broad and cavernous that they seemed to yawn well-hole wide and threaten to gulp the whole audience into their traps of hilarious maliciousness. And meanness transcendent, yawning in one overwhelming face and heroic goodness expressed in actions as cleanly violent as a cyclone seen from a distance, rising ever above the devilish tricks of the bad guys, and the women’s eyes looking ever wider with horror or welling ever limpid with love, shocked with surprise over some bashful movement of the hero’s lips, his ocean waves of hair, his heaving chest, his eyes anguished with love, despair, or the sheer impossibility of communicating feeling through words. Or now determined with womanly virtue to foil the bad guy and escaping in the panting finish with the good guy’s shy assistance; escaping even the Indian chief’s dark dark clutches even as I cowered—sharing my friends’ fear now, in my imagined seat underneath the Indians’ galloping ponies’ flying hooves, yet surviving to see her looking with wall-wide head and yard-wide smile of mouth melting with the hero’s to fade into the darkness sibilant with women’s and young girls’ swooning sighs.
Had seen already the trains in my imagination, running wild, threatening to jump the track and crash into the white section below our high enthronement, with smoke and steam threatening to scald the air and bring hellfire to those trapped in their favored seats—screaming as fireman and engineer battled to the death with the Devil now become a Dalton boy or a James or a Younger, and whose horses of devil flesh outran again and again the iron horses of the rails, up-grade and down, and with their bullets flying to burst ever against the sacred sanctuary of Uncle Sam’s mail cars, where the gold was stored and the hero ever waited; killing multitudes of clerks and passengers, armed and unarmed alike, in joy and in anger, in fear and in fun. And bushwhacking the sheriff and his deputies again and again, dropping them over cliffs and into cascading waterfalls, until like the sun the Hero loomed and doomed the arch-villain to join his victims, tossed from cliffs, shot in the heart with the blood flowing darkly or hung blackhooded with his men, three in a row, to plunge from a common scaffold to swing like sawdust-filled dolls or blackbirds hung from electric wires by pieces of thread, moving slowly—down in the valley, valley so low—in lonely winds.
All whirled through my mind as filtering through Body’s and the others’ eyes and all made concrete in their shouting pantomime of conflict, their deadly aimed pistol and rifle blasts, their dying falls with faces fixed in death’s most dramatic agony, struck down as by the wrath of God, their imaginary six-shooters blazing one last poetic bullet of banging justice to bring their murderers down down down to hell, now heaving heaven high in wonder evoked in a far white wall of mystery….
So now I wanted to leave the place unentered, even if it had a steeple higher than any church in the world, leave it, pass it ever by, rather than see it once then never enter it again—with all the countless unseen episodes to remain a mystery and like my mother flown forever. But I could not say it, nor could I refuse to enter; for no such language existed between child and man. So I, Bliss, the preacher, ascended, climbed, holding reluctantly Daddy Hickman’s huge dark hand. Climbed up the steep, narrow stairs crackling with peanut shells and discarded candy wrappers through the stench of urine—up into the hot, breathing darkness; up, until the slanting roof seemed to rest upon the crowns of our retracted heads.
And as we come in
to the pink-tinted light of the gallery with its tiered, inverted hierarchical order of seats, white at bottom, black at top, I pull back upon his hand, frightened by what, I did not know. And he says, Come along, Bliss boy—deep and comforting in the dark. It’s all right, he says. I’m with you. You just hold my hand.
And I ascended, holding on….
Mister Movie-man, she said … and I touched her dark hair, smiling, dreaming. Yes, I said … still remembering.
The pink light faded as we moved like blind men. All was darkness now and vague shapes, the crackling of bags and candy wrappers, the dry popping of peanut hulls being opened and dropped to the floor. Voices sounded in the mellow idiom back and forth behind us as we found seats and waited for the magic to begin. Daddy Hickman sighed, resting back, over flowing his seat so that I could feel his side pressing against me beneath the iron armrest. I settled back.
Why don’t they hurry and get this shoot-em-up started, someone behind us said. It was a sinner.
Git started? a deep voice said. Fool, don’t you know that it was already started before we even sat down? Have you done gone stone blind?
It was another sinner. I could tell by the don’t give a damn tease in his gravelly voice!
No, the first sinner said. I don’t see nothing and you don’t neither. Because when it comes to looking at shoot-em-ups I’m the best that ever did it. What’s more, I can see you, my man, and that ain’t so easy to do in the dark.
Well, the deep voice said, it’s starting and I’m already looking and you don’t even know it. So maybe you see me but you sho in hell don’t see what I see.
Yeah, I know, but that because you drunk or else you been smoking those Mexican cubebs agin.
Listening, I looked to see how Daddy Hickman was reacting. Silently eating popcorn, he seemed to ignore them, feeding the white kernels into his mouth from his great fist like a huge boy.
See there, the second sinner said, because you black you’re trying to low-rate me. All right, call me drunk if you want to but any fool knows that a shoot-em-up don’t have no end or beginning; but go on playing all the time. They keep on running even when the lights is on. Hell, it’s just like the moon in the daytime, you don’t see it but it’s dam’ sho up there.