Chapter XV
NEARLY EVERYONE IN Rocky Comfort was on the school-house grounds at two o’clock Sunday afternoon. Some of the families living on the other side of Rocky Comfort Creek had started out early that morning in wagons pulled by slow-walking mules. They forded the creek a hundred yards above the schoolhouse and drove up sitting in house chairs that had been placed in the wagon-bed. Others came in cars. Many walked, and some rode mule-back.
Clay Horey and Dene, together with Semon and Lorene, had arrived at one o’clock. They had been the first there, and Clay and Semon went inside and opened up the building and got things ready for the services. It was a two-room school, and the larger room had about forty desks in it. At one end of the room there was a platform, where the teacher sat, and on it two chairs and a table.
While they were inside, Lorene and Dene went down to the spring for a drink of water. They were gone for nearly half an hour.
The schoolhouse grounds soon filled with teams and wagons, and bare-back mules tied to trees. The automobiles were left in the sandy clearing between the building and the grove. There were thirty or forty persons there, not counting the younger children and babies.
Semon and Clay came out the front door and surveyed the crowd.
“Looks like the people are starved for preaching,” Semon said, his eyes sweeping over the grounds. “The Lord sure did know what He was doing when He told me to come to Rocky Comfort. These people are ripe for religion. Saving them will be as easy as falling off a log.”
“Shucks,” Clay said, laughing a little, “that’s nothing. Folks in Rocky Comfort will go anywhere anytime when there’s something going on. It don’t matter much to them whether it’s a wedding or a funeral, or even just an old-fashioned country break-down.”
“A break-down?” Semon asked.
“Sure.”
“I’ll have to remember to say something against dancing,” he said, making a quick note in his mind. “That’s always a good subject to preach about to country people.”
He walked off into the groups of people, shaking hands and introducing himself. The men shook hands with him readily enough, almost eagerly; but the women and girls were slow to touch his hand, and they looked at him in quick glances. Semon knew how to make himself at ease in a group of women, though; and, moreover, he had a way with them that won their interest. Soon they were all laughing and crowding around him.
“The preacher’s been staying at your house, ain’t he, Clay?” Ralph Stone said.
“He’s been there since last Wednesday,” Clay told him proudly. Some of the men pressed closer to hear them talk about Semon. “I reckon it’s something to puff up about when the preacher comes and stays at a man’s house that long.”
“Ever see him before?” Ralph asked.
“Never laid eyes on him before last Wednesday when he drove up and lit.”
Another man pushed through the crowd surrounding Clay and Ralph Stone.
“The preacher’s a sport among the women, ain’t he, Clay? Just look at him step around over there. He’s got all the girls giggling like they had been goosed.”
Everybody turned and looked at Semon. He was laughing and joking with the women and girls, stopping every now and then to stoop over a toddling baby and chuck it under the chin.
“The women take to anybody who makes out he’s a fool about them and the young ones,” Ralph said. “You can’t tell them no different, after that. You just have to let him run his course, like a dose of castor oil. There ain’t no way in heaven or hell of stopping what’s bound to be.”
Semon was moving towards the schoolhouse door. When he got to the steps, he stopped and waved his arms above his head and called the people to come inside. The men made no move; and the women waited until Semon had entered the building, and then they all crowded in at the same time, like a flock of sheep all trying to jump through a gap in a fence.
“I don’t know what he can find to preach about that everybody in Rocky Comfort don’t already know something about,” Ralph said. “I figure that he’ll preach just like all the traveling preachers who’ve been through here since I was a boy.”
Tom Rhodes came up the path from the spring and went to his car. He had been waiting down at the creek bank until his wife had gone into the schoolhouse.
The other men and older boys went further into the grove and sat down in a wide circle, some leaning back against trees, others perching on their heels, and looked at each other with familiar nods of the head.
“Come here a minute, Clay,” Tom said under his breath, standing behind Clay. “Want to take a little walk?”
Clay nodded and left the circle. He followed Tom to his car and helped him take out the jug from the back seat. The jug had been wrapped in a burlap bag and hidden there.
They strolled out of sight and stood behind some pine trees drinking Tom’s corn whisky. They made the cork tight when they had enough, and covered the jug with pine needles where it could be picked up later in the day.
When they came back to the clearing, they could hear a humming sound in the schoolhouse. The women were doing their best to raise a tune without even so much as a fiddle. Semon had taken out his tuningfork and had struck it on the table several times. The note came all right, but he could not keep the pitch. The girls and women were timid about singing, and the song never became loud enough to be heard on the outside where the men were.
Down the path towards the spring, two boys were thrashing about on the ground, striking each other with their fists. The other boys had taken sides and were urging the two scrappers to keep up the fight. The men heard what was taking place, but they paid no attention to it. They went on whittling and chewing, and listening to the discussion between Ralph Stone and Jack Rainwater about the right time of the month to plant corn.
Every once in a while one of the girls or women would come out of the schoolhouse carrying a bawling baby who refused to be quieted while Semon was preaching. After the baby had been taken out into the grove to play a while, it was carried back inside again.
“I sure would like to hear Semon preach,” Tom said. He sat down in the circle and rested himself on his heels. “I don’t know what he’s got to say that I don’t already know, but I’d just like to hear him, anyway.” The others stopped talking to listen to Tom Rhodes.
“There ain’t no law against going in the schoolhouse and cocking your ear to him, Tom,” somebody said.
“There ain’t no law, but I can’t make myself go in there in the broad daylight. I reckon I’ll just have to wait for night and go in with everybody else.”
“He won’t get warmed up till about eight o’clock tonight,” Ralph said. “It’d just be a waste of time sitting in there while he’s still cold. I’ve seen traveling preachers before, and none of them can get good and hot under the collar till about half an hour after night-fall. It takes the blackness of night to make a preacher cut loose with all he’s got and do real old-fashioned preaching.”
Somebody was listlessly tossing a pair of battered dice on the ground. He did not take much interest in what he was doing, and he had not even taken the trouble to clear the pine needles away. Unless someone was willing to stake a few dimes, there was not much incentive in merely throwing dice on the ground to see what number turned up. It was too early in the afternoon to start a game, anyway.
Semon’s voice suddenly broke through the quiet air and beat against their ears. No one could understand then what he was saying, at that distance, but it sounded as if he were shouting at someone who had made him angry. Everybody turned and listened.
Inside the schoolhouse the crowd of women and girls sat motionless behind their desks listening to Semon Dye. He tore the air with his blasts. He waved his arms and shook his fists in the face of an imaginary devil, and at the end of each pause he emphasized his message by pounding on the teacher’s table beside him.
“You all ought to stop it! It ought to make you sleepless at night to think what y
ou’ve done. You ought to get down on your knees and pray to God to be forgiven. If you ain’t got a conscience, then make yourselves one. That’s a lot better than not having any at all. Everybody ought to have a conscience to tell him when he does something sinful. I’ve got one, and I’m proud of it. I’d squeeze the heart out of the man or devil who tried to take it away from me. It’s the old devil himself who tries to make you ashamed of having one.”
The women listened intently. Semon had not yet told them what it was he was preaching about, but they all knew it was something that would interest them. They waited breathlessly for him to say it was.
“Some folks say only a fool believes in God. I’m a fool about God. Whose fool are you?”
Semon had been preaching for an hour or longer, and he showed no sign of coming to an end. The longer he talked, the louder he shouted; and the harder he pounded the rickety table, the more interested the girls and women became. Some of them who had crying babies hesitated before leaving the room, and they tried their best to quiet the children until Semon finally came out with what he was talking about.
He stopped and breathed deeply.
“Praise God!” he said hoarsely.
The women relaxed for a moment, long enough to glance knowingly at their neighbors.
Semon took off his coat and hung it on the back of a chair. It was hot in the schoolhouse. Outside in the sun the waves of heat extended from the earth as high as some of the treetops, and in the shade it was almost as unbearable. The women fanned themselves with palm-leaf fans and with handkerchiefs. The flies swarmed overhead in monotonous circles, coming down in lazy jumps to light on the babies.
Flies and June bugs came in and went out the open doors and windows at will, and in the four corners of the room gray hornets’ bags hung precariously. Dotting the walls and ceiling were yellow crusts of clay around which swarmed mud-daubers. At almost regular intervals a woman would slap her leg with a desperate lunge, jerk her dress above her knees, and flick off a red ant that had stung her. She would scratch the bite until it was swollen and red, and then wet her finger and rub the stinging mound of poisoned flesh.
“Oh, but it hurts me!” Semon cried. “Yes, it does. It hurts me like a bleeding wound. I can’t have any peace while I think about it. I look at all your beautiful faces before me this beautiful Sabbath afternoon—I gaze at the beauty in your hair, in your eyes, in your face, and my heart pains me. I know that underneath all this beauty are sinful souls. I know what you think. I know you can’t always keep on the strait and narrow path. I know temptation lies with you in your beautiful arms. I know all about it. That’s why it hurts me. And, oh, how it hurts me!
“To think that underneath all those pretty dresses that you spend so much care on washing and starching and ironing, frilling and folding—to think that under there is a black sinful soul that hisses in its wickedness like a poisonous snake! Yes, it hurts me. It really kills me to think about it. That’s why I’m here this afternoon. I came over here to Georgia to save you before it’s too late. The Lord told me how wicked you folks in Rocky Comfort are, and he told me to do all I could to save you from hell. We want you in heaven. We need you there. In heaven we want all the beautiful girls and women now in Georgia. Up there you’ll look even prettier than you do down here. Up there you’ll shine with the beauty of a clean soul. And it hurts me to think that you are going straight to hell. That’s where you’re going if you don’t change your ways before it’s too late. Yes, it hurts me. Oh, how it hurts me!”
Semon stopped and wiped his face with his handkerchief. He had heard a mud-dauber droning somewhere around his head, and he stopped and listened to see how close it was. The mud-dauber whirled around in a circle over his head. Semon moved to the other side of the platform and prayed for it to go away and not sting him.
All of the women down in front of him sat still. They were afraid to move for fear of missing one word. Not yet had he told them what he was preaching about, for, or against. And that one word was anxiously awaited. Several of them put their hands under their skirts and scratched the ant bites without even glancing at the marks. Semon had not even hinted at what he was preaching about. They knew he had a definite sin in mind, but, of so many possible sins, it was not easy to determine which one it was. He had kept them on edge for fear they would miss it when he reached the point in his sermon that explained all they wished to know.
The palmleaf fans waved back and forth in front of fifteen or sixteen faces. There was a dry crackle in the palmleaves that sounded like the wind blowing through a canebrake. Other than that, and the occasional swish of a starched skirt that was hastily jerked upward over ant-stung legs, there was no other sound of disturbance. Outside the room there were many sounds; but no one heard those. All lent their ears to the words of Semon Dye.
Semon had refreshed himself sufficiently to continue from where he had stopped a few minutes before. He did not hear the drone of the mud-dauber over his head any longer, and he felt more at ease. He picked up the thread of his sermon and began speaking in a low, almost indistinct voice. The women and girls stopped fanning with the palmleaves for fear they would miss what he was going to say.
Out under the trees, in the circle in the grove, the men sat and looked at each other. There was a hoarse hum in the air when half of them were talking at the same time.
The sun was already sinking behind the trees. It was a little cooler than it had been immediately following midday, when most of them had arrived, and it was no longer necessary to wipe the perspiration away.
Somebody turned around and looked towards the schoolhouse. The man next to Clay nudged him with his elbow.
“Aint that the preacher himself coming out the door, Clay?”
Clay stood up to see better.
“I reckon it must be.”
Semon was walking towards the grove, calling Clay.
“Just a minute, Horey,” he said sharply. “I’d like to see you just a minute.”
He began beckoning to Clay with his hand, urging him to hurry, and waited where he was. When Clay had gone a dozen steps, he called him again.
“I’d like to have a word with Tom Rhodes, too.”
“He wants you, too, Tom,” Clay said. “You’d better come along and see what’s on his mind.”
Tom got up and left the circle.
“Don’t let the preacher get you into no devilment, Tom,” Ralph Stone said.
Everybody in the circle laughed.
“It takes a preacher to think up mischief,” somebody said. “I guess they’re all alike. I used to know a traveling preacher who was a regular devil.”
Clay and Tom walked towards. Semon in the school yard. He was pacing up and down with his hands locked behind him as though in deep thought. He did not notice them until they were standing beside him.
“What’s the matter, preacher?” Tom said.
“I appoint you and Horey, there, as deacons,” Semon said sternly. “That’s a trust you mustn’t let go of.”
“What’ll we have to do?” Tom asked. “I ain’t used to such a thing as that.”
“Deacons take up the collection and see that the money is taken care of till it’s handed over to me.”
“You figure on taking in some money here?”
“I am, I am,” Semon replied firmly. “Christians always pay up the preacher.”
“You don’t know Rocky Comfort folks very well, then,” Tom said. “That’s what the last preacher who stopped here complained of the most. There aint many around here who’s got money to give away.”
“Oh, they’ll put money in the collection, all right,” Semon assured him. “People are always liberal with the preacher. I always see to that.”
“How do you aim for me and Tom to go about getting it?” Clay asked.
“Bring your hats inside and pass them around.”
“Oh, that,” Clay said. “I know what you mean now. I thought before you spoke that you wanted us to go around proddin
g folks to give money. I know all about passing the hat around. I’ve done that before.”
“That’s fine then,” Semon said. “Now, you and Tom come on in behind me, and pass your hats for the money.”
He turned and ran up the steps. He did not want to see if they were following him.
Inside the schoolroom Clay and Tom did not know what to do. They stood there in the back at the door until Semon mounted the platform. He motioned for them to come down to the front.
“Now we’ll have the offering,” Semon announced. “The deacons will wait on the congregation.”
Semon sat down in the chair at the table and waited for Clay and Tom to come down to the first row of desks and begin taking up the collection. When they made no move to come down, Semon motioned to them with his hand. Silently he pointed out to them the first women on each side of the room where they were to start.
Clay went to the corner and held his hat over the woman’s lap.
“Put something in the hat,” he said.
She shook her head.
“I said, drop something in,” he said sharply.
The woman’s face turned red, and she shook her head at him.
Clay wheeled around and looked at Semon for further instructions. Semon stared at the woman for a moment, and then nodded to Clay, indicating that he should proceed to the next woman. Over on the other side of the room, Clay could see that Tom was having the same trouble he was having on his side.
He moved to the next woman, looking back at Mrs. Jones until she hung her head in shame.
The hat was held in the correct position, but the second woman made no effort to give. Clay pushed the hat against her bosom, urging her to drop some money into it. She shook her head and looked off into another direction.
“Drop it in,” Clay said, shouting at her angrily. “The preacher wants the pay for his preaching.”
The woman’s face turned red, and she turned around to escape Clay’s glare.
“Now, this ain’t getting nowhere,” he said, turning around to look at Semon. “I aint got a penny yet.”