Then the time they had their last fight, there we were all in the kitchen finishing up dinner when Mama came in with three bags filled with what must have been a whole display of Christmas socks. Mama said she got them way marked down since it was almost summer, but Daddy didn't care. He called her behavior outlandish and wanted to know the meaning of it all. And Mama said, "There is no meaning. That's what I like about it. I just bought them." Mama tossed the bags onto the kitchen table, just missing Grace's glass of milk, flopped down in her chair, and said, "I'm tired of everything having meaning, Able." And she looked tired, too. She had been looking tired all the time lately, up until the day she started packing for the convention. Her eyes were droopy looking and her mouth couldn't hold a smile for more than a second, as if her smile were broken from having to use it so much being the preacher's wife. She was going round in a pair of shoes with the heels so worn down on the outside they made her feet slant sideways, and the hem of her favorite brown skirt had come down in the back and she wore it every day anyway.
Daddy told her that he didn't like the changes going on with her, and Mama said Daddy didn't like any kind of change and that was his whole problem. She said, "Everything changes. Able, but you keep trying to hold everything still, pin the whole world down, and you can't. If things don't change they just up and die, and I'm tired of dying. I'm just so tired of it all."
Well, Grace heard that about Mama dying and took off from the table, and Daddy said, "Now see what you've done? You've upset the child."
But it wasn't Mama that Grace was upset with, it was Daddy. She said it was all Daddy's fault Mama was dying, and no amount of reminding her how much Daddy loved Mama and explaining about figures of speech and such could change Grace's mind.
I got so caught up with remembering Daddy and Mama fighting and listening in on their phone conversation that when Daddy said good-bye in this real quiet voice and put down the receiver, I headed on into the kitchen to ask Daddy about Mama coming back and forgot all about my new outfit.
Daddy's hand was still on the receiver, his head bent forward, when I came clomping in wearing the sandals Sharalee had loaned me. Each step made a loud clomp-clomp sound on the wood floor, and when I heard them I remembered what I had on and just froze in my tracks. Daddy lifted his head and stared at me like he was catching sight of Lady Godiva with a head shave.
I could feel my face burning but then I thought of how Adrienne stood up in front of all those folks the day before, like she just had a right to do so, and I looked straight at my daddy's face and said, "Morning, Daddy, hope you had a good night's sleep. Mmm, what's for breakfast? I smell something good."
I walked over to the table and with my back to him pulled my chair out. I was about to set down when I felt the chair jerked out from under me. I turned back around and I swanee, what I saw, it wasn't my daddy atall. It was just this monster in Daddy's beige suit and hairpiece. This purple-faced, blood-drooling ape-man was fighting with the chair like it was alive and trying to strangle him. He picked it up with both hands and snarled and yanked it around several times as if he were trying to wad it up into a wooden ball so he could throw it at someone. Then he threw it down and kicked it across the room, pounded on it, and did that fighting yanking thing again. He hit his head on the pink birdcage hanging from the ceiling and his glasses flew off and slid across the floor, but he just kept going at that chair. Then he turned toward me with such fury in his face and pain in his eyes I screamed and flew out of the kitchen and up those stairs. I tore at my outfit like it was on fire. I ignored all the ripping sounds and just kept tearing until it was all off. I heard someone on the stairs and I slammed my door and screamed some more. I screamed while I scraped the comb through my hair and screamed when I saw big clumps of my hair dropping to the dresser. I screamed into my bra and I screamed into last year's sundress with the daisies on it. I screamed into my stockings and screamed when I shredded the left side of the stockings with one of my fingernails and had to take them off. I pulled on the first pair of socks I could find, not caring even if they matched so long as my shoes didn't pinch. Then, feeling dressed to Daddy's satisfaction, I opened my door, ran past someone in the hall, screamed down the stairs and out the side door.
7
I didn't stop running until I reached the graveyard that lay between our house and the church. My whole body was still shaking and my throat hurt from all my screaming. I set down on the grass and leaned against one of the gravestones. I thought maybe I'd just stay out there forever, maybe just melt into the ground next to one of the dead people. I couldn't stop crying.
"Is that just you. Charity?" I heard Boo whisper from somewhere behind me.
I jumped up and spun around, looking for him while I answered. "Well, who do you think it is, some ghost? Where are you? Grace? Boo?"
Boo stepped out from behind a huge block of granite. Grace stepped out behind him.
"We thought maybe it was the reverend," Grace said.
"The reverend? Does Daddy know you're calling him that?" I wiped the tears off my face.
Grace didn't answer.
I turned on Boo, who stood there looking like a ghost himself in all his baldness. The boy didn't have a hair on his body. Miss Tuney Mae claimed it was because his mama had had some awful fright when he was still in her womb and it caused the both of them to lose their hair; only difference was she got to wear a wig.
"Law, Boo, don't be creeping up on me like that, you hear? Anyway, what are you two up to? I thought you were supposed to be out on the porch, shelling peas."
"We were just wondering what's wrong with the reverend," Boo said.
"Nothing. What do you mean, what's wrong?"
Boo's eyes sort of rolled around in his head a few times, and then he said, "Why was he so angry? You were screaming. Did he beat you?"
I looked at Grace. "'Course not. I swanee, Grace, don't you set him straight on anything?"
Grace just shrugged. "We were scared," she said.
"What are you two inventing now? Calling Daddy the reverend and then thinking he's in there beating me up. Lordy-loo, Grace, you ought to know better."
"I've never seen him so angry," Grace muttered. "We saw through the window. We were scared."
"What was he so mad about?" Boo asked again.
"I don't know. I don't know—maybe 'cause Mama's gone, or maybe he didn't like what I had on, or maybe it was that Jesus chair thing, I don't know. Does there have to be a reason anymore? Seems to me that lately he's just angry to be angry. Law, what I wouldn't give to be with Mama right now—to be anywhere but here."
I turned away from them, walking out of the cemetery and the yard and down the road toward the cornfields. Grace and Boo followed behind me like spies. I walked faster, feeling the sweat on my forehead and under my arms building up to a couple of good trickles. The two of them trotted up alongside of me. I didn't say anything to them and they didn't seem to expect me to, so we marched on in silence, stomping around the cornfields and down the street. I heard a train hooting down the tracks that cut across the road about a half mile away, and its call made something inside me squeeze until I thought I wouldn't be able to take another breath.
Then Grace poked my shoulder and said, "Look, there's Mad Joe."
Sure enough, there he was, down on his knees in front of Adrienne's house, digging in the herb bed and singing some kind of lonesome song.
"Law, if he's got his shotgun we're running the other way," I said.
"He wouldn't shoot us, Charity," Boo said. "We ain't worms."
"Yes, but in his usual Sunday-morning condition we might just look like worms to him. Now I mean it, you two, you stay with me."
"He doesn't look in his usual Sunday condition, though," Grace said. "He's just digging."
"Hey, Mad Joe!" Grace and Boo both called out.
Mad Joe raised up from the garden and waved his trowel.
Grace and Boo took off and were down on their knees digging beside him be
fore I could catch hold of either one of their shirts and stop them.
I hurried across the lawn to catch up.
"Hey, Mr. Joe Dunn, sir," I said, standing behind the three of them, my eyes searching the truck bed beside us for his shotgun.
Mad Joe twisted himself around and sat back on his heels. "Well, gracious me, Charity, look at you. You 'bout as tall as your daddy, I'm thinking." Mad Joe had this delighted look on his face like he was really glad to see me.
I smiled back. "Yes, sir, I am. I'm five foot seven."
"That's good. Yes, siree, that sure is."
Then both of us looked at each other like we were each waiting for the other to say something else.
Mad Joe took off his hat and set it on Boo's head.
Boo lifted his head. "I can't see."
Mad Joe laughed, this he-he-he kind of laugh. "You keep it on anyway. You oughtn't to be going round without a hat on, Mr. Boo—and be careful with that rosemary, it ain't holding up so well." He turned back to me. "You here to see the Jesus chair?"
Funny thing, I didn't know why I was there. I hadn't meant to be going anywhere special and then there I was. But now that he asked me, I was wanting awful bad to see the chair, to talk to it.
"Yes, sir," I said.
Mad Joe rubbed his hands together and clumps of dirt dropped to the ground.
"It's a miracle, it sure is," he said.
"Yes, sir."
"I knew it, too. You know that? I knew Miss Adrienne was a messenger sent from Datina."
"Datina—your wife, you mean?" I asked.
"Yes, ma'am, my wife." Mad Joe nodded. "She always telling me to have the faith. Always saying, 'Don't give up on our babies.' Always saying to expect a miracle, and I been waiting. I been waiting on her to send down a miracle, 'cause I know no doctor'll cure my babies—and then, soon as I set eyes on this Miss Adrienne, I knew my Datina was working a miracle. My babies got a book full of paintings of angels, and don't every one of them look like this Miss Adrienne. So I been here every day waiting. Been waiting just to see what my Datina would do next, and Lord have mercy, she done sent me a Jesus chair. Now, you just see if my babies don't get a cure." He turned back around and started digging again, taking the trowel away from Boo and sending him off to fetch the watering can.
I heard a door slam and saw Adrienne coming off her back porch toward us. My heart did a flip-flop. She was shuffling toward us wearing this huge flowery kimono in turquoise and orange and red, and I just had chills watching her, 'cause there she was just letting about a half foot of it trail in the dirt without a care. Now, that's living. Daddy wouldn't let me so much as drag my feet, let alone some elegant piece of clothing. Someday, I thought to myself, someday I'm going to have enough money to buy myself something silky and expensive, and then I'm going to drag it everywhere like it's just an old dishrag.
Adrienne caught up to us and put her arm around me and nodded at Mad Joe.
Mad Joe jumped to his feet. "Morning," he said. "I hope we weren't disturbing your slumbering. I was just wanting to set some of these plants right after yesterday's trampling."
Adrienne laughed and shook out her hair. It had been tied in a knot, and just with the one shake of her head, out it came. I couldn't wait to try that in front of my mirror.
"Thank you, Joe," she said in her ice-melting voice. "I thought you might want to go in to see the chair. You said yesterday..."
Mad Joe smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I would, that's a fact. I just got to dip my hands in this here bucket and wash 'em off."
Mad Joe reached down and rubbed his hands together in the water. Then he wiped them on the towel he had wrapped around his neck, picked himself some of the rosemary, and gave a little bow. "Excuse me, won't you," he said. Then he hurried round to the back porch, and we waited but he didn't slam the screen door. He just let it gently creak shut.
Grace and Boo both stood up, dusting off their hands. Boo pushed Mad Joe's hat back off his face and studied Adrienne. Just when I was really starting to squirm 'cause he was staring so hard, he said, "The reverend's going to be talking about you this morning."
"About me? About my visions, you mean?"
Grace and Boo both nodded.
"About the Rapture," Boo said. "We heard him talking about it this morning, didn't we, Grace?"
Adrienne gave Boo a real hard look, studying him all over. Maybe she was just getting around to noticing he had no eyebrows or something, but I had a feeling it was more 'cause of the Rapture thing.
"Folks are saying this could be it," Grace said. "'Course the reverend doesn't agree. He said it would take more than this kind of thing to fool this town."
"What?" Adrienne's face went all chalky. "What are you talking about. Rapture? What's rapture?"
"Rapture. You know, Jesus' second coming. Miss Becky Cobb was saying yesterday how this is it. The time is nigh." Boo blinked at Adrienne. "She came by our place last night all fidgety fingered. She said she was just making sure one of us hadn't gone up into the clouds yet 'cause she's wanting to make sure when people start going she knows it so she can be ready. She hates surprises, Miss Becky does. They make her real nervous. 'Course my daddy says with all the fires she's been setting lately, she's likely to really get a surprise when she's one of the ones left standing on the ground jest a-weeping and a-gnashing her teeth."
Adrienne tightened the silk sash around her waist and looked at the three of us with such choking bewilderment it's a wonder she could stay standing.
I tried to explain. "The Rapture is when Jesus returns after a lot of wars and evildoings and judges both the dead and live folks and chooses which ones He's wanting with Him and which ones will be left behind to suffer. He takes all the good, true believers up with Him."
"The Rapture?" Adrienne said for the hundredth time.
"It's in the Bible," I said.
"In the Bible? Really? Jesus is going to take people up into the clouds?"
"He's going to suck 'em up like that." Boo snapped his fingers. "Two men will be out working in the field and without any warning atall one of them will just disappear—the Rapture."
"Your father's going to talk about this?" Adrienne asked.
"This morning in church." Grace nodded and took hold of Boo's hand.
"I haven't been inside a church in years, but I think I'll go today. What time is the service?"
"Ten," I said. "I'll save you a seat so you won't feel—you know, funny."
8
The church was hot and airless when we arrived. Both sets of doors were propped open to let in any outside breezes that might blow our way, but there weren't any. Folks were filing into the pews and pulling out the old straw fans before they even sat down. My fan had been eaten away some, probably by one of the Dooley babies, but unfortunately I could still read the tired old ad on the back: Thomson's Funeral Home—May Your Loved Ones Pass the Thomson Way.
I settled in next to Grace and Boo in the front pew, where Daddy liked us to sit, and set to fanning myself.
"Could you turn a little so that's not blowing my way. Charity? I might catch cold."
I glared at Boo. "Just what exactly is this disease you were born with, anyway?" I said. "I mean, how could anyone sit here on a day like today and think it's cold?"
Boo just pulled out his hymnal, set it in his lap, and stared at it.
I looked at his bald head and his small hands gripping the edge of his book and got myself a bad case of the guilts. Of all places to attack someone. I gave him a nudge. "You look real handsome, Boo."
He kept his head down, but I could see a bit of a smile peeking out.
Sharalee gave me a shove from behind as she and her parents took up their fans and sat down behind us. Then in puffed Miss Tuney Mae Jenkins, with her hair dyed cotton-candy pink and her chiffon dress in shades of red billowing about her like clouds in a sunset. Her shoes were covered in a pair of men's black dress socks that she wore on Sundays so she could feel those foot-pedal things on the organ
. She was the church organist.
She dropped herself down on the organ bench and began playing some sorrowful tune. Her playing was always a sign for folks to start talking, and I could hear words like "Rapture" and "Jesus chair" and "phony" weaving in and out of people's conversations while I tried to talk with Sharalee.
"I knew it. I just knew you wouldn't wear that outfit." Sharalee turned to her mama. "Didn't I say she wouldn't wear it? And all that work I put into it! Really, Charity, you should have worn it."
"Sharalee," I said, "just hush, all right? Just hush."
"Oh, I get it. You did wear it, but your daddy made you take it off. What did he say?"
Before I could answer, Mr. Day, Boo's father, leaned forward over the back of the Marshalls' pew and said, "Miss Becky's gone. Miss Anna came by our house this morning after talking with Able. She's just beside herself with worry. Her sister's just disappeared."
"The Rapture!" Boo said.
Grace and Boo gave each other this big-eyed, spooked-out look.
After Mr. Day dropped his little bomb, Mrs. Marshall sidled out of her pew and into another one. The waggin' mouth of the South had work to do.
By the time the choir shuffled across the front of the church, with the women all shouldering their purses like mules lugging saddle-bags across the desert, the whole church was talking Rapture. Miss Tuney Mae's organ playing got real soft and she was leaning way off the bench so she could hear what folks were saying, even though I could tell by the know-it-all look on her face that she had already heard, probably from Daddy, which meant that the choir knew, too.