Gone Fishin' (11 page)

He’d
have been lucky if it was Big Jim on his trail.

The
second-night drunk never feels as good as the first. I finished the
whiskey and laid in a funk all night. I didn’t sleep at all. I
just had visions of people coming in and out of my room; some of them
I knew and some I didn’t.

My daddy
came in and sat on the bed. He looked at me with sad eyes and I felt
I had done something wrong. I asked why he never came back and he
said that he died; that he wanted to come back but death was too much
and he finally gave out.

Mouse came
in with a young woman. He was talking to me but feeling on her at the
same time. I asked him to stop but he said, ‘You know you like
t’watch, Ease.’ And then he pulled out his thing, it was
so big that the girl got scared but Mouse sweet-talked her and she
said okay…

Then the
door opened and Domaque came in. He stood next to the bed and said,
‘You up, Easy?’

‘Do
I look like I’m up?’

‘Well…
you lyin’ down but yo’ eyes is open…’

I just
waited for him to disappear like the rest of my dreams but then he
said, ‘I wanted t’talk wit’ someone, Easy. An’
you Raymond’s friend too…,’ He went on, ‘I met
that girl an’ she real pretty, an’ she be out to Momma’s
house.’

‘At
Jo’s?’

‘Uh-huh.
She called Ernestine an’ I like her an’ she said she come
out an’ look at my house if Momma wanted her to.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Uh-huh,
Easy. She kinda pretty an’ she wanna stay out to there wit’
momma…’

When I saw
the sky lightening into dawn the dreams went away. I knew that I had
fever but it didn’t matter because I was sure now that I had to
go home. I was going to go to church with Miss Alexander and then I
was going to find the road to Rags Pond. And when I got back to
Houston I was going to learn how to read and write. That was all I
knew; in that I guess I was lucky.

It was
Miss Alexander calling from the door. I guess she didn’t want
to come into a man’s room uninvited.

‘All
right,’ I called back. ‘I be up in minute.’ But I
was asleep before my mouth closed.

In my
sleep I saw my parents sitting at breakfast. My father was reading a
paper even though he couldn’t read. My mother was making
griddle cakes, singing…

‘Easy!’
Miss Alexander was shaking my shoulder and calling in my ear. ‘We
gotta go, honey! Jo gonna be there.’

I remember
sitting on the side of the bed with my head between my knees. I had
fever and cramps and a pain in my head but I thought it would pass in
a day; it’s an amazing thing that young men get any older at
all.

I’d
slept in my clothes, which was lucky because I don’t think I
had the fingers to do buttons and zippers that morning.

Miss
Alexander was wearing a plain white dress with a lace green hat and
William wore a brown suit with black lines crisscrossing it. Momma Jo
was with them. Domaque and Ernestine were behind her. Dom had on the
same overalls he wore when I first met him and Ernestine still had on
the blue dress with the red-brown cows printed on it. She’d
washed that dress though and she had a necklace of tiny red flowers,
the kind of flowers that grew at Domaque’s house.

‘Hi,
Easy,’ Jo said in a soft voice. ‘You look a little tired,
honey.’

‘Hi,
Easy,’ Dom yelled. ‘This here is Ernestine.’

‘Easy,’
she said simply.

I looked
down at her feet; they were still bare.

We all
walked down to the building with the white crosses on the doors and
went in. A woman sat at the front playing an upright piano.

It was a
lively tune but I couldn’t put a name to it. Theresa was there
in a nice violet-and-white dress; she came over and sat next to me. I
recognised almost everybody from the dance at Miss Alexander’s
but I didn’t remember any names so I just nodded when people
said hello.

The room
was almost full, about sixty souls there. A big woman and a shrimpy
little man went up to the piano and started singing hymns. There was
a hymnal underneath each chair and, one by one, people lifted them
and started to sing along. I didn’t because I have a bad voice
and I just didn’t feel up to it.

When I
heard the door open in the middle of ‘Sweet Baby Jesus,’
I turned around to see who it was.

The chill
I felt when I saw daddyReese was the cold that a corpse might feel.

He wasn’t
the same Reese that I had seen a few days before. That Reese was a
powerful man, that Reese had muscle like black iron and a thick mane
of nappy black hair. But the Reese who walked through that door on
Sunday was an old man. His arms and chest sagged down like flab but
he wasn’t fat; he must’ve dropped ten pounds in those few
days, I’d never seen a man lose weight so fast. His hair was
sprinkled with white, not gray. He was stooped, just a little, and
when he walked he had a slight limp.

Some men
believe in evil. They’ve seen so much of it in the world and in
themselves that it becomes a part of what they know as truth. And
when you believe in it the way daddyReese must have, you open
yourself up to people preying on that fear. The strength of hatred
turns to weakness.

But with
all that Reese was bowed - he wasn’t broken. He was wearing a
black suit, the old kind that my grandfather wore with five buttons
on the jacket. He had a starched, high-collar white shirt and a hat
kind of like a bowler.

When he
saw me I thought he was going to come in my direction but just then
Jo turned to see what I was looking at and that changed Reese’s
mind. He took a chair in the back.

Just about
then the minister entered the room. Reverend Peters was a fat man
with a wide mouth and a black suit; he strode down the middle aisle
shaking hands and saying good morning to the people he passed. He was
bristling with energy, the kind of man that pious women have sinful
dreams about. The kind of man who feels so confident that other men
don’t like him too well.

‘Mornin’,
brothers and sisters!’ he shouted.

‘Mornin’,
reverend,’ said an old woman in a raspberry dress. She was
sitting right up front.

‘Yes,
it is a good morning. Every one of God’s mornings is a good
one.’

‘Mmmmm-hm!
That’s a truf,’ the old woman said.

‘And
the only thing that’s a bad mornin’ is a mornin’
that you wake up an’ you don’t find Jesus in your heart.’

‘Yes,
Lord!’ That was Miss Alexander.

‘Oh,
yeah! When you wake up and Jesus ain’t wichya, then it truly is
a bad day. Not only for you but for every one of us in the
congregation!’

‘Amen,’
a few voices said.

‘Because
Jesus loves ya! He loves ya and he wants you to do right. An’
what is right? To have Jesus in your heart. That’s all. Because
if you got Jesus with ya you ain’t never gonna do bad. Jesus
won’t let ya do bad if you let him in. He won’t let you
go astray. No he won’t. The Lord is gonna stick by you just as
long as you stick by him. He’s gonna be a extra pair of eyes to
see wrong…’

‘Amen,
brother, show me them eyes,’ the shrimpy man in the baggy pants
said from the piano bench.

‘I
don’t need to show you, Brother Decker. I don’t need to
show ya because the Lord will show you. He will show you out from
temptation and you won’t even feel bad because the love of the
Lord is greater than money! It’s greater than love of a woman
or a man! It’s greater than freedom!’

I could
feel the congregation tense up at those last words.

‘Yes,
chirren, the love of the Lord is greater than anything you can have
or desire. The love of the Lord is greater than anything.’ He
stopped and ran his eyes across the congregation. ‘Anything
that you can have or desire. Anything. If you see a new dress,
sister, and you think that that dress is gonna make you as beautiful
as Sheba, as beautiful as Cleopatra…’ He stopped, looking
around again, and then smiled a knowing smile… ‘But we all
know that beauty passes, don’t we?’

He opened
his eyes wide, and a few laughs broke in the audience.

‘You
look in the mirror from one day to the next and you’ll see what
I mean.’ I glanced back at Reese.

The
minister went on, ‘You young ones might not know it today, but
don’t worry, the Lord is gonna forgive ya. You give him a
chance, a half a chance, just a glimmer, a bare sliver of a chance,
and the Lord is gonna forgive ya. He will. I know it because he has
saved me.’

We were
with him then, every soul in that church. And God was with us.

‘I
was a sinner. Oh yes, Lord, I was a big sinner. I lied and cheated
and you know the Lord don’t hold with no liar. I hated it but I
couldn’t help myself because if the Lord ain’t wichya
then you know that the devil is.’

‘If
the Lord ain’t wichya, you know the devil is.’

‘And
the devil was with me and I did his handiwork. You do it too. Oh yes
you do! Don’t sit back there and tell me that the Lord don’t
slip away from you sometimes when you see another woman wearin’
that pretty dress an’ you cain’t afford it. Don’t
tell me that ‘cause that’s a lie and lyin’ is sin.
Men and women is born to sin and the only way out is lettin’
Jesus in your heart. You cain’t help it, no you cain’t.
You men see a pretty girl an’ you know what you feelin’
is wrong but you cain’t help it, you cain’t. You not
gonna do it by yo’self! You need the Lord to help you do
right.’

He paused
and took a glass of water from the piano. Somehow he made drinking a
part of the sermon. You could tell that his sermon had just come to
him as if God had flown down into him as he took the podium. No one
was talking, no one was looking around, no one shifted in their
chair. God was in the room with us in the shape of a fat minister
about the color of coffee with three spoons of cream stirred in.

Perspiration
had broken out over the minister’s forehead. He took a fine
white handkerchief from his pocket and ran it across his brow, then
wiped his hands. By the time he was finished with his hands his head
was beaded up again.

‘I’m
sorry, brothers and sisters,’ he said with his head bowed. ‘I
have another sermon to give and you know I don’t believe in a
long sermon but today something got in me. That happens sometimes.
When you let the Lord in there’s no tellin’ what might
happen. The Lord might pick you up and throw you across the world.
You could be a young girl on the farm until the Lord picks you up and
makes you a general at the head of a great army. Yes he can… He
might, he might.’ Reverend Peters got quiet then and it seemed
like he’d lost his place. Sweat was running off his head but he
didn’t bother with it.

After a
long moment he said, ‘You all know about Job. How he was a rich
man and a family man, a man who had the respect of not only his
fellow man but the love and the respect of God.’

The words
left such a silence in the room that I had to stifle an urge to
shout.

‘Yes.’
The minister was calm now. ‘God loved him but he needed Job to
prove that he deserved that love. Oh yeah, because you got to prove
yourself to the Lord. He’s not gonna open up his great kingdom
of heaven if you’re not worthy. And how is he to know if you’re
worthy unless he tests you?

‘And
the Lord took away Job’s thousands of sheep and took away his
thousands of camels. The Lord brought disease, death, and division on
Job’s family. And when the Lord was through, Job was a terrible
sight to behold. He’d lost his wife, his chirren, his money,
his health, Job had even lost his self-respect. He tore at his breast
and wished that he was never born! His friends and people betrayed
him and God turned a deaf ear.’ When the minister looked out
you could see tears rolling with the sweat down his face. ‘And
Job doubted. Who wouldn’t? Even if all you had was one dress
and a tin pan - if someone took that and left you with nothin’
you’d be tempted to despair. And we know that it’s the
devil causes despair. Think of Job; he was a rich man! A respected
man! You don’t let that go without some tears and some
bitterness. But when he realised that all he had taken for granted
could be taken from him, Job was amazed. He wasn’t angry at
God. He was angry that he had loved God for the wrong reasons.
Because even in poverty, even with nothing, Job realised he had God
within him. There was love and grace inside. And Job was saved.

‘You
might think that this is a simple story. Something you learn in
Sunday school; a Bible story for children to remember if hard times
should strike. And that’s what I thought about it too. But you
know I was turnin’ soil last Thursday, ‘cause you know
I’m just like the rest of ya: son of a sharecropper, salt of
the earth. I was watchin’ the soil turn up under the plow like
water in the wake of a great boat, and I thought, “This land
belongs to God.” It’s for sure it don’t belong to
me or any of you here this morning. We all know whose name it is on
the deeds to all our places and even on this buildin’ we
prayin’ in.’

I
remembered Miss Dixon’s fears and I thought that maybe she was
right.

‘I
remembered the poverty of my daddy’s sharecroppin’ days.
And I thought about Job; how the very ground from under him fell away
and all he had left was the deaf ear of God. I wondered, “What
did Job eat when he had lost everything?” And I knew even then
that Job scratched in the ground and hunted in the wild and he lived
off fish from the lakes. He created a life from God’s greatest
gifts: the mind and the heart and the land too.

‘You
might wonder why I tell you this. It’s because I see a day
coming when the Lord is gonna test us. He’s gonna pull the land
away from us and he’s gonna strike down with his open hand and
smash away this village. He’s gonna take it all and the only
thing you’ll have left is your wits and the love of Jesus in
your hearts. You’ll have to make your way against a terrible
storm. Your hearts will be full of tears but remember, it’s God
testin’ you. He’s lookin’ to see that you love him
as the spirit not just for the fleshly desires he can satisfy. And he
needs to know that you will survive to praise his name.’