Send Me Down a Miracle (12 page)

I must have nodded or something, 'cause she poured half a glass of the stuff and handed it to me, and Lord have mercy, I took it.

She raised her glass. "To
The Holy,
" she said.

"Really?" I said. "You're going to call it
The—
"

Adrienne nodded and said again, "To
The Holy!
"

"To
The Holy!
" I repeated, and clinked my glass against hers. I took a sip and told myself.
Drink this in remembrance of me,
which is what Daddy always said before we drank the grape juice during communion service. I was hoping Jesus, and Daddy, if he ever found out, would count this as a kind of outdoor communion. I even tried to keep my mind on the Last Supper the whole time I was feeling that devil's liquid burning down my throat, but I couldn't help it, part of the time I had this juice and joy feeling rushing all through me 'cause I was picturing myself setting with Adrienne in Paris, sipping wine at an outdoor café.

Adrienne set her glass down empty and picked up the bottle. I set mine down with one sip missing and said a quiet "Amen."

I saw Old Higgs's truck turning into the driveway and I jumped in front of my glass, hoping Old Higgs wouldn't see and tell on me. Adrienne shook her head and said, "You know, Charity, one of these days just pleasing your father won't be enough. You're going to have to please yourself. Free yourself and take off! Be your own person!" Adrienne had poured herself another glass of wine and was letting the stuff just spill down her throat.

Old Higgs climbed out of his truck and came over to us. "Miss Adrienne, Charity," he said, lifting his hat from his head, then setting it back on.

"Hey, Mr. Holkum," I said.

Adrienne poured herself another glass of wine and nodded.

Old Higgs peered around my back, saw the other glass, grinned, and said, "Got a message for your pappy."

I didn't say anything. I just squinted into the sun and waited for him to go on.

"Miss Becky's been found, praise the Lord and hallelujah. We had that prayer meeting, and now she's found. Glory, glory, we got us a miracle. Jesus, praise the Lord, is with us."

"Yes, sir," I said. "I heard about that. I'm real pleased."

"Who's been found?" Adrienne asked, holding out her canvas again and examining it.

"Miss Becky, ma'am," said Old Higgs.

"Is she your dog?"

Old Higgs adjusted his shoulders. "No—you know, we had that prayer meeting at your house last night, praying for her to be found. The old woman who lives with her sister, yonder." Old Higgs pointed out toward the road, although the Cobbs lived about a mile from Adrienne's.

"We was hoping, if it was all right with you, Miss Adrienne, that we could meet again tonight. We got to praise the Lord, give thanks for His blessings."

Adrienne nodded and said, "I've got to go into town and call my dealer." Then she turned and walked off toward the house with her painting, and me and Old Higgs just stood looking at each other, not sure if she'd answered him or not.

"Well," he finally said, "you make sure you tell your pappy, now, you hear?" Then he turned and walked back to his truck.

I stood there for a moment and watched him back out of the drive, the red dirt clouding up around his wheels. Then I set off again myself, full of thoughts about Adrienne and how she had said that someday pleasing my daddy wouldn't be enough; and seeing her painting, seeing her so full of the life I wanted, I knew it already wasn't.

I was hurrying along the edge of the cornfields, sure Daddy had beat me home, when I thought I heard someone whispering my name. I turned this way and that but didn't see anybody. I took a couple more steps and heard it again.

"Charity, here. Up here I am."

I looked up and saw Boo's hairless legs dangling from a branch.

"Boo, what you doing up there? Where's Grace?"

He swung his body around the branch and dropped to the ground.

"I've got to tell you something," he said. He wiped at his nose with his arm.

"I already know Miss Becky's been found. I guess the Lord hasn't need of you after all." I turned to leave and he caught my arm. His hand was cold.

"Say, what are you doing in shorts and short sleeves?" I said, turning back around to face him. "Aren't you supposed to have some kind of cold blood running in you or something?"

Boo waved his hand. "That's just Miss Tuney Mae saying that. I just catch the chill easy, is all—but I'm thinking maybe I been cured since waiting on the porch with the okra and going to see that Jesus chair this morning."

I grabbed his Crimson Tide cap off his head and examined his scalp. "Nope, don't see a single strand of hair yet."

"Oh, you're so smart." Boo wagged his head at me and grabbed his cap back. "That isn't what I was a-going to tell you, anyways. There's some kind of upset going on at your house. I think you'd better get on home."

"Well, where do you think I was headed?" I yelled at him, knowing it was my own fear making me cross. I stomped off, trying to block out Boo's last words.

"It's real bad. The reverend's fit to be tied."

I kept walking—slowly, but I kept walking. I knew it was no good putting off what I knew was coming. I scanned the side of the road for a good switch, found one, and continued walking, whipping the switch in the air and listening to it whistle.

When I got to the house I slowed down even more, dragging my switch behind me. I expected to see Daddy waiting for me on the porch, pacing and jingling his change, but he wasn't there. I entered the house through the kitchen and listened. No sound. I took a couple of steps farther into the kitchen and stopped again. No movement. Where was he? I left the kitchen and stopped in the hallway. I jumped when I saw a dark figure moving at the other end.

"Daddy?"

He was standing in front of the window, the sim behind him so that he looked more like a shadow than a person.

"Charity."

I held up my switch. "I brought me a switch sized to fit the deed."

Daddy walked toward me, saying nothing, showing nothing on his face about what he was thinking. I backed up and he reached forward and set his hands on my shoulders. "The devil has got ahold of this house with his teeth and is shaking it down to its very foundation."

"Yes, sir," I said.

"We must overcome this evil! We must get at the very heart of it and wipe it out today. Today! The devil shall not tear us asunder!" He was shaking me. With each word he was shaking me as though he thought the very heart of this evil thing was living inside of me.

"Daddy, you're scaring me." I wrenched myself free, but Daddy stayed close.

"We will put on the full armor of God so that we can take our stand against the devil's schemes." He glared at me. "Get your sister down here and meet me at the car." Daddy marched toward the front door, then turned around and said, "This instant!"

I ran up to Grace's room and knocked on the door.

"Come in," she called out.

I stepped inside and looked around. It wasn't a room I often went in, and not just because we weren't ones to be talking with each other much. There just wasn't room for Grace and her stuff and anyone else. I don't think she owned a single toy or doll, but she did have the world's largest collection of rocks—most likely all from her head—and birds' nests and arrowheads, and she had all kinds of cacti growing in pots with their long needles poking out just daring you to not look where you were going, and strung up like necklaces across her windows were pinecones. I guess she liked prickly things.

"Daddy wants us in the car this instant," I said. Grace was working on her bird-feather collection. She was kneeling at the side of her bed and taping a few new feathers to a huge square of cardboard.

I went and stood over her.

Grace looked up, her yellow hair sweeping the cardboard.

"Did you hear me?"

"She's not coming back," she said.

"Who? Mama? 'Course she is. She's just staying on extra. What makes you think she's not coming back?"

Grace didn't answer. She had gotten the tape stuck to her fingers and it was twisting and sticking to itself.

"Grade?"

She frowned. "I heard the reverend on the phone with her, and when he hung up he said, 'She's gone.'"

"Me. I was gone, not Mama. I was supposed to be here at home learning my Bible verses, but I wasn't. It's me he was talking about."

"But—"

"Grade, put down that stupid tape and listen to me."

Grace pushed off from the bed and stood up. The tape dispenser was dangling from the twisted line of tape still stuck to her fingers.

"It was me who was gone, okay? Not Mama. She'll be back. She'll be back. She always comes back."

I pulled the tape off her fingers and stuck it on the bed.

"Now come on before Daddy has a real fit."

We raced down the stairs and out to the car. Daddy wasn't there. We climbed inside and sat there with the car doors open 'cause of the heat, and waited for Daddy. Then we saw him coming out of the garage, holding an ax in his hands. I jumped out of the car.

"What's that for?" I asked, following him around to the back.

"Get in the car." Daddy opened the trunk, shoved aside some old birdcages, and dropped in the ax.

"But what's that for? What are you fixing to do?"

He slammed down the lid and leaned into the car, his hands pressing against the top of the trunk, his eyes staring into his own reflection.

"Every day I'm hearing the Lord calling me to take up the ax and reduce that chair to splinters, and today I'm going to do it." He pounded the car with his fist. "Yes, in the name of the Lord, I'm going to do it."

"The Jesus chair? You're going to chop up the Jesus chair? But you can't! Daddy, you can't!" I tried to squeeze between him and the trunk, but he grabbed my arms and shook me.

"Oh yes. Indeed I can—I must." He re-leased me. "Now get in the car." He turned away, moving to his side of the car and opening the door.

I grabbed the back of his jacket, pulling it back from his shoulders, and cried, "But it's the Jesus chair. I need it!"

Daddy whirled around, and I heard his jacket tear as it ripped through my fingers.

"It is Satan's chair."

"No! You don't understand!" I cried. "I really need it. How can we ever get Mama ba—"

"Don't you dare say it!" He raised his hand in warning, and I drew back. "It's you who doesn't understand. You're but a child, who thinks and speaks as a child. You don't listen for the Lord as I do. You don't study the prophet Isaiah and know that he says, 'All who make idols are nothing and the things they treasure are worthless.'"

He pointed his finger and then pressed it against my chest, just below my neck. " Those who would speak up for them are blind; they are ignorant to their own shame.' Yes, Charity, that is in Isaiah, and he tells us that those who worship idols will be brought down to terror and infamy. To
terror
and
infamy!
Do you understand? You, Adrienne, this whole town brought down by God's wrath."

I stepped back, away from him, not in fear of him but in fear of myself. I couldn't believe what I had done. I had grabbed his jacket and ripped it, I had answered back and hadn't been afraid to do it, and worst of all, there was more I was wanting to say and I knew I was going to say it.

"You—you quote Scripture and it sounds right. Daddy," I began, moving toward him again. "But it feels wrong to destroy the chair." My voice grew louder. "It
is
wrong. I know it. Jesus is there. It would be like chopping up Jesus Christ. You're going to chop up Jesus Christ! Daddy, you can't do it!"

Daddy's face exploded with rage, and I felt the sting of his hand as it smacked against my cheek. "Jesus Christ dwells within us all!" his voice boomed. "He is not a chair! He is not a piece of wood! He's here. In here!" He pounded his chest. "How I have failed you if you can't see that! If this town can't see that ... You have opened your soul to Satan and he has walked right in. You have no need of the chair. It is the devil who needs it." He pounded the roof of the car.

I looked away and rubbed at my cheek, smearing my tears around on my face. He had never slapped me before. He had never slapped anyone before. I wanted to drop to my knees and curl up into a tight ball and cry out for Mama, but I didn't. I kept talking, and my voice was quiet and tiny when I spoke.

"Isn't it ever just all right to listen to our feelings, Daddy? Aren't our feelings ever right?"

"No, daughter, never. Our feelings alone are never right. Now, I'm telling you, get in the car."

New tears ran down my face. "I can't. I can't let you do it."

"You think it's up to you?" Daddy got in the car and slammed the door. He rolled down his window. "You coming?"

I shook my head.

Daddy twisted around to Grace and yelled, "Get those doors closed!"

Grace had barely finished getting both doors closed before Daddy shot back in the drive, pulled out into the road, and screeched away.

I kept talking as if Daddy were still standing there listening to me, and I said what I should have said all along.

"It doesn't matter how many verses you pull out of the Bible, Daddy, 'cause, see, I've seen the chair, I've felt the Lord's presence, and it's good, I know it's a good thing."

And that's when I knew I had to fight him. I had to keep Daddy from hurting that chair.

I took off for the fields, knowing that if I went the shortcut I could beat him to the house. I ran in the tire ruts alongside the rows of corn, and it was like I was just running in place, getting nowhere. The stalks were just a green blur that I caught out of the corner of my eye, as constant as a gnat pestering at my face. I kicked off my sandals, hoping I could run faster, needing to run faster, even though I knew I could beat him to the house. See, I was thinking of Daddy and him splitting up that chair, and this picture came to me of him striking the first blow and a stream of blood flowing out the side of the chair, just like the blood that flowed from the side of Jesus. So I ran faster, not knowing what I was going to do, how I was going to fight Daddy—only knowing that even if I couldn't fight him, if I couldn't win, I needed to be there. I needed to weep at Jesus' feet.