Slow Way Home (18 page)

“No, it’s not. Sure not,” a woman down in front said. A baby started crying, but it didn’t break Sister Delores’s stare on the Bible pages that fluttered in time with the corner fan.

“I was gonna preach on Abraham and his trip to Egypt, but coming here this morning something happened that tore at my heart. Tore it right down to the quick. Come on, somebody.”

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A woman with hair the color of sand waved a purple handkerchief at Sister Delores. “Preach it, Sister.”

Right then I wanted to punch Beau in the ribs and stand up and shout that Alvin was the one who tore up her heart. But Beau was too caught up in drawing a picture of a spaceship on the church bulletin.

“Love is a precious gift, and some people don’t want nothing to do with it. They act devil-filled to the heart, and it just breaks mine in two.” Sister Delores grabbed the microphone from the lectern, and it squealed louder than the crying baby.

“Jesus told his disciples to bring the little children to Him, and that’s what I was trying to do. Just like Mother Hightower brought me to Him. Now y’all know we got no secrets in God’s Hospital. They tell me I wasn’t no more than three days old when I was put up in a place for orphans. Nobody knowing any of my people until one day Mother Hightower walked in and picked me out. Said she seen sweetness in my eyes. Mother Hightower’s hand was rough as day-old cowhide, but let me tell y’all something: it belonged to a heart softer than fine silk. We’d say our prayers, and then she’d pull that big ol’

heavy Bible down from the kitchen cabinet and read the words from Psalms. Over and over until I had them stitched on my heart. ‘The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear? When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up
.
’ ”

The buzz from the lights filled the room and not even the baby cried out. Beau looked up and hit my knee with his. “She’s fixing to cry.”

I just sat there staring deeper into the soft brown lips that curled into a half smile. Sister Delores had found her daddy and her mama in one person, and by the way her nerves stayed so settled, I knew it was for keeps.

She moved down the stage steps and stood face-to-face with the congregation. “Do you know Jesus? Is He your daddy and your mama or just a crutch you pull out when the pain tears you a part? He wants you to lay it on down, and come home now. Come on home to Daddy Jesus.”

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Harvey had not taken his place at the podium before the words and music flew around us. Words as soft as the place I imagined Sister Delores’s heart to be.
“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling. Calling for you
and for me . . .”

The woman with the purple handkerchief was holding both hands high in the air while Sister Delores kept her head bowed in prayer. My heart slowed even more when I looked up and saw Him. Sitting in the tall preacher’s chair behind Sister Delores, He was wearing a long beige shirtdress and His hair was the color of honey. His eyes never left me. They were magnets pulling out layers of poison from a wound that wouldn’t heal.

When I moved from behind the pew, not even Beau’s yank at my shirttail could keep me still. It was Jesus, looking just as sun-tanned as He had on the funeral fan. Only this time Jesus was smiling and threw His head back. When His hands reached out, I saw the holes and wanted to touch them. To put my hand in His and believe. To believe that He would fill the holes that my own mama and daddy had left in me.

With each step I made down the aisle, I saw Him waving me on to the finish line. His fingers were long, long enough to pull me up to where I belonged.
“Come home. Come home. He who is weary, come
home.”

I reached up as high as the woman waving the purple handkerchief. Higher than any hurt I had ever been given. Just when I had made it to the first step of the altar, Sister Delores pulled me closer to her. The silky material that covered her round stomach brushed against my cheek. Floral perfume and the scent of grease from Nap’s Corner were trapped in the dress. Smelling salts that brought me back to this world. A world that was not my home.

Eleven

A
mist of rain danced in the air the day I got baptized. The cowboy singers stood under the concrete canopy at the state park right next to a bucket of chicken. Their harmonized lyrics floated with the breeze and came in and out like an am-plifier that was on the blink. Sister Delores stood knee deep in the ocean water dressed in a white gown. When she first told me I’d have to wear the dress, I resisted until I was convinced that others would have one on as well. We lined the beach in various sizes, with our bare feet digging deeper into the soggy sand. A man Poppy’s age stood in front of me wringing his hands until Sister Delores called out for him to move forward. Church folks spread out across the concrete benches; their various shades made me think of a bunch of brown M&Ms with a cluster of white ones that somebody had forgotten to paint. I searched the crowd until a woman dressed in a red dress moved away to wipe her baby’s nose. In the gap I saw Nana’s face appear and disappear with each swipe of the truck windshield wipers. Poppy leaned next to the concrete piling as if he was holding the shelter up.

Between the clip of windshield wipers I watched Nana turn her head away each time the crowd yelled a war chant of “Glory” to signal another person had been dipped into the ocean. When it came my turn, the cool water chilled my spine. Sister Delores reached out for
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me and smiled as wide as I’d ever seen her smile. “Come on, baby, I got you. I got you.”

The pull of the sea kept us in a steady rocking motion. She put her fingers over my nose and held up the other hand high towards the graying sky. “Brandon Davidson, by your profession of faith in Jesus Christ and your willingness to turn you heart over to Him, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” With a slight shove, Sister Delores pushed me under the choppy water. Even though her fingers pinched my nose, it did not stop the saltwater from rushing down my throat. All the while I kept worrying whether the baptism would be for real because Davidson was not my real last name.

Rising up to the water’s surface, I heard the crowd shout “Glory”

once again. Brushing away the stinging salt from my eyes, I looked towards the truck just in time to see the windshield wipers take away a mist of rain. This time Nana did not look away. She stared straight at me and dabbed her eyes.

“I don’t know why you wanted to get dunked for,” Beau said at the school the following Monday. “You looked funny coming outta that water with your hair all stuck together and wearing that dress.”

Opening my notebook, I ignored his comments. Ever since Parker Townes and his shiny black patrol car had started stopping by Beau’s house, he seemed full of piss. Sister Delores told us the Bible says not to give pearls to a pig or something along those lines. Since Beau was acting like a pig that wanted to woller in slop, I decided to let him.

That afternoon for the first time Bonita and Parker Townes picked us up from school in the patrol car. Groups of kids from our grade and those younger gathered around the car, which was so shiny their faces gleamed back at us. I jumped inside the back of the car, where Josh was already pretending to be criminal clutching the bars that separated the backseat from the front. Bonita laughed, and waved for Parker to 128

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get out of the car to greet the students. His big silver gun stuck out as if it was an extra bone on his hip. While he answered questions about whether he had ever shot anybody, Beau moved away towards the door to the front office. Then it occurred to me that, given my cir-cumstances, I too should be hiding from the patrolman with snaggled teeth instead of being piled up in his backseat. From the backseat, I watched Beau jerk away when Bonita tried to rub his shoulder. After a pull at his arm, he walked obediently back to the car and never looked up as the younger students squealed when the flashing lights of the patrol car came on.

At the camper Nana greeted me with the usual Pepsi. She waved at Bonita, but I was too busy trying to reach my snack to see if Beau waved back or not. The smell of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls hung in the humid air. Inside, Nana turned off her afternoon story on TV and motioned for me to wash up. My eyes never left the plate of rolls as she slid a knife through the bread and white gooey icing stretched towards her.

“I’m glad Bonita and Parker are seeing more of each other.”

I decided not to tell Nana of Beau’s recent bad attitude or to remind her of how scared she acted the first time she had met the patrolman at Nap’s Corner.

As I ate the warm rolls, Nana would reach over and occasionally wipe icing from my chin. “Is it good to you?” she’d ask.

She was caught up in the flavor of it all as much as I was and that’s probably why neither of us heard the knock at the door the first time.

“Hello. Anybody home?” Sister Delores’s voice never did seem right outside of church. “I’m telling you, it’s hot out there today.” She filled the entrance of the camper, and Nana nervously reached for a paper napkin.

“Thank you. I just wanted to stop by to see how y’all doing. We sure did miss you at the baptismal.”

“Oh, I was there,” Nana said. “That sprinkle of rain kept me inside the truck, but don’t you worry none, I was there.”

Sister Delores wiped her brow. “I figured so all along.”

Nana looked at the schoolbooks I had scattered over the so-called
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sofa. “Brandon, pick up those books so Sister Delores can have a seat.”

I cut my eyes back at Nana. It was the first time she had called the preacher by name.

“Oh, I know how these boys need time to do their lessons. I don’t want to be in the way. Maybe we could just sit out here under this shade tree.”

Nana looked at Sister Delores the same way she did the new people we met in town who tried to press too hard with questions they had no business asking. “I’ve got just a few minutes before I have to get supper started.”

Watching them sit together next to the cook-out grill that was guarded by concrete blocks, I felt as if I was watching a movie with two actors I had known from different TV shows. Their lives seemed like an H with me being the line that connected them. I cranked the window handle just enough to hear their voices, and their words floated in on waves of wind.

“I’ve been seeing your husband at church a time or two.”

Nana brushed away invisible lint from her pants. “A.B. never was one for religion. Back home, uhh, down the state where we’re from, he never did care for our preacher.”

“Oh, I know what he means. I got no use for religion.”

Nana slowed her nod. “Beg your pardon?”

“Oh, you know, a bunch of folks all the time talking about rules. I got no use for such as that. Those kind made me quit church back when I was just a Sunday morning Christian. Now relationship is what I’m after, not a bunch of laws. I want to lead my church the same way Jesus did it. He stirred up those religious people just like a bunch of hornets. He sure did, now.”

The afternoon train sounded in the distance. Sister Delores looked towards the beach across the road. “You got yourself a good boy. You raising him right.”

“And just so you know, as long as he’s lived with me he’s been in church. I just got to work some things out right now. You know, just me and the Lord. Everybody goes through a desert now and again.”

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“You’re right about that, now. We’ll always have us a desert to pass through. Well, call if y’all need me.” Sister Delores reached for the edge of the grill and pulled herself up from the picnic table.

Nana wiped away chips of concrete from the table, her eyes never following the steps of our guest.

Sister Delores’s words competed with the creaking of her opening car door. “We all go through those dry spells from time to time. We sure do. But just be careful. If you stay around in the desert for too long, that camping tent you pitched just might end up becoming a fine brick home you don’t want to give up.”

Sister Delores drove away, and Nana’s arms remained folded long after the Impala had disappeared down the driveway.

The day the Spring Fair opened, we stopped by the gas station to make our weekly call to Uncle Cecil. While Nana and Poppy huddled closer to the phone receiver, I stood at the corner watching the rows of trucks and cars that lined the entrance to the fair across the street.

Tents and trailers transformed the empty lot into a place of high excitement. The owner of the gas station played with the change inside his pants as we stood watching the traffic. Jingles from the change ac-companied the only words I had ever heard him speak.

“A fella from Waycross come down here to put that Ferris wheel together. Said it was the biggest one south of Albany. Said you could see all the way over to Tallahassee on a clear night.” He raised up on the balls of his feet and stretched his head high. His words were almost as intoxicating as the multicolored lights that lined the side of the Ferris wheel. The commotion and noise from across the street got Nana and Poppy off of the phone faster than I could have.

Grass killed from the scorching sun crunched under our feet, and the smell of corn dogs blanketed the air. Passing people I knew from town and school made it feel more like a family reunion. Right then my old life back in Raleigh seemed like nothing more than yellowed photos in a dust-covered album.

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We met Bonita and Parker at the shooting booth. Dressed in blue jeans and a western shirt, Parker looked smaller without the uniform and pistol. But his marksmanship gave him away as an expert shooter.

Bonita held the three teddy bears to prove it.

“Here, Pauline, take one of these. I’m running out of hands.”

Bonita handed Nana the teddy bear dressed in overalls.

Poppy laughed and snuggled the bear closer to Nana’s chin before she swatted at his hand.