Rapture of Canaan (11 page)

It was out in the field where I talked to James.

Barley was taking his turn with the tiller, and James and I both had armloads of old tobacco stalks to carry to the far end of the field. Pammy and John were working opposite us, on their way back to pick up more, and Mustard was helping Barley.

“Listen,” I said, “if you don’t like being my prayer partner, you can just tell Grandpa Herman to find you another one.”

“Why would I want to do that?” he asked.

“Well—in case you don’t like me,” I told him.

“I like you fine,” he said.

“You do?”

“Yeah,” he said, and stopped and wiped his face off with his sleeve and spit. “Why would you think I don’t like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re the one who didn’t want to be my prayer partner.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Pammy told me that when you found out you had to hold my hands, you cried like a girl.”

“I wasn’t crying,” I insisted. “I was cutting up onions.”

“oh.”

“The whole reason they put us together in the first place was because I told Nanna”—and I paused—“I told Nanna that I liked you and to help me figure out a way,” and I paused again. “Well, just a way to see you more.”

“Oh,” he said again, and tried not to smile but did it anyway. “Really? Nanna did it?”

“And ever since—well, you ain’t acted like you wanted to be with me.”

“I wanted to be with you,” he said. “I just thought you were—I don’t know—like
them.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, like a Believer, in everything.”

“You mean you’re not?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said stubbornly, and started walking again.

“You’re not a Believer?” I yelled out, and then I started laughing out loud.

He looked back at me and said, “I am too a Believer. But I don’t think for a minute that Rajesh Patel is going to Hell. Or his sister either. And if you think that, you’re just ...
full of shit. ”

“I don’t think that,” I said, running to catch up with him, laughing so hard my lungs felt like they might explode from the happiness. “I can’t believe you said that
word.
”

Then James crumpled beneath his face. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean it. We have to pray,” he said desperately. He looked like someone just realizing that he’d taken his last breath.

“I don’t
care,
” I assured him.

“Well,
I
care,” he said. “And of course Rajesh is going to Hell. He sure can’t go to Heaven. Where else could he go? We have to pray.”

James fell on his knees right there, pleading with God for forgiveness. I knelt on the ground beside him, listening to him swear that he was a Believer. But I didn’t pray with him. The wind was blowing his curls everywhere. He had the most beautiful curls I’d ever seen. It was all I could do to keep from rolling with laughter on that hard earth.

 

 

 

T
hat night when James and I met together in prayer, we
prayed like never before. We prayed out loud.

James said, “Heavenly Father, help David and Laura to conceive a child in your image,” because they’d been trying since their last loss and weren’t having any luck.

And I said, “Thank you, Lord, for Nanna, who’s always there to help us and love us and who still sleeps on nettles for past sins. Please bless her.”

James added, “And help Ben Harback make a decision about whether he wants a life inside this community or outside of it. And help the Patels to come to know you, Lord.”

And I said nervously, “Help me and James to know your love, to be able to share with each other your love.”

And James gripped my hands hard and said, “Let me love Ninah for you, oh Jesus. Let me be the one to show her your love.”

I could feel my hands shaking. I wasn’t sure if he’d asked for the same thing I’d asked for, but I thought his request might be a tiny bit different.

T
he next day when we got off the school bus, we all went
straight to the field, dropping our books at the end of the row. We were almost finished preparing the soil, and we were just in time. It was the second week of March and the seeds needed planting.

But we’d only been working for twenty minutes or so when Daddy trampled across the cleared ground in our direction.

“Hey, Uncle Liston,” Barley called out, and Daddy nodded his head.

Daddy was always either smiling or praying or crying. His face was hardly ever as blank as I saw it then. I knew something was wrong immediately.

“How much y’all got left to do?” he asked.

“Ought to finish it up this afternoon,” James said.

“Well, how ’bout you boys come with me and leave the field to the girls,” Daddy replied. “We need to dig a grave before dark.”

My stomach tried to flip over, but I wouldn’t let it. I took the tiller from James and walked off, not wanting to hear what came out of Daddy’s mouth next, but unable to make my ears cooperate.

“Is somebody dead?” Mustard asked.

“No,” Daddy said. “No. The community’s taken a vow of silence until supper time. Herman will talk to us then. So don’t open your mouths again, okay?”

We all nodded back.

I didn’t want to think about what had happened. I worried that Nanna was sick. I worried that James was in trouble or I was. I knew I needed to keep my mind on Jesus and everything would work out. But I couldn’t.

Up on the hill beside the church, I could see the men with their shovels. I imagined James’ hands callused and blistered from so much digging.

It was so quiet that I thought I could hear things moving beneath the ground.

I thought about human voices, the way they shout and whisper and break, the way they shade each other and dip. I wondered what Jesus’ voice had sounded like, if it was scratchy or booming or stammering or smooth.

I thought about my own voice, lean and low, the way it sounded when I answered a question at school, too loud and always a surprise. I thought about the way my voice sounded in prayers, like a single bell that rings just once but echoes on and on and holds itself in the air and then falls. Or how it hides behind other voices and hopes no one will notice.

I knew that boys’ voices changed, but that day, I realized my own voice had. Before I’d gotten so old, it’d sounded the same way always—sassy and clear. But by that time, my voice had deepened, slipped down towards Hell on its way up to Heaven. I knew that my voice had been holding back a holler, that it wanted to break wide open like the sky or the ground. But my voice was heavy, a flute without holes, wooden, imperfect, and thick.

 

 

 

T
hat evening we ate without words, everyone saying their pri
vate prayers over their servings of corn bread and venison stew. I was glad to see everyone there, glad to see that Nanna, though somber, seemed as healthy as she had the day before. No one was dead. So someone had sinned. Terribly.

I knew better than to look around during the evening meal and kept my eyes on my plate for fear of being accused of insolence.

Towards the end of the supper, a baby started crying, hard. Normally no one would even have noticed. Someone would have picked it up and cooed and hushed it with their familiar mothering hum. But not that night. The baby cried on and on, and when Freda Langston finally picked it up, Grandpa Herman broke the quiet.

“A tiny child,” he huffed, “before it is even old enough to speak is selfish. Selfish. Born a manipulator. Before it has even learned to walk, a baby sins. Knows how to get its way. Cries out, demanding to be comforted. And so we come into this world sinners. Sinners who
cannot
to save our lives live perfectly.

“It’s the curse of Eve,” he continued, standing by that time and as red-faced as I’d ever seen him, “that we sin. That we disobey God outright. That we live for our bodies,
feed
our bodies,
comfort
our bodies, and forget about our
souls.

“Our
souls,
people. We need to be feeding our souls.

“And every time we open these mouths, to satisfy the wants of the body through word or food or drink, we turn our backs on Jesus.

“If it wasn’t for the curse of Eve, we wouldn’t
need
this food. We’d be perfect spiritual beings nurtured solely by the love of God,” and then Grandpa Herman picked up his plate and threw it at the door so that it hit the wall and shattered, the pieces falling onto the floor like a leftover song.

We all sat upright, our spines aching to be obedient, our eyes cast downward, and my heart glad that it wasn’t
my
baby that had prompted his sermon. I hoped that in his bed that night, Nanna would smother him with a pillow. But only for a moment.

“One of those among us, Ben Harback, has been found guilty of imbibing in forbidden drink. He came onto these holy grounds this morning with his breath tainted and his eyes reddened by Satan’s own sweet piss.

“He has admitted to his crime. He has asked to be forgiven. And praise God, the one above is capable of granting him that forgiveness. For the scriptures read that ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Where is that in the Bible, Ben Harback?”

“First John, chapter one, verse nine,” Ben muttered.

“On behalf of The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind, you are hereby ordered, Ben Harback, to single-handedly teach the children the laws of Jesus Christ and the laws of this community for the next year. If it be God’s holy will, you will rededicate your commitment to Christ and to this community through your preparation and service. Clearly it will do you good to return to your studies of the laws.”

“Yes, sir,” Ben answered from the corner where he was sitting. I looked up for the first time to see him shamefully alone, without food or water. I wondered what Grandpa would do if I went to sit with him.

“But the Bible also teaches us that ‘the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ And
where
in the Bible is
that,
Ben Harback?”

He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Romans six: twenty-three, sir.”

“Speak
up,
” Grandpa demanded.

“Romans six: twenty-three,” Ben repeated.

“That’s correct,” Grandpa patronized. “And in order to remember those wages of sin, your grave has been prepared, Ben Harback, where you will lay this night and contemplate the wages of sin, where you will pray without ceasing for God’s delivery of your piteous soul.

“Now clean up these tables,” he said to the rest of us, “and report to the cemetery in exactly one half an hour where Ben’s funeral will be held.”

Around the room, people moved for Grandpa Herman, and a slow chorus of whispers began until Grandpa yelled out, “In
silence.”

 

 

 

B
en climbed into his grave willingly. It was still cold in open
air, and I couldn’t imagine how cold it must be deep in the earth. Grandpa Herman led us in a song, and we stood around the grave holding hands, singing to God for the renewal of Ben’s soul.

And then we formed two lines on either side of the grave where there were mounds of dirt, and everybody had to throw in one shovelful.

Of course his hands were free. He could protect his face or move around. The dirt we threw in was just a symbol of his death to the world, in hopes that when the sun came up, he’d be born again, resurrected like Jesus and pure.

And then in the brisk night air, Grandpa Herman gave another sermon, about God’s forgiveness, and I think he brought up Nanna again and how she’d been a liar and had been spared death. He said that if it was God’s will, Ben Harback would be spared too, and that he’d come back into our community as a soul-winner for Jesus.

I stood beside Nanna as he spoke. I didn’t have to ask her what she thought of Grandpa’s punishment. I already knew.

I wondered how she could love such a man, with his mind so twisted and his vision of himself as just beneath an angel.

I wasn’t the only one who considered such things.

As we were walking home late that night, Mustard said, “That’s just crazy. Having to sleep in a grave just for drinking a little bit of alcohol.”

“He was drunk,” James said, stone-faced. “It’s a bad example.”

“Yeah,” Pammy agreed. “I know now that I’ll never get drunk. Not that I was planning to.”

“But sleeping in a
grave,
” Mustard said.

And later at home, when I was supposed to be asleep already, I crept to Mamma and Daddy’s bedroom door to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“That man will break,” Daddy said.

“He’ll be fine,” Mamma assured. “God will sustain him.”

“Don’t you ever wonder why your daddy gets to be the one who makes the rules around here?” Daddy fussed. “Don’t it seem like we could talk it over as a congregation. I know drinking’s a vice, but Maree, my God, that man might die of pneumonia. He made a simple mistake. Who hasn’t?”

“I don’t want to hear this, Liston.”

“But you’ve got to think about it sometimes, don’t you? The things he says. The things he’s teaching our children.”

“Our children have grown into good, God-fearing people,” Mamma insisted. “You go look outside this community and see where you can find a family with four children who grow up to obey the commandments of the Lord.”

“I ain’t talking bad about the Bible,” Daddy said. “But what if that’d been David? What if David had fallen and taken a drink? Would you feel the same way if
he
was the one in the grave?”

“One of the benefits of our children
growing up
in this community,” Mamma jeered, “is that we don’t have to worry about them doing something like that.”