Rapture of Canaan (33 page)

“I don’t want to leave you,” I yelled.

“If you’ve given up on Herman, you’ve left me already,” she called back without turning around.

“Nanna,” I begged, catching up. Then I held onto her, wishing I had a rocking chair so I could soothe her proper. “It’s okay, Nanna. It’s okay.”

And when she couldn’t stop, when I felt her shuddering so hard I worried I wouldn’t be able to keep her bones from separating and slipping from my hands, I said, “We don’t have time for this right now, Nanna. Come on.”

She followed me.

We crossed the creek, and only a few minutes later, we heard a voice call out—David’s—and then Nanna raced towards him. By the time I got there, David was kneeling on the ground, lifting up Grandpa Herman’s khaki pants, dark flannel shirt, and camouflage jacket.

As others gathered around and more voices called from far echoes, “Did you find him?” Nanna reached down and gathered Grandpa’s boxer shorts, socks, and shoes.

“Oh, Lord,” Everett said. “Did y’all see this?” He motioned to the ground beneath a bush where a bottle of Coca-Cola sat upright, half-full. There was a pack of Nabs beside it, with two uneaten and a soggy one bitten in two.

We stood together at daybreak, not feeling the light at all. We stood so silently that breathing sounded like shouting. And then David said it.

“He was raptured. It was the rapture.”

“Hush, David,” Daddy whispered. But other voices were already launching, and I couldn’t tell one from another. It was as if the voices were struggling to hoist each other into Heaven—hoping to at least get their voices there if their bodies had missed the call.

“Oh dear Jesus” overlapped by “Help us, Heavenly Father,” tumbling across “The Rapture? When?” The voices called from behind trees. The voices puffed and panted. The voices blasted into the morning, “Save us, Jesus.”

“No way,” I said out loud. “Stop it!”

“It was the rapture, ” David repeated, then began crying, then praying. “We’ve been left behind. Jesus, don’t tell me we’ve been left behind.”

I turned to Barley, who held his mouth open—like he was trying to keep it from moving. I could see him filling up, rising like a thermometer, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before the top blew off.

“I don’t believe it,” Barley yelled out. “Great-Grandpa got raptured?” He shook his head as if to throw the idea away, then took off running. “I’ve got to tell them,” he called back, his voice cluttered with fear.

“Hold on, now,” Daddy shouted, but Barley was gone. David stood up and took off running after him. Then Joshua and the others, screaming, crying out to trees, “Lord, forgive us. Lord, don’t leave us here.”

“Do you think it’s true, Daddy?” Everett asked. His chin rigored beneath his beard, and then he ran behind them, forgetting who he was.

It all happened so fast and felt so slow.

“Y’all get back here right now,” Nanna hollered. “We got to keep
looking.”

But nobody came back for her.

“Come on, Leila,” Daddy said. “My truck’s over here.” And he offered her his arm and hustled her away. I ran behind, then ahead of them. I hopped into the truck bed. They climbed inside. And Daddy drove us home.

 

 

 

I
t seemed like a long ride back, though we got there just as the
others were running into the yard. Uncle Ernest’s truck clanked behind us, then halted to park. I didn’t know what to think. There’s something about fear that gets in your blood and thickens everything up. I didn’t feel much of anything. I knew that Fire and Brimstone had been consumed, but I was scared not to stick with them for fear of having nothing to hold onto at all.

David was the first through the door, then Barley and Daddy and Nanna and me.

The women were sitting at the table, eating toast and eager for news.

“We found his clothes,” David shouted. “We found all his clothes.”

“Well, did you find him?” somebody asked.

“Don’t you see?” David said. “It was the rapture. He’s been raptured.”

“What?” Mamma said.

Then Barley screamed out, “We’ve been left behind.”

Everybody was quiet for a second, and then Mamma broke into tears and began to hold onto Laura, who had started to scream.

“We got left behind?” Pammy said, and then she began crying too. “Why’d we get left behind?”

“God, have mercy,” Olin said, and then Mustard, who had just come in with John and some younger boys, took off running, hollering, “Nooooo” so loudly that his voice graveled.

“We ain’t missed the rapture,” Daddy said, but in his voice, I could tell that he wasn’t quite sure himself. “I know we ain’t all missed it. Do you think Herman would have been the only one taken?”

But three-quarters of the people were already on their knees, sobbing out to Jesus, hollering and begging.

“It was the storm last night,” Wanda called. “That must have been when it happened.” And then she began praying too.

Some people broke into tongues. Some people screamed and begged God to reconsider. I stood looking at Daddy and Nanna, who were as perplexed as I was. “That’s bullshit,” I said. “Ain’t been no rapture.”

“He was the only one,” Laura yelled, “the only one who tried to get you to repent. And it’s
your
sinfulness that tainted this community, Ninah, and kept us from being resurrected.”

“It’s not the rapture,” I defended. “Look.” And I ran to the faucet and turned on the water to show her that it wasn’t running blood. But I was grateful for the clearness when it came.

“That won’t happen until later,” she wailed. “It’s
your
sinfulness that’s kept us here,” and she ran to me and grabbed my head and began pulling my hair, shaking me by my hair until Nanna hauled off and slapped her into the floor where she collapsed and began her prayers again.

I thought it must have been the long night and the stress, the worry and uncertainty that had made them all so strange.

Outside, I could hear Mustard roaring “Noooooo,” and Bethany shrieking out to Jesus, demanding that our family be taken, even if we were to be taken late.

“You can’t be taken late, Beth,” Olin bellowed. “But maybe it weren’t the rapture. We should pray.”

“Help usssss,” Pammy implored, her short red hair shaking across her terrified face.

“Good God, y’all,” Uncle Ernest tried. “All these clothes mean is that Daddy took them off. Maybe he got hot or something.... We need to get back out there and keep looking.”

“That’s right,” Nanna demanded.

“It’s no use,” Aunt Kate moaned. “The lamb has called the roll, and we’ve been left behind. How long will the potatoes keep if we put them in the cellar? Six months? A year? Oh, Jesus ...”

That’s when I remembered Canaan. I knew that if God had really called his special children home, Canaan would be gone. But I didn’t know where he’d been sleeping. I tried to listen for his cries, because surely in all that noise, he’d be awake. But I couldn’t hear him for all the voices lifting off, voices like sirens, voices mourning and cursing and hating. All those voices so heavy and afraid. I worried that the walls and floorboards wouldn’t be able to hold them.

I wandered to the back of the room, stepping around the praying bodies. As new people would come in, someone would say, “Gabriel blew his trumpet last night. The rapture’s happened, and we’ve been left here for the years of tribulation.” The doorway became a heap of bodies, falling one into another and repenting. Daddy stood in the kitchen holding Nanna, both of them watching amazed.

Mamma stood up and wiped her strained eyes. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got to slow down. We’ve got to think logical. This don’t make good sense.” But then Bethany wailed out, and when Mamma touched her, it was like she was consumed again in the horrible dejection.

“Maree,” Daddy called. “Maree!”

But she didn’t pay him any attention. She was too far gone.

I couldn’t stop watching the praying bodies. I saw them all as paper dolls, cut from the same brown sack. What one did, the rest had to do. It was almost as if they thought with one great misshapen mind.

It was almost as if Nanna and Daddy were the dolls on the end, with one hand attached and one hand free, trying desperately to yank the others up.

But I wasn’t attached to anybody, and Canaan was only attached to himself. I knew I had to find him.

Canaan was against the wall on his pallet, yelling like someone about to be sacrificed, though nobody had noticed. I picked him up and held onto him, too tired and too stunned to try to interrupt their shouting.

I tried to remember if Canaan was really holy. I checked his finger to see if the invisible ring was there, but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel my invisible ring either.

I tried to remember if invisible meant the same thing as imaginary. My mind was so dulled, and the clamor was so impossible to penetrate. I held Canaan to my chest, and as he cried, he sucked at my nipple through Nanna’s dress.

I remembered that on the resurrection day, the graves were supposed to open and the dead were to rise in Christ’s name. But when I looked out the window, all the graves looked normal, and I began to feel relieved.

Fire and Brimstone had turned into a mob. I thought they might all be insane. I thought I must be dreaming, and I knew I’d better wake up quick.

But then Grandpa Herman walked up to the door, looked in at us like we were all crazy. He stood there naked as the day he was born, puzzled and muddy and with sprigs of hair standing up all over his head.

“Leila,” he hollered. “What in the hell’s going on?”

It took a while for everybody to hush. The silence rode through like a wind gust that passes slow, leaving a few leaves to rustle after it’s gone.

“Baby,” Nanna said. “Where you been?”

Everybody looked up at him, standing there without his clothes. There was snuffling and choked-back coughs throughout the room.

“The store,” he explained—like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I went to get you a moon pie.” And he held it out, smushed and dirty but still in its wrapper. “The brown ones you liked when we was courtin. Is that marshmallow inside or something else?”

“Herman,” Nanna said, and somebody handed her a coat, and she wrapped it around him and layed down his hair with her palm.

“Fix him some breakfast,” she demanded.

“Praise Jesus,” somebody called, then “Hallelujah.”

“It was a warning,” Laura shouted. “We’ve been given another chance to get our lives right.” Her eyes looked possessed. I wasn’t sure that I could be a good mother, but I couldn’t leave Canaan with her.

“I want to be the new leader,” David cried. “God’s calling me to do it. I want to lead our people back to God.” As he spoke, he shook one leg like he had something down his pants.

“What makes you think we ever strayed away?” Daddy asked him.

“We’ve been given the biggest
sign
we could ever see,” David preached. “And
praise
his name, we’ve been given a second chance to repent, to do all in our power necessary to make our hearts right with God.”

“David,” Mamma said. “We were wrong. We were wrong. We’re just scared. Sit down.”

But the fighting began again. Mustard, who had to be close to splattering, began to curse David and Laura and even Olin for scaring him to death, and he said that there wasn’t going to be any rapture.

People broke out into prayers, and other people grabbed them by the hair and lifted their heads up and said, “Listen! We were
wrong.
Herman’s
back.”

I huddled Canaan next to me and walked right out the room, without anybody paying us any attention at all.

 

 

 

A
ll the way to the pack house, I could hear them yelling. The
voices vibrated in my head, and I kept telling Canaan, “You don’t have to hear this. You don’t have to listen.”

I was glad it was still early. I was glad we were out before daytime had a chance to shove the early up into the clouds.

“You don’t have to think about it,” I told him. “You don’t have to dream about it. You don’t have to live this way, and I’m sure as
hell
tired of it.”

By the time I climbed the rickety steps and made my way into the pack house, Canaan wasn’t crying anymore. But he was shaken and scared, and if he’d been able to use his hands, I knew he would have been grasping for me. Because everybody needs something to hold onto besides themselves every now and then.

“Nobody’s gonna take you away from me again. You want to see your daddy?” I asked him. “You want to go to Heaven right now so we don’t have to live like this?”

I kept a pair of scissors in the pack house to clip my twine and fabric with. I found them and tested them against my hands. They weren’t so sharp, but I thought they’d do the trick.

I wanted to do it fast. First to him, and then to me. I wished I could do it to us both at the same time, but I only had one pair of scissors, and I’d need my spare hand to hold him still.

I took Canaan and the scissors and settled down on the tobacco sheets. The door was cracked, so there was a bit of light, but I didn’t want it to be bright enough for him to see me. I didn’t want him to think I’d hurt him for the sake of pain. Not ever.

A part of me wanted to hurry. But a part of me wanted to do it slow, the way I imagined James had done it, securing that knot around his middle. I wondered what thoughts had gone through his head that day. I wondered if he’d wished for a pocketknife in those last moments underwater. I wondered if he’d had more nerve than I did.

I thought about Nanna’s mamma, pointing that gun at her husband’s back. I tried to imagine her pulling the trigger without a second thought, but I knew that wasn’t how it happened. She’d kept him there, frightened, at gunpoint, pondering what she was doing.