Rapture of Canaan (6 page)

And Laura began wailing out, stood up, and the congregation urged her on, their voices growing like mudslides. She shook and cried, her syllables tripping over themselves until she wasn’t saying anything we knew, and the words she said sounded hard and maybe like curses in other languages.

“Praise be,” Grandpa Herman yelled.

“Forgive me, Lord,” I could hear my daddy saying, his back in front of me curled like an apostrophe, the bolts of his spine threatening his skin, and his head leaned against the next pew. “Forgive me for doubting your holy and righteous word.”

“Thank you for your strength, my King,” David called.

“Without you, I would be nothing,” Laura chanted. “Without you, Oh Heavenly Prince, I would be lower than the ohlaba hebamashundi weya komo dhikam laticalama hebamashundi,” and as she spoke, her voice went higher and higher, and her breathing got stronger, and then she was panting and squealing, crying, “Help me remember thy awe-some and bewechya walabebeya komo hebamashundi,” and I was embarrassed. Embarrassed to be hearing her voice, stretching up like violin strings, tighter and louder and screeching and punctuated with her frantic breathing. Embarrassed to know what her tongue must be doing inside her mouth, rolling all over itself like it couldn’t help it. It sounded like something she should do somewhere else. Not in church.

And I was embarrassed to be sitting next to James, hearing it all, though we’d heard it all our lives. And I was embarrassed because Laura wasn’t even ten years older than me, not even eight years older, and I didn’t want that to happen to me. Not ever.

And I was embarrassed that God had never shared with me his language, had never given me special words, his almighty baptizing wind.

And I was embarrassed to think that I might find it in some other place.

 

 

 

S
ometimes if we’d finished our chores and there was still a little
bit of daytime left, the children could get permission to go horseback riding. We rode two or three to a horse even though there were usually enough horses to go around. It was easier to talk that way.

One afternoon we were out in the woods, with me and Mustard and James on one horse and Barley and Pammy and John on the other. It seemed like the girls always got sandwiched between the boys, and that day, I was protected by Mustard from the front and James from the back.

We’d already crossed the creek and had ridden to a hilly place with trees on either side so that I had to keep ducking to avoid being swatted by the tiniest branches. We’d gone farther on the horses than we usually went, and I was secretly hoping we’d end up at the pond where the boys went swimming sometimes but the girls were only allowed at baptisms since the water was rumored to be dangerous. I was hoping I’d get to explore.

“Let’s take them to the top and run down fast,” Barley called, and buried his heels in his horse’s sides to make him go.

“Don’t do it, Mustard,” James warned from behind me.

But Mustard kicked the mare we were riding too, and she took off unexpectedly, making me hold tight onto Mustard, who was holding the reins, and making James grab onto me like I was sturdy as a pine, even though I wasn’t.

When I shifted back, I was closer than I’d ever been to sitting in his lap, and after I’d gotten used to the feeling of traveling steep uphill, I kind of liked the new sensation of his nearness. I tried to tell myself that it was no different from sitting next to him in church, but it was different.

“Mustard, don’t do it. The ground’s too uneven,” James hollered in my ear as we got closer to the top, and I yelled, “Ouch,” even though his voice didn’t bother me at all.

“It won’t hurt them,” Mustard said. “Hang on.”

“Ninah, tell him to stop,” James demanded, like I could make him listen.

But I didn’t want him to stop. It wasn’t that I wanted the horse to get hurt. I just didn’t want to shift directions. I was too busy trying to memorize the way James’ legs felt around my backside, hanging on, the way his arms felt buckled around my middle. I’d already forgotten about wanting to go to the pond.

From the top of the hill, Barley hollered out, and Pammy did, and John squealed as they held onto the galloping horse. We stopped and watched them soaring downwards, the horse’s brown tail flicking as his front feet pounded the ground, then his back feet.

Then the horse stumbled over a hole, and all I could see was a tumbling of bodies, somersaulting clothes, and Pammy’s red hair. But the horse neighed out, got up, and kept running. It was Pammy who grabbed his tail, and then we were watching her being pulled behind him, with Barley running hard to catch up and grab the reins. It looked like the horse’s back hoofs were kicking Pammy in the belly even though later she said they weren’t.

John was crying, so Mustard began walking our mare slowly down the slope. We could still hear Barley yelling “Whoa, boy, whoa” in the distance.

“Be careful,” I warned Mustard.

“But hurry up,” James said. “You got to get to him. I
told
you it was a bad idea.”

Then we were down from our horse and checking on John.

“You okay?” I asked him. But he just moaned and showed us his scraped hands.

“Stop being a crybaby,” Mustard yelled. “We gotta catch up with Barley and Pammy.”

“Leave him alone,” James screamed. “Go on ahead.”

So Mustard climbed back on the mare and went trotting off.

“Come on, John,” I said. John was a whiner, and I knew he probably wasn’t hurt at all—probably not nearly so hurt as Pammy anyway.

I didn’t offer John my hand, but James gave him his. He helped him up and led the three of us through the ravine. And even though my thinking about John was more along the lines of Mustard’s, I didn’t say so. Not after seeing the way James was treating him.

On the far side of the creek, we met up with the others. Mustard was still on horseback, but Pammy was rubbing the fallen horse’s head, and Barley was petting her neck. They were all laughing nervously.

“Don’t you ever do that again,” James scolded.

“It was kind of fun,” Pammy said, but she was muddy, and I could see that her legs were shaking.

“Nobody got hurt,” Barley laughed.

“John
got hurt,” James said.

And on the way back to the barn, we shifted positions on the horse. James held the reins, even though Mustard protested. I still sat in the middle, wishing there was some way we could go downhill so I’d have a reason to lean against him again.

 

 

 

L
ate
fall and winter, when the crops were in, the men of our
community took jobs laying bricks, building houses, painting, or reupholstering furniture. Fire and Brimstone men had a good reputation as strong workers who did twice what other men did during the day. They never went to work drunk or took a whole hour for lunch or knocked off early, so even Methodists or people without faith would hire them for the winter months.

But Saturdays were for hunting. Before day, the men would rise, eat together, and head out to the woods, to the hundreds of uncut acres Fire and Brimstone owned. They’d take their dogs and guns and ride away in pickups, dropping off a man at every tree with a stand built into it, a crude treehouse where each man would sit and think about God while waiting for the dogs to run a deer down below.

Even the boys got to go. To me, deer-driving was one of the most mysterious habits of our community. I woke up early every Saturday too, looked out the window to see Mustard and James walking out with Olin, to see Barley leaving his house with his father, and John, who was younger and only had a BB gun, running to catch up. They’d laugh and puffs of smoke would appear in the cold air. They’d pat each other hard on the back and make their way into Grandpa Herman’s house, stomping their boots on the steps. He’d hold the door for them all, welcoming them so happily with his forbidden denture-smile.

I wanted to go with them worse than anything.

Saturdays were expectant days. We listened for the shotgun blast, wondering who had fired, wondering if they’d killed a deer or planted another shell into the land, wondering how long it would be before the truck pulled up, a deer in the back, limp as a mop.

For the women, Saturdays were cleaning days, days for washing our clothes and our bodies, our floors and our windows. All we had to do on Saturday was wash and wait for the men.

One Saturday in November when the floors were already done, Mamma sent me out to the woodpile to collect a few pieces of firewood. I was on my way back into the house when I heard the pickups come bumping down the road. Mustard was in the back of the first truck, his red hair hidden beneath a knit hat but his red ears poking out obscenely. “James killed one,” he hollered. “And they’re getting ready to bloody him.”

“James killed it,” I yelled inside to Mamma. “Come on.”

“Oh good,” she called back, excited. “I’m getting my coat.”

It was James’ first deer. And whenever a man killed a deer for the first time, the other hunters collected the blood and entrails and poured them over his head. It was a family tradition, a rite of passage, and a man’s special bath all rolled into one.

My daddy had built a place to skin and clean a deer just off the side of our house. He’d hung a noose, of sorts, from the rafters in the beams of the garage, and that’s where they tied the deer up, upside down, so that they could rip it from top to bottom, and the head would hang low so they could saw it off more easily.

When we got there, James was beaming. Olin ruffled his dark hair, and Bethany put her arm around him. The women were coming from other houses, and the last of the pickups were pulling into the yard.

But when they pulled the deer out, it was a doe. I knew we had a law against killing female deer and couldn’t understand why everybody was so jubilant. Grandpa Herman kept saying, “That was a good shot, son,” and James kept grinning, saying things like “I just looked down and there she was, walking behind a blackberry bush.”

I shuffled back to Nanna while they hung the deer up.

“It’s a
doe
,
”
I whispered to her.

“He won’t kill a doe again,” Nanna assured me. “It’s his
first deer,
” she added, as if that explained it.

I tried to remember whether other men had been allowed to kill a doe their first time. I figured they
must
have. But I’d never paid attention. It hadn’t seemed to matter before that day.

“You got anything to catch the blood in, Liston?” Olin asked, and Daddy told me to fetch a five-gallon bucket.

We had one just outside the back door to catch rainwater, and I dumped the sludge out of the bottom and raced back.

By the time I returned, Everett and Olin had pulled the deer’s legs apart, and Daddy had his knife stuck high in the deer’s crotch. He was standing to the side, and as I placed the bucket beneath the deer, he pulled his sharp knife downward.

I should have moved, but I couldn’t stop watching him open her up that way. About the time he reached the rib cage, the stomach and blood splashed out and into the bucket, stewed like vomit. I wasn’t expecting it to come so forcefully, so soon, and I got caught in the spray.

I jumped back, but not in time to spare my face, my dress, or my shoes.

Ben Harback started laughing, and everyone looked at me. I found myself standing there, speckled with her blood, and with my arms held out to my side as if I didn’t want my hands to touch myself.

“Child,” my mamma said, “don’t you have sense enough to know not to stand that close?” But then she was laughing too. Everyone was.

I backed out of the way, back to Nanna, who shook her head at me and slapped my bottom playfully. I looked down at my white socks all soiled.

“I’ll have to do another load anyway,” she said. “James’ clothes will be a lot worse than yours.”

Then we stood together and watched David pick up the bucket. James tried to run at first, half-playing but half-serious. Grandpa Herman caught him and told him to take it like a man, and then James walked into the circle and David dumped the hot blood over his head.

Everybody clapped for him, but nobody clapped as hard as Grandpa Herman. Drops fell from James’ earlobes, trickled along his nose. He spit and spit and wiped his eyes.

While they were cutting the deer up, I changed clothes and took the bloody ones over to Nanna’s. I took my underwear to her too, all those pairs I’d kept in the box. I stuffed them in the pockets of my dress, and she washed them with James’ clothes.

That night the men cooked venison outside on the gas stove. It was cut up into small chunks and fried tender. But I couldn’t eat it. Not that time. Even though it was James’ first deer, I couldn’t eat her.

That night Nanna returned my clothes to me, and all my underwear was clean and folded up neatly inside my dress. I could still see the stains on them though. They weren’t white like Pammy’s. They were dingy like the bottom of a sock.

James and Mustard and John and Barley had set out traps to
catch raccoons and squirrels and anything else that happened to fall prey. Though the next day was Sunday, the boys were allowed to go check their traps after church and after we’d eaten.

“Can I go with them?” I asked Mamma.

“Them woods ain’t no place for a girl,” she said.

“Please, Mamma,” I begged. “I’ve finished all my homework.”

“Let her go, Maree. Ain’t no reason why she can’t run along with them,” Aunt Kate said.

“Ask your daddy,” Mamma told me.

They were getting ready to leave already, and I told them to wait for me. Barley moaned about it, but they waited.

Daddy was outside with the men, picking his teeth with a stick he’d whittled down and slapping his knee over a joke somebody had told.