Three Days Before the Shooting ... (76 page)

She was still there, sleeping quietly. The room was breathless and her odor, warm and secret, came to him, and just then she turned to rest on her back, her breathing becoming a quiet, catchy snore. Somehow all had changed. He shook his head, “No, I can’t sleep with you,” he said to her sleeping face. “I don’t want you for my mother. I’m going back to the sofa.”

Then it was as though a hand had reached down and held him, forcing him to look at her once more, and before he realized it he was looking at the hem of her gown resting high across her round, wide-spread thighs.
I’ve got to get out of here
, he thought.
I got to move
. But suddenly he was caught between the movement of his body and the new idea welling swiftly in his mind, feeling his foot dangling over the side of the bed while in the dream-like, underwater dimness of the light, he seemed to be looking across a narrow passage into a strange room where another, bolder Bliss was about to perform some frightful deed.
No
, he thought,
No no!
seeing his own hand reaching out like a small white paw to where the hem of her nightgown lay rumpled upon the sheet, and lifting it slowly back, stealthily, cunningly, as though he had done so many times before, lifting it up and back. He watched from far back in a corner of his mind, disbelieving even as he saw the gauze-like cloth lifted like a mosquito net above a baby’s crib—then he had crossed the passage and was there with the other Bliss, peering down at what he had uncovered, peering into the shadow of the mystery. Peering past the small white paw to where the smooth flesh curved in the dim light, into the thing itself, the dark impression in the dark.
But what
, he almost said…. He saw yet he didn’t see what he saw. There was nothing at all, a little hill where Body’d said he’d find a lake, a bushy slope where he thought he’d find a cave…. It was as though he had opened a box and found another box inside in which he was sure he’d find another and in that, still another—and by then she’d wake up. Yet he couldn’t leave. Fragments of stories about digging for buried treasure whirled through his mind and suddenly he was standing in a great hole reaching for an iron-bound chest which he had uncovered, but just as he took hold of it a flock of white geese thundered up and around him, becoming as he watched with arms upraised a troop of moldy Confederate cavalry galloping off into the sky with silent rebel yells bursting from their distorted faces. He wanted desperately to move away but the cloth seemed to hold him, and now she gave a slight movement and his eyes were drawn to her face, seeing faint lights where before there had been dark shadows…. He jumped, hearing himself say “Oh!” and feeling the film of cloth rolling like a grain of sand between his fingers.

“Revern’ Bliss, is that you?” she said from far away.

“I didn’t mean to do it, mam….”

She sighed sleepily. “Do? What’d you do, honey?”

He held his breath, hearing
dododododododododododo!

And again, “Revern’ Bliss?” …
dododo…
.

She stirred and he saw her arm go over as she started to turn only to halt with a deep intake of breath which suddenly stopped and he realized that he had trapped himself.
It’s happening and it will be like Daddy Hickman says Torment is, forever and forever and ever …
Then as though the other Bliss had spoken in an undertone, he thought,
You’re It this time for sure but you must never be caught again. Not like this again—move. When they come toward you, move. Be somewhere else, move. Move!

But he couldn’t move. He was watching her hand reaching out searchingly patting the spot where he had lain. And he thought,
She thinks I wet the bed and I didn’t and now her fingers are telling her that it’s dry and if I only had, like the Jaybirds spying on you and telling the ants and telling the Devil, and she’s raising up and her eyes growing wide and I shall be punished for what I can’t even see. Please Lady God Sister Mother
.

“Oh!” Sister Georgia said, sitting up with a creaking of the bedsprings, and he felt the sheet swing across his leg and up around her body so swiftly that it was as though she or I’d never been exposed. He could see his upraised thumb and finger making an “O” of the darkness and she was saying, “Oh, oh, oh,” very fast and the night seemed to rush backwards like a worm sliding back into its hole. And he told himself,
It was only a dream I am in the other room lying on the sofa where I went to bed and that woman with the veil is coming toward me and I know who she is and I’m overjoyed to see her save her and now dodging waterspout of fish and falling and screaming and now this one will come in a second and lift me from the floor—save me from…

“NO!” she said, “OH NO! Revern’ Bliss, Revern’ Bliss! YOU WERE LOOKING AT MY NAKEDNESS! YOU WERE EXPOSING MY NAKEDNESS!”

He was mute, shrinking within himself, his head turning from side to side as he thought,
If I could fall off the bed it would go away. If I had wings I could—

But her words were calling up dreadful shapes in his mind. A black horse with buzzards tearing at its dripping entrails went galloping across a burning field, making no sound…. A naked, roaring-drunk Noah stumbled up waving a jug of corn whiskey and cursing in vehement silence while two younger men fought with another trying to cover his head with a quilt-of-many-colored cloth and he could feel her words still sounding. All the darkness seemed to leave the room. Nearby the cats which had hurtled across the night like a swirling wheel of knives had cornered now, filling the air with an agony of howling.

“You were, weren’t you, Revern’ Bliss?” she said. “Tell me, what was you doing?” And the minor note of doubt in her voice warned him that there was still time to lie, to erase it all with words and he seemed to be running, trying to catch up but he wasn’t fast enough and felt the chance slipping
through his hand like a silver minnow. He seemed to hear his voice sounding unreal even before he spoke.

“I didn’t mean to do it, mam, honestly, I didn’t….”

“But you
did!”
she said in a fierce whisper. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, peeping at my nakedness and me asleep. Sneaking up on me like a thief in the night, trying to steal me in my sleep! You, who’s
supposed to
be Revern’ Bliss, the young preacher!”

“Please, mam,
Please
mam. I really didn’t mean to do it. Forgive me. Please, forgive me….”

She shook her head sadly, sitting higher and clutching the sheet around her.

“Oh, you really ought to be ashamed,” she said. “That’s the least you can do. Acting like that, like an old rounder or something that’s had no training or anything. What I want to know is ain’t there
any
of you men a Godfearing woman can trust! I thought you was a real genuine preacher of the gospel and I was proud to have you staying in my house. You never would’ve had to sleep in any hay around here. But now just look what you done. I guess I been offering my hospitality to an old jackleg. A midnight creeper. I guess you just another one of these old no-good jacklegs. You’re not good and sanctified like Revern’ Hickman at all and it’ll probably break his heart to hear what you done.”

He cried soundlessly now, wanting to go to her, his whole body, even his guilty fingers crying Mother me, forgive me. He felt cast into the blackest darkness, the world being transformed swiftly into iron.

“Please,” he cried, touching her arm, but she pulled away, refusing to touch him as he reached out to her.

“No,” she said, “Oh no. You get out of my bed. Get on out!”

“Please, Sister Georgia.”

“I said, get!”

“Yes, mam,” he said. He dragged himself from the bed now and found his way back to the sofa and lay sobbing in the dark.

“Sister Georgia,” he called to the other room. “Sister Georgia …”

“What is it, ole jackleg?”

“Sister Georgia, please don’t call me that. Pleeease …”

“Then you oughtn’t to act like one. What is it you want?”

“Sister Georgia,” he said, “are you a lady or a girl?”

“Am I
what?”

“Are you a lady or a girl?” he said.

She was silent, then, “After what you done you shouldn’t have to ask.”

“But I have to know,” he said.

“I’m a woman,” she said. “What difference does it make, ole jackleg preacher?”

“Because … maybe if you’re a girl what I did isn’t really so bad….”

She was silent and he lay straining to hear. Finally, she said, “You go to sleep. It won’t be long before day and I have to have my sleep.”

She won’t tell me
, he thought,
she won’t say
.

His tears were gone now and he lay face downward, thinking,
I don’t care, the other one is the one for a mother…
.

It was a bigger tent than ours. The seats went up and around the sides and we had to sit up high at the end over near where the animals were coming through. I was looking down at the pumping and swaying of their backs and at the tops of the heads of the men in red coats walking beside them as they came through. I said, “What kind of elephants are those?”

“Those are African, Bliss,” Daddy Hickman said. “There’s African elephants and Indian elephants.”

“But how do you tell them apart?”

“By their ears, Bliss. The African ones have big ears,” Daddy Hickman said.

“What about the noses?”

“You mean
trunks
. They’re about the same.”

They were strung out like fat boys moving around the ring holding trunk to tail.

“How about those lions?” I said. The man in the white-and-gold coat and the shiny boots was shooting a pistol in the air and waving an ice-cream-parlor chair at the lions.

“What do you mean, Bliss?”

“I mean, where do they come from?”

“They’re from Africa too, little boy.”

I looked at the lions, sitting up on some stools with their lips rolled back, snarling. One struck at the air with his paw, like Body trying to shadowbox. The man snapped the whip and he stopped. I said,

“Why don’t they catch him?”

Daddy Hickman was bent forward, looking hard.

“Why don’t they catch him?” I said.

“They’re mastered, Bliss. He’s scared them. They could destroy him like a cat with a mouse if they weren’t scared. But that’s the test of his act. He can outthink them from the start because he’s a man, but in order to get in there with those animals and master them he has to master his nerves.” He laughed. “Bliss, you can’t tell it from up here, but he’s probably popping his whip and shooting off that pistol at his own legs about as much as he’s doing it at the lions. Because sometimes the trainer makes a mistake and that’s it, the lions take over. But we don’t want that to happen, do we? It’s enough to know it’s a possibility. Is that right, Bliss?”

“Yes, sir.”

Now the man was popping the whip and making the lions gallop around in a circle, while he stood in the same spot, making them gallop around and around him. I said,

“Could you do that, Daddy Hickman?”

He laughed and looked down at me.

“What’s that, Bliss?”

“I say could you make those lions do like he’s doing?”

“No, Bliss, I’m only a man tamer. Lions are not in my line.” He laughed again.

“Daniel could,” I, Bliss, said.

“Yes, but Daniel wasn’t a lion tamer either, Bliss. It was the Lord who controlled those lions. What Daniel had to do was to have faith.”

“But don’t you have faith?”

“Sure. But if the Lord ever wants to test me with a lion, He’ll do it, Bliss. And He’ll put the lion in my path. I won’t have to go looking for him. I don’t think he intends for me to go bothering with these lions. Would you want to get in there with them?”

“Uh-uh—No, sir. I’m too little.”

“What if you were big, Bliss?”

“Maybe. If I was as big as you I might.”

“What if they were little lions?”

“That would be better. I’m not afraid of little ones. How long do you think it took that man to learn to scare them?”

“I don’t know, Bliss. He probably started when he was your age. Maybe he started with dogs, little puppies or little kittens…. Look yonder, Bliss, here come the clowns. My, my! Now watch this, you’ll like the clowns.”

He was smiling.

They came through the tent flap in a burst beneath us, all dressed up in funny clothes. I could see down on top of their heads. Seven clowns, one of them short and black, another tall and skinny in underwear and a fat one wearing a barrel, running to the center of the tent, and they were hitting one another over the head with clubs that exploded and sent flowers and birdcages shooting out of their hats and heads, while the black one runs in and out, holding on to his britches with one hand and hitting at them with the other like a girl, a washerwoman, in and out between their legs. Then the others were turning and hitting him on the head and each time they hit he dropped his britches, showing his short bowed legs and his flour sack drawers with printing on them and a big red star in the center and one of them hits him there with a big paddle and he sounds like a hoarse jackass, hoarse and disrespectful early in the morning, while he skips around trying to pull up his britches and falls and turns a flip and gets up and rolls and skips and runs real
fast, still holding on. Then the one with the big red nose pulls out a big mallet and hits him on his head and he squashes down to his knees and a big red rooster flies out and runs squawking around in the ring with the others chasing him over the sawdust and he hits him again and again, real fast, and hams and sides of bacon and cabbage and spurts of flour and eggs start falling out of his clothes and he starts running out of his bloomers and a clown dog drops out and starts barking and chasing him along with the others and him skipping and running and turning double flips and more chickens squashing out and a little pink clown pig with a black ring around one eye and the whole tent is laughing while the big clowns are hitting one another with the eggs and hams and sides of bacon and it sounds like the Fourth of July. He was just my size.