Текст книги "A Land More Kind Than Home"

Автор книги: Wiley Cash

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 17 страниц)

It didn’t take long for my shoulders and my elbows to get good and sore from holding up my weight, and I dropped down to the ground to give them a rest. I ran my fingertips over my elbows and used my fingernails to pick off the flecks of dried paint and pieces of old wood that had gotten stuck on my skin. Joe Bill ducked under the air conditioner and came over to my side.

“This is boring,” he whispered. “All they’re doing is singing. I think we should leave.”

“Then go on back to the river,” I said, but I hoped he wouldn’t because I didn’t want him leaving me up there all alone. He watched me pick at the dried paint on my elbows, and then he looked back across the field toward the trees.

“I just think we should get going,” he said. “They’ll be letting out here soon.”

“But I haven’t even seen Stump yet,” I told him. “That’s the whole reason we came up here.”

“I’m just thinking that we shouldn’t be doing this,” he said.

“Now who’s acting like a chicken?” I asked. Joe Bill stood there for a second, and then he ducked under to the other side of the air conditioner. I turned back to the window and got up on my tiptoes again and raised myself up with my elbows and cupped my hands around my eyes to peer in through that crack.

Not a single one of the people inside had sat down yet, and somebody was still banging away on that piano even though it looked like they’d all stopped singing. Just about every one of them had their eyes closed, and some of them had their hands up over their heads like they were waving big at somebody who might be too far away to see them.

All of a sudden, Pastor Chambliss flew right past my eyes and then disappeared, and the way he was moving looked like he might’ve been dancing or skipping or hopping down in front of the church. A second later he flew by again, and then he came back and stood right in front of me. I could see him good. He stayed there with his back to me and Joe Bill, and he just stared at all those people where they swayed back and forth with their eyes closed and their hands waving way up over their heads, their fists opening and closing like they were trying to reach up and grab something out of the sky.

Pastor Chambliss had his hair buzzed so short that you couldn’t hardly notice the little bald spot right there in the back, and I probably wouldn’t have noticed it myself if he hadn’t been sweating and the light hadn’t caught it. He looked like somebody who’d been in the army to me, even though he was probably too old to be a soldier now. The back of his blue dress shirt was dark with sweat, and the shirtsleeve on his left arm was rolled up past his elbow, but he had that right one buttoned tight at his wrist, and I knew why—his right hand was scary to look at: bright pink and wrinkled up. He kept that right sleeve rolled down tight, but he couldn’t keep his hand hidden; everybody in the church had seen it, and most of them had probably got so used to it that they never even thought about it anymore. But I’d thought about that hand all weekend long because I’d seen it out in the bright sunlight two days before, and I saw the whole arm it was attached to too, and I’d seen where that pink skin ran up to his shoulder and covered his chest like chewing gum does when you blow a bubble and it pops and spreads itself out across your cheeks.

ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE, AFTER THE SCHOOL BUS HAD DROPPED ME off at the top of the road, I’d found Mama and Stump sitting on the porch steps like they were waiting on me. They were both holding small wooden boxes that looked like cages with handles on them, and when I got close enough to hear what she was telling Stump I heard the handle squeaking where Mama swung her box back and forth in front of her. She looked up and smiled when she saw me.

“There you are,” she said. “How was school?”

“What are y’all doing out here?” I asked.

“Waiting on you,” she said.

“What for?”

“Because I figured you might want to go out and catch a few salamanders for y’all’s room.” I dropped my book bag by her feet on the bottom step, and I looked at the wooden box where she held it in front of her. She held it out to me, and I took it by the handle.

“You serious?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, “y’all been wanting some, and I figured you might as well have them if you can take care of them. We’ll have to find something to put them in, but this’ll do for now. I’ll take your book bag inside, and you can go on down to the creek if you promise to keep that shirt and those pants clean.”

“I will,” I said. I looked at the box in my hand. “Where did you get these?”

“From a friend,” she said. “He’s letting me borrow them just so y’all can use them. But we can’t keep them, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

She picked up my book bag and stood up from the steps and turned to go into the house, but she stopped and looked back at me and Stump. “See if you can catch five salamanders,” she said. “I think that would be plenty for us to have. So see if you can catch five.” I looked at Stump like I couldn’t believe what she’d just said, and I swung my cage by its handle and bumped it against his like I was making a toast.

“You ready?” I asked. He jumped up from the porch, and we started across the yard toward the creek at the bottom of the hill.

But we didn’t catch any salamanders. We couldn’t even find a single one. It was probably the only time I’d ever gone off looking for salamanders that I couldn’t find them, and when we walked back up the hill toward the house all we had in those little boxes was a few sticks and some blades of grass that reminded me of the terrarium we had in my classroom at school.

My pants were soaked up past my knees and I carried my shoes with my socks stuffed down inside. I was afraid that Mama was going to be mad at me for getting so dirty, especially after I’d told her I wouldn’t. Stump had left his shoes on while he was walking through the creek, and I could hear water sloshing around in them and they squeaked when he walked. I knew Mama wasn’t going to like that either.

We came up alongside the house, and I stopped beside the rain barrel. It sat up off the ground on some concrete blocks, and the gutter ran down into it from the roof. I squatted down and turned the spigot. I heard bubbles come up inside the barrel when the spigot opened and the water started pouring out.

“Wash off your hands,” I said to Stump. “We’d better wash our shoes too. Mama’s going to be mad if we bring all this mud in the house.”

He sat his box down in the grass by the rain barrel, and he held his hands under the water and rubbed them together to get the dirt off.

“Stick your shoes under there too,” I said. He picked up one of his shoes and held it under the water, and I found a stick and used it to scratch the mud off the sides of his shoe. Then he held the other one under there and I did the same thing. Stump turned off the spigot, and when he did we heard them inside the house. I looked up at the window where Mama and Daddy’s bedroom was, and me and Stump stayed kneeled down there in the grass and listened to them. They were making the same noises that we heard them make in the morning sometimes when they didn’t know we were awake yet.

Stump stood up straight and looked up at the window, and he turned his head like he was trying to hear them better. He tossed his shoes onto the ground behind him and walked up closer to the house.

“One of them’s going to look out that window and see you,” I whispered. “If they do, they’ll come outside here and wear us out for spying on them.”

I turned the spigot back on and put my shoe under the water and scratched some more of the mud off the bottom with that stick. Stump walked right up against the house and reached up his hands to the window ledge like he was thinking about pulling himself up to look in.

“You’d better stop it,” I whispered louder, and I reached out that stick and poked him on the back of his leg. He looked back toward me and stepped away from the window, and then he put his hands flat on top of the rain barrel and grabbed on to the gutter and pulled himself up. I turned the spigot off, and I heard that big bubble inside there float up to the top again.

“Stump,” I said, “you’d better get down. That ain’t going to hold you,” but he acted like he couldn’t even hear me. “You’d better get down,” I said again.

When I stood up, I could feel the mud and wet grass squishing between my toes, and I could hear Mama and Daddy’s bed squeaking inside their room. Stump put his hands on the window ledge and stood on his tiptoes on top of the rain barrel and tried to look in there. I saw the concrete blocks under the rain barrel move just a little, and then it leaned a little to the side like it might tip over. I put my hands on the sides of it to try and keep it from falling, and I felt the water in there roll around from side to side.

“Stump,” I whispered. I reached out and tugged at his leg, but he just stayed up on his tiptoes and tried to see in the window like he didn’t feel me pulling on him. “It ain’t going to hold you,” I said. I tugged at his leg again, and when I did all that muddy water on his feet made him lose his balance. His feet went out from under him, and he fell on his butt on top of the rain barrel. It ripped loose from the gutter and tipped toward the yard, and Stump slipped and fell up against the house and landed on top of those concrete blocks. The rain barrel turned over in the grass with its top busted off. Water poured out onto the ground and ran down through the yard, and Stump just laid there on his back on top of those concrete blocks.

I heard Mama’s voice through the open bedroom window. “What was that?” she said.

“I don’t know,” a man said. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I knew it wasn’t Daddy’s. “I’m going to go see,” the voice said. “You stay right here.” I heard the bed squeak like somebody was standing up. “You stay right here,” the voice said again. I knew whoever’s voice I heard was coming out to find us. I looked down at Stump.

“Get up,” I said to Stump, but he wouldn’t move. I kneeled down and tried to stand the rain barrel upright, but my feet kept slipping in the wet grass and it was too heavy to move. Stump just laid there with his eyes closed like the wind had got knocked out of him, and then he reached around behind him like he’d hurt his back. I heard the bedroom door open.

“Get up, Stump,” I said, but he just laid there and looked over my shoulder at the window above me like he couldn’t move. “They’re coming out here,” I whispered. I reached down and tried to pull him up by his hand. “Get up,” I said again.

I heard the screen door slam shut around front, and I turned and hightailed it toward the woods beside the house. I ran until I didn’t think anyone could see me, and then I stopped and laid down flat on my stomach behind some tree roots and looked back toward the yard. I could see the rain barrel where I’d pushed it back up, and I could see where the gutter had gotten bent and broken, but I couldn’t see Stump at all because he hadn’t stood up yet.

I laid on my stomach in the woods and waited on whoever I’d heard to come around the corner of the house and find Stump, and then I remembered that my shoes were still up there and I knew they were going to find them and tell Mama and she’d wear me out because I should’ve never let Stump climb up there because we shouldn’t have been spying. But I forgot about all that when I saw Pastor Chambliss. I only saw his face at first because he peeked around the corner like he’d been hiding from somebody and was checking the side of the house to make sure it was safe to come out. He stood there peeking around the corner at the rain barrel, and then he walked into the side yard and I could see him good. All he had on was a dirty old pair of blue jeans that he had to hold at the waist because he wasn’t wearing a belt. He’d pulled his boots on over his blue jeans, and he stopped walking and bent over and pushed his jeans down over the tops of his boots. When he bent down, I saw the inside of his right arm and how bright pink and shiny it was. When he stood up straight, I saw that the pink, wrinkled skin covered his chest and ran up his neck too. He looked out toward the woods beside the house, and I got as flat as I could on the ground behind those roots so he wouldn’t see me. He walked over to the rain barrel and stopped, and then he just stood there looking down at Stump like he was surprised to see him laying there. Pastor Chambliss bent down and sat the rain barrel up straight. Then he fixed the top where it had come loose. He pounded on it with his fist and shut it tight. I heard the screen door slam, and then I heard Mama’s voice come around the house from the front porch.

“What was it?” she hollered. Pastor Chambliss whipped his head around and looked toward the front yard.

“Nothing,” he hollered. “Go back inside.” He turned and looked down at Stump again.

“You sure?” she said.

“Yes,” he hollered. “It ain’t nothing. The rain barrel tipped over, that’s all. Go on back inside.” He squatted down like he was getting a good look at Stump, and then he reached behind the rain barrel with that wrinkly arm like he was offering Stump his hand so he could help him up. “What did you see, boy?” he said. He waited like he expected Stump to say something, and then he laughed. He turned and walked back to the front. I got a good look at that bad arm, and I saw that it didn’t even have any hair on it. I laid there in the woods behind those roots and stared at his arm until he’d gone around the corner of the house toward the porch steps and I couldn’t see him anymore.

That night, while me and Stump were getting ready for bed, I asked Mama what had happened to Pastor Chambliss’s hand that made it look like that. Stump and I were already in the bed, and she was folding some of our clothes and putting them in the dresser and she was hanging our dress shirts in the closet. With the closet door open I could see Stump’s quiet box sitting up on the top shelf. Mama’d made it for him when he was little because she said when the world got too loud Stump needed a quiet place where he could go off and be alone. She took one of Daddy’s shoe boxes and wrote, “Quiet box—do not open” on the side of it. I could read her handwriting from where I laid in the bed. She’d never let me see what was inside the quiet box, and I’d always been afraid to even ask Stump because I was afraid she’d find out that I’d been messing with it.

Mama had just picked up the shirt I’d worn to school that day when I asked her about Pastor Chambliss’s hand, and, instead of hanging it up, she just held it out in front of her and stared at it like she was looking to see how clean she’d been able to get it.

“What do you mean, ‘What happened to his hand?’” she asked. She finally put my shirt on a clothes hanger and hung it in the closet. Then she reached down into the laundry basket again.

“How’d it get that way?” I said. “Why’s it all pink?” She turned around and looked at me. I saw that she was holding the blue jeans that I’d gotten wet and muddy down at the creek.

“What’s got you thinking about that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just wondering.” She turned back toward the dresser and folded my jeans and opened a drawer and put them inside. She sighed.

“Would you believe that once upon a time, back before the Holy Ghost got ahold of him, Pastor Chambliss was on fire for the world and the things of this world burned him up?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that he wasn’t living for the Lord,” she said. “He was on fire for the world. But now he’s on fire for the Lord Jesus, and nothing in this world can ever burn him again.” She kept on folding clothes without looking back at us. Down the hall in the living room I heard the sound of Daddy reclining in his chair. Then I heard the television set turn on.

“What’s the rest of him look like?” I asked. “Is it all burned up too?” Mama grabbed the rest of the clothes out of the laundry basket and stuffed them into one drawer without even folding them. She picked up the basket and turned around and stood by the door and looked at me and Stump where we were laying in the bed.

“Why would you ask me that?” she finally said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wondered.”

“I’ve never thought about what the rest of him looks like,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be thinking about things like that either. Go to sleep.” She turned off our bedroom light and closed the door. I heard her walk down the hall to her and Daddy’s bedroom, and I heard the door close and the sound of her kicking her shoes off onto the floor. The bed springs creaked when she laid down.

I laid there in the dark with my eyes open and stared up at the ceiling. Then I rolled over on my side and looked across the bed at Stump.

“Stump,” I whispered. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at me. “What did you see when you were up on the rain barrel?” We stared at each other for a minute, and then he closed his eyes and turned over on his other side. I laid there and looked at the back of Stump’s head, and I pictured Pastor Chambliss coming around the corner of the house and asking him the same thing: “What did you see?”

I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling again, and then I closed my eyes as tight as I could and tried to say my prayers, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t help wondering if that pink, burned-up hand had touched my mama.

BUT NOW PASTOR CHAMBLISS HELD HIS BIBLE IN THAT BURNED-UP hand inside the church, and I remembered what Mama’d said about him being on fire for the Holy Spirit, and I thought about him bursting into flames and giving off all kinds of heat, and how that air conditioner might just be pulling it out of the church and blowing it right onto me and Joe Bill.

The air conditioner and that piano were going too loud for me to hear what Pastor Chambliss was saying, but it looked like he must’ve been preaching into the microphone because he had his Bible in his hand and he raised it and pointed it at everybody. He walked back and forth, and for a few seconds I couldn’t see him, but then he came back to where I could watch him and when he did he had a woman on the stage with him; I knew it was Mama before I even saw her face. I raised myself up a little higher to get a better look, and when I did I saw Stump standing right there beside her. I felt something tugging on the back of my shirt, and I realized it was Joe Bill. He’d come around under the air conditioner and was standing beside me.

“I just saw Stump,” he said. He tugged on my shirt again, and I balanced myself on one of my tiptoes and kicked at his hand to get him to stop. “Hey,” he whispered up at me.

“I see him too,” I said.

“Why is he down front?”

“I don’t know,” I said. He let go of my blue jeans and ducked under to the other side of the air conditioner again.

I couldn’t see anything except the back of Stump’s head, but I could tell he was looking all around the church at all those people and I saw that now most of them had their eyes open and they were looking right back at him. Pastor Chambliss held his Bible with his bad hand, and he stepped around and got in between Mama and Stump and reached out his other hand and put it on top of Stump’s head. Mama reached across Pastor Chambliss and touched Stump on the shoulder and it looked like they were all praying, but after they stood like that for a second Stump started jerking around like he wanted to get away from them. Pastor Chambliss got up behind him and held his Bible and wrapped that ugly arm over Stump’s shoulder like he was giving him a bear hug. He reached out with his left arm to keep Mama away from Stump, and she took her hand off his shoulder and backed away until I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t stand seeing Pastor Chambliss wrap his arm around Stump, and I couldn’t help but be mad at Mama for letting him do it.

Pastor Chambliss just held Stump and held him and it looked like he was hugging him from behind and he wasn’t ever going to let him go, even though Stump was trying to get away because he hadn’t ever liked folks touching him and holding him like that. All the people in there held their hands up in the air, and then they started singing again after somebody got to banging away on the piano, but I couldn’t hardly hear nothing except that air conditioner right up against my head. My arms were getting so sore and tired that I was afraid I was going to fall. I couldn’t find Mama’s face, but I saw her hand reach out and take Stump’s, and he was fighting so hard with Pastor Chambliss that Mama could just barely hold on to it. Pastor Chambliss had both arms around Stump now, and he was holding on to him real tight with his Bible pressed right up against his chest, and they rocked back and forth like they couldn’t stand up, and all of a sudden they just fell over and I couldn’t see them at all no more because they were laying out on the floor.

Mama reached down and tried to get Stump to stand up, and it looked like she was pulling on his hand, but Pastor Chambliss wouldn’t let him go and Mama cried and looked like she was hollering for him to turn Stump loose. I felt Joe Bill tugging on my jeans so hard that I was scared he was going to yank me out of that window and I wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

“What are they doing to him?” Joe Bill said, but his voice was just barely a whisper and it sounded like he was running out of breath and he had to force out the words. “Jess,” he said. “What’s he doing to him?” I just kept watching Mama, and I didn’t say nothing to Joe Bill because seeing her cry got me crying too and I didn’t want Joe Bill seeing me do that.

Another man came up on the stage and kneeled down, and I figured he was helping Pastor Chambliss hold Stump still, but I couldn’t see nothing except Mama crying and trying to hold on to Stump’s hand. It looked like she was still hollering for them to get up and leave him alone.

“Jess, we better go,” Joe Bill said. I felt him behind me pulling on my shirt, but I didn’t turn around and I didn’t get off my tiptoes.

“They shouldn’t be doing that to him,” I said.

“Jess,” he said. His voice sounded like he was about to cry. “We got to go. He’s all right.” He didn’t say nothing after that, and I turned my head to ask him to put his hands under my feet to boost me up so I could see Stump, but Joe Bill was gone. When I looked across the field, I saw him hightailing it toward the woods, and I watched him run through the high grass with his untucked shirttail flapping out behind him.

I looked in the church again and saw Mr. Gene Thompson standing right up on stage too, and he had his arms locked around Mama and she was crying and fighting with him, but he wouldn’t let her go. I still couldn’t see Stump or Pastor Chambliss either, and I looked around and around but it was only a little crack and I couldn’t see everything in there. I dropped down and ducked under the air conditioner to the other side where Joe Bill had been standing and I got up on my tiptoes and raised myself up onto my elbows so I could look in again, and when I did I saw Stump laying on the stage and Pastor Chambliss and that other man laying on top of him. Stump’s feet were kicking like he was trying to get away and a couple other men left their chairs and walked up on the stage and put their hands on him and touched him and somebody was just banging away on the piano and just about all of them had their eyes closed except Mama and Mr. Thompson. She was staring at them where they were laying on Stump and holding him down and touching him and she was crying and hollering for them to stop. Stump kicked his legs around like he was trying to run sideways on the floor, and Mama screamed so loud that I could hear it over that piano and I could hear it over the air conditioner and all those people singing.

For a second I forgot where I was and I hollered out, “Mama!,” and when I did she jerked one of her hands up over her head and busted Mr. Thompson right on the lip. He let her go and raised his hand and touched his mouth to see if there was blood coming out. Mama got down on her knees and started pulling all them people off Stump, and he sat up as quick as he could and she hugged him to her and rocked him back and forth and all those men just sat there on the floor and stared at Mama and Stump like they didn’t know what to think. Mr. Thompson looked down at Mama, and then he whipped his head around and his big, yellow eyeballs looked right through that little crack like he was staring straight at me.

I figured everybody in the church’d heard me holler out for Mama, and when I leaned back to drop myself down I felt somebody behind me and they put their hand over my mouth and pulled me backward out of the window. I reached out for the window ledge, and I felt a chunk of that old wood break off in my hand. Whoever it was behind me tackled me, and we fell back into the high grass. The sun hit me right in the eyes, and I couldn’t see and I was crying and I couldn’t catch my breath because somebody’d put their hand over my mouth and it was keeping out all the air. Then it felt like something heavy was resting on my chest. I closed my eyes and tried to scream, but then, when I opened them, I saw it was Joe Bill sitting on top of me.

“Be quiet, Jess,” he said. “Be quiet.” I tried to roll over on my stomach so I could get up and run, but he wouldn’t get off me. “Be quiet, Jess,” he said again. “They’re just trying to help him.” I was scared to death, and I was crying so hard that I couldn’t even breathe. I laid there fighting with him on top of me, and before I knew it I was up and running for the trees.

I ran all the way across the field and into the woods, and I kept running until I was dizzy and had to stop to catch my breath. I looked around for Joe Bill, but I didn’t see him. There was a tree beside me, and I reached out and held myself up to keep from falling over, and then I leaned my back against it. I heard something crashing through the trees behind me, and I knew it was Joe Bill coming to find me. I put my hands on my knees so Joe Bill wouldn’t see me crying, and when I did I saw my hand had blood on it and I had it all over my blue jeans and it was on my shirt too. I turned my hand over and saw that a splinter half as long as my middle finger had gotten stuck down in the fat part of my hand right below my thumb. All of a sudden it hurt so bad that I couldn’t even think about touching it. I just stayed bent over with my other hand on my knee and I stared at the splinter and watched a drop of blood run through my palm, down my fingers, and into the leaves. I tried to clear my head and think about something else besides what I’d seen them doing to Stump. I heard Joe Bill running through the woods behind me.

He stopped running, and I heard him panting like he was out of breath. I turned my head so he wouldn’t see me crying, and I tried to make a fist to hide all the blood, but that splinter was so big that it wouldn’t let me close my fingers. A drop of blood had landed on my shoe and was running off the side into the dry leaves.

“It’s all right, Jess,” Joe Bill said. He couldn’t hardly talk because he was so out of breath. “They were just laying their hands on him,” he said. “They were trying to help him.” I looked up at Joe Bill. I saw that he was crying too.