Those Smitten Church Girls
They sat in a half-empty diner off Colombus Highway. It was small and the windows were steamed and they sold whole hams to take home.
Savannah smiled at the waitress as she brought over two cups of coffee.
They sat in silence awhile and watched the traffic beginning to stack ’cause there were men working the road.
“I heard it’s gettin’ real bad in Grace,” Peach said.
“Yes. I know Summer Ryan, I teach her cello.”
“And the cloud.”
“And the cloud. Though it hardly seems worth the fuss.”
“They’re sayin’ it’s bad, that somethin’ bad is comin’.”
The waitress hovered and asked if they wanted pie and they said no so she left them.
“Della’s birthday today,” Peach said.
Savannah reached across and squeezed her hand. She’d met Peach at the center in Pinegrove.
“I walked the route she took to church this mornin’. I do it most days, before the heat gets up. There’s a cypress grove, by the backwater. The trees by the line, the roots ain’t covered no more so they just sweep the ground and they look like snakes, or arms or somethin’. The wildflowers are pretty though.”
Savannah watched her speak, the way her mouth moved, and she wondered who Peach had been with in her life. The men that would visit. She wondered if there was pleasure, if there was ever pleasure.
“I hope he didn’t hurt her,” Peach said, and she stirred her coffee and didn’t cry. “Sometimes I want it over, but I ain’t ready to pay that price. I can’t stay here much longer, this place where I’m at between wonderin’ and closing off. Would it be easier if I got to bury her and say good-bye? . . . I ain’t sure of nothin’.”
“You do well, Peach.”
“They thought she was trash,” Peach said. “At first, those cops that stopped by and knew what I did to get money, they saw Della as nothin’ but my daughter ’stead of the girl she was. Didn’t matter she was smart, or she went to church or that she was a sweetheart.”
“That must have been so difficult for you.”
“I stopped by the station weekly. Ernie was kind but the other cops, they fixed me with stares that lay someplace between pity and disgust, the Bible Belt looped over my head and ready to hang me. They had it figured, those shiny cops all sharp judgment.”
“But it changed.”
Peach nodded. “After the other girls, girls from the better families. Maybe they looked at Della and started to see her. That piece they wrote in the Herald, they spoke to Della’s teacher and she said nice things. I ain’t got much pride, Savannah, but I’m proud of my daughter and I needed them to see her too.”
“Who?”
“Everyone. I wouldn’t let them look at her and see my mistakes, I’d die before I let that happen. We’re all more than the bad things we do.”
Savannah felt the words.
“I ain’t been sleepin’,” Peach said. “Funny, now I ain’t got the worry of who’s showin’ at my door.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sometimes I see him outside, sittin’ in his car.”
“The man you’re seeing?”
“Yeah. But he don’t come in, he just sits there watchin’ the window. So I kneel down and I pray.” She laughed soft as she spoke.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I want him to see somethin’ else, maybe it’ll throw him ’cause it ain’t what he’s expectin’. You reckon maybe I’m a bit mad, Savannah?”
“I think everyone is a bit mad, Peach.”
They watched a big man pass and he shot a glance over both of them then settled at the counter and reached for a newspaper. He had a scar by his eye and he turned his head embarrassed when Savannah glanced at him. She wondered about scars, visible and not. She wondered how little people saw when they looked at her.
“I want him to come knock at the door and take me someplace.”
“But he doesn’t.”
“I reckon maybe he’s shamed, ’cause people know me after what happened, know all about me and what I do. He’s good though. He hurts, for the things he’s done, he tortures himself so bad. Maybe that’s why I love him, ’cause he feels for others like that.” Peach sipped her coffee and rubbed her eyes. Her nails were painted and broke.
“You could just ask him. Just ask where you stand.”
“I couldn’t lose him. I’d take this, whatever it is, I’d take it over nothin’. Does that make me weak?”
“You’re not weak, Peach. Far from it.”
“I don’t expect the fairy tale, what you and Bobby got.”
“That’s not –”
Peach caught herself, eyes sad, and this time she reached across. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean that . . . Michael.”
Savannah smiled.
“I just meant you and Bobby . . . he’s a good man. I saw that. He came in once, to the West End Mission.”
“Did he?” Savannah said.
“One Sunday. He sat at the back during the service. Pastor Roberts made a show of him, got him to stand up, and Bobby was shy. Then after, Bobby was talkin’ about the Christian Youth drive. He’s got a way about him.”
“He works hard. He visits churches all over the state.”
“Della was smitten, had those big puppy dog eyes for him, like all the church girls.”
*
Noah and Raine left the Buick parked on Hallow Road but far from the crowd.
People stood thick at the border at all hours now.
They passed a couple ice cream trucks, and a guy selling coffee from the back of his pickup. He had an old urn and a couple bottles of milk in a cooler, and a wife with a hard face and a stack of bills in her hand.
Crowds stood against the dark wall, stuck a hand through the shadow before finding the courage to follow it, like it was a gateway to someplace forbidden.
There was awe among the visitors, talk about God and light. They took turns taking photos. Some knelt in prayer. A small line held hands and dipped their heads, chanting soft enough to keep their words from traveling to the onlookers. Noah heard they’d tripped down from Viker Hill or maybe someplace just as bleak and devout.
There were folk laughing, some on lawn chairs with sandwiches, settling in for a day of cloud gazing.
A wild-eyed black man stood alone. In his hands he held a sign: THE SKY IS FALLING DOWN.
The man glanced up at Noah and nodded. Noah nodded back.
The world was flat and Grace hung over the edge.
They walked side by side, Noah in the light of Windale, Raine in the dark of Grace. They moved slow, the ground uneven beneath their feet.
“I saw some guy with Arizona plates,” Noah said.
“I saw Colorado.”
“Jesus.”
“You reckon maybe we would’ve liked all this shit goin’ on a while back, before?”
“Maybe. I know Purv’s enjoyin’ it, he’s making a fast buck every day now.”
They walked on.
“I see you watchin’ me sometimes,” Raine said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s all right, all the boys watch me.”
“How come you’re being nice to me now?”
“I ain’t.”
He tried to take her hand. “Fuck off,” she said.
“That’s better,” he said.
They’d been to three houses the night before, watched the lady with the fire-red hair, and also a honky-tonk way out in Midway. They’d staked half the night; Purv and Raine drifting off sometimes, Noah staying sharp. At one point he’d seen a flicker of light from a basement window in a house by the old Monroe railroad. He’d crept out alone and sidled up to the window then dropped to his hands and knees, peered through and caught sight of the guy, Chester Mulharney, whacking it to some grainy videotape.
They heard yelling and they turned but couldn’t see nothing ’cause they’d walked far along the line.
“Probably a Kinley shakin’ down the wrong guy,” Raine said.
They struggled on, the ground turning to dips and waves and lumps of earth baked hard as rocks. He’d skipped dialysis again, ’cause Raine needed him, ’cause the days were passing fast.
He felt tired. Missy called and he didn’t answer. Trix stopped by and he didn’t come to the door. He’d get back on track. As long as he didn’t leave too long between each session.
“You reckon Summer’s dead?” she said without warning. “You reckon the Bird took her like he took those Briar girls?”
He stopped and turned to face her. He pulled her forward, into the sunlight, and she squinted back, eyes burning like she was daring him to lie.
“She’ll come back. She will come back. I promise.”
He knew it was a moment that’d last and haunt and keep pace till it was over. A moment taken from a summer when a funny kinda cloud shaded their lives, a summer when he made a promise he couldn’t possibly keep no matter how much he asked and how much he prayed.
He tried to take her hand again but she slipped it from him.
“My sister holds my hand.”
“Oh.”
“Can we bring her here one day? Even if the cloud has gone,” she said.
“All right.”
“All right.”
“You reckon Summer will like me?” he said.
“No.”
When they got back he bought her a cone, though she tried to stop him. Raine held it and licked the edges, trying to keep pace with the melt. They reached the Buick and climbed up onto the dented hood, leaning back against the windshield and staring straight up.
“Imagine if there ain’t no sky above the cloud. Imagine if it’s just gone,” he said.
“What will be there then, when it moves out the way?”
“Just space. It will be like we’re livin’ in outer space. The stars will shine so bright that we won’t even need the sun no more.”
“Imagine the cloud takes gravity with it too, and we can just float round. Imagine when we drive back into town, we’ll get to the border and the Buick will just take off.”
“We’d have to tie it somehow. Tie everything. Otherwise folk would just float away too, everything would just float away.”
“Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad,” she said.
“I want to go up there. Into space. Since I was a kid and Purv stole a rocket from that toy store that used to be next to Ginny’s. We tied it to a firework and lit it by the Red. It fell just as the fuse sparked, aimed right back at us. We hightailed it, I was laughin’ so hard and Purv was screamin’ real high like a girl.”
She smiled.
“My momma said I could be an astronaut if I worked hard at school. I believed her. Funny how it slips as each year passes,” he said.
“What?”
“Hope, maybe. Belief. That there’s better out there. Better than what I got, which ain’t all that much really.”
“I didn’t mean it, what I said the other night.”
He shrugged like it weren’t nothing. “We don’t think about that, me and Purv.”
“ ’Cause you’re brave and you’re fierce.”
“We are. Don’t stop me wishin’ though.”
“For what?”
“I sit in the station, watchin’ the real cops and maybe for a moment I feel like one of ’em. I step outta my life and into theirs. I got this need to be somebody else so bad it hurts.”
“But you can just be you, Noah. Don’t matter what you end up doin’ or where you end up livin’. You can just be you.”
“I don’t want to be me.”
“Why not?” she said, her voice quiet.
He looked up at the sky and didn’t say nothing.
“I know,” she said. “I saw you . . . at Mayland.”
He swallowed. “I saw you too.”
“It’ll be all right,” she said.
“It will, just not for me,” he said.
*
Black sat beside Bobby on the wood bench in the cemetery. Lights burned in the church and dropped color through the stained glass.
Black sipped his beer slowly. He’d bought a six-pack from Ginny’s then came to sit awhile. He’d been surprised to find Bobby there, even more when he’d taken a beer for himself.
“How come you ain’t home?” Black said. “It’s gettin’ late.”
“I’m not sure really. I sit out here sometimes. Makes me feel closer to death.”
“Closer to God then.”
“Maybe.”
Black glanced over at him. Bobby looked beat, like a man that didn’t ever rest no more. Black could relate.
“Do any pastors ever give up, just walk away from it and join the rest of us down here?” Black said.
“That what you reckon? I exist on a higher plane?”
“Maybe you’re less flawed. I was brought up like that, respect the church and all.”
“I knew this guy . . . a pastor over in Hattiesburg. He seemed to love it, I mean, he was a decent speaker, warm and compassionate and funny.”
“What happened?”
Bobby ran his finger around the can. “He woke one mornin’ and stopped believin’. Suddenly it was all lies, all nonsense. Just like that. He carries all this guilt with him. For wastin’ his life, for wastin’ people’s time.”
“You ever worry that’ll happen to you?”
Bobby nodded.
“I get that, kinda like losin’ your mind.”
“Or findin’ it.”
Black smiled.
“I used to come out here after church, when I was a kid. I used to read the gravestones. I’d look for the oldest, then the youngest,” Black said. “I still do it now. I got a thing about the messages on the stones.”
“How do you mean?”
“It’s hard to get it right. People try and say too much, flower it up. It bugs me.”
“So what’s the perfect script?”
“Somethin’ that means somethin’ to someone.”
“How do you mean?”
“Just somethin’ so simple, but it gets you right here,” Black said, tapping his chest with his fist.
“Like Mitch Wild?” Bobby said. “I’m always drawn to that stone.”
Black nodded. He could make out the grave from where he sat, the marble shined ’cause Noah tended it often, the script proud against lantern light. Brave and fierce in his service to the people of Grace.
“They got that one just about perfect,” Black said as he lit a cigarette. “You ever hear of the Boyington Oak?”
Bobby shook his head.
“It’s an oak tree in a cemetery over in Mobile. So there was this guy named Charles Boyington, he was a printer, lived in Mobile in the 1830s. He was also a gambler. One time he was seen with another guy, Nathaniel Frost, who folk reckoned owed money to Charles. Later they found Frost’s body, all stabbed up and robbed, near the cemetery on Church Street.”
Black passed Bobby another beer.
“Now Charles Boyington was the obvious suspect. He was executed and buried in that same graveyard. Before they hanged him Charles kept sayin’ a mighty oak would spring up from his heart and prove he was innocent.”
“Did it?”
Black nodded. “Grew right out his grave. Now that’s gotta beat a headstone, right?”
Bobby smiled.
Black set his beer down and rubbed his eyes. “Fuckin’ cloud.”
“I can hear Pastor Lumen from here some nights. When he’s got the microphone. I tried talking to him –”
Black waved him off. “He don’t listen to no one. Never has, never will. We were all glad when you and Savannah came to town. I mean, I ain’t wishin’ the man ill or nothin’, but he’s always had a cruel tongue. I got the press here, the dark sky and the girls.”
“I helped search, went to Joe and walked with his men,” Bobby said, staring down at the dirt. “I think of Summer out there and it kills me.”
“He’s preyin’ on church girls, you know that?”
“I do.”
“That’s the kinda world this is now. I wonder if things will get better in the future. Religion . . . makes you wonder about it. The gains and the losses.”
“What do you believe, Black?”
“I got a cross tacked up in my kitchen.”
Bobby nodded.
“How do you do it?” Black said. “That compassion, for people that ain’t good, a lot of them, askin’ forgiveness when you know they’ll do it again.”
“It’s not on me to forgive. How many faces do people have, Black? I don’t have the empathy I need anymore. I see people round me, people close to me, and I see what they want to see. But it don’t make it real. I died years back, the part that goes on does only that.”
“Your boy?”
Bobby nodded. “If I stop believing then where’s Michael now?”
“Blame is a game you ain’t never gonna win, Bobby.”
Bobby saw lights in the sky. “This guy you’re lookin’ for.”
“The Bird.”
“I really hope you stop him soon.”
*
Noah lay in his bed but sleep didn’t come.
Raine didn’t need his problems ’cause she had her own.
They’d driven back to her place after, the Buick bumping along the track roads in the kinda silence that made Noah wonder if they were the last people left out there, the rest just sucked down and swallowed by air too heavy now, sky too dark and too sad.
He’d watched her walk up her street then blend into shadow without a glance back in his direction.
He rubbed his eyes till there were colors, then he sat up quick when he heard tapping on his window.
Raine’s face pressed against the glass, the world behind her cut to a single cloud. He opened the window and she climbed from the flat roof into his bedroom.
She kicked off her sneakers.
She told him to lie down, then she lay beside him, her head on his chest, rising and falling with each of his breaths.
She moved up and kissed him hard.
She sat up and took off her T-shirt and bra.
He looked away.
She reached for his hand and brought it to her breast.
“Why are you doin’ this?” he said.
“Pity.”
“I’ll take it.”
She smiled.
“I think I love you,” he said.
“Shut up,” she said.
*
It was as the square slowly woke, as weary eyes opened to morning dark, and as the two warring sides of the green readied for another long day, that the network vans came to life. Reporters got into position, makeup was hastily applied, and cameramen roused from makeshift beds.
Joe got to his feet and walked over, leaving Tommy sleeping on the bench beside. He asked one of the reporters what was going on and might’ve got nothing if it weren’t for the look on his face.
Joe kept even as he was told.
Before long the news ravaged the town like wildfire.
Another girl had gone missing.