“It’s turning off a hot day,” Reverend Joy said. “Would you like to come up to my house and have some tea? One of my flock, not a half hour ago, brought me a block of ice that she carried in her car all the way from Marvel Creek, about half of it melting into the floorboard before she got to me. And she brought a platter of fried chicken. Ice and chicken are all laid out in the icebox. If there’s enough ice, I might could churn some ice cream, though I can’t make promises there.”
“What you doing down by the river, then, if you got all that up there?” Jinx said.
“I wasn’t hungry yet, and I came to see if the water was up. I was thinking about a little fishing later, and I wanted to see how the water was.”
“How is it?” I asked.
“High. Come on up and have something. It’s a good reason to get away from the river and the sun for a while. I didn’t really want to fish all that bad anyhow.”
“We just ate,” I said.
“Just the tea, then,” he said.
“We got to be on our way,” I said.
“I understand you being cautious,” Reverend Joy said, “you people not knowing me. But I’ve been a reverend in these parts here for two years, and so far, I haven’t shot or eaten anybody.”
“It is turning off hot,” Mama said, smoothing her hair. “I could have a glass of tea, and hold something to eat in abeyance. Maybe that ice cream.”
I looked at Mama, surprised. She was flirting. I had never seen her do it, but I had seen May Lynn go at it, and she was a master, so I recognized it for what it was. Still, Mama doing it was as strange to me as if I had looked into the mirror and discovered for the first time that I was actually a hippopotamus wearing a derby hat.
“Good, then,” Reverend Joy said. “I’ll just lead the way.”
“We can’t leave the raft,” I said.
“Sure you can,” Reverend Joy said. “It’s tied off good. And after we have some refreshment, I’ve got a bit of lumber and such, and I think we can make you a rudder. You’re going to go down the river, a rudder would make it a whole lot easier to control your craft. Way I figure, the current, which is strong there, pulled you right off the main river. After you have something cold, maybe a bite to eat, you can set right off again.”
Except for Mama, we were hesitating. She, on the other hand, had gotten up and was starting to move toward the hill. Reverend Joy took note of it and quickly took her arm and led the way up. I don’t know what he said to her as they walked away, but she thought it was funny. She giggled. I hadn’t heard her do that in a long time. Actually, I hadn’t never heard her do it quite like that, way a schoolgirl will do when she’s playing some kind of game or the other.
When Mama and the Reverend Joy was a little ahead of us, I said to Jinx and Terry, “I’m not sure I like this.”
“He might know we’re on the run and is gonna turn us in,” Jinx said.
“I doubt our pursuers have spread the word,” Terry said. “They want to keep that money quiet. But he might have a car, and with him attracted to your mama, he may be generous enough to give us a ride to Gladewater and we won’t need the raft. Come on, let’s not let your mama out of our sight.”
We gathered up our stuff, including the money and May Lynn’s ashes, and followed Reverend Joy and Mama up and over the hill.
13
The Reverend Joy’s house wasn’t big, but it was solidly made of logs and had split shingles. It rose up higher than most single-floor houses. The shingles was coated over with a thin brushing of tar to keep out water, and I could see tar paper sticking out from under them at the edges. The roof was shiny in the sun. The front porch was tight, with firm steps, and had a rocking chair on it.
Out front of the house was a black car with a coating of dust and a front right tire and wheel missing. The axle on that side was up on some wood blocks and there was grass growing around the car like hair around a mole. A half dozen crows were camped on it and had speckled it like a hound pup with their white droppings; they gave us a beady look as we came up. With his car up on those wooden blocks, looked to me like we wouldn’t be talking the reverend into taking us anywhere.
There was a well house out front, too. It was nicely built of seasoned lumber. It had a roof over it with a platform out to the side where you could step up and take hold of the rope and work the pulley to drop the bucket down the well. There was a pretty good-sized shed nearby, too. It was made of logs, like the house, and had the same kind of shingles. It had an open place with a roof over it and a long bench under it, and another section that was closed in by walls and a door. There was an outhouse not far away and it was painted blood red; it had been built recent, and a few spare two-by-fours and the like lay near it in the yard.
Only the garden looked out of step. It was a pretty big square with some buggy squash growing on top of badly hoed hills, and a line of beans that were yellowed and withering. The whole thing looked as if it was begging to be set on fire and plowed under, so as to be put out of its misery.
On a hill, not real far away, was a church. I figured that would be the reverend’s church, and this would be the house the congregation provided.
Inside the house there was a window on every wall, two on each of the long walls. The windows was all lifted to let in air, and there was outside screens over the windows to keep out bugs. It was cooler inside than I would have thought, and that was probably on account of the tall ceiling. He had a new icebox in one corner and everything in the house was scattered about and old enough to have been found in a pyramid in Egypt. But there was plenty of it. We all took a seat at a big plank table in the center of the room. The reverend got some glasses out of a cabinet, went to the icebox, took an ice pick, and went to chopping us some chips. He put them in glasses, and from another part of the icebox he got out a pitcher of tea and poured tea into the glasses.
We sat and looked at each other and sipped our tea, which was made with lots of sugar; it was so sweet it made my head swim, but it was cold and wet and I was glad to have it.
The Reverend Joy lost interest in the rest of us and spent his time looking at Mama. It was the kind of sick look a calf has for its mama.
“You on some kind of picnic?” he asked her.
“A pilgrimage of sorts,” Mama said. “We are off to see what we can see.”
“Is that a fact?” he said.
“It is,” Mama said.
“Well, I’m sure glad to have you in my house, and that God has brought us together,” Reverend Joy said.
“Or the river,” Jinx said.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Maybe the river brought us together, and not God,” Jinx said.
“Aren’t they the same?” Reverend Joy said.
“They might be, but if they is the same,” Jinx said, “that same river that will get you together for a glass of tea will drown you or get you snakebit.”
The Reverend Joy grinned at Jinx. She looked a mess, as all of us was, except Mama. Then again, she hadn’t dug up two bodies, burned up one in a brick factory, wrestled goods onto a boat, and poled and paddled down the river. That sort of thing had taken the freshness out of the rest of us. But Jinx, she was special messed up. She had bits of pine straw in her pigtails, and the sides of her pants showed damp dirt. I figured when she got up from that chair her butt would leave enough mud you could plant a fair stand of corn in it and have room left over for a hill or two of cucumbers.
“You don’t sound like a strong believer in the Word or the Heart of the Lord,” Reverend Joy said, never losing his smile.
“I got my own thoughts,” Jinx said.
This was true, but I knew her well enough to know they weren’t under lock and key and could come out and be seen with only the slightest bump of suggestion. I was hoping Reverend Joy would leave it there, but like the rest of his breed and politicians, he just couldn’t.