"Did she see them?" asked the sons.
"Better than that!" shouted the fathers. "She felt them, touched them, put her finger on them!"
"If she was blind, sir, we could believe her. That'd be like braille. But some five-year-old kid who couldn't read her own tombstone if she climbed out of her grave and stood in front of it?" The twins frowned. Fleet, thinking of his mother-in-law's famous generosity, leapt out of the pew and had to be held back.
The Methodists, early on, had smiled at the dissension among the Baptists. The Pentecostals laughed out loud. But not for long. Young members in their own churches began to voice opinions about the words. Each congregation had people who were among or related to the fifteen families to leave Haven and start over. The Oven didn't belong to any one denomination; it belonged to all, and all were asked to show up at Calvary. To discuss it, Reverend Misner said. The weather was cool, garden scents strong, and when they assembled at seven-thirty the atmosphere was pleasant, people simply curious. And it remained so right through Misner's opening remarks. Maybe the young folks were nervous, but when they spoke, starting with Luther Beauchamp's sons, Royal and Destry, their voices were so strident the women, embarrassed, looked down at their pocketbooks; shocked, the men forgot to blink.
It would have been better for everyone if the young people had spoken softly, acknowledged their upbringing as they presented their views. But they didn't want to discuss; they wanted to instruct. "No ex-slave would tell us to be scared all the time. To 'beware' God. To always be ducking and diving, trying to look out every minute in case He's getting ready to throw something at us, keep us down."
"You say 'sir' when you speak to men," said Sargeant Person. "Sorry, sir. But what kind of message is that? No ex-slave who had the guts to make his own way, build a town out of nothing, could think like that. No ex-slave-" Deacon Morgan cut him off. "That's my grandfather you're talking about. Quit calling him an ex-slave like that's all he was. He was also an ex-lieutenant governor, an ex-banker, an ex-deacon and a whole lot of other exes, and he wasn't making his own way; he was part of a whole group making their own way."
Having caught Reverend Misner's eyes, the boy was firm. "He was born in slavery times, sir; he was a slave, wasn't he?"
"Everybody born in slavery time wasn't a slave. Not the way you mean it."
"There's just one way to mean it, sir," said Destry.
"You don't know what you're talking about!"
"None of them do! Don't know jackshit!" shouted Harper Jury.
"Whoa, whoa!" Reverend Misner interrupted. "Brothers. Sisters. We called this meeting in God's own house to try and find-"
"One of His houses," snarled Sargeant.
"All right, one of His houses. But whichever one, He demands respect from those who are in it. Am I right or am I right?" Harper sat down. "I apologize for the language. To Him," he said, pointing upward.
"That might please Him," said Misner. "Might not. Don't limit your respect to Him, Brother Jury. He cautions every which way against it."
"Reverend." The Reverend Pulliam stood up. He was a dark, wiry man-white-haired and impressive. "We have a problem here. You, me. Everybody. The problem is with the way some of us talk. The grown-ups, of course, should use proper language. But the young people-what they say is more like backtalk than talk. What we're here for is-" Royal Beauchamp actually interrupted him, the Reverend! "What is talk if it's not 'back'? You all just don't want us to talk at all. Any talk is 'backtalk' if you don't agree with what's being said…. Sir." Everybody was so stunned by the boy's brazenness, they hardly heard what he said.
Pulliam, dismissing the possibility that Roy's parents-Luther and Helen Beauchamp-were there, turned slowly to Misner. "Reverend, can't you keep that boy still?"
"Why would I want to?" asked Misner. "We're here not just to talk but to listen too."
The gasps were more felt than heard.
Pulliam narrowed his eyes and was about to answer when Deek Morgan left the row and stood in the aisle. "Well, sir, I have listened, and I believe I have heard as much as I need to. Now, you all listen to me. Real close. Nobody, I mean nobody, is going to change the Oven or call it something strange. Nobody is going to mess with a thing our grandfathers built. They made each and every brick one at a time with their own hands." Deek looked steadily at Roy. "They dug the clay-not you. They carried the hod-not you." He turned his head to include Destry, Hurston and Caline Poole, Lorcas and Linda Sands.
"They mixed the mortar-not a one of you. They made good strong brick for that oven when their own shelter was sticks and sod. You understand what I'm telling you? And we respected what they had gone through to do it. Nothing was handled more gently than the bricks those men-men, hear me? not slaves, ex or otherwise- the bricks those men made. Tell, them, Sargeant, how delicate was the separation, how careful we were, how we wrapped them, each and every one. Tell them, Fleet. You, Seawright, you, Harper, you tell him if I'm lying. Me and my brother lifted that iron. The two of us. And if some letters fell off, it wasn't due to us because we packed it in straw like it was a mewing lamb. So understand me when I tell you nobody is going to come along some eighty years later claiming to know better what men who went through hell to learn knew. Act short with me all you want, you in long trouble if you think you can disrespect a row you never hoed."
Twenty varieties of "amen" italicized Deek's pronouncement. The point he'd made would have closed off further argument if Misner had not said: "Seems to me, Deek, they are respecting it. It's because they do know the Oven's value that they want to give it new life." The mutter unleashed by this second shift to the young people's position rose to a roar, which subsided only to hear how the antagonists responded.
"They don't want to give it nothing. They want to kill it, change it into something they made up."
"It's our history too, sir. Not just yours," said Roy. "Then act like it. I just told you. That Oven already has a history. It doesn't need you to fix it."
"Wait now, Deek," said Richard Misner. "Think what's been said. Forget naming-naming the Oven. What's at issue is clarifying the motto."
"Motto? Motto? We talking command!" Reverend Pulliam pointed an elegant finger at the ceiling. " 'Beware the Furrow of His Brow.' That's what it says clear as daylight. That's not a suggestion; that's an order!"
"Well, no. It's not clear as daylight," said Misner. "It says '… the Furrow of His Brow.' There is no 'Beware' on it."
"You weren't there! Esther was! And you weren't here, either, at the beginning! Esther was!" Arnold Fleetwood's right hand shook with warning.
"She was a baby. She could have been mistaken," said Misner.