Connie did not come, but her boarders did. Mavis drove the Cadillac, with Gigi and Seneca in the back and a somebody new in the passenger seat. None of them was dressed for a wedding. They piled out of the car looking like go-go girls: pink shorts, skimpy tops, see-through skirts; painted eyes, no lipstick; obviously no underwear, no stockings.
Jezebel's storehouse raided to decorate arms, earlobes, necks, ankles and even a nostril. Mavis and Soane, greeting each other on the lawn, were uncomfortable. Two other women sauntered into the dining room and surveyed the food tables. They said "Hi" and wondered aloud if there was anything other than lemonade and punch to drink. There wasn't, so they did what a few other young people had already done: drifted out of the Morgans' yard and strolled past Anna Flood's store to the Oven. The few local girls already there clumped together and withdrew, leaving the territory to the Poole boys: Apollo, Brood and Hurston. To the Seawrights: Timothy Jr. and Spider. To Destry, Vane and Royal. Menus joined them, but Jeff, to whom he had been speaking, did not. Neither did the watching groom. Dovey was removing the fat from a lamb slice when the music hit. She cut her finger in the blare and sucked it when Otis Redding screamed "Awwwww, lil girl…," obliterating the hymn's quiet plea. Inside, outside and on down the road the beat and the heat were ruthless. "Oh, they're just having fun," a voice behind Reverend Pulliam whispered. He turned to look but could not locate the speaker, so he continued glaring out of the window. He knew about such women. Like children, always on the lookout for fun, devoted to it but always needing a break in order to have it. A lift, a hand, a five-dollar bill. Somebody to excuse or coddle them. Somebody to look down at the ground and say nothing when they disturbed the peace. He exchanged glances with his wife who nodded and left the window. She knew, as he did, that fun-obsessed adults were clear signs of already advanced decay. Soon the whole country would be awash in toys, tone-deaf from raucous music and hollow laughter. But not here. Not in Ruby. Not while Senior Pulliam was alive.
The Convent girls are dancing; throwing their arms over their heads, they do this and that and then the other. They grin and yip but look at no one. Just their own rocking bodies. The local girls look over their shoulders and snort. Brood, Apollo and Spider, steel-muscled farm boys with sophisticated eyes, sway and snap their fingers. Hurston sings accompaniment. Two small girls ride their bikes over; wide-eyed, they watch the dancing women. One of them, with amazing hair, asks can she borrow a bike. Then another. They ride the bikes down Central Avenue with no regard for what the breeze does to their long flowered skirts or how pumping pedals plumped their breasts. One coasts with her ankles on the handlebars. Another rides the handlebars with Brood on the seat behind her. One, in the world's shortest pink shorts, is seated on a bench, arms wrapped around herself. She looks drunk. Are they all? The boys laugh.
Anna and Kate carried their plates to the edge of Soane's garden.
"Which one?" whispered Anna.
"That one there," said Kate. "The one with the rag for a blouse."
"That's a halter," said Anna.
"Halter? Looks like a starter to me."
"She the one K. D. was messing with?"
"Yep."
"I know that one there. She comes in the store. Who the other two?"
"Beats me."
"Look. There goes Billie Delia."
"Naturally."
"Oh, come on, Kate. Leave Billie alone."
They spooned potato salad into their mouths. Behind them came Alice Pulliam, murmuring, "My, my, my-my-my."
"Hello, Aunt Alice," said Kate.
"Have you ever in your life seen such carrying on? Bet you can't locate one brassiere in the whole bunch." Alice held the crown of her hat in the breeze. "Why're you all smiling? I don't think this is the least bit funny."
"No. Course not," said Kate.
"This is a wedding, remember?"
"You're right, Aunt Alice. I said you right."
"How would you like to have somebody dancing nasty at your wedding?" Alice's bright black eyes searched Anna's hair.
Kate nodded sympathetically while pressing her lips tight so no smile could seep through them. Anna tried to look seriously affronted before this stern preacher's wife, thinking: Dear Jesus, I wouldn't last an hour in this town if I married Richard.
"I'm going to have to get Pastor himself to stop this," Alice said, and moved resolutely off toward Soane's house. Anna and Kate waited several beats before setting their laughter free. Whatever else, thought Anna, the Convent women had saved the day. Nothing like other folks' sins for distraction. The young people were wrong. Be the Furrow of Her Brow. Speaking of which, where was Richard anyway?
Down on his knees, Richard Misner was angry at his anger, and at his mishandling of it. Used to obstacles, adept at disagreement, he could not reconcile the level of his present fury with what seemed to be its source. He loved God so much it hurt, although that same love sometimes made him laugh out loud. And he deeply respected his colleagues. For centuries they had held on. Preaching, shouting, dancing, singing, absorbing, arguing, counseling, pleading, commanding. Their passion burned or smoldered like lava over a land that had waged war against them and their flock without surcease. A lily-livered war without honor as either its point or reward; an unprincipled war that thrived as much on the victor's cowardice as on his mendacity. On stage and in print he and his brethren had been the heart of comedy, the chosen backs for parody's knife. They were cursed by death row inmates, derided by pimps. Begrudged even miserly collection plates.
Yet through all of that, if the Spirit seemed to be slipping away they had held on to it with their teeth if they had to, grabbed it in their fists if need be. They took it to buildings ready to be condemned, to churches from which white congregations had fled, to quilt tents, to ravines and logs in clearings. Whispered it in cabins lit by moonlight lest the Law see. Prayed for it behind trees and in sod houses, their voices undaunted by roaring winds. From Abyssinian to storefronts, from Pilgrim Baptist to abandoned movie houses; in polished shoes, worn boots, beat-up cars and Lincoln Continentals, well fed or malnourished, they let their light, flickering low or blazing like a comet, pierce the darkness of days. They wiped white folks' spit from the faces of black children, hid strangers from posses and police, relayed lifepreserving information faster than the newspaper and better than the radio. At sickbeds they looked death in the eye and mouth. They pressed the heads of weeping mothers to their shoulders before conducting their life-gouged daughters to the cemetery. They wept for chain gangs, reasoned with magistrates. Made whole congregations scream. In ecstasy. In belief. That death was life, don't you know, and every life, don't you know, was holy, don't you know, in His eyesight. Rocked as they were by the sight of evil, its snout was familiar to them. Real wonder, however, lay in the amazing shapes and substances God's grace took: gospel in times of persecution; the exquisite wins of people forbidden to compete; the upright righteousness of those who let no boot hold them down-people who made Job's patience look like restlessness. Elegance when all around was shabby. Richard Misner knew all that. Yet, however intact his knowledge and respect, the tremor inside him now was ungovernable. Pulliam had fingered a membrane enclosing a ravenous appetite for vengeance, an appetite he needed to understand in order to subdue. Had the times finally gotten to him? Was the desolation that rose after King's murder, a desolation that climbed like a tidal wave in slow motion, just now washing over him? Or was it the calamity of watching the drawn-out abasement of a noxious President? Had the long, unintelligible war infected him? Behaving like a dormant virus in blossom now that it was coming to a raggedy close? Everybody on his high school football team died in that war. Eleven broad-backed boys. They were the ones he had looked up to, wanted to be like. Was he just now gagging at their futile death? Was that the origin of this incipient hunger for violence?