“This ain’t meant as a place for living in.”
“Well, we’re living in it.”
“We’re building something, Clara. And they ain’t but a few of us. What does Ely say about Elaine?”
“That we should oughta care for her more.” Which is not exactly what Ben meant with his question. The lopsided Easter moon hangs low in the damp sky like an orange balloon that’s losing its air. When it looked like that, her grandmother used to call it God’s ear. “You see? He’s listening, child. Tell him all what you know.” I am afraid, she tells Him now. Her daughter has grown up tall and rambly, coming to look like a kind of scrawny slump-shouldered version of her father, but with none of his natural friendliness. She hasn’t been back to school since they went out on the road, has been traveling only with grownups, so she hasn’t had a chance to be the age she is. There have been teenagers at all of their revival meetings around the country, and in the early days Elaine was able to run the Junior Evening Circle, read Scripture lessons, talk about her experiences as a witness of their origins and as one of the First Followers, but she has become more and more withdrawn, shying away from people, ducking her head and covering her mouth the way she does, retreating to their trailer when not absolutely needed. When Clara asks her what she’s doing there, she always says she’s reading the Bible. The poor child. She has known too much sorrow for one so young. She brightens up only when she gets a letter from Junior Baxter, and then sometimes Clara hears a smacking sound behind her door. She knows what that is all about and she doesn’t like it. She still has a nightmarish memory of being caught up in the fever of the Day of Redemption and being unable to rescue her daughter, to protect her from what was happening. There was so much else she had to do. Just like now. It’s like in a dream when you have to run but cannot. She has tried to talk to Elaine about that day, but gets no reply. Clara knows what it is to be at that time of life and to be alive to one’s own desires, and frustrated by them. She wasn’t the prettiest thing in the county either when she was Elaine’s age, but she was patient and steady in her faith and what she eventually found with Ely was pure and beautiful and wholly satisfying in a godly way, and she wishes for something like that for her daughter. Junior Baxter is not going to answer that wish. And so she is afraid. Elaine is all the family she has left. “We’ll just have to trust in the Good Lord,” she says finally, flicking on her flashlight. “Grace has brought us safe thus far, and grace’ll lead us home. Reckon we better go get our tunics on and make sure the candles’re lit.”
“Ho, Rocky. C’mon, boy.”
In the flickering candlelight, the snow-white tunics of the Brunist Followers, assembled for their Easter night prayer meeting, cast a rippling otherworldly glow, adding to the awe and grandeur of this day of Christ’s Resurrection. There is a divinity present here in the Meeting Hall tonight, and it is they. Ben Wosznik leads them in the singing of their traditional baptismal hymn, “I Saw the Light,” his sweet country voice lifting their own—“No more darkness! No more night!”—and then the Brunist Evangelical Leader and Organizer beams the lamp of her dead husband’s mining helmet upon the head and shoulders of their kneeling benefactress and newest convert and says that baptism in the Spirit, as Ely Collins always preached, is the outer sign of what’s happening inside, going from being dead in sin to being alive in Christ, and Mrs. Edwards says, “I am a terrible sinner seeking salvation,” and Clara replies that whosoever repents and believes on the Lord Jesus Christ is justified and regenerated and saved from the dominion of sin by the grace of entire sanctification, and Mrs. Edwards, who is beginning to weep, says, “Oh dear God, I do believe and I feel so sanctified! Thank you with all my heart for allowing me to join the saints in light and for delivering me from the dominion of darkness!” Willie Hall shouts,
“Colossians 1:12–13!” and the others hug the new Follower and commence to weep and wail joyously and to give testimonies of redemption and of the infinite mercies of God and, led by little freckle-faced Hazel Dunlevy warbling away like a bird in the trees, to sing in the Spirit, accompanied by Ben on his guitar as best he can follow the spontaneous eruption. Willie’s wife Mabel drops to her bony knees and, eyes closed, raises her hands toward the rafters as if grasping for something, then lowers them to the floor, doing this over and over, touching different spots on the floor each time as though setting a table or laying out cards, and others do the same or similar, waving their hands about ecstatically, slapping the floor and themselves, even as they continue to sing in their medley of voices. “The Lord He has warshed away my sins, warshed me in the blood a the Lamb, I been born again!” declares Wanda Cravens in her soft nasal whine, barely audible in the noisily prayerful hall. “I been livin’ for Him ever since in glory hallelujah freedom!” Wanda’s husband Hunk Rumpel is minding the little ones tonight, but the plumber Welford Oakes is here and he responds with “Glory! Hallelujah! Freedom!” and others echo him and Willie Hall declares: “And Paul he said, But I was free born! Acts 22:28!” “Amen, brother! Born free! Hallelujah!” Travis Dunlevy barks fiercely. “God is light and Bruno is His Prophet!” Whereupon his wife Hazel goes under the power, falling to the floor and speaking in tongues, which the plumber’s wife Glenda Oakes, her glass eye reflecting the myriad candles, interprets as a prophetic utterance about the horrors of hell awaiting all unrepentant sinners. “I want so much to be part of you! I’m so sorry for who I am!” Mrs. Edwards bawls, heaving to the floor next to Hazel and rolling about (she is wearing nothing but her flowered underpants underneath the white tunic, and some approve of that and some don’t), “I love you all! I truly do!” The West Virginia coalminers Hovis and Uriah, rocking back and forth, separately confess to unclean thoughts, while balding Wayne Shawcross grips the straps of his bib overalls and, eyes closed and head tipped back, bellows out: “I hear ye, God! I kin hear yore trumpet soundin’!” Which is another cue for Willie Halclass="underline" “And he’ll up’n send his angels off” with a great sound of a trumpet, and they’ll go and gather his elect from out the four winds, sweet Jesus! from one end a Heaven t’other! Matthew 24:31!” “Ay-men, Brother Willie! From outa the four winds! We was lost but now are found!” They can feel the Spirit stirring. Clara Collins is on her knees, praying for guidance and strength and talking quietly to her first husband, her daughter Elaine beside her, hand at her mouth, whispering a plea to her father that he not forsake them. “I’m sorry, Pa! It’s important! I know you can see me. But I have to do it!” Mrs. Edwards is sobbing and gasping and thrashing about and words are coming out that is likely some kind of speaking in tongues, like in all baptisms, though there’s something about her husband and Easter eggs that is probably not. “Sin crep up on me, Lord,” Wayne hollers, drowning her out. “Tell us about it, Brother Wayne!” shouts Welford Oakes. “Tell us about your rassle with sin!” “I was cattin’ around and cuttin’ shines sumthin awful, Lord, but You walked with me and You talked with me and You even come along unto a house a sin and led me to my lady and my salivation!” His wife Ludie Belle, who has been shouting and crying and dancing and shaking like all the others, though perhaps with more abandon, now commences to recount the story of her own fall into sin and timely conversion, which has been often heard but is always appreciated and is never told the same way twice. “I was jist a harmless split-tail thing and I thought my frolick-some carryin’s on was jist only doin’ my do, but my body it misfooled me with its carnical desires and carried me off down the Devil’s black alleyways!” As Ludie Belle traces her passage through the diabolical regions, her husband Wayne, eyes closed, nods at all she says and leads a chorus of “amens.” Hazel Dunlevy, emerging from her holy trance, commences to clap rhythmically to the beat of Ludie Belle’s story, the others clapping with her in unison and singing out phrases that catch their fancy. Clara claps along absently, but her head is down and her eyes are closed and her lips are moving in private dialogue. “But I never left off a-goin’ t’meetin’ nor beggin’ off to the Lord for all my sins!” Ludie Belle exclaims. “My body it belonged to Satan but my heart belonged to Jesus!” All are aroused by this to a fever of prayer and repentance, and the newest Brunist Follower, still tossing about on the floor, cries out: “O dear God! Help me! I don’t know who I am!” Ludie Belle, standing legs apart and arms out among the shouts and slapping of palms, pauses to gaze down sympathetically upon this suffering sinner. “It’s the question I useter ask myself when I was a unsaved working girl!” she declares, just as young Colin Meredith, calling for his mother, comes through the front door behind her with the office workers Darren and Billy Don, all three of them with wet heads. “I was that nameless lamb what went astray, but Jesus He found me when Wayne done! And now I do know who I—Oh no! It’s him! It’s Satan hisself! Look out!” She throws her arms up as if to ward off an attack, tumbles to the floor, goes rolling about, bowling into people and knocking over folding chairs, screaming: “No! Stop, you mizzerbul fiend! I know you’re jealous a Jesus, but I ain’t a-comin’ back!” It’s as though someone has grabbed her in a private place and is dragging her violently around the room and she is trying to tear his hands away. Hazel Dunlevy screams and ducks as if under attack herself, and others cry out as well as the chairs and hymnbooks fly. Billy Don, eyes agog, watches, he watched in turn by his coworker and roommate Darren, hands pressed prayerfully, palm to palm, before his face. Colin, seeing his adoptive mother bouncing about on the floor in such agitation, commences to shriek madly and dash about the room as though possessed, banging into the walls and furniture and other worshippers. Ludie Belle grabs a table leg as if hanging on for dear life, shouting: “Pray for me, brothers! Pray for me, sisters!” She is ripped away and tumbles along as though falling into a pit, grabbing at ankles and reaching hands. “I feel it! I feel it! I feel the ecstasy!” comes the other voice from the floor, still sobbing. “Law sakes!” exclaims Ludie Belle, clutching the leg of a folding chair and dragging it along with her. She struggles to her feet, but falls again. “He’s wild as a rollicky boar in a peach orchard! Halp!” She is on her back, squirming, twisting, her fists flying. Oh no! The Devil seems to be having his way with her! It’s terrifying! Wayne strides through the room, swatting at the air, and snatches her up. Ludie Belle, clinging to him, kicks out at her attacker. “Git outa here with yore ugly ole hoe handle, Mr. Satan!” she hollers. “I been saved!” Clara emerges from her deep reverie and says sharply: “Stop that boy, Ben! He’s gonna hurt hisself.” Her husband captures Colin as he comes flying by and brings him, yipping and trembling violently, to his mother, now getting confusedly to her feet and blinking as if returning from some vast unearthly distance and pulling her tunic down. Clara announces with a brief closing prayer that the Sunday night prayer meeting is concluded. Wayne picks up the fallen chairs and Ludie Belle snuffs the candles, as the others, with a chorus of amens and goodnights, turn to make their way back to their trailers and caravans. At the door, Hovis remarks to Uriah: “Ifn that ain’t the beatenest! You think Ole Nick was really there?” “Shore he was. I seen him.”