“Oh, Roy’s got a place behind the gas station in Topperville,” Helen said. “Theodore, he’ll be staying with us. At least for a little while.”
“That’s the one in the wheelchair?”
“Yes’m,” Helen said. “They been together a long time.”
Emma stepped out onto the porch and hugged the girl. She smelled faintly of Ivory soap, as if she’d had a bath recently. “You want to come in and sit for a while?”
“No, I got to go,” Helen said. “Roy’s waiting on me.” Emma looked past her down over the hill. A dung-colored car shaped like a turtle was sitting in the pull-off behind Earskell’s old Ford. “He’s preaching over in Millersburg tonight, where them people got their eyes carved out. We been out gathering spiders all morning. Thank God, with the way this weather’s been, they’re still pretty easy to find.”
“You be careful, Helen,” Emma said.
“Oh, don’t worry,” the girl said, as she started down off the porch, “they ain’t too bad once you get used to them.”
3
IN THE SPRING OF 1948, Emma got word from Ohio that she was finally a grandmother; Willard’s wife had given birth to a healthy baby boy named Arvin Eugene. By then, the old woman was satisfied that God had forgiven her for her brief loss of trust. It had been nearly three years, and nothing bad had happened. A month later, she was still thanking the Lord that her grandson hadn’t been born blind and pinheaded like Edith Maxwell’s three children over on Spud Run when Helen showed up at her door with an announcement of her own. It was one of the few times Emma had seen her since the girl married Roy and switched to the church over in Topperville. “I wanted to stop by and let you know,” Helen said. Her arms and legs were pale and thin, but her belly was swollen big with a baby.
“My goodness gracious,” Emma said, opening the screen door. “Come on in, honey, and rest awhile.” It was late in the day, and gray-blue shadows covered the weedy yard. A chicken clucked quietly under the porch.
“I can’t right now.”
“Oh, don’t be in such a hurry. Let me fix you something to eat,” the old woman said. “We haven’t talked in ages.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Russell, but maybe some other time. I got to get back.”
“Is Roy preaching tonight?”
“No,” Helen said. “He ain’t preached in a couple of months now. Didn’t you hear? One of them spiders bit him real bad. His head puffed up big as a pumpkin. It was awful. He couldn’t open his eyes for a week or better.”
“Well,” the old woman said, “maybe he can get on with the power company. Someone said they was hiring. They supposed to be running the electric through here before long.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” Helen said. “Roy ain’t give up preaching, he’s just waiting for a message.”
“A message?”
“He ain’t sent one in a while, and it’s got Roy worried.”
“Who ain’t sent one?”
“Why, the Lord, Mrs. Russell,” Helen said. “He’s the only one Roy listens to.” She started to step down off the porch.
“Helen?”
The girl stopped and turned around. “Yes’m?”
Emma hesitated, not quite knowing what to say. She looked past the girl, down the hill at the dung-colored car. She could see a dark figure sitting behind the steering wheel. “You’ll make a good mother,” she said.
AFTER THE SPIDER BITE, Roy stayed shut up in the bedroom closet most of the time waiting on a sign. He was convinced that the Lord had slowed him down in order to prepare him for something bigger. As far as Theodore was concerned, Roy knocking the bitch up was the last straw. He began drinking and staying out all night, playing in private clubs and illegal joints hid back in the sticks. He learned dozens of sinful songs about cheating spouses and cold-blooded murders and lives wasted behind prison bars. Whoever he ended up with usually just dumped him drunk and piss-stained in front of the house; and Helen would have to go out at dawn and help him inside while he cursed her and his ruined legs and that pretend preacher she was fucking. She soon grew afraid of them both, and she traded Theodore rooms, let him sleep in the big bed beside Roy’s closet.
One afternoon a few months after the baby was born, a little girl they named Lenora, Roy walked out of the bedroom convinced that he could raise the dead. “Shit, you’re just a loony,” Theodore said. He was drinking a can of warm beer to settle his stomach. A small metal file and a Craftsman screwdriver lay in his lap. The night before, he’d played for eight hours straight at a birthday party over on Hungry Holler for ten dollars and a fifth of Russian vodka. Some bastard had made fun of his affliction, tried to pull him up out of his wheelchair and make him dance. Theodore set the beer down and started working on the head of the screwdriver again. He hated the whole goddamn world. The next time someone fucked with him like that, the sonofabitch was going to end up with a hole in his guts. “You ain’t got it no more, Roy. The Lord done left you, just like He left me.”
“No, Theodore, no,” Roy said. “That ain’t true. I just talked to Him. He was sitting right in there with me a minute ago. And He don’t look like the pictures say, either. Ain’t got no beard for one thing.”
“Loony as hell,” Theodore said.
“I can prove it!”
“How you gonna do that?”
Roy paced back and forth a couple of minutes, moving his hands around like he was trying to stir inspiration up out of the air. “We’ll go kill us a cat,” he said, “and I’ll show you I can bring it back.” Next to spiders, cats were Roy’s biggest fear. His mother had always claimed that she caught one trying to suck his breath away when he was a baby. He and Theodore had slaughtered dozens of them over the years.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Theodore said. “A fuckin’ cat?” He laughed. “No, you gonna have to get a little more serious than that before I’ll believe you now.” He pressed his thumb against the end of the screwdriver. It was sharp.
Roy wiped the sweat from his face with one of the baby’s dirty diapers. “What then?”
Theodore glanced out the window. Helen was standing in the yard with the pink-faced brat in her arms. She’d gotten huffy with him again this morning, said she was getting tired of him waking the baby up. She had been bitching a lot lately, too damn much in his opinion. Hell, if it wasn’t for the money he brought home, they’d all starve to death. He gave Roy a sly look. “How about you bring Helen back to life? Then we’ll know for sure you ain’t just talkin’ crazy.”
Roy shook his head violently. “No, no, I can’t do that.”
Theodore smirked, picked up the can of beer. “See? I knew you was full of shit. You always have been. You ain’t no more a preacher than them drunks I play for every night.”
“Don’t say that, Theodore,” Roy said. “Why you want to say things like that?”
“Because we had it good, goddamn it, and then you had to go and get married. It’s drained the light right out of you, and you too dumb to see it. Show me you got it back, and we’ll start spreading the Gospel again.”
Roy recalled the conversation he’d had in the closet, God’s voice clear as a bell in his head. He looked out the window at his wife standing by the mailbox singing softly to the baby. Maybe Theodore was onto something. After all, he told himself, Helen was right with the Lord, and always had been as far as he knew. That could only help matters when it came to a resurrection. Still, he’d like to try it out on a cat first. “I’ll have to think on it.”
“Can’t be no tricks,” Theodore said.
“Only the Devil needs them.” Roy took a sip of water from the kitchen sink, just enough to wet his lips. Refreshed, he decided to pray some more, and started toward the bedroom.