A Fine White Dust Page 2

  The Saviour

  It was hot that night. Steaming. And it smelled like every lady in the place was wearing Jungle Gardenia and every man fresh out of a steel mill. The building was one giant hornets’ nest, droning and droning and droning, and at first I nearly headed back home. I mean, for me church was fried chicken at the picnics and a little holy softball and ceramic crosses. I wasn’t sure about God all in a sweat. It scared me.

  Unfortunately, I got stuck in the middle of a pew and couldn’t get out. A woman was down at one end with a baby and all those bags that go with it. And a fat man was at the other end, his knees taking up every last inch of space. And the smell of Jungle Gardenia closing in, front and back. I was trapped.

  We all stood up and sang “Bringing in the Sheaves,” big Joanie Fulton pounding away on the organ like some butcher pounding at a piece of meat. I knew the song by heart, and I’d missed singing it, so I sang all the verses through without ever opening the hymnal. When it was done, I felt good. Up. Yes, I was rising.

  Then Woodrow Radford, the assistant pastor, got up and started talking about the revival, how it came to be, what it meant to us all, why every church needed one. Woodrow had a voice like a lawn mower—that dull kind of sound—and I was getting bored and nearly ready to make the fat man get out of my way, when the revival preacher was introduced and he stepped out from behind the choir into the pulpit.

  “Lord in heaven,” I said. The people around me turned their heads. “Lord in heaven.”

  It was the hitchhiker. The pickax murderer. Oh, my heart just stopped. It stopped cold, I know it, and my mouth hung like an idiot’s.

  Those light blue eyes didn’t belong to any murderer. They belonged to a preacher.

  Preacher Man.

  I never heard his real name that night. Things real, things solid—they were gone. The Preacher began slow, and I knew that voice when he started. I’d never heard it before in my life, but I knew it. And I leaned into it, yes I did, I leaned my body into it and I let him take me. I was hungry for The Word. I didn’t know it till I got there, but yes, I was hungry, and he did know The Word. What did he say? I wonder now. What was it he said? Doesn’t matter. Didn’t then. But he had a way. And I could feel the tears coming to my eyes as he preached. Yes. And I could feel my heart ache and ache with the longing. Hungry. And I wanted to be holy. Preacher Man, make me holy, that’s what I said. Make me a temple.

  And the others must have felt it, too. The church swayed back and forth with the rhythm of his voice, and it was like so many migrating birds, turning into the east all at once, turning into the west, turning and swaying and watching for the stars. The Star. Yes, we wanted to find holiness that night. The diaper-bag lady and the fat man and me and all the rest. Praise God, we said. Holy Jesus, we said. Forgive, we said.

  Forgive, forgive, forgive.

  I wanted to be clean. I wanted to sparkle. I wanted to dance with the Preacher Man in the glory of the Lord.

  That night.

  Yes, he took us all, and when he was done, we were no longer ourselves. We were his, Preacher Man’s, and the sweat running off him and the sweat running off us was proof of it. I thought I had been cleansed. I thought I had been saved. I thought I had come home.

  And when I walked up to him at the end of the evening, up that long aisle to ask him—beg him—to judge me a sinner, I looked right into those light blue eyes and he knew me. Yes, his eyes changed, and he knew me.

  He grabbed my wet hands, and he said, “Are you a sinner?”

  “Yes,” I sobbed.

  “Do you want to be saved?” he said.

  “Yes, praise God.”

  His hands went about my head.

  “God bless you. You have been born again.”

  And I fainted.

  The Joy

  I woke up at sunrise the next morning. At first my mind was all spinning and dancing, and I thought it had been a dream.

  Are you a sinner?

  Do you want to be saved?

  You have been born again.

  For those few moments, I thought it was a dream, and I marveled at it and I smiled at it and I gave a long, deep sigh and then, then, it hit me.

  No dream.

  You have been born again.

  Praise God, I moved my lips, lying there. I mouthed it again and again. Praise God, praise God, praise God, praise God!

  And the joy came leaping from my heart. I was full, I was full, I was FULL of the Lord! Preacher Man’s face was right there. I remembered just how he looked, and oh yes, he did forgive me. Oh Lord in heaven, he had forgiven me. Oh my Lord.

  I might be best friends with an atheist, I might have half-washed Christians for parents, I might be weak and afraid to speak out for Jesus, but I was forgiven. I had longed to feel BIG in the eyes of the Lord, longed to make Him proud, to be with Him. And finally I was.

  I lay there with the tears coming, and I thought that I was safe. Oh, thank God, I am safe.

  Not many times in my thirteen years had I felt such happiness. Moments as a little child, I guess, that caused my heart nearly to burst—some wonderful toy, the ocean, my mother coming home to me. Such moments as those I guess brought the joy. But they were far from my memory, and that morning, that morning, when I woke up saved, there was nothing to compare such a feeling to.

  Nothing.

  Of course, I remembered fainting, and I was some embarrassed by it. But I was out only a couple of minutes, and I wasn’t the only one lying there at the Preacher’s feet. They were all around, fainters just like me. And church members lifting us up and shouting and singing as they wiped our faces and told us to wake up now in the glory of the Lord.

  I had opened my eyes in the arms of a big woman covered with sweat and with tears, but behind her, there were those eyes of the Preacher Man. I looked into his face and my heart swelled like the rising sun, and I knew I loved him. I loved everyone and everything that moment, but mostly I loved the Preacher Man.

  After the service, some folks gave me a lift home, and I was glad of it because I didn’t know if my legs could have carried me.

  When I got home, my parents were up, watching TV, and I wanted to run into the room and hug them and cry with them about it all. But there they sat, looking at nothing, really, and being people I hardly knew. So I just went on to my bed and collapsed, dead till morning.

  I spent two hours thinking about the revival before I went on down for breakfast. Pop had gone to work at the phone company already, and I saw Mother in the yard clipping weeds, so I got me a bowl of corn flakes and took it out to sit with her.

  “ ’Morning,” I said, and eased down onto the grass near her.

  “ ’Morning, honey.” She smiled at me, her eyes all squinty. “Did you sleep well?”

  I nodded hard, my mouth all stuffed with cereal.

  “Good,” Mother said. And she went on clipping her weeds.

  I kept eating, not wanting to say anything till I was sure how to put it.

  “Any yards to mow today?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Do you and Rufus have any plans?”

  “Nope.”

  She nodded and clipped. I ate some more. It was quiet.

  Finally she said, “And how was the revival last night?”

  I swallowed down a big mouthful and took a deep breath, and I said, “I got saved, Mother.”

  She stopped clipping and turned to stare at me. I gave a sort of goofy grin and waited.

  It took her some seconds to let it sink in. I didn’t know what she’d say, but I was glad she was alone when I was telling her. I don’t exactly understand why, but I was glad Pop wasn’t there. Mother and I would have been smaller then, if that makes any sense.

  She smiled, not a big smile and sure not a sparkling one, but she gave me a little smile and she said, “Well, I’m glad for you, Peter.”

  She looked at me deeper then for a minute, and she smiled again, and this time she seemed to really mean it. She said,
“I’m so glad for you, honey.”

  I just grinned and shrugged and sort of played the goof again. Then I said thanks. I meant thanks, too. And she went on with her clipping while I headed into town.

  You know who I was looking for. I didn’t even know his real name yet, but I sure wasn’t afraid of him anymore, and I had enough of the night before still ringing in me to want more than anything to see him that morning.

  So I went to the drugstore. And like it was planned by God himself, the Preacher Man was there.

  But this time he was outside the store. He had a cup of something hot in his hand, and he was leaning up against the wall with it, looking around. He looked so fine there, I remember. Like a young drifter who’d come into town—tall, silent, ready to be a hero. But first he had to have his coffee.

  I guess seeing him again set off something in me you might call fear. Yes, I was looking for him—I wanted to see him more than anybody in the world—but all of a sudden my heart got to pumping and my hands went all sweaty and I thought maybe I’d just better turn back home. I wasn’t up to it. He was more than I could handle.

  But he saw me, the Preacher Man, and he lifted his arm and smiled so big and waved me over. I pushed the pedals on my bike with feet that felt like two tons of lead, but I made it to him.

  His face glowed.

  “And how are you, this wonderful morning?” he asked, sort of motioning to the good weather around us.

  I was nervous. I must have showed my whole mouthful of teeth when I smiled back at him.

  “Just fine, Reverend. Really. Mighty fine.”

  His face showed that he knew just what kind of fine I meant.

  He said, “It’s a wondrous thing to wake up in heaven, isn’t it now?”

  I thought, Why, that’s just the way of putting it. In heaven. Yes, he knew about it.

  I said, “Oh, it’s as good as heaven on earth can be, Reverend. It truly is.”

  He agreed with me. And he went on about it awhile: what being saved meant to a soul, how it changed every last little part of a person’s life, and so on like that. I ate it up. These were the words I wanted to hear, words I couldn’t get from Mother or Pop or Rufus. I wanted the Preacher to go on talking all day, he made the light inside me shine so.

  But he left off talking salvation, and he bought me a soda pop so we could sit on the steps of the post office across the street just to talk regular. I told him everything. About Mother and Pop, about mowing lawns, about seventh grade, about me and Rufus. He listened. He listened to me talk better than anybody ever had. And laughed, yes, he found me funny time and time again, and it made me jump with surprise when he’d let go with this big, open laugh. He seemed to like me. I seemed to be making him happy, and as we talked, I would think for a second, This cannot be real. Those hitchhiker eyes were so clear and all lit up, and it was like a crazy nightmare, those hours I thought he was a pickax murderer.

  “You are some thinker, Pete,” he told me. “I do believe you might turn into a fine preacher yourself.”

  That made me blush. Imagine me, the Jell-O Man, doing to a church full of people what he could do.

  He told me about his preaching, too, about his travels the last three years, selling all his possessions, hitchhiking town to town to revival preach. People heard of him by word of mouth and left messages for him at other churches, asking him to come preach. They’d leave word of their revival dates and hope he’d hear of them, and they’d never know till about a couple of weeks before if he was coming. But I figure everybody thought he was worth all that waiting and wondering if he’d show. I sure thought he was.

  He kept bringing up his Wild Days, too. It was like he just couldn’t get loose of them. He’d say, “Holiness didn’t come easy, Peter. My eyes enjoyed what the Devil could paint. He could make things sparkle, make a glitter that blinded.” When he’d start a Wild Days story—“I was living in New Orleans and keeping time with …”—I’d stop him. Change the subject. Because I didn’t want to know about those days. Just don’t tell me, I thought to myself. I don’t want to know. Don’t tell me.

  I guess I wanted to think he’d always been like he was when I met him.

  We talked a good three hours that day. And I did learn his name—James W. Carson. He told me I could call him Jim, not Reverend, and I did, though in my head I called him Preacher Man.

  Anyway, it’s hard to explain what happened between us those three hours. But we both did a lot of talking—me more than him. And laughing—him more than me. And he was so fine there, in his blue suit and white shirt, his face sort of tan and his blue eyes all happy.

  It was like the man who had watched me and Rufus go walking out of that drugstore a week or so back just never existed at all.

  Never existed.

  The Change

  I should have known Pop would be disappointed in me. Oh, he tried to hide it, to pretend he didn’t care one way or another. But I could tell it really bothered him that I went and got myself saved.

  And that hurt me.

  I knew what Rufus said was true, that it wasn’t any of my business how my parents thought about God, but that didn’t change the way I felt deep down. And deep down, I wanted them to be like me. Pop especially. Pop was always a hard nut to crack—never could tell just what he was thinking—but church would at least have given him and me something in common. Without it … well, without it, he wasn’t anything like me at all.

  I knew Mother had told him about me that evening, the second night of the revival. I was planning to go to church—I wanted Preacher Man to set my soul spinning again—but at supper I could tell Pop was troubled, and that changed my mind.

  Mother and Pop were so quiet, it was like somebody had died. I felt like a fool, because I knew they were both thinking about me and not knowing what to say. I sure didn’t know what to say. Mother would look at me a second, her eyes all soft and sad, then she’d look away. She had left a brand-new Bible in my room that afternoon, so I knew she wasn’t mad about my being saved, but then again, she sure wasn’t jumping for joy.

  And Pop. Pop just fiddled with his food. It wasn’t like him. If one thing made Pop happy, it was eating. And we were having fried chicken, his favorite. But he just fiddled.

  So we sat like that for a time. Then Pop said, so fast it made me jump, “Are they going to dunk you in the river?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  Pop nodded. He looked at Mother and she looked at me and I looked at the chicken.

  Then all of a sudden, Pop grinned. He said, “Remember when your granddaddy was dunked?”

  Pop’s grinning made me grin.

  “Yep,” I said.

  Pop chuckled. “Old man wouldn’t take off his glasses. Preacher tried to take them off him, but nothing doing. Dad said if any angels were coming, he wanted a good look at them.”

  Pop thought a second, then grinned again.

  “Took his hearing aid off, though. I guess he figured whatever angels came along wouldn’t be worth listening to.”

  I laughed and Mother laughed and Pop chuckled.

  It was like things had never changed.

  Pop grew quiet again, though, and awfully sad. I could tell. I thought maybe he was thinking about Granddaddy. Maybe missing him the way I’d miss Pop if he died. Or maybe he was thinking about me. But the look on his face made me want to stay home. I hated to leave the house when he was sad.

  So I hung around. We three sat on the porch and watched the cars go by, commenting on this piece of gossip and that. We were all careful not to mention the revival or my salvation, and I wondered when it was that I learned not to talk to my folks about certain things. I mean, when I learned to be careful around them. Was I six? Or nine? Was it just last year?

  When did that change? I looked at them and wondered.

  Pop decided to turn in early, and Mother followed him, so that left me sitting alone about nine o’clock. I felt so depressed about everybody, I decided to go on over
to the church anyway.

  The place was packed. By the time I got there, Preacher Man was calling people to be saved, and they were surely coming. I stood in the back of the church, the heat hitting my face and the sweat starting to bead up under my nose. I stood and felt like somebody who had just walked into a stormy sea, with the waves coming in hard and sudden and trying to take you away.

  They were up there, the sinners, crying and wailing and hanging on to each other. Some had fainted already. Most of the choir was crying so hard they couldn’t sing. Joanie Fulton, her heavy feet pumping and her eyeliner running over her fat cheeks, sobbed and pounded at the organ. The place rocked.

  And he was in control of them all. He was walking through them, his face burning and his hands reaching out. He smoothed the gray hair of the old ladies. He hugged the women. He hugged the men. He held the girls like he loved every one of them. He held them longest because they cried hardest.

  I watched him move through them all, and I knew there was nobody like him on the whole earth. I wanted to run up and be saved all over again. I wanted him to see me, to look at me. I wanted to be special to him.

  The tears came up in my eyes as I stood there, singing with the church.

  And in my heart, I prayed it would go on forever. I prayed it would always be like this. I prayed things would never change.

  The Telling

  And now comes the telling. The telling of me and the Preacher Man.

  You know, things changed after that second revival meeting. No way they wouldn’t. Because while Preacher Man sure hooked me on the first night, the second night he reeled me in. After I stood in the back of that church, watching him, tears streaming down my face, he had me. I would have died for him. And in some ways, I guess I did.

  The telling.

  I went home that night and dreamed him through till dawn. Dreams of Preacher Man and his sweat and his face and him pulling me down the aisle, pulling me in and in and in. I woke up worn out, like I’d never gone to sleep at all.