The Arms of God: A Novel Read online

  Reverend Ely looked down the row of the Johnson family and recognized the blood of Elton Williams as it spread across their consolidated vacant gaze. Even Beulah, who did not birth the prejudice, nursed it with her milky compliance, dripping blood from her hands as if it were she who stood by the tree and tied the knotted noose. It had taken the whole family to create this act of evil. But more, it involved the entire congregation of Pinetops who gave permission for this to occur on their property. It was the act of the whole town, the whole race that nodded its head in approval by not saying a word.

  He watched the blood spill into the aisle as the old women struggled to keep the stains from their shoes and old men danced about avoiding puddles. Higher and higher the sea of red rose until Reverend Ely knew of only one sacrament to rid them of this blight.

  He walked down the steps to the altar mumbling some words and then knelt at the table. There was an uncomfortable sway in the congregation as necks strained to grant focus to what the man was doing since never in the decade of his preaching had he ever left the pulpit.

  With both hands he yanked up the candle placed near the center next to the offering plates and stepped back into the pulpit. Holding the stick like a sword he lit the pages of the Bible and waited until the blaze stood high and white red before he dropped his blood-soaked face into it like it was a holy baptism. The fire crackled and hissed as a man of the cloth disintegrated within its hot arms. The preacher never said a word, his sermon burning through the sanctuary, hot and winding.

  The Sunday morning gatherers hurried from their seats, watching from a distance as the old church smoldered, leaving nothing in its place but a golden cross and a smooth piece of oval glass that finally popped and shattered, dropping into the ashes of a man whose vision was blemished by guilt.

  Shoestring Cannon had been huddled near the rear of the church when he smelled the fire. It did not alarm or frighten him; it merely motioned like a fat crooked finger, leading him up the steps and out past the choir room where he saw a Bible engulfed in flames and a preacher laugh and kiss the lips of hell.

  The hobo was sure that this was Satan’s doing. He knew that Reverend Ely, who had let him in the back door to get warm, had been possessed by demons since all those in church reported that he had not said a prayer all morning. The old man was also certain that the whole area was cursed by the devil’s smoke and that anywhere that the soot or gray mist settled there would be trouble and misfortune.

  In Shoestring’s mind, the fact that only a cross was left was sign from the gates of purgatory that all those in the vicinity must beg for the Lord’s forgiveness or hell would surely swallow them. And with that notion he deemed as prophecy, the man with the limber back and raw-boned arms helped the members put out the fire and then ran through the street calling for sinners to repent and save themselves from destruction.

  When the crazed man ran by Ruth and the boys who were standing behind the front screened door of Mattie’s house, he saw the ashes spread along the porch and steps. He stopped and licked his finger, yelled out the preacher was dead, and made a cross in the air trying to protect them from the spirit of death that would not pass over a dwelling stained with the markings of Hades.

  Ruth pulled the boys away and closed the door, the fire truck clanging up the hill. She checked out the window, making sure the fire was contained and that she and her neighbor were safe from the burning, and remembered the Reverend Ely’s visit and the glaze that reached behind his eyelids and covered his stare. She thought about his final words to Roy, something about trees, and how even after the nap, even after he was rested and refreshed, he had seemed as off-centered as the old railroad man spitting crosses in the wind.

  Ruth went to the back bedroom to check on Mattie and found her, eyes open, face upward, her arms folded across her belly as if she were resting in her grave. “Well, look who’s finally woke up.”

  Mattie turned and peered toward the door, her face gaunt and knotted. “What’s happened?”

  “Well, what you wanna know first?” She sat in a chair next to the bed. “The fire is Pinetops; burning down this morning. You had a baby on Friday, and we ain’t heard a word from you since.”

  “I had a baby?” Mattie put her hand beneath the cover feeling for a sign of birth. She ran her fingers down her swollen belly and felt the sticky clots of blood that had pooled between her legs. “You been here all this time?”

  Ruth straightened the hem of her dress. “Mama came and stayed a while yesterday while I did some laundry; but yeah I been here.”

  Mattie closed her eyes. “It was quite a dream.” And she pulled back the sheets and started to stand. Stiff towels fell from between her legs as she wobbled at the quick change of positions.

  Ruth stood up to help by taking her arm and they walked to the front room together. She gathered some clean rags that were hanging in the kitchen for Mattie to sit on as the young woman leaned slowly onto the sofa. Olivia was hungry and Mattie motioned for the baby. Ruth handed her the child and watched the ease with which she fed her.

  She unbuttoned her blouse and set her baby near to her breast. It was startling to Mattie to feel the sucking of something so hungry and after a while when the milk began to run, she thought she saw her lover’s face pour from her nipple in a long, creamy white line. She watched the baby curl her hands and then stretch her wrists and saw the muscles that gathered her mouth in a tight bow. She watched the swallowing in her neck.

  The tug and hold on her left breast was both pleasurable and painful; but it was hardly meaningful to the woman who knew so little about tenderness. Ruth, however, believed in what she saw. A mother was feeding her child; and to a midwife, that was enough to sustain and nurture life.

  The sucking noises offended Roy. The smack, smack, smack made him angry and he was sorry to see Mattie awake again. He had come to enjoy the presence of this new family and the absence of the old one. E. Saul taught him games and riddles while Ruth perfumed the house with rich smells of fruit pies and buttered bread that before had only hinted at him through broken glass.

  She rubbed his neck with Vaseline that had taken away the roughness of his scar. And she touched it without cringing, something no one else could do. He did not crouch in fear while they were there nor was he sent to his room before dark and forced to dive between quilts to keep from hearing these same kinds of sucking and smacking noises.

  He had watched Ruth feed her baby. But she sang while she rocked; and the creaking of the chair and the low deep tones of her voice soothed away the hungry sucking of the baby. Soft as fur her songs would slide across the room and slow the gasps for air from the nursing child. Steady was the wood rolling on wood that kept the rhythm of a mother’s song.

  It was satisfying to sit near them, not like this. Not like the hard tow and drag of this woman’s child. Roy got up and went into the kitchen with E. Saul quickly chasing him. Roy already missed his mother’s death.

  Olivia fell asleep cradled in Mattie’s arms and was quickly returned to the floor next to Tree. Mattie reached behind her back and found a pack of cigarettes from a table drawer. She pulled one out, lit it, and took a breath, enjoying the taste of tobacco that seeped across her tonsils and down into her lungs.

  “Roy, go get me a blanket,” Mattie hollered past the door.

  Roy slowly got up from the war zone in front of the kitchen stove where he and E. Saul were playing with bits of paper, making armies and tanks, and went into his mother’s bedroom and pulled the old patched quilt from the bed. He dragged it into the sitting room and handed it to Mattie.

  She reached down and touched his face. “You got to be so big, Roy. I’d forgotten how blue your eyes is.” He leaned away from her and returned to his game.

  “So what started the fire?” Mattie peeked out the window and draped the quilt around her, enjoying the sweetness of the smoke that circled from inside her lungs to form a wall that thickened and grew above her head.

  “Don’t kn
ow,” Ruth said as she rocked back and forth, peering out past the window. “I did hear that the preacher is dead. He come by this morning, you know.”

  “Yeah, what for; he looking to save me?” She moved over to the sofa.

  “No, he brought some milk for the baby.” Ruth glanced over at the boxes. “He acted a little touched, but I figured it was from the lynching.”

  “Who got hung?” Mattie tapped at the ashes of her burning cigarette.

  “He found Elton Williams out at the oak just a few days before the storm. I believe that’s what broke him. Folks say he carried the body all the way to Elton’s mama, never stumbled or asked for help. But something just didn’t seem right about him this morning.”

  Ruth tugged at her stockings. “He was a good man. I’m right sorry he had to die.”

  “Yeah, well enough of this death talk.” Mattie put out the cigarette. “I’m starving; what is it that smells so good?”

  There was a pause and she turned to Ruth who was frowning. “Oh, now, don’t go looking at me like that. Ain’t nothing I can do about it, is there?”

  Ruth was shaking her head. “You could sit with it a minute. You white folks beat everything. Somebody die in the morning and you wanna get him in the ground by lunchtime. Can’t you all just sit with it a minute? Just let your heart feel something for somebody else just a minute? Beat all I ever seen.”

  She yanked the towels up from the floor. “A church is burning to the ground, a preacher, who had a kind heart, is dead; and all you thinking about is eating.” She made a low moaning sound of disapproval.

  Mattie rolled her eyes like a child. “Okay, I’ll sit with it; but while I do, can I get some lunch?” She grinned at her neighbor.

  Ruth got up and slapped Mattie’s leg. “Girl, you try me, you know that?”

  They both laughed and Ruth went to the kitchen while Mattie tried but failed to sit with the pain. Someone else’s misery just couldn’t hold her consideration for any more than that of her own.

  When the afternoon crept into the arms of dusk, Ruth and her children left. Roy watched his neighbors walk to their house from the chalky split panes in his room. With Mattie having returned from the dead, things would go back to the way they were before, except for the addition of this sucking, crying, wetting thing that took up his space by the stove and peered up to him for help.

  E. Saul peeked over his shoulder and waved at the boy, but Roy only buried himself into the quilts, hoping that the double rings and the sunbursts would ease the loneliness that crawled up his spine and settled in his throat.

  He dived in finding scraps of life in every panel of Kay Martha’s old quilts. And Roy tried to step inside the patterns of daisies and moons and feel the colors like they were part of him. He imagined the slim needle lifting the stone yellow color from his legs and fixing it into a flower or a sliver of sunshine. He knew the blue would come from his eyes and patch up a stretch of the sky where he could disappear.

  He spread himself from corner to corner, turning out rose and pink and stems of green-black and coffee-brown. He would float in and out of the colors as if he was nothing more than drops of light and could move into and out of the fabric with the ease of a keen silver point. Back and forth he would start to go, picking up speed, becoming lighter and lighter like the wisps of dye that beckoned him.

  And he could almost fly off in weightless shaded ribbons, easily and casually, except for a throbbing unwieldy red ring that would not fade. It held him down like an anchor. And the boy watched from below as the moons and the daisies fluttered around and above him and vanished again into the darkness.

  Mattie finished her meal and headed for the sofa. Olivia was ready to nurse and Mattie picked her up aware of the rip up and inside her legs that ached and burned. She hated what birth did to her body. The marks that stretched across her belly and down along her thighs. Her posture bent from the extra weight that lowered her shoulders and left her spine drooped. Lumpy tits, hardened from stones of milk, the tender nipples. The vacancy in her vagina where the ligaments had torn. The emptiness that it left her with, having grown so accustomed to the presence of another. The widening of bones and the loosening of skin.

  She wanted to be young again. Tight muscles and lithe. Dancing wildly with strong ankles and hips. The twist in her neck, so fast. The firm breasts that had never been handled. The chill of her tongue from ice cream or dirty talk. The quick stab of a pebble on the pads of her feet that had not grown callused and leathery. The surprise of water splashing on unexposed skin. The snug waist and taut buttocks that she could squeeze together and hold a dime. The goose-bumped unknowingness of what the body could do and the eagerness to try anything from backward flips off a landing to pulling down her panties and letting Tommy Logan feel her for a penny.

  Everything felt old to her. Used up and done too many times before. And even though she still enjoyed sex, it was only because she liked the noises and the mixing of smells. Liquor and sweat. Tobacco and her moisture. Grunts and graphic descriptions of what felt good, the satisfaction at the shrivel of a man when he was done. But that was the most of her sensory pleasures. Alcohol dulled her and childbirth stole her brawn.

  “You shot through me like a bullet, little girl,” she spoke to the feeding child edged between her breast and a pillow. “And you out here now like you wanted so bad.” Mattie lifted her breast making the feeding easier.

  “I reckon you’ll see it ain’t such a wonderful thing to be born. Can’t imagine that the joy of living ever wipes away the longing. But you here now.”

  The tiny infant stared up at her mother.

  She leaned forward to the coffee table and picked up the pack of cigarettes. She pulled one out and lit it. The trail of smoke curled around her lips. She peered down at her daughter.

  The baby closed her eyes, then opened them again.

  She touched the baby on the forehead, tracing her finger along the infant’s brow. She took a long, slow drag from the cigarette, then crushed it in the ashtray beside her. She nodded off while Olivia watched her sleep. The baby smiled at the dark-haired woman who fed her but did not see. And the light from fire and heaven dimmed in the night shadows as mothers and children everywhere hoisted themselves onto the dreams of each other.

  You my best friend

  (clap together clap)

  Sisters to the very end

  (legs slap, slap)

  I’ll go where you gone

  (snap fingers snap)

  Never ever be alone

  (toes tap, tap)

  Keep you covered from the rain

  (clap together clap)

  Protect you from your mama’s pain

  (legs slap, slap)

  Through thick and thin, we more than friends

  (snap fingers snap)

  We sisters to the very end

  (toes tap, tap)

  Four

  Witchhazel Comely lived only about a mile from the field that used to be a church, now empty of ash or steeple. It just seemed farther because it was way back in the woods where pine trees, thick and tall, circled her rickety old chimney that was always breathing fire.

  Witchhazel grew herbs and knew recipes for every ailment that had come up in the ninety or so years she had been gardening cures. She had love potions and tonics for grief. She could made soft soap and pastes for removing stains. She blew out burns and talked off warts. And there was even a story that she raised a boy from the dead. She was known far and wide for her salves and teas; and folks, black and white, sent out after her assistance when harm took hold of a body.

  She lived alone except for her dog named Gabriel. And she never left her house in the woods except twice, once in 1904 when the mayor was bleeding at the lungs and a second time when she lifted herself from off her own deathbed and walked to the edge of Smoketown, having recognized the third passing of evil just as it was making its way across a garden path.

  In 1904, Mrs. Emily Murphy had tried the town doctor
and had even sent off for the one in Winston-Salem, but no one could keep the mayor from declining. Finally, Johnnie Mays, a devoted house servant who was frustrated at his employer’s distress, told her about Witchhazel and how she was blessed with the Gift. Mrs. Emily Murphy, without so much as a question, immediately sent him to fetch her.

  Witchhazel told the young dark man that she never left her house, that she would give the herbs and the needed instructions; but that she never left and she wasn’t about to start for no white man. And then she jerked her head like a punctuation mark and went inside. Johnnie Mays ran across town from the mayor’s house to Witchhazel’s three times before coming up the fourth time riding a carriage and convinced her to come out of the woods and into the tidiest part of Greensboro.

  Some folks said it was on account of the money that Mrs. Emily Murphy offered; but everybody knew that Witchhazel had no use for money and only took food and corn liquor for payment. A couple of people counted it was the threat the mayor’s wife ordered that she would be run out of town; but Witchhazel wasn’t scared of anything living or dead; so most everyone agreed she went because of that carriage that Johnnie Mays came riding up in.

  It was a shiny black carriage with six, not four, not two, dark red horses with eyes as bright as dawn and coats as glossy as mahogany wood. They stepped with high curved legs that struck the air with distinction and dropped to the ground in a small swirl of dust. Their manes, combed and smooth, were straight strands that glistened without a tangle; and their hooves were polished and tan, spawning no chips or unsightly smirch.

  Witchhazel rode high in the seat, her aged black felt hat cocked to one side. Gabriel sat next to her, the straggly mutt that howled at first moons; and even though he was only a dog, held his head in dignity while sniffing the smells that rose up from below him. The old woman rode through the town like the Queen of Heaven and stayed seated until Johnnie Mays jumped from the driver’s bench and went around to help her down. When she got inside the house, going through the front door, Mrs. Emily Murphy hurried her to her husband’s side, begging her to save him.