The Rapture of Canaan Read online

  I knew that boys’ voices changed, but that day, I realized my own voice had. Before I’d gotten so old, it’d sounded the same way always—sassy and clear. But by that time, my voice had deepened, slipped down towards Hell on its way up to Heaven. I knew that my voice had been holding back a holler, that it wanted to break wide open like the sky or the ground. But my voice was heavy, a flute without holes, wooden, imperfect, and thick.

  That evening we ate without words, everyone saying their private prayers over their servings of corn bread and venison stew. I was glad to see everyone there, glad to see that Nanna, though somber, seemed as healthy as she had the day before. No one was dead. So someone had sinned. Terribly.

  I knew better than to look around during the evening meal and kept my eyes on my plate for fear of being accused of insolence.

  Towards the end of the supper, a baby started crying, hard. Normally no one would even have noticed. Someone would have picked it up and cooed and hushed it with their familiar mothering hum. But not that night. The baby cried on and on, and when Freda Langston finally picked it up, Grandpa Herman broke the quiet.

  “A tiny child,” he huffed, “before it is even old enough to speak is selfish. Selfish. Born a manipulator. Before it has even learned to walk, a baby sins. Knows how to get its way. Cries out, demanding to be comforted. And so we come into this world sinners. Sinners who cannot to save our lives live perfectly.

  “It’s the curse of Eve,” he continued, standing by that time and as red-faced as I’d ever seen him, “that we sin. That we disobey God outright. That we live for our bodies, feed our bodies, comfort our bodies, and forget about our souls.

  “Our souls, people. We need to be feeding our souls.

  “And every time we open these mouths, to satisfy the wants of the body through word or food or drink, we turn our backs on Jesus.

  “If it wasn’t for the curse of Eve, we wouldn’t need this food. We’d be perfect spiritual beings nurtured solely by the love of God,” and then Grandpa Herman picked up his plate and threw it at the door so that it hit the wall and shattered, the pieces falling onto the floor like a leftover song.

  We all sat upright, our spines aching to be obedient, our eyes cast downward, and my heart glad that it wasn’t my baby that had prompted his sermon. I hoped that in his bed that night, Nanna would smother him with a pillow. But only for a moment.

  “One of those among us, Ben Harback, has been found guilty of imbibing in forbidden drink. He came onto these holy grounds this morning with his breath tainted and his eyes reddened by Satan’s own sweet piss.

  “He has admitted to his crime. He has asked to be forgiven. And praise God, the one above is capable of granting him that forgiveness. For the scriptures read that ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ Where is that in the Bible, Ben Harback?”

  “First John, chapter one, verse nine,” Ben muttered.

  “On behalf of The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God’s Almighty Baptizing Wind, you are hereby ordered, Ben Harback, to single-handedly teach the children the laws of Jesus Christ and the laws of this community for the next year. If it be God’s holy will, you will rededicate your commitment to Christ and to this community through your preparation and service. Clearly it will do you good to return to your studies of the laws.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ben answered from the corner where he was sitting. I looked up for the first time to see him shamefully alone, without food or water. I wondered what Grandpa would do if I went to sit with him.

  “But the Bible also teaches us that ‘the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ And where in the Bible is that, Ben Harback?”

  He cleared his throat and mumbled, “Romans six: twenty-three, sir.”

  “Speak up, ” Grandpa demanded.

  “Romans six: twenty-three,” Ben repeated.

  “That’s correct,” Grandpa patronized. “And in order to remember those wages of sin, your grave has been prepared, Ben Harback, where you will lay this night and contemplate the wages of sin, where you will pray without ceasing for God’s delivery of your piteous soul.

  “Now clean up these tables,” he said to the rest of us, “and report to the cemetery in exactly one half an hour where Ben’s funeral will be held.”

  Around the room, people moved for Grandpa Herman, and a slow chorus of whispers began until Grandpa yelled out, “In silence.”

  Ben climbed into his grave willingly. It was still cold in open air, and I couldn’t imagine how cold it must be deep in the earth. Grandpa Herman led us in a song, and we stood around the grave holding hands, singing to God for the renewal of Ben’s soul.

  And then we formed two lines on either side of the grave where there were mounds of dirt, and everybody had to throw in one shovelful.

  Of course his hands were free. He could protect his face or move around. The dirt we threw in was just a symbol of his death to the world, in hopes that when the sun came up, he’d be born again, resurrected like Jesus and pure.

  And then in the brisk night air, Grandpa Herman gave another sermon, about God’s forgiveness, and I think he brought up Nanna again and how she’d been a liar and had been spared death. He said that if it was God’s will, Ben Harback would be spared too, and that he’d come back into our community as a soul-winner for Jesus.

  I stood beside Nanna as he spoke. I didn’t have to ask her what she thought of Grandpa’s punishment. I already knew.

  I wondered how she could love such a man, with his mind so twisted and his vision of himself as just beneath an angel.

  I wasn’t the only one who considered such things.

  As we were walking home late that night, Mustard said, “That’s just crazy. Having to sleep in a grave just for drinking a little bit of alcohol.”

  “He was drunk,” James said, stone-faced. “It’s a bad example.”

  “Yeah,” Pammy agreed. “I know now that I’ll never get drunk. Not that I was planning to.”

  “But sleeping in a grave, ” Mustard said.

  And later at home, when I was supposed to be asleep already, I crept to Mamma and Daddy’s bedroom door to eavesdrop on their conversation.

  “That man will break,” Daddy said.

  “He’ll be fine,” Mamma assured. “God will sustain him.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder why your daddy gets to be the one who makes the rules around here?” Daddy fussed. “Don’t it seem like we could talk it over as a congregation. I know drinking’s a vice, but Maree, my God, that man might die of pneumonia. He made a simple mistake. Who hasn’t?”

  “I don’t want to hear this, Liston.”

  “But you’ve got to think about it sometimes, don’t you? The things he says. The things he’s teaching our children.”

  “Our children have grown into good, God-fearing people,” Mamma insisted. “You go look outside this community and see where you can find a family with four children who grow up to obey the commandments of the Lord.”

  “I ain’t talking bad about the Bible,” Daddy said. “But what if that’d been David? What if David had fallen and taken a drink? Would you feel the same way if he was the one in the grave?”

  “One of the benefits of our children growing up in this community,” Mamma jeered, “is that we don’t have to worry about them doing something like that.”

  “Honey,” Daddy said, “it’s not the end of the world that the boy took a drink.”

  “And the boy will be better off tomorrow, when he’s repented.”

  That night I looked out at the cemetery for a long time before I fell asleep. I kept watching to see if Ben Harback would climb out and leave. I thought that if I was in his position, I’d be out of that grave and out of Fire and Brimstone before the sun came up.

  I’d been staring a long time before I saw Nanna sitting on the ground not far from the place where the dirt still sat in mounds on t
he earth. I wondered if she was counseling him, if she was feeling sins of her own and wanted to repent. I don’t know if she stayed there all night. I didn’t want to know.

  The chicken coop at Fire and Brimstone had been falling down for as long as I could remember. The boards were so weathered that you could scrape off the outside layer with your fingernail, and after every big storm, somebody had to get a ladder and nail down the rusting sheets of tin that served as a roof. But we’d repaired the chicken coop so many times that the nails could be pulled out of the soft boards with the tips of the smallest fingers.

  Pammy and I had been begging for a new chicken house for years. The grown-ups kept laughing at us, saying Fire and Brimstone had better uses for its lumber and how much shelter could chickens need?

  But every time it rained, I’d look at Pammy and she’d look at me, and we’d know exactly what the other was imagining. Chickens huddled together, trying to dodge the water that blew in between the cracks of their walls, their skinny chicken legs no thicker than reeds bogging down as they scratched for worms in their muddy floor.

  The rest of the family prayed for crops, but for years, me and Pammy had been praying for the chickens. They were our responsibility.

  One afternoon when it’d just stopped raining, I badgered Grandpa Herman about it again.

  He was half-hidden under the hood of the tractor, fiddling with a wire while Barley cranked it, then shut it off at his command.

  “Goodness gracious, Ninah,” he said to me, though he spoke to the motor, “the way you worry about them chickens, you’d think they’d lay golden eggs.”

  They might lay gold eggs if we treated them better,” I tried. “There’s holes in the walls and holes in the roof. The roost is broken on one side, and ...”

  “James,” Grandpa hollered. “Go get some of them leftover boards from behind Clyde’s place and fix the chicken pen before Ninah has a stroke.”

  James, who’d been helping Daddy change the oil in the pickup, wiped his hands and headed my way.

  “Thank you, Grandpa,” I said—even though I didn’t want the chicken coop patched. I wanted it renovated.

  “And get that girl a hammer, and put her to work too.”

  “Yes, sir,” James agreed, then turned to me and winked, and laughed because he’d winked at me in front of Grandpa, but Grandpa’s head was still under the tractor’s hood.

  Y’all crazy about these chickens, “James said later, hammering a one-foot square of plywood over a gap in the structure. “These holes ain’t nothing but windows for the chickens, and now you’re covering them up.”

  “Windows have glass,” I argued. “You see glass in any of these holes?” I was working beside him, and doing twice as much as he was. But I didn’t care if he was lazy. I didn’t care much at all.

  “You and Pammy are the ones who used to say the holes were windows. Pammy used to claim that when you came to feed them, they’d be looking out and waving.”

  “They do sometimes,” I played.

  “And weren’t it just last year that y’all tried to get Nanna to make curtains for them.”

  “No we didn’t.”

  “Did too.”

  “It weren’t last year though,” I laughed.

  We moved around to the back. James found an old stool and climbed on it to reach some high places, but I hammered a two-by-four at the very bottom. I was still thinking of ways to keep the ground inside dry, and since the earth was muddy already, I could beat the board into the dirt without even needing nails. It seemed so backwards to be sturdying the foundation when the building was already standing.

  “That ain’t gonna work,” James said from above.

  “Why not?”

  “Just won’t,” he said. “And look, you’re dragging the tail of your dress in the mud.”

  “So?”

  “That ain’t no way for a girl to look,” he said. “Get up. I’ll fix it in a minute.”

  “No,” I said, and kept working until I got the board just the way I wanted it. And then James banged his thumb, choked back a curse, and wrapped his lips around the hurting place.

  “Look what you made me do,” he said.

  “Weren’t my fault,” I laughed.

  “Was too,” he said. “You talked back. A woman ain’t supposed to talk back, so a girl surely ain’t.”

  For a second, I wanted to knock the stool right from under his self-righteous feet. Then I reminded myself not to fight evil with evil.

  And then I did it anyway. I stood up and pushed the stool he was standing on over. He fell into the bushes that surrounded the chicken coop. The branches cracked beneath him, and then he rolled onto the ground.

  He landed on a big stob, and his side was bleeding. As little dabs of blood blotted through his shirt, I got real worried about what I’d done.

  “James,” I said, and I knelt beside him. “Here, let me see.

  But when I pushed up his shirt, he slapped my hand away. “What’d you do that for?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I just sat there, looking at him as he examined his scrape, studied his shirt, and fingered the little tear.

  “Well, you shouldn’t talk to me like that,” I began. “Cause you don’t own me. And you won’t never own me. I know more about this chicken coop than you ever will—” and I stammered and started to cry. “Cause I care about it, and you don’t.”

  He looked at me like I’d gone mad.

  “And that’s not all, either. You can’t tell me what to do because I know just as much as you, and I can hammer a nail better than you can. And it don’t bother you for your britches to get muddy, so why does it matter if my dress does?”

  “Well, that’s what the Bible says,” James declared. “A woman ain’t supposed to do the work of a man.” He was holding his side close, like he was holding in his ribs, and I was worried that I’d hurt him bad, but I didn’t back down.

  “Well, if I’m a woman, then whatever I’m doing is woman’s work. Don’t that make sense to you?”

  “I reckon.”

  “And do you really see anything wrong with the way I hammered that board? Look at it.”

  He looked but didn’t have a thing to say.

  “I hope you ain’t hurt,” I said. “Let me see it.”

  James pulled up his shirt, and there wasn’t much to it. Just a little scraped place edged in blue.

  “I’ll say I’m sorry if you will,” I offered.

  “For what?”

  “For thinking I’m not as good as you and ought to do what you say.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he said.

  “It’s what you said.”

  “Well, it ain’t what I meant.”

  We finished patching the henhouse before time for supper, and in the afternoon grayness, we stood together facing the feeble building, our backs turned to anyone who might walk our way. We pretended to admire our work, our hands joined.

  “I know you got more sense than most men at Fire and Brimstone,” James whispered. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  And though I knew James could change his mind quicker than rain could turn to mist, I decided to believe him.

  I really wanted to believe him.

  Tell me a story, ” I said to Nanna.

  “What story you want to hear this time?” she sighed, pretending to be aggravated.

  I was staying home sick from school, my face all stopped up from the pollen that had fallen, dusting our doorsteps greeny-yellow like hay cut too soon. Mamma was out in the garden with the other women, tending the plants that had just sprouted up. Some of the men had already quit their winter jobs to begin working on the tobacco beds. The young plants were still protected by polyethylene sheets, but they needed irrigating and then pulling up and setting out into the vast fields.

  It was always Nanna we stayed with when we were sick. But no one claimed to be sick at Fire and Brimstone unless it was real. Though Grandpa Herman was the one who meted ou
t most of the punishments, Nanna was the one who believed in education. She didn’t have much of an education herself, but she discouraged us from faking sick by giving each child who stayed home from school a bowl of prunes every thirty minutes until we went to the bathroom. It didn’t matter whether you’d broken your arm or stumbled onto the flu. You ate the prunes.

  Nanna believed a good cleaning out would make anyone well. I thought it must be a belief that she picked up from Grandpa. By the time the prunes went through you, you’d eaten three or four bowls, at least, and it seemed to me a fate almost as bad as sleeping in a grave.

  I was on my second bowl when I asked her to tell me about Grandpa Herman’s sins.

  “Ninah,” she said. “Why in the world would you want to hear about another person’s downfalls?”

  “He just seems so perfect,” I said. “And he can’t be. I just wanted to hear about something he did wrong.”

  “I think that’s an abomination,” Nanna said, and left the room.

  “Well, he talks about your sins,” I hollered. “Almost every Sunday.” I could hear her in the bedroom, shoving things around, pulling on a stubborn drawer, then forcing it back in.

  When she came back out, she had a jewelry box, and she sat down beside me and opened it up.

  “Do you see this pin?” she asked, holding up a ribbon attached to a medal so old that it looked like a penny that had been scraped and softened from switching to a million different pockets.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Herman got this pin from serving in the war,” she told me. “Do you know what kinds of things happen in a war?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Now I just want you to think for a minute about being in one. I want you to think about the things you’d see, the friends you’d bury. I want you to think about what it’d feel like to choose between shooting a man or coming home a coward. Or think about what you’d do when you came face-to-face with a person your same size—just from different parts of the world with different kinds of plans for it—what you’d feel like if you had to pick up a gun and shoot someone.”