Grandpa and Grandma started Cales Chapel, a church named after them, in the nearby mining town of Coal City in 1939, the year I was born. Grandpa preached there every other Sunday. Me and my sister Vonnie were going with them so Grandpa could baptize the people who got saved during the winter.
We climbed in the backseat among the quilts.
The mountain dropped off close to the edge of the road, sheering down through layers of hairpin curves so tight our old Buick headed back in the opposite direction every time we went around one. Vonnie felt carsick, so Grandma helped her climb over to sit in the front seat between her and Grandpa. Even my hard-to-turn insides felt uneasy when I looked at the steep drop only an arm’s length away.
Grandpa caught my eye in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t you worry none,” he said. “We’re a whole rabbit swerve from the brink.”
I looked at my sister. Eyes half closed, she was nibbling a Saltine and sucking sips of lukewarm water from a fruit jar. Her blonde hair had sweated through and left a damp spot on the car seat. She had stuffed the end of one of Grandma’s handkerchiefs in
each ear to muffle the groan of the engine, giving her the look of a flop-eared bunny.
A measly rabbit swerve.
I craned my neck to peer over the edge. The sour that rose up burned my throat. I swallowed hard, trying to remember to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth. We finally reached the valley and turned onto a narrow dirt road that led to a clearing. Grandpa pulled in next to somebody’s beat-up truck and stopped.
I loosened my grip on the passenger strap I’d been hanging on to.
Dressed in a suit that had probably been baptized before, Grandpa waded three feet deep into the roiled-up river. A rope looped around his waist reached to a tree on the muddy bank, and half a dozen deacons tied themselves along the rope like rags on a kite tail. The new converts straggled into a loose line, waiting their turn to make their way out to Grandpa. Family and friends stood on the bank to lend support. Others came just to watch.
“I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
Grandpa leaned the good brother back until he was clear under the water. He came up shouting, “Amen!” and “Hallelujah!” Others came up gasping and spewing river water.
The brand-new washed-in-the-Blood-of-the-Lamb Christians dribbled up the bank and groped for raggedy towels to sop the water from their eyes. They huddled under quilts in the bed of a borrowed truck on the way back to the church, and I got to ride back there with them. Some just-cleansed soul started singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” and others joined in. Somebody else tried to get “Are You Washed in the Blood?” going, but that one petered out after the first verse.
“Praise God,” somebody said.
“Amen,” somebody answered.
A thermos jug of coffee passed from hand to hand.
My grandpa and grandma belonged to the Pentecostal Holiness Church, and it defined them. It was a tough religion to live up to. You had to pray a lot, read the Bible, and spread the word if you were Pentecostal. Grandpa particularly liked to spread the word. A retired coal miner turned evangelist by the time he appears in my memory, he spent every spare dime starting churches and holding revivals in neighboring towns, God and Grandma leading him every step of the way.
There were a lot of things you couldn’t do if you were Pentecostal. You couldn’t cheat or lie or steal or dance or chew tobacco or cuss. You couldn’t act foolish. Of course, you couldn’t drink or smoke or go to the movies or murder anybody or take the Lord’s name in vain.
You couldn’t wear feathers either. It said so in The Rules.
You couldn’t gamble. Grandma wouldn’t even allow cards in the house. I guess it was in case temptation got the best of me and I went to gambling all the Monopoly money away. She had reason to worry. Sissy had a pack of real playing cards with pictures of sailboats on the back. Sometimes we’d play gin rummy all night long. We’d eat a whole stack of Ritz crackers smeared with peanut butter and white Karo syrup, washing them down with red Kool-Aid. Next morning, Sissy’s momma said it looked like a couple of little pigs had been rooting around in our bed.
“Why, that stuff ’s not fit to eat,” Grandma said when I told her about the peanut butter and white Karo. She sniffed a little when she said it. She wouldn’t have allowed crumbs in the bed, but I don’t believe that had to do with being Pentecostal.
I reveled in the wrongdoing more than Sissy did because of gambling being such a big sin in my house. Her religion was easygoing about things like playing gin rummy all night.
She was a Methodist.
I decided I wanted to be a Methodist too.
Sissy invited me to go to church with her, and Grandma let me go since the Methodists were holding a service to honor the men who were off fighting in the War. The red brick church had a steeple with a big cross on top that lit up at night. Wine-red carpet covered the floor, and candles burned on a long table in front of the pulpit. The Methodists sang songs as foreign to me as if they were in another tongue: “I Come to the Garden Alone,” “Out of the Ivory Palaces,” and “Fairest Lord Jesus.”
Three young men walked down the aisle to the front. All were in uniform—one Army, one Navy, one Marine. They stood stretched so tall it looked like they were trying to climb right out of the necks of their uniforms and go home to their mommas again.
Mothers with sons overseas were asked to stand and some
