Culpepper had told Delroy only this morning that he had known Josiah, and there had been times during his wild and wicked days that he felt certain Josiah had rung that church bell just to get him out of bed with the devil and into the Lord’s house come a Sunday morning. Some of those sermons Josiah had preached had taken, Culpepper had acknowledged during his brief conversation when he’d driven up with the bell in the back of his battered pickup.
“But not all of the Lord’s Word,” Culpepper had said shamelessly with a grin that showed all of his dentures. “Elseways I wouldn’t still be here with ya’ll.”
He’d given the bell to Delroy for free. Even thrown in a shining.
“Heave!” Delroy yelled again, feeling the sweat pop out. The exertion was hard and his body complained of all the bruises he still carried from fighting the creature at Terrence’s grave. But he put his heart and his soul into it.
And in there he found a song. He pulled again and sang:
“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”
Delroy matched the driving pull of his back, arms, and legs into the rhythm of the song, using the cadence to draw fresh air into his lungs and strive again.
“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”
He leaned instinctively into the rhythm of the song, the way field hands and cotton pickers had done when he was a child and sometimes worked with them alongside his daddy, who was harvesting their immortal souls while they pulled someone else’s crop to put food on their own tables.
Four hundred and more people had gathered at the church now. All of them knew the song. The words burst out over the neighborhood, swelling as the bell rose high into the air, coming from the throats of every man, woman, and child there.
“I looked over Jordan, and what did I see,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
A band of angels comin’ after me,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”
The bell continued to rise, and Delroy found more strength in himself than he ever had. The pulling and straining of the other men holding the rope evened out and became more of a concerted effort. They sang with him, putting their voices to his:
“Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
Swing low, sweet chariot,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”
Hands clapped, keeping time to the song. The applause rolled over the neighborhood, gathering strength and rhythm, missed beats leveling till they came as one.
“If you get there before I do,
Comin’ for to carry me home,
Tell all my friends I’m comin’ too,
Comin’ for to carry me home.”
The song kept on, growing higher and stronger as the bell rose alongside the steeple. Men scrambled on top of the roof and guided the bell over the roof’s edge. Then the bell was in the steeple once more.
“Hold what you got,” Dion Dupree called down. He was in his fifties and still spry as a child. He called himself an inventor, but his wife, LaQuinta Mae, said he “wasn’t nothin’ but a tinkerer on his best day, an’ he ain’t had but a few of them days.”
Still, the love between the two of them was unmistakable.
“Hold what you got,” Dion called again as he scrambled inside the bell tower.
Delroy held on, feeling the rope bite into his hands. But the pain felt good, let him know he was doing something worth doing.
Long minutes later, Dion yelled down, “Okay, you can let go now. It’s up there. Ain’t goin’ no place else.”
Slowly, with more than a little trepidation, the rope was eased back. The bell hung solid and a cheer went up. In another couple minutes, the clapper was released and everyone called for Delroy to come up and ring the bell.
He went, feeling as excited as a child, the way he had when he was four years old and his daddy had let him ring the bell on a bright Sunday morning. He pulled the rope hard, listening to the clangor ring all across the neighborhood.
The bell sounded clear and strong, a sound that would drive away evil and darkness.
They’ll come, Delroy knew. They’ll come, and they’ll want to know what’s going on. He looked into the blue sky past the bell tower as he descended. Look, Daddy. People are coming to our church again, coming to visit with God and learn His ways.
Now that the bell was in place, the picnic that had been brewing all morning suddenly let loose. Folding tables and picnic tables loaded with food and guarded by the women were suddenly declared open and fair game.
“Come on, Chaplain,” Walter said. “Grab a plate an’ let’s dig in.”
“You hold those people up,” Reynard Culpepper yelled. “Ain’t one o’ ya’ll touching that food till the chaplain’s done asked a blessin’ for it.” Skinny and tall and bald, Culpepper started toward another old man who had considerable girth and a round face under a straw hat. “An’ you, Elvin Smith, I know you done poked somethin’ in your mouf after I tole you not to do that. You keep that up an’ I’ll whup you an’ take them store-bought teeth away.”
When the churchyard grew quiet, Delroy stepped near the tables. He bowed his head and asked a blessing for the food, thanked God for the companionship and the church, and for keeping them all safe while they’d been foolish enough to pull the bell up into the church steeple themselves instead of waiting for the proper equipment. He finished the prayer, and a multitude of voices joined his in saying, “Amen.”
When he looked up, he saw Glenda standing out by the fence.
The last few years had been kind to his wife. She still had her figure and her looks, but there was a little more gray hair in the coal black