“10-1. I don’t have a clue what your sister’s talking about,” said Diane-Young, lighting up a More.
“I said when The Rapture comes everybody’ll be kissing—”
Bobby John didn’t let me finish. “She’s all taken up with The Rapture,” he said.
“10-1,” Diane-Young said. “10-1. What’s The Rapture?”
“It’s when we get lifted up to heaven without dying,” I said, “and when it comes, everybody’ll be—”
“Opal!” Bobby John barked at me. “Can’t you see we got a serious problem here and we don’t want no talk of The Rapture right this minute.”
“I was just trying to make you feel better,” I said.
Hot nights in summer sometimes I’d sit in my room in the dark and sing softly to myself, sing songs like
Somebody knows when your heart aches,
And everything seems to go wrong,
Somebody knows when the shadows
Need chasing away with a song.
I knew there was more in me waiting to burst out, bigger sounds caught way back in my heart, but I never bade them come forth.
When I was just about sung out, I’d put my radio on, and outside my window I’d hear you all going places in twos. Hear your cars and your shouts.
Just like into the ark, in twos.
You’d go to your hangout, The Sweet Mouth Soda Shoppe, across from the A&P, and I’d wonder what you’d say in there for hours, what you’d do when the sodas were all drunk, sitting there in booths for half the night.
Daddy’d say, “Opal, I never want you to date anyone unsaved, hear?”
“Well, that isn’t something I think you have to worry about, Daddy, since no one’s pounding on the front door to get in for a date with me.”
“The time will come,” he said.
What used to get me in my heart of hearts was you all going by in your cars, some with tops down, tape decks playing, hair flying in the wind—I’d watch you without you knowing it.
I’d ask myself: If Jesus was to say you could be down there right now laughing your fool head off in The Sweet Mouth Soda Shoppe with the rest of them, or be a part of The Rapture, what would you choose? My answer’d come The Rapture, but I’d wrestle songs of Satan arriving at that conclusion.
Sometimes I hated being just a watcher.
I remember right after the healing, that last week of school, when we were cleaning out our lockers and taking tests. One afternoon when it was real hot, like August weather, V. Chicken showed up at Central High with Jesse, in her little sports car. Top down. Music playing.
I came out the front steps and it was the first thing I saw.
I was carrying my plastic book bag with “Let the Son Shine!” written on the sides. The handle was broken, so I was carrying it under my arm, and wished I wasn’t when I saw her behind the wheel, because she’d be offering me one of her book bags next thing. (“Do you know anyone who can use this?” was what she’d say, both of us knowing who could use it.)
Head down, I had no plan to even look in her direction, curious as I was as to what those two were doing down at Central. Then Jesse Pegler called out my name, loud as a blast on the ram’s horn: “Oh-pull!” saying it the way he did. “Oh-pull!”
I’d have had to pretend I was stone deaf not to look around.
“Hi,” I said, so soft only I could hear myself.
He just jumped right over the side of the car, not even opening the door to get out, and came loping across the green lawn up to where I was walking on the pavement. “Don’t call me Bud, now,” he said, putting his little hand across my mouth, grinning at me. “Your mother’s already done that.”
“I know.”
“She tell you?”
“When you came to the healing that day. She thought you were Bud.”
“I’m his brother, Jesse.”
“I know.”
You could smell they’d just cut the lawn, and there was a soft wind blowing in our faces, ruffling his hair.
“How are you?” He stood there smiling down at me.
“I don’t know.”
He bent double laughing at that one. “What kind of an answer is I don’t know?”
“I’m all right.” I didn’t even know him yet, which was why it was hard.
“I suppose you know Bud?”
“I know him from working up at the von Hennigs’, same as Mum.”
“We’re brothers,” he said, so I knew he was real nervous himself.
Then out the front door of school Diane-Young came, in her green corduroy Levi’s and red hooded sweat shirt, sweating hard in the heat, with her “shit kickers” on and her radio/cassette blaring out top ten.
“Diane-Young!” V. Chicken shouted. “Hey! Diane-Young!”
Diane-Young stopped in her tracks and looked around with this “Who, me?” face. She held a hand up to her pink glasses and looked toward the car.
“Yes, you!” V. Chicken shouted.
Diane-Young did one of her funny I May Faint numbers, holding her CAT cap on with one hand, staggering as though she was going to fell down from shock. She did that all the way to the car.
“We’re taking Diane-Young over to meet my dad,” Jesse said.
I didn’t ask why, but I wanted to.
Jesse said, “Gee, Opal, we’d give you a ride, but the car’s too small.”
I could see Diane-Young getting into the jump seat, while V. Chicken held her radio/cassette for her. If Diane-Young saw me, she didn’t let on.
“I always walk, anyways,” I told Jesse, shifting my broken book bag from under one arm to under the other.
“I just wanted to introduce myself. We’re both P.K’s.”
“What’s P.K’s?”
“Preachers’ kids.”
Even the horn on her car sounded different from other horns, sounded like some goose honking overhead.
Jesse called back that he’d be right with them.
Then he said, “I’ll see you, Opal.”
“All right,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. And there was Diane-Young, back in with them from up at Seaville High, laughing in the backseat, with the sun making