I was combing the cat when I heard Guy Pegler say “… a special guest in our P.S. segment from right here in Seaville.”
The three of us looked up at that one, and that was when we saw Diane-Young Cheek standing there on the balcony with Guy Pegler’s arm around her shoulders.
“You know your girl friend was going to be on?” Daddy asked Bobby John.
“I know something went to her head ever since the healing,” Bobby John said.
Next thing we knew, Diane-Young Cheek was telling how Jesus Christ took her pain away.
“I’d gone to this place we have here called The Helping Hand Tabernacle,” she was saying, and Daddy snapped, “This church.”
“Well, we’re getting a plug,” Bobby John said. “At least we’re getting that.”
I called out to Mum that we was on national television. “Hurry and see!”
Guy Pegler said, “And what happened at The Helping Hand Tabernacle?”
“That’s twice,” Bobby John said.
Mum was in the room by then, paring knife in one hand, carrot in the other. “Praise the Lord!”
Diane-Young Cheek told how Reverend Keck and Reverend Ringer prayed over her.
“She’s in the big time now,” said Bobby John.
Guy Pegler said softly, “Diane-Young, I want to interrupt you long enough to tell our viewers you were in great pain because you’d tried to take your life.”
Mum sucked in her breath and said, “Well, the dirty linen’s out on the line now, for all to see.”
“Satan’s linen is never clean,” Daddy said.
“… and then I heard about this healing,” Diane-Young said.
“I tell you I was surprised when she showed up,” Mum said. “Wasn’t you surprised, Bobby John?”
“Never know what she’s going to do,” said Bobby John.
“I was surprised,” I said. “She said her folks said we were too emotional down at The Hand.”
“I expect they’re singing themselves some other tune now,” Mum said.
“Keep quiet and listen,” Daddy said.
“… suddenly the pain was gone and I just fell over,” Diane-Young said.
Mum said, “She was slain in the spirit. She fell in the spirit.”
“Diane-Young, I want to thank you for appearing with me this morning, and helping others realize that Jesus wants you to win!” Closeup of Dr. Pegler. “So do I!”
Then The Challenge Choir began singing, “Run, climb, reach for a star!”
Daddy said, “Well, we got something to give thanks for here, seems to me.”
We bowed our heads while Daddy said a prayer of Thanksgiving.
The prayer began, “O Lord, help us keep humble,” and no sooner ended when Bobby John began pacing around saying he supposed it was a good thing, he supposed a nationwide plug was a good thing.
“You should praise Jesus, son,” Mum said. “You helped bring her to Him.”
“Well, I was her mintor all right.
“You was her mentor” said Daddy. “You wasn’t her mintor. Sounds like you was in charge of her breath. Mintor.”
Later that day I got up from a nap, and the whole house was quiet except for Bobby John whispering into the phone. He’d pulled the cord into the living room, and was crouched over on the living-room couch.
“You could have told me you was going to be on nationwide TV, D. Y. … Now, that ain’t the point. It isn’t the point. It isn’t that we want anything, honeybunch. I just miss you so.”
He stopped talking when he saw me and said, “Opal’s in the room now.”
I started to leave when he said, “Opal, wait.” Then into the phone, “I’ll ask her. But you remember what I said.”
He put his hand across the mouthpiece and said, “Opal? The Cheeks are having a dinner party for Dr. Pegler and his wife and Jesse. They want you up there next Saturday night.”
In those few seconds before I answered, I saw Jesse’s face, Bud’s, smelled the honeysuckle at St. Luke’s, crazy, jumbled pictures in my head, until I finally managed to say, “What they want me for?”
“To help serve,” Bobby John said, as though I ought to know that as well as I knew my own name.
Something else … When Daddy woke up from his nap, Bobby John announced the Cheeks were going to put in a whole new CheckCheek Security System at The Hand. He had this big grin on his face. “It’s free from them to us, Daddy.”
“What for?” Daddy said.
“In gratitude for D. Y.’s healing, Daddy.”
“The Hand’s never been locked since it opened,” Daddy said.
“There’s been some stealing going on in The Hollow, Daddy. People been taking things from houses.”
“Taking things?” Daddy said. “The Lord commanded us if any man take your coat, give him your cloak besides, or don’t you remember your Bible?”
“They just thought—”
“They just didn’t think,” said Daddy. “We don’t need no CheckCheek Security in our Savior’s church, thank you all the same.”
Six
JESSE PEGLER
THE NIGHT WE WERE going to dinner at the Cheeks’, my mother said the Cheeks were “very important.”
I could just hear Bud’s voice saying, “Oooh, they must be filthy rich!”… Then my father answering him, “Rich as Croesus, right you are, and fund raising for the Lord happens to be every bit as important as anointing the sick or feeding the starved!” Bud would have piped up well, it was good my father felt that way because we did a lot more fund raising man we did anointing or feeding. … It was one of their old running arguments.
Me—I just bitched a lot and ended up showering and changing into my best clothes.
My father came by my room as I was finishing dressing.
He was wearing a new dark-blue thin-pinstripe suit, a light-blue shirt, and an ACE tie. The tie was patterned after a club tie, only instead of heraldic devices or sporting symbols, “ACE” was repeated across it in tiny gold letters against a blue background.
“Jesse,” my father began, “one thing experience has taught me is—”
I braced myself for some
