“That’s the one thing Daddy won’t like,” said Bobby John. “Daddy’s saying Guy Pegler stole our miracle.”
“I guess he sort of did, didn’t he?”
We just rode along for a while with the big moon beaming down, abundance of peace, said in Psalms, so long as the moon endureth. Asked myself if Jesus was to say you can live on Ocean Road and be Jesse Pegler’s girl, get notes from him, be his sweet baby, or you can be part of The Rapture—
Then Bobby John said, “She’s been walking on that leg okay for a long time.”
I looked up at him.
“It wore her out faking, pain was gone a long time ago. She was afraid not to fake, afraid they’d say nothing ever was wrong with her to begin with. … Well, we needed a miracle at The Hand.”
“Whew, Bobby John. What are you telling me?”
“Nothing you’re ever going to say aloud to anyone. Promise?”
“I promise.”
“K. Christian Keck come all the way from Philadelphia. How you going to get a man like that to come again if nothing happens—think he’d want to come back again with nothing going on but Mrs. Bunch falling again? Opal, people don’t pay when nothing happens but her going down. Daddy was worrying away, too.”
“Nothing new,” I said.
“Well, it doesn’t bother you. You don’t bear the brunt of it. You heard him tonight, telling me I was dumb again, telling me no one’s going to leave their living room while the TV preachers got choirs of fifty and more in living color. You know how long I been hearing that?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I got Daddy on the one hand needing the bills to get paid, and I got D. Y. on the other telling me there weren’t no way she could just say she could walk all right suddenly. Doctors said all along there wasn’t anything wrong with her when there was. If she was to just walk all right suddenly, everybody’d say the doctors was right and she’d been faking. … Well, that’s where the miracle come from, Opal. Right from Satan. Now we’re going to pay the price.”
We rode along awhile not talking, until Bobby John turned on his CB radio and started in on his spiel to make himself feel better.
“Put your ears on, good buddy. You don’t need a 10-84 to call Him. He’s God’s Son and He loves you no matter what your handle is or what channel you’re on. He won’t break in. He only comes by invitation.”
A week later, Daddy was shouting it out. “They stole our miracle, right out from under our noses!” He was loud, folks over to the dump scavenging could likely hear him yelling from The Hand.
I was doing a count that Sunday morning, not fifty people there, unless you counted the six in the choir. Daddy made fifty-one in the whole place, and the weather was good, too. Sun was out, temperature was in the seventies.
“When the haves come down here to the have-nots for their miracles, they leave their checkbooks home! They wait until they’re back up there in front of the cameras to give witness, and they wait until they’re back up there with the rest of the haves to whip out their checkbooks!”
“Amen!” from Mrs. Bunch. Then everybody, “Amen!”
“Well, when The Rapture comes, and it’s close at hand, I feel it in my bones, when The Rapture comes, we’ll have something to say to the haves. Praise the Lord will we have something to say to them!”
Everybody: “Praise the Lord!”
“We’re going to fix our eyes on their eyes and we’re going to say, ‘Where were you when we were needing? We were there when you were needing, but where were you when we were needing?’”
“WHERE WERE YOU?” Mrs. Bunch called out.
“The Rapture’s coming!” someone else cried.
“You know it, brother!” Daddy shouted back. He came from around the lectern with his hands balled to fists, thick eyebrows scowling, voice cracking out over us like a whip: “WHEREWEREYOU? WHEREWEREYOU? WHEREWEREYOU?”
“Where were you?”—Mrs. Bunch.
“Shout it out!” Daddy ordered.
“WHEREWEREYOU?”
Then Daddy started them chanting: “Rather be a have-not when The Rapture comes, wouldn’t be a have if I could, and uh rather be a have-not when The Rapture comes, wouldn’t be a have if I could, and uh,” working it up like a train chugging “rather … be … a … have … not … rather … be … a … have … not … uh … rather be a … have-not … uh … rather be a have-not … uh … rather be a have-not, a have-not, a have-not, a have-not, a have-not—”
The real truth was deep inside me I would rather be a have, which was why The Rapture sometimes scared the living daylights out of me. When God came down to take us back up with Him, be caught in my true thoughts like a cat with my paw in the fishbowl.
After church, while Mum made dinner, I drove far down into The Hollow with Daddy, to call on Willard Peyton, who was too old and frail to leave his house.
On the way there, Daddy stopped the van long enough for me to pick wild flowers from a field, to take to Mr. Peyton.
I arranged the flowers in an old Tropicana orange-juice quart, while Daddy sat on Willard Peyton’s bed, in the center of his shack on Sunny Sky Drive, and held his hand.
The biggest thing in the shack besides the bed was an RCA color TV with a nineteen-inch screen, set on the floor. Mr. Peyton had it tuned in to Guy Pegler.
Daddy motioned to me to turn the sound down and said, “We missed you this morning, Willard.”
“Royal, I’m heading for the barn.”
“I came to pray with you, Willard.”
“I sent something in to Oral Roberts, sent something to Rex Humbard, even sent something to him”—pointing at the TV—“but all their prayers don’t seem to be doing any good. Worrying about my dog, Royal, who’ll take him.”
“These prayers are on the house, Willard,”
