“I’m not blaming Dr. Pegler or It’s Up to You, because it was all my idea, with Satan helping. There’s a twenty-four hour Soaking at The Helping Hand Tabernacle tonight. That’s as good a time as any to get this thing cleared up.
“I’ll be there by ten o’clock and Dr. Pegler will be with me. D. Y., honeybunch, after this is all over I want you to be my wife. I’m asking you that on network TV. If you’ll have me.
“Come to the Soaking in The Hollow at The Helping Hand Tabernacle. This sinner will be there. … And thank you, Jesus. …I hope I’ve got a good 10-2. 10-10.”
Thirteen
OPAL RINGER
RIGHT AFTER WE HEARD Bobby John on the seven o’clock news, Daddy came in his van to take Mum, me, and the sandwiches we made for the Soaking to The Hand.
“Well,” Daddy said, “he’s done it this time! This time he’s really done it up good!”
“Faking that thing was weighing on his brain just like a tumor,” Mum said.
“What brain’s that, I’d like to know,” said Daddy. “He’s the new overnight sensation’s what he is, got himself a worldwide reputation now, in a class with Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan, and John Hinckley. On the news driving over here, I heard he was a dangerous religious fanatic!”
“That’s the killer!” Mum said.
“I said to Jesus coming over, Well he’s Your boy now, if You still want him. I wash my hands of him.”
“I don’t and Jesus don’t.”
“Jesus don’t wash His hands of anybody, is the only reason he don’t wash His hands of Bobby John.”
I swear Jesus made that summer night Himself, too. Driving along between them in the front seat of the van, I never saw so many stars show themselves before the sky got dark, while the sun was still going down, and in the warm evening air, all the sweet smells of things coming to blossom.
Late that afternoon when word came it was only Bobby John holding Guy Pegler, I still had the hope like some soft tiny baby bird’s feather rustling around in the wind we’d go to that dumb dance, thought Jesse might call back, say, Well, it’s only your brother, so no sense spoiling everything we looked forward to, Opal.
While I looked out the window of the van at the town, I knew that town so well, tears started leaking out of my eyes.
“Hush, now, honey,” Mum said, “you’ll get your pretty yellow dress all salty tears.”
“I never thought I’d be wearing this thing just to a Soaking,” I said.
“How are the Peglers taking it?” Daddy said.
“They’re not coming to The Hand,” I said. “They’re going to let the police handle it. Jesse’s staying home with his mother.”
“I said how are they taking it, not what are they doing?”
“They’re just taking it,” I said. (Jesse? I told him, I’m real disappointed about the dance, real disappointed. Yeah, he said back. Well, Opal, we can’t stay on the phone now.)
“They shouldn’t come to The Hand, they’re right about that. Police got roadblocks up, traffic’s thicker than Hell’s crowds with Satan’s sightseers.”
“Are our own people getting through?” Mum said.
“They’re there, most of them by now, with the cameras and the newsmen. I said we’ll have no cameras in the church, that was my first thought, but Brother Dudley said let them set up, won’t hurt the unsaved to see the saved one little bit, won’t hurt anyone to see a real church and not a nightclub act.”
“Still no word from Bobby John?” Mum said.
“Nothing you didn’t hear on the TV. Says he’s coming, bringing Guy Pegler with him. Well, the police are waiting. So’s his girl friend.”
“D. Y.’s there?” I said.
“Seems she’s changed herself into a girl from whatever she was before.”
“She was always a girl, Royal. That’s what got Bobby John into all this trouble.”
“Well she’s there, with her daddy, and more police.”
“What got Bobby John into all this trouble was he was trying to help The Hand,” I said. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know The Hand could do without his help,” Daddy said.
When we got down into The Hollow, the police stopped the van to check it out, then let us on though.
Brother Dudley was conducting the service. Daddy’d told him we were all just going on with the Soaking, never mind Bobby John’s crazy schemes. Daddy went in the back door of The Hand, while Mum and I took the sandwiches down to the basement.
We could hear them upstairs, stamping their feet and shouting though Brother Dudley’s words, and the organ playing softly, playing my favorite:
Take the Savior here below
With you everywhere you go.
He will keep the joy bells ringing in your heart …
Joy—bells, ringing in your heart.
“Well,” Mum said when we got finished putting out paper plates and napkins, “we’d better go on up, honey. Whatever will happen will happen.”
She gave me a hug. “You look so pretty in that dress, honey.”
“Thanks to Bobby John it don’t matter what I look like in any dress,” I said. “He’s just like Daddy, only thinks about himself.”
“Who’re you thinking about but your own self, Opal Ringer?”
“He could have picked another time is all I’m saying.”
“People don’t pick the time they go off their rocker, honey,” said Mum. “Bobby John isn’t in his right mind. … That won’t be the last Last Dance, anyway.”
“For me it is,” I said. “I’m back in the same old rut.”
She put her arm around me and we walked toward the stairs. “Don’t be worrying about ruts, sweetheart,” she said. “When The Rapture comes—”
I didn’t even let her finish. “That dumb thing isn’t ever coming! We just always say it’s coming when we can’t take what’s already here!”
But Mum was going right on anyway, “… the door will open in heaven and the first voice will be as a trumpet talking, saying, Come up hither. …”
There is a time to everything, I’ve known that to be true.
A time to be
