Sometimes I get to wondering what that night would have been like if that hadn’t happened to his car, and if he had made it to The Hand. But wondering that way, I’ve learned, doesn’t mean anything, because the meaning in everything is in what really happened, not in what might have happened.
What really happened was the police found them broken down, three miles from The Hollow, on Tanning Hide Road. They took Bobby John in; they took Guy Pegler home.
In between that happening and our finding out about it, my whole life changed. During that in-between time, long after the seed time, was the harvest, and I’ll tell you this about those harvests from my own experience. You don’t see them coming. That’s what amazes me.
Brother Dudley’d been on for hours without one leg growing, and no visible healing. It was the lights of the cameras making people reluctant, Daddy said when we stopped for sandwiches, and the strangers among us, so many faces unfamiliar to us, newspeople and people sneaking in, claiming they were always at them things. It was the restlessness in the crowd, everyone watching the door, waiting for Bobby John and Dr. Pegler. The air was too charged up, Daddy said, the only thing to do was go in the same direction.
Daddy went on at the stroke of ten, wearing his silver-lined coat, jumping suddenly like an exclamation point turning into a comma while he shouted at them: “SINNNNN—NERS!”
Crouched down, his fist in his palm where he’d punched it.
A silence that sent a chill up your spine.
Whispered next, soft but like the hissing sound of a rattle on a big snake’s tail: “Sinners. … What are you here for?” a little louder, “Why did you come here?” and louder, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
You could feel people’s hearts beating, feel everything stopped but the heartbeats, and the red eye of the TV camera.
“WHAT ARE YOU HERE FOR?”
“To get saved,” someone.
“WHAT?”
“To get saved,” more.
“WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHAT?”
“To get SAVED!”
“GOD!” Daddy shouted. “My high tower, and my refuge, and my Savior!”
“My high tower!” Mrs. Bunch called out.
“My HIGH tower!”—Daddy.
Then when I looked up, raising my hands and my eyes with everyone, while we shouted it out, I saw him.
Saw him on his long legs coming in the pew, tie hanging down, blue eyes seeing mine, squeezing past people until he was at my side.
Said, “Opal,” leaning down, warm breath near my ear, then, “Hi.”
“Bud,” all I could manage.
“My HIGH tower!” Daddy shouted.
“My HIGH tower!”—everyone. Me. Bud.
“My REFUGE! My SAVIOR!”
“My REFUGE!”—everyone. Me. Bud. “My SAVIOR!”
Bud Pegler put his hands out, palms up to receive the spirit, shouted out, shouted, “Yes, Jesus!”
“YES, JESUS!”—others.
“JE-SUS!”—everyone.
“YES, JE-SUS!” everyone shouted.
Then I did. “Yes, Je-sus!”
We all were, and I knew something soon as we all were, with the organ starting, choir beginning softly:
“When love shines in,
How the heart is tuned to singing,
knew I belonged there and they were my own.
Knew he belonged there.
Even in the bright lights, in the camera’s eye beaming out at us, when I saw Mum come down from the choir, that look in her eye, I felt my heart leap under my dress, but not the old wild fearful way now. My eyes couldn’t get enough of her, loving her thick legs moving side to side that way, beginning, loving her fat arms reaching up, listening to her, watching her big, sweet body swaying, Bud’s body swaying beside my own, everyone moving back and forth, music lifting us up, swaying back and forth. I was going up so high. I was on a climb. I was reaching so high that suddenly Bud’s hand reached high to grab mine, holding mine but not able to keep me down until I fell.
I fell.
I don’t know how long I was down, Mum said not that long, but I came up singing.
I came up and I was singing, the way I’d always thought I could, just as loud and not in any language that I ever heard before, just as loud and in my own voice, soaking wet all over me, cameras going, I could see their red eyes on me, tiny red living specks, and I had tongues. I felt my body giving room to my soul while it burst into full bloom.
Bud Pegler drove me home, while Daddy and Mum went down to bail out Bobby John. The Soaking was still going on.
“It was worth coming home to hear you, Opal,” Bud said.
We were coming up from The Hollow in the starry night.
“Well, it just happened.”
“Yes, God. It happened.”
“But I never thought my own brother would do a thing like that.”
“If I’d known it was Bobby John, I don’t think I’d have come all the way from Connecticut ninety miles an hour.” He looked at me, smiling, the whitest teeth. “I’m glad I did now.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was working at a nursery, landscaping, gardening. I was having all these arguments in my head with my father.”
“Daddy and Bobby John are always arguing, too.”
“Ever since my father got on TV, we haven’t gotten along well. I have trouble with the TV part of his ministry, I guess.”
“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “After a while you don’t even notice you’re on camera.”
Bud laughed real hard at that.
“Well, you don’t I said.
He reached down and snapped on the radio. He put his long arm on the back of the seat behind my head. I had my hands folded and could see the moons up on the nails of my right fingers. I let my head drop back, turned my cheek to the sleeve of his coat.
Some song came on, I don’t know—one of them. We rode along
