I finally knew all the truth about the glow, driving up from The Hollow in the summer night. No glow could ever be one if it didn’t start off a speck.
That’s what amazed me.
Fourteen
JESSE PEGLER
NEAR MIDNIGHT MY BROTHER called to say that he was in Seaville, that he’d gone directly to The Helping Hand Tabernacle, and that he’d be home as soon as he dropped off Opal Ringer.
My father was already asleep in bed, exhausted from the ordeal with Bobby John. I’d just come back from making the ACE presentation at The Last Dance.
Mother and Donald decided to let my father sleep; he’d had too much excitement for one day. He had to be up early for I’s Up to You.
I went up to my room changed into my pajamas, and listened to the radio in the dark. When I heard my mother’s whoop of joy downstairs, I knew Bud had come through the front door.
I got up and put on my robe.
I stalled around a little, waiting for the fireworks to end.
When I finally went down the staircase, he was still standing in the hall, his suitcase at his feet, somehow taller. He had on a suit and a shirt and a tie.
“Hey! Jesse!” he shouted up at me, and the next thing I knew I was trying to keep from bawling myself (tears were running down my mother’s face; even Donald was teary eyed), and I was taking the steps by twos, running toward him.
“Jesse! Jesse!” And he hugged me hard.
We let go of each other and I gave him a punch on the arm, laughing up at him, our eyes meeting for the first time. He had this look on his face, familiar and not, and for a minute I just stared at him to try and figure out what there was about the look, until he said, “Thank you, Jesus.” He shut his eyes. “Oh, thank you, Jesus,” serious, a whisper, and I saw my father, the same way my father must have always seen himself, younger, yes, but it was unmistakably him.
After Donald left, I went back up to bed, to give my mother a chance to talk with Bud alone.
When he finally came into our bedroom, he talked to me as he undressed, small talk, checking to be sure our father really was okay, saying he was a little worried about Mother, she seemed down.
He was getting into his pajama bottoms when he finally said, “I was about ready to come home, anyway.”
“To stay?”
“For a while.”
“And then?”
“Then I might go to Western Bible Institute.”
I didn’t say anything.
“I’m bushed,” he said.
I said so was I.
He didn’t ask about Seal. He said it felt good to be back, he’d missed everyone, he’d watched It’s Up to You every week.
“You were so close,” I said. “Why didn’t you just come home for a weekend if you missed everyone so much?”
He was sitting there bare chested, in his pajama bottoms, finishing a Marlboro, smoking the way he always had, no hands, the cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth, smoking curling up past his face.
“I wanted to do a lot of thinking,” he said.
Then he put out his cigarette and said, “Hey, let’s get some sleep. Do you want to pray with me first?” and he was actually getting down on his knees.
I pretended to sleep late the next morning so my father and Bud could enjoy their reunion.
My father made the most of it. He got Bud to go on camera with him, and Bud stood in the receiving line with him after the service was over.
My mother and father and Bud had breakfast together after It’s Up to You, and I straggled in after they were finished. My mother was in the kitchen, and Bud and my father were sitting over coffee.
“… and you don’t think Jesus would have taken advantage of television to get His message across?” my father was saying as I strolled into the dining room.
“Good morning,” I said.
“I’m just saying I wouldn’t want a television ministry,” Bud said. “I’d be happy in a little church somewhere in the sticks.”
“Good morning, son,” said my father. “… Are you too good for television?”
“No, I’m not too good for it! Hi, Jesse.”
“Pull up a chair, Jesse, son. … I asked you if you don’t think Jesus would have taken advantage of television to get His message across?”
“I’m not talking about Jesus now,” Bud said. “I’m talking about me.”
“Me me me,” my father said.
So nothing’d changed in that department.
I sat there and let them go at it.
After breakfast, Bud said he’d like to drive around Seaville.
“Does that sound good to you, Jesse?” he asked me.
I thought he probably wanted to get out of the house, get away from Dad. I gave him a wink and a smile and we took off.
On our way into town, I said, “I hate the tube, too. If you ask me, it’s Dad’s ego trip.”
Bud said, “Well, he was right about Jesus. Jesus spoke to crowds whenever he could. There were thousands at the Sermon on the Mount.”
I had nothing to say to that.
When we got to Seaville, we drove down Main Street, past St. Luke’s, where workers were taking down the tent and the lights from The Last Dance.
I told him one of the reasons Mom might have seemed “down” was she couldn’t go to many things with Dad anymore. Dad always got mobbed. I told him how they’d decided not to go to the dance, and how disappointed Mom was.
“She doesn’t have enough contact with people,” Bud said.
“She runs ACORN,” I said. “Seal helps her with it.”
“ACORN is all done by correspondence,” Bud said. “Mom likes the dinner on the ground,
