“It’s a super idea!” she congratulated herself.
I felt like telling her to knock it off—Bud was finished with her, and nothing she could do for ACE would change that. He’d told me himself the thing with Seal had ended for him; he pinpointed the ending to an evening when she’d stopped him in the middle of this long, passionate kiss to tell him about some new idea she had for “telephone tithing.”
I began to get that ache in my gut that came when I watched Seal and realized she never saw me. She looked at me but I wasn’t there: Bud’s brother was.
She was hopping around the room now in her stocking feet and jeans and T-shirt, telling me of course I knew who Opal Ringer was when I didn’t, going on and on the way Seal did.
I was wondering why we couldn’t just roll up our jeans around our ankles and run down to the beach, along the surf, hand in hand, and talk about something simple like who did what at school, laughing and forgetting everything back at ACE.
I was always wondering things like that, missing being something like a plumber’s son or the son of a lawyer, or anything but a preacher’s kid. We could never just roll around on the floor with the comics Sunday mornings and let the world go by.
“Seal?” I said. “Why don’t we just roll up our jeans and—”
“Shhh! Jesse.”
My father’s face appeared bigger than life on the TV, and his voice echoed from the loudspeakers outside. “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and—”
I sighed and held my chin with my hands, while Seal stood as still as she could and still be Seal, shut her eyes, bowed her head.
“Amen!” my father said.
“Jesse?” Seal said, coming across to me and throwing herself across my lap. “You want to go for a ride?”
“Hey! What’re you doing?”
She mussed up my hair with her long fingers.
“What’re you doing, Seal?”
“Getting you to go to a healing with me,” Seal said. “I’ll even let you drive.”
Three
OPAL RINGER
I USED TO HATE it when anyone from your world showed up at The Hand. It wasn’t anything I ever had to worry about a lot, because those of you who did go to church went to the fancy ones along Main Street, or out to the new TV Summer House, starring Guy Pegler.
Seaville had eight churches beside ours and one Jewish Center. All of them were on the other side of the railroad tracks from us. Even the black Baptist church was located on the good side of the tracks.
We were down in The Hollow, a stone’s throw from the dump.
On a hot Sunday morning when we had the doors and windows open, you could hear the gulls fighting over the garbage. When the wind blew you could smell the garbage, too.
I’ll never forget the time Mr. Westminster brought the whole Central High social history class to The Hand. Seeing how the Holy Rollers roll, I guess, calling it studying the ways others worship or some dumb thing like that. Daddy was glad because the offering was over three hundred dollars that Sunday. … Me, I wished I was six foot under. I felt like I was walking around in front of all of you in my underwear.
I remember the looks on your faces. Every time somebody’d raise their palms and say, “Thank you, Jesus!” you’d give each other looks, and your mouths would start twitching. You’d pretend you were coughing behind your hands, and a couple of you couldn’t even fake it, just got to giggling.
Every Sunday someone got slain in the spirit and fell over. Some churches had catchers, men who stood by to help the fall of whoever it was keeled over. Daddy didn’t believe in that, believed no one got hurt when the spirit of Jesus moved him or her. No one ever came up from the floor in The Hand worse off than before they fell, so maybe Daddy was onto something.
But you all never saw anything like that in your lives. I remember it scared Sybil Younger so bad she ran down the aisle and out the back door.
The woman who fell was Mrs. Bunch from Bunch Cleaners. She got slain in the spirit three or four times a year, and she was big, landed with a thud. Daddy always went over and stood by her and said, “Oh thank you, Jesus!” and the rest of us said it, too.
Sometimes I said it and sometimes I didn’t, and I sure didn’t say it that Sunday morning. My face was the color of cooked beets, and I didn’t even have Mum to hide behind. She was up there with her slip showing in the front row of the choir, singing “When God Dips His Love in My Heart.”
That Sunday afternoon before the healing, there was one of you waiting out front when we came up from lunch in the basement. On healing Sundays we always brought lunch so people didn’t have to troop home and back on the same day.
My own personal name for Seal von Hennig was V. Chicken. She was one of them who went to Seaville High, the school kids going on to college attend.
Before Bud Pegler ran off from home, Seal was his girl and they were the IT couple in this whole town. They had IT and they were IT, and you know how you watch a pair like them and think about what they got, what it’d be like to be them.
I knew more about what was between them than most, I think, because I helped out at the von Hennigs’ when Mum couldn’t handle all the work herself. Mum earned extra money working there, said I didn’t do any helping out holding their lace tablecloths to my face, swooning over the way they felt against my skin, but
