Papa and Reverend Davenport turned around toward the house, and I snapped my attention back to the duffel’s broken zipper. Caleb lugged his suitcase down the steps, the wheels bumping each piece of wood.
“What are you looking at?”
“Nothing.” The zipper on my duffel was stuck on a T-shirt. Caleb sidestepped me and hefted his suitcase into the trunk.
“Here, let me get that.” He zipped my duffel shut and lifted it over his shoulder with arms that had started to grow ropy muscles. His wiry build had only recently been chiseled out of the baby fat that had cleaved to his frame for the past fifteen years. Suddenly, he was beginning to look more like Papa than my younger brother.
“Since when did you become an expert at packing the trunk?”
“There’s so much you don’t know about me.”
I wanted a witty comeback, but his words stung more than I expected them to. We’d been so close when we were younger. When Papa first pulled him into the ministry, he’d sneak in my room at night to complain about the long hours in the study and the heightened scrutiny of his behavior. But recently, as he had started having a more prominent role in each service, the visits to my room stopped as his sessions in the study with Papa got even longer. Sometimes when he was in the pulpit with the deacons, I’d try to catch his eye as he led a prayer, but he wouldn’t look back at me.
We piled back into the car: next stop, Carthage, Mississippi. I hoped that the news of the boy would reach this new church before we did, and that there would be overflow crowds on the first night. The bigger the crowds, the better all our days would be. Good days were like rare coins that I stuffed into empty pockets. Days when the sun came up early without any sign of rain, when the tents were packed beyond capacity, when people were healed, when the spirit was moving. It helped to save up those coins for when we would have to use them—when only a handful of people turned out, when Papa’s righteous anger about God shifted from his voice behind the pulpit to his mighty hand that struck us far away from the congregants’ eyes. But I pushed those memories out of my mind as Papa turned on the car and the engine hummed to life. He shifted into reverse, and the place we had called home for the past week grew smaller. Shadows of overhanging trees crisscrossed the front window as gravel crunched beneath the tires. Reverend and Mrs. Davenport stood on the porch of their house and waved.
“Caleb, can you say our parting prayer?” Ma asked.
“Lord, watch over these Your children. Use us to do Your will. Amen.”
Amen.
We stayed in Mississippi for two weeks—after Carthage, we moved to Columbus, where Papa healed run-of-the-mill ailments and was preaching to standing-room-only crowds by the final Friday service. The following week, in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a family pushed a pallid child to the altar in a wheelchair. Papa spent a few extra minutes on the girl. As he touched her, the color came back to her cheeks. She didn’t walk that night—it was not to be—but the gathered crowd seemed to be satisfied with what he could do, enough to give him a rousing round of applause.
The next afternoon, we meandered off I-64 after the green highway sign read BETHEL, NORTH CAROLINA. Ma called out directions to Christ the Redeemer Holy Church of God, where Reverend Griffith was waiting for us. It was the fifth stop of this summer’s revival season—six more weeks to go. By this point last summer, I had already started to feel restless, but this summer, I was grateful for the subtle seat belt pressure on my chest and the bouncing movement of the tires beneath me. With each mile that we traveled on the highway, we outran the specter of the pregnant girl’s face frozen in agony and the hollow thump of Papa’s fist in the center of her stomach.
We turned right off the highway and passed a huge expanse of land where men were driving stakes into the ground. It was just trodden grass now, but on Monday night, there would be a giant tent with rows of folding chairs, a pulpit, and a cross inside. Papa slowed next to the field before opening the door; stepping outside in his dressy loafers, he approached the tent stakes, walked along the perimeter, and then stopped in the middle. Papa knelt in a bare patch and placed his head in his hands. Though the minivan was a hundred yards away from him, we bowed our heads in reverence. Hannah jerked her chin close to her chest, her body momentarily still. Papa’s mouth moved slowly, his lips barely parting to let out sound. Though I couldn’t hear his prayer, I imagined his words. Lord, let me be an instrument of Thy will. Let Your people come to be saved and healed. Amen. Somewhere behind that prayer, in what he couldn’t say to God but held deep in his heart, I knew that he wanted something else like the walking boy in Americus.
After a welcome dinner with the Griffiths, we ambled back to the big house on the church property with full stomachs. Lights illuminated the pillars and bushes, making everything glow. Papa opened the front door, and we began to stumble toward our
