Maum Hannah’s big room was ready, waiting for the people. A great yellow pine fire leaped high up the chimney, fanned by drafts from the wide-open door and windows. The same draft fluttered the swinging circles of fringed newspapers that were fastened on barrel-hoops and hung overhead to the old time-stained rafters, which they completely hid, making a cool, light adornment for the room. The side walls were covered with newspapers, soiled, smoky, yellow, for they were put up before Christmas and this was September. The small pine table, bare except for a small glass kerosene lamp and a worn Testament, stood a few feet from the hearth. Around this the wooden benches, which lived all the week in a pile under the house, were placed in orderly fashion clear back to the very walls. These old benches, each one a narrow board with four stout legs and no back, were sturdy and strong, able to hold up all the weight put on them.
Mary chose a seat near the door, for only members in good standing were entitled to sit near the front. Sinners were required to take the back seats. But she liked to sit where she could see everybody who came in the door, or who stood outside in the yard. July might get home tonight. He may have been left by mistake somehow. He’d find some way to get home. Cinder could not fool him off and make him forget all about her and Unex. Never. He knew Cinder and her tricky ways too well for that.
Some of the old sisters sitting near the lamp and the Bible, opened their eyes from praying and peered at Mary when she tipped in. “Good-evenin,” they all said with a bow.
“Good-evenin,” she answered softly.
Maum Hannah looked up again and cleared her throat, “How-come you is settin so far back, honey? You could come up nigher to de table. Unex could sit on de front bench.”
Mary thought hard for an answer. “De fire is most too hot for Unex, Auntie. I’m ’faid e might would catch cold.” It was a good excuse, and Maum Hannah folded her arms again, and closed her eyes and went back to her praying.
The yellow pine fire blazed higher and brighter, sending its hungry tongues in and out through the logs, hunting the tender rich spots, eating them first. By twos and threes the people came in, sometimes by whole families, father, mother, children like steps. The benches were all filled and those coming too late to get seats had to stand beside the walls, or stay outside in the yard, where their low talking hummed as if bees were swarming out there in the darkness.
The firelight beamed on the women’s Sunday hats and dresses, on the men’s close-clipped heads, but the yellow lamplight stayed on the table, for its work was to show Brer Dee, the leader, how to read the fine print in the Testament, and to help him line out the hymns for the people to sing, two lines at a time.
Brer Dee stood with his back to the fire, and found a place in the Testament by holding it right up to the lamp’s dim eye, then, laying that book down, with its open face on the table, he took up the hymnbook and searched its leaves until he came to what he wanted.
He straightened up, looked the crowd over, scratched his bony head, stroked his beard and began in a rumbling voice:
“Yunnuh listen, chillen, whilst I line out de hymn for all o we to sing to de praise o God.”
A deep silence fell. Even the tiny babies in their mothers’ arms, and the little children holding to grown people’s knees, gazed at him with round eyes while he rolled out the musical words:
“Guide me, Oh Thou great Jehovah!
Pilgrim through this barren land.”
Brer Dee himself raised the tune, and all the people joined in singing to God, asking help of His mighty strength for their own weakness.
As Mary sang tears streamed out of her eyes and fell on the shawl around Unex. She patted him softly, gently while he slept peacefully through the great full-throated waves of sound.
Where was her July now? Mary’s heart ached bitterly. It lay heavy and slow-beating in her breast, weighing her whole body down.
Brer Dee lined out the next two lines of the hymn:
“I am weak, but Thou art mighty,
Hold me with Thy powerful hand.”
Mary sobbed as she sang. Sorrow had her weakened so her knees quivered with little Unex’s weight. She who had been so strong a year ago, even a month ago, had become feeble and trembling in one short day and night of misery.
God had forgotten her. Maybe He was vexed because she loved July too much. And to punish her He had let Cinder take July away. He is a jealous God, with the power to give and take anything and everything. Maum Hannah said so.
He could even take babies out of their mothers’ arms. This idea pierced her with a sharp pang, and her arms tightened on Unex’s soft yielding body, until he wriggled and squirmed, and fretted out loud with discomfort. Mary patted him and rocked her body from side to side putting him back to sleep. Maybe God held another thing against her. God knew she got Unex before she was married, but He knew too that July was the only man in the world for her, and if he had refused to marry her she would have been faithful to him
