She had prayed for pardon, over and over, but God must not have forgiven her sin. He might be punishing her for it now. She thought over all this while the hymn was still being sung:
“Death of death and Hell’s destruction
Land me safe on Canaan’s side.”
Those were solemn words, and shivers ran down her spine. She had never really repented about Unex, and to have July back as in those happy first days when she had been everything to him, she’d give up all her hopes of Heaven and choose Hell’s destruction with July rather than have the safety of Canaan’s side without him. She was never afraid of anything when July was with her, for he had no fear.
“Let us pray,” Brer Dee called out, and Mary knelt down with the others.
Maum Hannah said prayers were answered. God listened to people and gave them the things they asked for, provided they plead with Him long and hard enough. Maybe praying now would bring July home. She began whispering, silently, earnestly, “Please, God, do, little kind Jedus, send July back home to me. Do don’ let that wicked woman, Cinder, keep him. She is a sinner. One man is the same as another to her, so long as they are young an’ strong an’ have money jingling in their pockets.” Mary’s prayer was filled with telling God about Cinder’s sins. She forgot all about praying for the forgiveness of her own sin, that old scarlet sin she and July had sinned together before they ever married.
She had never even confessed it to Brer Dee and the deacons, who turned her straight out of the church for dancing. Kind old Brer Dee had no pity where sin was concerned. He would turn his own child out of the church as quickly as he’d turn out a stranger.
He opened the worn Bible, and, although the lamp was dim and smoky and blurred and his eyes were not sharp and his lips stumbled badly over some of the long hard words they tried to say, he still made enough of them plain to tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh, the wicked, powerful, heathen king who held the children of Israel in bondage. Cinder was a lot like King Pharaoh, who was stiff-necked and hard-hearted and mean.
Brer Dee took as the theme of his talk the command given to Pharaoh by the Lord God: “Let my people go.” He shouted, as loud as he could, over and over the earnest, high-pitched, half-sung words, “Let my people go!”
The rhythm of the sentence, “Let my people go” shifted in Mary’s ears into a call to Cinder away off in town, “Let my July go!” A human voice could not go so far, but Brer Dee said the Holy Spirit was all-powerful. Time and distance were nothing to it, and it could reach to the ends of the earth.
If that were true the Holy Spirit might take her prayers right now, through the night, across all those miles of swamps and river and fields and forests clear to town to make Cinder let July go and to fetch him home to Unex and her. Tears trickled down Mary’s face as she tried to plead with God to send the Holy Spirit for July, but Brer Dee suddenly closed the Book with a snap and called on Andrew, the blacksmith, to pray, since his own voice was too hoarse to say another word. The strain of trying to move sinful hearts to prayer and repentance had him spent and breathless, and the hot fire back of him had him wet with sweat.
Although Andrew was little older than July, he had already been married twice, the first time to Mary’s cousin who died and left one little boy named Big Boy, then soon after her death he married Doll, July’s sister, a woman some years older than Mary, who already had a house full of children. When Andrew first became a widower he courted Mary, and Budda Ben urged her to marry him, for Andrew would make a fine husband, but Mary had argued that while no man on the plantation was more able than Andrew, who was a solemn deacon, she loved July best because he laughed and joked and sang as he worked and was fresh and ready for frolic when night came.
Andrew was now the faithful husband of Doll, her own sister-in-law. And Doll was shaking and patting Andrew’s colicky baby, hushing its cries while its father prayed to God, and July, her July, was God only knew where. Still, if she had it to do all over again, she’d choose July before any man in the world. Nobody else knew how to be so tender, or so gay, or so bold in loving.
Everybody stood up and sang the last hymn, slowly, solemnly, following the words Brer Dee lined out of the book.
“My soul be on thy guard
Ten thousand foes arise,”
The weight of dismay in Mary’s heart made her knees shaky. Tears burned her eyelids.
“The hosts of sin are pressing hard
To draw thee from the skies.”
Prayer-meeting was over and the shouting was about to start. The middle of the room was cleared quickly as the benches were carried out into the yard and put back under the house where they would stay until next meeting night. All the Christian men who had strong singing voices grouped themselves in one corner, and after a few minutes’ talk decided on the spiritual “Jubalee.” Andrew raised it, his deep voice ringing out full, his great throat swelling with the song.
“Dis is de year of Juba-lee.
Shout you, mo’ners, you done free.”
The others marked the beat of the words with a slow hand-clapping and a quiet knee-bending, singing low until the whole congregation joined in with a hearty fervor. Men, women, children sang with faithful reverence, waiting for the spirit to move the people’s hearts and make shouts ring out with
