It pattered and popped against the silver tin roof. Echoed through the house made of brick, plaster, and unanswered prayers. Slid gurgling through the gutters. Gushed into the earth. Puddled around the ancient tires of the somber Buicks and Cadillacs parked in the backyard because the church had no parking lot.
The boy clipped on his navy blue tie with the green and white stripes and wondered if God was crying.
He shrugged into his blue blazer, the one his mother had bought at Goodwill for five dollars, the one that had the stain on the lapels you couldn't see unless someone told you it was there.
He slipped on the penny loafers his brother had outgrown last summer, wiggled his toes in the extra room that he knew would give him a blister. Sighed.
The Root of All Evil was not growing in the parsonage.
He kicked a pile of Legos out of the way and left his room behind. Trotted down the stairs that had always squeaked. Stopped in the hallway at the bottom by the upright piano that had never been in tune. Tapped at the B sharp that had never worked. Moved on.
His mother and his brother were waiting by the back door. She was wearing her black dress and her silver necklace. His brother was wearing a five-dollar, Goodwill blazer. Three years apart but they still dressed like twins.
His mother was giving the Speech. Be on your best behavior. Be respectful. Look people in the eye. Say yes sir and no sir. Yes ma'am. No ma'am. Be young men. Not little boys.
She had been giving the Speech for a year now, ever since the boy and his brother had played hide-and-seek at a wedding reception and his brother had almost knocked the cake over when he had hid underneath its table. She had been so embarrassed.
She hadn't wanted this life.
She had married an engineer. Not a pastor.
But things change.
Souls are set ablaze with holy fire and everyone around gets singed.
The three of them huddled under a black umbrella and went outside.
The rain was gentle. No wind. No malice.
God had destroyed the world with rain. Now He bathed her with it.
The boy's loafers sank into the puddles as they made the trek across the gravel driveway to the church. He wondered what it must be like having to drive to church.
They marched up the concrete steps at the front of the church, where old Mr. Howe had always smoked a cigarette between Sunday school and worship. Until cancer had eaten his lungs and he hadn't been able to smoke anymore.
The boy remembered the funeral. It had been on a sunny day in September, summer's white-knuckled grip finally being pulled apart by an autumn breeze. There had been few people at that funeral, and even fewer tears.
The boy had once had a puppy. It had wandered onto Mr. Howe's land and the old man had shot it with a .12-gauge shotgun.
The boy had smiled at Mr. Howe's funeral.
They stepped inside the vestibule, his brother accepting a program from an usher while his mother snapped the umbrella shut. To the left was the small room where the deacons told jokes while they waited to take the offering on Sunday mornings. To the right was the room that had the rope that rang the church's bell. The bell that the boy and his brother had gotten spanked for ringing on a Saturday night because there had been nothing else to do. Up ahead was the sanctuary where the funerals were held.
The Sanctuary.
Take off your hat. Wipe your feet. This is the House of the Lord. Act like it.
Blood red carpet slid beneath the rows of oak pews that were just comfortable enough to fall asleep in. The chandeliers clinging to the vaulted ceiling cast gloomy light that made it hard to read the lyrics in the hymnals, the hymnals that made the church smell like a musty library.
Along the walls were twelve colorful stained-glass windows depicting the life of Jesus Christ. The Manger. The Temple where twelve-year-old Jesus had spoken to the old men. The Baptism. The Temptation. The Woman at the Well. Walking on Water. Healing the Blind Beggar. The Last Supper. The Garden of Gethsemane. The Crucifixion. The Empty Tomb. The Ascension.
The boy had been to all the churches in the county and had seen their stained-glass windows. He knew that these were the most beautiful.
They found a seat towards the back below the Woman at the Well. The boy looked across the sanctuary, sizing up the crowd. All the regular antebellum leftovers were in attendance. Mr. Holliday with his toupee that somehow always seemed to point north. Miss Durham with her quivering jaw, rheumy eyes, and purse full of Luden's throat lozenges. Colonel Berglund with his glass eye, the man who had driven an ambulance in World War I. Mr. Clayton with his sloppy dentures. According to the rumors, he had once shot a black man for brushing up against his Oldsmobile.
Millionaires, all of them. Old money that had trickled down from the plantations. These were the people who kept the church afloat. They were the ones who had paid for the boy's Goodwill blazer and hand-me-down loafers.
And they were dying.
Weighing down the front pew was Gerald Updike, the undertaker, a man so fat he couldn't fit into the coffins he sold. His funeral home was in the county seat ten miles away. He slept upstairs, and the corpses slept downstairs. The boy could only assume Mr. Updike had an elevator.
Every Christmas, Mr. Updike would send poinsettias to all the old women in town. In their bridge clubs and beauty parlors, the women would talk about what a nice man this Updike fellow was, sending flowers out of the goodness of his congested heart--never realizing he was soliciting their upcoming business.
Mr. Updike was getting busier by the week. Pretty soon, the boy imagined, he wouldn't have any white people left to come sleep in his living room.
The organ, which had been dribbling unobtrusively through the background, raised its voice and the service began.
They boy wasn't paying attention. He was staring into the exquisite window, watching Jesus talk with the Samaritan whore.
He thought of the water gun fight he and his brother had had last summer on the Fourth of July. How the sun's dazzling smile had made him squint. How the muggy, wet heat had coaxed the sweat from his pores like a snake charmer bringing forth his serpent. How the dewy grass had tickled his bare feet as he had sneaked around the side of the house. How the savory ghosts of hotdogs and hamburgers from cookouts down the street had settled over the backyard and had refused to leave.
He had finally caught his brother by surprise and had been just about to unleash a torrent of cold water on him when the back door had opened and their father had called them inside. The boy had tossed his water rifle in the grass next to a patch of dandelions.
Three days later, he had been at his grandmother's funeral.
The water rifle had lain in the grass for the rest of the summer, its rainbow plastic bleaching in the sun.
The dandelions had died.
The organ fell silent and the boy's father stepped to the pulpit. Frowned with hopeful gravity. Gripped the pulpit with vulnerable authority. Spoke with reserved passion.
The boy kept staring at the window.
He thought of the day the new Wal-Mart had opened twenty miles away in Rapid City. The newspaper had said free food would be there, so the boy and his family had piled into their burgundy Mazda and had started driving. They had driven through the endless sprawl of cotton fields that had once been picked by slaves. Past the white oak with the noose hanging from its lowest branch that had a story everyone had forgotten. Through the brief patch of swamp that was
supposed to be haunted.
Up ahead, blurry through the heat rising off the pavement, police lights had flashed. An accident had occurred, one involving a motorcycle and a Ford F-350.
Don't look, the boy's father had said.
The boy had looked.
Blood and organs smeared across the asphalt like spaghetti used as finger paint. The policemen shaking their heads, hidden behind their sunglasses. The driver of the truck sobbing in the ditch.
Someone in the audience began to cry. The boy didn't look to see who it was.
He looked into the Samaritan woman's eyes and thought of the kitten his mother had found on the side of the road. She had taken it home, bathed it, given it a saucer of milk. Orange fur and big blue eyes. They had named her Marmalade. She had made the boy smile. Until the day he had walked outside to get the paper and had found her body lying half-crushed on the double yellow line in the middle of the street.
The boy's father finished speaking and Gerald Updike lumbered to the pulpit and sang "It Is Well".