Midnight Without a Moon(46)
The room erupted in “amens.”
Now that he’d gotten the crowd stirred, Reverend Mims leaned back, cupped his right hand to the side of his mouth as if to shout his message to heaven, and said, “Praise ya, Lawd, for these souls that’s go’n one day join you at yo’ grand table in heaven. We all go’n feast on milk and honey. Come on taste and see that the Lawd is good.” He dropped his hand and danced a little jig around the pulpit as if he had said something remarkable.
The congregation, it appeared, agreed. Folks started dancing and shouting about milk and honey, wearing a long white robe, and sitting at the Lawd’s table, as if it would happen that night. When Fred Lee and I made eye contact, it took every ounce of resolve to keep myself from laughing. I knew I shouldn’t have been playing around during such a serious and sacred time, but I wanted to come to religion on my own terms, not Ma Pearl’s.
“Y’all young folks better be ready to meet the Lawd at any time,” Reverend Mims shouted over the shouting. “When death come to look for souls, he ain’t looking at nobody’s age. He’ll take ya at eighty-four, sixty-four, forty-four, twenty-four, fourteen, or even four. Yes, he take babies, too. He’ll take you whether you a man or a woman, boy or girl, white or black. He’ll take you whether you live in Mississippi or just visiting.”
Folks started shouting and falling all over the floor.
“Is you ready?” Reverend Mims shouted over the chaos. “Is you ready?” He stared straight at Fred Lee when he said those words. Throughout the week Fred Lee had only been playing around, like me. He said he wasn’t “stud’n no mourners’ bench.” Now he sat as still as stone as Reverend Mims pierced his soul with his words and his ugly yellow eyes.
“A fo’teen-year-old boy. Just a boy,” he said, his voice rising. “Visiting. Taking a vacation ’fore going back to school. Wanted to see Miss’sippi. Wanted to see how things is down here, like so many others who been up there in the North all they life.” He paused, closed his eyes, and moaned.
A few shouts of “amen” rose from the church.
Reverend Mims opened his eyes and set them on the mourners on the bench. “‘Time is filled with swift transition,’ the old song says. ‘Naught of earth unmoved can stand, Build yo’ hopes on things eternal. Hold to God’s unchanging hand.’”
It didn’t take long before the pianist struck up a note, and the church joined in with, “‘Everybody ought hold to his hand, to God’s unchanging hand. Hold to his hand, to God’s unchanging hand. Build yo’ hopes on things eter-r-r-r-nal. Hold to God’s unchanging hand.’”
“Behold, I stand at the do’ and knock,” Reverend Mims said over the singing, his hand cupped around his mouth, his golden eyes shining toward heaven. “If any man will just open up, I’ll come in.”
After a moment he directed his gaze back at Fred Lee and pointed. “Boy, is you ready?” he asked. “Is you ready to die?” He feigned a puzzled look. “No?” he said, as if Fred Lee had answered him. His next question seemed to be aimed at all of us left on the mourners’ bench. “Y’all think that boy from Chicago was ready to die? Y’all think he would’ve followed them white mens outta his uncle’s house if he knowed they was go’n kill him? That boy didn’t come to Miss’sippi to die. That boy come to Miss’sippi to live. To eat some good ol’?fashion’ home cooking. To smell the scent of fresh air. To see green fields and white cotton bolls. Instead he saw the bottom of the Tallahatchie River. Death don’t ’scriminate, and it don’t give you no warning. Be ready!”
I gasped when Fred Lee stood. All week long, like me, he had not taken the mourners’ bench seriously. As he took the seat of the right hand of fellowship, I couldn’t believe that with one sermon, a little country preacher had convinced him otherwise.
Shouts erupted from the crowd, with Ma Pearl shouting the loudest.
I didn’t shout, but I smiled. I was happy that my little brother got religion, even if I wasn’t ready to make that commitment myself. It took the church several minutes to finish shouting and dancing over Fred Lee’s conversion.
But even after another ten minutes of spewing fire and brimstone, Reverend Mims couldn’t move the last five of us mourners from that bench.
Chapter Twenty-Five
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
I DIDN’T BOTHER WIPING THE SWEAT THAT POOLED beneath my eyes. I simply trudged toward the edge of the field, homebound, lugging the stuffed-to-the-brim cotton sack behind me. That evening, it seemed my sack was heavier than I ever remembered. I hadn’t worked any harder than usual, but the sack seemed a bigger burden regardless. Perhaps it was because for the past week and a half I had watched Queen and Fred Lee hop into Uncle Ollie’s car and head into town for school while I headed out to the field with Papa.
It made no sense. I was the smartest of the three, but I was the one stuck in the field. I could understand that Fred Lee was only in seventh grade, and perhaps Ma Pearl and Papa wanted him to at least finish that much. But Queen was headed off to the tenth grade. She was the one who had more schooling than she needed, not me. And she was pretty enough that any man would want to marry her, like Mr. Pete married Mama. But that ungrateful girl was wasting her time with the likes of Ricky Turner and wouldn’t even give a smart colored boy like Hallelujah the time of day. I’d be happy if someone as smart as Hallelujah was bent on marrying me. Not that I was looking at marriage as my way out. But like almost any other girl, I looked forward to a family of my own someday too.