The Dry Grass of August(53)

“Oh, no!” Mary screamed. The preacher paused. People turned to look at us. A big woman rose from her seat across the aisle. She shoved chairs out of her way and bent over Stell Ann, pushing me aside like a chair.

“She be okay, just fell out.” The woman picked Stell up as if she weighed nothing and headed down the aisle toward the exit. Mary and I followed.

The preacher started up again, and the congregation turned back to him.

Outside the tent, the woman lowered Stell Ann to the ground and sat down beside her. She grabbed the fan from Mary, clutched it in her beefy hand, and began to fan Stell with a fury. I reached out to pat Stell, but the woman said, “Leave her be. She in the spirit.” Like Mary giving me an order. I sat back in the dust. The woman had BO so bad it made me choke. Mary kneeled beside us, her eyes closed, hands folded in prayer.

A mass of gray hair surrounded the woman’s fat face. Her purple dress had a collar of white lace, ragged and dirty around her neck. She prayed, her face shining in the light from a nearby torch. “Lord, this white child have fainted for you.Your spirit come over her and she be fill with Jesus. Gentle her, so she come back to us.” She took Stell’s right hand in both of hers.

Stell’s eyelids fluttered. The woman leaned over her and a drop of sweat landed on Stell’s forehead. Stell’s eyes opened. She looked up into that black perspiring face, inches from her own.

“Hey, honey, you coming back?”

Stell moaned and closed her eyes.

“Oh, Lord, be in her now, give her cease from sorrow.”

Mary said, “I believe this child has had about all the Lord she can take for one night.You go get some water.”

“Yes’m, that probably do it.” The woman put her hand on my shoulder and pushed down hard as she got to her feet.

“Stell Ann? You wake up now, it’s time to get on home.” Mary rubbed Stell’s hands. “Estelle Annette Watts, open your eyes.”

Stell looked up at Mary. “What happened?”

“You took off for a while.”

The woman was back with a cup of water. Stell sat up and drank.

Mary said, “Stell, can you stand?”

Stell got to her feet. “I’m okay, really.”

“You reckon you can walk back to the motel park? It’s a good ways.”

“Honestly, I’m fine.”

There was a clatter of voices inside the tent, and the woman said, “Reverend Cureton taking a break.” She reached into a pocket of her dress and took out a watch with a broken wristband. “Dint do but half a hour. He hungry. We always feeds ’em good.”

“We be getting on,” said Mary. With Stell in the middle, we held hands walking back up Zion Church Creek Road as the moon began to rise.





CHAPTER 21

At the edge of town, Stell directed us down a tree-lined avenue with wide lawns, a shortcut to the motel.We left the rumble of the boulevard. Our footsteps clattered on the sidewalk in the warm night, and our shadows stretched ahead and disappeared in the glow of the next streetlamp.

Mary asked Stell, “Is it okay, us going down this street?”

“It’s the quickest way back.”

“That’s good.”

I remembered the curfew signs in Wickens.

We walked a bit, then Stell said, “Reverend Cureton has fervor.”

“Um-hum,” Mary said.

I said, “He’s no Daddy Grace.”

Stell snickered. “You’ve never heard Daddy Grace preach.”

Mary chuckled, her gold tooth glinting. “They different, that’s for sure. Reverend Cureton preaches in a tent. Daddy Grace, he got a door mat woven from twenty-dollar bills for wiping the mud off his gator shoes.”

A car came down the street, slowed as it got to us, sped away.

A mosquito buzzed my ear. The air smelled like fresh-cut grass.

There was a loud pop, the tinkling of breaking glass. A streetlight went out a block away. Everything was quiet, even the crickets. Mary said, “Some boy got a new BB gun.” She walked faster. “I was a member of the House of Prayer from a child, and Daddy Grace was Moses to me. But I saw the light. Now I’m at McDowell Street Baptist.”

“Where Leesum is?”

“Yes, with Reverend—”

Another loud pop. A streetlamp near us shattered. Stell gasped.

“Stell, Jubie—” Mary’s voice was shrill.

A man spoke behind us. “We gonna get you, girl.”

Across the street a porch light came on. A woman shouted, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, ma’am,” the man called out. “We’re just clearing some niggers outen your neighborhood.”

“Help!” I screamed.

The light went out. A door slammed.

“They’re after me,” Mary said. “Y’all run. Get the police—”

Someone grabbed my hand and wrenched it behind my back, up between my shoulder blades. Another man shoved Stell against a tree, his hand over her mouth. I screamed again.

“Shut up!” The man holding me had rotten cigarette breath and stank of liquor.

A third man said, “What you doing walking in a white neighborhood after dark?”

Mary said, “Going home from the meeting.”