Wrapped in Rain(41)

Katie looked at me as I tried to dig a hole in the earth's crust and disappear. Jase continued. "I asked Unca Tuck if they could do that with people, 'cause I thought maybe if we did that to Daddy, he wouldn't be mean anymore."

Before he even finished his sentence, Katie had picked him up and walked back inside. "Come on, my little cowboy. It's time for lunch."



After lunch, Katie put Jase down for a nap even though he didn't want one. It was the first time I had seen him kick and scream, but she didn't put up with it, and the last words I heard out of his mouth before she whisked him through the front door were, "Yes ma'am." Reminded me of another woman I once knew.

Child, I disciplined you because I loved you. Same thing with the Lord. "He chastises those he loves. " You might as well get used to it.

Katie caught up with me walking down the fencerow toward St. Joseph's.

"I wanted a chance to talk about the `Uncle Tuck' thing."

"It's all right. It caught me a bit off guard, but it's probably best."

"I'm sorry anyway. I didn't know what else to tell him. I don't want him to know we're as lost as we are, and we've been in the car so much. Not going anywhere. He needs a connection. It wasn't right, but I didn't know what else to tell him. I'm sorry."

"He's a great kid. I don't know much about your exhusband, but somebody's done some great work with that boy." She smiled, nodded, and looked out over the pasture as we walked toward St. Joseph's. "I took a few pictures of him on the horse. I'll send them to you when you get wherever you're going."



She crossed her arms like she was cold and nodded. "That ... that'd be great." We walked farther down the fencerow as a flock of geese, in a long and stretched out V, flew overhead several hundred feet up.

"Where're you going?"

I stopped walking and pointed to the church. "Thought I'd check on things." I slowed because I wasn't sure I wanted her to go with me.

Katie eyed the church. "When did she die?"

I knew, but I acted like the number wasn't quite as close at hand as it really was. "A little over seven years ago."

"You still miss her?"

A family of moles had tunneled through one corner of the pasture, creating a maze of upturned earth and underground tunnels. I stepped over a tunnel and said, "Every day."

We stepped through the split rail fence and walked around the front of the church, where I let my eyes follow the muscadine vine climbing like a sentry across the front door. When the grapes on the vine were ripe, Miss Ella would pluck a few of them, suck on them, smack her teeth like they were hard candy, and spit out the seeds. "When I'm away from the craziness"-I pointed to the camera bouncing on my hip-"I come here."

We stepped through the threshold and the boards creaked under our weight. Pigeons flew out of the rafters above, flapping their fat wings, cooing, and fluttering back into their nests. A single blue pigeon sat on Jesus' head, bobbing its beak back and forth and strutting inside a ring of thorns. Light poured in the hole in the roof and showered the altar with a broad beam of daylight. Cobwebs decorated most every corner, and a prayer book lay on the floor beneath the railing, fat and bloated with rainwater. Roaches had eaten most of the binding.



I waved my hand from wall to altar to floor to wall. "She really loved this place."

Katie nodded.

A year or so after Miss Ella came to work here, Rex officially closed the church and brought in dozers to level the whole thing. Miss Ella found out, flung wide the doors, and pointed her crooked finger in the faces of the men driving the dozers. The church hadn't been operational as a church for fifty years, but locals would use it to pray, get married, and bury their dead. Rex got the news, stormed in, and found Miss Ella snapping beans in the kitchen. "Woman! When I say to do something, you do it!"

Miss Ella just kept right on snapping beans.

Rex walked up and slapped her, openhanded. I saw it because I was the six-year-old kid cowering in the pantry. Miss Ella put down the beans, wiped her hands on her apron, stood up, and looked at Rex. A foot shorter, she really had to crane her neck. Softly and gently, she said, "Unless you become like one of these"-she pointed to me, shaking in the pantry-"you will not see heaven."

Rex's face turned beet red. He huffed, looked like he'd blow a fuse, and ran his fingers inside and around the waist of his belt. "Woman," he boomed, "I don't give two cents for all your Bible quoting. You can just as quick find your ignorant butt on the street. What I say is. You understand me?" He took his hand and squeezed her cheeks until they cut into her teeth. With Rex's hand still vise-gripped on her face, she put her foot on the stool behind her and stepped up, leveling her head with Rex's. When he looked into her eyes, his hand let go.

She wiped blood on her apron. "Mr. Rex, I've done everything you've ever asked me. But I won't do this. That's God's house, and if you insist on tearing it down, I'll strap myself to the steeple and call every paper in Alabama. My mom and dad are buried out there." She looked out the window toward the cemetery and fingered her wedding band. "So is George."



She sat down and picked up another handful of beans. Over the snapping, she said, "Now, I need this job and I need the money, but more importantly"-she looked at him-"you need me because you can't find a soul who's willing to put up with you 'cause you ain't nothing but meanness."