Wrapped in Rain(43)

"So I asked, `Miss Ella, is my dad the devil?' She shook her head. `No, no, your father is not the devil. But the devil is inside him. Especially when he's drinking.'

"I didn't like that answer, so I asked her, `How do we get him out?' Without skipping a beat, she put her hand on that padding and her head against the railing. `We've got to spend a lot of time right here.' She rubbed the railing and looked around the room. `Child, I may be weak, may not weigh much, may have arthritis just eating me up, but right here'-she touched the railing with her gnarled hand-I'm undefeated."'



I smiled because I liked the idea of her being unbeaten. I sat down next to Katie and propped my feet up on the pew in front of me. We sat in the quiet a few minutes while the pigeons flew in and out of the hole in the roof.

"Shortly after your family left, we had a bit of a drought. Hadn't had rain in what seemed like a whole year, and dust was everywhere. Miss Ella was walking around with a rag and spray bottle strapped to her apron. Mutt and I got this wild hair up our butts and thought we'd try snuff. I don't remember whose idea it was, but one of us convinced the other that it would help with the taste in our mouths."

Katie smiled and leaned back against the railing. "This sounds like one of those lessons of experience."

"Don't laugh. Your day is coming, and he's in there sleeping."

"Tell me about it."

"Anyway, we ran down to the corner grocery and stole some Copenhagen." I put my hand over my eyes and tilted my head back. "I can still taste it. I never wanted death so badly." Katie laughed and pulled her knees more tightly up into her chest. "Anyway, Ave got out of the store, pulled open the can, and split it." I smiled and held out my hand like it was full of peanuts. "Not a pinch, mind you, a handful, in our mouths. We probably swallowed about half right then. By the time we got home, we had swallowed the other half. I hit the front door and the world was spinning backwards, upwards, every which way but right. There were two Mutts and three front doors, so I just pushed the doorbell on the one in the middle. Then came the sweat, and I knew it wouldn't be long. I also knew that this was going to end badly. Miss Ella opened the door, and I heaved from my toes up. Mutt, apparently a sympathetic vomiter, did likewise. We covered that woman in peanut butter, jelly, white Wonder Bread, and Copenhagen.



"Miss Ella thought we had some wild stomach virus, so she threw us in the car and drove ninety miles an hour all the way to Mose's office. We were moaning, holding our stomachs, and caked in vomit. He carried us in, they set up his office like an emergency room, and he went to work cutting off our clothes. When his scissors hit the Copenhagen can, he stopped and investigated. We, in the meantime, were praying that God would just go ahead and kill us, because if he didn't, she would. And as soon as her brother walked out into his waiting room and gave her the can, she did."

Katie laughed and threw her head back. I continued. "She stood up, grabbed us both by the ear, and dragged us to the car, the vomit just drooling down our chests. We were crying and, between dry heaves, apologizing, saying, `We're sorry. We won't ever do it again.' She started waving her finger in the air. `You're right, you won't, 'cause when I get finished with you, you won't ever touch that stuff again.' We got home, spilled out the car doors, and just spread our corpses across the driveway. She walked in the house and came back out with a long switch. Sick or not, she lit into us."

Katie covered her eyes and laughed.

"Yeah"-I smiled-"it's funny now, but back then, I was ready for a portal to open in the earth and just close me up in it. She really whipped us. When she was finished, she said, `Tucker Mason, you ever scare me like that again and I won't use just one switch. Next time, I'll use the whole tree.' I was too dizzy to stand up, but I wiped the drool off my face, or at least smeared it in, and said, `Yes ma'am."'



"How long did it take you two to try it again?"

I laughed. It was a good memory. One I had forgotten. "About six months." I stood up and walked behind the altar. "Every time I walk back into this church, I hear the echo of her laughter." I ran my hand across the worn and polished wood and remembered how she used to polish it with furniture wax. "And every time I walk into Waverly Hall, I hear my father's screaming." I looked out the window toward Waverly, rising up out of the earth like a gravestone. "If Miss Ella hadn't loved that house, I'd have set a match to it a long time ago."

I reached up and straightened Jesus, who was tilted sideways. I took a white handkerchief out of my back pocket and polished the wooden head like I was polishing a bowling ball. Some of the dried droppings flaked off and fluttered to the ground while the more recent stuff just smeared in like bug guts on a windshield.





Chapter 13


THE TIME PASSED AS THE SUN FELL THROUGH THE STAINED glass in the back. Katie looked at her watch and whispered, `lase is going to wake up hungry. I need to think about dinner."

"We're going to have a difficult time finding anything around here. I haven't cooked a meal in that house in several months. At least not a meal that you two would eat. And I haven't been to the store in longer than that."

"You really don't come here much, do you?"