Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

I heard Mama’s voice through the open bedroom window. “What was that?” she said.

“I don’t know,” a man said. I didn’t recognize the voice, but I knew it wasn’t Daddy’s. “I’m going to go see,” the voice said. “You stay right here.” I heard the bed squeak like somebody was standing up. “You stay right here,” the voice said again. I knew whoever’s voice I heard was coming out to find us. I looked down at Stump.

“Get up,” I said to Stump, but he wouldn’t move. I kneeled down and tried to stand the rain barrel upright, but my feet kept slipping in the wet grass and it was too heavy to move. Stump just laid there with his eyes closed like the wind had got knocked out of him, and then he reached around behind him like he’d hurt his back. I heard the bedroom door open.

“Get up, Stump,” I said, but he just laid there and looked over my shoulder at the window above me like he couldn’t move. “They’re coming out here,” I whispered. I reached down and tried to pull him up by his hand. “Get up,” I said again.

I heard the screen door slam shut around front, and I turned and hightailed it toward the woods beside the house. I ran until I didn’t think anyone could see me, and then I stopped and laid down flat on my stomach behind some tree roots and looked back toward the yard. I could see the rain barrel where I’d pushed it back up, and I could see where the gutter had gotten bent and broken, but I couldn’t see Stump at all because he hadn’t stood up yet.

I laid on my stomach in the woods and waited on whoever I’d heard to come around the corner of the house and find Stump, and then I remembered that my shoes were still up there and I knew they were going to find them and tell Mama and she’d wear me out because I should’ve never let Stump climb up there because we shouldn’t have been spying. But I forgot about all that when I saw Pastor Chambliss. I only saw his face at first because he peeked around the corner like he’d been hiding from somebody and was checking the side of the house to make sure it was safe to come out. He stood there peeking around the corner at the rain barrel, and then he walked into the side yard and I could see him good. All he had on was a dirty old pair of blue jeans that he had to hold at the waist because he wasn’t wearing a belt. He’d pulled his boots on over his blue jeans, and he stopped walking and bent over and pushed his jeans down over the tops of his boots. When he bent down, I saw the inside of his right arm and how bright pink and shiny it was. When he stood up straight, I saw that the pink, wrinkled skin covered his chest and ran up his neck too. He looked out toward the woods beside the house, and I got as flat as I could on the ground behind those roots so he wouldn’t see me. He walked over to the rain barrel and stopped, and then he just stood there looking down at Stump like he was surprised to see him laying there. Pastor Chambliss bent down and sat the rain barrel up straight. Then he fixed the top where it had come loose. He pounded on it with his fist and shut it tight. I heard the screen door slam, and then I heard Mama’s voice come around the house from the front porch.

“What was it?” she hollered. Pastor Chambliss whipped his head around and looked toward the front yard.

“Nothing,” he hollered. “Go back inside.” He turned and looked down at Stump again.

“You sure?” she said.

“Yes,” he hollered. “It ain’t nothing. The rain barrel tipped over, that’s all. Go on back inside.” He squatted down like he was getting a good look at Stump, and then he reached behind the rain barrel with that wrinkly arm like he was offering Stump his hand so he could help him up. “What did you see, boy?” he said. He waited like he expected Stump to say something, and then he laughed. He turned and walked back to the front. I got a good look at that bad arm, and I saw that it didn’t even have any hair on it. I laid there in the woods behind those roots and stared at his arm until he’d gone around the corner of the house toward the porch steps and I couldn’t see him anymore.

That night, while me and Stump were getting ready for bed, I asked Mama what had happened to Pastor Chambliss’s hand that made it look like that. Stump and I were already in the bed, and she was folding some of our clothes and putting them in the dresser and she was hanging our dress shirts in the closet. With the closet door open I could see Stump’s quiet box sitting up on the top shelf. Mama’d made it for him when he was little because she said when the world got too loud Stump needed a quiet place where he could go off and be alone. She took one of Daddy’s shoe boxes and wrote, “Quiet box-do not open” on the side of it. I could read her handwriting from where I laid in the bed. She’d never let me see what was inside the quiet box, and I’d always been afraid to even ask Stump because I was afraid she’d find out that I’d been messing with it.

Mama had just picked up the shirt I’d worn to school that day when I asked her about Pastor Chambliss’s hand, and, instead of hanging it up, she just held it out in front of her and stared at it like she was looking to see how clean she’d been able to get it.

“What do you mean, ‘What happened to his hand?’” she asked. She finally put my shirt on a clothes hanger and hung it in the closet. Then she reached down into the laundry basket again.

“How’d it get that way?” I said. “Why’s it all pink?” She turned around and looked at me. I saw that she was holding the blue jeans that I’d gotten wet and muddy down at the creek.

“What’s got you thinking about that?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I was just wondering.” She turned back toward the dresser and folded my jeans and opened a drawer and put them inside. She sighed.

“Would you believe that once upon a time, back before the Holy Ghost got ahold of him, Pastor Chambliss was on fire for the world and the things of this world burned him up?”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means that he wasn’t living for the Lord,” she said. “He was on fire for the world. But now he’s on fire for the Lord Jesus, and nothing in this world can ever burn him again.” She kept on folding clothes without looking back at us. Down the hall in the living room I heard the sound of Daddy reclining in his chair. Then I heard the television set turn on.

“What’s the rest of him look like?” I asked. “Is it all burned up too?” Mama grabbed the rest of the clothes out of the laundry basket and stuffed them into one drawer without even folding them. She picked up the basket and turned around and stood by the door and looked at me and Stump where we were laying in the bed.

“Why would you ask me that?” she finally said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just wondered.”

“I’ve never thought about what the rest of him looks like,” she said. “And you shouldn’t be thinking about things like that either. Go to sleep.” She turned off our bedroom light and closed the door. I heard her walk down the hall to her and Daddy’s bedroom, and I heard the door close and the sound of her kicking her shoes off onto the floor. The bed springs creaked when she laid down.

I laid there in the dark with my eyes open and stared up at the ceiling. Then I rolled over on my side and looked across the bed at Stump.

“Stump,” I whispered. He opened his eyes slowly and looked at me. “What did you see when you were up on the rain barrel?” We stared at each other for a minute, and then he closed his eyes and turned over on his other side. I laid there and looked at the back of Stump’s head, and I pictured Pastor Chambliss coming around the corner of the house and asking him the same thing: “What did you see?”