Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

“What happened?” she asked, but before I could even answer, Pastor Chambliss walked over through the crowd and stopped right in front of us. He looked down at me, and then he reached out with those smooth, pink fingers and lifted up my hand to get a good look at it. He held it there like he wasn’t going to let it go.

“Well, look here,” he said. “The good Lord can heal with one hand and harm with the other.” He smiled. “That’s the power of an awesome God.”

One of those women standing by us said, “Amen.”

I tried to pull my hand away, but he held it tight and I couldn’t get it free. He looked over at Stump and reached out to touch him too, but Stump moved closer to Mama like he was trying to get away from him. Pastor Chambliss smiled.

“Y’all coming back for the evening service?” he asked Mama.

“I reckon we can,” she said.

“You should,” he said. He let go of my hand and nodded toward Stump. “And bring this one with you. The Lord ain’t finished with him yet.”

“NOW, TELL ME AGAIN,” MAMA SAID. SHE BACKED DADDY’S TRUCK out of the parking space and pulled out onto the road. The truck shook just a little bit when she put her foot on the gas pedal to get us going. Stump sat in between us and stared straight ahead like we weren’t even sitting there in the truck with him. I kept the hand with that splinter in it propped up on my knee so nothing would hit it. It had already started to turn red, but at least it wasn’t bleeding anymore.

“What do you want me to tell you?” I asked her. It was hot inside the truck, and Mama rolled her window down and the air came in and blew some crumpled-up papers around on the dashboard. I thought about rolling my window down too, but I didn’t want all that wind in my face.

“I want you to tell me again about how you got that big old splinter,” she said. “I want you to tell me one more time how you done it.”

I looked in the side mirror just before we went around the curve up toward the highway. I could see the church in the mirror behind us, and there was still a bunch of people standing around outside in the parking lot. I saw Mr. Gene Thompson talking to some folks out by the road, and I swear I saw him turn his head like he was watching us drive off toward the highway.

“Me and Joe Bill were skipping rocks after Sunday school,” I said. “Right after Mr. Thompson came and got Stump. I found an old board and was hitting rocks like baseballs. Joe Bill was pitching. I wasn’t holding it tight enough, and it slipped a little in my hand and that’s how I got it.”

Mama looked at my hand, and then she looked back at the road. I heard her sigh.

“That board must’ve been awfully dry and rotten for it to have given you that kind of splinter.”

“It was,” I said. She was quiet for a second and I tried to close my fingers again, but the blood had started to scab up and get real stiff and it was even harder to make a fist than it was before.

“Jess,” Mama said.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If I call Joe Bill’s mama and ask her to talk to him about it, you think he’s going to tell her the same story about that bat?”

“It wasn’t a bat,” I said.

“You know what I mean,” Mama said. “Is Joe Bill going to remember it just like you told it to me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, but I knew he wouldn’t tell it like that because he didn’t know nothing about what I’d told her. I knew that if I told the truth about how I’d gotten that splinter then I’d have to tell the truth about what I saw them doing to Stump, and then I might’ve found myself telling her about how the rain barrel got broken and about how pink and wrinkled Pastor Chambliss’s body looked when he came around the corner of the house with no shirt on. I sat there and looked out the window and thought about that, and it made my neck feel hot and I could feel my heart beating hard and I felt the blood pumping in my hand like my heart was jammed up under that splinter. I wished I could go back and stop myself from seeing all the things that I’d seen in the past two days, but I knew there wasn’t no way that I could undo any of that now, no matter how bad I wanted to.

Mama put on the brakes at the stop sign at the top of the hill, and then she gave it some gas and we turned left onto the highway and headed toward home. Once we got going faster, the wind blew into the window even stronger and it flipped open the pages of her Bible where she’d sat it up on the dash. I looked at those pages while the wind turned them, and I saw that just about every page had Mama’s handwriting on it. She rolled her window up and then she reached out and closed her Bible and squeezed it down into the seat between her and Stump.

“Jess,” she said again.

“Yes, ma’am?”

“There’s something I need to talk to you about.” I turned and looked out my window again because I didn’t want to look at her when I already knew what she was going to say. I knew she was going to ask me about Mr. Gene Thompson telling her that he saw me and Joe Bill spying on them in the church, and then she was going to ask me why I lied about how I got that splinter. I tried to think about whether or not I should just go ahead and tell her about it all so I wouldn’t have to worry about it no more, just so I knew for sure that I’d finally done the right thing. I figured Joe Bill was in the car with his mom and dad on the way home from church right then, and he was probably telling them all about us seeing Stump inside the church anyway, and his mama had probably already called over to the house and talked to Daddy and he was going to be waiting for us on the porch when we pulled up in front of the house. If Joe Bill didn’t tell his mom and dad, then he’d tell Scooter for sure, and who knew what would happen after he did that.

I put my good hand on the dash and leaned forward in the seat so I could look past Stump and see Mama. I wanted to think of exactly what I should tell her about what all I’d seen, but when I looked at her I saw that she wasn’t even mad. She smiled like she was happy even though she had tears in her eyes.

“We had us a healing in church today,” she said. She looked over at me, and I watched two big tears run down her cheeks, and then she wiped her face and looked back at the road. I leaned back in my seat and felt light-headed because my heart had been beating so fast just the second before and now it felt like it had stopped cold.

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We had us a healing,” she said again. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “This morning, during the service, Pastor Chambliss invited the deacons down front and they all laid their hands on Christopher and prayed for his healing.” I heard her reach out and pat Stump’s leg, and I looked over and saw her give it a little squeeze. “I tell you what,” she said. “God answers prayer. We’ve had us a miracle.” I thought about what Joe Bill had said about them trying to heal Stump by laying on him and putting their hands on him, and then I thought about how Stump had tried to stand up and run away while they were doing it and how much watching it all happen had made Mama cry.

“How do you know there was a miracle?” I asked her.

“Because he spoke,” she said. “He said the only word he’s ever said, and he said it this morning in church with the deacons laying their hands on him and praying for our family.”

“What did he say?”

“‘Mama,’” she said. “He called out for me, and he said it. He said, ‘Mama.’”

I lay my head back on the seat and felt my skin get cold and numb like all the blood had been drained out of my body. I closed my eyes because I was afraid I might throw up if I even opened them to look around. My hand wasn’t even throbbing anymore, and it was like I’d already forgotten about that splinter. None of us made a sound, and all I could hear was the hum of the tires against the road.