Wiley Cash - A Land More Kind Than Home

“How’re you, Sister Adelaide?” he asked me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just about to leave.”

“We had us a blessed service this morning,” he said. “And I pray our children did as well.”

“We got along fine,” I said. “We always do.” He took him a few steps into the parking lot and stopped in front of me, and when he did one of those crates he held bucked so strong I was afraid it would jump out of his hand. He looked down at it for a second, and then he looked up at me. He was smiling.

“That’s good to hear,” he said. “Children are the lifeblood of this church. There ain’t no future without them.” He turned and set those crates in the back of Tommy Lester’s pickup truck where Tommy had put the ones he was carrying, and then he went around to the other side and climbed in beside Tommy. I watched them pull out of the parking lot and listened to Tommy rev the engine as they took off up the road.

I stood there and watched them go and thought about how that was an awfully strange thing for a man to say who’d go and show a mother how to kill her own.

BUT JULIE DID COME BACK OUT TO MY HOUSE. SHE SHOWED up at my door on Monday evening, the day after Christopher died, and when I saw her standing out there I could tell that she’d been crying.

“You told me before that I could come and talk to you,” she said.

“Well, of course you can, girl,” I said. “Come on in here.” I closed the door and led her over to the sofa and sat down beside her. It was only the night before when we were doing this very same thing, and it almost brought a chill to my bones, the very idea that we were almost going to relive it together. “Can I get you anything?” I asked her. “I got a little bit of coffee left on the stove, or I could heat you up a little water for some tea.”

“No,” she said, “I’m fine. I just need to get away from that house.”

“Well, Julie, you can stay with me for as long as you need to,” I said. I reached over and put my hand on hers, and when I did she took to crying. She tried covering her eyes with her hands, but it didn’t do any good. “You can bring Jess over here with you too. He might want to be with his mama.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Ben won’t let me have him. We’ve already talked about it. He won’t even let me be alone with him, he won’t even hardly look at me.”

“He’s just trying to get through this,” I told her. “Same as you. Everybody goes about dealing with things in different ways.”

“But he started up drinking after we got home from the hospital last night. And this morning, after his daddy took Jess to school, the two of them went off to his daddy’s house and they’ve been over there all day. I wanted to pick Jess up from school, but he wouldn’t let me have the truck, and I’m afraid he’s drinking too much to drive and I’m afraid of what’s going to happen. When I tried to talk to him, he just told me that everything that’s happened is all my fault.”

“Well, y’all just lost your son yesterday, Julie,” I said. “Y’all just lost your little boy, and there ain’t nothing that can prepare folks for something like that. People say all kinds of things when they’re grieving, especially men. This is just one of those things you can’t be prepared for.”

“It’s not just that,” she said. “I’m scared of him. I’ve never seen him like this in all the years we’ve been together. He’s acting just like his daddy did, and I hoped he wouldn’t ever be that way.”

“Now, you know that ain’t true,” I said. “You know he’s a better man than that.”

“I’d hoped he would be,” she said. “But he’s blaming me for what’s happened, saying it was my idea, saying the healing must’ve been my idea.”

“Well, Julie, you did the best thing you knew to do,” I said. “And you know it’s not right of Ben to blame you for trying to help Christopher.”

“But it wasn’t my idea,” she said. “It wasn’t my idea to do it.”

“Well, who in the world said it needed doing?”

“Pastor,” she said. “It was his idea. He told me there was something in Christopher that wasn’t letting him talk, and he promised me he could get it to leave him alone. He told me to trust him and that I shouldn’t even tell Ben about it until after it was done. He said that Ben would understand God’s truth eventually, that everybody would see how God had healed him.” She dropped her hands in her lap and sat there staring down at them. “But I shouldn’t have let them do it again last night,” she said. “Not after what happened yesterday morning.” She raised her eyes and looked at me. “But, Miss Lyle,” she said, “I swear I heard him speak. I swear he called out for me with all of them laying their hands on him. I know he was scared, but it worked. The Lord was healing him. I know He was. And Pastor wanted me to bring him back last night so he could finish, but I was scared after what had happened, and I wanted to say something. I wanted to stop it, but I just didn’t know how.”

“You really trust him, don’t you?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Chambliss.”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. I do trust him. I know he’s a man of God. I know God speaks through him.”

“Julie, like I told you, you can stay here as long as you need to. But I can’t have that man over at this house, and I’m asking you to please stay away from him, at least until all this gets settled. Your little boy died in his church, under his hand. I just think it’s best if you stay away from there for now. At least as long as you’re staying here with me. Can you do that?” She looked down at her hands for a minute like she was thinking about whether she could or not, and I honestly didn’t know how she was going to answer. She finally looked up at me.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “I can do that.”

“Good,” I said. “I just can’t have him coming around here. Not after what’s happened.”

As I was saying that, I’d already started thinking about how Carson Chambliss wasn’t going to like Julie staying with me, and I knew for sure he wasn’t going to like me talking to the sheriff on Tuesday afternoon, even if I didn’t know anything for certain about what happened to Christopher. Chambliss knew there were other things that I’d seen and heard, other things that I could talk about that might make him look bad or guilty. So I wasn’t a bit surprised when Julie came into my room on Wednesday evening after the funeral and told me he wanted me to come down to the church the next day, and I can say that after I did I knew for certain that I’d looked right into the face of evil.

ADELAIDE LYLE’S SKIN WAS THIN LIKE PAPER, AND HER veins were blue smears across the backs of her hands. I watched them roll over her knuckles where her fingers kneaded the chair against which her body leaned. It was Tuesday morning, two days after they’d brought that boy’s body out to her house on the night he died.

“Would you like something to drink?” she asked me. “Something to eat?” Before I could even answer her, she turned her back to me and shuffled over toward the cupboard and started searching the shelves.

“I’m fine not to eat,” I said, but she kept staring into the cupboard as if she couldn’t hear me. “I’m fine not to eat,” I said again, louder this time to make certain she heard me. She turned around and looked at me for a moment like I’d hurt her feelings somehow, like I’d denied her something by not eating whatever it was she might have been able to pull from that cupboard. I motioned toward the empty seat at the head of the table. “I just want to talk to you for a few minutes,” I said. “Just a few minutes. That’s all. Shouldn’t take too much longer than that.”