John Toole - The Neon Bible

He put his head down and stepped back.

"Friends, those were the words of a babe, while many of you grandfathers here are afraid to come up. That testimony should inspire you grandfathers and grandmothers who will not come up. Wouldn't you all feel good if you would have testified at this age. The Lord may take you any time, yet you are not preparing for that great day."

Some of the others testified, and a few just looked like they didn't know what to do up on the platform. The little children whose mothers went up were beginning to cry for them, so Bobbie Lee knew the testimonies would have to stop. He gave the piano player a signal and said for us not to forget the donation box in the back of the tent, which was the only support for this revival, and that he would be back tomorrow night with another message that nobody would want to miss, and if they couldn't catch him tomorrow night, and he hoped they could, he would still be in town through Monday.

The piano player started to play some fast song, and Bobbie Lee and the people on the platform went out through a little opening at the back of the tent. As they were disappearing, the people in the audience started to leave too. They stopped and talked with each other at the ends of rows and in the aisles, so it took a while for Aunt Mae and I and Mother to get out. By the time we got to the outside, the piano player had stopped, and the man who led the songs, the middle-aged one, was taking the white flowers off the platform.

Outside it was a lot cooler. I took a deep breath. All over in the schoolyard and in the street people were talking and drinking pop they bought from the man with the stand. We began walking home, but some woman who knew Aunt Mae from the plant stopped and talked to us. She was going our way down Main, so she walked with us.

Along the curb children and women were getting into the cars and trucks, and they were starting up, and their lights were going on. People walked in the street and jumped out of the way to let trucks pass them. Sometimes children just stood in front of the trucks with their arms out and pretended they wouldn't let them pass, but just when the trucks got near them, they laughed and ran away. I wished I was one of those children who could ride in the back of the trucks and hang my feet over the tailgate and feel the wind rushing all around me. The only bad time to ride there was when it rained.

The woman talking to Aunt Mae was the kind that talked a lot. For a while she talked about the plant and how she never thought she would ever be working at her age, and in a plant, too, which was a man's work. She said her son was on an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, and he wrote her and told her how proud he was she worked in a war plant. With her son's money and what she was making, she never saw so much money before in her life, but she worried about what Bobbie Lee said. She said her next letter to her son would have something in it about Bobbie Lee, he was such a wonderful man, one of God's chosen, and her son should know what he said about the boys overseas so he wouldn't make any mistakes, because she told Aunt Mae she didn't want any Chinee grandbabies on her knee with their dangerous-looking mother hanging around the house. She asked me if I liked Bobbie Lee, and I said yes, I thought he was pretty good being able to speak like that for so long without ever stopping or forgetting something like we did at school. She had gone up the second night he was in town. She went up every time the evangelists came to town because she said you can never get too much of that. She wanted to know why none of us went up, so Aunt Mae told her that we hadn't made our minds up yet. We'd better do it quick, she said, because Bobbie Lee was going to be here only a few more nights, and you might as well be in God's favor with all they said about Hitler sending a bomb over.

We left her at some street near the beginning of the hills. When she was gone Aunt Mae said something to Mother about her that I didn't hear. By the time we were halfway up the hill to the house, all the lights were off over at the tent and the last trucks were starting and lighting up and going off. I saw Bobbie Lee next when he was leaving town and Miss Moore took us on a field trip to see him off.

With a lot of women who had never worked before having jobs in the war plant and getting money from their husbands in the war, most people had more money in our valley than they ever did have. They didn't have too much to spend it on with the ration books for almost everything. In the grocery you could see everybody looking in their books trying to figure out which coupon to use for what. Nobody seemed to have enough, especially people with a big family. Aunt Mae and Mother and I always didn't have meat or butter or something because there weren't any more coupons for them.

We got oleomargarine for the first time, too. When I first saw it, I thought it was lard. Mother brought the box into the kitchen and put it in a bowl and dropped a red bean in and started to mix it. It was thick and hard to mix. After a while the bean disappeared and the lard started to get yellow. By the time it was creamy it looked like butter. I didn't mind the taste. I kind of liked it, though it was salty at first. That night we just had bread toasted in the oven with oleo, and cabbage with some pickle meat, because Aunt Mae used the coupons we needed to get good meat to get something else. The ration book made Mother go down into town more than she did before. She was the only one who knew how to use it.

One night that summer the women at the plant had a party. Aunt Mae was a chairman of it because of her job. The whole day she spent down at the plant decorating and helping them with the food. When she got home, she went right up to her room to get ready. I was going with Mother and Aunt Mae, and I wanted to see what it would be like because I didn't go to a party since I started school.

At about seven o'clock Mother and I were ready sitting on the porch waiting for Aunt Mae. Mother had on a good dress, and I was wearing my suit, a nice gabardine one. It was a wonderful night for a party, warm and clear, with just a little warm breeze. I hoped they had punch and sandwiches with the crusts cut off. We didn't eat any dinner because we were going to get food there.

After a while Aunt Mae came out, and she really looked good. She was wearing a dress she bought in town. It was maroon crepe with silver glitter around the neck. In the shoulders they had big pads that made Aunt Mae look strong, and the skirt just came to her knees. I liked her shoes because I never saw a pair like them before, with the toes sticking out and a little strap around her ankle. I thought what nice legs Aunt Mae had. Mother got out a handkerchief and wiped some of the red off Aunt Mae's cheeks, and Aunt Mae fussed about it. When Mother finished, she got out the little powder box she had in her purse and looked at herself in the mirror in it.

All the way down the path to town Aunt Mae told us to go slower because of her shoes. It smelled good on the path. Not only because of Aunt Mae, but because the summer flowers were out and the honeysuckle was climbing along the old stumps. Even though it was seven-thirty, the night hadn't set in yet. It was more like twilight, and the hills always looked pretty then.

Down in town a lot of people were walking over to the river where the plant was. When we got there, there were plenty trucks parked along the river and in the plant parking lot. Almost all the women getting out were dressed up with flowers in their hair. It must have been the honeysuckle from the hills, because you could smell it all over and I knew it didn't grow down by the river.

We went into the big room in the plant where they put the parts together. The small machines were pushed up against the wall, and that left a big space on the floor for dancing. There weren't too many dances in the valley. Now with the war on and the men gone there hadn't been one in a long time. Aunt Mae went behind a table where they had some food and helped the women there. Mother and I just sat on a chair by a big gray machine and watched the people.