Scott Cheshire - High as the Horses' Bridles

He looks at his father, who squeezes her leg again, and the shake of his father’s shoulder tells Josiah this time the squeeze is more vigorous. Maybe even painful. He wonders whether his hands are large enough to squeeze his father’s leg. Arm? Neck?

Gill looks at his boy, and then immediately away. Then he looks back just as fast. He cannot take his eyes from his son. Who is this boy? So unlike other boys his age. What does he know? What is he thinking? There is strength inside him, and Gill wonders where it comes from. Maybe Ida.

“So tell me, then.” Pullsey’s now behind the boy, arms at his sides like triangles. His face wears an expression of impatience, bottom lip over top, his mouth eating itself up.

Josiah says, “I thought you were over there.”

“And now I’m here.”

“I’m hungry.”

“And?”

“I need something to eat. Is that part of your job? You know why I’m here.”

“So you’re hungry, wait until lunch.”

“I can’t.”

A wave of applause echoes from beyond the curtains.

Pullsey lightly claps. “Brother Kizowski is a fine man, and a very good speaker. Big shoes, buster,” he says.

“What?”

“To fill. Big shoes to fill. You’re on in how many minutes?”

Josiah bites at a fingernail.

“Okay, okay, c’mere.” Pullsey sits on a stool and waves the boy over like, Right here, kiddo, relax.

“What?”

“You’re hungry, right?” He reaches under the stool and grabs hold of a gray metal lunchbox.

“What’s that?”

“Lunch,” Pullsey says, and hands him one of three sandwiches carefully wrapped in foil.

“My mother wraps them like this,” Josiah says, biting into ham and yellow cheese. “Hey, what happened to your hands?”

“Chicken pox,” Pullsey says. Rubs them together, cracking a knuckle. He puts the left hand in a pocket, the right behind his neck.

“I never noticed. Why’d you get chicken pox?”

“I was a kid. And kids get chicken pox.”

Josiah wipes his mouth with the cuff of his jacket. “I didn’t.”

“Not yet.”

Josiah chews. “Maybe God punished you with chicken pox.”

Kizowski is booming, but it’s muted some by the curtains. Pullsey and Josiah are surrounded by the lush cloth, a fiery red-orange. Ropes and sashes dangle from the backstage spotlights.

“Seventy years we live, brothers and sisters,” Kizowski says. “In the case of special power, eighty. And the scriptures tell us it is this generation — not that generation, or any other generation, understand — but this generation will by no means pass away until the Day of the Coming of the Lord.”

Clapping, clapping, and then it’s quieter.

“Amen,” says Brother Pullsey, offering a single quiet slap at his chest. He looks back at Josiah, and says, “Okay, that’s enough.” He brushes the boy off the stool.

“You hit me,” Josiah says, not really believing it even as he says it.

“I didn’t hit you. I just need my seat. And I’m sure you know what it is to be hit. Or maybe you don’t, and you should.” He looks to the stage. “Shh, he’s almost done.”

Pullsey walks back toward the curtains. Kizowski points two fingers at the crowd, then heavenward, raised above his head like goalposts.

“Are you an electrician? My uncle’s an electrician,” Josiah says from behind. “But I don’t think he can do this kind of stuff. You must be a genius.”

Pullsey turns, and boy is this guy grinning. “I know you since you’re this big.” He thumbs the top of his kneecap. “They’ve been spoon-feeding you forever.” He turns away, and Josiah hears him mumble something about his mother’s breasts — that she still feeds Josiah her breasts?

Josiah says, “I heard you cuss. What did you say?”

“I did not cuss,” Pullsey says, and faces Josiah squarely. “‘Your breasts are like two young ones, like the twins of a female gazelle.’ Read your Song of Solomon. The Bible’s full of boobs. And,” he leans forward, “I didn’t hit you.”

Josiah pulls back, not in fear, but in surprise. He walks back to the stool and he claims it. “So how come you’re not an elder yet? Most of the old men are elders.” He takes a bite of the sandwich and pushes at the temporary wall.

Pullsey almost takes the bait, but says a brief prayer instead. For patience. And a small prayer for Josiah, the twelve-year-old whiz kid from Richmond Hill who they say knows the Bible by heart. Exaggeration. “We all have our parts to play,” he says. “And today, mine is making sure every word gets heard. You about ready?” He motions Josiah to please get off the stool, but the kid just doesn’t give.

“Off the stool,” Pullsey barks. “Now.”

The boy drops his head like a corrected pup, and he moves.

“It’s almost time,” Pullsey says. “I’ll walk you out there, buddy, and we’ll get that mic just right.”

Josiah looks up, defeated, but also half-smiling. Not so bad a feeling to be told what to do. He puts his hand in his right jacket pocket.

“What have you got?” Pullsey asks, not really interested.

Josiah turns away and takes out a Star Wars figure from inside his jacket. He carries one everywhere he goes. If his father knew, he’d be in big trouble. He likes how, with an action figure in his hand, the world around him becomes another world, a bigger world. Stones become mountains. Holes become bottomless pits. He makes like the figure is climbing his tie, swinging from a rope, and then he puts it back in his jacket.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Pullsey says. He squeezes the boy’s shoulder, massages his bones. “Break a leg.” He rubs at the boy’s slender blades, and hears Kizowski declare from the stage: “Yes, brothers and sisters, please join me in welcoming our next and very special speaker.”

“That’s your cue,” Pullsey says. And Josiah makes like he’s ready, but Pullsey does not let go.

“Brothers and sisters, our young and gifted Brother Josiah Laudermilk.”

The applause is especially long, as if the crowd is trying to coax the boy out from backstage where Pullsey holds on to his lamb-white neck. And Josiah can hear his father clapping. It’s gotta be him, a deliberate, hard and hollow cupping of the palms. Loud, loud, loud. Clap, clap, clap. Not fifty feet from where he stands. This gives him strength. The boy looks up at the sound man, who now looks down at the boy. He’s just a boy. Their eyes meet.

If you stay backstage, you’ll stay a boy forever.

He steps out onto the stage.

“Be careful out there, big man. Knock ’em dead.”

* * *

Carlo Senior tells them to shush it.

Issy whispers, “You hear that? You hear they said Josiah?”

Always angry before he got in the Lord, but now with church on the weekends and the family Bible study, Carlo Senior acts like a real man, and sometimes he’s even so kind, never so pissed anymore. They call him Brother Famosa. Got church privileges, too. Brother Famosa’s a greeter on Sundays, and maybe one day he’ll be a servant brother like the other men who help out the church with their business. The microphone handling, the money boxes. Oh, and Sister Hilda Famosa just balloons when she sees him opening the door, and welcoming the congregation every Sunday morning. She wishes Carlo Junior would follow his lead, but his head is only in one place, all the chicas bonitas. And Havi — she’s worried about Havi, how he looks up to his big brother. Issy does, too. She hands the boys thin spiral notebooks and five-color push pens, tells to them to write down a check mark whenever they hear the name Jesus.

Oh my God, here he goes.

Carlo Senior reaches across the empty seat beside him, and presses his finger to Havi’s mouth like “Shhhhh.” Smacks him on the back of the head. Issy inches forward and away, because he knows Havi’s father will hit him, too. “You two be quiet,” he says. “People are looking.”