A Land More Kind Than Home Read online

  Some men stood with their hands in their pockets and talked to each other out by the road. A couple of them had that Brylcreem combed into their hair, and they smoked cigarettes and stood back and watched the rest of the people in the parking lot. I looked around, and it didn’t take me no time at all to find Mama and Stump because they had a whole crowd of people standing around them. They were all talking loud and laughing, and some of the women hugged Mama and a few people bent down and talked to Stump like they expected him to say something back to them. When he didn’t even look at them, they just smiled and stood back and stared down at him and talked to Mama some more without taking their eyes off him. Mama smiled like she loved hearing what they had to say. Stump looked toward me where I was standing across the road, and even though I knew he was probably looking out at the river behind me, I felt like he was staring me right in the eyes.

  I looked up and down the road, and then I went ahead and crossed to the other side and walked into the parking lot. The heat waves shook in front of me like a flame coming up out of a cigarette lighter, and for a minute it looked like every one of them people in the parking lot was on fire. The men smoking out by the road saw me coming, and they finished their cigarettes and dropped them on the pavement and put them out with the toes of their boots. They stared at me when I walked past. I knew they were looking at the blood on my shirt, probably wondering what in the world had happened during Sunday school that could’ve gotten me so hurt. I acted like I didn’t see them, and I kept walking toward Mama. A few of the women standing with her saw me coming, and they tapped her on the shoulder and pointed at me. She turned around, and when she saw me she put her hands on her hips and waited until I got close enough for her not to have to raise her voice.

  “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 h
eart 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.

  “Are you sure it was him?” I asked her.

  “I know it was,” she said. “I know it was because other folks heard him too. They were laying their hands on him, and you know how much he doesn’t like that, and I guess it just got to be too much for him and that’s when he hollered out for me. It was so loud in there with the music going and all that praying, and they were on him, and I swear if it hadn’t been the Lord’s work I wouldn’t have been able to hear him. It was a miracle.”

  “But what happens if he doesn’t say a word ever again?”

  “He will,” she said. “The Lord ain’t going to give us this gift just this one time and then take it away. That ain’t no kind of mercy.”

  “But how do you know what God’s going to do?” I said.

  “I just know,” she said.

  “But how? Maybe God doesn’t want Stump to say nothing else. You tell us all the time that nobody can ever know God’s will.”

  “That’s right,” she said. “You can’t. But the Lord doesn’t play no tricks. Evil plays tricks, and there ain’t no room for evil in this family.”

  I kept my head back on the seat and swallowed hard even though I knew I wasn’t swallowing nothing but air, and I tried to keep myself from getting sick. I felt my forehead start sweating because I knew that Mama would tell me that I was evil for being the one who hollered out for her and then letting her believe it was Stump. It didn’t even matter whether she knew it was me or not, I felt evil just the same. She rolled her window back down like she was done talking, and that air coming in felt good against my face, even if it was hot and dusty.

  “What do you think Daddy’s going to say?” I asked over the sound of the wind pouring into the truck.

  “We ain’t going to tell him yet,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll need to see it for himself,” she said. “He ain’t going to believe in miracles no other way.”

  “Why wouldn’t he believe it?”

  “Because he don’t want to.”

  I closed my eyes and thought about Daddy having to see a miracle to believe in it, and then I thought about mirages again, about how miracles might be like that sometimes. It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost. I knew that she needed to think she heard Stump holler out for her, even if I knew he didn’t, and I wondered if it was a sin to think any less of a miracle just because you know it ain’t real.

  I looked down at my hand and I thought about trying to slide that splinter right out, and I took my finger and felt where the end of it stuck out of my palm. The rest of it was right there just beneath my skin like a branch that’s frozen just under the surface of a pond in the wintertime.

  “Quit messing with that splinter,” Mama said. “You’re just going to work it down in there deeper, and then I won’t ever be able to get it out.”

  MAMA PULLED OFF THE HIGHWAY AND DROVE DOWN THE LONG Branch Road toward the house. Up ahead, my daddy’s tobacco fields sat on the left-hand side of the road, and I could see where he’d started to cut and stick the burley and hang it upside down to dry. It looked like somebody had come and pitched little, green teepees in the field as far as you could see. He’d come along in a few days and pick up those sticks full of burley and toss them onto the sled before hanging them in the barn.

  The rows of burley that hadn’t been cut and stuck yet were tall and thick, and when me and Stump took a mind to hide out we’d run out into the field like somebody was chasing us, and then we’d pretend like nobody could ever find us. I liked to imagine that one day in the late summer Daddy would be out working in the field sticking the tobacco, and he’d come up a row and look down and find me and Stump still hunkered down and hiding out.

  “Is this where y’all have been?” he’d ask. He’d look over at Stump, and Stump would smile just a little bit. “What are you smiling about?” he’d ask.

  Mama turned left into our driveway; it was gravel and full of holes, and we bumped along and kicked up gravel dust until we got around the corner and saw the house sitting back up in the holler. I looked for Daddy on the porch just in case Joe Bill’s mama had called him, but I didn’t see him. But then I looked to the left of the house, and I saw Daddy standing outside by the barn and he had a shovel in his hand with something hanging off the end of it. When we got closer I could see it was a big old snake.

  “What in the world,” Mama said.

  “It looks like a snake,” I told her.

  “It sure does,” she said and sighed loud enough for me to hear her. “He certainly does.”

  She parked the truck in front of the house, and I opened the door and hopped out onto the driveway.

  “Come on, Stump,” I said, and I ran past the front of the truck across the yard over to where Daddy stood by the barn. I could hear Stump running behind me. Daddy wore an old blue Braves cap with the white “A” on it and an old button-down shirt and blue jeans. His work boots were unlaced, and his jeans were tucked down inside them. I stopped in front of him and caught my breath and looked at that snake. It’d been chopped just below the head, and its neck was bent like it was looking at us funny. Blood and guts hung out where it’d been cut.

  “What kind of snake is it?” I asked Daddy.

  He smiled. “A dead one.”

  “For real,” I said. “What kind is it?”

  “Look here,” he said. He turned the shovel over and dumped the snake out in the gravel, and then he leaned the shovel up against the barn. The snake was a yellowy-brown color with black stripes running all the way down its body. It must’ve been four feet long and as big around as my arm. Daddy kneeled down beside it and picked up its tail. “Come take a look at this,” he said.

  Me and Stump walked over to where Daddy had a hold of the snake’s tail, and we both squatted down to get a better look at it. Daddy shook it back and forth, and it sounded like a dried bean pod when he did it.

  “Is it a rattlesnake?” I asked him.

  “A timber rattler,” he said.

  “I ain’t ever seen one of them around here before.”

  “I haven’t either,” he said. “Not in a long time.”

  “Jess!” Mama hollered from the front porch. “Come on in here and let me take a look at that hand.”

  I walked across the yard and went up the steps and found Mama in the kitchen. She’d lit a long wooden k
itchen match, and she held the flame under a little sewing needle, and then she laid the needle down on a napkin and shook the match until the flame went out. She lit another one and held it under a pair of tweezers and then shook that one until it went out too.

  “All right,” Mama said. She reached out and took my right hand by the wrist and held it in front of her. “You need to sit still.”

  “It’s going to hurt, isn’t it?” I said.

  “I hope not,” she said, “but you never know with those old bats. They can give you some awfully bad splinters.”

  “It was a board,” I told her.

  “That’s right,” she said like she’d forgotten.

  She held the needle in between her fingers and took the tip and started picking at the skin around the splinter. I expected it to be burning hot, but I couldn’t hardly feel it because my skin was already sore and raw from the splinter being in there for so long. I watched that needle, and I kept waiting to feel it prick me.

  “What’s that going to do?” I asked her.

  “It’s going to loosen it up,” she said. “We want it to slide right out of there. Otherwise, I’ll end up having to yank on it.”

  “It looks like it would come out right now,” I said.

  “It’s a whole lot deeper than you think it is,” Mama said. “That skin around it is nice and tight.”

  She picked at it with that needle a little bit longer, and then she laid the needle down on the napkin and picked up the tweezers. There was a little bit more of that splinter sticking out of my hand now, and Mama took the tip of the tweezers and closed them around it and gave it a tug, but that splinter wouldn’t even budge.