Original Sins (16 page)

Donny, by shifting his eyes, could encompass his entire world. Everyone important to him—his mama, his grandmaw, his neighbors, his classmates—was all right here. His best friend, Tad, whom he'd known forever. He'd always been a little biddy guy, which was why they called him Tad. But this year he'd shot up to six feet, so everybody'd started calling him Tadpole. School was off to one side, his grandmaw's apartment off to the other, with the field next to it where revivals were held in big tents. The sounds of preaching and testifying and praying had drifted through his open window, to mix with his dreams on summer nights. The river straight ahead, where he'd floated on homemade rafts. And all around, the mountains. He must have been out of his mind the day he asked about going up to New York City. He liked things fine the way they were. Now that he'd been around his mama some, he realized that New York City hadn't done her much good. The woman he remembered as warm and smiling was often cool and scowling now—at that very moment, for instance.

He spotted Rochelle. Usually she sang with the choir, wearing a long white robe. He enjoyed seeing her long legs encased in nylons, and the arches of her feet peeking over the sides of her spike heels. Looked like she was having to work at it not to sink backwards into the dirt. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. Her brothers and sisters, scrubbed and dressed in poor-fitting suits and starched white dresses, stood in a row on either side of her. How she managed to keep them so tidy-looking was a mystery. One of the boys grinned and stuck out his tongue at Donny. Donny tried to look stern, but the corners of his mouth twitched. As he looked at the row of little children, he became aware that some were much lighter than others. Their fathers might have been white men. Fury swept through him. His hands clenched into fists.

The fury drained away quickly, like air out of a bicycle tire. He looked down at his clenched fists.

“… so the king, he picked this Esther to be his queen. The king's counselor, he'd arranged for her people the Jews to be murdered. Well now, this Esther was real beautiful, and this old king, he couldn't deny her nothing. But did she march right in there and demand that he save her people?”

“Huhun!” people murmured.

“Well sir, what did she do then, this clever and beautiful woman? She prepared a big old feast. The king, he says, ‘Esther, what is thy petition and it shall be granted thee?' But did she ask the king to spare her people? No sir, she did not. She asked him to a second banquet. And a second time, the king, he says, ‘Esther, what do you want from me, honey?' Well, Esther, she was decked out in these flowing robes bordered with gold. Her table was weighted down with food—bowls of fruit, platters of chitterlings, goblets of wine. This time she says, real sweet and quiet-like, ‘If I have found favor in thy sight, O king, let my life be given me at my petition and my people at my request.' And the king, he says, ‘Now hold on here a minute. What's this all about, Esther?' And she told him about his wicked counselor, and the king, he set the Jews free and hanged the counselor.”

“You preach it, Reverend!”

Kathryn felt a sneer on her face. She was a lapsed Esther. When she'd been baptized in this river by Reverend Stump twenty-three years earlier, she'd been devoted to the concept that the world was shaped in accordance with the Lord's wishes—that her assignment was to make white people's lives more comfortable, that by doing so she'd assure herself of a place in the glorious hereafter. She didn't go to church in New York City. If this world was what the Lord had in mind, she didn't want nothing to do with Him. She glanced around. Her friends and neighbors spent their days following white people's orders and smiling as they did so. They spent their evenings and weekends unleashing on the Lord and on each other the stormy emotions that accumulated. But what if there was no Lord to turn to, and your resentment was allowed to pile up day after day …

She studied Donny, buttoned up in his dark suit. Serious and polite and obedient and well-meaning, just as she had been at his age. What incident would finally turn him sour? Nothing maybe. Look at his grandmaw. She'd be shuffling to her dying days.

Stump had paused and the crowd was silent. Suddenly he stabbed the air with an index finger and shouted, “You there with that big diamond ring a-glittering on your finger! You there in your city-bought finery! You there with that blonde wig hat on your head! You is lost! Lost! Cadillac cars rust! Sharkskin suits shred! Diamonds fall out of their settings and into the gutter—and then where is you? You is
nowhere
, friend—unless you has accepted Christ Jesus your savior.”

“So glad this morning, bless our God!” called Ruby.

“We is slaves. Bound by fetters to the prison of our earthly bodies. And I'm here to tell you this morning, brothers and sisters, that the only thing that can set you free is giving your life over to the Lord Jesus Christ. He frees us from our sins just as surely as the masters freed their slaves from bondage. Hallelujah! The new Jerusalem, the Holy City where the streets is paved with gold, where the gates is inlaid with pearls, it ain't no New York City. Ain't no Washington, D.C., or Cincinnati, Ohio. It commences at death for the faithful who in this life accept Christ Jesus as Lord and savior!”

“That's right!”

“Yeah, tell it, brother. Tell it!”

“That's why we here this morning, friends, to welcome into the fold these young people who have seen the error of their ways and days and have made the decision to commit their lives to Christ Jesus. Who wish to prepare theirselves for their triumphal entry into the Holy City of God. But even Christ hisself had to get purified, at the hands of John the Baptist in the water of the River Jordan …”

He waded into the murky foam-flecked river, reciting, “‘And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the lamb.'” His robes floated around his waist. Mr. Husk and the young people in white formed a circle in the water. The crowd wailed in complicated harmony, “I was a backslider once, but praise God I'm on the Glory Road now.”

Donny watched as the young people were dunked like doughnuts. He recalled his own baptism. He'd been sitting for many years on the mourners' bench in church, with the women on one side and the men on the other exhorting him to call on the Lord to bring him across. It had become downright embarrassing, both for himself and for his grandmaw, who was the most important lady in the church. Sunday after Sunday, revival after revival, he had waited to be struck between the eyes by a thousand bolts of celestial power, as his playmates seemed to be. Finally Reverend Stump had taken him aside and assured him it was enough just to believe in his heart in the one true God. When his time came to testify, he said just this—no voices in the night, no visions or trances, nothing. But everyone seemed pleased, and sang and wailed. His grandmaw thrust out her arms and shrieked with joy and collapsed into the arms of three ladies, while they fanned her with Sunday School bulletins. Her veiled hat sat askew. Since then he'd gone on to become a junior usher. Straightened up the church after services and swept it once a week.

Ruby glanced at Kathryn reproachfully for not joining in the singing. Others had sung for her. It was the least she could do. Instead she stood in silence and stared across the river. She'd been behaving peculiar ever since she'd been home. Harsh and shrill now, just like a Yankee. She didn't do nothing but badmouth Newland and tell everybody how they ought to act. Happened ever time someone from Pine Woods went up North. Came back know-it-alls, in fancy cars with fine clothes and jewelry and all like that, talking about nightclubs. From the looks of it, her own daughter had turned into one of these godless people, concerned only with the tawdry comforts of this wicked world. Ruby was determined not to let this happen to little Donny. She looked at the grim set to Kathryn's jaw and was afraid for her. Buddy had had that same set to his jaw when he came home from Paris, France, and a few months later he got his throat cut. Ruby agreed with every word Reverend Stump had just said about tact and guile. The Lord meant for people to treat each other good. Just because some folks didn't always abide by this was no reason for the godly to waver.

The Tatro family sat in a pew in the red-brick Methodist church in the mill village. Mr. Tatro, his perpetually grease-stained hands clasped between his knees, was next to Mrs. Tatro in her white gloves and aqua linen suit. Then Jed, arm extended along the pew back. Then Raymond, hunched in the corner trying to pretend he wasn't there. Each Sunday he'd announce he wasn't going. His father would reason with him about the state of his soul. Raymond would reply that he didn't believe in God. His mother would burst into tears. Jed would threaten to squash him like the insect he was. His father would command him to put on his suit. Raymond would throw himself onto the sofa and stare at them. Eventually he would stomp into his room and get dressed.

The deacon Mr. Boggs was intoning the lesson from Luke in a pious nasal whine: “‘But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, “Go and sit down to meat?” And will not rather say unto him, “Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken.” So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, … “we have done that which was our duty to do.”'”

Mr. Marsh ascended to the pulpit and leveled a stare fraught with significance at his flock. He asked quietly, “How many of us here in this church this morning can look our neighbor in the eye and truthfully say, ‘I have done that which was my duty to do?' How many of us? Let ever person in this church who feels he has a right to say these words turn to his neighbor right now and do it.”

There were uneasy rustlings as everyone tried to figure out what behavior Mr. Marsh wanted from them. All finally concluded correctly and remained silent.

Mr. Marsh crowed, “Not one person in this church, friends! Not one! ‘I have done that which was my duty to do.' That one little phrase and not a one of us can claim to have fulfilled it. Now, what are our duties, friends? Before we can fulfill them, we got to know what they are. In general our duties pertain to what we owe other people—what we owe our ancestors, what we owe parents, what we owe our children, our spouses, our bosses, our town, our state, our nation. And most especially they pertain to what we owe our God …”

Raymond watched Mr. Marsh closely, mentally framing each pose for his photo series on religion in the South. He smiled with delight as Mr. Marsh twisted his pudgy frame so his head blocked out a candelabra on the altar. The candlelight cast an aura around his bushy grey hair. The brass cross seemed to grow out of his head like an antler. He stretched out his arm in a Nazi salute.

Tiring, Raymond watched a wayward honey bee explore the vivid reds of Jesus's blood in the stained-glass window next to him. It buzzed around, alighted briefly, then flew on to the next droplet. Mr. Marsh was ranting about duty. Do-wah-ditty ditty dum ditty do. Do-wah duty duty dumb duty do. Raymond considered the topic. What was his duty, and was he going to do it? School would be out in a few weeks, and he still had no clue about what to do for the rest of his life. Last week he'd taken a tour of the mill. Room after barnlike room full of deafening machines doing things to cotton fibers. Warm moist air, hazy with lint, which coated the machinery like thick frost. His father was a foreman in the roving room, which was filled with rows of frames, each supporting a couple of hundred spindles. He demonstrated how to balance the tension so that the rovings, as they wound on to the bobbins, neither broke nor snarled. Raymond was amazed at the enthusiasm his father could summon after twenty-five years for the topic of the constantly fluctuating number of rpms required to keep the winding speed equal to the front delivery speed. He watched as his father scrawled calculations in a small notebook.

His father pointed out the small clocks on each frame. “You divide the hanks by the size of the roving to determine the pounds per spindle. Then you multiply that by spindles per frame to get your total production per frame. Multiply by the number of frames per operative …”

Raymond nodded. Bobbins were whirling and whirring as fluffy white bundles of fiber were twisted, stretched, and wound. Watching them was making him dizzy. Men and women in work clothes or coveralls tended the frames. Some spindles had halted, and people were removing full bobbins, packing them in boxes on wheels and replacing them with empty bobbins. The place was a giant sewing machine.

Raymond had always loved figuring out how things, anything, worked. But now that he had the picture, could he spend his life at it? He glanced at his father's face and read enthusiasm. His father kept glancing anxiously at him—eager for approval? This thought unnerved Raymond. He'd spent his whole life wanting, and failing to earn, his father's approval. And now here his father was wanting approval from him? Did his duty require that he follow in his father's footsteps?

On the other hand, his father had left Tatro Cove, hadn't gone into the mines like his own father. Leaving places was practically a family tradition. Maybe his duty lay in upholding this folkway?

After visiting the mill, he'd gone to the newspaper office to ask about a job. The photo editor praised his work but said they couldn't use more staff. “I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for me to die, Raymond,” Mr. Monroe quipped.

While he was standing there, word came of a murder on Cherokee Shoals. A mother had shot her son for putting a lighted cherry bomb in her roast chicken. As Raymond snapped pictures of the corpse, he wondered what a lifetime of this would do to him. Was there some way to make a living from playing chess or sorting stamps? A job in the post office? He could steam off exotic stamps. But who in Newland got letters from exotic places?