Perfect Peace (37 page)

Paul blurted, “I wanna be saved.”

“You cain’t be saved yet, boy. Not while you still a sissy. You gotta get delivered from that first.”

“I been tryin’! What else can I do?”

“Pray and ask the Lawd to deliver you. He’ll do it! I know He will!”

“I done asked God a thousand times!”

“Well, obviously you ain’t been sincere. If you was, He woulda done it by now.”

“I thought all you had to do was believe in Him?”

“You do gotta believe, but you cain’t be no sissy. You gotta get rid of that before He can do anything with you. He hates sissies.”

“Oh. I didn’t think God hated anybody.”

Woody smiled. “You don’t know Him yet, boy.”

“But don’t you gotta be baptized or somethin’, too?”

“No! You only gotta be baptized if you gon’ join the church.”

“So can somebody be saved who don’t go to church?”

“No!” Woody shouted, irritated. “The Bible say everybody gotta go to church.”

“But what if somebody get saved, but then don’t wanna go to church?”

“Then they ain’t saved!”

“Why not? You said—”

“Listen, Paul! You don’t know nothin’ ’bout God ’cause you ain’t read yo’ Bible.”

“I know I wanna be saved. I don’t wanna burn in no fire forever.”

“Then pray and ask God to deliver you from what you is. And really mean it this time.”

Paul thought he’d meant it every time.

“Ask God to make you clean. I know you been tryin’. He’ll save you one day—soon as you get delivered. Keep fightin’. It won’t take long.”

Woody walked away.

Paul closed his eyes and said, “God, I hope You can hear me. I don’t really understand everything Woody said, but I know I wanna be saved. I don’t wanna burn in hellfire forever.” He paused, but didn’t open his eyes. “Will you take the rest of the sissy out of me? Please?” Paul waited, but didn’t feel anything. Maybe he didn’t believe, he considered. He’d certainly tried, but
believing was hard when there was no proof. How could he be asked to believe what no one could prove?

Paul went to bed troubled and unsatisfied. Would he ever be saved? He loved God in his heart, but obviously that wasn’t enough to save his soul. He’d never wanted to be a sissy—had tried desperately to avoid it—but he must not have tried hard enough, he thought. Woody’s words left him despondent and less sure than ever that God even liked him. The day would come when he’d need a savior and, on that day, when the savior didn’t come, Paul would regret that, years ago, he had never learned how to believe.

With Sol gone and Woody lost in religious rhetoric, Paul became withdrawn and reticent. He and Eva Mae wrote notes to each other in class, but they stopped going to the field of clovers. Most days, he went straight home after school, performing chores with a silent disposition that soon accompanied him everywhere.

By eighteen, his transition into masculinity was as complete as it ever would be. He still switched slightly and never garnered any male friends, but his self-esteem was better than it had ever been since the death of Perfect. Or the birth of Paul. Memories of girlhood days had waned, and, more than anything, he wanted to be left alone. He didn’t want to
be
alone; he simply wanted adults to treat him like they treated everyone else. With simple nods of acknowledgment and invitations to “come by and see me sometime.” He wanted his peers, especially Johnny Ray, to stop avoiding him and to know that he was just as much a boy as the next. Well, almost. The urge to dress in girls’ clothes had disappeared, after that day in the barn when Gus put the fear of God in him, and once he’d recovered from the fever, Paul tried hard to say and do things that would make Gus proud. He didn’t want to cook with Emma Jean anymore, and he learned to restrain his normal overflow of tears. The only thing he missed was someone else confirming his worth. No one mentioned how precious he was—like they had said of Perfect—and he was left to believe that, as a boy, he didn’t matter. Only Emma Jean reminded him that he was still beautiful, although menfolk taught him to reject such comments. “Boys ain’t pretty, Emma Jean!” Gus interjected each time she said it. “They either handsome or nothin’ at all.” Paul was afraid to ask to which category he belonged, so he began studying his face in the mirror, hoping to discover those features that would qualify him as handsome. Being called
“handsome,” however, didn’t feel the same as having been called “pretty.” Paul discovered that when people said “pretty,” they meant something or someone innately endowed with traits found pleasing to the eye. Like when a forest dweller happens upon a rare, purple blossom. He marvels at it, then considers its creation as a manifestation of the divine God. Its beauty is simply the fact that it exists. It needs no enhancing or modification. “Handsome,” Paul discovered, is a designation used for those people or things that are well put together. A shiny car, for instance, can be handsome. Or a well-built house. Or a man in a suit. Something about the compliment didn’t feel as authentic as the former declarations of his beauty. It was as though men
could
be handsome, if they were willing to make the sacrifice, whereas pretty women had been sent from heaven that way.

He knew one thing for sure: he wasn’t ugly. Folks in Swamp Creek had expressions, both facial and vocal, for those whom they deemed unattractive. “That Redfield boy? The middle one? Lord have mercy! That child looks like homemade sin!” Miss Mamie said each time she beheld him. Others apparently agreed. They’d shake their heads, observing him from a distance, undoubtedly thanking God their children didn’t look like him. What did
homemade sin
look like anyway, Paul wondered. People never said these things about him. As Perfect, she had been affirmed by women and men as a carrier of beauty. Now, as Paul, his caramel, flawless complexion was spoken of only in private by women, and men acted as though they didn’t notice. The balanced nature of his facial features rendered most silent with envy. The truth was that he was a bit too beautiful for most people’s liking. Authorly kept Paul’s hair neat and orderly, and his extra-bushy, perfectly arched eyebrows accented soft, sensual, deep-set, dark brown eyes as though he wore eyeliner. In his teenage years, Paul’s face lost its roundness, revealing sharp cheekbones and full, puckered lips that made others look at him longer than they intended. Most agreed, silently, that Paul Peace
was
a pretty colored boy. Yet, because of his history, they didn’t dare say it.

Lee Anthony Redfield approached Paul and Eva Mae one day during lunch. The two were sitting on the grass beneath the only tree in the schoolyard.

“Hey, funny boy,” Lee Anthony called. His face showed no emotion. He was short for his age, five foot three, and couldn’t have weighed more than
120 pounds. Eva Mae had anticipated the day someone would beat the rudeness out of him.

“Shut up!” Eva Mae shouted, and stood. “He ain’t botherin’ you, so just leave us alone!” She waited for Paul to stand his ground.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you,” Lee Anthony said. “I’m talkin’ to
Perfect
.”

Paul’s head bowed.

“You is funny, ain’t you? Everybody says so.”

“Kick his ass,” Eva Mae murmured.

Paul stood. “Why don’t you just leave me alone? I ain’t never done nothin’ to you!”

“Well, answer my question and maybe I will.”

Eva Mae pounced upon him. Having underestimated her strength, Lee Anthony grabbed her lightly, allowing her to toss him aside and punch his nose until blood flowed from it like the Jordan. Paul watched in amazement. Lee Anthony soon realized he was no match for Eva Mae, so he surrendered with his right hand dripping in blood. “I’ll get you one day, faggot!” he declared to Paul as he shuffled toward the schoolhouse. “Girls can’t take up for you the rest of yo’ life.”

When Lee Anthony disappeared, Eva Mae turned and slapped Paul’s arm angrily. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” she shrieked.

“What? What did I do?”

“Nothin’! That’s the problem!”

“What was I supposed to do? You definitely didn’t need my help.”

Eva Mae gasped. “Aw, come on, Paul!
You
was s’pose to fight him, not me! Didn’t you hear what he asked you? How come you didn’t hit him? You can’t walk around bein’ no sissy! You gotta be a man—one day!”

“I don’t fight, Eva Mae!”

“Well, damnit, you better start. I can’t be takin’ up for you like you some helpless li’l punk!”

He never thought he’d hear Eva Mae call him those names. “I ain’t helpless, Eva Mae, and I ain’t no punk!”

“Then stop actin’ like one! You big as most of the boys ’round here now. Bigger’n many of ’em. How come you let them treat you like that?”

“I don’t
let
them treat me like nothin’! They just do it!”

“And they gon’ keep on doin’ it ’til you start defendin’ yo’self! You ain’t no girl no more, so stop actin’ like one!”

Paul’s mouth fell open. “I ain’t actin’ like no girl, Eva Mae! I just didn’t want to fight!”

“Why not!”

“ ’Cause I don’t fight. I just don’t.”

“Well, like I said, you better start ’cause I ain’t fightin’ for you no more.” She brushed her dress.

“Good! I didn’t ask you to fight for me anyway!”

Eva Mae walked toward the school. “Just be a man, Paul, okay? If you gon’ be one, then
be one
!”

Paul’s hurt settled beneath his skin like a lymphoma cancer. How could she, of all people, call him a punk? She knew his story, knew it better than most, and still she had said those ugly things? If he couldn’t depend on her, who could he depend upon?

Paul turned his back suddenly to Eva Mae, to the school, to the world, and dashed down the road a bit, crying, “I ain’t no punk! I ain’t!” His arms flailed wildly as his feet stomped the earth. “And I ain’t no sissy! Not now, not ever! You can’t make me be that way!” He grabbed a stick from the ground and began beating the trunk of a mighty pine. “I ain’t nothin’ but a boy, just like any other boy!” Tears flooded his cheeks but he didn’t wipe them away. “And I ain’t no freak!” Had the stick been an ax, the pine would’ve been leveled. “I’m a normal”—
wham!
—“Negro boy”—
wham!
—“and nobody’s gonna call me a sissy”—
whack!
—“ever again!” When the stick broke, Paul tossed the pieces into oblivion and found another one. “You cain’t make me no punk!”—
whack!
—“ ’Cause that ain’t what I am!”—
wham!
—“I’m a boy!”—
wham!
—“A boy!”—
wham!
—“A BOY!”

A curious squirrel watched Paul purge. Its head jerked right, then left, seemingly unable to discern the source of his madness. Abandoning the attempt, it scampered away, leaving Paul to complete alone what he had begun. “I’ll never be no sissy again!”—
wham!
—“Never!”—
whack!
—“I’ma be a man one day! A man!”

The screeches, grunts, yelps, and hollers left Paul exhausted. Within minutes, he collapsed to the earth, panting for dear life and fearing that people’s perception of him, like the tree, was immovable. He sighed deeply, unable to think of anything else to do. What difference did it make anyway? Emma Jean always said,
Folks gon’ talk about either what you is or what you ain’t, so no need wasting good time trying to make them like you. It never works. They ain’t God noway!
Paul agreed, but now felt the loneliness of having been rejected
by his only friend, his best friend, his one true confidante. That’s what hurt most. He knew others didn’t care about him, but Eva Mae? Her betrayal stung at the core. He felt weak and tired, like one suddenly drained of the desire to live. Crying had done him no good, and his inability to fight left him as vulnerable as a wounded bird in a forest. What else could he do? Nothing at all, he concluded, so he rose, brushed the seat of his overalls, and, with bowed head, returned to the schoolhouse where, half-listening to Miss Erma drone on about some man named Ralph Waldo Emerson, he sat in misery the remainder of the afternoon.

After school, Paul went to the Jordan. He couldn’t imagine what Gus and Bartimaeus did there, but whatever they did, they returned renewed, and that’s what he needed—a renewal, a rebirth, a fresh start—now that Eva Mae had become like the others. He’d never felt so alone in all his life. He’d also never realized how much he needed Eva Mae. Maybe the Jordan would teach him how to survive without a friend in the world.

Once arrived, he stood on the bank with folded arms as the breeze massaged his wounded soul. The rains had long since passed, so he certainly couldn’t count on them for assistance, and he was far too shy to wail. He didn’t understand why Gus and Bartimaeus did that anyway.

The Jordan had a beauty all its own. It wasn’t very wide—fifty yards or so—but its waters rushed as if in a desperate hurry. Fishermen and swimmers alike avoided it until, farther downstream, it spread and calmed into shallower water. Paul bent and submerged his hand in the flow, then jerked it back from the shock of the cold. He was taken by the Jordan’s clarity, as though, from the beginning of time, nothing had been allowed to pollute it. It was so clear that Paul noted huge rocks resting on the bottom, far from shore. The water was clearer than any well in Swamp Creek, and he wondered why people didn’t come to the Jordan for their drinking water. Wild ferns and other greenery covered both banks as far as Paul could see, and he knew now why the flood of 1915 had claimed so many lives. The turbulent rush outgrew its banks, he imagined, and ran in every direction until its thirst for life was satisfied. Only then did it recede and resume its natural flow. It was a mighty stream, a breathtaking wonder, certainly the most scenic place in all of Swamp
Creek. Maybe all of Arkansas. Yet, beautiful as it was, Paul felt certain that the Jordan was nothing to play with.