Send Me Down a Miracle (7 page)

I heard a door slam and saw Adrienne coming off her back porch toward us. My heart did a flip-flop. She was shuffling toward us wearing this huge flowery kimono in turquoise and orange and red, and I just had chills watching her, 'cause there she was just letting about a half foot of it trail in the dirt without a care. Now, that's living. Daddy wouldn't let me so much as drag my feet, let alone some elegant piece of clothing. Someday, I thought to myself, someday I'm going to have enough money to buy myself something silky and expensive, and then I'm going to drag it everywhere like it's just an old dishrag.

Adrienne caught up to us and put her arm around me and nodded at Mad Joe.

Mad Joe jumped to his feet. "Morning," he said. "I hope we weren't disturbing your slumbering. I was just wanting to set some of these plants right after yesterday's trampling."

Adrienne laughed and shook out her hair. It had been tied in a knot, and just with the one shake of her head, out it came. I couldn't wait to try that in front of my mirror.

"Thank you, Joe," she said in her ice-melting voice. "I thought you might want to go in to see the chair. You said yesterday..."

Mad Joe smiled. "Yes, ma'am. I would, that's a fact. I just got to dip my hands in this here bucket and wash 'em off."

Mad Joe reached down and rubbed his hands together in the water. Then he wiped them on the towel he had wrapped around his neck, picked himself some of the rosemary, and gave a little bow. "Excuse me, won't you," he said. Then he hurried round to the back porch, and we waited but he didn't slam the screen door. He just let it gently creak shut.

Grace and Boo both stood up, dusting off their hands. Boo pushed Mad Joe's hat back off his face and studied Adrienne. Just when I was really starting to squirm 'cause he was staring so hard, he said, "The reverend's going to be talking about you this morning."

"About me? About my visions, you mean?"

Grace and Boo both nodded.

"About the Rapture," Boo said. "We heard him talking about it this morning, didn't we, Grace?"

Adrienne gave Boo a real hard look, studying him all over. Maybe she was just getting around to noticing he had no eyebrows or something, but I had a feeling it was more 'cause of the Rapture thing.

"Folks are saying this could be it," Grace said. "'Course the reverend doesn't agree. He said it would take more than this kind of thing to fool this town."

"What?" Adrienne's face went all chalky. "What are you talking about. Rapture? What's rapture?"

"Rapture. You know, Jesus' second coming. Miss Becky Cobb was saying yesterday how this is it. The time is nigh." Boo blinked at Adrienne. "She came by our place last night all fidgety fingered. She said she was just making sure one of us hadn't gone up into the clouds yet 'cause she's wanting to make sure when people start going she knows it so she can be ready. She hates surprises, Miss Becky does. They make her real nervous. 'Course my daddy says with all the fires she's been setting lately, she's likely to really get a surprise when she's one of the ones left standing on the ground jest a-weeping and a-gnashing her teeth."

Adrienne tightened the silk sash around her waist and looked at the three of us with such choking bewilderment it's a wonder she could stay standing.

I tried to explain. "The Rapture is when Jesus returns after a lot of wars and evildoings and judges both the dead and live folks and chooses which ones He's wanting with Him and which ones will be left behind to suffer. He takes all the good, true believers up with Him."

"The Rapture?" Adrienne said for the hundredth time.

"It's in the Bible," I said.

"In the Bible? Really? Jesus is going to take people up into the clouds?"

"He's going to suck 'em up like that." Boo snapped his fingers. "Two men will be out working in the field and without any warning atall one of them will just disappear—the Rapture."

"Your father's going to talk about this?" Adrienne asked.

"This morning in church." Grace nodded and took hold of Boo's hand.

"I haven't been inside a church in years, but I think I'll go today. What time is the service?"

"Ten," I said. "I'll save you a seat so you won't feel—you know, funny."

The church was hot and airless when we arrived. Both sets of doors were propped open to let in any outside breezes that might blow our way, but there weren't any. Folks were filing into the pews and pulling out the old straw fans before they even sat down. My fan had been eaten away some, probably by one of the Dooley babies, but unfortunately I could still read the tired old ad on the back: Thomson's Funeral Home—May Your Loved Ones Pass the Thomson Way.

I settled in next to Grace and Boo in the front pew, where Daddy liked us to sit, and set to fanning myself.

"Could you turn a little so that's not blowing my way. Charity? I might catch cold."

I glared at Boo. "Just what exactly is this disease you were born with, anyway?" I said. "I mean, how could anyone sit here on a day like today and think it's cold?"

Boo just pulled out his hymnal, set it in his lap, and stared at it.

I looked at his bald head and his small hands gripping the edge of his book and got myself a bad case of the guilts. Of all places to attack someone. I gave him a nudge. "You look real handsome, Boo."

He kept his head down, but I could see a bit of a smile peeking out.

Sharalee gave me a shove from behind as she and her parents took up their fans and sat down behind us. Then in puffed Miss Tuney Mae Jenkins, with her hair dyed cotton-candy pink and her chiffon dress in shades of red billowing about her like clouds in a sunset. Her shoes were covered in a pair of men's black dress socks that she wore on Sundays so she could feel those foot-pedal things on the organ. She was the church organist.

She dropped herself down on the organ bench and began playing some sorrowful tune. Her playing was always a sign for folks to start talking, and I could hear words like "Rapture" and "Jesus chair" and "phony" weaving in and out of people's conversations while I tried to talk with Sharalee.

"I knew it. I just knew you wouldn't wear that outfit." Sharalee turned to her mama. "Didn't I say she wouldn't wear it? And all that work I put into it! Really, Charity, you should have worn it."

"Sharalee," I said, "just hush, all right? Just hush."

"Oh, I get it. You did wear it, but your daddy made you take it off. What did he say?"

Before I could answer, Mr. Day, Boo's father, leaned forward over the back of the Marshalls' pew and said, "Miss Becky's gone. Miss Anna came by our house this morning after talking with Able. She's just beside herself with worry. Her sister's just disappeared."

"The Rapture!" Boo said.

Grace and Boo gave each other this big-eyed, spooked-out look.

After Mr. Day dropped his little bomb, Mrs. Marshall sidled out of her pew and into another one. The waggin' mouth of the South had work to do.

By the time the choir shuffled across the front of the church, with the women all shouldering their purses like mules lugging saddle-bags across the desert, the whole church was talking Rapture. Miss Tuney Mae's organ playing got real soft and she was leaning way off the bench so she could hear what folks were saying, even though I could tell by the know-it-all look on her face that she had already heard, probably from Daddy, which meant that the choir knew, too.

Grace and Boo were holding hands and leaning back in the pew. They were staring up at the ceiling like they figured any minute they would be the next to go.

I was keeping a lookout for Adrienne and was starting to get worried. In a way I was hoping she wouldn't show. I knew Daddy wasn't going to be in the best mood about all this Rapture talk and Jesus chair stuff, but just as Miss Tuney Mae played her last note, in she walked.

She was wearing a fantastic pair of silky flowing pants and some sleeveless flowing top and a big, big straw hat. Looking the way she did, and coming in after the organ, made it seem almost as if she had timed it for a grand entrance. The whole congregation went dead quiet. She stood in the back of the church and looked over all the faces staring at her, then turned her head left, then right. She was looking for something. Then I realized that something was me, and I knew I had to stand up and wave, maybe even call out, if she was going to see me.

I didn't want to stand up and have everybody look at me. I was afraid Daddy would catch me.

I saw the door open at the front of the church, and then in glided Daddy. He stopped as soon as he saw what was going on in the back. I sank lower into my seat, praying Adrienne hadn't caught sight of me, but then my conscience had to go and quote Scripture at me, saying, "But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven."

I thought about how the apostle Peter denied knowing Jesus just before Christ was forced to haul his heavy cross up Calvary Hill. I couldn't live with myself if I thought I would have been one of the people who betrayed Jesus way back then, and wasn't this the same thing? If I betrayed Adrienne, wouldn't it be like I was denying that she saw Jesus?

I gave my father a quick look and saw that he was still looking at the back of the church, so I stood up and waved. Adrienne didn't see me. She was making her way down the aisle, and as she passed the pews, folks were reaching out and touching her, her shoulder or her wrist or a piece of her silk pants, as if she were Jesus Himself making His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Some of the folks were even whispering things to her, but I couldn't tell what until I heard Mr. Day behind me asking her to pray for his son, Boo. Then Mrs. Marshall lunged forward, reaching out over Sharalee and Mr. Marshall and grabbing Adrienne's hand. "Pray for my Sharalee," she said. "Pray that she loses her weight." Adrienne nodded and smiled, but her shoulders were all hiked up, her face was all white, and her mouth fell back into this skinny straight line with her lips pressed hard as if she were trying to keep a fly from buzzing in. That's when I wondered if she regretted ever having seen Jesus. Was it worth that time of wonderfulness to have to put up with everybody grabbing at you?

I said her name, and when she turned toward me and saw who it was, her shoulders relaxed and she really smiled.

I held out a fan to her. She took it and sat down next to me. Then she leaned toward me and whispered, "I know I'm late. People kept stopping by wanting to see the chair."

Miss Tuney Mae started playing her intro to "Now to Heaven Our Prayer Ascending," and Daddy, looking all hot in the face like he had already delivered his sermon, strode across the front of the sanctuary and stopped directly in front of me and Adrienne. Adrienne gave my hand a squeeze, and then we all stood up to sing.

Daddy sang the first line real loud and looked straight at Adrienne. His one eyebrow was raised, making him look strict and disapproving. I glanced sideways at Adrienne, but all I saw was straw hat.

The whole time we were singing. Daddy was giving me and Adrienne the hairy eyeball, and when we sang the line in the fourth verse "Every foe at length subduing, God speed the right," Daddy raised his head up and then looked way down at just Adrienne through his glasses, and it was as if he was trying to warn her, or challenge her, or something.

The whole thing made me go all shivery, and when we sat down I snuggled in next to Boo real good and kept my fan on my lap.

The rest of the service went as usual until we came to the sermon, which, for a change, everybody seemed to be looking forward to. There were all kinds of rustlings and settlingins going on behind me as Daddy took off his glasses and said a quick prayer about the coming sermon. Then he began by reading from the Book of Jeremiah, and right away the atmosphere changed. It was just like that calm-before-the-storm thing. It was as if the sky had gone all greenish black and the earth was standing still, tense, just waiting for all that electricity to start zinging around.

Daddy began, "This is what the Lord Almighty says: 'Do not listen to what the prophets are prophesying to you; they fill you with false hopes. They speak visions from their
own
minds,
not
from the mouth of the Lord.'"

"Are you
ready
—for the
hand
—of
God?
" Daddy shouted down at us from his pulpit. "Are you?" He glared at the folks on his left.

"Are you?" He glared at the folks on his right.

"Are
you?
" He pointed at Adrienne for a good twenty seconds, saying nothing more.

Then he pushed his glasses up higher on his nose and glared out at the whole congregation.

"We have here today a visitor. A visitor who has
claimed
she has
seen
—Jesus. A
sinner
who has claimed Jesus has come to her! To
her!

"And this town can hardly control itself. Right away we all
believe.
Right away we're talking Rapture.

"Rapture!

"Let us look at what the Bible says about the Rapture. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus' disciples ask Him
directly
—saying in
chapter twenty-four
, verse three, 'Tell us,' they said, 'when will this happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming and of the end of the age?'

"And what did Jesus say to them? What was the
first
thing Jesus said to them? He said, 'Watch out that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name claiming, I am the Christ, and will deceive many.'

"
Watch out
—he says. Watch out that no one
deceives
you!

"Yes. Whenever we start looking for signs of Christ's coming we are easily
deceived
by false prophets. And here we have before us today just such a prophet tricking folks with signs of spiritual power and authority. Do not be
fooled
by this sinner, this Antichrist!"

Daddy paused in his shouting and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. I took the time to glance at Adrienne and saw her sitting as straight and stiff as a deacon's bench. She was clutching her fan and glaring straight at Daddy, not blinking.