Scarlet Sister Mary (1928, Bobbs-Merrill Company)/Chapter 13
Saturday passed, then Sunday. All the excursion people were back home except July and Cinder and nobody knew what had become of them or where they had gone. Mary was so miserable she scarcely knew what to do. She could not sleep all night for listening and hoping and praying to God for her July's return. Maybe he got left and would get a boat from somebody and manage to row home up the river. Her eyes burned with gazing so hard and so long out of the window, scanning the road, the fields, the whole countryside, looking for him, for some message from him. But none came.
All day long she had fidgeted about the house, then outside in the yard; feeding the chickens, watering the cow and staking her in a fresh place to graze, carrying a pail of meal mixed with water to the hog in the pen, trying to make the dragging hours go by. The heart in her breast felt dead and cold, and she moved about with slow heavy steps. Her eyes would do nothing but drain out water, drop after drop.
Everybody else was stirring around talking about the trip to town yesterday, except herself and Budda Ben who sat out on the wood-pile in the late afternoon sunshine, resting his chin in his hand, staring at the ground, thinking, and thinking. His face was so solemn it scared her away after she went close enough to speak to him. Budda Ben had begged her not to marry July. He said June or Andrew or anybody else would make her a better husband. He had ranted and raved when he heard how July danced with Cinder on the night of her wedding, but now, when she went near him, he paid no more attention to her than if she were a shadow. He behaved like a rank stranger who knew nothing of what was going on, and she needed him so. He let her cut her own wood, not offering her as much as a splinter. But he knew. He could not fool her about that. He knew that July had gone off with Cinder and left her and Unex all by themselves.
The fire on the hearth had almost gone out, the room was dim and she must get some wood to last for the night. Putting her apron over her head, she hurried across the yard to the wood-pile.
"Budda," she called him low, "Budda, please, cut me a lil wood for my fire. I ain' got a stick yonder home."
She turned her head away to hide the tears that gushed out of her eyes.
"Whe is July?" he growled furiously.
"Gawd knows. July went off yesterday on de excursion an' e ain' never come home, not till yet." Grief melted all her pride and she sobbed out loud.
"Is cryin gwine to fetch em back?" he asked presently in a gruff tone. "I told you to leave dat no-count rascal alone, enty? You wouldn' listen at nobody. Not nobody. You's made a hard bed for yousef, now you got to lie in it."
With each word he waxed crosser. "Budda," she plead meekly, "please, Budda, don' holler at me now. You an' Auntie an' de baby is all I got left in de world."
"You would have you way, enty? Now, you want evybody to be sorry fo you. You ought to be shame. A-blubberin' like a baby, stead o bein glad to be shet o dat low-lived scoundrel. What did you want wid em, anyhow? Didn' e disgrace you befo e married you? Tell me dat?"
He paused for Mary's answer, but she had become wordless. Her one thought was to get home before she fell dead of misery there on the wood-pile, for the merciless words went clean through her heart, cutting off her breath, her strength, her courage, all her hope.
The great crimson sun dropped behind the trees, black shadows came out from under the houses and stayed.
Night was falling, red firelight twinkled out through the open doors and windows of the cabins up and down the street, but Mary's house was almost dark. She sat alone by the hearth where only a few embers glowed, bewildered, filled with unspeakable loneliness and grief. Maum Hannah was off with some sick person, Unex slept and she had no friend left to comfort her. A few people had come by to speak to her this morning, but she knew they had come to see how she took July's going and she didn't encourage them to stay and talk. If she had the heart, she would go away and leave everything, everybody. She could find work of some kind in the town, and yet, this was home. She had known no other place in her life. The very earth here was a part of herself, and it held her so fast she could never leave it, no matter what came. She must stay and face everything the best she could, as well as her misery would let her.
The old cow-bell began ringing for meeting-time. Voices and footsteps passed her door. A sudden stumbling on the steps startled her. "Budda Ben? Is dat you?" she cried, fear jerking the words out of her mouth.
"I cut you some nice wood, Si May-e. Come, fetch it in befo de dew has it wet." He spoke gently, kindly, as if he had never said a harsh word to her in his life.
"Budda—Budda—I'm so glad to see you—I'm lonesome, I'm most dead"
She was not angry with him, for deep in her heart she knew Budda was her faithful friend. Puffing and groaning with the effort to mount the steps, Budda came inside. Sobs choked Mary, and her brain whirled dizzily.
"Go get de wood, gal. Le me mend you fire. Whe de baby is?"
"Yonder on de bed—a-sleepin." She stood still in bewilderment as much a helpless baby as Unex himself.
"I'll stay wid em till you get you wood. Hurry, befo somebody else takes em. Dem chillen is tricky devils. You can' leave nothin' a-lyin around."
Budda hobbled to where Unex lay sound asleep. "Such a fine lil boy," he murmured.
Mary went and hurried back with an armful of wood, then another. Budda built up the fire, and when it blazed up bright, he said this was meeting night. Mary had better come go.
Mary's heavy heart throbbed in her breast, and a sob shook her as she leaned over the bed where Unex was. If she went to meeting she'd have to take him. He couldn't stay by himself in the dark, even asleep. She had been by herself all day, she might feel better to go where some people were.
Wrapping a warm shawl around him very gently, so as not to rouse him, she eased him up into her arms. Then holding him carefully, she closed the front door behind her and stepped out into the warm dark. All the red light the sunset had poured over the land and sky had died out. Night had crept out from under all the houses and rose up over the fields, chasing every shadow of daylight away. The afterglow had left the sky. The stars were appearing one by one, white stars first, then red ones and blue ones, all marching slowly toward sunset.
Where was July now?
Maum Hannah's cabin, where meeting was held every Wednesday and Sunday night, stood at the other end of the street, as the washed-out, dilapidated road running between the two rows of weather-beaten cabins was called. Not many people would be there yet. Only the old people, the good earnest Christians, cared to be on time for the beginning of the prayer-meeting. The young and the sinful preferred to linger on the door-steps chatting, laughing, smoking talking over the pleasures of yesterday's excursion to town.
As Mary passed them she called out as cheerfully and pleasantly as she could, "(How yunnuh do?" but she knew that her lively tone fooled nobody.
The answers came back at once, clear, warm, but pitying, "I well, Si May-e, how you?" with an undercurrent of murmurs, "Poor child." "E's frettin right now." "July ought not to do em so." "No." "July is a case, a heavy case." Then the kindly voices fell back into talk about the excursion to town.
The same talk had run steadily through the whole day. That excursion yesterday was the best excursion ever run. The most orderly. Not a soul had been shot. Nobody got cut with a razor. The one man bent on starting a row got pushed clean off the boat. A good thing, too. Lord, town had a fine restaurant. The fish there tasted too good. A pity all the day had to be spent going and coming. Still, it was sweet-riding. Yes, Lord. Such a pity July stayed in town with that black devil of a Cinder. But if he had come back, there would have been trouble. July always started a row or quarrel. A shower of hushes fell, for Mary was not yet out of hearing, and nobody would wilfully hurt her.
Maum Hannah's big room was ready, waiting for the people. A great yellow pine fire leaped high up the chimney, fanned by drafts from the wide-open door and windows. The same draft fluttered the swinging circles of fringed newspapers that were fastened on barrel-hoops and hung overhead to the old time-stained rafters, which they completely hid, making a cool, light adornment for the room. The side walls were covered with newspapers, soiled, smoky, yellow, for they were put up before Christmas and this was September. The small pine table, bare except for a small glass kerosene lamp and a worn Testament, stood a few feet from the hearth. Around this the wooden benches, which lived all the week in a pile under the house, were placed in orderly fashion clear back to the very walls. These old benches, each one a narrow board with four stout legs and no back, were sturdy and strong, able to hold up all the weight put on them.
Mary chose a seat near the door, for only members in good standing were entitled to sit near the front. Sinners were required to take the back seats. But she liked to sit where she could see everybody who came in the door, or who stood outside in the yard. July might get home to-night. He may have been left by mistake somehow. He'd find some way to get home. Cinder could not fool him off and make him forget all about her and Unex. Never. He knew Cinder and her tricky ways too well for that.
Some of the old sisters sitting near the lamp and the Bible, opened their eyes from praying and peered at Mary when she tipped in. "Good-evenin," they all said with a bow.
"Good-evenin," she answered softly.
Maum Hannah looked up again and cleared her throat, "How-come you is settin so far back, honey? You could come up nigher to de table. Unex could sit on de front bench."
Mary thought hard for an answer. "De fire is most too hot for Unex, Auntie. I'm 'faid e might would catch cold." It was a good excuse, and Maum Hannah folded her arms again, and closed her eyes and went back to her praying.
The yellow pine fire blazed higher and brighter, sending its hungry tongues in and out through the logs, hunting the tender rich spots, eating them first. By twos and threes the people came in, sometimes by whole families, father, mother, children like steps. The benches were all filled and those coming too late to get seats had to stand beside the walls, or stay outside in the yard, where their low talking hummed as if bees were swarming out there in the darkness.
The firelight beamed on the women's Sunday hats and dresses, on the men's close-clipped heads, but the yellow lamplight stayed on the table, for its work was to show Brer Dee, the leader, how to read the fine print in the Testament, and to help him line out the hymns for the people to sing, two lines at a time.
Brer Dee stood with his back to the fire, and found a place in the Testament by holding it right up to the lamp's dim eye, then, laying that book down, with its open face on the table, he took up the hymn-book and searched its leaves until he came to what he wanted.
He straightened up, looked the crowd over, scratched his bony head, stroked his beard and began in a rumbling voice:
"Yunnuh listen, chillen, whilst I line out de hymn for all o we to sing to de praise o God."
A deep silence fell. Even the tiny babies in their mothers' arms, and the little children holding to grown people's knees, gazed at him with round eyes while he rolled out the musical words:
Pilgrim through this barren land."
Brer Dee himself raised the tune, and all the people joined in singing to God, asking help of His mighty strength for their own weakness.
As Mary sang tears streamed out of her eyes and fell on the shawl around Unex. She patted him softly, gently while he slept peacefully through the great full-throated waves of sound.
Where was her July now? Mary's heart ached bitterly. It lay heavy and slow-beating in her breast, weighing her whole body down.
Brer Dee lined out the next two lines of the hymn:
Hold me with Thy powerful hand."
Mary sobbed as she sang. Sorrow had her weakened so her knees quivered with little Unex's weight. She who had been so strong a year ago, even a month ago, had become feeble and trembling in one short day and night of misery.
God had forgotten her. Maybe He was vexed because she loved July too much. And to punish her He had let Cinder take July away. He is a jealous God, with the power to give and take anything and everything. Maum Hannah said so.
He could even take babies out of their mothers' arms. This idea pierced her with a sharp pang, and her arms tightened on Unex's soft yielding body, until he wriggled and squirmed, and fretted out loud with discomfort. Mary patted him and rocked her body from side to side putting him back to sleep. Maybe God held another thing against her. God knew she got Unex hefore she was married, but He knew too that July was the only man in the world for her, and if he had refused to marry her she would have been faithful to him just the same.
She had prayed for pardon, over and over, but God must not have forgiven her sin. He might be punishing her for it now. She thought over all this while the hymn was still being sung:
Land me safe on Canaan's side."
Those were solemn words, and shivers ran down her spine. She had never really repented about Unex, and to have July back as in those happy first days when she had been everything to him, she'd give up all her hopes of Heaven and choose Hell's destruction with July rather than have the safety of Canaan's side without him. She was never afraid of anything when July was with her, for he had no fear.
"Let us pray," Brer Dee called out, and Mary knelt down with the others.
Maum Hannah said prayers were answered. God listened to people and gave them the things they asked for, provided they plead with Him long and hard enough. Maybe praying now would bring July home. She began whispering, silently, earnestly, "Please, God, do, little kind Jedus, send July back home to me. Do don' let that wicked woman, Cinder, keep him. She is a sinner. One man is the same as another to her, so long as they are young an' strong an' have money jingling in their pockets." Mary's prayer was filled with telling God about Cinder's sins. She forgot all about praying for the forgiveness of her own sin, that old scarlet sin she and July had sinned together before they ever married.
She had never even confessed it to Brer Dee and the deacons, who turned her straight out of the church for dancing. Kind old Brer Dee had no pity where sin was concerned. He would turn his own child out of the church as quickly as he'd turn out a stranger.
He opened the worn Bible, and, although the lamp was dim and smoky and blurred and his eyes were not sharp and his lips stumbled badly over some of the long hard words they tried to say, he still made enough of them plain to tell the story of Moses and Pharaoh, the wicked, powerful, heathen king who held the children of Israel in bondage. Cinder was a lot like King Pharaoh, who was stiff-necked and hard-hearted and mean.
Brer Dee took as the theme of his talk the command given to Pharaoh by the Lord God: "Let my people go." He shouted as loud as he could, over and over the earnest, high-pitched, half-sung words, "Let my people go!"
The rhythm of the sentence, "Let my people go" shifted in Mary's ears into a call to Cinder away off in town, "Let my July go!" A human voice could not go so far, but Brer Dee said the Holy Spirit was all-powerful. Time and distance were nothing to it, and it could reach to the ends of the earth.
If that were true the Holy Spirit might take her prayers right now, through the night, across all thdse miles of swamps and river and fields and forests clear to town to make Cinder let July go and to fetch him home to Unex and her. Tears trickled down Mary's face as she tried to plead with God to send the Holy Spirit for July, but Brer Dee suddenly closed the Book with a snap and called on Andrew, the blacksmith, to pray, since his own voice was too hoarse to say another word. The strain of trying to move sinful hearts to prayer and repentance had him spent and breathless, and the hot fire back of him had him wet with sweat.
Although Andrew was little older than July, he had already been married twice, the first time to Mary's cousin who died and left one little boy named Big Boy, then soon after her death he married Doll, July's sister, a woman some years older than Mary, who already had a house full of children. When Andrew first became a widower he courted Mary, and Budda Ben urged her to marry him, for Andrew would make a fine husband, but Mary had argued that while no man on the plantation was more able than Andrew, who was a solemn deacon, she loved July best because he laughed and joked and sang as he worked and was fresh and ready for frolic when night came.
Andrew was now the faithful husband of Doll, her own sister-in-law. And Doll was shaking and patting Andrew's colicky baby, hushing its cries while its father prayed to God, and July, her July, was God only knew where. Still, if she had it to do all over again, she'd choose July before any man in the world. Nobody else knew—bow to be so tender, or so gay, or so bold in loving.
Everybody stood up and sang the last hymn, slowly, solemnly, following the words Brer Dee lined out of the book. Ten thousand foes arise."
The weight of dismay in Mary's heart made her knees shaky. Tears burned her eyelids.
To draw thee from the skies."
Prayer-meeting was over and the shouting was about to start. The middle of the room was cleared quickly as the benches were carried out into the yard and put back under the house where they would stay until next meeting night. All the Christian men who had strong singing voices grouped themselves in one corner, and after a few minutes' talk decided on the spiritual Jubalee. Andrew raised it, his deep voice ringing out full, his great throat swelling with the song.
Shout you, mo'ners, you done free."
The others marked the beat of the words with a slow hand-clapping and a quiet knee-bending, singing low until the whole congregation joined in with a hearty fervor. Men, women, children sang with faithful reverence, waiting for the spirit to move the people's hearts and make shouts ring out with pure joy.
The smoky lamp on the high mantel-shelf shed its dim yellow rays on the men's bare, close-clipped heads and the women's hats. Some were old with broken brims and others were new and trimmed with gay ribbons; lack of proper apparel kept nobody home from meeting. God expects people to dress as decently as they can when they gathered to worship Him, but He knows all their needs and what they lack, and while men must always pray with bared heads, women must have their heads covered somehow.
Everybody sang with utmost strength. The room could hardly hold so much sound. Hearts swelled fuller and fuller as feet beat time and hands patted sharply, palm against palm.
Maum Lou, the weakest frailest soul in the room, had begun the shouting. With short, shuffling, rocking steps she eased into the center of the room. Her arms were bent at the elbow, her veined old hands hung limp from her stiff wrists, "Juba-lee" her old lips quivered. Tears shone in her eyes, her joy was keen as grief.
One by one the women joined her, forming an ever-moving circle that widened steadily, while the men sang louder, faster, bending their legs deeper, popping their palms together in deafening claps:
Dis is de year of Juba-lee!
Juba-lee, Oh, yes. Juba-lee—Juba-lee."
Doll gave her fretful baby to Maum Hannah to hold while she joined the shouters and her little stepson, Big Boy, came and stood beside Mary, holding to her skirt. Doll's feet beat the floor with stiff thuds. The fringed paper circles swayed and rustled overhead, the lamp flickered in its socket, the fire settled low in the chimney. Jubalee was done, and singers and shouters had to catch breath and wipe the sweat off their dripping faces.
"Better tell Doll not to stomp so hard. E's gwine kill eself if e don' mind," Andrew called out to Maum Hannah, loud enough for everybody to hear, but Maum Hannah smiled and shook her head. Andrew need not worry. Doll would not hurt herself. She was strong as an ox, and besides, God never lets a woman suffer from shouting His praises.
"Looka Lou," Maum Hannah said. "Lou can' hardly walk, e's so old an' weak, yet e can jump an' shout hard as a young gal when Gawd puts de sperit in em. Many a time I look fo Lou to pop e gizzard-string right in de middle o de meetin floor. But God takes care o His chillen whilst deys a-shoutin. Don' fret. Not 'bout Doll. Doll is a deacon's wife now, an' e has to shout harder'n de other womens."
Andrew led off again, singing.
Drinkin' wine, wine, my Lord,
I'll sit in Heaven ten thousand years
A-drinkin wine."
"Let me hold Unex, honey, an' you go git in de ring. A lil shoutin'll straighten out you back an' make you feel a lot better. I'd be on de floor myself if de misery in my crippled knee would let go a minute. But it's got me hamstrung. I can' hardly lift my right hand foot off de ground."
Mary shook her head no. She was too sad to rejoice.
The low-burning fire gave out less light than heat. Andrew's wet face shone, his eyes glowed, his whole body shook as his long arms, held now high, now low, hammered his hard palms together with terrible claps, beating time for the words of the spiritual which told about the joys of Heaven, the fearsome horrors of Hell. As his square jaws tightened, his strong white teeth bit the words into short cries which sprang out between his heavy lips. His heart was on fire, and its flame was spreading through the cabin. The women joined the singers, their high, thin, wailing notes shrill and fierce. "A-drinkin wine!" Children with bright wide-open eyes stood closer to the walls so as not to be in the way and get their bare feet tramped on by the frenzied shouters. Hot breaths heaved in and out, painfully praising God, praying to Him. "Glory to His name!" "A-men!" "Praise Him, sisters!" "Seek Jesus, sinners!" "A-drinkin wine!"
Maum Lou hopped higher and higher, outshouting them all. Only Mary sat still, her eyes wandering now and then toward the door, look ing, watching, hoping for July still. The happiness of the others drove her sad thoughts into a deeper gloom. She would have left the shouting except that her own home was too lonely to bear. She sat listless, heedless of everything but her own dark thoughts, until the exhausted singers and the shouters stopped for good.