Scarlet Sister Mary (1928, Bobbs-Merrill Company)/Chapter 23
On Friday Mary was washing clothes at the spring. The tubs were set close beside a tree whose shade was thick that morning, but the sun had crept around and was shining hot and bright on her back. She was wet through with sweat, but she made up her mind not to stop until she was through. She might not get to wash for herself again soon. Her time was getting short. The next change in the moon might be the time. Surely she could not go much longer.
This was the heaviest child she had ever carried—somehow the strongest one, too. She raised herself from bending over the tubs, straightened her back, and with a smile patted her distended body and said gently, "You gittin tired, enty? I tired too. Me most ready though. Po creeter! I gittin dese same tings ready fo you. You don' know dat, but it's so. Po ting, shut up in de dark—you soon gwine git you work finished, too—soon, same as me."
With a heavy sigh, she rolled her sleeves a little higher and bent over the tubs again.
She did not hear steps behind her and when Big Boy spoke to her, she turned with a start.
"Gawd! How you scared me!" she said with a laugh. "How you do, son?"
"Oh, I'm well, considerin, Si May-e. Pa sent me to ax if you didn' want to go to Heaven's Gate Church to-night?"
Mary straightened up and looked at him with a grin. "How-come Andrew sent me a answer like dat. E knows I'm gwine. I pure want to see de picture o Hell. I'm raven to see Hell."
"Well, Pa tell me to say we got a automobile now so you could have de buggy to ride in if Budda Ben would go long wid you to drive de mule. Pa say it might do you good to ride out."
Mary looked at Big Boy and smiled. "Tell you Daddy I'm much obliged. I b'lieve I will ride, I b'lieve I will," she said slowly. "But how-come you's in such a hurry, son. Stay a while an' talk wid me an' tell me what you see in town."
But Big Boy hurried away.
When the buggy with Mary and Budda Ben reached the church, a large crowd was already gathered there. People were thick in the churchyard, and all the doors and windows were jammed. The Bury-league had turned out, and the members were marching and singing until the picture was ready to show. Solemn black faces dripping with sweat were wiped with sleeves to keep from soiling the white gloves that covered the awkward unaccustomed hands.
A dark cloud looming in the west, hiding the sky, was cleft at frequent intervals by sharp zigzag lightning.
"Lawd, it's gwine to storm," Mary murmured nervously, and Budda whispered that he ever had heard when a Christian was buried, rain always fell in the grave. Maybe all this marching and singing by the Bury-league was stirring up the clouds and making them think somebody was dead. "No, Budda, no," Mary replied scornfully, "I seen rain fall plenty o time in a sinner grave when nobody wasn' makin a sound, Clouds can' see an' hear like people."
Budda did not argue the question.
"Le's hitch de mule, Budda," she said. "Le's hitch em to dis saplin. De lightnin's too close to hitch em to a big tree. Le's get out."
"Mind, 'oman! Don' trip. I don't want nothin to happen here dis night. Great Gawd! what you would do!"
Both of them laughed behind their hands at the thought of Mary's tripping as they joined a crowd near a window. "How you all dis evenin?" they asked.
"I well, how you?" came many answers.
The Bury-league marchers were moving to ward the church door.
"Dey better hurry," Mary whispered as she watched the black, swift-moving cloud. As she spoke a blinding flash of lightning was followed by a deafening crash of thunder. The singing marchers moved faster. Reverend Duncan walked bareheaded at the head of them, and his hymn book was open, ready to begin the service.
Mary was glad to see Andrew coming toward them with his hand reaching out to shake theirs and a pleasant smile on his face.
"I'm glad to see yunnuh is come out to-night. Mighty glad. I saved two good places for you to sit. Come right on inside de church. Big Boy is a-sittin on all two until you get dere."
Andrew went in first, Mary next, and Budda followed them down the aisle right to the Amen corner where their seats were.
Mary could see that the whole congregation was amazed. The Bury-league people who were marching in stared so hard at her that they almost forgot to sing. Some of them tripped and stumbled, so surprised were they to see Budda Ben and herself, the two toughest sinners in the whole country, escorted in by Andrew.
A great white cloth was stretched in front of the pulpit, and Reverend Duncan took his place in front of that to read out of the Book how scarlet sins could be made white as snow. It was a beautiful reading, and with the lightning flashing and the thunder crashing outside it sounded so solemn it reached clear down to the bottom of Mary's heart. "Though you sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." Reverend Duncan said nobody living could know how hot Hell was. He said that if all the stumps in the world, not only the stumps on this plantation, but all in the whole world, were dug up and put in a pile; and all the coal down in the bowels of the earth taken out and piled on top those stumps; then all the kerosene and gasoline and gun-powder in the world poured over the pile and set on fire; a sinner who had been in Hell no longer than three short weeks would freeze to death in ten minutes in a fire so cool as that.
The picture of Hell began with clouds of smoke coming out of a bottomless pit; smoke that was far blacker than the smoke from the river boat, and God knew that was black enough. Mary could smell it, and the stench of it was like coal-smoke mixed with burned feathers. It all but choked her. She had to cough to get her breath. Then, Satan's black head, with two horns like a bull, and grinning tusks like a boar hog, rose up out of the smoke which gradually cleared away until the awful fire from which it came could be seen.
Hundreds of devils smaller than Satan, and all of them with horns and long forked tails, danced around in front of the fire waving their pitchforks and making horrible faces at each other. Mary was almost afraid to look at them for fear she might mark her child on them, and yet she could not pull her eyes away.
As the poor pitiful sinners were dropped down, one at a time, through the mouth of Hell, the devils took them up on their pitchforks and stuck them down in the fire and burned them until they turned to little black creatures no bigger than hop-toads. They hopped and hopped around in the fire until Mary was so sorry for them she wanted to cry. All her life she had heard that sinners had to hop in hell, but she had never understood how awful it was until now.
When the people in the church saw all those terrible things the women began screaming. Some of them fainted and some of them went off into trances. The men were kept busy holding them and trying to comfort them. Mary was scared half to death herself, and she might have fainted too, but Doll who had a seat not very far from her began carrying on so, jumping up and down and shouting for help, that Mary felt she must help Big Boy try to keep the woman from dying, for Andrew paid her no attention at all.
If the Hell part of the picture had not been cut off then, to show a picture of Jesus, only God himself knows what might have happened. As likely as not the church would have been full of corpses, but Jesus, a kind-looking white gentleman with a beard and long hair like a lady, all dressed in a long baptizing robe, looked so harmless that everybody felt better at once.
Then Reverend Duncan got up and read out of the Book how Jesus said, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart."
Before he finished reading, the people were falling over themselves running up to the mourners' bench, yelling and crying, calling on Jesus to have mercy on them, and forgive them their sins. Not only women and children, but big, broad-shouldered men, the toughest boldest sinners, got down on their knees and begged Jesus to save them from torment. Their words fell thick as the heavy rain-drops on the church roof, but their prayers and weeping were feeble things beside the great peals of thunder that crashed down from the sky.
God was talking. Each terrible roar shook the church. The glass windows shivered and rattled, and the wind whirled and lashed the trees. Budda Ben turned and twisted and groaned, and kept looking behind him at the glass windows which let the glares of lightning shine right in on his back.
"I have hear-say glass draws lightnin, Si May-e."
Mary shook her head. She didn't know. She had never been around glass in her life. So much glass did look dangerous.
Then she thought of the Big House with glass windows all over it and all kinds of glass inside; looking-glasses and chandeliers hung with hundreds of pieces of glass. Lightning had never struck it, and it had stood there a hundred years. "No use to fret, Budda."
Just as she said it a-pain hit her so hard she groaned, "Do, Jedus, have mercy." She sat still for it to pass off, but a trembling seized her. She could not keep still.
"I got to go home, Budda" Budda did not understand her. "Home, I tell you—I got to go home." She tried to stand up, but Budda pulled her back.
"Pray right here, Si May-e. You'll get trompled on sho as you try to get to dat mourner's bench. De people's gone crazy."
"I ain' gwine to no mourner's bench, Budda, I gwine home. Is you deef?"
"You can' go home in dis storm, Si May-e. Sit down an' try to keep still, fo Gawd's sake."
"Don't talk to me bout keepin still. Oh, Lawd! Oh, Lawd! Do help me go home, Lawd! Oh, Lawd! What am I gwine do?"
Reverend Duncan was bending over the sinners urging them to pray harder, to be like Jacob and wrestle with God until He forgave them and put His sweet peace in their hearts. The whole congregation was in a stir, singing, wailing and weeping.
Mary called Big Boy to come help her get out. She yelled at the top of her voice but she could not make him hear her.
Thank God. Andrew heard. "You want to go up to de mourner's bench, Si May-e?"
"No, Jedus! I want to go home! Fo Gawd's sake, take me home, Andrew. Budda ain' able to make dat slow old mule hurry. Somebody's got to go long wid me."
Budda held to his stick, ready to follow in the path which Andrew cleared through the jam. Budda had forgotten his hatred for Andrew, and the strong man was very gentle as he helped the crippled sinner down the aisle, then down the church steps into the black wet night.
Mary did not wait for them, but ran through the rain, to the buggy which the flashes of lightning helped her to find in the confusion of vehicles around it.
"Do yunnah hurry, fo Lawd's sake," she called to the two men who were coming behind her as fast as Budda's feet could possibly shuffle along.
The mule's head was finally turned toward home, and the buggy wheels rolled in the waterfilled road. Mary tried not to moan, not to rock her body back and forth.
"Beat de mule, Andrew, make em step more pearter."
Andrew frailed the mule's haunches as hard as he could, but the beast's feet were hampered by floods of water and his eyes blinded by sheets of rain.
"Don' fret 'bout de mule, Si May-e, you hold on to dat child till we get you home. It ain' so far now," Andrew spoke kindly, but Budda was wretched.
"Great Gawd, Si May-e," he cried, "you can' turn em loose in dis buggy."
Mary had to laugh with Andrew at Budda's terror.
"I tried to get you to go wid Auntie to de midwife class last Monday mornin, Budda, an' you wouldn't do it. You better had. Den you wouldn' be so scared now."