Fat Lightning (10 page)

I take Granger what few table scraps there is and some of that canned dog food. Reckon he's the only true friend I got. Weren't for him barking that night, I never would of knowed about the Jeter boy, never would of caught him that night, him and that girl right out there by the barn where Jesus or anybody could of seen 'em.

But I didn't run up and scare 'em or even let 'em know I seen 'em. Just slipped back in the house and bided my time. Picked up the Bible and turned it to Revelations. Sometimes you can just flip open a page or two and get a message. So I opened it, and the first thing I seen was, “Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.” I turned another page back and what my eye was pulled to, just like somebody was leading me, was, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?”

How long, O Lord? I seen them hypocrites from the churches, all dressed up and fat and happy, eating Sunday dinner at that Morrison's I go to sometimes near-bout to Richmond. It just about makes you sick to see how pleased they all are. They can't think they'd ever do anything wrong, even though most of 'em are going around stealing from each other during the week, and they'd probably get up and walk out if a colored person was to come walking into their fine church. And the preachers would probably lead them.

It was that Reverend Boyle that Momma and Daddy took me and Holly to, not both of us together, but one at a time. It wasn't much before the Army come and got me. Holly was such a pretty little thing then, had curly blonde hair and eyes that shined like new pennies. We'd make up names for all the places around the farm, names that I told her we couldn't tell nobody else, and she swore to me that she wouldn't.

Down at the river, we'd call that Jordan. And the pond over by the property line, that was the Dead Sea.

Over on the other side of the sawdust pile, not the one now but the first one that burnt, was these weeds and little trees, and we had a cleared out spot in the middle where we could get to and nobody could find us. We called that Egypt. And Holly would come up to me when I was toting wood to the house or feeding the chickens, and she'd whisper to me, “Lot, can we go to Egypt?” I'd tell her when to meet me there. I told her above all not to tell nobody about Egypt, 'cause that was our special place. She was about the best friend I had, with Warren already working off from home and already fired up to enlist.

When Momma and Daddy took me to the preacher Boyle, first thing he said to me was, “Tell me about Egypt, Lot.”

Holly went and lived off with Daddy's cousin Pete and his family. I didn't see her no more until after I had come home from the war in 1919, and even then she stayed away from me. Me and her didn't never talk about Egypt no more.

Just like Holly must of told about Egypt, the preacher must of told somebody, because they didn't nobody speak to me at church no more, and after a while, Momma called me into her and Daddy's bedroom one Sunday and said that the folks at the church was gossipers and liars, and that she didn't want me to have no more to do with 'em, that I was too good for the damn Baptists. She called them that, too. So I didn't go to church no more, but Aileen and Grace and Momma and Daddy did. That's when I quit hanging around when we had company, too. I'd go out to Egypt all by myself, or drive the car somewhere.

The Army come and got me then. I know it was some of them gossipers and hypocrites in the community that told 'em where I was. Momma told 'em I'd gone down south, to North Carolina, to find work, but they come one morning and found me, in Egypt. Didn't think the fire would give me away, with all that smoke from the sawdust pile, but somebody must of told them right where to find me. Momma and Aileen and Grace and even Carter was crying when they took me off. Daddy had gone off. Some big old sergeant told me, “We got you now, boy. We goin' to feed you to the Huns. Show you what we do with chicken-shit like you.” Right there where everybody could hear. And I didn't see nobody I knowed for near-bout two years.

But I didn't never forget none of it. After I come home, folks would act like I was their long-lost friend. They didn't know they kept me goin' through the war. In bayonet practice, I'd just play like it was Reverend Boyle instead of some dummy. In them trenches over in France and Germany, when sometimes we'd have to shoot 'em from 10 feet away, I'd just pretend it was some deacon or Sunday school teacher instead. Made it easy to kill people.

NOW

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The park behind the main branch of the Richmond Public Library was meant to be a place where patrons would read “Jane Eyre” and downtown office workers would eat bag lunches and watch the seasons change. It is surrounded by grass-covered bunkers that make it look like one of the Civil War fortifications that ring the city's east side. It is shaded by Bradford pears.

On any day when the sun shines and the temperature rises above 50, though, Nancy knows she has no better than an even chance of having a bench to herself at noon. The wind-blocking bunkers and the shade the hardy trees provide were seen immediately by the city's dispossessed as a gift, and they have used it often and well.

Many of Nancy's co-workers at the library choose to eat at their desks, but she feels that if she can't have lunch outside her own building, then she's lost the whole city. The surliest wino gets a firm “no” when he asks for a handout; she only gives to those who appear to be older than herself, and she notices that they are becoming more and more scarce.

She first becomes aware of the old black woman because she is old, and because she is a woman. Most of the dispossessed are neither. While the young men hang together, she keeps mostly to herself, constantly going through a Thalhimer's shopping bag that seems almost as old as she is, rearranging what appears to be old rags and pieces of painted wood. She seems to favor red.

Sometimes, without being asked, Nancy will give a crumpled dollar to one of the few older people in the park, trying to foster the idea that she won't be forced into generosity. She tries it with the old woman one day at the end of her lunch, casually extending the gift toward the figure sitting stiffly on the bench. The old woman pushes her away, almost violently. Nancy sees for the first time that she's clutching a Bible to her chest with her left hand.

A big man in a flannel shirt and work pants, his blond hair and teeth thinning in unison, sees what happens and comes up to Nancy.

“Hey, lady, how about me? I can sure use some of that,” he says, his smile twisting into a leer.

Nancy doesn't even have time to be afraid before the old woman jumps between them, her chin barely coming to the man's chest.

“Wan' me to put a spell on you?” she shouts at him. “Wan' me to? What's big old white trash like you here for? You get you a job!”

The man is taken aback. All the other homeless watch in defeated silence as he backs off.

“Anything to keep you from breathing on me, you old nigger,” he says, but Nancy can see that the woman has his number somehow. She glances at Nancy and goes back to where she was sitting, alone and undisturbed.

As April dries out and becomes May, Nancy takes her lunch in the park more often, and she sees the woman every day, at the same bench, which no one else tries to take from her. She seems to have two dresses, different shades of a faded red. Her hair is steely gray and wild, never combed, and Nancy doesn't think she could weigh more than 90 pounds. She's lost most of her teeth. She occasionally appears to be drunk, but most of the time she contents herself with her Bible. She moves her lips when she reads, and sometimes she reads out loud, in a voice that is stronger than she is. It is the voice that stirs Nancy's memory first, and then she sees that the eyes haven't really changed that much.

It's been two months since Holly died, and Nancy's thoughts, for the first time in years, have willingly turned to Lot and to Old Monacan, something she'd tried to block out for 20 years. But Holly was the last, and now Nancy can look at it all again.

She drove out there, alone, went to the funeral with people she didn't know for the most part, then went by Old Monacan, or where it used to be. They left the house when they built the fancier ones around it; somebody was using it now for an antique shop. She saw right away that the barn was gone. The best she could tell, it was underneath the deck of a three-story Colonial home that backed up to the old Chastain place. She wondered if the people who owned the house knew what they'd built over. She deduced that the sawdust pile was somewhere under what was now the foundation of a sprawling contemporary.

She felt a stab of pain, walking through the weeds in front of the old house. She reached down to pick a jagged piece of wood out of her pantyhose, just above the ankle. It was, she saw when she held it up, fat lightning, so oily she thought she could feel its substance ooze through the pine wood. She threw it down and left.

But ever since that February day, she's been thinking about it, and a part of her already knows that she's going to write about it, now that nobody is left to be embarrassed.

And now, she thinks, this.

One warm day, a day that made her think of the one 20 years before, when she and Sam left Richmond for Monacan, she has an idea. She goes to her closet and finds a dress that she can stand to part with, a dress of cardinal red with a black belt. She puts it in a plastic bag and carries it to work.

At lunch, she brings her yogurt and apple to the park, along with the plastic bag. She thinks at first that the old lady isn't there, that she's moved on after all these weeks. But then there's a rustle in the bushes and the woman comes into view, moving stiffly. She dismisses with a wave of her arm a black man who looks to be half her age. He looks back resentfully, but he moves on.

Nancy finishes her lunch, then walks over and hands the bag to the old woman. She starts to push it away, but something catches her eye. The red.

She snatches it away from Nancy and lets the bag fall to the ground as she holds up a red dress to outshine her other two.

“Wook!” she exclaims, and the park's other residents whistle and shout.

The old woman looks back at Nancy, holds out her right hand, the one with the bracelet, and Nancy shakes it, turning it slightly so that she can read the name that encircles her wrist.

“Sebara,” Nancy says.

“Lot's nephew's wife,” Sebara says, and Nancy knows that the woman has known it was her all along.

It's then that Nancy knows she's ready to write.

1971

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

By late July, the crowds of pilgrims coming to see Jesus on the barn have grown to the point that the county sends a full-time deputy sheriff out every evening an hour before sunset to direct traffic. Now, due to some irregularity on the barn's surface or the shadow of a tree branch, there appears to be a line running from the figure's right eye to the bottom of its face.

Lot sees what it is as soon as the people first notice it.

“It's tears,” he says. “It's Jesus shedding his tears for this here sinful world.” And somebody mutters “Amen” in the back of the crowd.

With every new trick of the light, some new aspect is seen or imagined by the people, many of whom have driven hundreds of miles out of their way on vacation to see the vision. Dozens of people a day pull in at the stores in Monacan itself to ask directions to Lot's home, because the only dateline in the news stories they've seen is “Monacan, Va.” To reduce confusion, a sign is placed at the entrance to the county road to Old Monacan. It reads: Jesus-on-the-barn. An arrow points the way.

Simon Jeter complains to the sheriff's department that his crops are being ruined by all the people parking on the edge of his fields. One afternoon in June, he leaves his Buick in the garage and moves his oldest son's Ford pickup beside the garage, blocking the way to Lot's. Cars are backed up almost to the state highway before the deputy sheriff comes and threatens to give Jeter a citation for obstructing traffic.

But Jeter doesn't have much time to devote to keeping Lot's pilgrims off his property. His second-oldest son's boy, Terry, is still missing. They first assumed that the boy had run away again, and they checked with all their relatives and acquaintances where they thought he might have gone. But the boy doesn't show up.

Now, a month later, they have his picture on posters in stores throughout the northern half of the county. They even put one beside the dirt road leading past Jeter's to Lot's, hoping one of the pilgrims will have seen Terry somewhere. But no one admits to having seen the boy.

“It's one of them damned foreigners that Lot Chastain's got out at his place,” Jeter tells Sheriff Watson. “Ain't no telling where-all them people are coming from. Some of 'em looks like gypsies to me. They liable to do anything.”

The sheriff tells Jeter that it isn't likely that somebody could have kidnapped Terry at the Chastain place because there's always a crowd there, but he promises to have his deputy keep an eye on the pilgrims.

“If I was you-all, I wouldn't worry all that much,” the sheriff tells the Jeters. “He's run off before, and I expect he'll run off again. He'll turn up.”

“Ain't never been gone a month before,” the boy's father says in a low voice.

“Well,” the sheriff says, scratching his head, “he's gettin' older.”

Nancy is still coming out once a week, most recently with Aileen and Grace. There's been an offer on the farm, one that would allow Lot to keep the house, the land around it and the road leading in. The buyer is offering $450,000 for the rest of the land, taking up most of what was once the town of Old Monacan. He plans to build an upscale housing development, with a new road coming in back of Jeter's property.