With a Hammer for My Heart Read online

  I came out of the bus station and stared at the post office: limestone, right pretty. Then it came to me. I’d haul mail! People’s love notes and doctor bills, their wish books. That tickled me. I’ve always liked mail, and I can’t even read that good. So over I went.

  Turns out you have to pass some fancy test to even have a crack at carrying the mail. If you do pass, they put you on a waiting list. Shoot, I said, I’ve got people on a waiting list at home and they’re waiting for dinner.

  So out I came and stood facing the bus station. A rock and a hard place. It was high noon and the heat rippled everything like a washboard—my heart included. It thumped out, What now? Now what? Now.

  Then I saw a dry-cleaning truck pull up in front of a house catty-corner across the street, WE-SUIT-U, it said on the back, and there was a sign in the window: DRIVER WANTED. I bolted into the street and almost got hit.

  The driver was Noll Amburgey, a fellow I’d known since we was down in the grades. He was fixing to move to Dayton, he said, because his brother told him there was big money in this construction outfit he’d signed on with.

  “Who’s getting your job?” I asked.

  He didn’t know. He’d only told Curtis Ballard he was leaving the day before.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m in bad need of work. Could you put in a word for me?”

  “Hop in,” Noll said, “and you can meet him at the end of the route.”

  So I did. Luckiest day of my life, next to when I met June. Mr. Ballard took me in, had Noll train me, gave me grocery money for two weeks before Noll left. “You can clean out the boiler room,” he said, and I did, but it only took me two days. Rest of the time, I rode with Noll or worked patching up things at the house. I had this good deep-down feeling, like my life was taking a new turn. And it was. I been Mr. Ballard’s route man for eight years; he’s been my friend every one of them.

  …

  Not long after I started the job, he came in on a Monday morning and found the fire out. Building stone-cold and folks needing to work, customers coming by to pick up their clothes. And me not there to explain, much less head out on pickup and delivery.

  Any other boss would have had my time card tore up before I hit the door. I was expecting something bad.

  “Mr. Ballard,” I said, “I know you’re wondering why I didn’t come in this morning, why I didn’t fire the stoker last night. Lawanda, my girl who’s seven, took sick yesterday morning. June tried to doctor her with what we had, and she seemed to be coming along. Then about dinnertime her breath got thick, so we put her in the truck between us— the other kids in the back—and headed over to June’s mother’s at Little Splinter Creek. I might have told you before—she’s a healer. I don’t mean bark and vinegar; I mean laying on of hands.

  “You’re about to say why didn’t we go to a doctor, child sick like that, and go to someone close, not over Pine Mountain. Well, you’re forgetting it was Sunday, hard to come by a doctor, and after food shopping the night before, hard to come by the money, too.

  “Anyway, by the time we got there, Lawanda’s breathing had a rattle to it. I was scared myself, and June started crying before we even got out of the truck. Mamaw just held the screen door for us, saying, ‘Oh, honey. Oh, Mother Jesus.’

  “She sent June to the kitchen with the other younguns. It had been raining at the top of the mountain and they needed drying off and warming up. I could hear June filling the kettle.

  “Mamaw had me lay Lawanda on the biggest bed, cold in that room and not a cover on her. I went to pull up the quilt.

  “ ‘Leave it be,’ Mamaw ordered.

  “And quick as a mechanic checking your points, she felt anklebones, knees, hips. Tried ribs, elbows, shoulders. I watched Lawanda’s breath ease when Mamaw leaned over her, watched her face soften when Mamaw touched behind her ears.

  “ ‘Nighthawk,’ Mamaw said, her voice tight as a fiddle string. ‘Sweet Mother Jesus, fly away with her pain. ’

  “And she reached in under the bib of her apron and pulled out a feather.

  “ ‘Take that pain like some old dead thing to make a nest.’

  “Well sir, Lawanda opened her eyes. ‘Mamaw,’ she said, with not even a clutch in her voice, ‘where’d you get that?’

  “ ‘Angel,’ she said. ‘Big old black thing. Your ma’s got the kettle on. You want some tea?’

  “Far as I could tell, Lawanda was flat-out cured, but by then it was raining buckets and June said we ought to stay the night. I’d of called you, but Mamaw’s phone was out on account of the rain. I sure am sorry about the fire.”

  All Mr. Ballard said was, “Don’t that beat all.”

  MAMAW: It was at Little Splinter Creek Church that I saw what I saw. It’s been thirty-five years and I remember that night like the nights my younguns was born.

  Perry Roby had took the Spirit and was shouting “Damnation” up one side of his breath and “Praise Jesus” down the other. August, dusky dark, and the hot church keeping you mindful of the Pit. All of a sudden, a light whipped out like you’d unrolled a bolt of cloth. I couldn’t see the church nor nothing in it. I couldn’t hear the creek out the window. There was only this lap of light. I didn’t know but to climb up into it. That light held me in its arms, it laid my head on its bosom.

  And the light had a voice.

  “Mother Jesus didn’t do your dying,” it said. “You’ll still have to cross that river, like a child has to learn to sleep in the bed by itself. But of a morning, you’ll wake up and I’ll be waiting. I’m telling this to your hands. Don’t let nobody go to bed before their time.”

  The light hummed something sweet as rain and it set me down in Little Splinter. My hands was so hot, my sister Gola jumped when I touched her.

  “She’s with us now!” I shouted, and keeled toward Carla Dixon.

  “Praise His name!” I heard, going down, and knew they had it all wrong.

  …

  First thing I did was make a sign that said, LITTLE SPLINTER CREEK CHURCH OF THE MOTHER JESUS. Made it from boards left over from strengthening the chicken coop. I got me a poker and burnt the words in. Took me two weeks, had to wait till the kids was in bed. John said I was touched.

  “More’n touched. I was knocked down,” I told him.

  “Your insides can knock you down,” he said.

  “I know that. But my insides never took me nowhere, never told me nothing.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Well, your insides ain’t never been this old before. You got lights going on where my ma used to have heat waves. She’d call one of us to pump water while she stuck her head under the spout. Maybe you could use a baptizing.”

  I didn’t listen past that. No knot in the end of his string anyhow.

  Next church day I went early, learned Sam Wilder was conducting the service, and told him I was aiming to testify. I had my sign under my arm, wrapped up in a quilt.

  “You going to beat the Spirit into us?” he asked.

  “No. I got something to show.”

  “More’n I’ve got,” he said, running his hand over what was left of his hair. It was flat and yellow.

  So I was called first, after “Precious Memories” and Eugene Coldiron’s prayer. As soon as heads went up, Sam looked at me, thinking I would speak right where I was, but I headed up front, struggling past bellies and elbows with my sign.

  “Sisters and Brothers of this church,” I said, “watered by Little Splinter Creek, baptized in Redfox River, members of this Association, every one of you sons and daughters, some fathers and mothers to boot, I tell you: we have been led, but we have mistook the leading. We’ve seen a sign and read it clear wrong. Those words you carved on your heart about the Father, those words are lies. ‘Jesus is our Brother,’ you’ve been taught, been singing since you was a sprout. ‘Father and Son and Their Breath, that good Holy Ghost.’

  “Well, I been breathed on, let me tell you. I been lifted up to look Them in the eye. The heart’s eye, friends, the On
e that sees it all. And this is what I’m here to tell you: there ain’t no whiskers on Their faces. She ain’t our Father. She ain’t our Brother. She’s our Mother Jesus and she longs to take us in Her arms.”

  I took the quilt off my sign and held it up.

  “Mother Jesus!” I shouted as they drug me out.

  LAWANDA: The second time I saw Garland was about two weeks later. Something was bothering me I didn’t think I could tell my family about. And I couldn’t talk to anybody at school. That’s where it happened. So I thought I’d try Garland.

  It was Saturday again when I hiked up there, October air so clear, sky so blue, it hurt. On the way I met two of the Messer boys in the woods.

  “Squirrel hunting,” Bill said.

  “With slingshots?” I asked. Neither one of them had a rifle.

  “We forgot the gun,” Homer said. “Just heading home to get it.”

  Right. I could think up a better story than that.

  Garland was out picking the last of his peppers that morning. There was frost predicted. He had on the same khaki shorts and an old gray shirt that barely buttoned.

  “Hey there!” I called to him. “It’s me, Lawanda!”

  “What’re you selling?” he hollered back.

  “Nothing. I just want to talk.”

  “Well, come over here and give me a hand with the harvest.”

  He had bell peppers—green, red, and yellow—banana peppers, even jalapeños. “Don’t rub around your face when you pick them fellers,” he warned, and handed me a card-board box. His plants were almost bushes, sturdy, full, with big glossy leaves.

  “Do you eat all these peppers yourself?” I asked, snapping my first one from the plant and dropping it in the box.

  “No sir,” he said. “I make shoes out of them.”

  I looked at him sideways. He wasn’t smiling.

  “Bet they give you the hotfoot.”

  He made a face. “What I can’t use, I give to Curtis Ballard or Father Connor.”

  “Does the priest really come up here?” I’d thought maybe he was kidding when he said that the first time.

  “Comes regular. Brings holy water for my bus radiators.”

  “But you said they don’t run.” He rolled his eyes. “Does he come just to visit? You’re not Catholic, are you?”

  “Naw.” Garland spat, then threw a rotten pepper down the hill. “Father Connor brings me books. He aims to wean me off the bottle, keep me out of Hell.”

  “And Mr. Ballard?”

  Garland straightened up. He stretched, arms up over his head, groaning a little. I could see his navel. This was embarrassing, which it hadn’t been when he had no shirt on at all.

  “Curtis brings food and what it takes for the garden. He means to keep me out of jail.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I wondered where you got your food.”

  “Not out of magazines! And it’s a good thing too. When am I going to get that hotshot review you sold me?”

  “Four to six weeks, the form said, and it’s only been two.”

  “Huh! A month if it was a day. Look at you. Your hair’s a full foot longer.”

  “It is not!” The idea of a smile crossed his face. “Are we about done?”

  “I reckon,” he said. “Come on.” He left the peppers by the door of First Bus. I followed him in. We sat in the same places as before.

  “So what hauled you up this way again—bus reclamation?”

  “There’s this boy at school—”

  “Oh, no,” Garland interrupted. “Don’t hold me hostage in no boy-girl skirmish.”

  “It’s not like that! He’s just moved to Cardin from Little Splinter Creek, where Mamaw lives, and he’s telling people she’s a witch.”

  “Whoee! Ada Smith astride a broom!”

  “It’s not funny! Mr. Knight, my civics teacher, was talking about witch-hunts and how there’s no such thing as witches, and Jimmy Minniard, who’s only been there two days, says, ‘They may not be real, but there’s one where I came from!’ Everybody laughed. Me, too. I thought he was from another county.

  “Then Mr. Knight says, ‘That’s a serious thing to say.’

  “And Jimmy says, ‘I know. You should see her. Big crazy woman, goes around singing and healing people with feathers.’

  “My heart about stopped.”

  “Is it true?” Garland asked.

  “My mamaw is not crazy,” I told him. Then I explained to him as best I could about Mother Jesus.

  Garland studied the maps on the ceiling for a long time. Finally he said, “One thing’s for sure, Lawanda. They ain’t nothing you can do about what folks say.” He slapped the steering wheel for emphasis.

  “I know that." He disappointed me. “I just want to hear what you think about it—her having a vision and all. Do you think she really saw God?”

  “God?” He hooted. He heaved himself up and lumbered down the length of the bus. Then he came forward slowly, chanting and slapping the seats:

  “Damsels

  climb hills

  to talk

  theology

  with

  crazy old men

  like me—

  WHOOEE!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “But really,” I insisted, “I want to know what you think. ”

  He settled back into his seat. “I don’t know about light striking Ada Smith, but I know they’s plenty of darkness falling all around. And it don’t heal people. I don’t expect it gets thrown out of church, either. Most likely being churched is a sign in her favor. But you know your mamaw. Would she kiss the devil’s hind foot?”

  I shook my head.

  “Ever cook homy toads? Drink blood?”

  I laughed again. “No. All she did was have that vision.”

  “And it cost her?”

  “It sure did.”

  We were quiet awhile. The bus door was open and I could hear crickets singing.

  “Now it’s costing you,” Garland said.

  I nodded. He stood up and waved his arms. “Sins of the mothers shall be visited…” But his old-time preacher voice faded.

  “That’s not funny, either,” I told him, “but thanks for listening.” I got up to go.

  He bowed as I left the bus.

  “The truth stinks,” he said.

  GARLAND: Now I live in a bus, two buses, matter of fact. One’s full of books. Other one, if I don’t watch out, is full of bottles. Come summer, I got the biggest garden you ever did see. My corn runs around the hill, beans climb like something Jack might have planted. I got blackberries, strawberries, fruit trees. Curtis Ballard give me the seed, the little old plants to set out. Says it’ll keep me out of trouble. It won’t. But when I’m not drunk, it keeps me out of the bus. And gives me a mess of things to eat. In July I had enough zucchini, I could roll them off the hill and kill my enemies.

  You think I’m a mad old man. Well, I’m none too pleased and that’s the truth. But I’ve got all my marbles. They may be fried but I’ve got them. Shoot them from one end of this bus to the other anytime I take a notion. Pickle them like cucumbers.

  And pumpkins. Lord God, I’ve got enough pumpkins on the vine down there to light the streets of meanness for every child in the county. Now what’s an old man supposed to do with pumpkins? Blast them to flying mush with my gun? Back over them with a truck? Never did like to carve the fool things.

  Their faces is too much like devil spirits. Don’t think I don’t know. I done my time in Hell. It was called the service. The armed forces. Let me tell you, they’s more ways to die than to get your brains blowed out. Get splashed with your buddy’s brains, for instance. March over what’s left of men you’ve just killed. Step careful, the big boys say, and don’t look down. That ain’t easy. Once I tried to shake a piece of brush, something, loose from my boot, but it stuck right where the pants was tucked in. I poked at it with my gun. God Almighty, if it weren’t a hand, thick old hand, hairy, with a ring on it. />
  And when I came home—we weren’t living in a bus then; me and my wife had a little dwelling house up around Partridge—damned if I could set down and fall to and go back to teaching school. How could I look anybody’s kids in the eye? So I tried work in the mines and then construction like her daddy offered. I wasn’t lazy. In my day I was as work-brickle as the next. But after a week on the job, I couldn’t go out the door. Didn’t want her and the children going neither. Soon as I left, they’d come apart. That’s what frightened me. By the time I set a charge in the mine, it was them I was blowing up. I’d run back yelling, “Fire!” like always, but it wasn’t coal I heard splintering; it wasn’t chunks of black rock I loaded. It was their hands, their little bitty feet. Knots in the wood when I worked construction—they were eyes. You think I could take a saw to that or drive it full of nails?

  Got so’s I wouldn’t be there no time before I’d have to vomit, run home, and tell Nora to get them all in, set them down where I could see them. I counted their toes, ears, had to get the boy to take down his pants so I could see. “We’re all here,” Nora would say. “Garland, we’re all here.”

  It drove them off, the war did. You can see why. Scared them, wore them out. No money to feed them anyhow. I never got that disability till I laid up drunk the summer after they left. So I’m here alone. Been that way thirty year. I quit counting my parts. What I got, I got. But I count my buses, one, two, and my friends, Father Connor and Curtis. Damned if I’m going to count them pumpkins though. Ugly sons of bitches can count theirselves.

  LAWANDA: The next day was Sunday and I rode over with Mom, who had to take Mamaw a quilt top. That’s one of Mamaw’s jobs—she runs up quilts for people. By machine. Some folks look down their noses at that, but Mamaw says she can do it a lot cheaper and faster that way than she could by hand, and besides, her hands are shaky and her eyes clouded over. She has big fingers, too, but I don’t know if that matters.

  Anyway, I mentioned to Mom that I wanted to talk to Mamaw about something. She wanted to know what.

  “God,” I told her.