Jolly Read online

  The walk to the Morningside Baptist Church helped alleviate her feelings, as Jolly was sure it would. She was secretly proud to show her tall son to the Sunday morning world, and besides, the walk gave her a chance to inspect the progress of everybody’s iris and lilac. She had theorized for years, when neighbors stopped to comment on her own flowers, that “A body couldn’t grow a hill a beans in this dirt. All’s I do is just scratch around, just scratch around,” although when her brothers and sisters urged her return to Tennessee she reckoned she had too much dust and cactus in her hide to ever appreciate jasmine or magnolias again.

  At the doors of the church the ladies gathered to one side, ostensibly to get a better view of, and greet, any newcomers. The men gathered dourly a little distance away, talking about whatever noncontroversial topics there are left to discuss within the shadow of a Baptist Church. The young people, those who couldn’t escape being neither fish nor fowl, entered the church so that they could get the choice seats as far back as possible under the balcony where it was unlikely anyone had ever heard a word spoken in a normal voice from the pulpit.

  “Mother, let’s go on in,” said Jolly, offering her his arm.

  “Just a minute, Jolly-Bo. I want to speak to Miz Edhols.” She drew Jolly with her.

  “Hello, Mattawilde. Jolly. My, he’s still growin’ like a weed.” Jolly winced. “I was sayin’ to my Billy this mornin’—you know my Billy just admires Jolly. Thinks the world an’ all of him. He truly does.”

  Mama eyed Jolly significantly for a second.

  “Wants to sing like him, and everything. Course, my Billy’s goin’ in the ministry. He’s already made up his mind and seems there ain’t nothin’ me nor Homer can do about it—not that we’d be wantin’ to, you understand. He does have a fine voice, don’t he?”

  “Who?” asked Mama, her lips thin.

  “Why, Billy! A course he’s not as old as your Jolly, but when he is—” She winked at Jolly, and he fluttered the makings of a smile, hoping she hadn’t expected him to wink back. “—he’ll be somethin’ to behold. Well, you gotta fine Christian boy, too, Mattawilde. Lord bless us.”

  You old bat, thought Jolly. You and your snot-nosed Billy. I wish he could have been along last night. He might have learned something—enough to curl your ears.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Edhols. You coming, Mother?”

  “You run along. I’ll be there directly,” she said, turning to greet skinny Mrs. Fries.

  Jolly had to shake no less than fourteen hands on his way up the stairs to the inside doors. These were the elected Greeters and Ushers, both active and emeritus, the former group ladies, the latter, men. At the very top of the stairs he extracted his hand from a lady’s cotton grip and grasped a man’s.

  “Good morning, Jolly.”

  Jolly looked in the intense eyes of the preacher, a dark young man of less than thirty who had been in his present church only a year. “Just like a grand reception line, isn’t it,” he smiled.

  “Yeh,” Jolly laughed. “I feel like Queen Elizabeth, or something. Ah—how are you, Mr. Cramer?”

  “I’m fine, thanks. You? We haven’t seen you here lately, have we? You haven’t forgotten us, I hope?” He still held Jolly’s hand in his own white one, smiling. He was an acutely handsome man, Jolly thought, startled at the revelation, except he was too short. Jolly felt nervous looking down at adults, which kept him nervous a good deal of the time.

  “No, sir. I’m fine. Well—” he looked toward the people gathering after him on the stairs and attempted to disengage his hand without yanking.

  “We haven’t heard you practicing the piano lately.” The minister’s dark eyes smiled directly into, albeit slightly up into, Jolly’s.

  Jolly blushed. “How did you know about that? I didn’t think anyone knew I came in here to practice.”

  “I’ve been here—back in my office—when you came in. I used to enjoy hearing you play. But you haven’t been here in a long time.” The man lifted his brows, awaiting an answer.

  “No. No, sir, I haven’t,” Jolly said. “Well, we’re holding up the line.” He pulled his hand free and ducked into the sanctuary.

  The preferred seats under the balcony were all pretty well taken by fat Ron Corcoran and his followers, so Jolly sat at the outside on the last row of regular seats. You had to have a good night’s sleep to keep up with Ron’s illustrated hymnals and running comments on the state of affairs as they occurred in the Morningside Baptist Church on Sunday morning.

  From where Jolly sat he had a reasonable view of the whole church, and he began his old game of identifying its members by the backs of their heads. The church seated exactly a hundred and forty-four people (not counting the balcony, which was never used except for the ethereal sounds the choir affected from there at Christmas pageants, and the prized seats under the balcony) as Jolly well knew from past Sundays when he had counted one row across, nine, and the rows back, eight, multiplied, seventy-two, times two, a hundred and forty-four. Identifying the regular members of the congregation wasn’t difficult but it occupied a certain portion of an hour.

  Near the front on the far right, so his good ear would be attuned, sat Brother Able Peckham, who seemed to have been sitting precisely there since shortly after the Crucifixion. Beside him sat his tiny speckled wife, who would be asleep as soon as the singing was through, the two cherries in her summer hat bobbing restfully as she snoozed. In her usual place, Mrs. Hacy’s broad arms were flung in either direction along the back of the pew, the better to reach any member of the brood under her discipleship. She believed no child was too young to attend Sunday morning service if properly attended by resounding snaps on the head at judicious moments.

  Luke passed by, down the aisle, steered by his mother, whose jaw was set peculiarly. He exchanged a brief glance with Jolly, but it was enough to say, “Don’t call today. In fact, it’ll likely be a year before things settle down at my house.”

  Jolly’s own mother came into the church and got caught in the choice of sitting beside Mrs. Shiverly, whom she “loathed and despised” or beside Anita Meaders, Luke’s mother. Jolly was relieved to see her sit beside Mrs. Shiverly, because at least they wouldn’t talk.

  Breathless, the Sanic Sisters flowed into their pew after first shooshing away some strangers who hadn’t any idea there were reserved seats. Once settled, the Sisters checked the hymn numbers on the board and opened their personal morocco-bound hymnals, held them forward, prepared to sing. When the Sanic Sisters were in attendance, and they hadn’t missed a Sunday in anyone’s memory, there wasn’t any sense in the song leader or pianist trying to set a tempo, because there wasn’t anyone (outside of, perhaps, Mississippi Arney of Skull Valley) who could out-sing the Sisters in volume. A new minister always tried to outwit them at first by selecting obscure hymns with which they might not be familiar, but that always turned out to be a trio—the minister himself and the Sanic Sisters—because unless it was written by Mary Baker Eddy there wasn’t a hymn they hadn’t pretty well set to memory.

  At eleven o’clock the door on the dais (on which hung the record of Sunday School attendance and offerings) swung open and the choir filed in. They were outfitted in maroon robes with white collars. The ladies deposited their purses at their feet as they sat. “Oh, no,” groaned Jolly to himself. “Old man Rainey’s going to sing.” Cleve Rainey graced the choir four or five times a year when he felt up to a solo, and his presence there should be publicized ahead of time, a good number of the congregation agreed, so they could stay away. Cleve was pushing sixty, and his tenor voice had given up twenty years earlier. Behind Cleve Rainey strode Mrs. Edhols’ Billy, pompous as a bantam rooster, a regular member of the adult choir, a fact Mrs. Edhols was pointing out to her neighbor.

  From the door at the other side of the dais (on which hung the hymn numbers and scripture reading) entered the minister, who had spirited himself around the church in order to enter there. He surveyed his audience and then sat in his p
lush carved chair before the camouflaged baptismal tank—the swimming pool, as it was known by the irreverent young. The congregation began to fidget and crane to eye a particular vacant seat. There wasn’t any use to begin the services until Brother Ep Edward Clydefield occupied that pew. Once, a number of years ago, “Holy, Holy, Holy” was just at the amen point when Ep Edward entered, and he stood right where he was and made them do the whole thing over again from the beginning. The membership got the idea thereafter that services didn’t begin—if they were to maintain any decorum at all—until Brother Ep Edward had arrived. And Brother Ep Edward was the foremost cause of the mortgage’s being burned ten years ahead of schedule.

  “Brother Ep Edward ain’t arrived,” whispered a lady beside Jolly, as if everyone didn’t know.

  At five minutes past eleven, the old gentleman arrived at his pew in a regular suite of ushers. He wore his white perforated summer shoes and a white Panama suit (the only one ever known in Cortez) and handed his white straw to a solicitous usher. At his appearance the pianist broke into the run-through of “Holy,” and the congregation rose to its feet. To a visitor it would be hard to distinguish to whom the song was directed, God or Ep Edward.

  As the service droned on, through the Morning Prayer, the Scripture Lesson, and the Weekly Announcements, Jolly felt his eyelids begin their protest. The room was hot, and the overhead fans whirled at just the right speed to mesmerize a person. Finally, the choir stood to sing the anthem, an expurgated setting of something by Handel, but the solo passage lent itself well to Cleve Rainey’s singing because you couldn’t tell the trills and runs from the natural wobbles in his voice.

  The sermon began. Jolly settled farther into his seat, determined that by listening carefully he could stay awake for thirty-five more minutes.

  “Ladies and gentlemen; brothers and sisters,” Harold Cramer began in his resonant, eleven-o’clock voice, “this morning I have chosen as my text, Jeremiah, Chapter Six, Verse Fifteen.” He paused as Bibles rustled, no one wishing to be the last to find the passage. (“Old Testament,” murmured the lady beside Jolly.) “I read: ‘Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord.’ A-men.”

  “That’s right, Brother!” shouted Able Peckham, which may have indicated he was there when it happened.

  Jolly didn’t remember the verse in question, but he could tell from its tone that the congregation was in for it this morning. He shifted his gaze to the back of Luke’s head. From there he looked to the young girls in the choir, whose faces served as mirrors of Luke. He discovered Netty Alan blushing pink above her choir robe. So Luke was winking at Netty today. “Blush, poor girl,” thought Jolly, “but you’ll never make it in the Blue Goose.”

  At twelve fifteen exactly, the Sanic Sisters let go their final tone, reluctantly, Harold Cramer rushed to the back of the church to begin shaking everyone’s hand for the second time, and Jolly Osment fell in love.

  As he turned into the aisle, there she was. It was as simple as that. There she was. There she was stepping between her father (who had concealed her before) and mother directly across the aisle. Her eyes met his squarely without hesitation, and the heat lifted from the room as clearly as if a window had opened itself to spring. She returned his smile, and still stepping between her parents, she ignored the preacher’s proffered hand, and Jolly watched incredulously as her white sailor hat bobbed down the stairs.

  “Excuse me,” said the lady behind him.

  “Oh, excuse me, ma’am.” He rushed ahead of her.

  “You will come in to play, won’t you?” the preacher was asking.

  “Yes. Yes, sir. I enjoyed—I liked your sermon.” Jolly watched the hat bob through the front doors. He pulled on his hand.

  “Thank you, Jolly,” Harold Cramer said. “We’ll see you?”

  “Yes,” he said aloud, and to himself, “Let go, let go.”

  “And Jolly?” the preacher persisted.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Their name is Van Dearen. That’s D-e-a-r-e-n.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Cramer!” The hat was no longer to be seen. Jolly clattered down the stairs but checked himself prudently before rushing hell-bent into the sunlight, lest he appear anxious. The girl was just ducking into the back seat of a car. Her mother and father were already in the front. “Damn,” said Jolly. What was a person to do? You can’t just go rushing up to complete strangers and say “Excuse me, sir, but I want to stare at your daughter.”

  The sedan backed out into the street, stopped for a moment, then nosed away, around the corner, the white sailor hat nearly the last thing to go out of sight.

  Jolly grouched against the hot stone church and waited for his mother. She arrived in time, with Mr. and Mrs. Favor, who had offered them a ride home in their car.

  “Unless you’d rather walk, Jolly?”

  “No ma’am. I’d rather ride.” And that was the truth. It was too hot to walk if you didn’t have to, and not only from the sun.

  “All’s we’re having is some leftovers,” Mattawilde spoke from the kitchen, later. “But I think I’ll serve them in the dining room. It’s cooler.”

  “OK with me,” said Jolly.

  “Well, you can’t sit in the dining room in nothing but your pants. Run put a shirt on. And some shoes. I don’t care if we are the only ones left around here. Besides, it’s Sunday.”

  “All right, Mom. Anything you say. Mom?” Jolly called with his head in the closet, “did you see those new people at church? The man and the woman. And the girl?”

  “Was she the one with the green summer straw?”

  “No. It was white. One of those big, broad-brimmed ones.” Jolly paused. “Oh, you mean the woman?”

  “Yes. Who’d you think I meant?”

  “I didn’t notice what she was wearing. Their name is Van Dearen. That’s D-e-a-r-e-n.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “How’d you know?” Jolly came into the kitchen, buttoning his shirt.

  “Well, don’t look at me like I haven’t got good sense.” She made another trip from the kitchen to the table. “I asked around.” And that was more than Jolly had had the mind to do.

  “I might have known. Isn’t she pretty?”

  “Who?”

  “The girl. You know who I mean.”

  “Here, carry these.” She moved deliberately into the dining room (which was really only the far end of the living room) with Jolly close behind. “I reckon I didn’t notice.”

  “What do they do? Where do they live? Do you suppose they’re real strict Baptists?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt you none to know some real strict ones. And I don’t know their whole life history. Set down and have your lunch.”

  Jolly poked among the cold chicken parts until he found a thigh. It had lain overnight at the bottom of the dish and had a thin edge of white grease on it. He began to scrape the grease away with his fork.

  “How is it you never liked the drumstick? You’re the only one a my children never fought for the drumstick.”

  “That’s because I was deprived as a child,” said Jolly, scrutinizing the chicken thigh.

  “What do you mean deprived? Wasn’t anyone in my house ever deprived or went hungry. Not that I ever knew of.” She pulled off a small piece of meat and chewed it delicately. At sixty-four Mattawilde Osment was in fair health, but her teeth were wearing down. “Never did have a true bite,” she had often said.

  “Oh, Mom, I mean there’s ordinarily only two drumsticks on a chicken, right?”

  “Never heard different.”

  “You ever heard of two characters, formerly from these parts, name of Jamie and Nell Ann?”

  His mother tidied her lips with a linen napkin. Her brown eyes shot past Jolly to the pictures on the buffet. “Don’t be gettin’ sassy, young man,” she said in a vo
ice that was clear sign she was changing the subject. “Eat some a these asparagus. They’re right tender.”

  “Cold? Jeez, they’re bad enough hot.”

  “You used to like them, as I recall. I don’t know what gets into you sometimes. Lord knows; I don’t.”

  “Mother, I used to like to cut asparagus when we grew it. I never liked to eat it.” True, fresh asparagus spears, just six or seven inches high, cut clean and nice and made you feel you had something. Not like picking tomatoes, or pulling radishes or turnips or anything that had to be yanked, or that came out of the dirt unwillingly.

  “What you grinnin’ like a chessy-cat for?”

  “Nothing, Mom.” Every time he saw asparagus he thought of Jamie’s comment ages ago about their being phallic symbols. The comparison would have meant nothing, of course, had not Jamie continued with one of his famous explanations, which were seldom accurate but always graphic. Accurate or not, Jolly never ate asparagus with what anyone could have called relish, afterward.

  “Jolly-Bo.”

  “Hum?” He watched her slice an asparagus spear into bite sizes.

  “I been meaning to talk to you about Jamie.” Her eyes, peering above her glasses, concentrated on the asparagus, which meant she was approaching a topic she would rather put off.

  “What about Jamie?”

  “Have you seen him and didn’t tell me?”

  “Yes. I saw him last night.” He watched her lips begin to tighten.

  “Was that you and him I heard talking out in front right before you came in? I thought so.” She glanced up at him. “What did he tell you?”

  “What do you mean, what did he tell me? We just talked. About things.” He lined up the chicken bones to one side of his plate.

  “Now, I want to know. What things.”

  “Aw, Mom. Just things, that’s all.”

  “Did he tell you anything about himself? You know, where he’s been and what he’s been up to?”