The Bible Salesman Read online

  Dorie walked to the window, stood beside Henry, and looked down toward Mrs. Albright’s. “We don’t want to worry Uncle Jack about buying a new Bible, so don’t say anything to him about it. I’ll tell him.”

  “Since Mrs. Albright had Yancy, does she still have him?” asked Henry.

  “She had Yancy, yes,” said Aunt Dorie. “What do you mean?”

  “Does she have him the same way he has that ball in his neck?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like you can’t throw it away.”

  “Well, that’s right. I guess that’s the way it is,” said Aunt Dorie.

  “But some things you have you can throw away.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why do they both have the same word, ‘have’?”

  “I never thought about it. Come on over here and let’s look at your Bible.”

  1939

  The teacher, Mr. Harris, talked along. New Sunday school year at Antioch Baptist Church. Henry and five other nine-year-old boys sat in wicker-bottom chairs in the church basement classroom, a framed picture of the twelve-year-old Jesus on the wall — the picture that was on their Sunday school quarterly cover and on the walls in several other rooms throughout the children’s classrooms — along with other pictures, including Jesus with little children at his feet, outdoors somewhere.

  “God created the light before he created anything else,” said Mr. Harris, “and then he made the land and the water and he made it separate. And then he made all the plants. Then God made the sun and the moon and then after that the stars.”

  Mr. Harris, a heavyset man wearing a white shirt, one collar point turned upward, and a blue tie with red fishing reels on it that his wife had ordered from a catalog, half sat on and half leaned against a small table in the room. He paused between sentences and looked from one boy to the next. If you kept your eye right on them, one after the other, they were more apt to behave. Teaching these boys was a mission that fed into his view of himself — himself as one of the people that if allowed to run the world could help make it, by golly, a pretty good place. He had a sense of mission. “Then he made the fish and birds,” he said. “And then he made all the other animals. Then God made man and woman to have dominion over all the animals.”

  Mr. Harris owned his own upholstering company now, got all his business learning without any college, and would for sure continue upward in the world when he opened his second store, in Grove Hill. The business world was about fully recovered from the Depression, electricity had arrived, telephones would soon be in every home. He knew that the heathen on other continents would likely come to God, but perhaps not in his lifetime. Revelation 20 said there would be one thousand years of peace under Jesus’ rule, and there was too much heathenism going on for it to happen any day soon. Somebody would have to get roads and telephones into all the jungles and mountain areas in the world before that could happen. He himself couldn’t travel to Africa because of his business and family, but he could help raise brave and honest young Christian gentlemen who might. “Can somebody tell me,” he said, “what ‘dominion’ means?”

  Nobody answered.

  “It means man rules over them, over the animals. Does anybody have a pet?”

  Floyd Hall raised his hand. “I do.”

  “Thank goodness somebody can answer a question. What kind of pet, Floyd?”

  “A dog.” Floyd’s paunch had worked his white shirt out on one side, and his hair had grease only in front.

  “So who tells your dog what to do?”

  “His name is Scout.”

  Mr. Harris raised his eyebrows. “Who tells him what to do?”

  “My daddy.”

  “That’s right. And your daddy is a man, and God made man to have rulership over all the animals. That’s why we can go to Africa and shoot lions and tigers.”

  “My uncle shot a cat,” said Henry.

  “Yes, and cats too,” said Mr. Harris.

  “But if a man was in the jungle,” said Nicky Noland, “and he didn’t have no gun or anything, then a lion could gulp his fat ass right down.” He laughed and looked around, several boys smiled a little, one laughed, Henry was startled, and then they all, except for Nicky, turned to look at Mr. Harris. Nicky was still looking at the other boys.

  Mr. Harris stood from the table, stepped back, reddened, and frowned. “You may sit in the chair just outside the door, young man. We don’t use that kind of language in this room — or any room in this building.”

  Nicky caught on. His eyebrows raised and the corners of his mouth dropped, but he didn’t speak.

  Aunt Dorie had told Henry to stay away from Nicky Noland and his brothers. Somebody brought them to church on the two Sundays of the annual attendance contests with Zion Baptist.

  “I’m going home, mister,” said Nicky. “I ain’t sitting in nobody’s fat-ass chair. I never wanted to come in here in the first place.” The door slammed behind him.

  “Well, that is one way, boys, you do not want to be.” Mr. Harris paced. “You do not want to be disobedient and ugly. Now, listen to me.” Mr. Harris was upset, and thus he had the full attention of the boys. “God made man smart enough to make a gun that can kill a lion,” he said, “but lions can’t make guns to kill men. So you see that God made men smarter than lions or any other animals. That is as clear as the nose on your face.” He walked to the door, opened it, looked out, and then came back to his table, where he half sat again. He loosened the top button to his collar. The collar point dropped some. “After God made man and woman he saw that everything was very good. That was the evening of the sixth day when he finished all this, and then on the seventh day he rested because he was tired, and so this day became a very special day. It became the Sabbath, or Sunday, the day we go to church on, and worship and rest.”

  Henry pictured God being tired. And then, as if it were a big black tadpole swimming up from the depths of a mudhole, a question surfaced. He raised his hand.

  “Yes, Henry. Good.”

  “How could somebody who is perfect get tired?”

  “Oh. Well, Henry.” Mr. Harris smiled. “That seems like a good question . . . at first, but let’s think about it for just a minute.” He frowned. “We have to be very careful about what we ask questions about. Because we can commit blasphemy, and blasphemy is a sin. That’s just the way it is.” Mr. Harris stood up from the little table again. “We don’t want to get into any blasphemy, because Jesus will be unhappy with that, now won’t he?” He tried to smile.

  Henry couldn’t think of anything to say. He didn’t want to blasphemy. It sounded like a very bad thing. Mr. Harris was a Sunday school teacher, a man who had to know everything about the Bible and God to get his job. No way around that.

  “He said what?” asked Uncle Jack.

  “That it was blasamy to ask questions about God,” said Henry.

  “Blasphemy,” said Uncle Jack. He sat on the back door steps, leaning back with his legs spread, cleaning a fingernail with the short blade from his four-blade Case. He had bags under his eyes and combed his hair straight back. “Blasphemy.” He was chewing a plug, tossing it around fast in his mouth.

  Henry sat beside him. It had rained and then cleared up, and now the late afternoon sky dropped down a soft orange light that seemed to color the air in some strange way, to give green bushes and shrubs a dusty orange glow not theirs.

  “Course that don’t surprise me,” said Uncle Jack. “Bill Harris. Blasphemy, hell.”

  Henry looked up at his uncle. “He sent Nicky Noland out because he said a bad word.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Ass.”

  “Did he tell Harris to kiss his ass?”

  “No sir. Nicky said a lion could gulp down a man’s . . . a man’s . . .”

  “A man’s ass.” Uncle Jack laughed. “Well, he can, can’t he?”

  “Yessir, but if you say that in church then you might do blasamy and go to hell.”

&nb
sp; “Blasphemy. You got to learn to talk, boy. Tell you what: I’ll go with you and Aunt Dorie next Sunday and we’ll have a talk with Mr. Bill Ass Harris.”

  “No, Jack,” said Aunt Dorie. She’d come out quietly onto the porch and stood behind them. “Bill Harris does a lot for the church, and he’s in there on Sunday mornings with them boys when he could be at home sleeping like some people I won’t name.”

  Jack slowly stood. He folded in the blade against his overalls, turned. Henry stayed seated, looking up at him. “Well, Dorie,” said Uncle Jack, “Bill Harris is also a . . . a dull man. Them boys would get along just as fine by theirselves.”

  “I don’t think so. Boys need Sunday school.”

  “Like a . . . like a dog needs a spoon.”

  Aunt Dorie and Henry sat on the living room couch just before bedtime. Aunt Dorie told him that Mr. Harris and Preacher Gibson both had told Aunt Dorie that Henry was a very smart young man, and that the most important thing for him to know and understand was that Jesus died for him on the cross, for everybody, and that if Henry couldn’t understand something, that was okay. All he had to do was believe. She asked him if he believed in Jesus. He said yes. Did he believe in God and the Bible? Yes. She told him as long as he believed in those things, then he was a Christian and he would go to heaven. Once saved, always saved, she said. All he had to do was go down front at church and accept Jesus — when he felt Jesus calling. Because it had to be done publicly.

  Henry thought again about God resting on the seventh day. “But why would somebody who’s perfect need to rest? Can I ask that if I’m not in church?”

  “Yes, you can ask. For a little while sometimes God could be like a man and need some rest, but that don’t mean God wasn’t perfect. He could do whatever he wanted to. He just probably wanted to want to rest. He could be like a man and not like a man when he was inside Jesus because Jesus was God too. And Jesus was a man. God the Father is God, Jesus the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Jesus is perfect even though he cursed the fig tree and even though he cursed the men in the temple who were changing money.”

  “Why was it okay for Jesus to cuss?”

  “Because he was Jesus, and the fig tree and the money changers were bad.”

  “Could I cuss a fig tree and money changers?”

  “Well, no, because you’re not Jesus, son.”

  Henry knew Aunt Dorie was right about the Bible. The Bible was perfect, and it had the Twenty-third Psalm:

  The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

  Besides hearing Pa Dampier read the Twenty-third Psalm at the family reunion each year, Henry heard it, as a prayer, from Aunt Dorie and in church — read by Preacher Gibson or somebody else. And it had somehow gained a life. When Henry heard it or read it, he saw a shepherd with a staff, like the picture of Jesus in The Children’s Book of Bible Stories, and the picture of David with his staff in there too. He saw the green pastures, the same as on the mural on the wall behind the baptism place up front in the church. Yes, the Twenty-third Psalm had its own life, like some hymns were starting to have for him. “Love Lifted Me” showed a man sinking into the ocean with his hand up. “The Old Rugged Cross” showed a cross on a hill with rags hanging and a bunch of women kneeling around it, crying. “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” showed Jesus and Henry walking down a dirt road together. “Just As I Am” showed Mrs. Albright’s Yancy walking down the aisle on the right-hand side of the church, crying, and then leaning into the arms of Preacher Gibson. “Bringing in the Sheaves” showed these big groups of people walking across Egypt, bringing in things.

  In the Twenty-third Psalm, the still waters were the pond at Pa D’s farm and scared Henry just a little. But nothing came to him for “restoreth my soul” and “the paths of righteousness,” though he figured it might have something to do with a path around the pond. And then the big, harsh idea of the dark valley of the shadow of death, where vines grew along craggy hillsides with the tree branches that caught that man by his hair — the man with a hard name who was David’s son — and who later got his head cut off and made David sad. There was no need for Henry to fear, because the Lord was Jesus, and with his rod and staff he would save Henry from anything bad. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,” comfort meaning being in bed with Aunt Dorie and her soft pillow and her reading from The Children’s Book of Bible Stories, though Henry never quite knew the difference between a rod and a staff — there was that “spare the rod and spoil the child” that people talked about, except Uncle Jack used a switch, one that Henry had to choose off the bushes in the backyard, so maybe a rod was just a straight stick. What Henry saw in Jesus’ hand was the long stick with the curved end for the sheeps’ necks, and then maybe a stick of some sort, a rod, was on the ground — “thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Jesus did get mad: at the fig tree and at the money changers. Then next came “Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.” Enemies were Indians or Philistines or something like that. Jesus said forgive your enemies, but God killed a lot of them — especially when the Red Sea parted and then came back in on top of all those Egyptians. But Jesus didn’t kill anybody. He loved his enemies. And then that about oil on his head. He saw oil on a man’s forehead, curly hair, and the oil shiny, and he clearly saw the cup runneth over — it was Uncle Jack’s coffee cup — over into the saucer and then onto the tablecloth, with Aunt Dorie standing there looking on; and then, finally, there would be good things all his life, and he would “dwell in the house of the Lord for ever” — because he believed in God.

  He memorized the Twenty-third Psalm for his Sunday school class and drew a picture of the road that went on forever, on past the end of this life and into his life in heaven.

  1930

  WHEN HENRY WAS A BABY

  WESTERN UNION

  received at 99 CF COLLECT

  Simmons NCAR 755P May 3 1930

  Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Cleary

  Rt 6 GARDEN SPR FLA

  DANNY HIT BY PIECE OF WOOD FROM TRUCK IN HOSPITAL MORE SOON

  DORIE

  819P

  WESTERN UNION

  received at 233 CF COLLECT

  Simmons NCAR 544P May 4 1930

  Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Cleary

  Rt 6 GARDEN SPR FLA

  DANNY DIED UNEXPECTED FROM ACCIDENT FUNERAL ON WED AT 3 PM PLEASE COME ON

  DORIE

  630P

  Caroline’s school desk had a T carved in it, and she traced it with her finger. She was in the first grade. Her father had been dead for a week now, and the man in the truck who caused him to die might go to prison for it, and sometimes she dreamed it was all pretend. In the dream, she’d go to a room where her daddy might be, but when she got there the roof of the room would be gone, leaving a blue sky and moving white clouds above, and nobody would be in the room. Her daddy had gone up to heaven. He got hit by the plank sticking out from the truck and died.

  Back at home, Henry, the baby, lay on a quilt on the kitchen floor.

  The dog had got in the diaper pail and dragged diapers through the pushed-out screen and into the yard.

  Libby, Henry’s mother, saw the diapers when she came into the yard from milking. She hadn’t been able to fix the screen that the dog had pushed out.

  She would have to sell the goddamned cow. She’d rather be dead than this. She’d rather be in some kind of pain in a hospital where nurses c
ould bring food and water and medicine, and wash her sheets and pajamas. Danny would’ve fixed the screen as soon as that happened, and he’d have whipped the dog for pushing it out.

  She got the loaded shotgun and an extra shell. Called the dog. She’d have to get a ways away from the house, because she didn’t have the energy to dig a grave. So she kept walking — the dog following — on by the dried-up cornstalks from the year before and finally stopped atop the bank that led down to the creek, and that’s where she stood, pulling back the stiff hammers, remembering her daddy, standing out in the field of stubble tobacco stalks that time as he raised the shotgun, his shoulder being kicked back, the top of a stray dog’s head lifting off like a little wig in the wind. The dog had killed a chicken.

  Libby shot the dog twice, reloaded, and shot him again, walked back to the cabin, put the shotgun back, and picked up the crying baby, laid him on the water shelf on the porch, and took off the diaper — he had a bad rash — and cleaned him up. And then back inside she put a clean diaper on him — well, it was dry anyway — then a small clean flour sack with holes for head and arms, and then wrapped him in a quarter sheet and put a blanket in a cardboard kindling box and put him in that. She went to the sewing machine and got the money in the brown envelope. She stood for a second and looked at the sewing machine. Dorie would want it and would get it. Libby had never got the hang of figuring out a pattern, of the pumping with her foot, the threading and holding and stretching and going slow and going fast. Dorie had tried to teach her. She liked Dorie, because Dorie had given her the time of day.

  She got an armful of clothes and stuffed them into a paper sack along with shoes, razor and blades, toothbrush, hairbrush, and mirror. On the way to the truck she got a whiff of breeze from the hog lot.