Revival Season - Monica West (10 ebook reader .TXT) 📗

back on his face, poking him in the eye in the process. While people in the pews were praising the Lord, I could see that the man was growing more agitated. He began wailing as he tried to wriggle out of the deacons’ grip, but their arms were grasping him tight.

With a flick of his index finger, Papa directed the deacons to take the man outside. Papa had made his way to the pulpit again, and he raised trembling hands to quiet the crowd. The cheers of only a couple of minutes before had been replaced by confused stares and murmurs. He tried to mumble a benediction, but he was drowned out by the man’s bellows coming from outside. Papa, distracted, rushed the service to a close and disappeared through the slit in the tent that led to the darkness outside.

A shout came from the distance. I jumped up before I could realize what I was doing, shook loose from Ma’s tight grip that was holding me in the chair, and followed in Papa’s tracks. On the flattened grassy path behind the main revival tent, I smacked into an impassable wall of suited bodies that I tried to part with my hands. Another yell off to my left—this one more urgent, more desperate, than the last one. Out of the corner of my eye, a group of deacons had gathered, surrounding the man with the sunglasses. They were trying to lead him into the trees at the perimeter of the property, but he stood in the middle of their circle, swiping the air with punches.

“Get away from me,” he shouted. His fists were a flurry in front of his face. Maybe the darkness disoriented him, but his movements were clumsy like he still couldn’t see. As he spun around in woozy circles, his sunglasses fell from his head and landed by his feet in the grass.

“He’s a fraud!” the man yelled. One deacon grabbed him from behind and tried to bring him to the ground, but the man stayed on his feet. Then there was a parting in the circle, and Papa stepped through. My breathing slowed when I saw him; he would get to the bottom of this misunderstanding.

“Let him go, Robert. He isn’t a prisoner,” Papa said to the deacon. Then he turned to the man, his voice calm, but the scary kind of calm I always dreaded hearing. “A fraud? Is that what you called me?”

“I know all about you,” the man continued. “They may not know about you, but I do.”

“You know nothing about me,” Papa said, flexing his hands and then balling them into fists. With each movement, there was a soft crack of his knuckles. As the man continued speaking, it was easier to watch Papa’s hands than his face.

“I know about the girl you assaulted last summer. How you got angry when you knew you wouldn’t be able to heal her. Just like you’re angry now.”

The deacons’ close bodies held me back from jumping into the center and telling this man just how wrong he was about Papa. Then there was a muffled thump like a rock hitting the ground; when I looked back into the sliver of space, the blind man was on the grass and Papa was standing over him. It looked like he was stomping on the ground near where the man had been. Visions of the pregnant girl flashed in front of my eyes, but I squeezed them shut to rid myself of the memory. My eyes had to be deceiving me now—probably just paranoia from last summer.

The deacons’ bodies surrounded Papa, trying to hold him back; I caught a glimpse of him before the circle fully closed. This time, there was no mistake: there was blood streaming down his knuckles as he rained punches toward the ground where the man was writhing. His fists on the man’s body made the same sound as the punch he landed on the girl’s stomach last summer. He had said that was an accident; this was not.

“You know nothing about me.” Papa kept rubbing his blood-covered knuckles. My hands shot to my mouth to block my gasp.

On the ground, dazed, the man nodded.

“There’s more of that if you ever come back here.” Papa turned to face the circle of deacons. “Now get him out of here.”

The deacons moved as one, dragging the man’s body with them. I stood in the grass, exposed, my heart thundering in my ears, my legs frozen even as I knew I should return to the tent. Papa turned around in what felt like slow motion; fear and shock flickered in his widened eyes as they landed on me.

“Miriam.” My name sounded like a revelation in his mouth. “Why are you back here?” He walked closer to me, and I took a couple of steps back. When there was no more land behind me, I kept my eyes level with the top button of his dress shirt. The stretched fabric was transparent with sweat.

“No one can know about this.” His voice cracked like a preteen’s would, and my eyes couldn’t rise from his shirt to his face. He shook his right hand as though drying errant water droplets from it. With those same hands, Papa had baptized people—he’d baptized all of us too, including Ma—and he’d held Isaiah’s delicate body like it was a piece of glass. Standing inches in front of me in the darkness, I stared at the blood that stained the knuckles of his once-familiar hands.

I shook my head. He took a step toward me, and I flinched—a reflex—but he laid his left hand on my shoulder.

“I will never hurt you.”

I wondered if the emphasis on you meant he would hurt other people. Although Papa had disciplined me many times over the years, his flat hand only struck my bare flesh when I was willful or disobedient, and his spankings were never as angry or violent as what I’d just witnessed.

“Go back inside with your