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

breath and helped Hannah onto the grass outside the van. We moved slowly, passing deacons who looked through us like we were invisible, deacons whose backs I had hidden behind last night. Inside the tent’s flaps, the overhead bulbs felt like spotlights as Hannah and I followed Ma down the middle aisle. Faces—though not nearly as many as the night before—turned toward us, staring in the way that people stared at Hannah when they first met her. But there was usually a trace of concern or pity directed at Hannah, whereas these stares were hostile.

“Charlatan,” someone hissed from the back of the tent.

“I heard he broke his jaw.” Another whisper came to join the chorus.

I could always shake off what faithless naysayers said about Papa, but this time tears welled behind my eyes. If Ma was surprised by the accusations being lobbed at us, she didn’t let on. Her posture was ramrod straight as she bypassed the fourth row where we usually sat and staked out a place in the center of the first row. I slunk into the seat next to Ma, with Hannah on my left. Ma’s jaw jutted—it was easy for her to show pride when she didn’t know what I knew.

The wait for the sermon to start felt interminable. I kept wanting to turn around, to see if the tent was filling up at all, but I stayed still, not even wiping away a bead of sweat that made its way from my hairline down my face before landing in the collar of my dress.

After an hour that seemed endless, the old keyboardist ascended to the stage and the opening chord of “All to Jesus I Surrender” filled the air around us. A wave of nausea churned in my stomach as Papa made the processional inside. He slipped on a wan smile and stepped behind the pulpit, raising his arms to signal that it was time for the call to worship. The deacons were supposed to join him onstage, but they stayed with the congregation, leaving only Caleb in the semicircle of chairs behind Papa.

“ ‘Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever.’ ” These words, usually met with applause, were greeted with cacophonous silence. The microphone screeched, but Papa continued speaking even as his words were inaudible over the crackling feedback.

“What happened last night?” A voice from the back of the tent yelled above the din.

“You put him in the hospital.”

Ma stiffened beside me as she wrapped the long strap of her purse around her hand. I shifted my eyes to the right to avoid a conspicuous turn of my head and counted the fast blinks of her confused, glassy eyes, watched the slightest tremble in her top lip. My eyes skipped from her to Caleb, who was seated behind Papa on the stage, gripping both sides of the folding chair as Papa raised his arms to stop the congregation’s incessant shouting. But the voices kept coming one after another: “A preacher wouldn’t do that to someone!” a woman’s voice shouted. “You are no preacher,” some man said. With each declaration, Caleb drifted farther away from the stage until his eyes were pointed somewhere over my head at what I imagined was an object outside of the tent’s open flaps.

My neck snapped around for the first time all service. The seats were mostly empty, and the faces that stared back at Papa were full of anger. Papa looked down at his papers as though the answer was written there. He adjusted the wireless microphone behind his ear, but his lips didn’t move.

“Saints of God, I want to talk to you about the mysteries of faith.” He was yelling now, but their booing drowned out his amplified voice. Ma rooted in the side pocket of her purse until the key ring was in her hand; with each new jeer that rose behind us, she gripped the keys tighter in her fist until only a spike of silver stuck out. She scooted to the front of her chair, planted her block heels squarely on the grass, and stood, pulling me up with her. We had never left a revival early.

The jeers got louder behind us as my hand hooked under Hannah’s armpit to bring her to her tottering feet. Soon, we were speed-walking out of the back of the tent. We burst through the line of deacons, and Ma ran at full speed to the car and started it. I was just finishing buckling Hannah in when Papa and Caleb appeared, illuminated by the individual circular ground lights that shone outside the tent.

“What was that, Samuel?” Ma asked, after getting out and sliding into the passenger seat so Papa could drive.

“Let’s just get out of here.”

“No. What were those lies they were saying? You didn’t hurt that man. You just tried to heal him. Did something else happen after the revival service?”

“We can talk about this later.” He tossed his arm around the passenger seat and looked backward into the rear window. The van zipped away from the tent in reverse.

“We’re going to talk about it now.” Her words rose at the end with a sharpness that was reserved for times when she was angry with me or Caleb; I’d never heard her use that tone with Papa. Papa ignored her until Ma grabbed the gear shift and jolted the van into park. My head crashed into the back of the driver’s seat; I threw out a stiff right arm to keep Hannah in place.

“You need to go back there and tell them that it’s all a misunderstanding. We’re not going to run away from here like criminals! Tell them!” Ma’s words knifed through the minivan’s air as she leaned close to Papa’s face, her crooked finger pointing in the direction of where she wanted him to go. Papa released his hold on the steering wheel as his shoulders slumped.

They had indicted him back in the tent, so he wouldn’t have to admit to