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

much to admit that the long shadow cast during last summer’s revival season loomed over this one too.

“That’s a great idea, Samuel. It allows us to be open to the Lord’s guidance.” Ma’s voice was as distant as her eyes. Caleb, normally Papa’s staunch defender, didn’t chime in. While Papa searched my face for assent, I got up from the table and felt his gaze creeping on the back of my neck as I pulled out plates for Easter dinner.

Later, after everyone else had scattered upstairs to their separate corners, I sat at the kitchen table among the post-meal detritus: plates scraped clean with utensils crisscrossed on their surface, a carcass of glazed ham with pineapple rings barely hanging on, and stained cloth napkins tossed haphazardly on plates. In the darkness, I ran water in the sink and slipped the plates inside until all of Easter disappeared under a thick layer of soap bubbles. Next to me, moonlight danced off the stainless-steel refrigerator and illuminated Hannah’s crayon drawings.

“I will heal Hannah,” I said when all the dishes were done and the kitchen was clean, but I still couldn’t make myself go upstairs. Cracking the front door and stepping into the black, I wandered away from the house until I reached the sidewalk. “I will heal Hannah.” I repeated it in the warming night air to the stars that twinkled overhead. I turned around to walk back toward the house, jumping when I saw Caleb on the porch outside.

“What are you doing out here?”

“I needed someplace to think.”

I walked up the driveway and sat down next to Caleb on the top step of the porch. His gangly legs were folded beneath him in cartoon character pajama pants that were far too short. The distant buzz of a plane flying overhead interrupted the silence. Caleb and I looked up to see the blinking light moving slowly across the sky. I closed my eyes and imagined myself gliding tens of thousands of feet above this place, turning the houses into specks and the people into grains of dust. I’d never actually been in a plane, but I’d imagined flying many times, especially when we were on the revival circuit, feeling every bump of the road underneath the van.

“Where would you go?” Caleb asked after the plane droned away and left a trail of vapor in its wake.

I’d only ever really thought about the places where we’d driven—Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina. So I surprised myself when I said Alaska.

Caleb laughed. “Why Alaska?”

Mostly because it was bigger than Texas. But also because it was far away, even though I knew I couldn’t tell Caleb that part. “Not sure. It would be nice to see the northern lights. What about you?”

Caleb’s teeth glinted as he smiled. “Arizona.” He didn’t even pause before he spoke—he’d clearly been thinking about it for a long time.

“Why?”

“The Grand Canyon.”

Ma had taught us about the Grand Canyon during geography lessons several years ago—Caleb’s eyes widened as he heard about a 277-mile-long canyon that was a mile deep, as though he couldn’t fathom anything that large.

“What would you do there?”

I imagined him telling me that he would build a church out in the desert, or that he would use it as his main base while traveling the country to preach the Gospel like Papa.

“I’d be a park ranger at the Grand Canyon.”

My neck swiveled over to him. “Really?”

“Yup. I’d help people hike down there. But mostly I’d get to stand there and look at it every day.”

I hugged my knees to my chest as a chill settled in. The flickering filaments of fireflies sparked and extinguished just as quickly, briefly lighting a path to nowhere.

“What’s it like?”

“What’s what like?”

“Healing people.”

I whipped around to look at him, to see if he was really saying that he believed me. But he was still looking at the sky. My shoulders relaxed from where they had been by my ears, and the first real smile in months cracked my face. I took a deep breath and let my body return to each of the healings—from the stuffiness of the annex when I’d healed Micah to the claustrophobic bathroom with Nadia. “Kind of weird. This tingly feeling travels through me when it happens—kind of like a tiny electric shock. Then everything hurts as though I’ve taken some of their disease into my body.”

Another long pause.

“When did it start?”

“With Micah, I guess. It was an accident. It happened right after we came back from revival season. And it didn’t work all the way. That was the first time I felt something though.” I caught a glimpse of his profile, his strong jaw moving, like he was chewing all the taste out of the words he couldn’t bring himself to say. His eyes widened for a moment with a slight twinge of jealousy before they returned to normal.

“Did you really heal Ma?”

I nodded, but he didn’t look over. Maybe he sensed the disturbance in the air, the subtle wind from my swaying head.

“How many have there been?” His voice was tight.

“If you count Micah, six.”

I wanted to tell him more, about how Hannah would be my seventh this summer, but I knew I shouldn’t—not yet. The moon shone above us overhead, and next to it, the unmistakable pan and long handle of the Big Dipper. Even though I was older than Caleb, he had been the one to teach me about constellations. When he was nine and I was ten, he gloated as he took me by the hand and led me in the backyard one night. I had followed where his finger pointed as he told me how to identify Cassiopeia, the Big Dipper, and the Little Dipper. But that day felt like ages ago as we sat there for a few minutes in our older skins, looking at a canvas of dark sky that stretched above us, dusted with stars.

Spring drew to a close, and the house fluttered with activity as we prepared for