“You not ready?”
I butter my third biscuit and add a scoop of blackberry jam.
“What for?”
“That teacher that’s come on board this year’s gonna be at church this morning. Thought you woulda heard.”
“You know good and well I don’t do church. And why would I give a rat’s ass bout a teacher?”
“They say she’s taller than six foot.”
“Hmm.” I take a bite of biscuit, and the butter squirts out on my chin.
“And pretty old, as teachers go.”
“Uh-hmm.” I wipe my chin with the back of my hand and lick it.
Marris runs out of selling points but won’t give up. She says, “Well, it’d be something different to your morning, won’t it?”
I stand and say, “Let me get my hat.” Scraps of last night’s ugly hang round, and going to see a giant old teacher sit in Preacher Perkins’s stuffy church and be stared at by the righteous might be the spice I need. I stick my black straw hat on my head, jam the hatpin in the top, and walk out the door.
Marris drives her truck with the muffler shot to hell so everybody hears us a ways off. Pieces of road rush by in rusted-out places in the floorboard; I keep my feet off to the side. We park at the Rusty Nickel and walk the rest of the way up the hill cause it looks like a homecoming crowd come to see the show.
“I ain’t gonna stand,” I declare to Marris, me huffing up the incline. “Need me a seat. I’ll faint if need be.”
“Don’t get your drawers in a pinch, Gladys. Let’s get inside first before you start to act pitiful.”
Church is full. I set my eyes hard on the back of Ellis Dodd’s puny head and make him squirm in the seat I wanna sit in. He turns, sees me, and gets up quick to stand in back next to Marris. Now I got a good seat on the end of the second row near the teacher woman in front.
Even when she sits, you can tell she’s a big one. Bigger than me, and that says something.
On the other end of the front row is Prudence Perkins, Preacher Eli’s sister. She sits upright like she swallowed a rod but not the divining kind. She turns her head and stretches out her chicken neck to cut ugly looks at the teacher on the other end. Prudence don’t like nobody, but she must not like the teacher extra. I wonder how that could happen so quick? The teacher lady’s been here little better than a week from what Marris told me.
Church always got a smell bout it that don’t sit right with me, and it gives me the itches. Maybe it’s that fake hope that hangs in the air, frustrated cause nobody gets much back from praying. Maybe it’s all that joy the preacher splashes on like toilet water when he tries to make the afterlife special when bout anywhere is special next to Baines Creek.
Preacher Eli still stands outside to say his hellos to folks coming inside, and we’re packed tighter than toes in a shoe too small. I elbow Fleeta Wright so she scoots over and don’t bump up on my sore hip.
We wait cause we got to, and everybody studies on the teacher. Her dull hair’s cut too short for any respectable woman from these parts. She glances round, her eyes wide behind thick glasses, and wiggles her fingers at the Dillard girls, Pearl and Weeza. They grin and try to wave back, but their mama, Jolene, holds their hands down like it’s a sin to wave in church.
Fleeta Wright leans over and whispers to me, “Been a long while, Gladys. You forget the way to the Lord’s house?”
Her breath smells of garlic and onions, and I wrinkle my nose so she knows.
I answer back, “I know my way round all right. I come when it suit, not cause I have to.”
Fleeta rolls her eyes and crosses her arms over her fat bosom.
Folks get fidgety now and clear their throats. They getting tired of waiting for the show to start. I look down at a glob of blackberry jam stuck on my dress. I pick it off and eat it.
Preacher Eli finally walks to the front, stands behind the podium, and looks round at everybody. He nods like he’s surprised we’re here when we just walked past him at the door.
“My fellow friends in Christ…” He starts the usual preacher yammer and uses his loud church voice, which is silly cause the back wall ain’t but thirty feet away.
I knew the two Eli Perkins preachers what come before this one, and they was all stumpy men who told poor-to-middling jokes like it was part of their job. They was okay as far as preachers go and not too pushy. I told em not to darken my door. I don’t have need for the rules they sell, so they pretty much leave me be.
Like usual, Preacher starts with a joke.
“I went by Roosevelt Lowe’s the other day.”
He starts talking bout that old man what lost his leg in a hunting accident years back and don’t have good sense to be pissed at his buddy who done the shooting.
“And the good man that he is, I overheard him talking to the Lord. He said, ‘God, what’s a million years like to you?’ God said, ‘Well, Roosevelt, it’s like a second.’ Then Roosevelt asked, ‘What’s a million dollars like to you?’ And God said, ‘It’s like a penny.’ Then Roosevelt got around to the point and asked, ‘Well, then can I have a penny?’ and God said, ‘Just a second.’”
The teacher smiles and I hear Marris giggle in back, then the Preacher giggles too, but for the life of me I don’t know why. Nobody’s gonna get a million dollars, least of all Roosevelt Lowe and his wood leg. And what good is a second anyway?
Now the joke’s over that’s a waste of time, Preacher says, “I begin this morning’s service with the glorious news that the Lord has indeed blessed us richly in the person of Miss Kate Shaw, who’s come up from the valley to guide our children to read and write. Proverbs 22:6 says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.’ This is why we’re here today, my friends. We train our children to be soldiers of the Lord, and Miss Kate Shaw has come to help.”
When Eli says we’re training soldiers of the Lord and puts teacher lady in the mix, she shakes her head no no no. She looks right at Preacher Perkins, but he don’t pay her no mind. Prudence looks the teacher’s way with a hateful grin on her face and I don’t know why, so that gets my interest up just a bit, but I still nod off.
When I come to, that teacher lady stands next to Eli and makes him look pint-size, which won’t hard to do. He sits down, and she talks about losing her job and looking for a new place to teach. What kind of god-awful news is that? We’re used to crumbs up here. Now this here’s a teacher who’s crummy all on her own.