Anger trims the fat from a man’s vocabulary. Diction gets edged, syllables sharpened, subtleties of speech shaved away until all that remains is the flensed thrust of a thing being said.
It’s the Sunday before midterm elections and pastor Nate is no longer pretending to parse phrases. The light has gone out of the window over his shoulder. What is left of the stained glass panel there has been battened with naked planks of plywood, a partitioned morning leaking weakly through the board seams. The preacher wears white from neck to toe and as he talks his hands rest in odd blessing on a pair of bricks bookending the pulpit before him.
“Words matter,” says the pastor.
From the back pews where Aura and Opal are sitting it is difficult to make out the expression on Nate’s face, but his pale summer suit and tie glow with an almost ghostly light against the chancel’s variegated darknesses.
“Two little white boys went missing last week in South Carolina. You might have heard of it. Woman name of Susan Smith said a black man stole her babies. Just rode off in her car, she said, with her children still buckled in the backseat.”
Opal’s eyes have fluttered shut. The old woman’s chin nods in an attenuating, trancelike wilt until it has bobbed to a stop atop her breastbone.
Aura removes the hymnal from her grandmother’s lap. Opal has been acting puny since her breakdown at the district attorney’s office. Aura was practically rabid afterward, angry at that good-ol’-boy public defender and his skyscraping Indian sidekick. Angry with herself for even agreeing to the meeting. Angry at Carl’s ghost for getting Grams into such a state. For dealing drugs and for getting away with it for so long and for getting not just killed but tortured. For every boneheaded blunder her brother made since the day he was born.
Before she could drive Grams back to Langston, Aura fled to the district attorney’s toilet, hid there whispering a blue streak for ten full sacrilegious minutes, trying to compose herself. Just remembering it Aura feels her pulse knocking fast and loud against her insides. So loud it’s a wonder anyone can hear the preacher speaking.
“Now I’ve been around the block a couple three times,” Nate is saying. “You can stir the rhetoric with a stick in that last run-up to election. Who remembers Willie Horton?”
The pews shake with unanimous, grumbled complaint. Nate raises his voice above the fray.
“That was a lowdown dirty shame. Just a hateful perversion of free speech. They trotted out Willie Horton and his weekend pass I thought: There can’t be a thing worse than this. But I’ll tell you what,” says the pastor. “I was wronger than wrong.”
The preacher’s teeth catch and release the light, a Cheshire-cat flash.
“There’s people will say anything for a shot at running this country. Let’s take this Newt character. The one’s been hawking his Contract with America on all the talk shows. The one who looks at a big, beautiful crowd of black people like we have sitting here and sees instead a bunch of welfare queens on the dole. Driving their Cadillacs down to the corner store for more of that barbecue.”
The general sense of bedlam intensifies. Nate turns it up a notch.
“Now when Mr. Gingrich heard about Mrs. Smith’s loss he was understandably upset. We all were. So maybe Newt wasn’t in full command of his faculties when he opened his mouth. Said this tragedy was caused by a sickness in society. A sickness, he went on to say, that he could cure. But here’s the catch: everyone has to vote Republican on Tuesday!”
Someone says, “Oh no he didn’t!”
The preacher is almost shouting now.
“Or maybe mister Newt was taken by fear. Fear of that big black bugaboo carjacked Mrs. Smith. That’d scare any man. Maybe this dismay made Newt start speaking in tongues. So when he said this whole thing was the fault of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society—everyone here knows it—social security, war on poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, the civil rights acts.”
Nate grips the bricks with thick fists.
“Might be that was just some confused bit of word soup Newt was serving up. Maybe Mr. Gingrich would tell us he’s sorry if he were here today. But Newt can put his sorries in a sack. It’s not the thought that counts—it’s the deed. Mr. Gingrich’s words make waves here in the real world. Some concerned citizen heard those words. Then decided to launch a brickbat or two through our stained glass window.”
Pastor Nate lifts the blocks overhead so everyone can see. A name is chalked across each brick face: one reads SMITH, the other SIMPSON.
“I figure this person watches too much Court TV,” pastor Nate says. He lowers the bricks with a kind of tenderness, the way a father might handle an infant, and when they are laid back to rest the pulpit resounds with a subdued bukka-boom.
“A few days back Mrs. Smith admitted killing those boys. All by herself. Said she popped the parking brake and rolled that car into a lake. Wanted to make herself more appealing to some fella didn’t want a ready-made family.” Pastor Nate draws a breath and says, “Mr. Gingrich is using your grief, ladies and gentlemen, to advance his own career. Newt’s taking you for a ride. Just like Susan Smith took those policemen for a ride. Just like she took those two little . . .”
The preacher’s hands whip away from the bricks as if he’s passing off a hot potato. He retreats into the deeper shadows backgrounding the pulpit and whispers something no one can hear. Opal is breathing soft snores beside Aura.
“Lord help me,” Nate says, wringing his fingers. “I haven’t been this angry in I don’t know. Feels a little like dying. Please forgive me. Please . . .” He returns to the pulpit and says, “Let’s all bow our heads in prayer for those poor boys. Michael and Alexander Smith.”
A hypnic jolt lifts Opal awake in time for her to hear the preacher’s call for prayer. She utters a heartfelt “Amen!” and starts to stand. Aura hands her grandmother the hymnal and guides her smoothly back into a sit.
The whites of pastor Nate’s eyes cut to Opal.
“That’s right, Mrs. Jefferson. Amen doesn’t have to mean we’ve reached the end.” The preacher smiles, bashful, as if embarrassed by the simplicity of his epiphany. “Sometimes it means we’re just getting started.”