It was hot that night. Steaming. And it smelled like every lady in the place was wearing Jungle Gardenia and every man fresh out of a steel mill. The building was one giant hornets’ nest, droning and droning and droning, and at first I nearly headed back home. I mean, for me church was fried chicken at the picnics and a little holy softball and ceramic crosses. I wasn’t sure about God all in a sweat. It scared me.
Unfortunately, I got stuck in the middle of a pew and couldn’t get out. A woman was down at one end with a baby and all those bags that go with it. And a fat man was at the other end, his knees taking up every last inch of space. And the smell of Jungle Gardenia closing in, front and back. I was trapped.
We all stood up and sang “Bringing in the Sheaves,” big Joanie Fulton pounding away on the organ like some butcher pounding at a piece of meat. I knew the song by heart, and I’d missed singing it, so I sang all the verses through without ever opening the hymnal. When it was done, I felt good. Up. Yes, I was rising.
Then Woodrow Radford, the assistant pastor, got up and started talking about the revival, how it came to be, what it meant to us all, why every church needed one. Woodrow had a voice like a lawn mower—that dull kind of sound—and I was getting bored and nearly ready to make the fat man get out of my way, when the revival preacher was introduced and he stepped out from behind the choir into the pulpit.
“Lord in heaven,” I said. The people around me turned their heads. “Lord in heaven.”
It was the hitchhiker. The pickax murderer. Oh, my heart just stopped. It stopped cold, I know it, and my mouth hung like an idiot’s.
Those light blue eyes didn’t belong to any murderer. They belonged to a preacher.
Preacher Man.
I never heard his real name that night. Things real, things solid—they were gone. The Preacher began slow, and I knew that voice when he started. I’d never heard it before in my life, but I knew it. And I leaned into it, yes I did, I leaned my body into it and I let him take me. I was hungry for The Word. I didn’t know it till I got there, but yes, I was hungry, and he did know The Word. What did he say? I wonder now. What was it he said? Doesn’t matter. Didn’t then. But he had a way. And I could feel the tears coming to my eyes as he preached. Yes. And I could feel my heart ache and ache with the longing. Hungry. And I wanted to be holy. Preacher Man, make me holy, that’s what I said. Make me a temple.
And the others must have felt it, too. The church swayed back and forth with the rhythm of his voice, and it was like so many migrating birds, turning into the east all at once, turning into the west, turning and swaying and watching for the stars. The Star. Yes, we wanted to find holiness that night. The diaper-bag lady and the fat man and me and all the rest. Praise God, we said. Holy Jesus, we said. Forgive, we said.
Forgive, forgive, forgive.
I wanted to be clean. I wanted to sparkle. I wanted to dance with the Preacher Man in the glory of the Lord.
That night.
Yes, he took us all, and when he was done, we were no longer ourselves. We were his, Preacher Man’s, and the sweat running off him and the sweat running off us was proof of it. I thought I had been cleansed. I thought I had been saved. I thought I had come home.
And when I walked up to him at the end of the evening, up that long aisle to ask him—beg him—to judge me a sinner, I looked right into those light blue eyes and he knew me. Yes, his eyes changed, and he knew me.
He grabbed my wet hands, and he said, “Are you a sinner?”
“Yes,” I sobbed.
“Do you want to be saved?” he said.
“Yes, praise God.”
His hands went about my head.
“God bless you. You have been born again.”