Right about here I feel my insides hardening up, and I think the telling has got to stop.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me….
Yes. I have known that valley and that fear. I have known the shadow of death. And, in the remembering, in the telling, there is a terrible loneliness.
My best friend left me that morning with all the pain that comes to you when you hurt somebody you love. Rufus walked out, and I sat there in my room, thinking about Pop working on the lines, Mother’s face when she saw me at the revival. Thinking about how much I owed them.
It’s a terrible pain.
But even with the guilt, even so, unfortunately I still thought I was doing the right thing. You owe your parents for a lot. But you owe God for your whole existence. You owe Him for life everlasting. How can you turn your back on the One who made the heavens, and the earth, and you?
I could not turn my back.
I took my duffel outside and set it in the bushes behind the garage.
I spent most of the rest of the day working around the house, doing all those chores I’d kept putting off. I cleaned out the basement for Mother and I painted the light post for Pop. I mowed the yard and I pruned the hedge. I even gave the front porch a good scrubbing.
Just as the Lord would have wanted it, I set my house in order.
And the work felt good. I sweated and I strained in the heat, but it felt good, those hours when my hands were busy and my mind clear.
Later in the afternoon, Mother came home with the car full of groceries. Mother always liked to buy food “for her two men,” she said. So when I helped her carry the bags into the house, there was this ache in me. And as we unpacked the stuff, and I saw my favorite cookies and the canned meat nobody in the house liked but me, the ache got so bad I thought maybe something really was wrong with me, and I wondered if somebody thirteen could have a heart attack.
When I was little, I remember I used to talk to Mother about what I’d be when I grew up. And the most important thing to me was that whatever job I had, she could be with me. I guess I couldn’t take the idea of living by myself, without Mother. So I’d tell her we could both be scientists and have our own laboratory. Or I’d tell her I wouldn’t have a job at all, but I’d just stay home with her and make toys to sell to people.
I really loved Mother, and being around her, and unpacking the food she’d bought for me that day really hurt.
When Pop came home we all had a quiet supper. I tried to look at Pop while he ate, without him thinking I was staring at him. Poor Pop. That’s what I thought. Poor old Pop. I wished he’d had more chances in his life. I wished he’d gotten the things he wanted.
And now he had a boy who was going to walk out on him.
You hear about broken hearts all the time. I always turned up my nose at it, thinking it was some kind of girl talk. But looking at my two folks at supper that night, I could swear I felt my heart just cracking right up the middle.
And after supper, when I sat on the porch with Mother while Pop watched TV inside, I wondered why God had done it all to me. Made me meet the Preacher and set me on fire. Why God was calling me away from my folks. Why he couldn’t find some way to let me have the Preacher and have them, too.
Most times I could see God’s hand in things. But this time it seemed he was just looking the other way, leaving me with all the complications.
But I’d still go with the Preacher. I’d go with him because we were meant to be together, him and me. Because life with him would be the closest thing to heaven on earth. And because he needed me. He needed me more than Mother and Pop did. They had each other, but he was alone and carrying the burden of the sin of the world.
That was the thing about Jesus that got to me: how lonely He seemed. The last person on earth who should have been lonely. But He was the most alone person I ever could imagine.
I didn’t want the Preacher Man to suffer like that.
I’d still go with him.
Night came, and I told my folks I’d be walking over to the church about ten o’clock to help clean up. I told them a bunch of people would be there, that I’d get a ride home with somebody, not to expect me till after midnight. I said it all and even looked them in the eye and couldn’t believe how easy that lying was for me.
There was a duffel bag sitting outside in the bushes, there was an empty space on the kitchen wall where a ceramic cross used to hang, and there was a new boy named Peter Cassidy, all set to go out into God’s big world.
So about nine-thirty I went to the front door. Mother and Pop were still watching television. I stuck my head in the living room, and in a voice I didn’t know could be mine, I said, “ ’Night.”
“ ’Night, Pete,” Pop called, never taking his eyes off the screen.
Mother turned her head toward me, though, and in that split second her face looked just the way it did when I saw her at the revival. I can’t describe it. It was just a strange look I’d never seen on her any other time.
“Don’t be out too late, Pete,” she said in a quiet voice. My heart sort of stopped then.
“Okay, Mother. See you later.”
And I smiled and lifted up my hand in a wave as I went out the door, with one giant sob buried deep in me and wringing me inside out.
I fished my duffel bag out of the bushes and headed for the filling station. The walk was about fifteen minutes, so I had plenty of time. I sure didn’t want to risk being late and setting the Preacher all in a panic.
The night was cool and dry, the sky clear. While I walked, I tried to block out thoughts of what I was leaving behind me, like the way I used to block everything from my mind when I was learning to dive. I was scared to death, but I’d make my mind go blank and I’d walk out on that board and I’d be diving in before I knew it.
So I blocked out everything except a picture of the Preacher Man in my head, and I walked on.
The streets are nearly always deserted in town after nine o’clock—it’s just that kind of place. As I got nearer and could see the station in the distance, it didn’t surprise me that there wasn’t a soul around. There hardly ever was.
I was a few minutes early, I knew, so I just walked on under the streetlamp and over to the wall where the Preacher and I had made our plans the night before. It seemed hundreds of years ago. I was nervous, and I thought about getting a pop just to calm myself down, but I changed my mind. He might come all in a hurry and I might not look right with a pop in my hand. I ought to look ready to bolt any second. So I just sat up on the wall with my duffel by my feet, and I waited.
There was a clock lit up inside the station that kept the right time. Five minutes to ten. Five minutes and he’d be coming up the street, walking so straight and nice, and he’d say, “Let’s go, Pete.” My body shook with nerves, and I wasn’t even thinking of Mother and Pop and home.
I was ready.
When the clock hit ten, and I didn’t see him coming up the street, my nerves got worse. But I knew anybody at church could still have him cornered, still be pouring out their sins to him. He wouldn’t walk away from anyone in need. Even if it meant me having to wait for him. He had to minister to the needy first.
I was sitting there, wondering how the last night must have been, how many more sinners he had pulled up that aisle, when Joanie Fulton and her boyfriend came walking down the street.
I felt like I’d been caught at something and I panicked, but Joanie just smiled and said, “Hi, Peter.” Her boyfriend ignored me.
I lifted my hand in a wave and tried to look casual, like I sat on that wall every night at ten o’clock.
“Good revival?” I asked, trying to sound not too interested.
“Great,” she answered. “He fired up the whole place.” She laughed. “I was crying so hard I couldn’t see my music, so I squawked out more sour notes on that organ…” She buried her face in her boyfriend’s shirt, the way girls do sometimes, and giggled.
“Yeah.” I half smiled. “Well, see you.”
I watched them go off, thinking how lucky the Preacher was not to have a girl always hanging on him.
I figured he’d be along real soon, since Joanie had already gone.
The minutes kept on ticking by, and I wondered again about getting a pop, but I figured as soon as I snapped it open he’d come hurrying up the street. We were going to hitchhike all night long, and the later we got started, the harder it would be to get a ride.
“Come on, Preacher,” I whispered to the air.
You think there aren’t enough minutes in the day to do all you have to do sometimes. But watch a clock and those minutes go so slow, you wonder how anybody gets through a whole day with so much time sitting there to be filled up. I watched that clock’s hands move so slow and I watched the street stay empty and I thought God had just hung me up in another time zone. I wondered if everything around me was real. The deserted station with one fluorescent light burning inside. The street all black and empty except where the poles left a puddle of light every block. The stone wall I sat on with my hands twisted up tight, squeezed between my knees. My duffel stuffed with my life, sitting on the sidewalk beneath me. And the clock just ticking and ticking and ticking away the empty, silent minutes.
I sat there on the wall, my eyes looking as far up the street as eyes could look, until eleven o’clock. Eleven o’clock and still no Preacher.
Must be an emergency, I told myself. Must be somebody in a bad way. He must be worried about me sitting here waiting for him.
Eleven-thirty.
I know there’s some good reason, I told myself. Some good reason, but he just can’t send me word. I’ll wait on him. He’ll be here.
Midnight.
I walked up and down in front of the wall, stopping to stare at the empty street. Once a car came by, but it just went on.
Some good reason, I told myself.
Twelve-thirty.
I got a pop. I drank it all down in one gulp, and I squeezed the can hard in my hand. I squeezed it hard as I could, then I threw it in the street. The noise made me shake but the throwing felt good.
He’s not coming.
I stood in the middle of the street, feeling so heavy, all of me so heavy, and I told myself the truth:
He’s not coming.
And slowly I walked over to the wall, picked up my duffel, and slowly I started back down the road for home. I was a half-block down the street when somebody rose up out of some bushes, and my body gave one big jerk of fear and hope. Preacher, I thought.
“I’ll walk you home, Pete,” Rufus said.
Rufus. Old friend. I couldn’t move. Just stared at him, thinking I was having some kind of hallucination.
“Come on, Pete,” he whispered, putting his arm around my shoulders. “Come on and go home,” he said.
And I never spoke a word. I just walked on, letting Rufus take me home, and never speaking or feeling or hearing or seeing anything real around me.
The fifteen minutes going to my house was like two. We went up the walk and Rufus swung open the front door for me. I stood there, not knowing what to do.
“Go on in, Pete. He’s not taking you. Go on. Go to bed.”
Rufus guided me through the door.
I turned around and looked at him, my eyes so tired and heavy.
“Sure?” I asked.
Rufus nodded his head.
“Go on, Pete.”
And I went on up the stairs while Rufus closed the door behind me. I went into my own room and lay down on my own bed and felt the breeze from my own window running over my face, as I closed my eyes and wished to die.