GREAT JEHOSHAPHAT AND GULLY DIRT!

By Jewell Ellen Smith.

Chapter 1

An usher I'd not seen before carefully wheeled my chair down the center aisle and over to the right so that I would be facing the pulpit. Most Sunday mornings I sat on the opposite side of the church. But this usher didn't know that. Oh well, no matter.

The usher was saying something to me, but before I could adjust my hearing aid, I had to push my shawl back and slip a glove. By then, he had quit talking.

He let my chair roll to a stop so close to the chancel rail.

I could have reached out and kicked it with my foot-that is, I had been in the mood to kick a chancel railing and if I could have moved either foot.

I was almost in a kicking mood!

No, no! I shouldn't think of such a thing as kicking that bra.s.s rail. I should be wishing I could kneel down before it.

Somehow, though, my mind wasn't on praying.

The usher stepped back, then hesitated.

"Will this be all right, Mrs. Goode? Can you hear Dr.

Shirey's sermon from here? Or would you rather be a little over toward the choir and the organ?"

"This is fine. Thank you kindly." I was surprised the man knew my name.

He smiled and handed me the morning bulletin.

The minute the usher's back was turned, I clicked off my hearing aid so that I wouldn't have to listen to the pastor's sermon, the organ, or anything else. I just wanted-well, I didn't know exactly what I wanted.

The only reason in this round world I kept coming to Central Avenue Church was that it was right across the street from Crestview Rest Home, and I had to get out and away from that place once in a while. Crestview wasn't so bad, as nursing homes go. In fact, it was all right. Still, any rest home is a sad comedown from one's own house-and such a change.

As the congregation filed in, I looked about me. The sanctuary, quiet and beautiful with its stained-gla.s.s windows, its high, arched ceiling, and its deep carpets, was the only serene spot I had found since I came to the city. Out on the streets all was rush, confusion, turmoil-enough to drive one to distraction.

Here, too, I managed to block out for a little while the feeling of helplessness I'd had since I became so frail. The doctors kept saying that my general condition was good and my arthritis might improve some. But as yet I couldn't see much change.

To make myself lift my head and quit looking at my stiff, swollen knees, I turned toward the nearest window. I liked those green velvet curtains and the matching cushions on the pews. Both were the exact color of an Arkansas pine in early spring, when it takes on new life and puts forth myriads of tender buds, each a creamy, candle-like shoot, lovely enough to adorn a sacred altar.

I gazed at the candles on the altar and at the open Bible, crisscrossed with its narrow scarlet ribbons. The sight of that Bible was always a pleasure. It brought back memories my old church down at Drake Eye Springs-small, standing so calm in its grove of aged white oaks.

That little church had everything a big church has-except a steeple. But the colored folks up at Sweet Beulah Hill had a steeple. They had built a tall belfry and spire for church, and Sweet Beulah's bell could be heard for miles.

But it wasn't green curtains or candles or the memory of old country churches with their Bibles and bells that drew me to this large sanctuary. And it wasn't the quiet beauty of the room that made me want to come. It was my duty to be in some church.

Besides, the young minister had invited me to attend. I didn't care for Dr. Shirey's sermons. Not yet. But I did like him, and no doubt his sermons would improve. After all, a preacher is like wine. To warm the heart, each must age.

Young Dr. Shirey visited the nursing home every Tuesday afternoon, talking and pa.s.sing the time of day with each of us.

He always let me talk of my late husband Wallace, of our children and grandchildren. Lovely youngsters, little Vic, Nan, Jodie. Dr.

Shirey seemed to understand why I refused to go live with any of my children after my health failed so.

Sometimes the young preacher and I discussed religion. One day I took up practically an hour of his time with the tales about my preacher grandpa, Grandpa Dave. Dr. Shirey was intrigued with the old man's ministry. And for some reason or other, he was delighted to hear about Grandpa's double buggy and his matched white mares, Martha and Mary. He said it made him wish he could have been a country preacher back in horse-and-buggy times.

I was much concerned for Dr. Shirey. Standing there now behind the pulpit, he looked bone tired. And no wonder, for besides his parish work he was forever running here and there-to the juvenile detention home, the clinic for alcoholics, the mental health center, the Black ghetto. Often, he told me, he got discouraged over it all.

Never did I mention to him how I felt: bewildered, lost, like an autumn leaf caught up in an angry storm and carried far away from its forest, a leaf that longed to stay where it was, there to turn golden yellow, then brown, and finally, late on a winter evening, to flutter to the ground and to its sleep beneath the trees.

Nor would I ever breathe to my young pastor that some days I was utterly cast down, so broken in heart that I wished I were a little girl again and could run and hide under my grandma's bed.

I couldn't confide such a thing to Dr. Shirey. It would show I had lost courage -as so many older persons do when change comes with the years. Half the patients at Crestview are like that.

They don't want to keep up. They want to look back. My roommate has that att.i.tude, and I try to tell her not to give up, to face the present, to look to the future. It's all right to remember bygone days with a grain or two of nostalgia, but there's no need living in the past.

I was doing just that-remembering bygone days-while I waited for the choir to finish its anthem. When I was a little girl in Arkansas, in the section of low Ouachita hills that lies between the Mississippi River and the Red, our manner was slow and simple, down to earth as gully dirt. The horse-and-buggy days were already fading away, but we didn't sense it. The swift pace that was to come, virtually overnight, was still undreamed of.

There were not many automobiles, no superhighways, no jets, and no s.p.a.cecraft. In south Arkansas, the fastest thing on wings was a thieving chicken hawk, and anything in the sky bigger than a buzzard was referred to as a "flying machine."

There seemed to be fewer problems then. n.o.body had yet thought to build nursing homes and inst.i.tutions for this, that, and every other kind of person with a complaint. The elderly, maimed, halt and blind were sheltered beside the hearth of their blood kin.

The Negroes I knew-Shoogie, Doanie, Sun Boy, Ned, Little Stray, and all the rest-lived out in the country close by us. I couldn't have managed without Shoogie, for she was my main playmate, even though my sister Mierd and my brother Wiley were still living at home. Why, if it hadn't been for Shoogie, I never would have learned to build a good frog house in the sand. I'd love to see Shoogie again. After she married Doanie's oldest boy, they went off to the West Coast. I'd like to be with her, climbing pine saplings, wading in the branch, and jumping deep gullies!

We were all eating our white bread then and didn't know it.

There were no alcoholics. A heavy drinking man was a sot, a sinner. Women didn't drink-or if they did, they didn't tell it.

And as for mental health, it was an unheard-of term. Any persons slightly off were said to be "curious," or at worst, "touched in the head." They were tolerated by family and friends, while those considered dangerous were sent off to be locked up in the state asylum.

Ah, old man Hawk! He must have had a mental problem! I hadn't thought of that old coot in years. I wonder what a psychiatrist would have said about him. And Miss d.i.n.k. She didn't have a mental problem; she was just blind and had to be looked after.

Fortunately her niece, Miss Ophelia, gave her a home. And Ward Lawson, Miss Ophelia's husband! Now he was sure a sot drunkard-an alcoholic if there ever was one.

One summer afternoon Mama had let me ride with her in our buggy to visit Miss d.i.n.k, who, at that time, was living with the Lawsons on the run-down Crawford place some few miles beyond Rocky Head Creek.

I had a gourd dipper in my hand and was skipping along the edge of the woods on my way down the path to Miss d.i.n.k's spring.

My hair, braided tight, was tied with ribbons that flipped and rippled as I bounced along the trail. I could smell honeysuckle blooms and climbing jasmine, and I was wishing I had the time to chase the yellow b.u.t.terflies that were swooping and fluttering zigzag from bush to bush. But Miss d.i.n.k had wanted me to hurry to the spring and bring her a gourdful of fresh water. She had said, "It ain't far from the house here to the spring, sugar. Just stay in the trail till you hit the branch and turn down left a little ways."

Then she had skimmed her bony fingers over my face and braids to find out how I looked. "Ah, Nannie," she said to Mama while she still had her hands on my cheeks, "I can tell you and Jodie won't have no trouble a-tall marrying your baby off. She's pretty as a pink. What color's her eyes and hair?" Miss d.i.n.k patted my head.

"Her eyes are sort of greenish blue, like a gander's. And her hair's about as yellow as a crooked-neck squash when it's good and ripe. But that don't matter. If Bandershanks does as well as she looks, she'll fare fine."

"Just so she ain't got buck teeth. Many's the old maid I've seen with teeth like a beaver."

"Well, we can't be sure about her teeth yet. She's still got her baby set." Mama looked down at me.

I kept thinking about Miss d.i.n.k's eyes. Mama had told me she was losing her sight. Poor thing. The minute she said I was pretty as a flower, I knew she was plum blind, for I wasn't pretty. It hadn't been two days since Wiley had told me I looked exactly like a billy goat.

Mama was saying, "Bandershanks, you take Miss Ophelia's gourd out of the water bucket on the porch and run get some fresh spring water. Follow the trail now, like Miss d.i.n.k said."

I was following the trail, but I was beginning to think I wasn't ever going to find that spring. Then I heard Mister Ward Lawson yelling at his wife.

"Good G.o.d A' mighty, Ophelia! d.a.m.n you! What in G.o.d's name are you doin' down here, roamin' round at the branch this time of the evenin'?"

"Just looking for berries, Ward."

"Berries, h.e.l.l. You're lookin' for my still, that's what you're doin'. Huckleberries ain't ripe yet!"