Chapter Twenty-One
TWENTY-ONE
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in his day …
THE SINGING HITS ME all at once. The voices surround me, envelop me, uplift me.
I open my eyes and I’m standing in the huge white tent that houses the revival. It’s hot. Unbearably hot.
This is memory, as much as dream.
As solid and well formed and hidden as any treasure. Any secret.
It’s almost August, more than two months since my mom left.
I’ve become my father’s little sidekick, both of us feral and unkempt and truant.
My hair is matted and my shoes are too small and, most of all, I’m hungry.
School is starting in a week, and the night before, I’d been out late with my dad.
We’d been at the carnival until they closed up.
Riding a rickety spinning ride, screaming with delight each time it seemed I would be flung from the ride into the night sky.
On the way home, driving with my father down the twisting backroads that led to our house, it was like he wanted to recapture the feeling of the ride.
We’d both squealed with unhinged laughter while he took one blind curve after another.
Faster. Faster. The back wheel sometimes hitting the shoulder. Spitting gravel.
And then the deer appeared. As if out of nowhere. A magic trick.
It was just a tawny flash in my vision. My dad hit the brakes, turned the wheel. And we went, just like the carnival ride, round and round. Until we finally stopped, both of us gasping.
When we looked up, the deer was gone. Like it had never even been there.
And my dad laughed even harder.
“You ever see anything like that, Annie-Girl?” he said, gleefully slapping the wheel.
I’d laughed too. Surprising myself. And I’d felt some horrible knowledge well up inside me.
And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away …
The singing brings me back. I am standing in the tent. A revival going on all around me. Sweating bodies swaying in sync. A preacher in a white suit at the front. An offering plate passing and passing and passing like a carousel full of little white envelopes.
And they all sing.
Wash all my sins away,
Wash all my sins away …
I’d been so hungry for real food that I’d begged a girl down the street to let me stay the weekend with her, knowing her mamma made the best pork chops in the county.
The girl’s parents had taken one look at my wild state and decided that more than anything, I needed Jesus.
And after my experience in the car the night before, I couldn’t disagree.
And so there I am, in a huge white tent in the middle of a drought- ridden field, among the seething bodies and loud singing and raucous shouting, the speaking in tongues, watching as one person after another makes their way up the aisle to the preacher.
He lays his palm on their forehead and whispers something I can’t hear and then the person drops to the floor.
“What’s he doing to them?” I ask my friend.
“They’re falling out in the Lord’s power,” she says. “Being healed or having their prayers answered. This preacher is a good one. He came all the way from Memphis and everyone knows God works directly through him.”
“You mean they’re asking God for things and God is just … giving it to them because of the preacher?”
She nods and I try to slot this version of reality into my own. This magical previously-unknown-to-me world where preachers in white suits serve as middlemen, getting you a direct line to the Lord. Before I can question it, I’m stepping out into the aisle. The crowd all around us still singing.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its power …
I stand, heart racing, as the preacher approaches me, takes hold of my skinny shoulders, and asks what I need from God.
I stumble and stutter, my heart too full of confusion, only managing, “I wish that I … that I wasn’t…”
“Let your prayers be answered!” the preacher shouts.
And then he lets go of my shoulders and mashes his big, sweaty palm into my forehead.
He pushes. And, when I don’t budge, he pushes harder.
I am only ten and small. I go careening backward, falling to the ground with a hard thud that knocks the air out of me.
Above me, all around me, the singing goes on.
Till all the ransomed ones of God
Be saved, to sin no more
Be saved, to sin no more …
I lie there. Fully conscious. Fully aware of the scent of perfume and sweat and hot, dry grass. Fully aware of how hungry I am. How scared I am. How angry I am.
I’d come to God with a heart full of hope and been pushed to the ground. Not by some prophet wielding magical, divine power. Just a regular man. A man who’d count money at the end of the night. Roll up the tent and drive away just like the carnival would. I’d traded one show for another.
I stay on the ground, eyes closed, and listen to the song.
Be saved, to sin no more
Be saved, to sin no more …
Nothing had changed. I was still just Annie Gore.
My dad was still at home, still waiting for my mom to return.
And even if she did come home, what would happen?
Would they go right back to where they were before?
And what would happen to me? What kind of person would I become?
Was I just some combination of my parents?
Really, when all the chips were down, who was I? Who would I be?
I’d not been able to finish my prayer.
I’d wanted to say, “I wish that things were different. I wish that I was different.”
But he hadn’t been listening. No one had been listening.
I open my eyes. The tent is gone.
I’m alone in a sun-baked field. The cicadas are screaming. Thunder rumbles.
“Annie-Girl?” a voice says. I turn but it isn’t my father standing there.
“Chief?” I say. My voice is the voice of a child, high and frightened.
A huge hand hovers above us; gold and silver, it glints in the bright sun. Blinding.
“It’s okay,” Dishman says. “It’s gonna be okay.”
The hand moves, words appearing in the air between us, words I can’t make out. They wriggle and shimmer like a mirage.
And then there’s a loud BANG!
A gunshot or thunder, I can’t tell which. I bolt awake, sweating on top of the covers.
I grab my phone and, before I’ve even registered what I’m doing, I call Dishman’s number.
“Annie?” he says. “What’s going on? Did you find something?”
“What?” I say, still muzzy and confused. I look at the old clock on the nightstand. It’s almost 5:00 PM. The golden afternoon light shines through the gap in the curtains. Blinking, I let out a huge yawn. My days and nights have become so topsy-turvy that I’ve slept almost the whole day away.
“Annie?” Dishman says, sounding worried now. “Are you okay?”
“Sorry, I just … Actually, I don’t know why I called. I, um … What’s going on there? Did your other officers find anything on the footage?”
“Nothing yet. But I’m not at the station,” he says. “I’m at Ezra’s church.”
“The church? Why? Did something happen?”
“Somebody broke into the parsonage. Heaven knows what they might’ve taken.
People are showing up here, treating Ezra’s house like some kind of holy shrine.
It looks like someone also swiped the keys to the church office and rooted around in there.
Though nobody can be sure. There’s almost eighty people here now. The place is a circus.”
“I’ll be right there,” I say, and hang up before he can argue.