“Hell, you’re a preacher.”
“No,” he said. “I been away. I’m trying to get to—”
“All right, all right,” the other said. “I’ll meet you round back,” and went rapidly back into the house. He, Mink, went around it into the back yard, which if anything was of an even more violent desolation than the front, since the back yard contained another house not dismantled so much as collapsed — a jumble of beams, joists, window- and door-frames and even still-intact sections of siding, among which moved or stood rather a man apparently as old as he, Mink, was, although he wore a battle jacket of the type which hadn’t been copied from the British model until after Pearl Harbour, with the shoulder patch of a division which hadn’t existed before then either, who when Mink came in sight began to chop rapidly with the axe in his hand among the jumble of lumber about him; barely in time as the back door of the house crashed open and the first man came out, carrying a buck saw; now Mink saw the sawbuck and a small heap of sawn lengths.
“All right, all right” the first man said, handing Mink the saw. “Save all the sound pieces. Don’t split the nails out, pull them out. Saw up all the scraps, same length. Dad is in charge. I’ll be in the house,” and went back into it; even doors which he barely released seemed to clap to behind him violently, as though his passage had sucked them shut.
“So they caught you too did they, mac?” the man in the battle jacket (he would be Dad) said.
Mink didn’t answer that. He said: “Is that the reverend?”
“That’s Goodyhay,” the other said. “I ain’t heard him preach yet, but even if he hadn’t opened his mouth he would be a better preacher than he is a cook. But then, somebody’s got to scorch the biscuits. They claim his wife ran off with a son-a-bitching Four-F potato-chip salesman before he even got back from fighting in the Pacific. They were all doing it back then and what I notice, they ain’t quit, even without any war to blame it on. But what the hell, I always say there’s still a frog in the puddle for every one that jumps out. So they caught you too, huh?”
This time he answered. “I got to get to Memphis and then back down to Missippi. I’m already behind. I got to get on tonight. How much does he pay here?”
“That’s what you think,” the other said. “That’s what I thought three days ago: pick up a dollar or so and move on. Because you’re building a church this time, bully boy. So maybe we both better hope the bastard can preach since we ain’t going to get our money until they take up the collection Sunday.”
“Sunday?” he said.
“That’s right,” the other said. “This is Thursday; count it.”
“Sunday,” he said. “That’s three days.”
“That’s right,” the other said. “Sunday’s always three days after Thursday around here. It’s a law they got.”
“How much will we get on Sunday?”
“It may be as much as a dollar cash; you’re working for the Lord now, not mammon, jack. But anyway you’ll be fed and slept—”
“I can’t work that long for jest a dollar,” he said. “I ain’t got the time.”
“It may be more than a dollar. What I hear around here, he seems to have something. Anyway, he gets them. It seems he was a Marine sergeant on one of them landing barges out in the Pacific one day when a Jap dive bomber dove right at them and everybody tried to jump off into the water before the bomb hit, except one mama’s boy that got scared or tangled up in something so he couldn’t jump and the reverend (except he hadn’t turned reverend then, not for the next few minutes yet) went back to try and untangle him, when the whole barge blew up and took the reverend and the mama’s boy both right on down to the bottom with it before the reverend could get them both loose and up to the top again.
Which is just the official version when they gave him the medal, since according to the reverend or leastways his congregation — What I hear, the rest of them are mostly ex-soldiers too or their wives or the other broads they just knocked up without marrying, mostly young, except for a few old ones that seem to got dragged in by the passing suction you might say; maybe the moms and pops of soldiers that got killed, or the ones like that Sister Holcomb one that caught you down the road, that probably never thawed enough to have a child of any kind and God help the husband either if she ever had one, that wasn’t even sucked in but flagged the bus herself because the ride looked like it was free—” He stopped. Then he said: “No, I know exactly why she come: to listen to some of the words he uses doing what he calls preaching. Where was I? Oh yes: that landing barge.
According to the reverend, he was already safe and dead and peacefully out of it at last on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean when all of a sudden Jesus Himself was standing over him saying Fall in and he did it and Jesus said TenSHUN, about-FACE and assigned him to this new permanent hitch right down here on the edge of Memphis, Tennessee.
He’s got something, enough of whatever it took to recruit this new-faith boot camp to need a church to hold it. And I be damned if I don’t believe he’s even going to get a carpenter to nail it together. What did he say when he first saw you?”
“What?” Mink said.
“What were his first words when he looked at you?”
“He said, ‘Hell, you’re a preacher.’ ”
“You see what I mean? He’s mesmerised enough folks to scour the country for any edifice that somebody ain’t actually sitting on the front porch of, and knocking it down and hauling it over here to be broke up like we’re doing. But he ain’t got a master-carpenter yet to nail it together into a church. Because master carpenters belong to unions, and deal in cash money per diem on the barrel-head, where his assignment come direct from Jesus Christ Who ain’t interested in money or at least from the putting-out angle. So him and his outpost foxholes up and down the road like that Sister Holcomb that snagged you are sifting for one.”
“Sifting?” he said.
“Sivving. Like flour. Straining folks through this back yard until somebody comes up that knows how to nail that church together when we get enough boards and planks and window frames ripped a-loose and stacked up. Which maybe we better get at it. I ain’t actually caught him spying behind a window shade yet, but likely an ex-Marine sergeant even reformed into the ministry is no man to monkey with too far.”
“You mean I can’t leave?”
“Sure you can. All the outdoors is yours around here. You ain’t going to get any money until they take up that collection Sunday though. Not to mention a place to sleep tonight and what he calls cooking if you ain’t particular.”
In fact, this house had no shades nor curtains whatever to be spied from behind. Indeed, as he really looked about it for the first time, the whole place had an air of violent transience similar to the indiscriminate jumble of walls and windows and doors among which he and the other man worked: merely still nailed together and so standing upright; from time to time, as the stack of reclaimed planks and the pile of fire-lengths to which his saw was reducing the spoiled fragments slowly rose, Mink could hear the preacher moving about inside the intact one, so that he thought If he jest went back inside to compose up his sermon, it sounds like getting ready to preach takes as much activity and quickness as harnassing up a mule.
Now it was almost sunset; he thought This will have to be at least a half a dollar. I got to have it. I got to get on. I can’t wait till Sunday when the back door jerked, burst open and the preacher said, “All right. Supper’s ready. Come on.”
He followed Dad inside. Nothing was said by anyone about washing. “I figgered—” he began. But it was already too late. This was a kitchen too, but not Spartan so much as desolate, like a public camp site in a roadside park, with what he called another artermatic stove since he had never seen a gas or electric stove until he saw Mrs Holcomb’s, Goodyhay standing facing it in violent immobility enclosed in a fierce sound of frying; Mink said again. “I figgered—” as Goodyhay turned from the stove with three platters bearing each a charred splat of something which on the enamel surfaces looked as alien and solitary and not for eating as the droppings of cows. “I done already et,” Mink said. “I figgered I would jest get on.”
“What?” Goodyhay
