just hide up on a shelf for the rest of my life and gather dust. That day when you came over, you made me feel beautiful again. You made me feel young again. I didn’t fear you or hate you as I had other men, because I knew you were good. I had watched you grow up … You’re still growing up. You’re still a child. Oh God.
Sister Morrisohn, he said, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 4:30 sharp are best for me.
Yes. You’re so sweet to … teach me the piano three times a week. And I won’t take money from you.
You must take the money. Piano lessons don’t come cheap.
I will not take money from you. You must, or they will know.
But it’s weird.
We’re weird. We have weird love, me and you. Me and you. It sounds so … yeah, weird.
But so right. So … weird.
I wish you were here right now so I could kiss you, my darling. I want to kiss you all night. I want to wake up in your arms. Do you mind that I said that?
I don’t mind.
Outside his room was quiet. He wondered if Deacon and Sister Miron had left. It was rude not to have gone out and greeted them, especially since they planned on naming their son after him. He would make it up to them. He would apologize and say something flattering about Ginny’s—Sister Miron’s—heavy-left-hand music. He was, after all, the model Christian son.
Sister Morrisohn said, I bet when I told you I wanted to kiss you, you blushed.
Elwyn said, Maybe it would be safer if we didn’t call each other so often. We’ll see each other on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
You don’t understand how unpredictable this thing can be. Sometimes only your lover’s voice will do.
I’m blushing now, I think.
I wish you were here so I could kiss you. I’m definitely blushing, Sister Morrisohn.
I wish you were here so I could make love to you, my darling.
Long after her lover had hung up, she kept the phone to her ear like an embrace.
When she pulled away, finally, she went into the kitchen to pour herself a drink. The music from her record player in the living room switched from Tammy Wynette to Chester Harbaugh and His OldTime Fiddle Band to the Louvin Brothers to Jim Reeves. She kept time nodding her head. She liked old-time country music, the kind she had grown up listening to back home in North Carolina. In her father’s house. She liked the heartbreak songs, because she was a heartbreak girl. She liked the twanging and the whining in the music as a complement to the clever, sometimes depressing lyrics. She was a girl who was often depressed. Well, she used to be, but not anymore. Things, she told herself, were going to change. She opened the cabinet and took out the bottle. The wine was the good kind, a little tart with a sharp bouquet. She had kept the bottle hidden from Buford, who like all of the Faithful had disapproved of strong drink. But the Faithful are too strict in their rules concerning alcohol, Sister Morrisohn thought to herself. The Faithful are too strict about many things. Wine is good for the spirit, the Bible says so. Noah invented wine. Jesus turned water into wine. The Faithful are a bunch of tight a**es. She put the wine to her lips. Her spirit soared. There is warmth in the wine. There is warmth in him too. Her mind had gone back to Elwyn. There is warmth even in his voice, she said out loud.
She’d always had a problem finding warmth.
After her mother died, she had sought refuge from the cold fury in her father’s house. She was most unsuccessful in that endeavor. Now that your mother is in the ground, don’t act like you don’t know what we’re doing.
Now he didn’t have to waste all that energy beating her to get her pants down. There was no one to protect her now that her mother was dead. She got pregnant by him again. This time the baby died, thank God. And after that, she grew stronger. When he tried to put his arm around her, she had the knife. He was laughing at her, calling her skinny red ugly. She stabbed him, trying to dig out his ribs. Sent him to the hospital at death’s door. But still laughing: skinny red ugly, and got spirit just like your momma, ha-ha-ha.
She grew into a beautiful woman and had no shortage of men. Though some of them were kind, they never gave a thought to her needs. She hated them, she loathed them, she was dead scared of them—they all hit harder than her father, and they all hit, even the kind ones. Then Buford came. He offered to protect her for no reason other than she needed protecting. This was a different kind of love.
Christian love, he called it, which she thought she knew about because he was not the first married preacher who had fancied her. But Buford’s love was about loving your neighbor as yourself.
Who is my neighbor, Daddyo?
Anyone in need.
You don’t even know me, Daddyo.
I know that you are in need.
You’re just like the rest of them—what you want from me is between my legs.
I have a wife, thank you, and I’m quite happy with her.
That’s what you say now. That’s what you say until you get me alone and show your wild side.
I’m a wealthy man, I don’t need to cruise the jails to find women to sleep with, little girl. I’m Holy Ghost filled. I’m washed in the blood of the lamb. The only high I get is on Jesus. The only wild side I got is I’m on fire for the Lord.
Is that right? That is right.
We’ll see about that, Daddyo.
She smiled, remembering being with him in bed, free at last, after Mother Glovine had died. Wild side? Well, Buford did have his wild side. You could hardly call that Christian. But what he had felt for her, she decided, that brand of love was generous, kind, brave, warm. He had saved her and her brother (her son) Harrison with his warmth.
And here it was again, coming from the most unexpected of sources. Here was a boy, a man, a young man, who was generous, kind, brave, and warm just like Buford. They were about the same height too: 5’9”. They had the penetrating gaze of Sidney Poitier. They shared that beautiful ebony complexion. Out in the living room, Jim Reeves sang “Four Walls.” And Sister Morrisohn lost it.
She beat her chest and cried, Oh, Buford, what am I doing with this little boy? She collapsed on the kitchen floor. She washed the tiles with her tears.
In a little while, the last of the country songs stacked on the record player had played, and there was only the annoying clicking of the needle against the stereo housing. She got up, capped the wine, and put it away. She went into the living room and turned off the record player.
In her bedroom, she stretched out on her lonely bed, where she immediately fell asleep. She dreamt of Elwyn’s penis. How slender it was in her dream, so much less threatening than the sturdy lance he wielded in real life. How warm it made her feel, even in a dream.
She awoke at precisely 5:01, just enough time to prepare herself for night service at 6:00. At night service, Pastor preached a sermon on divine healing, which she found dull, but she said her perfunctory Amens and Yes Lords along with the rest of them. Then Pastor turned it over to the minister of music, Brother Elwyn,
