A loud belch escaped Angel. “Excuse me. Please.”
At least, Jerry thought, she had the grace to look mortified
Hephzibah waved it away. “That’s all right, honey. Long as you enjoyed everything.”
Angel looked down guiltily at the empty platters and plates and pie tins, as if aware for the first time of the devastation they’d wrought. Jerry wondered if she actually enjoyed anything in life.
“It was great, all of it.” He looked at Angel. “I guess we should mosey on up to the, uh, services. Right, Angel? We have to thank Uzziah”—he was the commune’s leader—“for your generosity to a couple of strangers.”
“Friends of Daddy are friends of ours,” Hephzibah said. “Besides, the generosity you receive is equal to the generosity you give.”
Jerry frowned. “Wasn’t that a Beatles’ song?”
Hephzibah leaned forwards as if revealing a great confidence. “Close. You can learn much from the lyrics of Lennon and McCartney. Almost as much as from the Book itself.”
Jerry nodded. “I’ll remember that.”
Angel seemed sunken even deeper in a digestive stupor than Jerry. Not unlikely, Jerry thought, if this was the first time she’d experienced a marijuana high. Which was probable. First-time users usually didn’t get off much, but Jerry suspected that just as the Daddy’s vegetables were so tasty, his other produce, as it were, was probably as potent in its own particular way. Jerry took her by the arm and helped her step away from the table.
“See you at the service, then,” he said, steering Angel out of the kitchen.
Everyone seemed to be moseying towards a whitewashed structure set on a high point a little bit apart from the scatter of other structures. It was in better shape than most of the other buildings, with a fresh coat of whitewash and a well-maintained wood frame and shingled roof. The sounds of the guitar called to them.
“Say,” Jerry said. “Isn’t that ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Angel said. “It sounds like rock and roll and I know nothing about the Devil’s music.”
“Oh, lighten up for once, would you?”
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Angel said. “It will be dangerous for both our bodies and our souls.”
“Yeah, well, we have to check them out. We’ll get a gander at their service. Ask a few questions. Maybe slip Uzziah a couple more twenties to take care of the damage you did to their larder—”
“You ate their food as well!” Angel said, stung.
Jerry sighed. She seemed to be one of those women who didn’t respond well to criticism, no matter how mild. “Let’s not go comparing who did what to the refrigerator, all right?” Jerry said.
Angel was reluctant, but she followed him. As they ambled up the hill to the church, Jerry noticed an oddly-decorated tree standing off by itself. He wasn’t sure what kind of tree it was. It had bottles of all colors, shapes, and sizes tied to its branches by strips of cloth. The bottles hung close enough together that when a wind blew they jangled softly against each other, making an odd, strangely pleasing music that could be heard even above the wailing tones of the electric guitar.
“What is that thing?” he asked, wondering.
“It’s a Spirit Tree,” Angel said.
“Spirit Tree?”
She nodded. “That’s what I said.” They stopped to look at it for a moment. “They’re common down South, but then so are snake cults. I ‘spect these people came up from somewhere near the Appalachians, bringing their snakes and Spirit Trees with them.”
“What’s it supposed to do?” Jerry asked.
Angel reached up and touched a cobalt blue bottle that had once held a stomach tonic, looking at it as if it contained the secrets of the universe. “Oh, the noise they make in the wind is supposed to scare away ghosts. Or maybe catch them if they get too close.” She let go of the bottle and it swung back, tinkling softly as it glanced against one of its fellows. “Anyway, that’s the foolish superstition. Come on,” she said, as if suddenly galvanized. “We’re missing the beginning of the service.”
They went on up to the church where they found seats in one of the back pews. It was already filling up. There were maybe thirty people inside with a dozen or more still filing in. The wooden pews were skillfully handcrafted. The floor was laid wooden planks, polished, and cleanly swept. The church’s interior was whitewashed plaster. The walls were unadorned except for some folksy portraits of Jesus Christ, most of which concentrated on the more gruesome aspects of His life. Christ scourged. Christ crucified. Christ with the crown of thorns. Most of the images made Jerry shudder. They resembled scenes more suitable for horror movies than a church, though he wasn’t really familiar with anything but the staid upper-class Protestant services he’d largely abandoned once he became an adult.
A simple plank altar stood against the rear wall. Before the altar was a wooden podium, hanging on the wall behind it was a nicely executed wooden statue of Christ on the cross. Even from their vantage point in the back, Jerry could see the agony on Christ’s face, the pain in his thin, rope-muscled body as it hung from the nails driven through his mutilated palms. It was a powerful if morbid bit of folk art. It seemed to hit Angel even harder. She stared at it from her knees on the pew’s unpadded rail, her lips moving in mumbled prayer.
The band was to the left of the podium. Daddy was playing the guitar, a shiny red Fender that looked like it would be far more at home in places where they played the Devil’s music that Angel so abjured. He wasn’t bad. Daddy caught Jerry’s eye, smiled, and briefly waved at him. Jerry waved back. He seems like a nice enough guy, Jerry thought. He sure raises some great-tasting vegetables.
The rest of the band was musically less certain. A teenaged boy sat behind a scanty drum set that consisted of a base and a couple of snares. A couple of women beat raggedly on tambourines, and a geezer had a big pair of cymbals that he whacked together at seemingly random intervals. He did seem to be having fun, as did the rest of the congregation. They were singing the lyrics to “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”
“I told you that’s what the song was,” Jerry whispered to Angel, who had stopped praying, but was still kneeling on the rail, her clasped hands resting on the pew in front of them. She looked around as if she’d found herself suddenly cast into the lion’s den.
Daddy, apparently leading the band, segued into a rocking version of “I Saw The Light,” which the congregation took up without missing a beat.
It was hot inside the little wood structure, and crowded. The pew where Jerry and Angel sat was full, as were most in the small church. The congregation, the men dressed in worn jeans or stiff polyester pants and neatly pressed shirts buttoned up to their necks, the women in ankle-length dresses with lace collars and tiny flower prints and sensible black shoes, were singing and clapping along enthusiastically with the band, when Uzziah made his entrance.
He walked quietly down the center aisle while Daddy led the congregation through one more chorus of “I Saw The Light,” a worn black Bible in one hand and a long, narrow wooden box carried by a leather strap in the other. He reached the podium, put his Bible down, and went to the altar and set the wooden box upon it as the congregation’s sing-a-long ground to a ragged but cheerful halt.
Uzziah looked out upon the congregation, a thoughtfully serious expression on his lined, darkly tanned face. “Ain’t it hot in here?” he asked in a soft voice than nonetheless penetrated to every corner of the suddenly quiet church.
Somehow Jerry didn’t think that he was talking about the weather.
“I said,” Uzziah said again, “ain’t it hot in here?”
This time a chorus of “Yes,” and “Amen” burst out from the congregation. Jerry looked around out of the corner of his eyes. A growing rapture was evident on many of the faces surrounding him as Uzziah opened his Bible and read the first thing his eyes seemed to strike on the page.