Granpaw stopped in front of one of the posts. He lifted his hat off his head and set it back down. A nail stuck out between his lips. He tilted his head the way the post was tilted; then he stepped up and nailed the cross to it. He nailed it tilted like the post, like a hitchhiker, sticking a thumb out for a ride.
He stepped back to look at his handiwork. “That ought to grab somebody’s attention. Don’t you think?”
“Yessah, Mista Wood,” Willis smiled. “Dat do fa-fine.”
Granpaw smiled, then looked over where I was standing. “Go get them others I laid up next to the car there.”
“You ain’t supposed to be out here, Granpaw,” I said. “You ain’t supposed to be driving.”
“Who said I wasn’t?”
“Granny. You might have a spell and run off the road.”
“Maybe I will, maybe I won’t. Why didn’t you say something before?”
“Cause of what you said. What you said about clouds.”
“We ain’t come to that yet.” Granpaw looked up toward the station wagon and back at us. “A body can’t just give up, just because of a little sickness.”
Willis fitted his walking stick snug under his arm. “Ya’ll ba-bad sick dough.”
“Yeah,” I said. “What if you were to go in a spell?”
“What if a pig was to shit roses?” Granpaw said. “Who’s side you boys on?”
“Yours,” I said. “Willis is right though.”
Willis grinned a mouth full of teeth.
Granpaw frowned. “Go fetch’em signs like I told you to. Won’t be no more driving after this.”
I went and got the signs. Some of the letters were capitols, some weren’t. And most were crooked. One said, ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’. The other said, ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’. I reached them up to Granpaw. “Who’s side are you on, Granpaw?”
“The Lord’s, if I’m able.” Granpaw took the signs, then reached in his pocket and got out more nails. He put the nails in his mouth like before and got the signs and nailed them to other fence posts. When he was done, he motioned us to come walk with him to a place out on the road.
“Now. Look there.” He pointed toward the signs. He’d nailed them so they were far apart from each other, so when somebody passed by on the road, they could read one after the other, first ‘love tHine eneMy’, then ‘in my Name shall tHey cast ouT devils’ then ‘These signS shall fOller them what beLieve’.
“Circa Stump folk be ma-mad!” Willis said. “Dat church land.”
“Road don’t belong to them.”
“Fence do,” Willis said.
Granpaw spat. “They don’t take care of it, if it does.”
All three signs leaned toward the road. Hitchhikers, waving down cars, each with a little message wrote across the front.
“Love thine enemy,” I said. “What about Germans Granpaw? What about Japs?”
“What about them?” Granpaw said.
“You can’t love somebody wants to kill you,” I said.
Granpaw grabbed out a hankie from his back pocket. He wiped it down the side of his face and patted his forehead.
“They’ll kill you Granpaw. The enemy will.”
Granpaw stuffed the hankie back in his back pocket. He looked up at the sky, at the clouds, shading his eyes with the bent part of his wrist. Then he walked back to the station wagon with Willis and me. He put the hammer away and got out a frying pan he’d brought from the house - that and something that looked like a witch’s broom without a handle. The frying pan was full of white gray coals he’d got from Granny’s wood stove in the kitchen. He gave the witch’s broom to Willis, then looked at me. “You bring that skull like I told you?”
I pulled the pouch with the skull from my pocket and loosened the drawstring. There was the smooth bone of the rattle-snake skull, its eye sockets and fangs.
“You seen that before, haven’t you?” Granpaw said to Willis.
“Uh huh. Mo’s. MMMake da rain be good.”
“That’s right.” Granpaw took a pinch of something from his shirt pocket and sprinkled it over the coals in the frying pan. Thick white smoke boiled up. He held the pan down to me. “Now, run that in there. Through that smoke.”
I held the skull between my thumb and first finger and put it through the smoke. “Like that?”
“More!” Granpaw hollered. “Do it a bunch a times!”
I did like he said.
“Hold to it now.” Granpaw closed his eyes and began to mumble under his breath. Hocus pocus nonsense it sounded like to me. He did that a while, then made a little half turn and stepped up the bank. He stepped through a place where the barbed wire lay on the ground, stepped over it and into the field. He had either gone completely crazy or into another of his spells.
“We better go back now!” I called. “Granny’ll be mad!”
He kept on walking. Willis and me had to go after him. It was just an empty field; dried out mostly; with weeds and some grass growing here and there. Granpaw got to the top of a low hill and stopped. He turned around and around, looking up in the sky at the clouds. “Hot. Hot weather this is, for September.” He set the frying pan on a rock and sprinkled more stuff from his shirt pocket. Smoke boiled up. “Fan that a little,” he said to Willis.
Willis started to wave the witch’s broom at the smoke.
“Towards the sky there,” Granpaw said. “Fan towards the sky.” Willis made a motion with the broom like to lift the smoke toward the sky. “Keep on that a way,” Granpaw said. “Sang ‘at song. Sang Amazing Grace How Sweet The Sound!”
Willis started to sing the song. The sound of it lifted up with the smoke to the sky. It was lonesome and strange like the time me and him snuck in Kingdom Church, Willis singing Amazing Grace in that pretty girl voice of his, me thinking I was on a hill somewhere wide open, looking off at clouds in a blue sky.
“Now, Orbie,” Granpaw said, “I want you to pick one of them clouds out. I want you to stare at it, you know, like it was the only one up there. Hold that skull like this.” Granpaw made a fist and put it in the middle of his chest. The sky was clear except for a few little cottony-white clouds. I held the rattlesnake skull like Granpaw said, the fangs of it poking me in the chest. I chose one of the little clouds. Willis kept on with the song.
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise…
“Look at it,” Granpaw said. “Like you loved it more than anything. Like it was the only thing in the world. That cloud.”
I tried to stare at the cloud like Granpaw said. Like I loved it. I stared and stared. I stared until the cloud started to go all shifty like. Fuzzy. Different shades of gray and blue.
“Think about all the people you love. That love you,” Granpaw said.
I thought of Momma and Granny. I thought of Missy. The cloud jumped around and changed color. “It isn’t working Granpaw. It’s not melting.”
“Don’t force it. Here, let me show you.” Granpaw took the rattlesnake skull, put it in the middle of his chest and looked at the cloud. I looked too.
…ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun!…
Right away the cloud started to break apart. It broke into smaller pieces; wisps of steam that stayed a few seconds then melted away.
Granpaw handed the skull back to me. “These signs shall foller them what believe!”