Strangers to Temptation. Scott Gould
the conversation back toward me.
“Get used to it,” she said, fanning herself with a dishtowel. For a nurse, she could be pretty harsh inside her own house. “Listen, I got enough worrying all to myself. That’s what church is for. Church is where you go to clear your head. So you just keep sitting there beside me and listen to Scoggins and one day a switch will flip on and you’ll get about half of life figured out. The other half will stay a mystery. Half is about the best you can hope for.” She mopped her face with the towel. “Go see if that fan is turned up all the way, would you? It’s hot as hell in here.”
She smiled when she said that. She knew what she was doing. That night, it was all I could do not to think about burning up eternally.
The next day was Sunday, which makes sense now—that I would spend a night tossing and turning, then drive off to church, fuzzy-headed and anxious again. Reverend Scoggins performed his little handkerchief drama, then preached about King David and Bathsheba. I tried to do what my mother suggested, let a switch flip, let half of the world come clear in my head, but it didn’t seem to be happening. Scoggins appeared to enjoy reciting the story of a king’s fall from grace. He had the same expression on his face people in town flashed when they bragged about stealing gas from McGill’s Esso station—a guilt-free smile that oozed satisfaction. Scoggins’ face glowed down to us, and I watched my mother fighting to stay awake. I wondered if she’d had trouble sleeping too.
I do recall at one point, David attempts to convince Bathsheba’s husband to come back from the war and lay with his wife. (My mother glanced toward me when Scoggins said “lay with,” and I nodded up at her because my friends and I had already discussed the cryptic words in the Bible, a language not unlike the adult code we’d begun to crack. She knew I knew.)
David, from where I sat, kept digging himself a deeper and deeper hole, and God watched every shovelful. My head bobbed and bobbed. I did my best to fight sleep, to listen to Scoggins’ words, but they turned into a lullaby somehow, and right when the reverend got to the part where David asked for forgiveness, I couldn’t keep my head on my shoulders, and the last thing I remember was a blast of gold light that flashed across my eyes when I fell sideways and cracked my forehead square on the pew.
IN HER FLAT nurse’s monotone, my mother said I bled relatively little for such a big split on my head. “I’ve seen worse,” she said. “Your skin is very thin there, you know.” My mother didn’t realize that toppling over in the pew—and interrupting church for a half hour while they carried me out and wiped up the blood—had scrambled the thoughts flitting around my head. I’d heard about religious ecstasy. I looked it up in the library. And I knew from my research that most people were wide awake when they had their strange, religious spells. I’d been out cold. But while I was out, David and Bathsheba and Eunice and my old man and Eddie Baxley and God and my mother jumbled together. Everyone’s story became my single story, buzzing in my head like a pissed off bee in a jar. My mother told me the first thing I said when I floated toward consciousness was: “What did God do to daddy when he came back from the war to lay with Bathsheba? Did King David make it back from Korea?”
She said Reverend Scoggins stood above me, and the two of them chalked my nonsense up to a nasty, enlarging bump on the head, at least until I looked at Scoggins clear-eyed and said, “Does everybody get forgiven in the end?” She told me when I said that to him, the blood drained from his face a little, like he’d been asked a question he couldn’t answer. “Boy needs some rest,” he said, and he went back to the pulpit to finish off David and Bathsheba.
I wobbled some when I walked, propped against my mother’s side all the way to the car, and she opened the windows so I could get as much air as possible on the ride home. My forehead was wrapped in a piece of purple cloth that felt silky to the touch and smelled slightly of stale cologne. I’m not sure when she made her plan, but my mother didn’t turn right into our driveway, instead went left and pulled across the grass and up the slope and threw the car in park, right beside the Lincoln.
My father lowered the driver’s window and looked through the slice of space. “How was church?” he asked.
“Your son had a moment,” she said. “Open that back door for me. It’s too damn hot in the house for him right now.” She helped me out of the car. “And if you say anything about needing a quarter, I’ll beat you senseless.” My father jumped out of the Lincoln, flustered as if he suddenly had houseguests he hadn’t prepared for. She gave me a slight nudge into the back seat, and it felt like it always did, like ducking into a big walk-in cooler. My hand made its way instinctively toward my pocket to search for a quarter that wasn’t there.
“Hello, Eunice,” my mother said, her voice caked with sugary sarcasm. “I hope you’re having yet another productive day on earth.” To me, she said, “When you feel better, walk on home. We’re the house right across the street. The one you can see real good from the front seat of this damn car.” I waited for her to slam the door, but she held back and just eased it shut, like a quiet taunt.
For a solid minute or so, the silence blew around us until I decided Eunice and my old man were waiting for me to open the discussions. “I passed out in church,” I said.
“What’s that ribbon on your head?” my father asked.
“That thing the preacher drapes around his neck sometimes,” I said back. “They needed a bandage. I was bleeding for a while.”
Eunice spoke, her voice more ragged than usual. “How you feeling now?” She didn’t turn in her seat, just continued to stare out the window. Before I could answer, she said, “Why there goes Laurice Reeves on her bicycle. She doesn’t look like she went to church.”
I didn’t know how she could tell at this distance that somebody had not attended services. “I’m okay, I guess,” I said, feeling a little neglected. To be honest, I hadn’t taken inventory of my faculties. My head didn’t hurt all that much, not more than a little throb every now and then behind my eyes. I couldn’t explain it (and I can’t to this day), but I felt different somehow, like a bang on the head had shaken something loose. I felt as though the person I was before church was a little bit of a stranger this afternoon. I wondered if this was what my mother meant when she told me changes were coming. I didn’t realize they would come this fast. Or that I’d have to smack my head on a church pew to bring them about. But something had indeed changed.
“Me and Eunice were just talking about the rise of communism,” my father said.
“Bullshit,” I told him. He snapped his head around.
“What did you say?” he hissed, then glanced at Eunice to see if she’d heard.
The purple bandage on my head draped one of my eyes and I tugged it up so I could look straight at him. “I said that’s all bullshit. You aren’t talking about communism. You’re just talking about anything so you can sit in the cold with somebody who will at least listen to you.” I pulled at the bandage again. “I speak the truth, Father.”
He stared at me like he was studying a map of land he’d never set foot in. “I think you better mind that tongue of yours.”
The end of the purple bandage hung off the side of my head, long enough that I could grab the end of it and dab at my mouth, which I did, and quickly followed with, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, Daddy.”
“We aren’t doing anything wrong here,” Eunice said. “Your father is just helping me get beyond Eddie.”
I’ll bet I’d never said more than fifty words to Eunice Baxley until that afternoon, when I told her Eddie was happy where he was, happier than he’d ever been before. She winced at that. “I think you ought to cut your ties with Eddie and live out your earthly days in peace,” I said.
I should confess, I had no idea where my vocabulary was coming from. It was like a typewriter in my head was spitting out sentences through my mouth. I was surprised at what I was saying and who I was saying it to, but I liked it. It felt good, like the air