The Poisonwood Bible
Page 8
After a good long hootenanny of so-called hymns shouted back and forth, the burnt offering was out of the fire and into the frying pan so to speak, all mixed up into a gray-looking, smoldering stew. They started plunking it down in front of us in tin plates or bowls. The spoons they gave us were big old metal soup ladles, which I knew would never fit into my mouth. I have such a small mouth, my wisdom teeth are coming in all sigoggling. I looked around for someone to trade spoons with, but lo and behold, nobody but our family even had any kind of a spoon at all! What the others aimed to do with their food, I wouldn’t hazard to guess. Most of them were still waiting to get served, like birds in the wilderness. They held up their empty metal bowls or hubcaps or whatnot and cheerfully beat them like drums. It sounded like an entire junkyard orchestra, because everybody’s plate was different. Ruth May just had a little tiny cup, which I knew she would resent because it made her seem more of a baby.
In all the ruckus, somebody was talking English. It just dawned on me all of a sudden. It was near about impossible to make out what was going on, because people all around us were singing, dancing, banging their plates, waving their arms back and forth like trees in a hurricane. But up by the bonfire where they were cooking, a coal-black man in a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up was gesturing towards us and hollowing at the top of his lungs: “Welcome! We welcome you!”
There was another man behind him, much older and dressed just out of this world, with a tall hat and glasses and a cloth drapery dress and swishing an animal’s tail back and forth. He hollowed something in their language and everybody began to pipe down just a hair.
“Reverend and Mrs. Price and your children!” cried the younger man in the yellow shirt. “You are welcome to our feast. Today we have killed a goat to celebrate your coming. Soon your bellies will be full with our fufupili-pili.”
At that, why, the half-naked women behind him just burst out clapping and cheering, as if they could no longer confine their enthusiasm for a dead goat.
“Reverend Price,” the man said, “please offer with us a word of thanks for this feast.”
He gestured for Father to come forward, but Father needed no invitation, it seems. He was already on his feet, away up on his chair, so he looked ten feet tall. He was in his shirtsleeves, which was not an unusual sight as he’s one of those men that’s easy in his body and in the heat of a sermon will often throw off his suit jacket. His pleated black trousers were belted tight but his chest and shoulders looked just huge. I’d almost forgotten, he still carried numerous deadly weapons under that clean white shirt.
Slowly Father raised one arm above his head like one of those gods they had in Roman times, fixing to send down the thunderbolts and the lightning. Everyone looked up at him, smiling, clapping, waving their arms over their heads, bare bosoms and all. Then he began to speak. It was not so much a speech as a rising storm.
“The Lord rideth,” he said, low and threatening, “upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt.”
Hurray! they all cheered, but I felt a knot in my stomach. He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tramping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
“Into Egypt,” he shouted in his rising singsong preaching voice that goes high and low, then higher and lower, back and forth like a saw ripping into a tree trunk, “and every corner of the earth where His light,” Father paused, glaring all about him, “where His light has yet to fall!”
He paused for breath and began again, swaying ever so faintly as he sang out: “The Lord rideth in the person of His angels of mercy, His emissaries of holiness into the titles on the plain, where Lot dwelled amongst the sinners!”
The cheers were slowing down. He had everybody’s attention now.
“And Lot said unto the sinners who crowded at his door, I pray ye, brethren, do not do so wickedly] For the sinners of Sodom pressed their evil will against the entrance to his household!’
I shuddered. Naturally I knew Chapter 19 of Genesis, which he’d made us copy out time and again. I detest the part where Lot offered his own virgin daughters to the rabble of sinners, to do with as they might, just so they’d forget about God’s angels that were visiting and leave them be. What kind of a trade is that? And his poor wife, of course, got turned to a pillar of salt.
But Father skipped over all that and went straight to the dire consequences: “The emissaries of the Lord smote the sinners, who had come heedless to the sight of God, heedless in their nakedness’’
Then he stopped, just froze perfectly still. With one of his huge hands he reached out to the congregation, pulling them in. With the other, he pointed at a woman near the fire. Her big long breasts lay flat on her chest like they’d been pressed down with an iron, but she did seem heedless of it. She was toting a long-legged child all straddly on her hip, and with her free hand was scratching at her short hair. She looked around nervously, for every pair of eyes in the place had followed Father’s accusing gaze straight to her nakedness. She bounced her knees, shifting the big child upwards on her hip. His head lolled. He had hair that stood out in reddish tufts and he looked dazed. For an eternity of silence the mother stood there in the spotlight, drawing her head back on her neck in fear and puzzlement. Finally she turned around and picked up a long wooden spoon and went to poking at the stew kettle.
In all the ruckus, somebody was talking English. It just dawned on me all of a sudden. It was near about impossible to make out what was going on, because people all around us were singing, dancing, banging their plates, waving their arms back and forth like trees in a hurricane. But up by the bonfire where they were cooking, a coal-black man in a yellow shirt with the sleeves rolled up was gesturing towards us and hollowing at the top of his lungs: “Welcome! We welcome you!”
There was another man behind him, much older and dressed just out of this world, with a tall hat and glasses and a cloth drapery dress and swishing an animal’s tail back and forth. He hollowed something in their language and everybody began to pipe down just a hair.
“Reverend and Mrs. Price and your children!” cried the younger man in the yellow shirt. “You are welcome to our feast. Today we have killed a goat to celebrate your coming. Soon your bellies will be full with our fufupili-pili.”
At that, why, the half-naked women behind him just burst out clapping and cheering, as if they could no longer confine their enthusiasm for a dead goat.
“Reverend Price,” the man said, “please offer with us a word of thanks for this feast.”
He gestured for Father to come forward, but Father needed no invitation, it seems. He was already on his feet, away up on his chair, so he looked ten feet tall. He was in his shirtsleeves, which was not an unusual sight as he’s one of those men that’s easy in his body and in the heat of a sermon will often throw off his suit jacket. His pleated black trousers were belted tight but his chest and shoulders looked just huge. I’d almost forgotten, he still carried numerous deadly weapons under that clean white shirt.
Slowly Father raised one arm above his head like one of those gods they had in Roman times, fixing to send down the thunderbolts and the lightning. Everyone looked up at him, smiling, clapping, waving their arms over their heads, bare bosoms and all. Then he began to speak. It was not so much a speech as a rising storm.
“The Lord rideth,” he said, low and threatening, “upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt.”
Hurray! they all cheered, but I felt a knot in my stomach. He was getting that look he gets, oh boy, like Here comes Moses tramping down off of Mount Syanide with ten fresh ways to wreck your life.
“Into Egypt,” he shouted in his rising singsong preaching voice that goes high and low, then higher and lower, back and forth like a saw ripping into a tree trunk, “and every corner of the earth where His light,” Father paused, glaring all about him, “where His light has yet to fall!”
He paused for breath and began again, swaying ever so faintly as he sang out: “The Lord rideth in the person of His angels of mercy, His emissaries of holiness into the titles on the plain, where Lot dwelled amongst the sinners!”
The cheers were slowing down. He had everybody’s attention now.
“And Lot said unto the sinners who crowded at his door, I pray ye, brethren, do not do so wickedly] For the sinners of Sodom pressed their evil will against the entrance to his household!’
I shuddered. Naturally I knew Chapter 19 of Genesis, which he’d made us copy out time and again. I detest the part where Lot offered his own virgin daughters to the rabble of sinners, to do with as they might, just so they’d forget about God’s angels that were visiting and leave them be. What kind of a trade is that? And his poor wife, of course, got turned to a pillar of salt.
But Father skipped over all that and went straight to the dire consequences: “The emissaries of the Lord smote the sinners, who had come heedless to the sight of God, heedless in their nakedness’’
Then he stopped, just froze perfectly still. With one of his huge hands he reached out to the congregation, pulling them in. With the other, he pointed at a woman near the fire. Her big long breasts lay flat on her chest like they’d been pressed down with an iron, but she did seem heedless of it. She was toting a long-legged child all straddly on her hip, and with her free hand was scratching at her short hair. She looked around nervously, for every pair of eyes in the place had followed Father’s accusing gaze straight to her nakedness. She bounced her knees, shifting the big child upwards on her hip. His head lolled. He had hair that stood out in reddish tufts and he looked dazed. For an eternity of silence the mother stood there in the spotlight, drawing her head back on her neck in fear and puzzlement. Finally she turned around and picked up a long wooden spoon and went to poking at the stew kettle.
