Had a pastor once told me it should hurt a little bit when you praying to Jesus. Preached for two hours every Sunday morning. Told him if the Lord was keeping us close to have us squirm, He should consider retirement. Pastor didn’t like that comment, ha ha ha. Watched him confirm Henry’s son into the church. Cried while he did it. Cries too often for me to trust he ever means it. Says queer folks won’t make it. 

Watched him love a girl named Sidney, seventeen years old, wore a white dress and a silver watch to Sunday church. Showed up on Saturday, too, with her daddy. Her daddy’s name is Elmo, goes by the red name rather than Thomas. Would’ve made a better preacher than the pastor, if God took votes. Never hit his little girl, as far as I’ve heard it. Let her yawn during the sermon and that’s what caught the eye of the pastor. The preacher and her daddy got into a fight, and that’s why she started to sit up and sit still during the sermon, and listen. Heard the preacher broke Big Elmo’s eye socket, and that Big Papa Elmo didn’t throw a single punch. Heard the pastor’s wife brought out a carton of eggs to the backyard and started chucking them. Heard that Big Papa slumped on home in blood and yolk. 

She had a pretty voice, but it was quiet. Only ever heard it when she got the words wrong. I think she liked it best when we sang “By and By” cause it reminded her of Elvis. She’d sing it real pretty, and a little bit stronger than the other hymns, like she was imagining that she was singing to The King, or that she was him, singing it. Her hair was golden. The pastor’s skin was bronze, and I thought it looked pretty when she was leaning on his neck and her hair drooped over it. Straight and long, like the road through Kansas’d be if it’d been paved with gold and it’d been cut off at the small of her back, and there were little daisies woven into it. Saw her at the market one Saturday morning, putting two lemons up to her eyeballs and smiling with her friends and faking the deacon’s voice, and laughing. Now she dead.

Pastor said he was gonna take her to go swimming one Friday morning, there’s a lake down near the church. Nobody in the town minded about their being acquainted, until the Lord started minding it. Their love brought the locusts. And the water never did part, not for her nor for her Moses. Told her he was gonna take her out of state to see the mountains. Told her if she prayed close enough, she could find God behind a righteous man’s zipper, yes sir. He preached to her in whispers, rather than in his big hard pulpit voice, and she felt special for it. When he was at the front, he wouldn’t look at her, and greeting folks after church, he just shook her hand and frowned and nodded. Twenty-five years old, that pastor. I’d seen him grow up that way, just like her. Neither one of them could help it. Not even Jesus could’ve helped him or her, given the circumstance.

They’d’ve took a boat, but the boat got taken. That’s just what I heard. That lake’s no good for swimming, but it’s the one we use for baptisms. Don’t know what the pastor intended to do with that girl, out on that boat. Caught him screaming at the sky once cause it was raining. His wife was out of town that day, preaching. She was trying to get her life devoted to spreading the teachings of Jesus. Pastor liked her being away more than he disliked what she was doing when she was off doing it. The girl wanted to swim in the lake, and he told her there were alligators. There ain’t no alligators. The girl took her shirt off and he did too. He stared at her and nodded, and she looked at him looking over her, and then she looked him up and down and she nodded too. She came over to where he was shivering, and she put her hand onto his necklace. He didn’t close his eyes or lift one finger against her. She put his cross to her mouth and ran her tongue upon it. He started to weep. She liked that, I heard. I heard that, cause I got good hearing. 

The trees were far enough into the water to be up to their waist in it. The sky was clear that day, and the fowl had instruments. Most folks in the town hadn’t woken up yet. He walked towards the water and took her hand.

“I don’t swim,” she said to him.

“Your shoes will be all right.”

“It’s too cold for swimming.”

“We’ll pray on it.” He grinned and she followed him.

There wasn’t a cloud to keep the sun’s look off the Earth. They went into the water, wading, like the song says. He was humming “By and By,” but she wouldn’t squeeze his hand or look towards him. She was looking at the water, watching it. She knew how much water could hold inside of it, and how much more it could take of us than we could of it. He told her to look at him, but she ignored him. I was on the other side of town, eating breakfast. I was sitting next to Henry Adamson, who was sitting beside his wife, situated under the television. Heard a gunshot go off. Teddy laughed about something Big Elmo had told him. Big Papa hadn’t even flinched to hear his daughter getting shot. Two days later, they found him, in Virginia. Wouldn’t tell what happened, but his hand had got cut off. Since then, ain’t seen him.

That’s the preacher I was mentioning who got his hand chopped off, not Big Papa Elmo. Elmo’s doing all right, he’s recovering. And that child couldn’t swim but she had wanted to go swimming. Folks ought to remember how children are foolish. She changed her mind all the time when she was looking at him. She was changing all the time, and he could feel it, which made him crazy for her. The thing about God is God don’t change, but God ain’t a woman. And if God were a woman, they’d all be cursed, all the ones out preaching so sure He ain’t one. I loved a child once who looked just like me, but we weren’t nothing alike. She was inconstant. I’m like the floor of the ocean that nobody’s reached yet. I’m like the sky up above that we ain’t polluted. I’m a planet you ain’t never visited, and an island filled with savages who can’t talk. I tell Jesus he can look, but even when the Son of Man asks for me to come near him, I tell him don’t touch.