Page 16 of Brimstone Hollow

The last strains of the hymn fade away and we all wait, in silence, to see what’s going to happen next.

“Where is he?” I hear someone whisper closer to the front.

Finally, a door in the far corner behind the stage opens and a young man slowly steps up behind the pulpit. He’s a small-built guy, maybe five and a half feet, with narrow shoulders and long limbs. Carrying a well-worn Bible the way a child would, held against his chest, he gives the impression of a boy playing at being a preacher. He wears a blue button-up with black trousers and his face, while tanned, has the pallid, sweaty look of a man about to step onto the battlefield.

“Good—” he starts, his voice scratchy and high. Though likely in his early or mid-twenties, his face has a childlike quality, round and soft, with dark eyes framed by looping tawny curls. He clears his throat, and then pulls a glass of ice water from within the pulpit and takes a long drink.

“Good evening,” he begins again. “And… welcome. I see we have a few new faces in the crowd.”

His voice is clearer now but still wavers.

“My name is Will Carpenter. Most of y’all know me and are used to me up here preaching on the nights when Brother Ezra takes his message out into the world with his revival offering. I’ve always said, at the beginning of every service, that I will do my best in his absence.”

He pauses and clears his throat again and then asks us to open our hymnals. I take an old flocked-edge hymnal from the rack on the pew in front of me, open it, and follow along as the pianist plays each piece and a man with an acoustic guitar joins her. The congregation sings “The Old Rugged Cross,” followed by “Amazing Grace,” followed by “In the Sweet By and By.”

The last songs strum a chord in my memory.

Old pews, old churches. Just like this one. Not so very far away in space or time.

I remember that long, long summer. The hunger in my belly that drove me to seek solace of the soul.

I remember coming home and seeing my dad on the porch, strumming his guitar. I remember wanting to stay where I was, watch him all night. Watch as he sat there and sang “In the Sweet By and By,” with a smile on his face, his eyes closed. The phone inside the house began to ring as he was finishing the song. He opened his eyes and saw me and let out a surprised laugh.

“Hey there, Annie-Girl,” he’d said. “You’d better go inside and get a jacket. It’s chilly out here tonight.”

“Okay,” I’d said, moving past him.

“And answer that phone while you’re in there—” he’d hollered after me.

I jogged into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

“Annie?” Her voice threaded through me like cracks in an icy lake. Beautiful and dangerous; I found myself taking a step backward at the sound of it.

“Annie, you there?” she said.

I took a deep breath, my heart thundering, and finally said, “Yeah. Hey, Mom.”

There’s a shift in the room around me as the singing stops. The wood creaks as all the hymnals go back into all the racks and all the bodies ease back to sitting.

Will says, “The book of Mark says, ‘These signs shall follow them that believe; in my name they shall cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’”

A few uneasy whispers travel through the church. Wood creaks again as bottoms shift in the pews. This part of Will’s message is surely whatsome people came to hear. How did a man protected by his belief succumb to a bite from the snakes he wielded as the very proof of his faith?

“I have heard it said”—Will pauses, takes another breath, and continues—“that if Brother Ezra’s faith had been stronger, he would not have fallen sick and died from the bite of the serpent. Yes, even in the very hours after Brother Ezra was called home to sit at the feet of our Lord. Yes, already the seeds of doubt have begun to spread. But did not the Lord call his very own son home to him?”

“Yes, Lord, He did,” someone says, softly.

“And so our Father must have had a greater purpose for Brother Ezra. For I cannot name a man of—” He pauses, his voice cracking with tears. “I cannot name a man of greater faith, of more powerful belief.”

“Amen,” an elderly woman says, lifting her hand to the sky.

Several amens follow.

Will continues his sermon with verses from the book of John and much talk of grief and letting go. Then, toward the end, his hands grip the pulpit and tears fall down his cheeks and drop onto the pages of his open Bible.

“In losing Brother Ezra, many of us feel as though we have lost… lost a father. But we will see Brother Ezra again, someday, when we go to meet our true Father in heaven.”

There’s another pause while he takes a big breath and then he says, “Let us pray.”