3
I was fair game for them. There was hardly anybody in the church who did not know how emotional and how excitable I was, and how music affected me. Why, I used to be thrilled over the way I myself played the violin, and have been known to hang entranced over a tune of my own composition! Even before the services began I saw that many of the Brothers and Sisters had spotted me and were only waiting the proper moment to pounce upon me, and when the call for converts came as many of them as could get near me pleaded and begged and cajoled; they scrambled and almost fought in their eagerness to ensnare such a prime morsel for the Lord. They could have worked no more furiously if God had been keeping the score. They screeched at me that now was the time to see Jesus, that God was waiting impatiently for me to be converted.
Some of them even threatened. They painted horrible pictures of Hell; they told me that unless I went down the aisle and confessed my sins and asked God to forgive me I would sizzle and burn and scorch forevermore. One old woman, her face working with fanatical fury, screamed at me that I was holding up the salvation of my whole family; that my father and my mother and my sisters and brothers would not go to Heaven unless I professed religion; she shouted that Satan was waiting outside the church to lead me into the depths of Hell and light a fire under my immortal soul. The whole crew pushed and tugged and hauled at me; one Brother got hold of my arm and tried to drag me into the aisle, yelling “Come to Jesus! Jesus is calling for you!”
And up on the platform Brother McConnell was rampaging to and fro, working himself into a frenzy, shouting that “Jesus wants you!” and above the roar of the Christian workers and the moans of the victims rose the wailing whine of a violin played off key, the thunder of the organ and the emotion-filled voices of the choir.
“Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee!”
By this time I was crying; I did not want to go to Hell, and I was horribly afraid of the Devil, and I was not old enough to realize what was being done to me. Yet something kept telling me that I should not do this thing; that it was all a mockery and a fraud. I know now, and I knew soon after that night, that the music was what was the matter with me, not religion. I did not see Jesus, and I never have. It was that slow music; that doleful, wailing chant of the hymns. I couldn’t withstand it. I never could. In the army I used to go to all of the funerals because I got such a terrific kick out of the funeral march and the sliding tramp of troops marching at half-step.
But I was doomed. It was in the cards that my self-respect was to be stripped from me and that I was to be emotionally butchered to make a religious holiday. They dragged and hauled at me until I was in the aisle, and then they got behind me and urged me forward. One old woman leaped ahead of us and performed a war dance that would have done credit to a frenzied worshiper of Voodoo. And as she pranced and cavorted she screamed:
“A bad boy is coming to Jesus!”
Others were going down too, shepherded by the hard-working Brothers and Sisters, and as they reached the bench Brother McConnell reached forward and grabbed their hands. For each one he shouted “Praise the Lord! Another sinner come to Jesus!” and then he gave the sinner an expert shove that catapulted him into the hands of a waiting Brother who immediately knelt with him and prayed. The team work was magnificent. I tried to hang back, but the band began playing again. The thunderous cadences of “Nearer, My God, to Thee,” pealed from the organ, and I couldn’t stand it. I was being torn to pieces emotionally, and I staggered and stumbled down the aisle, sobbing, hardly able to stand. They thought it was religion, and the Brothers and Sisters who were pushing and shoving me shouted ecstatically that God had me; it was obvious that I was suffering, and suffering has always been accepted as a true sign of holiness.
But it was not God and it was not religion. It was the music. Behind me came my brother, sedately, as he always did things. He went calmly to join the godly; for him there was no pushing and no pulling; when he saw me being dragged into the aisle he simply got to his feet and followed. I have always suspected that he went along merely to take care of me; frequently he did that. He was continually fighting my battles, and if he did not like the nicknames that the other boys fastened onto me, he protested so fiercely that the name was transferred to his shoulders. They tried to call me “Cat” for some obscure reason when I was a boy, and my brother did not like it; and to this day he is “Cat” Asbury in Farmington.
Brother McConnell grabbed my hand and shook it clammily when I reached the mourners’ bench, and I was shoved into a seat. Immediately a Brother plopped down beside me, an old man whom I had known all my life, and who I knew perfectly well was an old skinflint and a hypocrite, a Sunday Christian. He put his arm around my shoulders and began to pray, crying down my neck and shouting that another soul had been saved, calling on the Lord to witness the good work that he was doing. I half expected him to say: “Give me credit, God; give me credit!” And all the time I was wishing to God that the band would stop playing; my nerves were being shattered by the constant and steady beat of the hymns, and the penetrating wail of the violin and the thunder of the organ.
And at last it did stop. There was silence in the church, except that here and there someone was writhing and moaning. But the shouting had ceased. Brother McConnell had his benches full, all of his workers had each a convert to work upon, and he decided to call it a day and save whatever sinners remained in the congregation for another night. So printed cards were passed around, which we were to sign, indicating the church we would join. Then the evangelist said for all of us who had been baptized to sit down. My brother and I sat down.
With no music to upset me I began to think, and the more I thought, the angrier I got. I was ashamed; I boiled with fury and I wanted to smash the Brothers and Sisters in their smug faces. But I was just a boy and I was afraid. It was at this point that my younger brother came down the aisle and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey!” he said. “Mary said to stand up; you haven’t been baptized!”
“You tell her,” I said, “to go to hell!”
Luckily none of the Brothers and Sisters heard me, so I escaped special prayers. I signed my card, agreeing to become a member of the Southern Methodist church, and soon afterward I was released. My sister and my two brothers went home, but I sneaked away and went down to the Post Office, where I found another boy whose influence with a bartender was sufficient to get us a drink. I went with him to a saloon not far from the old Grand Leader building, and there I had my first drink, a gin rickey, and when the bartender would not sell me another I gave a Negro cart-driver a half-dollar and he bought me a bottle of squirrel whisky which I consumed in the vacant lot behind the Odd Fellows’ Hall. I got gloriously drunk, and about three o’clock in the morning I staggered home and up the stairs to the room which I shared with my brother. I awakened him, trying to undress, and he asked:
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Hell’s fire, Emmett!” I replied. “I’ve got religion.”
I went to the preacher’s house the next day so Brother Jenkins could sprinkle holy water upon my head and mumble a prayer, and later, having thus been baptized, I joined the church, but I joined with my tongue in my cheek and a sneer in my heart. I have never seen anything in any church since that would impel me to remove either my tongue or the sneer. And when I admitted publicly that I had been converted and was now a good and faithful servant of the Methodist God, I said to myself: “Over the left.” That was our way of saying: “I am like hell!”