Except for Big Sue’s displeasure about the frogs, Breeze would have told her that the Reverend was his mother’s husband who disappeared the day his grandfather cut the big pine, but the boy’s one wish was to have her forget him, and maybe she’d forget the licking she promised to lay on his hide.
When Uncle Bill drove up to the door with one of the biggest pertest mules from the barnyard hitched to a one-horse wagon, Big Sue, instead of praising the beast’s fresh-clipped mane and tail, looked doubtfully at the cloth strings tying the harness in many places.
“If de mule gits to kickin’ or either runnin’, how you gwine rule em?” she asked anxiously, but Uncle Bill laughed at her fears and helped her to the seat in front, putting the basket of dinner and the communion bread and wine back where Breeze sat on the floor.
At first the mule could not be moved out of a slow walk, but when the wagon crossed over a root in the road and the wheels made a creak and a bump, the mule jumped so that one demijohn turned over, its stopper flew out and some of the wine spilled. Big Sue scolded Breeze for letting it happen and told him to steady the jugs the rest of the way. She couldn’t. She couldn’t even bend with her corset on. It cut her wind and had her so heated she had to take off her big sailor hat and fan herself to catch air.
The wagon wheels ground slowly along in the deep sandy ruts. White clouds of dust rose above the slow-moving hoofs of mules and oxen that toiled along, pulling buggies and wagons and carts crowded with black people going to Heaven’s Gate Church. Other church-goers were walking, many of the women in their stocking feet, carrying their shoes in their hands along with their dinner baskets. Well-greased faces shone, everybody saluted everybody else, some with simple bows, others with bows beneath upraised arms.
Heaven’s Gate Church stretched its whitewashed length from the road clear back to the picnic tables made of clean new boards nailed together and fastened to wide-spreading trees whose shade made the grounds cool and darkened. The sweep of the open well was kept busy drawing water. The churchyard swarmed with people hurrying about like a nest of ants before summer rain. Women crowded behind the church, putting on shoes, fixing hair, smoothing crumpled dresses and aprons. Big Sue sucked her teeth at the sight of Leah who was strutting, sure enough. Big Sue grumbled bitterly because Leah was not only the choir leader to-day, but chairman of the lemonade committee. Leah had no judgment. The last time she fixed the lemonade, she had it sour enough to cut your very heart-strings. Leah pushed herself. She gave nobody else a chance. No wonder she got salivated.
The chain of wagons and buggies and carts that had stretched along the road crowding out people on foot, now filled the churchyard completely. Every low tree limb, every bush, held a tethered beast. Oxen chewed cuds. Mules dozed, roused to switch off gnats and stinging flies with close-clipped tails, then dozed again.
Every bench inside the long low whitewashed church was finally packed with people, waiting respectfully until the time came for the Reverend to get up in the pulpit and preach God’s word. He was very different from Reverend Salty, the kind old preacher who had lately died and left the congregation of Heaven’s Gate Church like sheep without a shepherd.
Reverend Salty was fat and easy to laugh, but this Reverend was slim and tall and solemn. He was so educated that he could read scripture right out of the Book. No word could trip his nimble tongue, but he said he had to wear glasses because he had strained his eyes searching the scriptures day and night to find out how to lead the people.
As he adjusted his glasses, carefully placing the curve of the gold frames behind his small ears, Maum Hannah, who sat next to Breeze on the front bench of the Amen corner, boomed right out with an earnest, “T’ank Gawd for life, son! T’ank Gawd! Praise be to His blessed name! I too glad I could git here to hear you read Gawd’s book dis day!”