What I Really Think of You Page 7

“He’s coming to pick me up, in half an hour.”

  “They’re watching me like a hawk,” she said, “that’s the shitty pity. But you tell B. J. I said 10-3.”

  “10-3?”

  “10-3,” she said and we heard the back door slam shut.

  We heard, “Di-Y? Di-Y, are you out here, dearest?”

  “I’m just helping Opal with the garbage, Mother.”

  “Why, how very thoughtful of you, Di-Y,” said Mrs. Cheek, coming down the path toward us in her long green dress. “Opal, did cook pay you? Did she offer you a ride home?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m paid, thank you. Someone’s coming to get me if his car makes it.”

  “Di-Y,” said Mrs. Cheek, “your friends are all gathered in the solarium. Why don’t you take Opal in there, and when her ride comes Grayson will tell her.”

  “They’re not my friends,” said Diane-Young.

  “They are your guests though, dearest,” said Mrs. Cheek.

  Mrs. Cheek followed us inside and down a long hall to the solarium, so we couldn’t talk about Bobby John anymore.

  She said “the adults” were going to watch a film of Rudolph Nureyev in Swan Lake.

  What the Cheeks called the solarium was a long, glassed-in porch at the back of the big house, with these shiny black tiles and clean white rugs, black-and-white cushions covering all the furniture, and green, spidery plants hanging down from the ceiling.

  “Everybody here knows Opal Ringer, don’t they?” Diane-Young said when we walked in.

  “Opal!” V. Chicken gushed at me, just as though I’d never passed her the brussels sprouts earlier. She was sitting on the couch with redheaded, freckle-faced Dickie Cloward, who stood up and said he’d met me at the First Methodist Church Strawberry Festival last year. I remembered that thing real well, because Daddy’d sat there on a folding chair going 300 x $3.25 comes to $975, and Mum said it was more like 200 there. Well, we was late, Daddy’d said, must have been a hundred here before we drove up. I’d complained we didn’t even get to enjoy anything anymore, because we were always counting up the take, ours and everyone else’s. Daddy’d told me we’d stop counting up the take just as soon as my rich uncle got out of the poorhouse.

  Verna Cloward, who looked just like Dickie, smiled real sweet at me, and next thing I knew Jesse Pegler was on his feet, coming across to say, “Oh-pull! Sit with me. We were just talking about my brother.”

  Verna Cloward said, “I was telling everyone that my father says Bud’s suffering from P.K.S. That’s Preacher’s Kid Syndrome.”

  “‘Syndrome’ is Dr. Antoinette Young’s very favorite word,” said Diane-Young. “She couldn’t get to sleep at night if she didn’t get to say ‘syndrome’ a dozen times every day.”

  “My father says,” Verna Cloward continued, “that preachers’ kids, particularly boys, have to go through a rebellious stage.”

  “What do you think, Opal?” Jesse said.

  I shrugged, an inch from being stuck and I knew it. Mum said all you had to do when you got stuck was ask a question, let someone else do the talking, and Daddy said stuck was normal for a woman because they were supposed to listen anyway. “‘Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection,’” Daddy said. “One Timothy.”

  The window was open and waves slapped the beach in the distance. I had on a green sweater, acrylic, hole under the right arm. Mum said why wear the one with the hole, when you got the pretty red one to wear up there, the real wool one? I said because you-know-who’s going to be up there, and if I run into her wearing it, how’m I going to feel in her old sweater? Mum said she didn’t give it to you to put in your bureau drawer, she give it to you to put on your back. You don’t know anything, I said. You just don’t know anything.

  I could feel the crazy blanket starting to come over my head, covering me like deep snows do rusty things left out on the lawn from fall when you took in other stuff.

  Their conversation went on without me, after a few more attempts Jesse made to pull me into it.

  Those of you who saw me that way got real uncomfortable—that I always knew from watching your faces, glances you gave each other, silences you left for me to fill, and when I wouldn’t, wanted to die of your own embarrassment for me.

  Soon I didn’t even move, didn’t even cross my legs or run my hand along my arm, or smile when you all smiled, to show I could still hear. I stayed statue still. I knew that I was there like some red, ugly pimple on the side of someone’s face, coming to a whitehead in plain view, mortifying everybody.

  I sat there while they talked of Bud.

  Seemed like the world was in love with Bud. Gone for so long, he was back all the time as big as when he was really there. I could see him clearly moving through that room on his long legs in his tight pants showing secret parts of him, the Marlboro cigarette hanging from his tipped lips, grinning, almost dancing when he walked, swooping down on that scene like some great wide-winged bird living near the sea, coming suddenly out of the blue summer sky all pink and silver, gliding.

  Said, “Opal, you’ve got real pretty eyes, and someday—”

  “Opal?”

  “OPAL!”

  “Huh?”

  “Grayson says Bobby John’s out back,” said Diane-Young. “Remember. 10-3.”

  Jesse said, “I’ll walk you out.”

  “Real nice seeing you again, Opal,” Verna Cloward said.

  “Night, Opal,” said V. Chicken, and they all said good night and good-bye, giving me big smiles.

  Jesse and I walked down the long marble hall. “You don’t have to walk me out,” I said.

  “I want to, Opal. You didn’t get a chance to say much.”

  “I had the chance.”

  “I get that way, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why do you?”

  Shrugged my shoulders again, thought of how there seemed no end to that long hall, like there seemed no beginning to my conversations with Jesse Pegler. I hoped the tuna-fish smell from inside the Baggie in my purse wasn’t leaking out, hoped he hadn’t seen the hole in my sweater.

  Then I saw Bobby John standing by the butler at the door, his best Hawaiian shirt hanging outside his fresh-ironed khaki pants, hair slicked back, cracking his knuckles, looking all around, smiling his sweet, sad smile at me. I was glad Jesse Pegler didn’t have to walk out with me to the van, if that’s what Bobby John’d come over in. I’d hate Jesse seeing me get into that thing.

  Last thing Jesse said, “I’m going to call you, Opal.”

  Driving away in Bobby John’s car, I gave a giggle because he said that.

  “How come you’re in such a good mood?” Bobby John asked me.

  I should have just said back to Jesse why, what for?

  “Well, I was the belle of the ball, Bobby John,” I said, sounding sour as month-old milk, moods swinging back and forth, back and forth, like the clapper in a church bell. “Had myself this real rootin’-tootin’ time.”

  “Don’t expect nothing from them people and you’ll never be disappointed,” Bobby John said. “Did you get to talk to D. Y.?”

  “She said they were watching her like a hawk because they think you’re too much of an influence on her. She said to tell you 10-3.”

  “That’s all she said?”

  “That’s all she said. What’s 10-3 mean, anyway?”

  “That’s CB talk, means ‘stop transmitting.’ Is that all she said?”

  “She said she might be going on an ACE Winning Rally, to witness,” I said, “and the cook there said she’d walked all right before the healing.”

  “Who’d she say that to?”

  “Ripper Blades’ mother. … Bobby John, what’d you think of him?”

  “What’d I think of who?”

  “Bud’s brother. Calls me Oh-pull. Says he’s going to call me. I don’t have a clue why. What for, I had a mind to ask.”

  “Well, if he’s going to ask you out, Daddy’s not going to like it.”


  “He’s not going to ask me out.”

  “He might.”

  “He’s not going to. But he’s saved, anyways.”

  “Who says he’s saved?”

  “He’s Guy Pegler’s son, anyways.”

  “That’s the one thing Daddy won’t like,” said Bobby John. “Daddy’s saying Guy Pegler stole our miracle.”

  “I guess he sort of did, didn’t he?”

  We just rode along for a while with the big moon beaming down, abundance of peace, said in Psalms, so long as the moon endureth. Asked myself if Jesus was to say you can live on Ocean Road and be Jesse Pegler’s girl, get notes from him, be his sweet baby, or you can be part of The Rapture—

  Then Bobby John said, “She’s been walking on that leg okay for a long time.”

  I looked up at him.

  “It wore her out faking, pain was gone a long time ago. She was afraid not to fake, afraid they’d say nothing ever was wrong with her to begin with. … Well, we needed a miracle at The Hand.”

  “Whew, Bobby John. What are you telling me?”

  “Nothing you’re ever going to say aloud to anyone. Promise?”

  “I promise.”

  “K. Christian Keck come all the way from Philadelphia. How you going to get a man like that to come again if nothing happens—think he’d want to come back again with nothing going on but Mrs. Bunch falling again? Opal, people don’t pay when nothing happens but her going down. Daddy was worrying away, too.”

  “Nothing new,” I said.

  “Well, it doesn’t bother you. You don’t bear the brunt of it. You heard him tonight, telling me I was dumb again, telling me no one’s going to leave their living room while the TV preachers got choirs of fifty and more in living color. You know how long I been hearing that?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “I got Daddy on the one hand needing the bills to get paid, and I got D. Y. on the other telling me there weren’t no way she could just say she could walk all right suddenly. Doctors said all along there wasn’t anything wrong with her when there was. If she was to just walk all right suddenly, everybody’d say the doctors was right and she’d been faking. … Well, that’s where the miracle come from, Opal. Right from Satan. Now we’re going to pay the price.”

  We rode along awhile not talking, until Bobby John turned on his CB radio and started in on his spiel to make himself feel better.

  “Put your ears on, good buddy. You don’t need a 10-84 to call Him. He’s God’s Son and He loves you no matter what your handle is or what channel you’re on. He won’t break in. He only comes by invitation.”

  A week later, Daddy was shouting it out. “They stole our miracle, right out from under our noses!” He was loud, folks over to the dump scavenging could likely hear him yelling from The Hand.

  I was doing a count that Sunday morning, not fifty people there, unless you counted the six in the choir. Daddy made fifty-one in the whole place, and the weather was good, too. Sun was out, temperature was in the seventies.

  “When the haves come down here to the have-nots for their miracles, they leave their checkbooks home! They wait until they’re back up there in front of the cameras to give witness, and they wait until they’re back up there with the rest of the haves to whip out their checkbooks!”

  “Amen!” from Mrs. Bunch. Then everybody, “Amen!”

  “Well, when The Rapture comes, and it’s close at hand, I feel it in my bones, when The Rapture comes, we’ll have something to say to the haves. Praise the Lord will we have something to say to them!”

  Everybody: “Praise the Lord!”

  “We’re going to fix our eyes on their eyes and we’re going to say, ‘Where were you when we were needing? We were there when you were needing, but where were you when we were needing?’”

  “WHERE WERE YOU?” Mrs. Bunch called out.

  “The Rapture’s coming!” someone else cried.

  “You know it, brother!” Daddy shouted back. He came from around the lectern with his hands balled to fists, thick eyebrows scowling, voice cracking out over us like a whip: “WHEREWEREYOU? WHEREWEREYOU? WHEREWEREYOU?”

  “Where were you?”—Mrs. Bunch.

  “Shout it out!” Daddy ordered.

  “WHEREWEREYOU?”

  Then Daddy started them chanting: “Rather be a have-not when The Rapture comes, wouldn’t be a have if I could, and uh rather be a have-not when The Rapture comes, wouldn’t be a have if I could, and uh,” working it up like a train chugging “rather … be … a … have … not … rather … be … a … have … not … uh … rather be a … have-not … uh … rather be a have-not … uh … rather be a have-not, a have-not, a have-not, a have-not, a have-not—”

  The real truth was deep inside me I would rather be a have, which was why The Rapture sometimes scared the living daylights out of me. When God came down to take us back up with Him, be caught in my true thoughts like a cat with my paw in the fishbowl.

  After church, while Mum made dinner, I drove far down into The Hollow with Daddy, to call on Willard Peyton, who was too old and frail to leave his house.

  On the way there, Daddy stopped the van long enough for me to pick wild flowers from a field, to take to Mr. Peyton.

  I arranged the flowers in an old Tropicana orange-juice quart, while Daddy sat on Willard Peyton’s bed, in the center of his shack on Sunny Sky Drive, and held his hand.

  The biggest thing in the shack besides the bed was an RCA color TV with a nineteen-inch screen, set on the floor. Mr. Peyton had it tuned in to Guy Pegler.

  Daddy motioned to me to turn the sound down and said, “We missed you this morning, Willard.”

  “Royal, I’m heading for the barn.”

  “I came to pray with you, Willard.”

  “I sent something in to Oral Roberts, sent something to Rex Humbard, even sent something to him”—pointing at the TV—“but all their prayers don’t seem to be doing any good. Worrying about my dog, Royal, who’ll take him.”

  “These prayers are on the house, Willard,” said Daddy.

  While Daddy prayed for him, I looked out the window at old Yellow, Willard’s dog, moping in the yard under a car up on blocks, like he had what Willard had.

  Some folks from The Hand said Willard Peyton was a miser, and had more money than any one of them made in a year, stuffed in a tin can and put in the ground behind his shack.

  I went out in the sun awhile, petted Yellow, waiting for Daddy to finish up. When I went back inside, the free 800 number was flashing across the bottom of the screen, for all the viewers who wanted to order the P.S. charm by phone.

  “I just wonder who’ll take old Yellow in,” Willard Peyton said, letting his head fall back on the pillow after Daddy’s prayers. “I tell you, Royal, if this is a minor stroke like they say, I’d like to know what a major one is. Old Yellow don’t have no one but me.”

  Daddy said, “Job said in III: 25, ‘That which I have greatly feared has come upon me.’ When doesn’t it? When doesn’t it?”

  Then Daddy kissed him and motioned for me to put the sound back on the TV, and we headed home.

  “We could take Yellow,” I said as we rode along.

  “We add dog food bills to cat food bills, we’ll be eating Alpo our own selves. Someone from The Hand will take the dog when the time comes.”

  “He doesn’t have any family, does he?”

  “He’s the last.”

  “Will The Hand get the money he’s rumored to have?”

  “I don’t know, honey,” said Daddy, “but we’d lose more than we’d get, if we was to inherit it. Willard Peyton’s been coming to The Hand since back in the days when we had cotton-stocking, gingham-dress, sawdust-trail revivals. He’s old stock, and we’d gain nothing with his passing.”

  “Still and all, I wonder what he’s got.”

  “‘The love of money is the root of all evil,’ Opal. I Timothy VI: 10.”

  “I don’t love it. I don’t have it to love. I just wonder what
it’d be like to have any.”

  “Never mind,” Daddy said, sighing.

  “We never seem to save any we get.”

  “Well, sweetheart, money’s like manure, does no good till it’s spread.”

  Another sigh from him. I got mad at myself for mentioning money, rattled on about how glad I was to be starting my new job down to Bunch Cleaners. He said he was glad I was glad, but I don’t think either of us was that glad I was getting paid three and a half an hour to go through dirty clothes looking for loose change, and put clean clothes on hangers under plastic.

  When we got back home, the whole house smelled of roast chicken, and Mum came out barefoot to meet us, saying, “Jesse Pegler was by to bring regards from ACE. I said what you doing here when your Daddy’s live on TV now? He said it wasn’t live no more. Did you know it wasn’t live no more, Royal?”

  “No, Arnelle, I did not. It’s not my business to keep track of Guy Pegler. … Poor old Willard is going to croak.” Daddy went over and plopped down in his Barcalounger in the living room.

  Mum said to me, “Jesse Pegler said to say he was by. Calls you Oh-Pull.”

  I laughed and clapped my hands together. “He always says Oh-Pull.”

  “Says Oh-Pull,” Mum giggled.

  “What’s got into you two?” Daddy said. “I’m telling your mother Willard Peyton’s going to pass, and you two are all worked up over some boy saying a name funny.”

  “He was looking for you, I think,” Mum told me. “He’s not just some boy, Royal. He’s Guy Pegler’s youngest, and a real nice boy. Real nice!”

  “I don’t give a hoot,” Daddy said.

  “There’s something I want to take up with you, too,” Mum said, “talking of giving a hoot. I don’t give a hoot for you expecting payment of any kind for a miracle our Lord performed! Royal, I didn’t like you saying in your sermon the Cheeks should have wrote us a check.”

  “That was not what I said, Arnelle, so you didn’t listen.”

  “You might just as well have said it. I hate to think we got money on the brain and that’s all. They offered us a CheckCheek Security System, free of charge, equal in value to one thousand dollars, and that is payment enough if you wanted to accept it.”

  “Did he walk way over here?” I said.