Running on Red Dog Road Read online

  All that time he was talking to Grandma, looking right past my mother.

  Being ignored like that did not set well with her. When the doctor picked up his black valise to leave, Grandma said my mother reared right up on her hind legs and told the doctor this was her child, and she knew a place where something else could be done. She had driven a car since she was fourteen years old, so she’d picked Hursey up then and there and carried him out, all swaddled in a quilt, and laid him on the backseat.

  My daddy and Grandpa were both down in the mines, Grandma said, and there was no way to get word to them, so my mother drove through a snow storm to the hospital in Beckley, leaving Grandma to tend to Vonnie, her still a babe in arms. A man saw her struggling up the icy hospital steps, Hursey heavy in her arms, and took him from her and carried him inside. The man smelled of antiseptic and another odor she couldn’t name, camphor maybe, and when she followed him through the double doors those same odors, stronger still and mixed with bleach, sickened her stomach. She swallowed hard to quell the urge to retch. When she saw a Christmas tree in the corner of the room, she realized it was the pine sap she smelled. Unable to think of Christmas, now only days away, she turned her back on the tree and its hateful red and green lights.

  The overheated waiting room steamed with faceless people in woolen sweaters and scarves and coats that gave off the odor of wet dogs. They hadn’t made her wait in that room though, and she was grateful to the man for that. Turned out he was the first of many doctors brought in to shake their heads over this child who was sick unto death.

  The doctor ordered the nurses to strip Hursey and put him in and out of an ice bath until they got his temperature down. Over the next day or two they put him through every test they knew to do. Mother told her the worst were the spinal taps, holding him down while they stabbed long needles into his back that made him scream like an animal. And the next day they did it again. Finally the big-shot doctors, who were pretty near as useless as the company doctor from home, least by her way of thinking, came up with a name for what my brother had.

  Spinal meningitis.

  It was a relief in a way to put a name to the enemy they were fighting.

  But Grandma said that was before my mother knew exactly what it was they were dealing with. The doctor who carried Hursey into the hospital explained that spinal meningitis was an infection caused by bacteria that somehow got into the bloodstream and settled in the spinal cord and the brain. He was trying a course of sulfa drugs, but she should know she had a very sick boy. It was a fearsome battle ahead, and make no mistake, this disease could kill him.

  If Hursey had only got the spinal meningitis a few years later, they might have given him penicillin shots, and that would have cured him before the disease took its hold. But it was 1937 that he got sick. It wasn’t until 1944 that a patient at Fairmont General Hospital in West Virginia became the first person ever to be treated with a full course of penicillin. Fairmont was only a Sunday drive from Beckley. But for seven years plus the few hours it took to drive there, our brother might not have lost his hearing.

  Grandma said everybody was praying God would perform a miracle, and several went with Grandpa to the hospital and laid on hands and prayed that Hursey be delivered from the sickness that had him in its grip, but it wasn’t to be.

  At least not yet.

  Days passed with him in that bed, his head bent back and neck rigid, the slightest movement causing him to cry out in pain. Unable to take more than a few sips of water laced with a little sugar and salt, his baby fat fell off, and muscle too, leaving only the skin and bones of him, at first feverish and convulsing, then pale and still.

  But Grandma said Hursey was a fighter.

  And she gave God the glory for that, for giving Hursey that fighting spirit.

  No matter how many times He let her down, Grandma could always find something good to say about God.

  Grandma said the doctors came and stood over Hursey’s bed, defeat showing in the slump of their shoulders as they walked away, not knowing whether he’d pull through another night. Yet pull through he did. After a few weeks, he began to improve. His eyes stayed open longer. And he was able to eat a little. Bananas and custard and melted ice cream began to fill out the hollows of his face. Soon he could sit up in bed, then in a chair. Before long he was walking around the halls. Finally the day came he got to go home and be the child he was meant to be, playing in the yard and getting dirty like little boys will.

  Grandma said the good Lord had answered their prayers.

  When our mother called him for supper one day, he never even looked up. She walked to where he sat holding a wooden car his daddy had made him for Christmas, which they’d put off celebrating until he got home. “Hursey Clev, come on and eat before it gets cold,” she’d said to him, thinking he was caught up in some little boy daydream of snips and snails and puppy dog tails. But when he still didn’t take notice, she reached down and touched his blond head.

  It startled him, and he looked up.

  I imagined my brother watching Mother’s mouth form shapes that floated toward him and dissolved into thin air without making a sound.

  And Mother would have felt the words he breathed out tremble her eardrums and make waves in her head until she finally allowed herself forced herself willed herself to hear what he was telling her plain as day.

  “Mommy, I can’t hear you.”

  He was five years old.

  I didn’t understand why, despite all the prayers of people of unbounded faith, God went against His word and turned a blind eye on my brother.

  And I told Grandma so.

  “Not thy will, but Mine be done,” Grandma reminded me, like she’d heard Him say it yesterday.

  I wondered why healing my brother wouldn’t be God’s will. From what I knew, Hursey hadn’t acted near as bad as me. Maybe I’d turn up deaf, or worse.

  Grandma told me nothing bad was going to happen to me, so to quit talking foolish. As for why God hadn’t healed Hursey, she said it wasn’t for us to question why. One day He would reveal His plan in all its glory and we’d understand clear as could be.

  No matter how many promises He broke, Grandma never got mad at God.

  Over the next several years, doctors, specialists in hearing, tested my brother and fitted him with hearing aids, bulky black boxes that strapped to his chest with ugly wires running to earpieces that hurt his tender ears and didn’t help him hear even the loudest sound. He was stone deaf and no hearing aid would ever help. But they sold the useless things to my mother anyway, one after the other, always a newer better one, and for high prices. Of course, it was really hope she was paying for, and sometimes hope comes in a black box with a high price.

  One day Hursey ripped his earpieces out and sent the newest ugly box, wires flailing from it like tentacles, into our backyard fishpond to drown under the water lilies. He refused to wear hearing aids again or to listen to anybody who tried to get him to. And if my brother didn’t want to listen, he had the perfect solution.

  He closed his eyes.

  16

  The Flesh Is Weak

  We were waiting for God to perform a miracle. And Merle Hobart was waiting to help Him.

  Merle Hobart pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at the sweat on his brow as two middle-aged men, turned so much alike I believed they were twins, separated from the front of the prayer line and made their way across the stage to where he stood in a golden circle of light. Both told him they were afflicted with a lifelong weakness for alcohol. Merle Hobart, white shirtsleeves rolled halfway up his forearms, reached out and placed a hand on each brother’s head.

  “Get thee out, Satan! In the name of Jesus, I command you!”

  His voice was strong, with more than a hint of backwoods in it.

  It was a voice easy to believe.

  Slain in the spirit, the men fell back and were caught and lowered to the floor by Merle Hobart’s disciples. After the brothers r
egained their senses, they kneeled at his feet, his light reflected on their faces.

  “Listen, for I am speaking to you. No, the Lord is speaking to you through me. He asked me to tell you He is healing you of the craving for alcohol this very minute. Demons are leaving your body as I’m talking to you. Jesus is filling you up now. I felt the power of His blood surge through my arms like a bolt!”

  The men rose to their feet and stumbled off the stage, sobs contorting their faces.

  Looking up to Heaven, Merle Hobart prayed, “Thank You, Jesus. Amen and amen.”

  Words of praise floated up from the crowd:

  “Hallelujah!”

  “Thank you, Jesus!”

  “Praise God!”

  Every day at two o’clock Grandma sewed buttons and turned collars and darned socks while she listened to Merle Hobart on the radio. He was a young preacher just starting to make a name for himself, and like my grandma and grandpa, he was in the Pentecostal Holiness Church. Grandma and Grandpa had a lot of faith in God and a good bit in Merle Hobart, so when he announced he was holding a healing meeting hardly more than a day’s drive from home, they decided to take my brother to be prayed for, although they had to talk him into it.

  Hursey was twelve. I was five and wanted to stick my behind in the backseat every time the car left the driveway, so I begged until Grandma agreed to let me tag along. Since Vonnie, two years older, was in school, Grandma asked Sister Wood to stay with her for the one night we’d be gone. We packed up fried chicken and biscuits and hardboiled eggs and apples and headed out—Grandpa driving, Grandma telling him how to, and me and Hursey already squabbling in the backseat.

  It was late when we got to where the meeting was being held, so we found a room in a tourist home to spend the night and rest up for the healing service the next day.

  The line of sick people coiled itself like a wounded serpent around the innards of the tent. The man in front of me, so frail I could count his rib bones under his shirt, lay stretched out on a narrow table with wheels, his body tied on with lengths of clothesline. A little girl, withered leg dangling, slept in her daddy’s arms, and behind her a young man dragged himself along on homemade crutches.

  We never seemed to get closer, although we must have, because the sick and infirm snailed across the stage in a sluggish trail of suffering, littering the floor with crutches and canes and tears offered up in the ecstasy of the healing power of God. I kept wanting to witness a healing I could see, like somebody growing back a missing arm or leg right there in front of me, but not a soul did, even though there was a bunch could have used one.

  To pass the time, Hursey and I played a game where he’d draw one of the sick people and I had to guess which one it was, until Grandma saw what we were doing and put a stop to it. After that we played I Spy and Twenty Questions. We couldn’t talk out loud so we used sign language to spell everything out, holding our hands low so we wouldn’t call unnecessary attention to ourselves. Grandma was dead set against calling attention. She frowned a little and started to say something but decided to leave well enough alone.

  A woman with frizzly red hair wheeled herself across the stage. Paralyzed since she fell down her cellar stairs, she said she’d lost all feeling in her legs and couldn’t walk a step.

  “Rise! Rise up and walk in the name of Jesus!”

  The woman pushed up from her wheelchair and took a step toward the flock gathered together in the name of God and Merle Hobart. She started out, her steps halting at first, then speeding up as she trotted back and forth across the stage, shouting and raising her arms in jubilation.

  Again, Merle Hobart turned his eyes toward Heaven and prayed.

  “Thank you, Jesus. Amen and amen.”

  “Praise the Lord! You won’t be needing that old wheelchair anymore. Jesus is standing next to you right now. I can see you leaning on His everlasting arms.”

  Merle Hobart gave a nod to the choir and they commenced to sing “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms.”

  I worried God might not bless Hursey with His favor because I was there, tainting Grandpa and Grandma’s goodness. Grandpa had caught me lying more than once, so I was sure God knew all about me. It wouldn’t be fair for Him to take my sins out on Hursey, but I’d suspected that God wasn’t always fair from other dealings I’d had with him. Still, I didn’t want to be too hard to get along with. All He needed to get back in with me was to heal my brother. And if He was in the mood, maybe He’d go right down the line and heal everybody else that needed it.

  People suffering with headaches and toothaches and bellyaches and every other ache you could think of were prayed for, and we were still nowhere near the front. When I realized we weren’t going to get close enough for Merle Hobart and God to heal Hursey, all I wanted was to go home and wash the film of sickness and sorrow off me, have a supper of fried eggs and sliced tomatoes, and climb in my own bed under Grandma’s homemade quilts.

  But Grandma and Grandpa kept hoping until the last song was sung and the last prayer was prayed. Grandpa’s shoulders, already stooped from working low coal in mines under the West Virginia hills, bent a little lower, and Grandma had that set look on her face, which meant she didn’t want to talk about it, and she didn’t want to hear anybody else talk about it either. We went back to the tourist home to gather our things and get ready for the long drive home.

  “You go wash up, but don’t you be getting in that bathtub. Looks clean enough, but there’s no telling who’s been there before you,” Grandma said, filling the sink with hot water and handing me a washrag and a new bar of Ivory soap she’d brought from home.

  “Wash down far as Possible, wash up far as Possible, then wash Possible.”

  Grandma usually grinned at me when she said that, but there was no grin left in her.

  We packed up and followed our dim headlights away from Journey’s End Tourist Home.

  I asked Grandpa why God needed Merle Hobart to help Him heal those people. Grandpa said everything is part of God’s master plan, and like the hymn said, we’d understand it all by and by. It seemed to me it was a piss-poor plan. I’d recently heard somebody say piss-poor, and ever since I’d been dying to say it out loud, but of course I didn’t dare.

  Down the road apiece, we stopped to get us a slice of pie and a cup of black coffee for Grandpa. Hursey was the one that spotted him sitting next to a woman in the back booth of the diner and elbowed Grandpa, who nudged Grandma to look.

  “Why, that’s Merle Hobart,” Grandma said.

  I could tell something didn’t set too well with her.

  Merle Hobart brushed a stray lock of the woman’s hair back from her face, his wedding band glinting under the fluorescent tube. I didn’t recognize him at first—he looked so ordinary without that golden halo of light shining down on him. But it was him all right, sitting all cozied up to that redheaded woman who said she fell down her cellar stairs and couldn’t walk a step until she got healed and started running back and forth on the stage shouting glory hallelujah.

  Grandma remarked that she had lost her appetite, but Hursey and I each had a slice of warm crabapple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream oozing down the sides. After we finished eating, Grandpa poured a second cup of coffee into the beat-up thermos he’d used in the mines, and we got back on the road.

  Feeling the hum of the tires on the blacktop, Hursey soon fell asleep, his legs sprawled halfway over my side of the seat. I thought about poking him to make him move over, but I never did. It wasn’t like me to be that considerate. But I expected my brother was all worn out from one more disappointment in his life, although he never told me so and I never asked. Grandma began singing about how we’d understand it all by and by, her voice floating thin and warbly in the dark.

  “Amen and amen,” my grandpa said.

  “Clev,” Grandma said, “I’d just as soon you didn’t start that.”

  Grandma picked up her darning needle and one of Grandpa’s socks just like usual. Today she tune
d the radio to Deke Godby’s Gospel Hour. And just like usual, we never talked about our visit to Merle Hobart.

  17

  Ladies Don’t Sweat

  Taking advantage of the last hot days of summer, Grandpa held a revival where he’d preach every night for two weeks straight, begging and pleading with sinners to come forward and get saved so they wouldn’t burn in an everlasting Hell. The meeting got pretty heated up, what with all the shouting and praying and preaching, and there was no breeze to damper down all those flame-filled words.

  I started looking around for my favorite fan.

  The only one left in the pew rack in front of me advertised Sunset Memorial Park Cemetery. Although the cemetery part appealed to me, somebody had scribbled all over the back. Grandma offered to trade me her Trublood Insurance Company fan, but I wasn’t interested. I thought it said Troubled Insurance Company. Besides, I had my heart set on a fan two pews in front of us, the one with a blue-eyed Jesus in a royal blue robe, kneeling and looking up to a sky-blue Heaven.

  Grandma said she wasn’t putting up with my nonsense because all those fans worked the same and there wasn’t one iota of difference and that I was just being picky for no good reason and she wasn’t having me call unnecessary attention by traipsing all over the church because of some silly notion I had when there was a perfectly good fan right there. No sirree, she was not going to have it.

  She knew I’d mind her, no question about it, but she also knew I’d pout all night. What would the church ladies think? She couldn’t risk it.

  “I guess you can this time, but you best get the one you want right off next time because there’s just no sense in . . .”

  She trailed off quick when Sister Wood came by with a question about the Home Missionary Society meeting at our house next week. Grandma was in charge of the missionary work and Grandpa was in charge of preaching, but in everything else he followed Grandma’s lead like the faithful second-in-command he knew himself to be.