When she came downstairs Edna Mae and Luke were still bickering. Luke was on his way out—why didn’t he just leave? And Edna Mae was so exhausted she could barely keep her balance swaying and staggering like a drunk woman—why didn’t Mawmaw just go to bed?
Dawn thought how strange it was, how embarrassing almost—(she wouldn’t have wanted Miss Schine to know!)—at this late hour of this terrible day her mother and her brother were standing there bickering about something so profound as the end of the world.
NOT SINCE HE’D ARRIVED in Muskegee Falls seventeen years before as an ardent young minister had anyone in the St. Paul Missionary congregation seen Reverend Dennis so emotional in the pulpit.
It was as if the hell-fires of the World Trade Center towers were lapping at the very roof and windows of the church. Almost, you could see in Reverend Dennis’s ruddy face and wet glaring eyes the gleam of these fires. He had removed his preacher’s dark formal coat and he had torn open the collar of his white cotton shirt at the throat; he had rolled the sleeves to his elbows and it was fascinating to see how, when he waved his arms, the sleeves inched downward, and he had to push them up again, impatiently. His graying dark hair was damp with perspiration like gel. His voice was piercing as a horn you could not escape even if you dared press your fingers over your ears.
Enthralled Dawn listened. She was squeezed in close between Anita and Noah and gripped the hands of each tightly for she knew that they were very frightened and that their mother seemed often to be forgetting them in this confused time. She would afterward not recall much of what Reverend Dennis said but she would never forget the elation of the man’s voice and how badly she had wanted, during the sermon, which careened and lurched like a drunken boat, the minister’s eyes to fix upon her.
“‘After these things I looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven, and the first voice which I heard was of a trumpet speaking with me saying, “Come up hither, and I will show you these things which must be done hereafter” ’—my brothers and sisters in Christ, could any words be more timely than these words of St. John the Divine—of the Book of Revelation? This ‘terrorist attack’ is God’s warning to us, we cannot ignore as we have ignored such warnings as rising tides, rising temperatures, the tides of hell—abortions, birth control—the rise of homosexuality and such abominations and anathema to the Lord— ” In a quavering voice Reverend Dennis spoke for more than an hour, raging, and weeping; his fingers plucked at the collar of his shirt, that was dark now with perspiration, so that you could see the shadow of his chest hair beneath, that made Dawn’s breath quicken, as if she’d had a glimpse of something forbidden—her father part-unclothed, in the shadows of her parents’ bedroom at the old house; her brother Luke shoving a bare foot into the leg of his jeans, his face fixed in concentration so that he had not noticed her staring at his supple body, the small bulge of his tight-fitting white shorts between his legs, the taut muscles of his thighs.
After the sermon, Reverend Dennis appeared to be exhausted. All who heard him were exhausted. Dawn had been waiting for him to speak of her father as sometimes he spoke of Luther Dunphy in the pulpit, to ask the congregation to “send prayers” his way; but today in his excitement over the terrorist attack Reverend Dennis seemed to have forgotten Luther Dunphy.
Edna Mae tried to speak to the minister but could not get through to him past others who were crowded about him.
It was unfair! She was the wife of Luther Dunphy, and they would not let her through to speak with Reverend Dennis.
Luke had driven the family to church, and now drove them home. In the passenger’s seat Edna Mae was fretting and weeping as a baffled child might weep.
“They’re forgetting Luther! They’re forgetting who he is, what he did—the sacrifices he made.”
Dawn said, “Don’t cry, Mawmaw. They won’t forget him.”
Luke said: “God won’t forget. That’s all that matters, Mawmaw.”
In the backseat of the vehicle Dawn sat between the shivering children who were strangely quiet. On either side of their big sister they sat without fidgeting as if, so early in the day, they were already tired and ready for bed. Dawn sought out her brother’s evasive eyes in the rearview mirror but he avoided looking at her.
Luke persisted, as if in mockery: “God is all that matters, see? The rest is bullshit.”
HELP ME, JESUS! My husband needs me with him in his hour of need.
And yet, in the morning, again Edna Mae could not lift her head from her pillow. A terrible weariness had sunk into her bones in the night turning their marrow to lead.
Each morning before she left for school Dawn came to plead with her—“Mawmaw! Wake up.”
Edna Mae wanted to protest, she was awake. Her brain was awake. Yet, she could not open her eyes.
Barely she could move her limbs. If her limbs were not leaden-heavy they were light as air and detached from her, incapable of being moved.