Great Jehoshaphat and Gully Dirt! Part 47

"Papa?"

"Bandershanks, baby, you've talked enough for one day! Don't say no more!"

"Papa, I just wanta know when you're gonna let Black Idd wake up! I ain't gonna tell n.o.body Stray's in the flour barrel and Ned's in the oil drum!"

"Bandershanks!"

Every man in the store looked at me. Then at Papa. They began to laugh. And their laughing was real-not like Mister Hawk's.

"You ain't mad at me, are you, Papa?"

Papa said something about being glad of the day I was born, but I couldn't understand much of it because the men were still laughing.

"You ain't gonna switch my legs?"

"No. But I was just thinking-if your legs were growing as fast as your ears and tongue, you'd be grown already."

"I'd be a lady?"

"No doubt of it!"

"Could I go to school?"

"I aim to send you to school right this minute! Wiley, son, you take Bandershanks over to the schoolhouse. Just ask the teacher to let her sit in one of the empty desks 'till dinner time. She's got no more business here at the store right now."

"But, Papa, how'll I get across that branch?" Somehow, I didn't want to go to the schoolhouse. I wanted to go home and hide under Grandma's bed.

"Wiley can show you a narrow spot."

"Come on, Bandershanks, I'll help you jump the branch! It ain't wide!"

"Mrs. Goode! You're still here? Church is over! The congregation's gone home. Why, the custodian is ready to lock up!

Come on. I'll help you across the street."

"What's that you say?"

"I said, 'I'll wheel you across the street.'"

"I thought you said you'd help me jump the branch. Oh? It's you, Dr. s.h.i.+rey! Why, thank you. Yes, I must get back to the nursing home. You're so kind to bother with an old lady like me.

My, my, I was lost in a reverie that took me back, way, way back, Dr. s.h.i.+rey."

"How far was that, Mrs. Goode?"

"Just a minute. Let me get my hearing aid adjusted. This thing's a nuisance. Pastor, I don't think you could understand how far it was. Things were different then. It was over half a century ago, when I lived back along the Ouachita hills, in a plain, bare, dogtrot house, where bread was white and the goose was fat and a man's mule was part of his family. We still thought G.o.d had made us all-man, goose, and mule-out of the same gully dirt. Ah, I was a child! If things went bad, all I had to do was crawl under my grandma's bed! Or run to Papa. Or to Mama."

"The grownups-what'd they do when things were bad?"

"Well, come to think of it, they just did the best they could and let the Good Lord take care of the rest. My father did. No matter what came, Papa would just holler out 'GREAT JEHOSHAPHAT AND GULLY DIRT!' and keep going."

As Dr. s.h.i.+rey rolled my chair around and started me up the center aisle, the fringe of my shawl brushed against the chancel rail. I was ashamed that an hour before I had wanted to kick at it.