One Sabbath dawn Mary shook him awake. He opened his eyes and stared sleepily at her transfigured face.
“Bart,” she commanded, “kneel and pray.”
He blinked in bewilderment and burrowed deeper into his pillow.
She went on in a breathless singsong, “De Lawd, He come in a vision, and I see His eyes running over with tears of blood, and I hear His voice like a mournful pleading, ‘Mary, Mary, wake your child and teach him to pray.’ ”
He peeped at her over the edge of the sheet. She began to moan, strangely and beautifully. Her small spare body rocked back and forth. Her tears were streaming.
He was frightened and stirred. He reached for her hand. “Mam, Mam, I can’t find Jesus. I search’ in the Bible. He warn’t there! I search’ one night in the lonesome graveyard, and I heard the ha’nts wail. But I couldn’t find Jesus. He warn’t there!”
Mary beat upon her breasts. “Search your heart, my son!”
His face was tortured. It was screwed up in a desperate agony of straining toward God. An icy chill rushed over him.
Mary persisted inexorably: “Can’t you hear de rush of wings? Can’t you hear de los’ lambs bleating on de hills? Can’t you hear de Marster’s voice, ‘Come up higher. Sinner, rise! Come up higher. Sinner rise!’? Ain’t you feel de monstrous light what strike and blind? Ain’t you heart rise up in your mouth, and your conscience stab like a sword? Can’t you see de little Jesus holding out His bleeding hands, and de water and blood gushing out of His side? Rise, my son, rise!”
He was swept out on the tide of her passion. She began again her strange sweet moaning. He found himself swaying. Music surged through him. He flung back the covers and stood erect. His face became radiant.
Mary stared at him, still now and watchful.
The music grew. Suddenly there emanated from his heart a voice of matchless purity singing over and over, “Kind Jesus, kind Jesus, thy servant waits on the Lord.”
He stretched out his hands and groped toward the open window. Mary did not touch him. She would rather have seen him fling himself out than disturb the mysterious ways of God.
In the half-light, with the little bird calling, Bart saw the vision. He saw the heavens split asunder, and God with a crown on His long white hair, and His face too powerful for the eyes of man. God in a chariot with golden wheels and golden spokes that shone like a thousand glittering suns.
And Bart saw the Devil wrestling with a boy, and the boy was Bart. All around them the red flames leaped like horrible licking tongues. The Devil had gained the uppermost hand, for what with the fire and the face of God the boy could not see.
The Lord said, “Satan, let my servant go!” The sound of that voice was a peal of thunder. The Devil clapped his hands to his ringing ears. His proud tail shriveled between his legs. He fell into outermost darkness without a mumbling word.
The boy began to plead toward that blinding light for mercy on his soul. God in His chariot barred the way to the gates of gold. The boy pleaded, “Lord God, have mercy!” But God was stern.
Then the boy saw Jesus standing in the gates with the crown of thorns on His head, the mark of the nails in His bleeding hands and His bleeding feet, and the water and blood in a sad stream down His side. The face of Jesus was the face of a little child. Bart stretched out a humble hand, and Jesus smiled. Jesus spoke in a voice like a rippling brook. Jesus said, “Father, forgive this poor sinner. For him I done suffer and die. Forgive him as I have forgive him. Bid him enter into Thy kingdom.”
God was soothed. God said gently, “Come, my son.” The boy ran along beside that chariot into the kingdom of heaven.
Bart cried out in a loud voice, “Hallelujah! I been redeemed! The Lord is my savior! I been redeemed!”
The great tears sluiced down Mary’s smiling face.
That was the hour that Bart got religion. From that day on, God walked beside him like a natural man.
A mournful wail cut across Bart’s thinking. Who-ee, Who-ee! and the sound was a soul in torment. It was the Lucy Evelyn giving up the ghost and going to meet the mermaids of the sea. For a moment Bart brooded over this poignant fancy, then he struck his fist in the palm of his hand and muttered softly, “Great Scott! I see now, Lord.”
His suppliant attitude changed to furious energy. The Lucy Evelyn had sunk. He had no doubt of that at all now, nor any more time or pity to waste on her. The who-ee, who-ee, was the whistle of a train pulling into South Station. It was also a sign from God.
He streaked through the crowded market. The cobbled streets and narrow sidewalks struck crashing cymbals of fierce activity against his seasoned ear. The rumble of wagon wheels was continuous, and drivers cursed each other as they tried to thread their huge loads and huge horses through the nearly impassable lanes. Pushcart peddlers were everywhere, balancing their beautiful pyramids of showy fruit and making a precarious way out of the market center to the street corners of Boston. Wagoners, bound for the alleyways of suburbs and housewives at kitchen windows, beat against the incoming traffic, and here and there a horse reared in protest.
Curb salesmen shouted their wares, their piled-up produce blocking the sidewalks along with retail buyers inspecting the open crates. Wholesalers stood in their doorways watching the truckers unload their freight. Faneuil Hall was a droning hive in and out of which darted agile jobbers to inform the busy sellers, at their rented stalls, of merchandise en route by train or boat from every corner of the country and the farthest reaches of the earth.
The scent of fruit and vegetables struck the morning freshness from the air and substituted the headiness of summer produce. Color overwhelmed the eye, glowing apples, golden apricots, oranges, lemons, green avocados, cream-yellow cantaloupes, purple plums, buttery pears, prickletop pineapples, wine-red cherries, blush peaches, sweet Georgia melons, dust-brown figs, the dark oblong of dates, and the last of the season’s strawberries.
Out of crates and barrels and bags and boxes poured summer squash, asparagus, broccoli, beets, artichokes, onions, lettuce, peas, cucumbers, peppers, potatoes, corn, string beans, spinach, tomatoes, and limas in the more modest livery of vegetables.
Italian faces, Greek faces, Jewish faces, and Yankee faces swirled past Bart as he ducked a box of apples and slid around a side of beef. He was in frantic search of his broker. He was going to tell Pennywell to wire every jobber in New York and Philadelphia until he got enough favorable answers for two carlots of bananas. There would be a banana shortage in Boston. He believed this with everything in him. He would corner the market and make a killing while his competitors were feverishly canvassing the concerns that had already sent him their limit.
CLEO AND JUDY came out of the subway at Scollay Square and turned toward the market center. Cleo felt a sharp distaste at the surge and clangor around her that made her pause at every store front where a man might come charging out of a doorway to brush aside any women or children who stood in the path of commerce.
Here in the market was all the maleness of men. This was their world in which they moved without the command of women. The air hung heavy with their male smell and the pungent odor of their sweat. Their rolled-up sleeves showed the ripple of their hard muscles. Their thin, wet shirts outlined their iron backs. Curses ran lightly over their lips, wonderful expressive words that Cleo stored in the back of her head. As she neared them, their eyes approved and dismissed her, because they were too busy for long appraisal of anything that could not be bought and sold in the Boston Market.
Cleo, walking carefully over the cobblestones that tortured her toes in her stylish