Light While There Is Light. Keith Waldrop

Laodiceans: “These things saith the Amen. . . .” A train was pulling in across the street, stealing J.W.’s thunder and sending a shower of soot down on all of us. There were few listeners anyway, but some left amid the roar. A teenage girl began to laugh and shout into her boyfriend’s ear—he tried then to pull her away from the meeting, but she stayed and so did he. An old woman sitting on a package wrapped in brown paper slipped a little more snuff into her already bulging lip. “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.” The train had stopped and was snorting. “I would thou wert cold or hot.” The black cloud that belched out now blotted the daylight and we could hear nothing but the engine puffing and grinding. Engineers do not like to stop at Sharon, going east; the rails are upgrade then all the way to Easley. The electric voice came through again as the last car rumbled past and the sky slowly reappeared. “Behold I stand at the door and knock. . . .” I could look at the scripture as it was read, because Evangeline had her blue leather Bible open, but I was gazing at my brothers, whom I had not seen for two years but who were now, suitcases and all, crossing the highway from the depot, followed by two of the toughest-looking characters I had ever seen.

      “And I tell you,” J.W. was roaring, “when Jesus comes back to this earth with power and glory and sits down to judge the quick and the dead, is he going to find you with your lamps trimmed and waiting? Is he going to find you ready at the Rapture or will he say depart from me ye wicked into everlasting damnation I never knew ye?” Stella started playing for the invitation. Evangeline opened the book to “Just As I Am” and I scratched out the melody underneath the heavy chords. Most of the sidewalk congregation moved away quickly, but those who did not were soon cornered and exhorted to give their hearts to Jesus. A tall black man with white hair and expensive clothes nodded yes he was already the Lord’s and touched the hem of his jacket to make sure it still covered his hip pocket. The woman on the package was weeping and with a crooked index finger scooped a mass of snuff out of her jaw and slapped it on the sidewalk. When it was all over and the microphone and the accordion and my violin were packed away in J.W.’s car, neither Charles nor Julian was to be seen, so I rode back to the campus with the others.

      My mother’s first experience of divine healing was directly after separation from my father. It was rather an informal experience, without a service and without the shock of sudden recovery that is commonly reported. “I told the Lord,” she said, “that I was going to do his will—and he would just have to give me the strength for it.”

      The most obvious improvement was in her eyes. She now found it possible to read the Bible, in moderation, and to look at a certain amount of music. So she started again, after a lapse of twenty-odd years, teaching piano. At first she took on neighbor children, a few from the church, some friends of mine, and little by little built up a large class. The house was always ringing with some botched melody, which she would correct mercilessly, though often still she listened with her eyes closed. When we moved to South Carolina, what she regretted most leaving behind was her horde of keyboard thumpers who, twice a year, slicked up enough to be presented in public recital. Her students loved her, and some of them even learned to play.