Revival Season

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To my parents, Henry and Edna West, for roots and wings


ONE
We rumbled toward Georgia from the west, the direction from which all great and powerful things originated. “Except the sun,” Caleb said, feeling particularly feisty as the novelty of another revival season settled in. Ma turned and shot him the look where her dark eyes narrowed into slits. Then she spun back around, closed her eyes, and mumbled a prayer: “Lord, watch over these Your children. Use us to do Your will. Amen.”
Done praying, Ma refocused her attention to the map she was holding in the air; her finger landed on a bold black dot, far from the big star at the center of the state. We always went to smaller cities—tiny dots that surrounded the capital’s star like satellites. Her stubby, unmanicured nail tracing the winding path to Americus, Georgia, was nothing like the polished nails in the magazines that I snuck glimpses of in the library. Nails that we would never be able to have, since vanity was an unforgivable sin. I’d learned that lesson the hard way last spring when my best friend, Micah, and I had sat in the middle of her bedroom floor, an open bottle of nail polish between us. Micah lifted the wand and smoothed the shiny orb of light pink lacquer on my thumbnail. So faint no one will notice, she said. When I got home the next morning and linked my hand with Papa’s to pray for breakfast, he forced me to remove the polish under his watchful eye before anyone could lift a fork to their mouths.
I watched Ma in the rearview mirror as the minivan merged onto the Texas highway. Papa turned up the radio as our van became one of an anonymous throng of vehicles barreling beneath an overpass. But none of the other cars had the important task that we did: driving nine hundred miles to bring the word of God to people who needed to be saved from their sins. The exhilaration before the first revival of a new season meant I could barely sit still between the cracked windows whose building pressure buffeted my ears. We’d been doing this for years—twelve, to be exact—but somehow this first moment of revival season, when everything was possible, never got old.
We pulled into our ceremonial first stop—a tacky diner 281 miles away from our house in East Mansfield, Texas. Soon, conversation flowed as we pierced straws through plastic lids and drank the syrupy sweet soda we were only allowed to have during this inaugural revival season meal. With our hands curled around sweaty paper cups, Papa dreamed out loud.
“I might break the two-thousand-soul mark this year. Wouldn’t that be a blessing?”
It would be more than a blessing—it would be a miracle. The two-thousand-soul mark had been elusive for all of Papa’s years of leading revivals; it was three times more than last year’s soul count, and it would be even harder to accomplish this year.
“There will be lines around the tent waiting for me when I arrive. This is the year, Hortons.”
My eyes searched the table’s shiny surface as I took another deep sip. The caffeine made the lights extra bright as they bounced off the orange plastic tables, and it amplified the clink of ice coming from surrounding booths. The combined effect made Papa’s words seem slightly forced.
“Any naysayer would tell you that’s impossible, but they don’t know my God,” he said.
I wondered if a small part of Papa believed what those people said, especially after what happened at last year’s revival, but I pushed the doubts out of my mind. Doubt was a sin.
“Back to the van, Hortons!” Papa urged. I savored the last sips of my soda and stilled the jitter in my limbs as I took my half-eaten lunch to the trash. Each rotation of the tires brought us closer to Americus, and the promise of what this revival season might have in store came into focus as we slid beneath the mournful weeping willows of Louisiana. As Louisiana passed us off to Mississippi, a thick wall of humidity smacked us in the face. By the time Georgia’s plump peach welcomed us on the highway sign, the weight of this year’s revival season fell on the car like a lead blanket.
Papa cracked the front windows to let in the moist air. “You smell that? That’s the smell of pagan land.”
My little sister, Hannah, rocked next to me; clicking sounds rose from the back of her throat, and her elbows were frozen in acute angles in front of her chest.
“Can you make her be quiet?” Papa hissed toward us in the back seat. I patted Hannah’s knee and handed her the soft rubber ball that was reserved for moments like these. She reached out a clawlike hand and pulled it toward her chest, rolling the ball between her fingers and kneading it like dough. Her limbs slackened, and she loosened her jaw.
Ma and Papa never told me or my younger brother, Caleb, what was wrong with Hannah. At least not directly. Once, back in Texas, I woke up long after I thought everyone else was asleep. As I tiptoed past my parents’ bedroom on my way downstairs for a glass of water, I overheard Papa say that Hannah had cerebral palsy, but his accusatory tone sounded like Hannah’s disease was the result of some flaw in Ma’s faith.