“Yes, ma’am,” I said, but I knew he wouldn’t tell it like that because he didn’t know nothing about what I’d told her. I knew that if I told the truth about how I’d gotten that splinter then I’d have to tell the truth about what I saw them doing to Stump, and then I might’ve found myself telling her about how the rain barrel got broken and about how pink and wrinkled Pastor Chambliss’s body looked when he came around the corner of the house with no shirt on. I sat there and looked out the window and thought about that, and it made my neck feel hot and I could feel my heart beating hard and I felt the blood pumping in my hand like my heart was jammed up under that splinter. I wished I could go back and stop myself from seeing all the things that I’d seen in the past two days, but I knew there wasn’t no way that I could undo any of that now, no matter how bad I wanted to.
Mama put on the brakes at the stop sign at the top of the hill, and then she gave it some gas and we turned left onto the highway and headed toward home. Once we got going faster, the wind blew into the window even stronger and it flipped open the pages of her Bible where she’d sat it up on the dash. I looked at those pages while the wind turned them, and I saw that just about every page had Mama’s handwriting on it. She rolled her window up and then she reached out and closed her Bible and squeezed it down into the seat between her and Stump.
“Jess,” she said again.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“There’s something I need to talk to you about.” I turned and looked out my window again because I didn’t want to look at her when I already knew what she was going to say. I knew she was going to ask me about Mr. Gene Thompson telling her that he saw me and Joe Bill spying on them in the church, and then she was going to ask me why I lied about how I got that splinter. I tried to think about whether or not I should just go ahead and tell her about it all so I wouldn’t have to worry about it no more, just so I knew for sure that I’d finally done the right thing. I figured Joe Bill was in the car with his mom and dad on the way home from church right then, and he was probably telling them all about us seeing Stump inside the church anyway, and his mama had probably already called over to the house and talked to Daddy and he was going to be waiting for us on the porch when we pulled up in front of the house. If Joe Bill didn’t tell his mom and dad, then he’d tell Scooter for sure, and who knew what would happen after he did that.
I put my good hand on the dash and leaned forward in the seat so I could look past Stump and see Mama. I wanted to think of exactly what I should tell her about what all I’d seen, but when I looked at her I saw that she wasn’t even mad. She smiled like she was happy even though she had tears in her eyes.
“We had us a healing in church today,” she said. She looked over at me, and I watched two big tears run down her cheeks, and then she wiped her face and looked back at the road. I leaned back in my seat and felt light-headed because my heart had been beating so fast just the second before and now it felt like it had stopped cold.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“We had us a healing,” she said again. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “This morning, during the service, Pastor Chambliss invited the deacons down front and they all laid their hands on Christopher and prayed for his healing.” I heard her reach out and pat Stump’s leg, and I looked over and saw her give it a little squeeze. “I tell you what,” she said. “God answers prayer. We’ve had us a miracle.” I thought about what Joe Bill had said about them trying to heal Stump by laying on him and putting their hands on him, and then I thought about how Stump had tried to stand up and run away while they were doing it and how much watching it all happen had made Mama cry.
“How do you know there was a miracle?” I asked her.
“Because he spoke,” she said. “He said the only word he’s ever said, and he said it this morning in church with the deacons laying their hands on him and praying for our family.”
“What did he say?”
“‘Mama,’” she said. “He called out for me, and he said it. He said, ‘Mama.’”
I lay my head back on the seat and felt my skin get cold and numb like all the blood had been drained out of my body. I closed my eyes because I was afraid I might throw up if I even opened them to look around. My hand wasn’t even throbbing anymore, and it was like I’d already forgotten about that splinter. None of us made a sound, and all I could hear was the hum of the tires against the road.
“Are you sure it was him?” I asked her.
“I know it was,” she said. “I know it was because other folks heard him too. They were laying their hands on him, and you know how much he doesn’t like that, and I guess it just got to be too much for him and that’s when he hollered out for me. It was so loud in there with the music going and all that praying, and they were on him, and I swear if it hadn’t been the Lord’s work I wouldn’t have been able to hear him. It was a miracle.”
“But what happens if he doesn’t say a word ever again?”
“He will,” she said. “The Lord ain’t going to give us this gift just this one time and then take it away. That ain’t no kind of mercy.”
“But how do you know what God’s going to do?” I said.
“I just know,” she said.
“But how? Maybe God doesn’t want Stump to say nothing else. You tell us all the time that nobody can ever know God’s will.”
“That’s right,” she said. “You can’t. But the Lord doesn’t play no tricks. Evil plays tricks, and there ain’t no room for evil in this family.”
I kept my head back on the seat and swallowed hard even though I knew I wasn’t swallowing nothing but air, and I tried to keep myself from getting sick. I felt my forehead start sweating because I knew that Mama would tell me that I was evil for being the one who hollered out for her and then letting her believe it was Stump. It didn’t even matter whether she knew it was me or not, I felt evil just the same. She rolled her window back down like she was done talking, and that air coming in felt good against my face, even if it was hot and dusty.
“What do you think Daddy’s going to say?” I asked over the sound of the wind pouring into the truck.
“We ain’t going to tell him yet,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll need to see it for himself,” she said. “He ain’t going to believe in miracles no other way.”
“Why wouldn’t he believe it?”
“Because he don’t want to.”
I closed my eyes and thought about Daddy having to see a miracle to believe in it, and then I thought about mirages again, about how miracles might be like that sometimes. It was like Mama was lost in the desert and had gotten so thirsty that she was willing to see anything that might make her feel better about being lost. I knew that she needed to think she heard Stump holler out for her, even if I knew he didn’t, and I wondered if it was a sin to think any less of a miracle just because you know it ain’t real.
I looked down at my hand and I thought about trying to slide that splinter right out, and I took my finger and felt where the end of it stuck out of my palm. The rest of it was right there just beneath my skin like a branch that’s frozen just under the surface of a pond in the wintertime.
“Quit messing with that splinter,” Mama said. “You’re just going to work it down in there deeper, and then I won’t ever be able to get it out.”
MAMA PULLED OFF THE HIGHWAY AND DROVE DOWN THE LONG Branch Road toward the house. Up ahead, my daddy’s tobacco fields sat on the left-hand side of the road, and I could see where he’d started to cut and stick the burley and hang it upside down to dry. It looked like somebody had come and pitched little, green teepees in the field as far as you could see. He’d come along in a few days and pick up those sticks full of burley and toss them onto the sled before hanging them in the barn.