Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Melanie Jennings
make sense of it all, watching Pastor’s arms now on his arms, as he
moved Jerry through the water and into the middle of our large circle.
I thought of the half-dead, slippery fish Jerry and I hooked weekend
mornings that fought the fishing line threaded in their mouths.
Jerry, in his desperation, looked like them. I could see he was tired
and scared he was going under any second now. I had a split-second
fantasy of him lifting his legs up fast enough to let the water pull him
out of our circle and down the river toward the barbed wire. But we
both knew he wasn’t going anywhere, stuck in this circle of everyone
we knew. He wasn’t getting out even if the Lord Jesus appeared above
us all right now mingled in the leaves and branches of the sprawling
oak tree. Jerry was going under that water to be saved all right—there
was no stopping these people, and I knew for sure there wasn’t no
stopping Pastor James with his arms around Jerry moving him with
the sureness and strength of an army commander, ready to bring
his youngest soldier into the wonder of a new life. I was afraid for
Jerry crossing over and getting dunked and all. He was just thirteen
and that seemed to be the bad-luck year for getting baptized in our
family. My own time was soon coming and I watched this event with
an attention I had only previously shown at church funerals, shelving
the details in my mind so I could pour over them later.
At the very peak of Pastor’s frenzied speech, down Jerry went
under the clear water. His dark hair swam around his head like loose
water snakes. We could see his face scrunched up and ugly as his
legs kicked. He had been pushed down suddenly, off balance and
backwards. A few bubbles swam out his mouth and wiggled to the
surface. Pastor’s voice and our mumbled prayers hung interrupted in
the air, still as an empty church around us. Jerry opened his mouth
and eyes wide under the cool water, looking up like a scream and then
suddenly breaking the water’s surface and sucking in a loud, deep
breath. Vena gasped, then shouted, “Hallelujah!”
I stood in the water for that moment before the testifying began
around the circle, and as the oak leaves from the overhanging tree fell
and sped around my arms in the chest-high water, I remembered the
time I had almost gone under, or over, never to rise again. Hekatchipac
Injun Slide. My Uncle Lloyd, Jerry’s father, who wore lots of turquoise
and collected buffalo pennies, told me that every weekend Injuns
from the Hekatchipac reservation got drunk and drove off the edge
of Hekatchipac Injun Slide. So every Sunday as my crazy aunt, Nippy,
Lloyd’s wife and Jerry’s mother, who had the shakes and an enormous
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 95