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

Melanie Jennings
From the carsick road where Hekatchipac Injun Slide pitched
itself over the edge, we’d arrive at the Second Pentecostal Church
of Hekatchipac, on B Street. We used to go to the First Pentecostal
Church of Hekatchipac, but my aunts switched when Nippy didn’t
make it into the choir there. Church was Sunday morning till noon
and Wednesday evenings. In between those, several social functions
as deemed necessary by Pastor James’s wife kept us all holy.
The building was a one-story, pre-fabricated affair, high-noon white
against the backdrop of the dry, yellow hills, where all the pink-freckled
children ran around inside, and the older folks sang their hey-heys and
ho-hos to the Lord Jesus and Amen Brother Johnson. Use your Sword in
your time of need, Sister. Amen.
The church didn’t hold sound too well, and I sometimes got
the feeling sitting on those plastic-metal chairs or the few scattered
pews lining the front rows that the rocking and singing could be
seen outside, swinging and moving the walls to the rhythm of the
tambourine and heavy thump of the drumbeat. Are you washed? Are
you washed? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb? Traditional
hymns were only occasionally sung, with even “Amazing Grace”
getting a lively rendition. When I was real little, I’d see girls from
my third-grade class driving past with their parents on their way
to church, crisp bows in their taut blonde braids. The good church,
the quiet church, the nice church, the better church. They were
Episcopalian. They didn’t have to go to church anymore.
But our church meant songs with the congregants’ hands in the
air rocking back and forth and one person singing a harmony, usually
my Aunt Vena, over the rest of the high and low vowels, drawn out
long and melodious like the angels themselves were slipping from
their mouths, floating their way to Heaven. Are your garments spotless?
Are they white as snow? Are you washed in the blood of the lamb? I
watched my uncles and my father play in the band, banjo or guitar,
just rhythm at church and nothing like the train-and-twang honkytonk
songs they played at home. My father wore old-fashioned bolo
ties on Sunday, and their stones would sway and catch the light as his
foot tapped out rhythm. The band hunched over their instruments,
still enjoying themselves in the music for God and the sermon. My big
Aunt Vena stood near the piano and jiggled and hollered her songs at
the congregation. I wanted to be just like her.
Jerry and I sat next to each other in the cramped pews side by side
with our aunts and played hand tricks in the closed space between our
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 97