Paradise Sky

“Hell,” I said.

“Didn’t kill him. I shot him in the leg, and he went down. I figured the only thing I could do was take E

“We hid out in the woods, and that night I got Pa over to her place. The old woman said the bullet was too deep to come out, but that he’d heal over, and if he didn’t die of infection, which she called the rot, he’d live to pull a cotton sack another day. It was my plan to leave him there, thinking that bullet would work for him, not against him, and that he could say I shot him and E

“That old woman gave him something to drink, and Pa passed out. She said it was for the pain and he’d get over it in a few hours. That was naive of me. I rode out of there into the trees, and at that point it was like I couldn’t go no more. I just fell off that horse, down between some sycamores, and lay there. The horse ran off. I was so weak I couldn’t move anymore. I had been going without rest, and now I was drained by fear and confusion. I was up pretty high in the hills, but I had a good view of that old woman’s shack. I seen that old woman come out of her shack and head toward the little settlement down below. I tried to get up and move on, but my legs had quit on me. I decided if someone, or dogs came, they could have me. I didn’t have no more fight left. I just laid down there in the cold and slept.

“I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke up my will had been somewhat restored, and so had my strength. Down below here come that woman, and she was walking fast for someone old as she was, and right behind her on horseback, and some on foot, was a bunch of men with lanterns. They come to her house, and I knew then she had gone and told on us. Pa was knocked out from her so-called medicine. They went in and brought him out, and the only thing I’m thankful for, Nat, is he was still mighty drugged and couldn’t walk. He was literally dragged. They put a rope around his neck and found a tree limb and pulled him up. His neck wasn’t broken, like in a clean hanging, but he was strangled. Again, I hope that medicine kept him away from too much pain. He kicked a little, but it wasn’t any time at all before he was still. That old woman wasn’t anything but a Judas.

“I eased back on my hands and knees, got to my feet, and started ru

“I lit out. I just kept going. I started heading north. I stole chickens, killed and ate them to survive.”

“Better dead chickens to eat than alive,” I said.

“That’s the truth. I stole eggs, stole food from houses when no one was about. I even robbed a couple of white men on the road with my six-gun and whipped one of them about the ears just because I could. I was on the road one night, going into Illinois. I had stolen an old swayback horse and was getting bolder as I went. I come upon a colored fellow lying beside the road. He was dead. It appeared his neck was broken. I guess he had fallen off his horse or been thrown by it. The horse was nowhere to be found. That’s what I was thinking then, about the horse. Not thinking there’s a poor man lying dead at my feet, but that he had a horse, most likely. I searched through his pockets, found a flask of whiskey in his coat and two bits in change. I never did find his horse. I wanted to. I figured it had to be better than that old swayback. I left there with that flask, drinking, not thinking one whit about that poor man.

“I went on, and the night turned cloudy. I swear, a bolt of lightning, blue-white and sizzling with fire, came down out of the heavens and hit that swayback smack in the head and gave me the burning trembles. When I woke up that horse was lying on top of me, and I could smell its hide sizzling from the lightning strike. It was then that the clouds parted and I saw the stars. Nat, it was then I saw the face of God. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t seeking vengeance. He was there to let me know I had a chance to turn things around. What do you think about that?”

“That God liked you all right but didn’t have the same feeling for horses.”

I couldn’t help saying that, and feared soon as I said it Luther would take offense. But he laughed. “That’s a good point, Nat. I’ve thought on it. And you know what?”

“What?”

“I don’t have an answer. But what I had from that point on was faith that I was placed here by God for something better than robbing the dead. I worked for a long time to get out from under that horse. That lightning bolt had knocked us to the side of the road, and the ground was soft there. I wasn’t crushed on account of that, as the ground gave with me and made enough of an indentation I was able to slip out from under that dead swayback. I was numb for a while, being stu

“Along with hairy balls,” I said.

“That, too. I walked out, Nat, walked into Illinois, and first colored church I come to I went in during services and dropped to my knees and prayed. I prayed not for ownership of things but for my eternal soul. I prayed to be a better man. A little later I got a job there at the church, cleaning the place, and pretty soon I was doing a bit of preaching, time to time, you know, when the preacher would let me. He didn’t let me for long, because I started getting a following, a big following. He came and told me I was too good at it. I was taking his job altogether. I didn’t want to do that to him, and he didn’t want it done to him. I moved on through the country, stopping at colored churches and preaching when they’d let me be a guest at their pulpit.

“It was heady stuff for me. I went from being a Church of Christ for a while to being a Seventh-day Adventist. All I remember about the Church of Christ is they argued over musical instruments. Some were for it, some weren’t. Adventist I don’t remember anything at all. I met some Catholics and prayed with them some. I was a Baptist for a while, but frankly, I found them too stupid. I know that’s a harsh thing for a preacher to say, but they believed the Bible word for word, and common sense didn’t stir them in the least. If the preacher told them a handful of shit was honey, they’d eat it. They lacked the desire to question. The Methodist I was with a little longer, but they thought they were special because they could go to dances and didn’t see the devil in their soup, meaning they were down on the Baptist, who could service a goat and shoot a man while doing it, and think if you had been baptized, you were forgiven. Catholics had too many beads and such makings. There were some other branches, but they hurt my feelings about the same. That’s why I started my own church and took to my own way of preaching.”