Albert – 2004, just before Samuel Leaves PUT SOMETHING HERE ABOUT HIM ALSO REMEMBERING 1994 WHEN SARAH DIED IN THAT CHURCH THEY VISIT
I follow Samuel. He doesn’t know. I see him go across the field after supper. He told Pa he was going to the diner to help Eddie. The diner is not across the field. The diner is in town. I wanted to go help Eddy too. I like the diner. I like washing the dishes. Samuel said no. He said I’m too young but I’m older than he is. I remember when he was little even though he’s nearly grown now.
He knows that.
Samuel walks fast across the field. He walks so fast I can’t catch up. He walks faster and faster to the edge of the woods, and then he’s gone. I know where he went. He went where that trail up the mountain starts.
I look back at the house. Pa goes to the living room to read the paper after supper. Ma goes to the kitchen and washes the dishes. You can’t see the field from the living room. You can’t see the field from the kitchen.
I run through the field towards the woods. I run to where Samuel disappeared.
I know where the trail is, and I know where it goes. I pretend I’m tracking Samuel. I look for broken twigs and smashed leaves. I look for footprints. I don’t see any broken twigs or smashed leaves or footprints, so I just follow the trail. I know where he’s going.
The woods are nice. Birds sing. Wind swooshes leaves. That’s all I hear. I hop over the three little streams. I get my shoe wet in the last one. Ma will be mad if my shoe is wet when I get home but I can’t take it off. She’ll be madder if my feet are muddy.
I walk and walk. I like to walk. I can walk a long way and not get tired. I know this is a long way. I remember this walk from before.
The trail comes to an old road. We used to drive up this road. There aren’t any cars here now. I stop for a minute to be sure. The road is full of holes with water in them. Plants grow way up high in the middle. I have to climb over a great big tree that fell across the road. It’s so big I have to pull myself up on top before I can get to the other side. I sit on the tree for a minute.
“Albert?”
The voice scares me. I nearly fall off the tree.
Quentin is staring at me. He’s sitting on a big rock that’s half in the road. He’s all shadowy. He gets up and comes over to me.
“What are you doing here?” he asks me. He holds out his hand and helps me jump down off the tree.
“I’m following Samuel,” I tell him. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m following Samuel too,” he says. “Want to follow him together?”
“Okay,” I say. I like Quentin.
We walk down the road. We have to walk around more holes with water in them and around more big plants and we go over more trees. These trees aren’t as big, though. We can just step over these trees.
“Does your Pa know where you are?” Quentin asks.
“No,” I say. “He doesn’t know where Samuel is either. Samuel said he was going to the diner, but he went here instead. I couldn’t catch up with him.”
“Yeah, he’s pretty fast,” says Quentin.
We walk and walk. The road is twisty and sometimes we can see it below us, twisting around like a snake. But it’s not moving like a snake does.
Quentin has a bottle with water in it. He gives me some. I see a building through the trees. We keep walking and then we’re standing in front of it. We’re standing in the yard and there’s tall tall pine trees beside it. I remember running around with other kids there. We played tag and ran through the pine trees. Now there’s weeds up to my waist. The building is skinny, and it goes way above us, into the trees. It looks crooked. It used to be white but it’s not now. Now it’s grey like our old barn. A cross is laying in the weeds. It used to be over the door. It looks crooked too. The windows are broken. The rock steps have big hunks out of them. Rock hunks have rolled down to where we’re standing. I kick at one. I look at the door.
Quentin is squinting up at the door too. It’s not shut all the way. He starts up the rock steps. I follow him.
We look around the edge of the door. We look inside. It’s dark inside. I can’t see anything at first. Then I can see way up to the front, where Pa used to stand on that stage way above everybody else. I see Samuel standing there now. He’s looking at something on the ground. He picks up a piece of paper.
Quentin says COMMA? “Hey Samuel.”
Samuel turns around and sees us at the door.
“Oh, hey guys,” he says. “What are you doing here, Albert?”
He’s smiling at me. I know he’s not mad. Ben would be mad if I followed him. Samuel never gets mad at me.
“I saw you go across the field,” I say. “You didn’t go to the diner.”
“No, I didn’t,” he says. He hops down from the platform, walks towards us.
“You’re supposed to tell the truth, Samuel,” I say to him. “You aren’t supposed to lie.”
“I know,” he says. “I just changed my mind. It’s okay to change your mind.”
He grins at me.
“I met Albert on the trail,” says Quentin. “That’s a longer walk than I remember.”
Quentin sits down on one of the pews. There are only a few right-side-up pews to sit on. Most of them are tipped over. They look funny. They look a little scary. They aren’t supposed to be like that.
“It was a long drive back then,” says Samuel. “Well, it seems like it was. I can barely remember us coming here in a car.”
He sits down beside Quentin in the right side up pew. I sit on a tipped-over pew. It’s funny to sit on it like that. They used to all be right side up. They used to all be full of people.
“I remember us coming here,” I tell Samuel and Quentin. “Pa stood up there.”
They both look at me.
“Yeah, I guess you would remember,” Samuel says. “You would have been old enough.”
Quentin starts to say something, then he doesn’t. He looks at Samuel.
“Do you remember the snakes?” Samuel asks me. He’s not smiling. He pushes his hand through his black hair till it’s standing straight up on top.
I look at the front of the church again. I look way up there where Pa stood on his stage. I remember the Sundays. Every Sunday he would stand up there and talk. His voice would boom and he would talk and talk, boom and boom. That man with the big red face would play a guitar. That woman with gold hair would sing. The words were high and sharp and hard. It was loud. It hurt my ears.
Pa would talk about Hell and God and he would tell us that if we truly believed we would be saved. He said it wasn’t easy to truly believe. He said we had to be tested. We had to prove it to God. He said the snakes were a test. If we didn’t truly believe but said we did, we would die and go to Hell. And Hell would be fire and it would hurt. One time I burned my hand on the wood stove and it hurt a lot. Pa said Hell would hurt way worse than that. I didn’t want to go to Hell. And I didn’t want the snakes to test me.
BREAK HERE — INDICATING THAT ALBERT IS TALKING ABOUT THE PAST FOR A WHILE (1994) IN THIS SAME LOCATION
I remember sitting on the front row that Sunday. I remember looking up at Pa. He was wearing his white white shirt. Ma washed it for him special the night before. His black glasses pointed at all of us, one by one. I sat between Samuel and Eddy. They were little. Their shiny brown shoes didn’t touch the floor. Samuel wouldn’t be still and Sarah kept shushing him. Samuel said “Mom, Mom, Eddy is being mean! Eddy won’t share!” to Sarah. She made me sit between them so they wouldn’t poke each other. Samuel kept poking me because he couldn’t reach Eddy. Eddy had a book about tigers and Samuel wanted it. Ma leaned over Eddy and told Samuel that if he didn’t straighten up she was taking him back to the room with the babies. That’s where the twins and Jessie were. Jessie really was a baby. I carried her back to the baby room for Sarah when we got there that morning because Sarah had to have both hands to hold onto the twins. I was careful with the baby. Sarah always let me carry her because I was careful.
Samuel didn’t want to go to the baby room so he quit trying to poke Eddy. Eddy stuck out his tongue at Samuel and looked at his tiger book again. Ma didn’t see Eddy stick out his tongue. Sarah saw him but she just took a big breath and looked back up at Pa. I wanted to make a face at both of them so they would be still but I didn’t. I didn’t want to go to Hell.
Sarah was sitting on the end of our row. She watched Pa. She twirled her long hair around her fingers. She had gold hair too. Her Bible was in her lap but she didn’t look at it.
Pa looked down at Sarah. His voice boomed. He was saying the words that didn’t make sense. It sounded like waaa aaahhhh waaaaa naaaaaa. Over and over. The words made my head buzz. Sarah stared back at him. She twirled her hair tighter around her fingers. Samuel looked at Pa too. Sarah put her hand on Samuel’s head. Eddy kept looking at his tiger book.
The man with the big red face started playing his guitar again. He played faster and faster. People started getting up and moving around like they were trying to dance. Pa didn’t dance. Pa stood up there and looked at the dancers. He kept saying the words that didn’t make any sense. I put my hands over my ears but I could still hear them. Pa looked at Sarah. Everything was louder and louder. People were standing in front of us, doing the dance that wasn’t dancing. Sarah was moving back and forth in her seat. She looked funny. She didn’t look like Sarah. She looked like that doll with the yellow hair and the white face and the big black eyes Ma keeps in the china cabinet. That one that stares and stares and stares at me if I look at it. I don’t like to look at it.
Pa stopped saying the words. He turned around. The boxes were behind him. They were stacked against the wall. His friend Mr. Watson was standing back there beside the boxes. Mr. Watson was singing something. I couldn’t hear the words. Mr Watson opened the top of one of the boxes. Pa bent over it and pulled a long gray thing out. The music got louder. The singing got louder. Sarah kissed Samuel on top of his head. She stood up. Ma leaned across me like she was going to grab Sarah. She couldn’t reach Sarah. Sarah’s Bible fell in the floor. One of the not-dancing people stepped on it and it flew back under our pew. Sarah didn’t look at it. She started swaying too. She started doing the not-dancing. She waved her arms around. Her gold hair went in circles. Her long skirt flew out and hit my face. Ma stood up, then sat back down. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She put her hand over her mouth. Eddy dropped his tiger book. Samuel grabbed my hand.
Pa was holding a great big snake. It was so big it was laying across both his arms. It moved back and forth too, like the not-dancing people in front of us. Sarah whirled around and whirled around and then she was beside Pa like her skirt and her hair whirled her up there. People were moving back and forth in front of me. They were waving their arms. They were singing. I couldn’t hear what they sang.
“Albert Albert Albert” PERIOD HERE?
Ma was shaking my arm.
“You take the boys,” she was yelling at my ear. “Take them outside right now.”
She pushed Eddy into me, pushed me into Samuel, pushed us all into the aisle. We bounced against the shaky people in the aisle like the little silver balls in that game I play at the arcade. Ping ping ping. Eddy was crying. He was trying to shove through the people. Samuel stood in the aisle while people pinged against him. He was watching Pa and Sarah. Pa was handing the great big snake to Sarah. Its face was waving back and forth right in her face. Its yellow eyes were looking into her eyes. She was reaching out for it. She let Pa drape it over her arms. Pa was saying things to Sarah. I could see his mouth moving. Sarah glowed.
Ma yelled in my ear, “Go go go.”
I grabbed Samuel’s arm with one hand and I grabbed Eddy’s arm with the other hand. I pulled us all through the crowd, though the not-dancing, through the noise. I pretended I was a superhero. But I couldn’t fly us over the people blocking our way. Then Ma’s friend Mrs. Ross was there, right in front of me. She picked up Samuel so fast his feet flew into the air, and she got Eddy by the arm.
She leaned over at me and said “Albert we’re going out that door now and don’t you look back.”
Somebody behind us started screaming, way up high, above the singing and above the chanting and above the music.
BREAK HERE? BACK TO PRESENT AND OUT OF ALBERT”S REMEMBRANCE OF 1994, 10 YEARS BACK
I stop talking. I didn’t know I was talking. Samuel and Quentin are staring at me. They are frozen. Samuel is white. He’s holding the piece of paper he picked up from the floor. An orange tiger’s face with big gold eyes is smiling at us. It’s so quiet.