Revival

by Jonathan Dixon

With a cloudy pillar of dust rising in their wake behind them, a boy and his grandmother were traversing through a barren land. The boy knew these dusty old roads through ceaseless stretches of farmland nearly as well as his grandmother did, both being able to distinguish every mile from every other, either by subtle landmarks that would go unnoticed to an untrained eye or by simply knowing outrightly that a certain field or pasture was in itself remarkable and uniquely distinguished for reasons that only a local native would understand. The old Ford truck that his grandmother was driving had been her husband's prided possession while he was living, but since he had died, shortly before the boy's memory began, his grandmother had driven it, and it was known around the parts as being her truck, as much has it had ever been known as her husband's while he was living. She had, in fact, taught herself how to drive it after her husband died, people told the boy, nudging him when they speculated that his grandmother did all that while his grandfather surely spun in his grave.

The boy, nearing ten, openly hoped to have it himself one day. He coveted the Ford and was privately learning how he would drive it himself by watching his grandmother's graceful charge over the steering wheel, the manner in which she touched her feet to the clutch and gas pedal, the way she hooked up her eyes to see the world behind her in the mirror, and the way her hand grasped the head of the stick shift with her knuckles sometimes going white with such a tight grip at especially high speeds on bumpy, unpaved roads.

She promised him that he'd have it as sure as he turned legally old enough to drive it. The boy counted on that promise, of course, and often wanted it reiterated. The boy washed himself in his grandmother's attention, though, in his young innocence, he didn't fully realize the extraordinarily strong measure of affection that his grandmother had for him, though it was entirely obvious to everyone who also had their own affections for the gifted and good-looking boy with such nice manners and a polite smile with such clean teeth. They were glad that his future interests were so well protected by his grandmother's sheltering wing. The boy didn't know the spirited interest that his grandmother had in his eternal well-being, either, and about how she wished more than anything to see him grow up to be a God-fearing man, and her wish that he be the head of a godly household with a virtuous wife to support him after she had passed on.

More than anything else about his grandmother, the boy liked the sense of comfort that he drew from his grandmother's certainty about the world. He had a hint that her certainty flew in the face of obvious complexities that he saw even in his little corner of the world, but retained a confidence that his grandmother knew more about all of it, and if she could stand fast in her own surety of her view of the world, then it must be an earned and true perspective that he could trust.

As his grandmother drove on, through a neighboring county, one county over to the west of their own, the boy looked out the window at the flat-plained stretch of land looming in front of them and extending all around them. It was nearly dusk, and the sun was starting to lower, yet it hovered comfortably above the horizon yet, shining brighter and duller than ever in the day, causing the boy to squint so as not to be blinded to the other wonders in the world outside of the Ford. Half a mile to his right, amidst a copse of trees, birds were flying around, taking their last constitutionals for the day before resigning to their nests, enjoying a wide-spread conversation with each other that resounded in one loud racket heard by all of creation. Most of the grass in the pastures on either side of the road was almost eaten-up by the few cows that the boy could see. The road ahead of them was mostly paved, though it obviously hadn't been recently.

The boy and his grandmother went about on business through these counties from time to time, and the boy could have driven these roads himself, probably even with a blindfold, if only he'd known how to drive. On this particular occasion, however, they were on no routine business. They were, in fact, headed to a campground for a revival meeting that his grandmother attended every year. The boy's grandmother told him that she was giving what might amount to the greatest treat of his lifetime, if the Lord willed it, with him perhaps strengthening his commitment to Godly living, and perhaps his even being called into the ministry. He could tell that she was feeling "up in glory", like she always said, about tonight, just from seeing the way she was occasionally tapping her fingers on the steering wheel while humming a few bars of a hymn tune quietly to herself. He hadn't actually been to the camp meeting with her before, though his older sister had. This was going to be a first, his grandmother had assured him, a first opportunity to get a glimpse of what the spirit of God could do to peoples lives when people opened up to it.

The drive to the campground had been going along quite silently for the half-hour that it had taken thus far. It was getting kind of warm in the cab, and the boy really wanted to lower his window a bit more, but his grandmother didn't like much wind. He was sweating around his neck, dripping onto the collar of the short-sleeved white shirt that his mother had ironed for him specially to wear that evening. He knew that his grandmother didn't much like to be bothered while she was driving, though, so he didn't bother her with it. It wasn't too awful much further, anyway, the boy was pretty certain. He just looked over at his grandmother, seeing her lips twitching a little, and wondered if she might be praying, though she might also be thinking about her grocery list or perhaps trying to remember the way to the campground.

His older sister had taken him aside the day before to explain to him what was going to happen to him if he went with his grandmother to this camp meeting. She'd said that there were all sorts of folks who put on their Sunday best to attend meetings like these only to act like freaks and put on a bunch of shenanigans. Sometimes they were slain in the Spirit, she told him, which meant that they just fell over and didn't move. It was like they fainted, but it was the Holy Spirit who did it, she said. Sometimes some of them would run around shouting, saying stuff like "praise Jesus" and what-have-you. They'd dance, too – which was the only time they were allowed to, because it was the Holy Spirit that made them dance, and they were dancing like King David did in Psalms. He didn't know that he should believe what she'd said, but she said it so seriously that even he had to drop his doubts about anything his sister said to him.

"This is going to be a treat for you, indeed!" his grandmother spoke up, intruding on his thoughts, "I want you to be able to really see what God can do."

"Are they going to . . . ?" the boy started to ask, but stopped, not knowing how to go about saying what it was he wanted said.

"Do what, honey?"

The boy paused for a second or two. "Get slain in the Spirit?" the boy stammered out, practically awed by the very idea of it. He regretted asking the question as soon as he said it, though, and wondered where his grandmother would speculate that he'd heard about it.

If anything, though, his grandmother was heartened by his question. "Oh, John, I hope the Spirit is really there for us tonight!" she said in a kind of strained voice, rapping on the steering wheel for emphasis. She clenched her jaw. "God grant it!" she said. He could see that her lips trembled a little. She seemed to be very serious, which surprised him. "I want you to be able to see people so moved by the Holy Spirit that they just can't sit still!"

When they drove around another curve the boy saw a big sign stretched from two trees with "REVIVAL" spread across it in capital letters, saying where it was going to be and the dates.

"We're nearly there! It's just down the road a little jog more," his grandmother said, excitedly tapping him on his knee.

When they arrived, they seemed to have passed from the familiar and monotonous world with which the boy was so well acquainted and into some different and unrecognizable world altogether. The campground was within a big grove of trees, with a lot of the trees cleared out to make room for the campground. It seemed funny to have so many people gathering in such an isolated spot in the middle of hardly inhabited farmland, with all kinds of cars parked about and people milling around, all dressed up like he and his grandmother were. The difference about the place that made it seem so different from the world that he knew was that there was some kind of a different feeling in the air – maybe just the combination of the excited look on the people around, with so many in one spot.

His grandmother almost skipped a leap as they got out of the Ford and headed toward the tabernacle, where everyone was headed and where there was loud music already playing, since the meeting was about to start. "I can just feel the presence of God already!" his grandmother said right out loud, to which standers-by nodded with complicit agreement, smiling.

The tabernacle was an open-air pavilion with a series of old pews lined up. There was a big pulpit up at the front, flanked by a piano on one side and an electric organ on the other. The boy's grandmother found them a spot on the end of one of the pews, letting the boy have the place at the very end. His grandmother sat next to him, and over to her other side the boy saw another fairly elderly lady with blue rinsed hair fanning herself with an old paper fan with the picture of Jesus standing at the door and knocking. Another fan of the same kind was in the hymnal rack in front of the boy, which he picked up to look at the picture, flipping it over and reading on the other side the message that the fans were donated by the Bass Funeral Home. People were smiling around at each other, some of them apparently knowing each other. His grandmother knew a few people, though in different pews, to whom she waved if they happened to look her way. The music was loud, which the boy liked, as he tapped his toe and waved his fan with the rhythm of it. He'd heard the tune before, plenty of times, but he couldn't think of any of the words.

Hardly before he'd had a chance to look around, a tall man in a blue jacket and tie stood up in the front and grabbed hold of the pulpit and shouted, "Can someone say 'amen'?"

Everyone shouted out "Amen!" and a few followed up with a "thank you Jesus!" or "praise Jesus!"

"I'm here to tell all of you," the man said, "that God is still in the miracle-working business! It wasn't but last year that I was down with cancer, and the doctors told me I had three months before I'd meet the Lord. Now, I won't ever decline to see the Lord, but I knew that there was still some of the Lord's work left for me to do here on this earth. And, sure enough, what those doctors couldn't cure, the Lord did, and I'm here to let everyone know that the Lord will do that same thing for any one of you, too!"

The congregation roared with more "amens!" and "glorys!" as the man continued, "my wife is here at the piano, we travel across the country now to tell people about how the Lord can work. Even though a lot of folks say that the age of miracles is passed, we're here to say that it isn't, and we're counting on a the Spirit's moving here tonight!"

"Amen!" people responded again, while the man raised his hand upward in the firmness of his testimony. The piano started in promptly, and the organ joined in with a tremolo that would liked to have knocked the boy out of his pew. "Number 720 in the books!" the man called out, and everyone stood up to sing. The piano rang out almost like ragtime, and they all started in a thunderous chorus of "When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder."

The boy was as quickly as that washed up in a whirlpool of the energy that everyone threw into the worship. He looked around and saw the whole crowd singing out like they were an angel choir. He looked over at his grandmother, and saw that she had her hand raised up to heaven, which a lot of others were doing, too.

They sang all four stanzas of the hymn, and then a few other hymns after that in immediate succession, with the man calling out the numbers. Though everyone seemed to be having a good time, there wasn't any of the shenanigans that his sister had told him about at all. He thought he actually liked it.

Pretty soon, though, virtually as soon as the boy noticed more timidity than he expected, a man ran out into the aisle near them and started dancing and waving his arms, shouting "Hallelujah! Glory!" His grandmother nudged him, saying, "see, John, the Holy Spirit's got control of us tonight! Hallelujah!" she shouted. A lot of others started shouting out to, and the music seemed to sound even louder. There were only six stanzas in the hymn they were singing, but the man had them all sing the first verse again. The music finally died down and some of the dancing people returned to their seats, but everyone was still standing.

"Glory, Jesus!" the man shouted from the pulpit, "Hallelujah!"

"Amen!" the boy's grandmother shouted along with a bunch of others. She leaned down to him, saying, "this is just what I'd hoped for – doesn't it feel good? The Spirit's here! Hallelujah!" she called the last word as she stood up straight again. "Hallelujah!" she shouted again.

The man called out, "Does anyone here have a testimony of what the Lord has done for them?"

"He saved my life and set me free!" some man up near the front called out. "Amen!" several others responded.

"The Lord delivered me from sickness, and I praise him," an elderly lady near them said, though the boy thought there was no way she'd said it loud enough for everyone to hear. They all said "Amen!" to her, though, too.

The man at the pulpit called out another number, and the organ and piano started in again, almost even louder than ever. The people sang out, and it was as if the last hymn hadn't stopped, because there was the man, and several others, dancing again, people waving their hands, people crying, and there was even one man with a plaid jacket running up and down the aisle, with a big smile on his face, throwing his arms around shouting out "praise Jesus!" over and over.

While they were still singing, a fairly young lady who was sitting in their pew clamored past them and went up to the front. The man went down from the pulpit to her and put his arm over her shoulder. They seemed to exchange some words in private before he let her go, with her still standing there. He went back to the pulpit, and when the music stopped, he announced, "this woman wants to meet Jesus. Will anyone come up who need to be saved?"

The boy thought that at least there'd be a sermon before anyone's souls would be saved. Several people, though, went up, without even hesitating. The organ started in playing again, except softly. People all around the boy prayed quietly to themselves, though he could hear a few of the words that they murmured. Up in front some people knelt at the alter rail with the lady and put their arms around her, praying with her. Others went and knelt by themselves. He could see that the lady who'd gone up there was sobbing, judging from the way her shoulders and head were shaking. The tall man called out for them to sing "Savior Like A Shepherd Lead Us", and the piano joined in with the organ, playing softly. As they sang, even more people went up.

His grandmother leaned over and whispered to him, "This is just the kind of outpouring of the spirit I'd hoped for! I'm going up to pray with that lady. I think she needs it." His grandmother edged past him and went up to the front to join the crowd of people gathering around the lady. The boy sat in the half-empty pew by himself, with the blue-rinsed lady still fanning herself, except that she had her eyes closed and her lips moving, waving her free hand as she prayed. The boy felt odd sitting there alone and wondered if he should be doing something in particular. He had no idea what he should do, except maybe just wait for his grandmother to come back. He wondered if he should go up there with her. He was getting to feel pretty uncomfortable without his grandmother there to show him what was going on. In fact, the whole meeting seemed one great display of chaos to the boy. After another minute, he decided to go ahead and go up, and if he was lucky, maybe he would find a place near his grandmother.

Just as soon as he got up there, though, while he was trying to locate his grandmother in the crowd of people all along the altar rail, sometimes two or three thick, the blue jacketed, god- is-still-in-the-miracle-working-business man himself happened to be there and immediately singled the boy out, putting his arm around the boy's shoulder, sweeping him aside to speak to him especially. The man leaned down close enough for the boy to smell the man's stale breath and whispered, "Are you looking for the Lord?" The boy didn't know what to say, really, and he fell silent, thinking about what he should say or do. Without hardly stopping for an answer from the boy, though, the man said, "That's okay, I was there myself, young man," he said, evidently remembering a time when he, too, was ten years old and in need of the Lord. "I know you need the Lord now just like I did then, and I was too proud to admit it, too. Why don't we kneel over here, and we can pray about it."

The man, with his arm still snugly around the boy's shoulder, steered them over to the end of the alter rail, before the boy could protest with any kind of explanation. The man pushed the boy down and kneeled right next to him, wrapping his big arm around the boy's back so that the smell of the man's odor from his sweaty torso shot straight into the boy's nose. The man didn't say anything for a moment or two, but then started with a prayer on the boy's behalf, asking that God would let His word light the boy's path. The prayer seemed to last an eternity, with the man rumbling on and on, with his grip around the boy seeming to grow tighter and tighter, while people all around him were wrapped up in their own spoken prayers, sounding utterly cacophonous when combined with the playing of the piano and organ. The man finished praying, but stayed there, silent, for what seemed like hours, holding the boy with a hug that let the man's finger tips clasp all the way around to the boy's chest, which he touched with a prolonged squeeze. The stubble on the man's face grazed the boy's cheek as he swayed in rhythm with the music of the organ and piano, the boy held securely under his strong arm.

An elderly, skinny trembling old man plopped down on the boy's other side and started to sob, saying, "oh, my Jesus, mercy! Mercy, on me!" The boy, sandwiched between the touching, burly man with his arm wrapped all around him and the quivering old man whose bony elbows poked the boy's side, stared at the concrete floor with wide-open eyes.

The Lord brings in his sheep at all ages, young man," the man said, rubbing his fingers against the boy, up and down. The boy kept smelling the man's sweat, and the feel of the man's moist fingertips seemed to be searing into his lungs. "Do you know what you want to say?" the man asked.

The boy remained kneeled with his head lowered and his hands folded against his chest, silent, gaping at the floor beneath him.

"Why'd you come up here tonight?"

The boy started to mutter, not saying anything intelligible or even knowing what he intended to say.
"You can say it, son. It's alright."

The boy still said nothing, but just sighed deeply

"You did the right thing by coming up here. It was the best thing for you to do."

The boy didn't look up from the floor. The old man next to him was still sobbing, crying for mercy.

"I'm going to pray with this man for a while," the man said, finally lifting his arm from the boy's shoulder. "Why don't you just stay here and think for a minute, and we can pray after that."

The man went over and knelt on the other side of the sobbing old man. The boy lifted his head slightly after a moment, fastly glancing over next to him and saw the two men wrapped up in each other, starting to pray. He tried to swallow his sanguine mouthful of fear, but couldn't. He wasn't sure if he should leave or wait, since his grandmother's instruction to mind what his elders told him was so deeply sewn into his habits that they were ever and always present in his decision making, even if unconsciously. The boy shook his hands, letting his fingers jingle as he wondered what to do.

He shot another quick glance over at the two men beside him. He saw that the man's eyes were closed in prayer and would not see him leaving. He staggered up to his feet, and, once standing, he practically ran, as calmly as possible, out of the tabernacle and into the dark. Once out of the tabernacle, he outrightly ran several paces out beyond the light of the tabernacle, finding a large oak tree to lean against. The air was cooler since the sun had set, and he stood there for a good five or ten minutes leaning against the tree, catching his breath, watching out into the grove where some stealthy night creatures were roving about, seeing above him the whole celestial array of stars, twinkling and blinking. He started to walk, with twigs and old leaves crunching under his feet. With no other idea of what else to do, he headed toward the Ford. If only he could drive it himself! he thought over and over to himself.

When his grandmother finally came out, nearly two hours later, she had no idea what had happened to him due to the chaos of the service, nor did she suspect that he wasn't in there, enjoying all it as much as she was. For all she knew, he'd been worshiping for those two hours.

As they drove back home, the boy looked out the window, sitting silently as the Ford's motor rumbled and the rubber tires wore against pavement and hardened dirt. His grandmother said not a word, but after a while began to sing in a near whispery voice:

There's a land that is fairer than day,
And by faith we can see it afar;
For the Father waits over the way,
To prepare us a dwelling place there.

The boy sat not moving whatsoever, looking out the window only, even though whatever there might have been out there to see was closed off to him for the darkness. The crickets must have been humming, if the rumble of the tires had not drowned them out. "We shall meet on that beautiful shore," his grandmother sang and fell silent. The boy merely breathed and sat still and looked out unflinchingly into the darkness.