Life Is Short But Wide (8 page)

People with families were moving into town. There were other young men in Wideland now. Some of them called upon her, or just stopped by to see if there was anything they could do for her. She didn’t need Preacher Smoke. In fact, away from the church or a funeral, she never thought of him.

But he thought of her. A great deal. As he lay back in his cot, one hand under his head, eyes looking through the dark at the ceiling, other hand on his crotch, he thought of her. “She such a childlike little lady. I know she got confidence in me. I can see it in them soft eyes a’hers. She real gentle, too, got that soft voice. Young, smooth skin. Got a full body; woman’s body, plump, but pleasin. She pretty! She do look like a rose, soft and gentle and, Lord … she lonely too. She ain’t got nobody else! Up there in that big ole house all by hersef! It’s my duty, as a man of God, to do my duty and answer her call.”

One Sunday, as he preached, he looked down to the front-row seats, and looked directly into the eyes of Rose. When he held her eyes with his own, she blushed, embarrassed, and
turned her eyes away. He thought, happily, “That’s what girls do when they love you! She really fallin in love wit’ me!”

He began to seek her out, always trying to look into her eyes again. She always blushed because she was young, and didn’t know why he always seemed to want to look into her eyes. “I know he isn’t thinking of courting me!” She thought she was surely mistaken, but then he appeared at her side several times in the next few weeks, reaching for her hand, in a preacherly way, of course. She stopped sitting up close to the pulpit. Instead she sat in the back with Bertha.

Preacher Smoke began to stop by Rose’s house during the dinner hours, when he thought she would have cooked, to try to have a meal with her. He thought he could eat
and
talk. But Rose didn’t eat much, and hardly cooked anymore since her father was not coming back.

Preacher had to make another plan. He decided he would go to see Rose after he had eaten at another good sister’s house, and his stomach would already be full. But in the afternoons and evenings, someone, usually Bertha, was always there.

And so it came about very early one morning, he got up from his lonely, musty bed to make a home-visit to Rose. Preacher Smoke knocked on the big oak front door. Rose had been asleep, so it took her a moment or two to get to the door. She was thinking, “Who in the world is knocking on my door this early?”

When Rose saw Preacher Smoke so early she blinked, thinking, “Something must be wrong with somebody. Somebody has died!” She said, “Good morning, Reverend. What’s the matter? Has something happened?”

She let go of the door to pull her thin robe closer around her neck. Preacher Smoke walked in through the loosened door and turned to wait for her to close it. “I’m jes out on my early duties and said to myself, ‘I betta stop and check on lil Rose while I’m out here.’ Is your coffee ready?” He smiled.

She knew he had no wife, and that he lived in rooms in back of the church. She decided to make some coffee or, like she usually did, heat up what was already there. These were not times to waste anything.

He followed her into the kitchen, talking. “Mz. Rose, your house always so neat and clean comfort’ble.” She stood at the stove to light the fire, and was putting on the coffee pot to reheat. When her back was turned to him, he came up close behind her and, putting one arm around her waist, pulled her to him as he placed his other hand over her breast! She dropped the pot she was holding and tried to turn to face him, and push him away from her.

“Preacher Smoke! What are you doing! ? You get your hands off me, and get out of my house!”

He didn’t let go, and he didn’t leave. He believed she really wanted him and was too shy to be her natural self. He reached down and raised his hand up under her long robe, searching eagerly for that one place he wanted to cup in his hand, saying, “Hush, chile, hush, just let me show you how good you gonna feel. I got somethin here for …”

Rut Rose fought him. She was a virgin, and did not completely understand his actions. She prayed for her dead father … or Wings or Bertha to come through the front door. No one came.

She had struggled from the kitchen back into the parlor room toward the front door. But she couldn’t get away from the grip he had between her legs. She was in her nightclothes, she had no underwear on. She pleaded with him, “Let me go, please. Stop!”

And he pleaded, “Let me show you, darlin, jes give me one minute …” He pressed her against the wall so she could not move away from him. His hand and fingers had found the place. No matter how she struggled she could not get that hand to move. She felt his fingers moving to get inside her.

She raised a foot to kick him, but that was a mistake. Swifter than a second, first one, then another finger pushed their way further inside her.

The thrill, the feel was too much for Preacher Smoke. His face and body engorged, even strengthened. He took his free arm, lifted Rose off her feet, and threw her solidly on the couch. With some invisible hand he got his own pants open. His body pressed upon hers, and in a few feverish humps the deed was done. He was finished without really entering her body. The rape was accomplished, but the physical harm did not go deep.

Rose was sobbing, her legs askew, nightgown rumpled and torn. She tried to sit up, and pull her gown together. She was sobbing, not at the pain, she didn’t feel that so much yet. She wept from rage and her impotence. She looked at him with hatred. She thought, “This dirty, ignorant, old reprobate man! Stupid ignorant bastard!”

Preacher Smoke was saying, “Now, Rose, it didn’t have to be like that. If you’d a let me, you could’a enjoyed it more. Now, look what you done done!”

Rose pulled herself together; still crying, she stood up. He reached to hug her, saying, “I’m gonna love you, Rose. We gonna get married!” Her sobs grew louder. She snatched her insulted body from his arms, turning to go toward the kitchen.

Preacher Smoke stopped to adjust his clothes before going to find her. Rut she found him first, with a butcher knife in one hand and a frying pan in the other. She screamed, “Get out of my house! You dirty son of a bitch preacher!”

Preacher Smoke was startled. “Rose, I’m gonna marry you! Didn’t you hear me, girl?” He started moving backwards toward the front door. “What chu gonna do with that there knife? Where you learn to cuss like that? You a lady! Ladies ain’t sposed to talk like that!”

Rose reached and flung the front door wide open as she said, “And you a preacher! And a grown man! You’re not supposed to do what you have done to me! Get out of my sight! I don’t want to see your face!”

His eyes stretched wide, he moved, stumbling, out of the door, still talking. “Rose, I’m your minister. I ain’t gonna hurt you none! I wants to marry you! Didn’t you like what I did, none?”

She screamed, “Get out of my house!” She hit him with the frying pan on the side of his head, and raised the knife to stab him with the other hand.

Swiftly he finished stumbling out the door and down the steps. The wily preacher kept in mind the neighbors or anyone passing down the road. He turned back to say, “You sho is a liar, Mz. Rose. I didn’t know that chu lied like that! I sho can’t keep company with a liar, Mz. Rose. Emph, emph, emph!”

Rose followed as far as the porch, breathing hard, tears and snot flying, screaming, “Don’t you ever, never, come back to this house as long as you live!!”

Then he was gone. Rose leaned against the closed door, and slid down to the floor, sobbing, and feeling defeated.

Rose bathed herself several times a day for a week. She still didn’t feel clean. She had decided to keep her business to herself.

Rose spent the first night crying in her bed, trying to sleep, yet listening to every sound around the house. Every noise sounded strange and frightening.

Rut after crying herself to sleep several times that week, she told Bertha what had happened. Bertha, aghast, asked her, “Does you need to go to the doctor?”

“I have cleaned myself. I’m not cut nowhere.”

Bertha shook her head, slowly. “Must not’a been no big thing enough to hurt you. Rut maybe you should tell the polices, cause it’s some things you can’t see.”

Rose sighed a sound somewhere between
tears and disgust. “The police don’t care what happens to a colored girl anyway, Bertha.”

Bertha said to herself in her heart, “This chile has done changed. That nasty preacher man destructed her.”

Wings came by, checking on her. Rose wondered if he knew. He brought his nephew, Dreaming Cloud, whom he called “Cloud” for short. They were checking all locks on the doors and windows. When Wings was leaving, he said, “This is what we do for now, but I will have someone watching. Cloud will be here to check on you regular. I bring you Brave back, too. You need someone here with you.” Later when he brought Brave, the dog wagged his tail, happy to see an old friend.

Dreaming Cloud was a quiet, shy, but intelligent young man. He was even handsome in a way, his body was medium height, and thin. He also had a persistent cough that he couldn’t seem to get rid of. He liked Rose because she was Val’s daughter, and had become like a member of his family.

When Cloud met Juliet, an instant friendship was struck. Juliet liked him very much. They had something in common and seemed to know it. He always stopped to sit and talk with her a good while.

In the meantime, Bertha kept a steady eye on Rose and her house. She went by often. Once she stopped in to leave one of Juliet’s little handwoven baskets, trying to distract Rose’s mind. As Juliet grew older her work greatly improved. The baskets were simple, attractive in colors, and in useful sizes. When they could afford it, people were buying them. And Rose was distracted; she decided to help Juliet sell them.

On another day, soon after the rape, Bertha asked after
Rose’s health, then was silent a moment. She leaned toward Rose and asked in a low secret voice, “When your monthly due?”

Rose sighed that sorrowful, pained sound again. “I never kept up with that. Rut I’m waiting for it, now, watching for it.” She shook her head, sadly, as she said, “It’s a sin against God to have a sinner like the preacher sitting in any church teaching people how to live right!”

Bertha put her comforting hand on Rose’s shoulder, and patted it. She said, “But that is why we go to church, Rose. To learn. Everybody sittin in church is a sinner. None is good but the Father, God. God put that in the Bible so you know all people are sinners, and it ain’t no tellin what one of em will do! You s’posed to r’member that in all your dealin’s with men, and women, too. Everybody can, and might, do you wrong. Sometime the least one you expect, chile.

“God teach us that so we will be extra careful cause the devil is everywhere, and tryin to get inside everybody. Some people do not believe that, and I know they has plenty sorrows.”

Rose just looked at the soft-spoken Bertha, with more respect. Bertha seldom talked much, but obviously, Rose thought, “It isn’t because she is dumb. That’s twice I have made a mistake in judging.”

A week later, her period came. She breathed much easier. She had positively dreaded the possibility that the preacher might have left a baby inside her private body.

Preacher Smoke never came back to her house. Bertha had let everybody at the next church meeting know what had happened between the preacher and Rose.

The Church Board asked Preacher Smoke to leave. They
were all guilty of some sins, but Preacher Smoke had gotten caught. He told the Board, “You know that that there girl is a awesomeful liar. Lyin on a poor man, a good man like me! I done caught her lyin many’a time! But, I will go cause I know the devil always punish the good ones! Ya’all be careful round that girl, cause she will lie on you next! Watch what I tell ya!”

They let him go before they had found a new minister. That was no problem in those times; many ministers were walking the land looking for a home. That’s why they had become ministers. Some borrowed money to buy a Bible to preach from … or stole one.