Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [63]
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
How could I live with myself? How could God stand me? Was this why Jesus wouldn’t speak to my heart? The music washed over me.... Softly and tenderly, Jesus is calling. The music was a river trying to wash me clean. I sobbed and dug my heels into the dirt, drunk on grief and that pure, pure voice soaring above the choir. Aunt Alma swore all gospel singers were drunks, but right then it didn’t matter to me. If it was whiskey backstage or tongue-kissing in the dressing room, whatever it took to make that juice was necessary, was fine. I wiped my eyes and swore out loud. Get that boy another bottle, I wanted to yell. Find that girl a hardheaded husband. But goddam, keep them singing that music. Lord, make me drunk on that music.
I rocked back and forth, grinding my heels into the red dirt, my fists into my stomach, crooning into the dark night and the reflected glow from the tent. I cried until I was dry, and then I laughed. I put my head back and laughed until my voice was hoarse and the damp fog came in to cover the lights from the revival. If Aunt Ruth had come out to me then, I would have apologized for everything, for living and not loving her enough to save her from the cancer that was eating her alive. I didn’t know. For something, surely, I would have had something to apologize for, for being young and healthy and sitting there full of music. That was what gospel was meant to do—make you hate and love yourself at the same time, make you ashamed and glorified. It worked on me. It absolutely worked on me.
10
The gospel revival tent had been a revelation, but the “Sunrise Gospel Hour” became an obsession. Every morning, before Aunt Ruth and Uncle Travis were up, I’d go sit close to the radio in their parlor to listen to the “Sunrise Gospel Hour.” In the stillness of the early dawn, I would lean into the speaker and practice my secret ambition, cupping my fingers next to my chin and tilting my head back to whisper-sing so no one could hear me. I sang quietly along with everything, not just the gospel shows but the country hits that followed—Marty Robbins, Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash, Ruth Brown, Stonewall Jackson, June Carter, Johnny Horton. I sang so quietly I could barely hear my own voice, but in my imagination my song soared out strong and beautiful.
Aunt Ruth would always smile when she saw me with my head pressed close to the radio. “Turn it up,” she’d say. “You an’t the only one likes a little music.” Sometimes she’d even start humming along. One weekend she got Earle to bring his record player over and we spent two days listening to her favorite songs. It turned out Aunt Ruth had a bunch of her own records in a box under her bed, an original Carter Family set, Patsy Montana singing “I Want to Be a Cowboy’s Sweetheart,” the Clinch Mountain Clan doing Hank Williams’s “Are You Walking and a-Talking for the Lord,” Roy Acuff’s “Wabash Cannonball,” and Roy Acuff singing “The Wreck on the Highway.” Her prize was a copy of Al Dexter and the Troopers singing “Pistol Packing Mama.” Every time the chorus came on, she’d pound her hand on the couch and sing along, waving at me to join in with her. We’d yell it out, “Pistol packing mama, lay that pistol down,” until we drove Uncle Travis out to sit on the bumper of his car with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.
He came in once to get a hunk of cheese for a meal and stopped in to complain. “You’re scaring off the dogs. Give it a break.”
“Leave us alone, old man.” Aunt Ruth’s face was pink and happy.