The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks - Donald Harington [106]
“Hold on, Parson!” said Brother Chism, rising to his feet. “Turtles aint got no voices!”
“It means turtledove,” Brother Stapleton explained, and described one, and held out his hand, and a real, or seemingly real turtledove flew down and alighted upon his hand, and everyone’s mouth gaped open…everyone’s but his sister Sirena, who had seen him do this trick many times before. Then the preacher’s gentle voice lifted and quickened, and he pounded his Bible and said, “That’s what it says here, friends, ‘For lo,’ it says, ‘the winter is past,’ it says, ‘the snow is over and gone,’ it says!” And the rhythms of his voice lulled his audience, hypnotized them, their eyes glazed over as he painted pictures of springtime and bloom and the renewal of the verdant earth.
The chief difference between Brother Stapleton’s magic and that of the motion picture and television is that while the latter are only visual, the former was not only visual but also tactile, olfactory, and gustatory. His audience could feel the spring breeze blowing through their hair, smell the blossom of dogwood, taste the first-harvested sprout of sparrowgrass. For the length of his sermon, which lasted two and one-half hours, the winter actually was over and gone. The main body of his sermon he devoted to the story of Solomon, dwelling upon the legendary love between the wise King and the Dark Girl of the Song. He did not use the word “love,” which was an embarrassment, but everybody knew exactly what he was talking about, and everybody could see vividly depicted on the “screen” of the mind the exact lineaments of the dazzling Solomon in all his glory and the exquisite exotic beauty of the girl, and they could see as clearly as if they were there the nut orchards and fruit orchards and shepherds’ tents where the lovers met. We may appreciate the suitability of Stapleton’s selection of the subject matter, for Solomon himself (or whoever wrote his Song) was a master of description who gave us a vivid image of his beloved, step by step from her eyes to her toes. Brother Stapleton’s “projection” or “showing” or “screening” concluded after two-and-a-half hours with the words, “And so, my friends, we may think that God keers fer each of us jist like King Solomon keered fer that purty gal, and we air comforted by it.” Then he ceased.
His audience, like an audience at a movie theater when the house lights come on after a gripping film, sat motionless and unseeing for several minutes. Then most of them smiled and looked very entertained and satisfied, but a few of them looked perplexed, and one of these, Seth Chism, rose and asked, “Aint there to be no call to the mourner’s bench?”
Brother Stapleton stared for a moment at that front bench, empty, reserved for sinners seeking salvation. He shook his head.
Clyde Dinsmore rose and asked, “Aint there to be no communion? We done brung the grape juice and sody crackers.”
Brother Stapleton replied, “No, Brother Dinsmore, but mightn’t ye lead us in the closin prayer?”
Brother Dinsmore made a short prayer, thanking God for the “show” and apologizing to Him for the absence of the call for sinners and communion, in Jesus’ Name, Amen. Everybody had their heads bowed, except the male Ingledews, who noticed that Brother Stapleton crossed his fingers at the moment Jesus’ name was invoked.
Then the service was over.
Salina Ingledew invited Brother Stapleton and his sister Sirena to Sunday dinner, and everybody went home, marveling to one another about how real that “show” had been, everybody, that is, except the deacons of the “amen corner,” Brothers Chism, Dinsmore, Plowright, Coe and Whitter, who remained behind in the meeting house to discuss their new minister and his unorthodox ways of conducting a service. They granted that he sure spoke a right powerful sermon, they even admitted that they had seen those images plain as day, but some of those images seemed a mite too bold; for instance, in that part toward the end, what was the King and that girlfriend of his doing out there in that