THE REVEREND ELTON T. SNEED was not a man for whom the world was a complex place. He believed in Jesus, the flag, the devil, sin, camp meetings, Wednesday night services, helping his neighbor, tithing, jailhouse ministries, the restorative power of baptism, the gift of tongues, and the exorcism of demonic spirits, some of whom he called by name. The heroes and villains of the Old Testament moved in and out of his rhetoric as though they were contemporary figures who lived in the community. Unlike many of his peers’, his sermons seldom touched on the subjects of sex or politics, primarily because he had no interest in them. For Elton T. Sneed, the critical issue for a preacher was the wrestling contest between Yahweh and Satan.
For Elton, a ministry meant the acquisition of power—the power to heal, to cast out unclean spirits, and to wash away original sin. Salvation didn’t come with catechism lessons, attendance at church, or even the daily practice of good deeds. It came like the sun crashing out of the sky, crushing a person to the earth. “If you don’t believe me, ask St. Paul what happened on the road to Damascus,” Elton was fond of saying.
When Elton brought salvation to the willing, it was in the form of an exorcism that left them dripping with sweat and fear, or, if he baptized them, he pushed them under so many times they thought they were about to drown or had been mistaken for dirty laundry.
The problem for Elton was not his belief system but the consequences of it. If redemption and forgiveness of sin came with baptism, or if indeed the Holy Spirit descended through the top of the tent and entered the human breast, how could a Christian shun or turn away from a brother or sister whom Jesus had chosen to save?
Sometimes Elton’s jailhouse converts seemed to be a bit shaky in their beliefs after they made parole. They showed up at the parsonage door, asking for money, perhaps smelling of marijuana, a couple of women in the car, their faces averted. In these instances Elton usually gave them money, provided he had any, then would be filled with depression, a sense of personal failure, and a question mark about the worth of his ministry.
But he consoled himself with the changes he had witnessed in Wyatt Dixon, even though some of Wyatt’s friends were a challenge to Elton’s attempts at unconditional charity. His church and his larder remained opened to the worst of the worst. Who was he to judge? If he’d been dealt the lot of these poor souls, he would have probably turned out as corrupt and profligate as they, he told himself.
Look at the two men who had just pulled their pickup truck into his yard. The evening light was weak, the western sun veiled by smoke from dead fires, but Elton could see the faces of the two men getting out of the truck, and he wondered if both of them had been in a terrible accident or malformed in the womb.
The shorter man had a gnarled forehead, like the corrugation in a washboard, a squashed nose, and missing teeth. His eyes were set too low in his face and his upper torso was too long for his short legs, so that he gave the impression of a walking tree stump.
His friend was tall, with the flaccid muscle tone of a gorged serpent, a disfigured mouth that looked as if it had been broken with a hard instrument, and a hairline-to-cheek burn scar that had tightened the skin on one eye into a tiny aperture, as though he were permanently squinting.
Elton stepped outside the door of the parsonage, which was actually a house trailer enclosed in a wood shell, and nodded at the two visitors walking up the incline toward him. The air was damp from the rain and smelled of smoke and river stone and wet trees, and he thought he heard geese honking high overhead.
“Hep you boys?” he said. There was grease on his hands from his dinner, and he wiped his hands on a paper towel.
“Looking for work. Man at the State Employment said you might get us on bucking bales here’bouts,” the tall man said, his eyes going past Elton into the backyard.
“Haying is all done by machine today. Don’t many buck bales no more,” Elton said.
“We’re not choicy,” the tall man said. “Haven’t ate for a day or so.”
The two visitors stared at Elton, as though their problems had not only become his but somehow had originated with him. Elton put the paper towel in his pocket self-consciously. “I expect I could fix you something,” he said. “But it looks like y’all need a job more than anything else.” He tried to grin, and his face felt stiff and self-mocking.
“Nice of you to invite us in,” the shorter man said, walking past Elton into his home. His friend followed him, passing inches from Elton’s chest, the burned area on his face puckered like dried-out putty.
Elton stepped inside but did not close the door behind him. “I got peanut butter and jelly, if y’all don’t mind something simple,” he said.
But they seemed not to hear him. They looked at the meagerness of his possessions—the footworn carpet, the secondhand furniture, the imitation wood paneling on the walls—with the curiosity of people who might be visiting a zoo.
“Your wife here?” the truncated man asked.
“She died. Eight years back. In Arkansas. Say—”
“It’s true y’all talk in tongues?” the tall man said.
This time Elton did not try to answer their questions because he knew they did not care about the answers he would give them. The truncated man sat down in a soft chair and clicked on the television, flipped the channels, his eyes like angry chunks of lead as he stared at several blurred images. He clicked the set off. “It’s this Mideastern crap. That’s all that’s on there. Guys who wipe their ass with their hands shaking their fists at the camera,” he said.
Elton remained silent, knowing in his heart of hearts that everything that was about to happen was part of a higher plan. Just don’t be afraid, he told himself. Think of the children of Israel in the fiery furnace. Think of Dan’el in the lion’s den. Think of Paul and Silas locked in jail, the angel of the Lord flinging back their door in a burst of light.
But he could not suppress the fear that was invading his body, stealing his courage and his faith, causing his face to twitch, his brow to break into a sweat, his buttocks to tremble. “It’s Wyatt you’re after, but he ain’t here. He’s trading some horses up at Flathead,” he said.
“You’ll do just fine, Preacher,” the tall man said.
“Wyatt’s friends are here. Three fellows y’all don’t want to meet. They went up to the grocery for me,” Elton said.
“They were here,” the short man said. He was still seated in the soft chair. His elongated forehead was tilted forward. He raised his eyebrows at Elton, as an ape in a cage might. “But they’re not here now. That’s because they’re locked in the back of a van.”
The room was silent again, so quiet Elton could hear his own breathing, an imperceptible creak under his foot when he shifted his weight. A drop of sweat ran into his eye, and he wiped it out of his eye socket with the heel of his hand.
The tall man took a carton of orange juice out of Elton’s icebox, shook it, and drank
directly from the carton. Then he glanced at his watch and exhaled his breath wearily. He wore a dark green shirt that was tucked into his khakis and dusty alpine boots, and his clothes gave off an odor like detergent that had been ironed into the fabric. He set the orange juice carton on the counter and looked at Elton evenly, his half-destroyed face seeming to study the forms of redress the world owed him.