The Sweetest Hallelujah. Elaine Hussey

her closed eyes showed respect to Brother Joshua Gibson and God the Father Almighty, and open eyes could send you to hell a poppin. Last year Billie had even sent a letter to the North Pole telling Santa she hated him for not bringing her a bicycle.

      She marched past the front door of the honky-tonk toward the alley that led around to the little house where Tiny Jim and Merry Lynn lived. Though she told everybody she wasn’t scared of anything, that was a lie. Billie was afraid of getting cut into six pieces and nuclear bombs that could turn everybody to dust with the push of a button and cottonmouth moccasins and the wrath of Queen. But her biggest fear was being left motherless.

      She decided to strike up a bargain with God before she entered the alley. “God, if you’ll keep Queen from finding out I’m here, I promise to shut my eyes during the preacher’s long-winded prayers. I bet you get tired of listening to them, too, don’t you? Your friend, Billie.”

      At the last minute, she remembered to say, Amen, and then she entered the alley. This time of morning while most folks were in their houses eating molasses and biscuits, the alley was creepy. There was no telling what was waiting to grab her. Just in case God got busy with a more important prayer, like one from President Eisenhower, Billie balled up her fist. It never hurt to be ready to fight.

      Something screeched, and she flattened herself against the brick wall. Was it a haint? Or was it a dangerous stranger, come to snatch another little girl away from Tiny Jim’s? Billie didn’t want to end up floating in Gum Pond in a cotton sack.

      By the time a gray cat streaked by with its ribs poking through matted-up fur, Billie was shaking with relief. That was another thing. If she could be in charge of things, she’d make it against the law to starve animals and let them run loose all over Shakerag scaring little girls, even if they weren’t supposed to be in the alley in the first place.

      Humming “Lead On, O King Eternal” to show anybody listening she wasn’t scared, she walked past the garbage cans. One of the lids was off. She hoped the cat had done it and not somebody up to no good. Just in case, she picked up speed. When she got through the alley, she had to bend over and catch her breath.

      The scent of barbecue was strong out back. Tiny Jim’s pits were smoking, and Billie could smell the meat slow-cooking on the coals. When he took it out of the pits, it would be so tender it would fall off the bone. You could cut it with a fork.

      A curl of pork-scented smoke followed her all the way to Tiny Jim’s front door. It had once been green but was now blackened from constant companionship with smoke pits. Billie lifted her hand and knocked.

      Anybody else seeing the gigantic man who opened the door would have turned tail and run. But she knew him as the man who sent his gold Chevrolet Bel Air to pick up Queen and her pies, the man who passed the collection plate on Sunday, the man who showed up at your door at Christmas with a smoked ham, even if you hadn’t told a soul you had nothing to eat for supper but a strip of fried fatback.

      “Good mornin’, Billie.” Tiny Jim peered back down the alley behind her, looking for Queen and Mama, she guessed. He opened the door wider. “Come inside. You just in time for breakfast.”

      Queen always said, Be polite. Just because folks is offerin’ you food don’ mean they got it to give. Her stomach rumbled, and on the spot she decided to part company with polite. Besides, the cold biscuit in her pocket didn’t compare to the mouthwatering smells inside this house.

      He led her to a kitchen where the linoleum didn’t have cracks. The curtains had lace on the bottom and looked brand-new. There was a cloth on the table, too, as white as Tiny Jim’s big teeth.

      “Do you like bacon or sausage?” She nodded and he piled both on her plate, then added two hot biscuits. “I bet you like butter and jelly on your biscuits, a growin’ girl like you.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “You got manners. I like that.” He spread a big cloth napkin and tucked it into the neck of his shirt. “I done said grace. Go ahead and help you’self.”

      He was the kind of grown-up who didn’t make up foolish conversations at the table, just sat there and let you enjoy your food in peace. Billie started to ask, Where’s Miz Merry Lynn, then she heard her. A low moaning coming from down the hall.

      “Is Miz Merry Lynn coming to eat?”

      “After a while. I keep her a plate warmin’ in the oven for when she’s ready.”

      The moaning down the hall turned to a high-pitched keening. It sounded like Miz Quana Belle’s hound dog last year after her pups got toted off to new homes.

      “Mr. Tiny Jim, do you know how to find my daddy?”

      He took the napkin from under his chin, folded it into a square and pressed it between hands as big as Virginia hams before he laid it on the table. Then he sat real quiet, looking at her. It wasn’t the kind of stare that made Billie squirm, just a sad kind of look that made her wish she could say something respectful about dead Alice. Queen always said, Speak kinely of the dead.

      “Mr. Tiny Jim, I’ll bet your little girl was nice.” He nodded. “I’ll bet you’d never take her off and cut her in six pieces.”

      “You oughtn’ be thinkin’ such things.” He pushed his chair back, reached over and lifted Billie onto his lap. “I wish you was my little girl.”

      Billie pictured her life as Tiny Jim’s little girl. She’d have bacon and sausage every morning. She could go to the juke joint when she pleased because her new daddy would be watching her like a hawk. She’d have her own room with new curtains that had pink lace on the bottom and shiny linoleum floors that didn’t have cracks.

      But it would be Alice’s old room, and she might have to sleep with the dead girl’s cold breath whispering in her ear, her floating head perched on the lamp shade, her chopped-off legs standing in the door so Billie couldn’t get past without screaming for help.

      Tiny Jim turned his sad eyes down the hall where the sounds coming from Merry Lynn reminded Billie of a starving cat.

      “Thank you just the same, Mr. Tiny Jim, but I’ve got a real daddy.”

      “Saint could put the mojo on that horn of his.”

      “Will you help me find him?”

      “Billie, he was a great jazzman and a good friend, but I done reckon he’d be no ‘count as a daddy.”

      “Why not?”

      “He had problems.”

      “What kind?”

      “Big ones. The kind little girls not s’pose to worry they purty heads over.” He kissed her on the top of her head. “Now, you run on home befo’ yo mama and Miz Queen catches you.”

      “I gotta find my daddy. He’ll know how to make Mama well.”

      “I don’t reckon the Saint nor nobody else can do that, sugah. Yo mama’s in a bad way.”

      “I won’t let her die!”

      Tiny Jim just sat in his chair a long time, shaking his head and watching her with eyes as mournful-looking as a red-bone hound dog. Billie believed he was a nice man, but that didn’t mean he was going to put her in his Bel Air and drive off across state lines looking for the Saint.

      “You won’t tell I was here?”

      He winked. “I reckon a little mouse done eat them sausage and biscuits.”

      She thanked him for breakfast, then went back outside where the alley and the barbecue pits and the garbage cans looked the same. The cracks in the caked dirt path and the oak trees and sagging light lines sprinkled with black birds hadn’t changed. The sun was coming up just like it always had, and nothing about the way folks stirred from their houses and headed off to work said this day was any different from the rest.

      Only Billie knew. Sometimes you could be