Over the Plain Houses. Julia Franks

he heard, and he found them within seconds—he kept handing me the book with his finger on a line.”

      It was true. Matthew had learned early on that the best way to please his father was to study on the scriptures. Like many people, he could quote chapter and verse, but unlike most, he had an uncanny ability to link the passages to other stories he’d heard. It was a certain kind of skill, even if it wasn’t useful in the way people thought of useful. Her father had it too, that ability to collect ideas from lots of places and then put them together to build something new and unexpected.

      But Mrs. Furman had noticed it.

      Irenie wanted to hear more about her son’s talents, but the two of them had followed the flow of worshippers toward the pews. The other parishioners were settling in, shrugging out of coats and scarves. She extended her hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Furman.”

      But the other woman ignored her hand and kept talking. “Mrs. Lambey, I don’t think your son is getting what he needs from that school.”

      There were only a few people standing now. Irenie was supposed to make her way up to the front of the church, where the saved members sat behind the pulpit box. It was certain that Brodis was watching her now. No doubt he was already seated, waiting for her. She heard the deacon Haver Brooks step up. Everyone in the church, sinners and saints alike, had begun to quiet.

      Virginia Furman whispered, “Mrs. Lambey, please, there’s a new school in Asheville, for exceptionally intelligent children.”

      Irenie stopped. Mrs. Furman’s face was inches from her own, her cheeks flushed red and her long front teeth as straight as board and batten. “He could get in. I just know it.”

      For once Irenie didn’t want to sit in front. She wanted to hear what the woman from the Department of Agriculture had to say. For once she couldn’t recall a good reason not to sit with the regular congregation. There, in the pews, her own mother sat among the sinners—now catching her daughter’s eye and patting the seat at her side. How long had it been since she’d spent the day with her mother’s full hip against her own, the squeeze of her hand upon her knee, her sister’s gossip chittering past her ear? Irenie cast a quick glance toward the bench behind the pulpit, where the saved sat, rock-faced and proper. On impulse, she took a place next to her mother and sisters and motioned Virginia Furman into the pew beside her.

      Mrs. Furman leaned into her ear and whispered, “There are scholarships.”

      The choir commenced singing, “I Heard my Savior Speak to Me.” Irenie picked up the other woman’s hand and squeezed it in her own.

      Brodis glanced to the raised platform behind the pulpit where the saved members sat in U-formation, the women in calico store dresses, their hair fastened in biscuits at the napes of their necks. She wasn’t there. He turned toward the congregation. There, at the door, two women filled the dipper at the water bucket—but not her. People were settling themselves, the men next to the window in the square of morning light, the women on the other side of the aisle shadowed in gloom. And Irenie. Right there, in the pews among the sinners. She was supposed to be sitting on the platform behind the pulpit. She was supposed to be sitting among the saved. She, more than anyone, belonged to the Lord.

      Why wasn’t she sitting among the saved?

      But there was no time. Haver Brooks was making his way to the front of the room. Brodis stepped up and found his own place among the church members and the fellowshipping preachers. His wife didn’t look at him. In place of meeting his eye she untied the strings of her bonnet and stared at the pulpit as if her behavior didn’t matter a thing in the world.

      She had an obligation to the congregation, especially on this day, the sacrament of the Last Supper. It was her mother’s habit, this sitting among the congregation, not hers.

      But his wife was an inside-herself woman. Even when he’d first met her, and told her about the accident that had crippled his foot, she’d listened without saying a word. She’d looked at him and in him, as if she had the self-experience to understand the lull and fester of despair. But she’d been younger than him by ten years, narrow-shouldered and slim, her hair the color of ancient pennies. The big freckles on her face and arms were coppery too, and he’d wondered right away how much of her body did they cover.

      But these days her private thinkings vexed him, like a walnut a man carried in his pocket. He couldn’t leave off touching it, rolling it between his fingers, worrying and working it until the thing loosed itself and the two halves fell away as they’d been meant to do all along.

      Now Irenie’s mother leaned in and said something to her, both of them laughing in response. Next to them, a raft of aunts and nieces whispered and giggled.

      And something else. The woman from the extension office was sitting at her right. Why? And why had she come all the way across the river to get into this church, and by herself?

      Furman, that was her name. They had two agents to work at the USDA office now, two men and now the woman. The men had come five years ago, in ’34, then commenced holding meetings and visiting farms in both counties. From the get-go they’d been selling the idea of tobacco. And there were people that had switched. Rickerson was the first to get shed of his wheat and rye and cane. Brodis was the last, even though he didn’t use the tobacco for himself and had to sell every leaf. After that, the push was for separate pens for the animals. Build more fences and paddocks and leave the crops free in the open, they said. Never mind that the deer and raccoons would get them.

      Not that any of the agents had ever farmed a day in their lives. And you couldn’t trust their interest. It was the looking-down kind, the kind that made a body to take in a stray dog or an idiot child. The kind born of vanity.

      But Isaiah had told that the crown of pride would be trodden under feet. And it was sure Irenie believed that way too. She wouldn’t be swayed by a stranger come from across the river for some kind of charity visit. Most likely the outsider was happenstance. Just that his wife had for some reason chosen this day to cozy up to her mother.

      When Haver ran out of announcements, Brodis stood, his bad foot prickling in his boot, his mind overstrung. He said, “Let us pray,” and the sound of fifty heads bowing was like a communal sigh, or the swing-out of a gate. He felt something inside him give way then too. The first voice, Mary Higdon’s: “Dear Jesus, be with my mother. . .” Then another voice joined in, a man’s. “Lord, I know. . .” And then another and another, each with its own plea. The jumble of sound rose above them until it was a needful cloud kept aloft by the pleas on either side, a communal swell of voices, some soft and insistent, some shy, some strident, all rising together in a bubble of hope, and then floating up toward the ceiling, where it dissipated in a scattering of Amens and Thank-yous and faded in a murmur and a sigh. The room had warmed, and the prayer evaporated in the smell of burning wood and warm bodies. Then the voices of the choir spilled over their heads.

      Haver strode out and began lining the words.

      “I heardan-old-oldstory.”

      The congregation sang the words back majesty-slow. I Heard an Old Old Story. . . .

      “Howasavior-camefrom-glory.”

      How a Savior. Came From Glo-ry. . . .

      Haver led the swaying congregation through three times, the chorus at first mournful and rich as the droning of bagpipes, but each rendition more vigorous than the last, until the singers pounced on the final notes. Beneath the. Cleansing. Flood.

      With the last word hanging yet above them, Haver boomed, “Let us join hands in fellowship.” Women hugged, men embraced, and sound bubbled up again. Brodis turned to Haver, and for a moment, their caviling and jockeying fell away. For a moment all he saw was a vulnerable old man with a ring of fat around his belly and sweat mizzling the armpits of his white shirt. Brodis squeezed the deacon’s shoulders in a tight bear hug and Haver Brooks squeezed him back. It would be a good service, he could see, never mind his wife’s shenanigans.

      He hadn’t planned what he was