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Ninety Days Inside The Empire: A Novel by William Appleman Williams

Communion

Page 43

-- Or had it been worked out along the way by those who built it? The bricks, a light russet with random streaks of gray, had been left natural. There was a story which had taken on the aura of scripture in the telling by Griff about the long-departed minister who had started to whitewash them. A boy who threw a ball through the open doors carried the news home and the reverend was shortly waited upon by a committee of the faithful who defrocked him on the steps and dumped the tub of lime over his head. Once a week there after the steps were scrubbed and whitewashed in his memory.

Marsh chuckled at the memory of the talk, but his eyes continued around the interior. It was all done in pine and cypress brought by wagon from the groves north and east along the rivers and the gulf. The pews were shaped in gentle curves away from the center aisle down toward the organ pipes, the choir seats and the preacher's well. The pine was satin smooth from polishing by thousands of backs and bottoms. But the ultimate magic was elsewhere. The floor eased upward from the well in a series of terraces, each holding two rows of pews. That inspired design did as much for the acoustics as the gently pitched internal roof line, and hence the organ and the voices filled the space with hardly any distortion. And of course the minister and every member of the congregation could see everyone else. One was a member of the community in being as well as in heart and mind.

Over the years a good number of white architects had come by on weekdays when the doors were open from sunrise to sunset. In their own way they prayed, taking measurements and making sketches, even a photograph now and again. A few even came back on Sunday and put a dollar in the collection plate.

"Well and well! Good mornin, Mr. Judge." The voice carried a gentle tease of laughter. "You sure here earlier than usual! When you come, that is!"

Marsh popped out of his reverie to greet the two women and a boy starting upstairs to the balcony and on to the belfry where they would peal the bells to announce that The Lord was expected here within the half-hour.

"Come early to be sure I get a good seat."

"The balcony's open today for communion, and you can hear and see real good up there."

"I'll follow you up, and thanks for the thought."

"You just get here more often, Mr. Judge."

-- I better, what with what's going to be coming along.

The organist was already there, smiling and nodding his head as he danced his hands just above the stops and keys of the scheduled music. Marsh shook his head in wonder. The man had to be in his seventies, but he could still hold his own at Five Corners and was known to give a tickle to Bach and any other religious music. Some thought his variations attracted as many people as the sermons by The Reverend.

"Morning, Thomas."

Thomas nodded, continuing his warm-up. "You missed me Friday night, Mr. Judge. Some youngun from the airbase thought he could cut me. You can catch 'em without being seen. They always come in late and sit in the back."

-- You know most of it, don't you, friend.

Marsh moved to where he was told, thinking that this congregation was unlike any of the others he had visited during his efforts to find the way that The Lord wished him to walk in. Here the people came early to sit down front and squeezed in tight, only reluctantly filling back toward the door.