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Let Sleeping Cats Lie
By Carolyn Harris
Preacher Bob was the prettiest man I ever saw. He was tall and firm with dark brown eyes that looked like something you’d dig out of Sandy Bottom Creek. His hair was a wavy brown pelt that crawled down the neck of his starched white shirt then poked out in a little fringe along the cuffs as neatly as if Mama had stitched it there. His pale white hands were shaved and sharp to the touch and he wore a big firey opal, he called his Eye of God, that winked and blinked at me every Sunday afternoon.
That summer, the ladies up and down Gravel Top Road thought he was the best thing that ever happened to Sandy Bottom. Little Brother said to watch out for him cause the preacher was smart like that fat brown pack rat that stole our good stuff and left us all his junk. Little Brother didn’t like him because he showed up every Sunday and always got the best parts of the chicken and Little Brother got stuck with the pope’s nose. He said he was going to shoot the preacher in the butt with his BB gun and send him back down the gravel road past the feed store and out of town.
After his first visit, Mama warned me not to get too carried away with his "Praise the Lord" fancy words–I better keep an eye out for myself and not expect the Lord to show up and put food on the table. She never complained that the Lord sent Preacher Bob to take the food off our table. I heard Mama tell Aunt Cora he was a rounder and would always have an eye out for the ladies even when he was too old to do anything about it. But Mama didn’t run him off with the hatchet like Digger Delaney when she caught us out behind the goat barn. When it came to men, there weren’t a lot of fancy pickins in Sandy Bottom. I think she was starting to worry about my future. "Pass the biscuits, please," always came with her reminder, "Better hold off on too many biscuits till you catch a fellow. Once you snag a husband, your fanny can thump behind you like a bridal procession."
I had plenty of fellows interested in my fanny and other personal parts. Most of them just weren’t up to my standards. I was holding out for someone with a job and hopefully most of his teeth. Chowder Downing had a job. He even owned his own fix-it shop, but he used to swat flies and eat them to make the girls squeal when he was younger. I heard his mama whopped him with a frying pan whenever he got the urge nowadays and he was pretty well broke of the habit, but the one time he took me out to the movie in Vinegar Hill, I froze up. He had the big bucks, even bought us one of those jumbo deluxe boxes of popcorn with extra butter. When he tried to get his tongue in the hole where I’d lost my left molar, I panicked and started coughing. It was probably only popcorn, but all I could worry about was choking on a fly.
For now, Preacher Bob was my best hope and Mama bit her tongue about a lot of things cause deep down she knew if I could snag the preacher, it would be a feather in her cap. She’d be head hen in the coop at the Abundant Light Social Circle when they embroidered bibs and knitted socks for the orphans in Africa.
After more than a month of Sundays, we knew he was getting serious. He’d show up after Sunday services with a little brown paper bag and a clean white shirt. He’d wait till after dinner--in case he got any of Mama’s milk gravy on it--then step into Mama’s bedroom and change into his clean shirt. With a bow he’d hand Mama his dirty shirt to wash and iron as if he was offering her a blessing from the Lord. She wasn’t all that pleased about it, but kept a smile on her face till we were out the door and settled on the porch swing.
One big problem in this budding romance was Big Blackie, Mama’s raggedy tom with the stubby tail. He got here first and let Preacher Bob know it. When we’d move outside to the swing after dinner, he’d slink out of the broken board on the porch floor and crawl in beside me so Preacher Bob couldn’t get too close, then flop around like a fat piece of cooked spaghetti until I could get my fingers in his armpits. He didn’t like Preacher Bob and Preacher Bob didn’t like him. If Preacher Bob tried to stroke Blackie, he’d crouch on his stomach, switch his stubby tail and glare at him with speckled gold eyes. Preacher Bob called him Satan and that probably made him even madder. Little Brother said, "Big Blackie’s smart enough to smell a rat," but I think Blackie just heard Mama tell how Preacher Bob lost his temper at Aunt Cora’s and threw her little fluffy mop dog into the wall. The little thing still limps around on three legs and Aunt Cora says, "I’d rather burn in hell than let that hairy bugger back in my house."
Preacher Bob did have a temper. I’d heard other stories, but I wasn’t too worried. When we got hitched, taming his temper was one of the first things I’d start working on.
It was a hot August day when I finally got the nerve to face up to my problem and hop on the wedding train. The roses were wilting, but the cicadas hadn’t got wound up to full strength yet. It was still pretty shady on the front porch and I figured we had about an hour to get my problem straightened out before the sun made it around the corner and we’d have to call it quits for the day.
My problem was me. Preacher Bob had been after me from the get go to confess my sins. Today was going to be the day. I had to pick my time just right. I didn’t want Little Brother around, and certainly didn’t want Mama listening to more than a few things she didn’t know about.
I knew today it was now or never. I’d worn my good white Easter dress, dabbed a Touch of Innocence under each tittie and slipped into the pantry during dishes and took two deep swigs of Mama’s cooking sherry. I rolled Big Blackie’s head out of my lap and smoothed my skirt across my legs flat as a table cloth. Big Blackie lay like a corpse, legs in the air, speckled yellow eyes closed. I gave him a quick scratch with my thumb under the chin and figured he was out of the picture for a while.
It was time for Preacher Bob to make his usual move. He knelt before me a bible in one hand, the other on my forehead. "Let the hand of the Lord save you." Big Blackie opened one golden eye and watched him. Preacher Bob pushed my head back and called for the Holy Spirit to get in there and start cleaning out the muck. He moved to my left tittie. He was squeezing it and calling for the Lord to help me repent. Over Preacher Bob’s shoulder, I saw Little Brother walk by with his BB gun. I was afraid he was going to mess everything up, but Mama rapped on the window then came out the front door rubbing Avon in her knuckles as if we weren’t even there--me and my good Easter dress and tingling tittie and him on his knees on the dirty board floor. She whacked Little Brother in the head and steered him down the road to Aunt Cora’s.
Preacher Bob was working so hard on that tittie, I could feel something moving around in my belly, but I figured it wasn’t the Lord. I’d had that same feeling in the back of JD’s pickup last Tuesday night. The hand of the Lord worked its way down to my belly running its finger up under my belt and flicking at my pink Sunday panties.
Preacher Bob must have sniffed my Touch of Innocence, cause he stopped his mumbling and opened his eyes. His nose twitched like a rat sniffing for cheese and I giggled.
"Are you ready, sister?"
I was ready. I felt the sherry sting my cheeks. Being the wife of a big fuzzy fellow didn’t seem all that bad. I ran my finger tips down Big Blackie’s belly and wondered if running my finger tips down Preacher Bob’s back would feel just as good. I thought about slipping my hands in that crisp white shirt and rubbing him under the armpits as he moved to my thighs. His bible was gone now.
"Repent, repent," he murmured as he worked away on my thighs with both hands, while the firey Eye of God winked at me. "Confess your sins and step into the abundant light."
Now was the time to give him what he’d yearned for all these weeks. He worked his hands down between my thighs sliding my skirt up around my knees.
"Oh Lord, save me," I moaned. I was afraid my nipples would burn a hole in my new Easter dress as I moved back and forth with his hands letting him redeem me.
I started with Jr Brown and the night in his uncle’s barn. I worked my way through Luther Smart and the tinsel on my titties after the Christmas program, and Travis Little and the lemon cake. I was trying to remember exactly which time it was when Leroy Parsons and I got stuck together with the marshmallow cream, when he bellowed "Satan" and grabbed Big Blackie by the belly knocking his bible down Blackie’s hole in the floor. He stood to hurl Big Blackie against the petunia box, but Blackie hung on. Blood ran down his clean white sleeve and he tried to bang Big Blackie off with his knee. Blackie leaped to his chest and climbed him like the cherry tree. He dug his claws in, riding Preacher Bob’s head like Little Brother rode our new billy goat--all hunched over and digging in, afraid to let go. When Preacher Bob took off through the gate, Big Blackie leaped to the walk, flicked his stubby tail, flopped in the sun and licked his crotch.
What a waste of Mama’s Sunday chicken.
To read more Carolyn Harris, CLICK HERE.