In short, Brother Garner was an incorrigible sentimentalist, and while Southern ethos was full of tradition and veiled sentimentalism, we fiercely hid our true feelings.
For instance, when Mr. Bubba Sinclair tried to kill himself , no one expressed surprise or shock. Bubba was the richest man in town. Of course, he was an Episcopalian and an alcoholic. His family owned the only remaining antebellum plantation. The family grew nothing, worked at nothing. They were old money. The Sinclairs had earned their money when Bubba’s great-grandfather, Marlboro Sinclair, returned form the War (i.e., the Civil War) and purchased most of Desha County. The Missouri Pacific, when it expanded southward, was obligated to make old Marlboro very wealthy. The Sinclairs did nothing with their money, of course, but spend it and by this time the Sinclair genus had just about run its course.
Suicide an act was expected of an unstable person whose alcoholism had brought dishonor on his family and town. The only thing that bothered us was that he failed. Such a noble action demanded resolution, and we perversely expected Bubba to act like a man and finish the job. Although we never said anything to him, he knew what was expected and he finally did it.
Garner was, however, a greater threat to our fragile equilibrium.
Dwight Washington, a high school scholar and track star, had a conversion experience at one of our revival services. This was an aberration, t o say the least.
There existed, however, in our church, a well defined, strongly held white Christian racial orthodoxy that supported racism.
As a result, theological motifs that were so comforting to us had lost meaning to the African-American church. For instance, Brother Garner predicted that America was the probable site of the coming millennium, Christ’s thousand-year reign of peace and justice. For many African-American believers, America was not the Promised Land–it was Egypt. No doubt Dwight felt some hesitation when he attended our church.
I never told anyone, but I had invited him. It was my fault.
Above the choir loft in our church, directly behind Brother Garner, was a stain glass image of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. When I kneeled at the communion rail I remember looking up at Jesus and wondering what it was like. I wondered what he was doing in that window. I imagined he had just finished brushing his teeth–why not? My mother had told me thhat good people brushed their teeth twice, sometimes three times/day. Jesus was, without a doubt, the best person who ever lived. So, if my sources were correct. he must be brushing his teeth right up there. Oh, that stain glass window implied that he was praying all the time but I knew better. I knew that he had to have been brushing his teeth a lot.
Now I did not know much about Dwight’s soul, but everyone could tell that he needed to brush his teeth more so when Brother Garner mentioned that we were going to have a revival service next Wednesday night I was very careful to invite Dwight.