Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Read Online Free PDF

May-flower Baptist, the only white church in town, has dinner-on-the-grounds.
    Under the ruthless direction of Miss Maybelle Mason, the old snapping turtle who runs the post office, Ren and the boys from the Royal Ambassadors bivouac the long tables under the big live oaks beside the sanctuary. While Miss Maybelle fumes over straight lines and wide-enough walkways, Miz Naideen West, the preacher’s pinch-faced wife, fusses over the white sheets she calls tablecloths (which are the exact same ones she calls drapes during the Children’s Christmas Pageant). On top of the sheets, she spreads long palm fronds for decoration. After church, the women will cover them with their specialties.
    Everyone knows who cooks what best, and for weeks now, when the church ladies pass each other at the post office or in Mr. Voight’s grocery store, they fawn and nod with exaggerated politeness. “You
are
makin’ your fried chicken, your baked beans, your carrot Jell-O salad, aren’t you?” they chirp like birds to one another.
    When they see Mother, these women have one thing on their minds. “Lizbeth, you are bringin’ that
scrumptious
fruit cocktail cake of yours!” It’s always the first dessert to disappear.
    Unlike most people around here, we weren’t born Southern Baptist. Doto and her family are self-described Lukewarm Methodists and Mother’s from a long line of Congregationalists, which is practically Episcopalian. When my parents arrived in Mayflower, they were newlyweds, barely past twenty, and kept to themselves. The following year, though, it was obvious that Mother was expecting me and, even more so, that Daddy got the polio. After Doto and Doc Johnny (and Luther, of course), Miss Maybelle Mason, eyes like a hawk, was first on the scene. Of course, she organized the church ladies in nothing flat and the casseroles arrived, like clockwork, for months. As Mother recovered, and Daddy improved, they were honor-bound to repay the brigade for their diligence. The price was membership in Mayflower Baptist Church.
    Of course, the major prerequisite is baptism. But it’s an often-told, true story that Daddy caught the polio in the very lake where the baptisms take place, and refused to enter it again or allow Mother to, either. Citing some sort of “Biblical precedence,” the minister agreed, and my parents’ waterless entry into the congregation gave new meaning to the term “dry Baptists.”
    It was afterwards that Miss Maybelle, who always has her ears open, heard Daddy playing the piano and revealed his talent to the community. Long story short, Daddy got roped into leading the Mayflower Baptist choir, a job which he vows is infinitely preferable to being a Deacon.
    Although we attend every Sunday, my parents take “the long view” on a number of church tenets, the most notable being the ban on alcohol. Daddy, a quick Bible study, never minds pointing out that the Apostle Paul encouraged Timothy to “drink a little wine for thy stomach.” “Surely,” Daddy says, “
Paul
enjoyed a glass of the grape and
so
can I.”
    On Mother’s part, she just bakes her fruit cocktail cake exactly as her mother does, flooding the coconut and pecan mix on top of the cake batter with a generous cup of rum, then covering all with brown sugar and dots of butter.
    None of this means my family’s not
spiritual
. (Though what happened to Marvin has put me at odds with God these days.) To their credit, our parents have spent considerable time discussing the difference between Faith—the abiding belief in a Divine Creator that’s as plain a part of a hundred-year-old oak tree, or a fiery red sunset, as the nose on your face—and Religion—which is the rigamarole that makes
some
folks figure they’ve got a leg up on everybody else.
    Usually, my favorite part of Palm Sunday is the young people’s Bible Drill, the hotly contested game of who-canfind-it-fastest, played in the lag time between the end of church and the blessing that