Lay that Trumpet in Our Hands Read Online Free PDF Page B

begins dinner-on-the-grounds. Usually I love the competition, and to tell you the truth, usually I do quite well.
    But this year, because of Marvin and all, I didn’t feel like competing. In fact, I’d made up my mind
not
to participate until Doto told me about the prize—four tickets to the glass-bottom boat ride at Silver Springs—and suggested, if I won, I might give them as a thinking-of-you gift to Luther and Armetta.
    It was Marvin, after
all
, who turned me into a first-class Bible Driller, by sharing his secret.
    “Think of the Bible as a rainbow, Roo,” he told me. “See the books in colors. The beginning ones are red: Genesis and all the begets and begats and the Moses books through Judges,
scarlet
red. After that comes the name and story books starting with Ruth and going through the poem books to the juicy Songs of King Solomon. They navel orange. After that, you got the four major prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel, plus a whole batch of minor prophets, twelve actually, Hosea through Malachi. They daylily yellow, and
that’s
the end of the Old Testament.
    “Up next, they’s the Jesus stories with the four Gospels and the Acts, they your green section with the words ‘spoken by our Lord and Savior’ in red letters—green and red like Christmas, y’see. Then, they’s the Apostle Paul’s letters to
all
the different churches all over the ancient
world
starting with the Romans through the Hebrews. They blue, Mediterranean Sea blue. At the hind end of things, you got the other letters from James, Peter, John and Jude; they’s violet. No need to give the Revelations a color,
everybody
knows where they is.” Marvin was a patient and inventive teacher.
    Today, in his honor, when our Sunday school teacher Miz Agnes Langford calls “Time for Bible Drill!” I join the others elbowing their way into formation in front of the food tables. I prefer, and take, the end.
    “Attention!” Miz Agnes commands and we straighten up like good Christian soldiers, Bibles at our thighs, pinned in the curve of our right palms.
    “Draw swords!” comes next, which means Bible front and center, face-down on left palm, right hand on top, thumb at the ready.
    After that, Miz Agnes calls book, chapter and verse: “Ezekiel 34:12.”
    Yellow
, I think,
middle of the book
, and take a breath.
    She calls it again: “Ezekiel 34:12,” then gives the command: “Charge!”
    I breathe out, thumb the Bible open to the middle, check book name and chapter, top right corner, check verse numbers bottom left, and step forward.
    “Reesa?” she says.
    “Ezekiel 34:12,” I say, then read,
“As a shepherd seeketh out
his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so
will I seek out My sheep, and will deliver them out of all places
where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.”
    Miz Agnes
always
picks out comfort verses.
    “That’s right, Reesa, and what a comfort. Attention!”
    I step back into the line and we start again. The person who finds the most verses first wins.
    One Sunday, only once, she let me call the verse. To amuse the others, I picked a recent discovery from the orange section, Song of Solomon 7:2: “Thy navel is like a round goblet that wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.”
    Miz Agnes was not comforted and spoke to my parents afterwards. Later, Daddy laughed and asked if I was trying so hard to shock Miz Langford, why didn’t I go with the one about
I am a wall and my breasts are like towers
?
    “Be bold,” Daddy told me, “or what’s the point?”
    Today’s Palm Sunday Bible Drill comes down to a tie breaker—me versus Billy Roy Sparks, who’s two years older and can say the books of the Bible backwards. I’m not worried. Truth is, I usually beat him.
    The others stand back, while Billy Roy and I square off for the final selection. The adults are hungry, their interest roused by whiffs of rapidly arriving country