near-death trips Iâd taken with my own pet, Stockings. My dad had given me a Tennessee walking horseâbut not a saddle. And so I rode bareback, clutching Stockingsâs mane, praying that shewouldnât get spooked, though she always did, tearing off into the woods, breathing fire. By the time she stopped, after thirty-nine thousand repetitions of the command âWhoa!â, the hickory branches would have etched my skin into a bloody gingham. If one of the four horses of the Apocalypse had to be put down, Stockings was ready to ride.
I could buy the gaudy deaths and grisly details set forth in Revelation because Oklahoma itself was a biblical landscape. We must have been on tornado watch half the year. And the place was literally crawling with snakesâsnakes in my treehouse, snakes on the porch, snakes in the yard, snakes on Rainbow Mountain, which my mom found out the hard way used to be named Snake Mountain after one of its copperheads put her in the hospital. Because I was baptized when I was eight in a water moccasinâinfested lake, and, as if I wasnât petrified enough (fangs and drowning being two of my bigger fears), Sister Minnieâs drunken husband drove up to the waterâs edge in his pickup right after I came up for air and he started scream-singing the hymn âShall We Gather at the River.â Because our cousin Gary Johnâs wife got shot dead in the head with Garyâs own gun by Garyâs sisterâs husband, who was joking around and didnât know the gun was loaded, ha-ha. Because the leader of my Brownie troop was smashed into a million pieces trying to cross the train tracks. Because my grandfather Pa Vowell buried another wife every few years. Because my other grandfather Pa Parson was a Cherokee wart doctor who could tie a string around a wart and bury the string in the ground and that made the wart go away. Because my grandmother Ma Parson lost her mind one dayand couldnât remember my name though she could remember all the words to âBringing In the Sheavesâ and today we call this Alzheimerâs but back then we called it âGodâs will.â Because on Wednesday nights my mother would drive this ancient witchy widow to churchâa lady who believed haircuts for women were a sin, which did stop her from trimming that mangy white rope dangling off her scalp around 1923 but did not stop her from scamming rides off my mom (a former hairdresser); my sister and I dreaded the moment the woman climbed into the car because sheâd give us the evil eye and tell us that our perky, little-girl pixie cuts were some kind of fatal flaw weâd go to hell for.
So in such a superstitious town among such accident-prone citizens, Revelation seemed more like a gossip sheet than a ghost story. In fact, considering all the random wrath of God around me, Armageddon appeared refreshingly well thought-out. And that was its attraction to everyone at church. We gathered together to reassure one another that no matter what horrible thing just happened, no matter whose daughter just got scraped off the train tracks, whose mother was in the hospital with fang marks perforating her leg, God had a plan. A cruel, kooky, murderous horror movie of a plan for sure, but a plan nonetheless.
Thatâs what even the gloomiest sermons were aboutâthe future. And thatâs why in the gospel hymns we sang, âwillâ was the most popular verbââI will meet you in the morning,â âThere will be peace in the valley someday,â and my favorite, âIâll fly away.â Even now, a quarter of a century after I learned those songs, theyâre still stuck in myhead. I miss singing them. I miss the harmony. Some Sunday mornings, in the middle of secular superstitious rituals like reading The New York Times Magazine or watching that berserk Sam Donaldson on TV, Iâll hum âIâll fly awayâ as I make coffee,