Read Online Lay It on My Heart by Angela Pneuman - Free Book Online Page A

lower parts of his back and stomach look skinned. Ruthie Pope is a practical woman, and the first thing she does is cover a patch of her wall-to-wall carpet with a sheet so he doesn’t soil it. The second thing she does is grab her cylinder of Crisco and oil my father’s naked body from the waist down while four of her seven children watch, open-mouthed and silent. My father, she will say later, pushes air through his lips with pain. He seems to be talking to himself, and Ruthie reckons he’s delirious. There’s something familiar about him, but she can’t put a name to the gaunt, glassy-eyed, bearded face. And he doesn’t give her his name, or she would find the number for Daze or for Phoebe. The Peakes and the Popes, old Rowland County families both, know of each other, though it is possible they haven’t crossed paths in years. She keeps asking, though. “What’s your name, child? What’s your name?” and when he finally manages a name, she believes she hears him say he is the Apostle Paul. Then he says it again, and she figures the best she can do for this man, and for any and all concerned, is call the police.
    I am closing the lid on the Swinburne’s gelatine box, sliding it back under my bed, when the phone rings downstairs. Phoebe has been sitting at the kitchen table, listening to the Sunday-night Christian soap-opera broadcast by the Salvation Army, the stories about streetwalkers and drug users who hit rock bottom in Chicago or Cincinnati and stumble into churches on their last legs, where they meet kind people ladling out hot soup right alongside the gospel.
    The radio goes off, and I hear her friendly, public voice fall flat. She’s still on the phone with Police Chief Burton, Ezra Burton, when the doorbell rings, and there’s Mayor James, having got the first call from the chief who thought Phoebe Peake should have someone with her, should have someone drive her to the hospital. Phoebe either thinks I’m already asleep or is too shocked to think of me at all. For the first time ever, she leaves the house without telling me where she’s going and when she’ll be back.
    At my window I follow the mayor’s taillights until his car disappears up Main Street. I stay at the window awhile longer, whispering my prayer, listening to a long, slow train come through and watching the moon, which has risen to sit opposite the cross on the water tower, the two lights hanging on either side of town like the very eyes of God.

Chapter 4
    T HEY KEEP MY FATHER in the first hospital for four days. His legs are covered in gauze, but the doctors leave the more serious burns, in the more serious places, exposed to the air. When Daze and I get there Monday morning, everything but his head and shoulders is shielded by a curtain, for modesty, while he sleeps away next to his IV bag. Someone has shaved his beard and clipped his hair close to his head, which makes him look younger. And smaller. And it’s awful the way his jaw has dropped open to one side, his mouth a stretched-out hole. I want to pull the curtain the rest of the way closed so no one can see him sleep this way without him knowing it.
    â€œThe bleach did a number on him,” Phoebe says when she finds us in the hallway. “Not to mention the fasting. They want to run a few more tests.”
    â€œTests?” says Daze.
    â€œThey want to rule out a head injury. He said some things when they brought him in.”
    â€œHe’s exhausted,” says Daze. “My poor boy.” She gives me a hankie, in case I’m about to cry, but I’m not. I’m whispering my prayer so fast my mouth turns dry.
    â€œWhat’s all the muttering about?” says Phoebe.
    And Daze says, “Oh, leave her be. It’s too much for any of us to take in.”
    For the summer, I have an off-and-on part-time job helping Mrs. James clean out her attic, and, with Phoebe and Daze tied up at the