A Land More Kind Than Home

Besides us, nobody in this world needs to know anything at all. It ain’t going to do her a lick of good, and trouble is all it’s going to bring us.” He dropped his hand from his eyes and squinted against the sun.

“Folks talk,” I said. “Especially in a town like Marshall, especially about a church like this. Putting up newspaper so they can’t see inside ain’t going to keep them from talking.”

“Well,” he said, “I trust the folks of my congregation to know who needs talking to and who don’t. But if you got any ideas about taking our business outside this church, then I think you’d better tell me now. I need to know that I can trust members of my congregation with the Lord’s work.”

“That’s fine,” I said, “because I can’t be a part of this no more.”

“What do you plan on doing?” he asked.

“I can’t be a part of this no more,” I said again. “I’m leaving the church, and I want to take the children with me.”

He smiled and just stood there looking at me like he was going to laugh in my face.

“Is that right,” he said. “You’re just going to take the children out of my church and teach them in your own way, teach them your own beliefs. What do you think gives you the right to do that?”

“Before the hospital got built I delivered just about every child that ever stepped foot inside this church,” I said. “And I delivered just about all their mamas and daddies, too. I ain’t claiming to be in charge of their spirits, but I have a job to see them safely through this world after bringing them into it. And I can tell you this ain’t no place for children to be,” I said. “It just ain’t safe.”

“Sister Adelaide,” he said, “I’ve been pastoring this church long enough for you to know that we protect our children, and I can tell you that I wouldn’t never let a youngster take up no snake or drink no poison or nothing like that. But you’ve been here long enough to know that what we do here is the Truth and our children need to see it. Our children need to be raised up in it.”

“And you should know that children can’t keep no secrets about what they see either,” I said.

He folded his arms across his chest and kind of rocked back on the heels of his boots. He turned his head and looked out over the river toward downtown Marshall like he was thinking about what I’d said. Then he turned his head and looked back at me.

“Can you, Sister Adelaide? Can you keep a secret?”

“I can,” I said. “But I’d rather not know any secrets that need keeping, and I won’t know them if I stay out of your church. A church ain’t no place to hide the truth, and a church that does ain’t no place for me. Ain’t no place for children neither.”

From the book A LAND MORE KIND THAN HOME: A Novel by Wiley Cash. Copyright C 2012 by Wiley Cash.
Reprinted by permission of William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.