JOHNTOWN, TENN.
397
closed her eyes and lifted up her head and, weeping, had cried out:
"Dear God, I thank Thee, for Thou hast brought back to me what
is dearest to my heart."
That was enough, he reckoned, to sort of bust something in any
man, especially when six weeks of likker has gone bad on your stom–
ach and you've got the clap and the place on your head isn't yet
healed where they clubbed you and you've been thrown in jail like
a hog in a pen and you're fifty years old and your name's been in
the paper to do you no credit. It had busted something in him,
all
right-the way she thanked God for him coming back. So he had
joined the Baptist Church of Johntown, Tennessee, and been bap–
tized in Elk Creek,
in
the big still pool below where the creek came
boiling white over the gray limestone. He had been dunked good.
Then the preacher had lifted him up into sunlight. The ladies'
choir, ranged on the limestone shelf above the pool, under the shadow
of gray bluff and the dappling green glimmer of June leafage, was
singing "Bringing in the Sheaves." The Reverend MacCarland Sump–
ter lifted up his hand in blessing. Celia Hornby Harrick, with tears
running down her cheeks and eyes bright blue as glory, threw her
arms around his body and pressed her face against his chest, no
matter if he was sopping wet and all Johntown goggle-eyed. And he
stood there, with water squishing in his shoes as he shifted his weight
from side to side, and patted her on the head, saying, "Baby-now
Honey-Baby-don't take on, Baby."
He was glad he had been dunked good and well. With all that
water coming out of his thick head of hair, folks couldn't tell whether
it was creek water or tears running down his own cheeks, as he stood
there patting the head of Celia Hornby Harrick.
He reckoned that the preacher, knowing all he did about him,
had to give him a little deeper dunking than the ordinary sinner
needed. Once, meeting the preacher on the street, he even had the
impulse to tell him the joke. But, giving the preacher's face a pre–
liminary survey, he decided against it. He reckoned it was a sort
of pride, just plain ornery human man-pride in sinfulness, that made
him want to tell the joke
in
the first place. So he made another joke
to himself. He reckoned since even if he was saved he still had such
a bait of sin-pride, he might take longer than most to build up
saint-pride.
