Title:  “Salvation”
Author:  uberaeryn
Pairing:  Sawyer
Spoilers: Small one.
Warnings: Mild language.
Summary: . . . gather with the saints at the river that flows by the Throne of God . . .

I was trying to write smut, but this happened instead.

When I was little I spent most nearly all my time at my Granny’s house. Summer time was the best, because that little ol’ rundown house with the asphalt shingles nailed all over it was way out in the country and I could run wild mornin’ to night, and she’d let me, after I’d done my chores.

Summer. Hotter’n hell, chiggers and ticks and mosquitoes, but the smell, hay and dirt and that powdered soap Granny used on the laundry, and fishin’ and swimmin’ and fireflies, too. I’d catch ‘em in one of those old Mason jars and Granny would be proud and pretend to use it as a lantern, and when I’d wake up the next mornin’ all them fireflies would be gone and I’d ask her where they were and she’d say God had needed ‘em to do their work somewhere else, I’d just have to catch some more that evenin’.

She was old by the time I came along, in her seventies, must’ve been, because my Mom came along very late, from what I can figure. (I came along apparently way too early for my Granny, because when I look back now at the few conversations my Mom and Granny had in front of me there’d been a lot of talk about how my Mom had embarrassed Granny, she could barely show her face in town. Took me a while to figure that out.)

Anyway, she was an ornery old thing. Lived on sweet tea and toast and, in the summer, and whatever she made me go bring in from the garden, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, okra; I’ve never had fried okra like that in my life and I know I never will again.

She also dipped snuff, fine, powdery tobacco that she’d spit out daintily into a kerchief she kept in a pocket in that apron just for that reason. It wasn’t until later on that I found out that not all grannies dipped snuff and used the glasses it came in to drink out of. That’s what we drank out of, snuff glasses and jelly jars.

Her hands were swollen, fingers crooked from arthritis and as soon as I was old enough she was teachin’ me to braid hair. Her hair was long, past her waist, and white as snow except for the very ends which were kind of a rusty color from where she’d stopped colorin’ it red years before. She’d had have me brush it out while she rubbed that Pond’s Cold Cream all over her face and arms, then I’d braid it, and no matter how awful it looked she’d wrapped it around her head like a crown and pat at it when the neighbors came by to gossip and tell ‘em I’d done it for her, and I’d run like hell. No boy wanted to known as the boy who did his granny’s hair.

I got switched, all the time, a switch I always had to cut myself. She’d usually make me get hickory but when she was really in a snit it was willow, because of the extra sting. And it was usually because instead of pullin’ weeds or feedin’ that broken down, sorry excuse of horse she still had, I’d sneak off on down to the creek behind her house. Work first, she’d always say, goin’ at the back of my thighs like there was no tomorrow and I’d whine and ask her about all the fun and she’d say I’d get my turn, everybody did sooner or later.

She had some old guy come and help out sometimes, a total bastard, mean to me and always yellin’ and I took to makin’ his life a livin’ hell however I could, and one day he grabbed me by the shirt collar and started beatin’ the livin’ shit outta me and I will never forget the look on Granny’s face when she rounded the corner of the house, pure, righteous fury, and she grabbed me away from him and threw me behind her and chased that old man out to his truck, cursin’ a blue streak and tellin’ him he’d better never lay a hand on her boy again and if he knew what was good for him he’d get the hell off her property and never come back.

I was in shock for three days. I had no idea my Granny knew words like that, hell, at the time, I didn’t know words like that, and when that old boy had gone she’d dragged me inside and looked me over top to bottom, goin’ on and on about how nobody good had ever come out of that family and what on earth had she’d been thinkin’, havin’ him come round to do for her, and made me sleep in the bed with her that night.

She’d never told me she loved me but I always knew it, especially after that.

And that horse. Leftover from the time my Grandpa was still alive and the fields were still worked, hell, they used him as a plow horse, that old plow rustin’ away in one of the old sheds. Ragman, was that horse’s name, white, gentle as hell, waited every day for me to come feed him then he’d just kind of shamble around the fields, waitin’ to kick off, and when I was smaller and Granny was stronger she’d haul me up on his back and lead me around the field by his halter and I was the Lone fuckin’ Ranger, no doubt about it.

Things got worse when it got time to can, she canned everything, and made jelly and jam and I hated it, hated it, because it made the house hot as hell and because it meant summer was almost over and I’d have to go on back home. I’d have to start wearin’ shoes all the time, not just on Sundays.

And every Sunday church, hated it, naturally, every kid did, a tiny, wood frame Baptist church that smelled like dust and old people, a church that took forty people on really good days and I’d sit, bored as hell in Sunday School and thinkin’ what a bastard God must’ve been if those stories from the Bible they were tellin’ were any indication, ‘course, though, ‘bastard’ wasn’t the word I used at the time. I’d fidget and sigh and stare out the window, longin’ for the sun and that creek behind my Granny’s house, and I’d get hollered at by that crazy old lady of a Sunday School teacher, hell, almost all them old ladies at church were crazy, except for one or two who would smile and rub at my hair and sneak me candy or gum when my Granny pretended not to look.

Church was worse, ‘cause I was stuck there at Granny’s side on one of them hard, old pews, same place every Sunday, and I knew not to fidget then ‘cause I’d really get it once we got back home so I’d sit and stare at the pictures of Jesus on the wall or at the second hand on my granny’s watch, countin’ down the minutes until it was over. Only fun I ever had was the singin’, loved those hymns even though most everybody there couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, and I knew ‘em all by heart and you always skipped the third verse and nobody seemed to know why so I finally quit askin’.

Especially “Shall We Gather at the River.” That was my Granny’s favorite, sang it around the house all the time and sang it even louder at church.

And then one Sunday somethin’ happened and I was actually listenin’ to that old preacher talk, and halfway through I was just about cryin’, somethin’ powerful slammin’ through me that had me shakin’ in fear and my Granny put her arm around me and when the sermon was over and it was time for the altar call she pushed me forward as they sang the hymn.

Come home, come home, ye who are weary come home . . .

I looked at her, eyes wide and legs shakin’ and she pulled me close and said, son, this is a walk you have to make by yourself, but me and God will be with you all the way, watchin’. Go on now, it’ll be all right.

So I walked, I guess, I don’t remember much about it but I suppose I knelt down the way all the other sinners did and I prayed.

And then I was baptized, in a lake not far from the church, the same lake everyone got baptized in because that old church was too small and too poor for baptismal, and everyone gathered around at the bank and the preacher drug me out into the water, fully clothed, that’s just the way it worked, and he made me cross my arms over my chest and he prayed loudly about somethin’, salvation, I suppose, but all I could think about at that particular moment was water moccasins and how I knew Bobby Anderson peed in that lake all that the time and how that if you were gonna get your ass saved, best to do it in the summer time when it was nice and hot. And then the preacher dunked me under and my mind went white, like all the thinkin’ I’d ever done in my short little life disappeared completely and the hurts in my heart that I hadn’t even known were there were gone, and I figured this was God or Jesus or both and that if this is how it worked then that was fine by me.

Then he pulled me back up and there was applause and another round of “Shall We Gather at the River,” and then the devil came back and I was swimmin’ across that lake ninety to nothin’.

Some laughed out loud, some hid it behind their hands, but Granny, dear Lord, she was entirely different story, and when we got home she switched me again, told me to learn a little respect, and when I was done cryin’ from the switchin’ and the fear and the salvation she cleaned me up, sat me down in that kitchen, fed me fried chicken and peach cobbler and told me what a good boy I was, she was proud of me.

That afternoon she made me sit beside her on that old sofa, listenin’ to the Carter Family on the radio, and even though I insisted I was too old for it she dragged me into her lap, kept tellin’ me I was a good boy and how proud she was of me and that no matter what happened, she and God would always be there with me. And I woke up, sweaty and groggy, it’ve been hours later, it was summer still and the sun was startin’ to set, best sleep I’d remembered havin’ in a long while and I looked up at her, her face soft in sleep and for the first time I wondered what her life must’ve been like, what she’d been like when she was little like me.

I never did find out.

She died not too long later, me confused and my Mom cryin’ and they sang “Shall We Gather at the River” at the service and that part, at least, I understood, and then . . . well after that, things changed, for the worse and if Granny’d been around she’d been switchin’ me left and right and if she had maybe things would’ve been different, who knows.

I’ve walked the rest of that walk by myself. Let the devil back in, did the devil’s work, and sometimes I think of Granny and I’m homesick and scared, scared that I’ve disappointed her.

But when I’m alone, out there in the ocean or in one of the pools I’ll duck myself under the way that preacher did, and once again my mind will go white and the hurts, so many more now, disappear, and I know, I know that both God and Granny haven’t given up on me just yet, no matter how much I try to make them.

I’ll die out here, I suppose, or maybe out on that damned raft, who the hell knows, but I gotta find out if anyone knows that hymn, ‘cause whether they bury me right and proper or dump me into the ocean someone has to sing “Shall We Gather at the River,” whether they like me or not and whether they mean it or not, because that’s what they did at Granny’s funeral and they damn well better do it at mine.

I’ve pulled a lot of shit, done a lot of terrible things, but I ain’t scared of dyin’, even though I got a huge price to pay for everything I’ve done. But I ain’t scared. ‘Cause Granny’s gonna meet with a switch the size of the hand of God and beat me somethin’ terrible, then she’s gonna pull me in her lap no matter how much bigger I am than her now, and she’s gonna tell me that I’m a good boy, a good man and that she and God have been with me all along.

***

End