couldn’t sleep. It was because I understood the young drunk at the healing crusade. He believed his heart was so full of badness that it could never be cleansed. I was a murderer twice over. If ever a soul was damned, it was mine.
Then I heard the voice of the angel, so soft I wasn’t sure it was actually there. I got up, climbed the riverbank, and made my way through the trees and across the railroad tracks. I stood at the edge of the meadow, where I could see the huge tent. Behind it was the town, a few lights still shining here and there among the hills. Most of the automobiles were gone, the meadow nearly deserted. A soft glow lit the tent canvas, not at all the brilliant blast from the host of electric lamps that we’d seen earlier. Maybe from just one or two. The music wasn’t the great flourish it had been but was quiet now. There was only the piano, and the horn, and that heavenly voice.
I crossed the meadow. The flap that covered the tent entrance wasn’t closed all the way, and I found that if I knelt, I could see inside.
They were gathered around the piano on the platform: the trumpet player, the piano player, and Sister Eve. A single light shone above them. Sister Eve no longer wore a white robe but was dressed in a western shirt with snap buttons. Her blue jeans were rolled up at the ankles, and I could see that on her feet were honest-to-God cowboy boots. They were playing a song I’d heard on the radio at Cora Frost’s house, “Ten Cents a Dance,” a sad melody about a woman paid to dance with men but desperate for someone to take her away from all that. The trumpet notes were long, mournful sighs, and the beat the piano player laid down was a funeral dirge, and Sister Eve sang as if her soul was dying, and oh, did that sound speak to me.
When the song ended, they all laughed, and the trumpet player said, “Evie, baby, you oughta be on Broadway.” He was tall, with slicked black hair, and a pencil-thin mustache across the pale white skin above his upper lip.
Sister Eve pulled a cigarette from a small, silver case, and the trumpet player lifted a lighter and offered her a flame. She blew a flourish of smoke and said, “Too busy doing the Lord’s work, brother.” She took up a glass that sat near her on the piano and sipped from it.
“What next?” the piano player asked. He was as slender as a sipping straw, his skin the color of dark molasses, and he wore a black fedora tipped at a jaunty angle.
Sister Eve drew on the cigarette, then her lips formed a little O, and she puffed out two perfect smoke rings. “Gershwin really sends me. I’ve always been a sucker for ‘Embraceable You.’ ”
Which was a song I knew, though I didn’t know who’d written it. I felt the weight of my harmonica in the pocket of my shirt, and my lips twitched with eagerness. As the piano player laid down the first few bars, I moved out into the dark of the meadow, sat down, pulled out my mouth organ, and played right along with them. Oh, it was sweet, like being fed after a long hunger, but it filled me in a different way than the free soup and bread earlier that night had. Into every note, I blew out that longing deep inside me. The song was about love, but for me it was about wanting something else. Maybe home. Maybe safety. Maybe certainty. It felt good, in the way I’d sometimes imagined what prayer might feel like if you really believed and poured your heart into it.
The notes ended, and I sat in the warm glow that had come from being a part of the music. The tent flap lifted. Silhouetted against the light from inside stood Sister Eve, motionless, staring into the night.
* * *
MORNING DAWNED BRIGHT and warm, but we all slept late. When Albert finally rolled out of his blanket, he said, “We need to get on the river, make some distance. I’m still worried about Hawk Flies at Night. But first I’m going to see if I can scrounge some food to take with us.”
“Couldn’t we stay just one more day?” Emmy said. “The soup last night was so good. And I’d like to see