Being Saved!

I’m not a superhero. I couldn’t fight him and I couldn’t hide from him. He walks through the walls. But for us plain basic humans, there is hope. There is God. I was saved in the baptismal waters of a small Southern Baptist Church. Many people think I was somehow brainwashed because I was so young. Eleven and thirteen days is at the cusp of adolescence making adulthood only a short hop away. Besides, salvation is only understood through grace. Grace occupied at least 40% of my soul and with that in mind grit didn’t matter. I was not brainwashed. 

The night I got saved an October chill christened the air. Mama had wrapped a ginormous starch white towel on my shoulders. It smelled of Downy fabric softener, the one in the blue bottle with the soft brown bear smiling. I breathed in the air around me, a crisp sharp scent swirling around the towel. Even before night fell little bits of starlight grazed the twilight. My hair still dripped in water from my baptism. I should have been cold, but I’d been baptized in the waters of my holy savior. I was high on God and that feeling warmed me. I needed it because that night the Devil showed me temptation and the dark vast desert that came with it. I didn’t know it then as I walked out of the church doors down the paved canvas walkway towards Mama’s 1970 station wagon, a Chrysler Town and Wagon. I knew this at eleven because, Papa, Mama’s daddy taught me a little something about cars. 

“Come here, Darling.” Papa pointed to the chair beside him. This was his office which consisted of a lazy boy, RabbitEars TV, and an end table stuffed with newspapers, and Louis L’Amour’s paperback novels. 

“I know you don’t like your Mama’s station wagon. It embarrasses you in front of your friends, but that’s a good solid car and I don’t want your Mama on the road from here to Harpersville with you two kids. You all are safe in that car.” Papa gave me his serious look and then spit tobacco into one of my Grannie’s old snuff jars.

“Okay,” I told him.

He winks at me. “Later on I’ll show you how to make a battery last inside a car when you can’t afford the one-hundred and twenty-five dollars to buy a new one. Your Mama is a single mama and her money is always stretched thin. Your daddy…” Papa stopped and looked away from me. Nevermind.” He stood up. “Let’s go see about making the battery in my old Lincoln out there last a little longer.”

Papa used baking powder and vinegar to get his car running and it purred up for a little while that day, but then Papa just went on and bought a new battery. He said Lincoln’s battery was ten years old, so he expected it to die. A ten-year-old battery living is a little of a hyperbole, but at that time I believed Mama’s old man. I understood my old man too, Daddy. He recently told me about the Grayman, a ghost that warns of storms. That was two months ago and I still see the Grayman everywhere. It frightened me to see ghosts because I knew such things existed. 

I was thinking about the Grayman on the trip home. My mom, brother, and I traveled home soon after my baptism. We lived in a single-wide trailer. The color doesn’t matter, only the size. It was tiny like half of a human-sized Altoids container cut vertically.  It held together like tin, but that night, it held together like steel. Inside our tin box, our living room took more than a quarter of space. That said, it was the biggest room in the place. My little brother, Big Head was his name, never mind the real one. Big Head and I spent a lot of time in the big room. It had three blinds with heavy dark curtains. They were always shut. It was always dark. 

That night we didn’t stay long in the big room. We were in bed by nine pm. It was a school night and Mama was strict about shuteye. Still, Big Head and I always stayed talking and sometimes quietly playing with our Star Wars figures. Tonight we merely talked. Him on his bunk bed below and me gazing backward towards the night outside my window. 

“You think Mama’s asleep,” Big Head asked. 

“No,” I told him.

“You think she can hear us if we talk?”

“No. As long as we’re quiet, she won’t hear. Plus, I think she’s talking to Barbra Ann on the phone. I can hear the Shh sounds coming from Mama’s room.” Barbra Ann and Mom are bonded, sisters without blood.

“I got something to ask you,” Big Head said so fast his words spilled into each other. 

“Slow down. This sounds serious.”

“It is serious. It’s about the Gray Man.

Spit bobbled up my throat and I swallowed it back and then I was able to choke out my lie. “Gray Man is not real.”

“Daddy said …”

“Daddy says a lot of things,” I interrupted him. “He said he was going to be back this week. It's already Thursday.”

“I believe some of the things he says. Plus, I saw him.”

“Saw who?” My heart thumped loudly in my chest. 

“He’s like the legend says. He appeared a grey shadow - translucent,” Big Head said, proudly. Now you know why he’s called Big Head. It’s because he has one, both figuratively and physically. 

“Continue,” I said, intrigue more than fear racing through the word. Besides, the Bible spoke of ghosts. Jesus to start. I had to believe him.

“He showed up at the Lake yesterday afternoon.”

“You mean when Mama took us swimming? Why are you just now telling me?”

“Well, you know, you had all that saving stuff going on, and I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

“Jesus was a ghost, of course, I believe you. Plus, I like you alright.”

“Better,” Big Head said, sheepishly. 

“Wait a minute,” I said, Epiphany outstretching her arms. “There has to be a beach to see the Gray Man. We live two hours from the coast.”

“Maybe it's any water.”

“Maybe,” I said, quieter than I intended. “What do you think it means?”

“I think we need to be careful,” Big Head said. “He’s warning us of something. Maybe it's not the hurricane we think of, but maybe a hurricane.”

“Just pray,” I said. “I’m going to sleep. It’s getting late. Mama’s right. School tomorrow.”

Big Head didn’t speak. Silence spread in the darkness so heavy that when a small noise passed through, it shattered. This is how it felt when Big Head spoke. “Mags,” he asked, cutting through the silence. 

“Yes,” I answered. I hadn’t even closed my eyes. I still kept my head tilted back and stared through the window. 

“If the Gray Man comes again, will you not wake me?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not sure I’m heeding his warning.”

“We don’t live at the beach. How do we know how to heed his warning?”

Big Head sighed. “I guess we don’t. But, just in case.”

“Go to sleep.”

The darkness grew heavier and the silence choked me. I grew paranoid and through the dark window behind my head I kept imagining I would see the Gray Man. I didn’t know why I was so afraid of him. The legend says he doesn’t hurt anyone. He only warns them of an impending storm. But, I was uneasy. Finally, I shut my eyes and I couldn’t again bring myself to open them. I prayed, Now a-lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God Bless…” And I was asleep. I suppose I’d been out for three hours when the dream became my reality. I was playing baseball with my cousins, both on Mama’s side and Daddy’s. The day was filled with white light everywhere. We were all in front of my Papa and Grannie’s house, a basic brick one-story home with a single not enclosed cement parking space and a wide open porch with two swings. It was a lovely place with memories like cotton candy. I felt good in the dream like right after I got saved only hours earlier. I felt once again invincible. At that moment my cousin Hugo swung the bat, hitting a bee that came after me sitting on the front porch steps. Everything happened so fast, I swatted the bee and just as it was about to sting me, I awoke feeling the lightest touch on my bare leg where the bee would have stung me. I sat up touching my leg and thinking it was only a dream. Then I heard footsteps coming from the living room towards the hallway directly in front of mine and Big Head’s bedroom. Mama was asleep. I could hear her snoring. No one should be in the living room. Then the footsteps came to the hallway lit only by a dim bulb in the kitchen. I could barely see. I sat up. I’d been saved and the light of Jesus was bright within me, and I was curious. I could hear the footsteps pass my door in the hallway and yet there was something there. I was awake staring into the hallway when his head poked over. He was an older man with glasses, pale as powder. Curiosity turned into cold fear. I could not speak or call out to Mama so frozen. The words stuck in my throat. The man once I could see him came out standing more than six feet translucent and lithe with an intense gaze I didn’t know as safe. I kept trying to call out to Mama. When I finally did, I heard Mama fall out of bed, her footsteps swift. The man turned to go. I then noticed he had a paper bag in his hand. He disappeared through the wall behind him. 

The next day, Big Head and I examined the side of the trailer beneath our bedroom. Big Head said all night he kept hearing the wind like a hurricane and waves beat at the side of the trailer threatening to drown us all. We saw it all at once and at the same time. A huge dent the size of a well-bitten apple crushed the white paint. “I didn’t believe you this time,” I said.

“I know,” He said, turning to me and looking me directly in the eye. “I heard him. You saw him.”

“I hope the storm is over,” I said.

Big Head smiled and lightly punched my arm. 

That night and every night after whenever I hear footsteps, I keep my eyes shut.