There Must Be Some Mistake by Frederick Barthelme

Author:Frederick Barthelme
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2014-10-07T04:00:00+00:00

18

Baptism

JILLY TOLD me about her baptism. “I was three or four when I was baptized, only we called it christened, that was our name for it. I was three or four and I still remember it. It was at the river, more of a creek, really, that ran through our farm and then down past the church, which was a Quonset hut with some plants around it dropped in the middle of a parking lot. There was a leggy oak down beyond the parking lot, actually several of them, so there was shade over the water, and that’s where the Parson Bob did the baptisms. He was an old guy, much older than my daddy who got himself rebaptized the same day. Anyway, I was scared about being baptized, but not of the water. I was scared of the parson’s teeth, which were big and square and loose. They looked like they were made of wood or something. They had bad color, and everything he said took on a strange sound, like the words were slipping and sliding in his mouth. Clicking around. He was leaning over me real hard, had a big hairy hand on my back to keep me from drowning, and his face was real close to mine as he dunked me. I had nightmares about it later. The creek was muddy from all the baptizing he’d been doing, so I held my nose when I went under, and spewed a little when I came up. People thought that was funny. Daddy went in after me, and the parson had a little trouble holding Daddy up when he laid back into the water, so he had an accident and had to get up out of the water on his own steam. Parson Bob lost control of him when he was performing the ritual. I remember we left pretty fast afterward, jumped in the car, which was a Buick that Daddy got from his parents before they died, and we shot down the highway toward our place. Daddy drove all the way home barefoot, which I never forgot, I was so surprised. I’d never seen his feet before. They were big and white and veiny. Hairs on his toes. I can still see them down around the pedals, dripping wet, I can see those feet like it was yesterday.”

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