Fire in Beulah by Rilla Askew

Author:Rilla Askew [Askew, Rilla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781101200216
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2001-12-31T00:00:00+00:00

Money got such a power, even if a person don’t have it but only think it, that invisible force going to change them, the way hunger do. But money power is not what I’m talking about. I’m speaking of the earth’s own black blood, and that power don’t come because oil turn into money. Listen. Oil got its own power. That power come from under the earth.

Bluford’s mother told me. Way back when whitemens first come into this country with these pounding machines, boom, boom, boom, pounding holes in the world to go deep and open up a shaft for that power to get loose, she told me, You pray, daughter, pray plenty. A terrible time coming. These whitemens don’t know what they doing. The earth’s bleeding now, a terrible time is going to come. Bluford’s mother passed over before the worst happen, but many a day she smoked us with cedar, prayed over us, me and Bluford and Cunsah and Joy. She told us, not for a warning to try and stop it, because you can’t stop it once it let loose—I tell you, there are forces we can’t even begin to dream—but Bluford’s mother want us to prepare ourselves for what’s coming, because she have the power to see.

You think I prepare myself like she ask me? Well, I tried. I did try. But somehow the Lord didn’t give me the eyes to see then. Or maybe it’s because I’m too much colored and not enough Indian, I don’t know. But let me tell you, unless you been witness to it, you can’t imagine what oil will do to people. You can’t picture how a man will sell his soul to get timbers to make a hole because he believe he smell oil flowing under the earth. How it will turn a town mean as seven devils in a heartbeat. Yes. The very minute oil spouts up near a town, in that very instant that town’s heart going to corrupt. Oil have the power to bloom a new Sodom overnight on the prairie, same place yesterday nothing but switchgrass stood. It’ll turn a man so wicked he’ll kill little children to get hold of their lease rights. I tell you, honey, God have made plenty mysteries under the sun, but the single biggest mystification I ever see is what I seen unleashed yonder from my own native dirt. But it took me too long to know what it was.

First time I gone down to the Deep Fork I stared right at it, but I couldn’t see. I can tell you very well what put the mud on my eyes: nothing but old plain greed. Now, that’s money-power mixed up with oil-power, Lord, Lord, it’s a terrible force. It’ll snatch you out quick as Satan, you never even feel it because you got a mind telling you lies right inside your own head. Them whitemens never did bring me my two hundred dollars, never brung me no paper to

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