Chapter 6: The Fish Fry

Isaiah's POV

I have fried fish for this church every Friday of revival week for thirty years.

Forty feet of folding tables ran down the church grounds that evening, and the line went out to the sidewalk on Dauphin Street.

Lucius worked the fryers in a white apron, laughing at everybody, and Calvin poured lemonade with his sleeves turned back one exact fold.

Abner sat at the cash box with a white bandage across the heel of his right hand.

He had told the pastor it was a door.

I stood at the bread table with my collar buttoned and a mark on my shoulder that itched every time I raised my arm.

Naomi came through the gate at six in a yellow dress.

I watched the three of them see her.

Lucius lost his grin for the length of a breath and then found it again, louder.

Calvin's hand stopped on the pitcher.

Abner looked at his cash box.

Each of them looked at her, and then each of them looked at me, and then each of them looked away.

We had talked on Tuesday in the church office, the four of us, with the door shut.

Nobody had said stop.

Nobody had said what any of us was thinking, either, which was that she had not come home to be thanked.

I did not know what she had come for.

I had decided not to ask.

She took a plate from Lucius, who gave her extra, and a cup from Calvin, who gave her the coldest.

She paid Abner a five-dollar bill and did not take change.

Then she came and sat down next to me on the bench.

"Deacon Pettway," she said.

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