Principia Martindale, a novel

 An excerpt from Chapter 9

  Brother Horatio Raven hill had painted his bus silver inside and out because he wanted it to look like a bolt of electrical lightning streaking across the skies on its way to the gates of Heaven, which he hoped would be standing wide open when he got there with his passengers, most of them regulars, coming from as far away as Texarkana or Lake Charles, Alamogordo or Abilene just to ride with a man whose nature it was to thirst after righteousness and for the sake of righteousness, a man much sought after by the bereaved, the down and out, and the betrodden, for his Godlike reputation preceded him like word of a rain cloud moving across a parched desert. Twice a week he left San Antonio for a round trip through the Brush Country and cactus flats of Southwest Texas. Along the way he preached, sang, witnessed and generously gave drink from his cup of wisdom, filled to overflowing. Great was his gift for giving, and greater still was his joy in knowing that he had given his all.

  Brother Ravenhill, a confirmed old bachelor, was raised in the town of Ranger by his mother, a widow who pumped gasoline at a roadside station and accepted checks from out of town if the Lord told her to. She never received a bad one either and always reminded her son of this. He lived at home and helped her run the station until she died of blood poisoning at the age of sixty two. Then he sold the family business, bought a bus and started carrying people from place to place. He accepted checks from out of town, out of state and out of the country, if the Lord told him to, and after twenty-five years in business he was proud to say that he had never received a bad one either.

  At the time he met Principia Martindale he was fifty-five years old and was known by his passengers as one of the finest preachers in Texas. Principia felt privileged to be riding with him. She was eager to know him better, and if only she could get her sinful classmate, Tawnya Louise Baker, out of her mind she might strike up a conversation. “Oh, I don’t know why I can’t forget about you once and for all,” she said as though Tawnya were sitting on the next seat.

  Brother Ravenhill heard her but didn’t know who he was hearing, nor did he understand a word of what she said. “Do I hear the angels talking? he asked, looking over his shoulder at the passengers, a total of five, scattered all over the bus.

  Toward the back was elderly Mr. Elmer Primm, confined to his wheelchair, which was sitting in the middle of the aisle, and in the seat closest to him sat his unregistered nurse Viola I. Dyer, who was accustomed to keeping a careful eye on her patient because he had a bone disease, wasn’t expected to live very long and could not walk, even after his last operation, which his doctors had said was ninety-five percent successful.

In the middle of the bus sat Mary Alaska Ragsdale, a grandmother who was on her way to Judson to see her daughter, Joyce Jeannine, and her grandchild, a boy named Lucky after his father. Mary Alaska was dressed in a pale pink skirt and a matching jacket; her hair was steel gray, had just been washed and set that morning, and her rings, already too large, were sliding to the palm side of her fingers. As usual she was carrying a book and two pair of glasses, one for reading and one for seeing; both of them were slung around her neck on silver chains.

  Mary Alaska read a great deal and that morning was no exception. She was deeply involved with a little book called Searching for Serenity and was enjoying herself thoroughly, but her lifelong friend, Winkie Kermit, sitting on the next seat, was about to jump right out of her skin. Winkie was thin, had black curly hair with white roots and was Mary Alaska’s age, fifty-nine, but looked much older. They were both coming from Lockhart.

  Mary Alaska was married, had one daughter, no sons and a husband who drank, but Winkie had never been married, said she just hated the very idea of it and didn’t need another nasty old man around the house. Mary Alaska was convinced that Winkie felt that way because she had been expected to nurse her father until the day he died, which is exactly what she had done, and as if that were not enough, her brother, Morris, moved in on her shortly after their father’s funeral, took the best chair out to the front porch and sat there rain or shine, year after year, while Winkie cashiered five and a half days a week at the variety store. Absolutely everybody in Lockhart worried about her because she was so thin, frail, dried-up-looking and scared of anything that moved.

  Openly she admitted her fear of airplanes even though she had never been inside one, horses that kicked even though she had never been kicked by one and roofs that blew off in the middle of the night. (That had never happened to her either.) She also bore testimony to her fear of buses; she had ridden on many and already suspected their driver of being a reckless maniac because she didn’t like the way he kept looking at her though the rear-view mirror, but Mary Alaska, even though she knew she was lying, assured Winkie that nothing was wrong with their driver and that she should sit still and stop worrying.

  “But Mary Alaska, I’m so nervous I can’t stand myself to day,” said Winkie, trying to straighten her white blouse and her black skirt at the same time. She owned nothing but white blouses, black skirts and sneakers, her cashier’s uniform. “I simply don’t know what’s wrong with my nerves; something’s went with them, I guess.” She dug into her purse with both hands. “I sure hope I can remember what I’m looking for; I think I will when I see it.”

  They had been on the bus a little over an hour and already Winkie had twisted two buttons off her blouse and had wound up her wristwatch so many times she had broken the spring. And besides that, her sinus trouble was acting up again so every breath she drew sounded like reeds in a wind storm, a noise that aggravated Mary Alaska something awful, but she was determined to stand it somehow.

  Four seats in front of them sat Principia Martindale gazing absent-mindedly out the window and feeling the need to rededicate her life. “O Precious Redeemer,” she prayed out loud, “I’ve always wanted to be a simple ordinary person, just a day-to-day servant of God, but everybody else seems to think that’s not enough, and now they’ve got me believing that it’s not enough when I know perfectly well that it is, so please, Jesus, help me to straighten all this out.”

  Winkie Kermit craned her neck to see who was doing all the talking. “Isheee-ma-ha, Lord,” she whispered, as though she could reach right out and touch the Holy Spirit. After a few moments she settled back in her chair and waited for something else to happen; she felt sure something would.

  “I feel just like I’m grasping at straws,” said Principia. “Sweet Jesus, please make me feel better about something. I don’t care what it is.”

  Again Winkie Kermit craned her neck. “Did you say something to me, Mary Alaska, or am I hearing things for sure this time,” she said, squeezing her cotton handkerchief and sniffing her nose. “It’s so hard for me to course anything these days, especially the human voice.”

Principia came out of her thoughts and turned slightly in her seat so she could see the two women as well as listen to their conversation.

  “No, I most certainly did not say a thing,” said Mary Alaska Ragsdale, popping her gum. “As you can see, I’m reading this little book. It’s trying to teach me how to live serenely, and I was just about to learn something new when you interrupted me the way you did.”

  “Isheee-ma-ha!” said Winkie, twisting another button off her blouse. “I will not say another word to you and that’s a promise. Osheee-ma-ha. I didn’t go to do it in the first place; something made me like it always does. I was just sitting here and minding my own business and wondering how you managed to stay so calm and something just came over me. OOO-ma-HA-lalalala, I’ve always wanted to be like you, Mary Alaska Ragsdale. Nothing bothers you and everything bothers me. But I’m determined once and for all not to let the Devil get me down any more, that is if I can help it. So from here on out I’m just going to sit right here and be real, real calm and watch the fence posts go running past this window and thank the good Lord that I’m still alive. OOO-Isheee-ma-ha-la-ma-ha. Ma-ha-la-ma-haaa.”

  “Winkie Kermit, can you utter one word without breaking into the ‘postolic language?” asked Mary Alaska, trying to be kind. “I do think that might be one reason why you’ve had so much trouble relaxing on this trip. Somehow or another you’ve got to keep more of that unknown tongue inside you and not let it go bursting out. You’ll frighten my daughter out of her wits if you keep this up and my son-in-law, well, he’s liable to throw you right out of the house and me with you. Now if you want my advice, what you should do is read this book because it will teach you how to be serene. God knows you need it.”

  “God knows everything, Mary Alaska, and I thank you for those kind words,” said Winkie, spraying her nose with Breathe-Ease. She squeezed the bottle with both hands. “If I had something good to read it seems like it would satisfy me like it does you, but reading and riding together makes me deathly sick to my stomach.”

  “Well, it’s fortunate then that you have the sense it takes to realize it,” said Mary Alaska without looking up from her reading matter. ¬ When that woman breathes she sounds just like a percolator, she thought. I wish to God almighty somebody would cut her nose off and throw it so far away she’d never find it again.

Principia overhead everything they said. I simply must meet those two women, she said to herself. Tawnya Louise would consider them a waste of her time, but it seems to me they have so much to give.