When Zora left Colonel Cresswell’s about noon that Sunday she knew her work had just begun, and she walked swiftly along the country roads, calling here and there.
- Would Uncle Isaac help her build a log home?
- Would the boys help her some time to clear some swamp land?
- Would Rob become a tenant when she asked?
For this was the idle time of the year. Crops were laid by and planting had not yet begun.
This too was the time of big church meetings. She knew that in her part of the country on that day the black population, man, woman, and child, were gathered in great groups; all day they had been gathering, streaming in snakelike lines along the country roads, in well-brushed, brilliant attire, half fantastic, half crude. Down where the Toomsville-Montgomery highway dipped to the stream that fed the Cresswell swamp squatted a square barn that slept through day and weeks in dull indifference. But on the First Sunday it woke to sudden mighty life. The voices of men and children mingled with the snorting of animals and the cracking of whips. Then came the long drone and singsong of the preacher with its sharp wilder climaxes and the answering ‚Äúamens‚Äù and screams of the worshippers. This was the shrine of the Baptists‚ÅÝ‚Äîshrine and oracle, centre and source of inspiration‚ÅÝ‚Äîand hither Zora hurried.
The preacher was Jones, a big man, fat, black, and greasy, with little eyes, unctuous voice, and three manners: * his white folks manner, soft, humble, wheedling; * his black folks manner, voluble, important, condescending; * and above all, his pulpit manner, loud, wild, and strong. He was about to don this latter cloak when Zora approached with a request briefly to address the congregation.