AND THE PRAYER OF FAITH SHALL SAVE THE SICK
We didn’t go to the ER. No matter how bad the cut, or bruise, or break, or flu or fever, we never would. We would pray, and wait, and know that whatever happened was solely in YHWH’s control. I had watched people accept YHWH’s willover the years. One man cut clean to the bone of his leg with a chainsaw. I overheard Maxine telling the small group of women gathered in her kitchen (I wasn’t supposed to overhear, but I overheard a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to), how she had to cut his clothes off of him in the bathtub because he was bleeding so much and how he drifted in and out of consciousness as she painstakingly picked out the bits of cloth and wood. After she’d cleaned the wound, she bound it as tightly as she could, put him in a makeshift splint made of slats of wood from the porch and aside from changing the bandage regularly, left the wound to heal as it would. He didn’t die and he did walk again. I listened quietly, imagining the blood seeping out of the long gash, steadily, filling the space around his body in the bathtub, red and sticky against his dark blue denim robe, Maxine bent over him, the man moaning and groaning confused and in desperate pain, (I had a very vivid imagination) and it dawned on me that Maxine was the only one allowed to see other men besides her husband naked. Puzzled by that thought at first, in the end I made sense of it because obviously, as Laycher’s wife, she was exempt from the rules that the rest of us had to folloew. She must’ve also reached the state of perfection that set her above and beyond temptation.
Only one man, as far as I know, died for lack of medical care. It happened when I was about six. Timothy was diabetic and had to stop taking his medication when he joined the church and put his faith in YHWH. After he slipped into a coma, the elders prayed for him around the clock for days before he finally died. We kids weren’t allowed to see him. There was no funeral, just men digging a grave behind the church building on Laycher’s land to bury him, while the women surrounded his wife inside, comforting and consoling her as she wept. I felt sad for his family, but I also wondered how he had sinned, what had he done to be struck down like that? I knew that sickness was YHWH’s way of punishing us or getting our attention to tell us to change. The worse the sickness, the worse the sin. “He said he would chastise us if he loves us. You can’t pray for just anyone. I prayed for Brother Timothy when he cut his wrists, brought him out of the hospital. Why is he gone now? His cistern leaked and he never fixed it.” Timothy was a tale of warning. I never knew until this very moment, reading through the old notes from Laycher’s sermons, that he had tried to commit suicide. That, of course, was the sin that he died for. I had no memory of him, only the memory of the solemn tone of any conversation about him. The only other body in the church cemetery was a man who had been electrocuted while on a ladder trying to disentangle his child’s kite from the electric wire. He should have known better than to let his kids fly kites. They flew like birds in the sky and were breaking the commandment to not make any graven images. So, I knew that his death was the wrath of YHWH, too.
There was one other man I remember from when I was little, about four or five years old, who stopped taking his medication, but he didn’t die. He did end up back in the State Hospital, though. Roosevelt was a big man with an even bigger laugh, giant hands and an infectious smile. We used to sit us on his lap and play Paddy Cake. In fact, his favorite thing of all was to play with us kids and the feeling was mutual, we loved his visits. We didn’t know much else about him except that he wasn’t like the rest of us. There was something wrong with him, but Laycher was praying for him and YHWH was going to deliver him. One day after church, after most people had gone home, Laycher and a few brothers who were left were praying and talking really quietly, and for some reason I was there with my dad. My mom and siblings may have been there, too, but I don’t remember them. Roosevelt was sitting alone, agitated, rocking back and forth. Because I loved him, I wanted to know what was happening, but the brothers just kept sending me away every time I’d try to get to him. They’d say, “no, go stand in the back of the church, he isn’t safe to be around right now.” I was tiny, scared, and worried. I heard whispers about demons and fighting their voices his head. They said when he opened his mouth they could see the demon’s eyes in the back of his throat. I didn’t understand how someone who was so loving could be possessed with demons. They tried late into the night to cast the demons out, praying fervently, the hands of not only Laycher but two other elders laid on his head, his shoulders, his back. They spoke in tongues, eyes closed, brows furrowed, faces raised heavenward, and shook his body with the intensity of their prayer, but his rambling got worse and he started to push back and to yell at them to stop touching him. They reached for him again and he swung at them. He tried to stand up, and they pushed him back onto the pew.
I watched and listened silently as small children do and I heard them say that they were getting worried he would hurt someone. Laycher shook his head in disappointment, “we have no choice, we have to send him back.”
“Back where?” I asked my dad timidly.
“He’s not getting better,” my dad explained, “so we have to send him back to the State Hospital.” I didn’t know what the State Hospital was, but it sounded ominous.
Roosevelt’s reaction to the plan confirmed my assumption. He cried and pleaded, “no, please don’t send me back there, I can’t go back. You don’t understand, I want to be here, I like it here, I can do it, I promise, just let me try again.” He reached out to no one in particular, his big hands opened wide, but then he turned to me, begging me not to be afraid,“don’t you want to play Paddy Cake, Honey? Aww, come on, like we always do. You’re not afraid of me, are you? You were just sitting in my lap this morning. Tell them you’re not afraid, Honey, please tell them you’re not afraid of me.” I stood motionless next to my dad, his hand resting protectively on my shoulder. Roosevelt’s arms dropped to his side and water seeped from his eyes and ran down his cheeks. I had never seen anyone look so defeated and alone and it made me so sad, but I was afraid, I was very afraid, not of him but of seeing the demons in his throat. I didn’t go to him, I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t help, I just stood there motionless and mute. I remember the darkness of the night and the blue and red lights of the ambulance strobing round and round. I had never seen an ambulance up close before, only flying by on the highway. The men who drove the ambulance wore uniforms that looked like the police—I was afraid of the police. They loaded Roosevelt into the back, he had surrendered without a fight and was strapped down to a bed with handles on the sides that the men could pick up and move. They closed the doors to the back of the ambulance and locked them, and then they drove away. I watched it grow smaller and the lights flash further and further away, until it was gone. It was one of the saddest things I’d ever seen. I held my dad’s hand and cried and wondered why it was YHWH’s will not to save him, why Laycher hadn’t been able to cast out the demons and make him happy again even though he kept saying I rebuke you in the name of YHWH?
Months later, as we walked along the edge of the park, I looked up at a brick building with bars on the windows. “What’s that building?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s the State Hospital,” someone replied. “That’s where Roosevelt lives now.” I wondered why they put him in jail. I turned to look again, craning my neck while being pulled along by my hand, feet tripping over themselves, the way we do when we’re tiny and at the mercy of the bigger person who is hurrying along, even though we may want to stop and look.