The Revival

DONALD SHIPP is the kind of man
That you wish everybody could know,
And this story properly begins with Don Shipp
Because of the way he answered a question.

It was twilight in the valley. The mountains,
Dimly purple, melted into mystery by the dusk,
Rested in a great repose, a poignant awareness
That seemed to reach out, to close around,
To gird with a barrier of peace the human consciousness.

The small cabin that the congregation had rented
After their church burned was almost hid
From sight; tucked in at the foot of two steep
Wooded slopes. The little house, too,
Seemed wrapped in a living stillness
As if it might be waiting for something.
An early star appeared, and a near-by whippoorwill
Began to stab the dew-soaked quietness
With his provocative call.

We followed
Those ahead and stood as a man unloosed
The heavy iron chain that was holding the door.
It slipped through the roughly made gash in the wood
And rattled to the floor with a sound suggestive
Of prisons and keepers. The door swung back,
And I saw in the half-light an altar —
A splash of white like faith in the shadows.
There seemed, too, to be candles on the altar.
Quickly the man opened the batten shutters,
And enough of the daylight was left to prove the altar
A goods box with a towel thrown over it
And the candles not candles at all
But gladiolus in a milk bottle.

It was their reading desk. Over it
Part of the ceiling had been torn away,
Leaving the bare pine rafters.
There were ten wooden benches and four kerosene lamps.
The man stood on the benches and lighted the lamps
With a carefully sheltered match, lifting
Each smoky chimney only high enough
To turn the wick, which gave a little dry squeak
When it was waked up — a surprised protest
When he said, as it were, ‘Time to get up
And let your light shine!’

The light
Revealed shortcomings as it often does —
Whitewashed slabs and boards, once partly covered
With newspaper, now peeling off in hanging strips.
There was a lingering suggestion of boiled cabbage
In the remembering boards, mercifully modified
By the summer air.

As the congregation gathered,
The cabbage competed with soap and homemade starch,
Onions and cheap perfume and the perspiration
Of honest ploughing. There were a few young girls
With rouged cheeks. Most of the men were collarless
And in overalls, and most of the women carried fat infants
Or small children. They all strayed in, the women
Hanging behind in solemn, awkward self-consciousness.
A boy of five walked with the delighted importance
Of complete unrestraint up and down the benches,
Stepping over the backs from bench to bench.
Wheels rattled outside, and there swept up to the door,
With a chariot-like swoop and sudden shuddering stop,
A strange vehicle. It was the platform
Of a battered motor truck on which perched confidently
The wooden body of an old covered wagon.
The hoops that used to hold the sheltering canvas
Now rode upon the engine’s power
Without responsibility, enjoying an unhampered view
As they arched naïvely over the occupants
Who were sitting in rather uncertain chairs.
The mother held a baby in her arms, the father
A small child, while three larger children
Sat flat in the straw of the wagon bed.
From the front seat climbed down two men and a woman.
They all filed into the cabin, leaving the pulseless truck
Deserted out under the gathering stars.

Just then Don Shipp walked in. He was dressed
Much as the others, but he brought a new thing
Into the room: an easy energy in his walk,
A flash from his smile — something that gave the gathering
An instant coherence.
When Don Shipp was born
He must have come trailing a little of Space behind him.
His father — grandson of a German cabin boy
Who came over with a merchant crew —
(They changed his German name to Shipp in honor of the voyage)
Had been a pioneer; had built his log cabin
Without a single nail, and had moved his furniture to it
By felling a small oak tree,
Chaining a yoke of oxen to its heavy end,
Nestling the mattress in its branches
And piling the furniture on the mattress,
Then zigzagging through the trails that he had cleared
Along the tops and sides of the ridges.
So Don had an inheritance.
‘There’s Mr. Shipp,’
Said Sid Reeves. Sid had gold teeth
And a heavy lock of straight brown hair
That kept falling over his forehead, and he wore
A bright plaid tic. He looked as though
He might be something of a dandy with the girls.
Bud Summers was sitting with him, and they
Had evidently struck a live topic.
‘Hey, Don,
I jest ast Bud who was the two chief publicans
Mentioned in the New Testiment.’
‘Hold on,’ said Bud, not willing to give up.
‘ Lemme study a minute. Matthew was one, —
Wait, hold on, — Zacchæus was th’ other ’n.’
The nut was cracked and Bud subdued his satisfaction
With a jerk of his head. ‘I knowed in reason I knowed ’em.
Say, Don, what was it you said a-Sunday
About the parable of the talents?’
Don held
The Adult Bible Class. ‘What did you say
That one talent was?’
Don’s deep blue eyes
Lighted with the zest of a teacher in his field of ease.
He turned to me in half apology.
‘I’m an illiteral man,’ he said simply,
‘ But this is the way hit seems to me to be.
The one talent is our chanst at salvation.

We all have a chanst to begin somewhurs.
We all have that to start with.
Ef we use it, hit increases five er ten.’

The room had filled up, and the preacher had come in,
Sleek of hair and cheek and looking too young,
But his confidence bespoke experience.
' Brothers an sisters, le’s all join in singin’
“Sin Is to Blame.”’
The little organ began its attempt
To master the tune. As the singing got under way,
Buck Nevins appeared suddenly in the door.
His powerful shoulders, heavy long black beard,
And almost fierce brown eyes
Suggested the physical force of a storm-cloud.
He paused, then made his way with a deliberate stride
To an empty place on the front seat.
Everybody knew that more than any man in the settlement
Buck Nevins was the slave of drink.
He beat his wife, terrorized his daughters,
And made his home so dangerous when sprees took him
That the neighbors always stood ready for their defense.

The singing finally crackled out like burning brush.
The preacher read from the Scriptures and then gave out his text:
‘On such the second death hath no power.’
A baby began to wail disconsolately
As though he felt that he had been deceived.
The preacher, ignoring the impertinence of the protest,
Worked rather gradually toward more fervor
Until the ‘Amens’ and ‘Lord save us’
Began to come satisfactorily from the floor,
Varied by shuddering sobs and groans.
‘An’ the lake of fire and brimstone, which is the second death,
Where the wicked shall burn for ever an’ ever . . .’

Mose Billings said it was a powerful meetin’.
The preacher jumped so high he nearly hit the ceiling.
So ended the first night of the revival.

During the protracted meeting which followed
For seven days, Buck Nevins sat

On the front seat, trying to receive the spirit Whereby he could be called to a profession of faith.
One after another the brethren prayed with him —
And his mother, his wife, his daughters.
He sat, his elbows on his knees, his head
Buried in his hands, stubbornly holding out,
Yet waiting with a miserable hope for the light to break.

On the sixth day, young Willowby Martin,
Who had spent his summers since boyhood
On the side of the mountain near Deep Creek
And had caught many a rainbow trout In the company
Of Buck Ncvins, dropped in on his way for groceries
To sec how the revival was progressing.
He slid into the back seat near the door
And meant to slip as quietly out within five minutes,
But the preacher spied him, and, coming down,
Leaned across the bench. ‘Brother Martin,
Won’t you come up and pray with Brother Nevins?’

Willowby knew he could n’t have won a higher tribute
Than being regarded as one of them — a reward
That only unaffected genuineness can claim.
He followed the preacher up the aisle and sat down
Beside Buck, putting his arm around his shoulders.
‘Buck,’ he said gently with the utter simplicity
That made him what he was, and therefore loved,
‘You know you want to be a better man,
And you know God can help you to do that.'

The next afternoon, the seventh day of the revival,
Just as the sinking sun was painting the sky
A smeared and brilliant saffron, and Willowby
Was staking his tomato plants, he looked up
To see Sid Reeves riding across the sunset,
His horse at a trot. He turned down the lane
And Willow by scented news on the breeze.
Sid reined in his horse abruptly
And the animal flourished to a sudden standstill.
His hoofs cutting into the soft ground.
‘Buck Nevins has professed!’ called Sid excitedly.

Two years later I was talking to Don Shipp
Out on the edge of his cornfield.
He had dropped the plough in the furrow and come forward,
Hand outstretched, with that rare smile of his
To welcome me, his small son stumbling over the ruts
With three-year-old determination, close behind.
We plunged into real things before we knew it.
Don is that kind of person.
‘What about Buck Nevins?'
I asked. ‘Did he stay sober?’
‘Has n’t drunk
A drop since. As good citizen as you’ll find.
Yes — seein’ the light’s a real thing.
But — well, you know — you can’t tell it to folks.’

‘What do you think it is that does it?’ I asked.
‘The preacher — well — it is n’t what he says, is it?’

Donald looked at me for a moment, a bright,
Clear, steady look. He was weighing something.
Then a wave of integrity swept through his face,
Flushing it pink to the roots of his thick hair,
And I knew I was going to get an answer
That came from a very deep well.

‘Hit’s the Word of God. Hit’s that that does it.’

(More than his name leads me to think
That there’s something of the Covenanter in Don too!)