The church’s gravel parking lot was almost full when we arrived. Most of the vehicles were old farmers’ trucks like ours, all covered with a fresh coat of mud. There were a few sedans, and these were driven either by town folk or by farmers who owned their land. Down the street at the Methodist church, there were fewer trucks and more cars. As a general rule, the merchants and schoolteachers worshiped there. The Methodists thought they were slightly superior, but as Baptists, we knew we had the inside track to God.

I jumped from the truck and ran to find my friends. Three of the older boys were tossing a baseball behind the church, near the cemetery, and I headed in their direction.

“Luke,” someone whispered. It was Dewayne, hiding in the shade of an elm tree and looking scared. “Over here.”

I walked to the tree.

“Have you heard?” he said. “Jerry Sisco died early this mornin’.”

I felt as if I’d done something wrong, and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Dewayne just stared at me. Finally, I managed to respond. “So?”

“So they’re tryin’ to find people who saw what happened.”

“Lot of folks saw it.”

“Yeah, but nobody wants to say anything. Everybody’s scared of the Siscos, and everybody’s scared of your hillbilly.”

“Ain’t my hillbilly,” I said.

“Well, I’m scared of him anyway. Ain’t you?”

“Yep.”

“What’re we gonna do?”

“Nothin’. We ain’t sayin’ a word, not now anyhow.”

We agreed that we would indeed do nothing. If we were confronted, we would lie. And if we lied, we would say an extra prayer.

The prayers were long and windy that Sunday morning. So were the rumors and gossip of what had happened to Jerry Sisco. News spread quickly before Sunday school began. Dewayne and I heard details about the fight that we couldn’t believe were being reported. Hank grew larger by the moment. “Hands as big as a country ham,” somebody said. “Shoulders like a Brahma bull,” said somebody else. “Had to weigh three hundred pounds.”

The men and older boys grouped near the front of the church, and Dewayne and I milled around, just listening. I heard it described as a murder, then a killing, and I wasn’t clear about the difference until I heard Mr. Snake Wilcox say, “Ain’t no murder. Good folks get murdered. White trash like the Siscos get killed.”

The killing was the first in Black Oak since 1947, when some sharecroppers east of town got drunk and had a family war. A teenage boy found himself on the wrong end of a shotgun, but no charges were filed. They fled during the night, never to be heard from again. No one could remember the last “real” murder.

I was mesmerized by the gossip. We sat on the front steps of the church, looking down the sidewalk toward Main Street, and heard men arguing and spouting off about what should or shouldn’t be done.

Down the street, I could see the front of the Co-op, and for a moment I thought I could see Jerry Sisco again, his face a mess, as Hank Spruill clubbed him to death.

I had watched a man get killed. Suddenly, I felt the urge to sneak back into the sanctuary and start praying. I knew I was guilty of something.

We drifted into the church, where the girls and women were also huddled and whispering their versions of the tragedy. Among them, Jerry’s stature was rising. Brenda, the freckled girl with a crush on Dewayne, lived only a quarter of a mile from the Siscos, and since they were practically neighbors, she was receiving more than her share of attention. The women were definitely more sympathetic than the men.

Dewayne and I found the cookies in the fellowship hall, then went to our little classrooms, listening every step of the way.

Our Sunday school teacher, Miss Beverly Dill Cooley, who taught at the high school in Monette, started things off with a lengthy, and quite generous, obituary for Jerry Sisco, a poor boy from a poor family, a young man who never had a chance. Then she made us hold hands and close our eyes while she lifted her voice to heaven and for a very long time asked God to receive poor Jerry into His warm and eternal embrace. She made Jerry sound like a Christian, and an innocent victim.

I glanced at Dewayne, who had one eye on me.

There was something odd about this. As Baptists, we’d been taught from the cradle that the only way you made it to heaven was by believing in Jesus and trying to follow His example in living a clean and moral Christian life. It was a simple message, one that was preached from the pulpit every Sunday morning and every Sunday night, and every revival preacher who passed through Black Oak repeated the message loud and clear. We heard it at Sunday school, at Wednesday night prayer service, and at Vacation Bible School. It was in our music, our devotionals, and our literature. It was straightforward, unwavering, and without loopholes, compromise, or wiggle room.

And anyone who did not accept Jesus and live a Christian life simply went to hell. That’s where Jerry Sisco was, and we all knew it.

But Miss Cooley prayed on. She prayed for all the Siscos in this time of grief and loss, and she prayed for our little town as it reached out to help this family.

I couldn’t think of a single soul in Black Oak who would reach out to the Siscos.

It was a strange prayer, and when she finally said “amen,” I was completely bewildered. Jerry Sisco had never been near a church, but Miss Cooley prayed as if he were with God at that very moment. If outlaws like the Siscos could make it to heaven, the pressure was off the rest of us.

Then she started on Jonah and the whale again, and for a while we forgot about the killing.

An hour later, during worship, I sat in my usual spot, in the same pew where the Chandlers always sat, halfway back on the left side, between Gran and my mother. The pews were not marked or reserved, but everyone knew where everybody else was supposed to sit. In three more years, when I was ten, my parents said I would be allowed to sit with my friends, providing of course that I could do so without misbehaving. This promise had been extracted by me from both parents. It might as well have been twenty years.

The windows were up, but the heavy air was not moving. The ladies fanned themselves while the men sat still and sweated. By the time Brother Akers rose to preach, my shirt was stuck to my back.

He was angry, as usual, and he began shouting almost immediately. He attacked sin right off the bat; sin had brought tragedy to Black Oak. Sin had brought death and destruction, as it always had and always would. We sinners drank and gambled and cursed and lied and fought and killed and committed adultery because we allowed ourselves to be separated from God, and that’s why a young man from our town had lost his life. God didn’t intend for us to kill one another.

I was confused again. I thought Jerry Sisco got himself killed because he’d finally met his match. It had nothing to do with gambling and adultery and most of the other sins Brother Akers was so worked up over. And why was he yelling at us? We were the good folks. We were in church!

I seldom understood what Brother Akers was preaching about, and occasionally I’d hear Gran mumble over Sunday dinner that she’d also been hopelessly confused during one of his sermons. Ricky had once told me he thought the old man was half crazy.

The sins grew, one piling on top of the other until my shoulders began to sag. I had yet to lie about watching the fight, but I was already beginning to feel the heat.

Then Brother Akers traced the history of murder, beginning with Cain slaying Abel, and he walked us through the bloody path of biblical carnage. Gran closed her eyes, and I knew she was praying-she always was. Pappy was staring at a wall, probably thinking about how a dead Sisco might affect his cotton crop. My mother seemed to be paying attention, and mercifully I began to nod off.