Dominion by Randy Alcorn Page A

call up someone many of you know, or at least you know of him. Clarence Abernathy. Maybe you read his columns in the Trib. I asked him if he’d say some words about his sister, Dani. Welcome, Clarence. Come on up here.”
Clarence walked up front and faced the congregation. He saw the proud faces of the older women, glowing, beaming, ready to burst like they always were when a black man who’d made it stood up front before the community. He was never comfortable being shown off; it seemed to imply black men rarely succeeded. He felt particularly out of place standing behind a pulpit. If God wanted someone to speak for him today, Clarence knew he was a poor choice. He could think of nothing else to say, so he just looked at his notes for a prompting.
“Dani had that knack for fixin’ up the food, even when she was little. She always wanted to be near Mama, and Mama lived in the kitchen. I remember them fixin’ up possum, and Mama explaining to Dani you had to cook that possum till you could pull out the hair, nice’n easy.”
Some made faces and chuckled, many smiled.
Without him realizing it, Clarence’s diction had changed as he made himself at home in the community. “Dani and I did chores together. Went on adventures together. Snuck around and spied out raccoons and skunks and badgers and foxes. Sometimes we just spent the day watchin’ the corn grow and talkin’ about our dreams. We had lots of dreams, me and Dani.”
His voice thickened. He paused for nearly ten seconds.
“One of the things about my little sis was her laugh, that delightful, hilarious, out-of-control laugh.” Clarence had planned to say more about her laugh. He didn’t.
“Summers were the best. Sometimes we hiked into the Bienville Forest, just the two of us, not far from our home in Puckett. Other days we moseyed down the Strong River and walked through the Mississippi mud. Dani loved to squish her toes in it. Then she’d skip up to Farmer Marshall’s jade meadow and pick buttercups. She used to put them up to her face and the sun would hit them just a certain way, and I remember the reflection, the amber color it made on her skin.”
Sobs of recognition and comfort and anguish filled the auditorium. Clarence no longer looked at his notes and found himself saying very different things than he’d written.
“I used to work the grease into Sissy’s hair when she wanted to try something new with it, which seemed like about every week. One time in the Chicago projects, in Cabrini Green, some boys called her a name, made fun of her nappy hair. Next thing I knew my fists were bleeding, two boys were on the pavement, and I was on top of them. When I got home I caught it from Mama. Nearly knocked my head off, Mama did. I ended up hurtin’ a lot worse than those boys.”
Laughter erupted from the congregation, especially the men, many of whom had nearly had their heads knocked off by Mama too. Obadiah sat there nodding, as if to say, “My boy’s tellin’ the truth, now, this ain’t no story, folks.”
“Mama was so mad she told me to stay in my room for five hundred years.” More laughter. “Daddy told me I shouldn’t have done it, but he said he understood why. He said we had to protect our womenfolk.”
Clarence looked at his daddy, both of their eyes watering.
“Later that night Dani snuck into my bedroom and told me, ‘Thanks, Antsy.’ Then she gave me a big plate of cookies she’d baked up just for me.” He fought for control.
“She’d gone and baked cookies for me. That was just like Dani. Then she said, ‘I know you’ll always be there for me, Antsy.”’ His face contorted as if in a wind tunnel. “Well…I wasn’t there for her when those hoodlums came after her Saturday night. Nobody was there for her. Nobody.”
Not even God.
He didn’t say that out loud, out of respect for his daddy. But something inside him burned so hot he didn’t trust himself to say any more. He had some concluding words written out, some