“Patsy” Submission to the State Library of North Carolina’s 2024 Writing Contest

Patsy
A short short story

By Morris Dean

[The State Library of North Carolina will announce the results of the contest in July.]

Brother Smith concluded his sermon and stretched his arms out to the congregation. “Now, loved ones, as the choir sings ‘Softly and Tenderly,’ won’t you come up and be saved?”^* A shiver passed through Patsy’s body. She had been told Jesus was waiting for her. He did somehow feel close tonight. The sadness of the week since Brother Smith’s last Sunday night invitation—which she hadn’t accepted—was about to be lifted, she knew. The bonds that tied her to the pew and held her in her girlish ways, tonight would be severed. The choir began to sing. “Sof-tly and ten-der-ly Je-sus is calling....” Her younger brother and her mother and then her father stood between her and the aisle. She could hear footsteps in the church. People were moving. Why hadn’t she herself sat next to the aisle? “Now,” intoned Brother Smith, “while every head is bowed and every eye is closed, come on up. Don’t be afraid.” Was Patsy afraid? In her heart she felt as though she had already taken this step. Going up didn’t seem essential. She had prayed to Jesus last night. Her friends wanted her to go with them to the picture show, but she had stayed home to read the Book of John. Wasn’t she already saved? John said that all you had to do was believe in Jesus. That’s what Brother Smith said too. But he always had these troubling calls to the altar. There’d be Brother Blankenship and Brother Brown or Brother Harris to get down on their knees with you and help you get close to Jesus. Maybe even get the Holy Ghost. Patsy shivered again. There was something. She was sure she didn’t have the Holy Ghost. Did she have to get that too? “Cal-ling, oh, sin-ner, come home....” Yes, a sinner, that was what she guessed she was. She may have stayed home last night, but she had wanted to go with her friends. She thought about them a lot as she was trying to understand the Word. “Dear friends, won’t you let Jesus wash you clean? Won’t you let his blood purify you and make you new? Don’t hold back. Every head is bowed and every eye is closed.” Patsy looked around to see whether others’ eyes were closed. They seemed to be, so she closed her own eyes. “Come on up here in the privacy of your own heart. Don’t you need Jesus?” Yes, she guessed she needed Jesus. Brother Smith said so. Her mother seemed to think so. She wasn’t sure whether her father thought so—he was so private about this sort of thing. Her brother wriggled in his seat. Was he going up? That was hard to believe. He nudged her. Through a cracked eyelid she verified that, yes, he was getting up. “Let’s go,” he whispered. Her eyes opened wider. “What, you want us to go up?” she whispered. “No!” he whispered loudly. “Let’s go out.” She felt a stab. “No, I have to go up. You can go out.” He giggled and looked puzzled. Half closing his eyes, he glanced up toward the front of the church. Patsy nodded. Her brother lowered himself back into his seat, seeming to want to see what would happen. Now she’d committed herself. Her cheeks blazed. She was no longer free. Did she intend to go up or not? She didn’t know. Her thoughts were tumbling around like laundry in her mother’s washing machine, falling on each other, tangling. Time was speeding up. Or was it slowing down? Oh, Jesus, help me, she thought. Take my hand. It would be nice, she thought, if she could just be alone with Jesus. The men up at the altar frightened her. What would they say to her? What would they do? The choir stopped singing. Patsy looked up and saw that Brother Smith had stepped down from the pulpit and was now with Brother Blankenship and Brother Brown and the three or four individuals who’d come up to be saved. Brother Smith was getting down on his knees to pray. The people around her were starting to stand up, and some of them were raising their voices in prayer. Others were dispersing and heading toward the rear. Quite a few seemed to have already left. Her mother stepped into the aisle, her arms raised, trembling, moving her lips in prayer. Her father was nowhere in sight; he had probably gone out for a smoke. She looked again at her bewildered brother, smiled at him, and took his hand. “Okay,” she said, “I’m with you. Let’s go out.”^**
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* The contest submission had 32 paragraphs. When I copied and pasted the text from a PDF version on my iPad to share with others, the paragraph breaks were lost. Novelist Michael Hanson commented: “The story is effectively conveyed as one long paragraph; no breaks are necessary, because the reader runs with the story just as Patsy’s thoughts are running.” I agree with him.

** An earlier version of this story was posted on January 18, 2014. I wrote the original story 42 years before that. For the 2014 posting, I noted that I myself, “and many other children, were Patsy, and still other children continue to be patsies yet.”
   Also, the real Pastor Smith figures in my July 2, 2015 memorial to my cousin Vernon DeWayne Voss (“Gone to meet Jesus”), whose wife was the sister of the Reverend Paul Smith’s wife Lois. I remember the couple as kind, good people, tenderly devout.

Copyright © 2024, 2025 by Morris Dean (aka Moristotle)