Pease River Revival: Merlina's Story

By Nancy Jean

In the fictional town of Peasy near the Pease River in northwest Texas, the church's fall revival is as important to locals as are the county fair and cotton harvest. But fall revival in Peasy is at a crossroad. Like post-war farms and public education, religion faces radical changes. This is a coming-of-age story as told by Merlina Rea, her neighbors and family. This is a murder mystery set in 1949; the Pease River Killer preys on young women and eludes the law. This is historical fiction, its setting a window into the challenges faced by women, people of color, and rural communities in post-WWII Texas.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 12, 2023

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Chapter 1

When Merle Met Ida Olive, by Merlina Rea

I was born during a dust storm so ferociously blasting its way through the Texas panhandle that it swallowed my mother’s wails outside the lean-to, where Brother and Sister Miller kept the laundry washtub and tools for their kitchen garden. Until I emerged during that typical late winter howl, they had held their secret close. For two months, my parents labored through the winter on the Miller farm, my mother’s pregnancy hidden under men’s woolen coats. They took care of the stock through snow blizzard and dry windstorm, repaired fence, cleaned stock tanks, turned fields, broke ice, killed prairie dogs and pack rats. All this in exchange for a cot inside the lean-to, two daily hot meals, and hot-water baths while predicting misfortune’s postponement, as teenagers do.

When my February birthdays rolled in, my parents recounted the event, gazing as tumbleweeds blew through the yards, crossing dirt roads and piling like thorny arrangements against barbed wire fences, how she nearly choked on dirt clots which my father would retrieve whole fist from her gaping jaws, the lean-to an inadequate shield from brutal Texas extremes. I’ll be in debt to you ‘til I die, Merle.

Well, Ida Olive, I guess you mightn’t. We met at a junction. Merlina Rea here is the road we chose. They share these sentiments on my birthday, tender words as sparse as a Great Prairie’s gentle rainfall, tousling my hair and patting my shoulders with genderless hands hardened and muscled by toil. To their parenting credit, I did not work alongside my parents until I could carry a full pail of milk from barn to the Miller’s kitchen or drive a wagon without the mules running away with me. Before that time, I was not certain how Ida Olive paid her debt to Merle. Nary a sibling made its arrival during storm or tranquility.

Thereafter, Brother and Sister Miller kept my parents on the farm, at first growing cotton, corn, and sunflowers for the market. Sister Miller owned a share in her parents’ Kentucky horse farm so, she had expensive things that her Texas neighbors envied. After Mother and Father saw to my first breath and allowed my cries to pierce farmhouse walls, the Millers, a childless couple at least twenty years older than my parents, saw their opportunity to expand the farm and score points for Jesus. By virtue of government agriculture and worker programs, the Millers received one hundred young fruit trees of various kinds. Which Merle and Ida Olive planted and tended. Therefore, the Miller aspirations for orchards and heaven kept my parents employed. We lived in one of the shacks reserved for traveling Black cotton workers, which my father enlarged and made comfortable, building rooms and furniture when he found time and lumber among the days and goods that belonged to others. When I was six years old, I finally slept in my own room.

Here is what I learned about my parents. By asking pertinent questions over many years, I could quilt their history at infrequent but effective occasions, such as when they were feverish or feisty. My father was fourteen in 1932 when he hitched a ride on a railcar in St. Louis and traveled west. My mother, born in Tulsa, was also among the thousands of teenagers who as orphans or because a daddy said, we cain’t afford to feed all o’ yeh youngins, hopped on railcars and camped along roadways. They did find plenty of work in exchange for meals but rarely found enduring work or the kind that included proper shelter. My parents were too young. When employers advertised job openings and applicants rushed to the offices, fathers and husbands shoved Merle and Ida Olive to the back of lines.

Merle first saw Ida Olive at a workers’ camp outside Matador in early May ’34. She led a large group of teenage trekkers in song while their hobo stew, generously loaded with beef scraps, cooked on the open fire. It had been long days for the teenagers; a ranch foreman hired them to put in sorghum seed and repair fence. They camped overnight near the cattle tanks. Ida Olive sang to soothe hurt while everyone took turns bathing in the cattle tank. While they ate, her songs stimulated hunger and shunned loneliness. Her melodic repertoire had songs responsive to every human emotion. Merle convinced Ida Olive to share his blanket one night. When my mother’s belly grew so that she could no longer disregard the tickling of new life, she told Merle. He found work for them on the Miller’s farm. With only two months to spare before birth, they had shelter for themselves and a crib for me, a discarded Lifebuoy Soap wooden crate lined with blankets stolen from where they hung unattended on Peasy clotheslines.

When I was a few weeks old and thriving on mother’s milk, Brother and Sister Miller escorted Merle and Ida Olive to the Baptist parsonage where a simple ceremony gifted legitimacy to we three Meyers. We would have to earn our moral standing in the community.

I knew that my parents liked each other. Daddy clapped when Mama sang, and Mama curtsied when he clapped for her. When Sister Miller discarded a peddled sewing machine and replaced it with a new electric Singer, Daddy brought the old one home for Mama. Several weeks later, after calving season, Mama enterprisingly showed Daddy that she could cut down her only church frock to make a dress so’s the girl who’s growin’ like pole beans don’t show ‘er stuff ever’ time she bends over -- he took her sewing kit and disappeared for three days. This behavior was markedly unusual for Merle; he did not indulge whims. We carried on with chores until Daddy returned with her sewing kit, new threads, and four bolts of new gingham and chambray fabric. He had walked to town and worked at the Pease River General Store for the fabric and his own meals, bringing the goods back in a new red wagon for me. Mama sewed dresses, aprons, and a new shirt for Daddy. Daddy assuaged Brother Miller’s fury and Ida Olive’s worry, promising to work double time over the next several days.

Whether Merle and Ida Olive were fully committed to Baptist dogma before they met each other and the Millers, I am not certain. However, the Old Time Religion Baptist Church in our Texas town was the Meyer’s second home as early as I have memory. Mama and I went with Mrs. Miller when once a week social obligations like bridge club and shopping inspired her to leave her beautiful home; we spent that time cleaning the church building. While Mama swept and mopped floors, I oiled pews, piano, podium, and altar. If it was a spring or summer Saturday, we ran through nearby fields and ditches picking wildflowers to fill sanctuary vases for Sunday service.

Beside cleaning, we also practiced our gospel songs. Ida Olive was a popular vocalist in and around Peasy. Most of the time, she led the services in song, waving her arms to the rhythm and singing several notches higher in volume than the congregation so that Hold the Fort for I Am Coming did not drag along, it being a song about military glory. One of the first big questions of my life was, Merle, why did Jesus slaughter his enemies? He grinned, sending me to bed early so’s your impudence ain’t rewarded.

By the time I was six years old, and sleeping in my own room, I sang duet with Mama, sometimes carrying the alto harmony and other times the soprano lead. She kept a stool within reach of the preacher’s podium, and I took to that stool like it was radio performance hour. Within a few more years, I sang solo and wrote hymns that made old women cry and the preacher happy that I was his opening act. A brief interlude occurred when father was back from the war, and his heartsickness silenced our songs for a long while.

Chapter 2

1948 Fall Harvest

A Lesson in women folk’s meanness

Fall revival season sashays in every year with majestic expectations, as lofty as autumn’s colorful show in prairie sumac and hackberry. Preparation for attendance, music, preacher, and rededication to Jesus begin when the county fair shuts down. I will do my part, having written two new songs and sewn a new frock to match a hat that my St. Louis aunt sent via postal service. My ensemble is green like the triple leaves of cotton plants when they present yellow blooms. After searching through Sister Miller’s scrap baskets, I found yellow crochet pieces that she let me use. We are friends now that I am thirteen. When I practiced the new songs yesterday, she cried and hugged me close to her big bosoms that lay heavy on top of her large waist. Mama is lean as quail breast; the muscles on her extremities rival those of our boys on the football team. But she has no breasts; and I worry, wondering whether it is a family trait. Ida Olive’s relatives have never visited us, and Daddy has no money for travel. I want to travel but, so far, I am too poor to think about it. I travel through literature.

Now, Merlina Rea, we must finish canning before three. Your new songs will inspire our revival preacher. By the way, I need to call the parsonage and press Sister Hooten about the preacher’s arrival. Since we’re putting him and his wife up here, I want to have fresh bed linens ready. Mrs. Miller and I jar the remaining black-eyed peas from this mornings’ harvest; then, we clean the kitchen and fill jars with fresh well water and mint leaves in preparation for her nap. When the days are hot, she takes to the swing Brother Miller fashioned under large elms and sleeps until she hears his truck or mule wagon return from the fields. I never again saw a supper as quickly cooked and set at the dining table as Sister Miller did every evening from April through late Fall. Mama says that Sister Miller takes naps and easily puts bounteous suppers together because there are no children under foot. I know that Sister Miller has little else to do beyond keeping her home beautiful and growing a kitchen garden. Once a week she plays bridge with the Kongenial Kard Klub – the spelling as seen in local newspapers – occasionally traveling as far as Hamlin or Lubbock. The only part of her life that I envy, Jesus please forgive me for Envy, is the indoor bathroom, complete with instant hot water, porcelain tub and toilet, and clean tile floors.

While the farmer’s wife dozes, I have a little time to visit friends. Mama is in the vegetable garden again, after working most of the day in the orchards and fields with Daddy. I recognize her big floppy hat, the long sleeve faded shirt made from flour sacking and long skirt made from patches of discarded woolens. I would be there with Mama if not for Mrs. Miller calling me in to help with canning and cleaning. Thank you, Jesus.

Pearl and Lincoln arrive, the first of three or four families who harvest cotton with us every year. I knock on the screen door and announce, Merlina Rea here to see you! They welcome me as always, and I watch them hang clothes in the wardrobe, stuff others inside a drawer, and set a few pictures on the shelf above the bed. The bed linens are new; well, not brand new. But new on this bed and better than you slept in last year. Mrs. Miller replaced all her bed linens after a shopping trip in Dallas. Mama and I laundered them this week. See the lavender sprigs? It was my idea to grow lavender, and the Millers gave me an entire field row for it. The happy plants grew and bloomed, so plentifully that I’ve been using these empty cottages to dry whole bouquets. The women in Mrs. Miller’s bridge club bought several. I saved the money. Are Noma and Myrtle coming with Hobart and Hazel? I can’t wait for evening choir!

We so happy to see you growin’. The bed is nice! And smells so good. If you any lavender to spare, we’ll hang it here. Place get smelly after we come in from fields. Cottage! When you learn that word? We saw Hobart and Hazel last week near Quanah. Them girls growin’ jest like you! Pearl and Lincoln share talk like jazz musicians share melodic schemes.

I am familiar with jazz. Every Friday evening, the Meyer family sits around the radio, listening to American Jazz on KFDA out of Amarillo. It is the last hour of music on a Friday, following several comedies and news on KGNC. Saturday mornings are early on the farm. Mama says that Baptists must not drink or dance but, we can tap our feet to radio music on a Friday night. Saturday night is all about preparation for Sunday church. Whether Daddy likes Mama’s strict schedules and rules, I am not sure. What I have figured out is that he abides nicely until he cannot; then, Daddy rides with other farmhands and cowboys into Amarillo or Abilene for a weekend. Mama is silent on his return but, they labor and love side by side until his next retreat.

Help us with these greens ‘n ‘tatoes, Merlina Rea. We was blessed with an abundance from the last farm. We’ll use storm shelter per usual. Caught catfish out o’ cattle tanks on our way here so will cook ‘em right away. Lincoln, you git that fire goin’ whiles we do this. Git outa that rocker! I want a fire and ‘tend to cook soon I’m ready. Move yo’ fat butt! Pearl scolds Lincoln, although she does not need to. I think she does it to make me laugh.

While they eat and set fried fish aside for the others, I bring tied lavender bundles from Mama’s lean-to and hang one in each of the colored cottages. I feel like a fancy hotel manager who prepares bedrooms for exclusive guests. Just then, the arrival of two farm trucks interrupts the afternoon’s lull, their cabs and cabooses nearly overflowing. The occupants hastily disembark, and late summer’s quietude bids goodbye for several days as old friends and new family gather for harvest and revival.

Noma! Myrtle! We race into each other’s arms. Pinch me, Noma. Pull my hair, Myrtle. I am dreaming; I just know it. Before I can stop myself, I cry; and we cause a stir among the adults who are busy unloading their few belongings. Three girls crying and dancing around like we stepped into a swarm of fire ants.

Hazel yells in our direction. Now that you got that outa your systems. Go fill these water buckets. My goodness. All you got is legs and arms; just missing your heads! When we get to the well, I unload my surprises.

They put in a second outhouse. We got one for the women and one for the men! Because I started my monthly blessings last winter. Mama told the Millers that I would be coming to their fancy bathroom unless we had better situations at the cottages. So, look! Facing in opposite directions are two new outhouses with a fence on which climb sweet pea and honeysuckle. Each of the outhouses is also larger than the old one, with room for shelves and hooks. Now, come here! I show them the bath shed. Inside it is a large aluminum tub, wood floor with a linoleum rug, a small wood stove for heating water, and shelves of toiletry supplies.

My friends hug